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walktalker · 06-11-01, 03:27 PM

EMI Has No Fears of Peers
While the recording industry continues to sue file-trading networks that allow consumers to download music for free, one major label has broken from the pack in its search for business models geared toward those very networks. Within the next month, the FastTrack file-trading network should pass Napster in terms of volume and use, according to a report by Internet research firm Webnoize. That continued growth in popularity of peer-to-peer technology has prompted EMI Recorded Music to offer a limited selection of videos from its Priority Records label through the Gnutella network.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,48147,00.html

Crazy Finns Forge 3-D for PDAs
In Viking mythology, the gods blunted their weapons to get results. Thor wielded his hammer, Mjollnir, to smash the skulls of his enemies. And ogres conjured storms by pounding the earth with their iron clubs. Now a group of battle-hardened developers, the Odins and Friggs of Helsinki's coding underworld, are shaping plain-old PDAs and smart phones into 3-D gaming devices. Helsinki's Fathammer has created a near-desktop-quality 3-D multimedia gaming platform, X-Forge, for devices that run Microsoft's PocketPC operating system, the Symbian OS and mobile Linux. An interactive demo of X-Forge, which runs smoothly on a Compaq iPAQ PDA, is loaded with equal parts peppy music, 3-D wizardry and Norse fantasy.
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,47850,00.html

Afghan Archivist of Culture
A brightly colored fresco lines the halls of an old temple, depicting images of a thriving culture. A museum with an impressive modern art collection attracts tourists from all over the world. This was Afghanistan 25 years ago. "At that time, it was a beautiful country filled with lush flowers," said Solaimon Olumee, an Afghan-American painter. "Women weren't covered. National Geographic called it a 'great vacation spot.'" But because the majority of Afghanistan's intellectual and artistic community has left, the country's cultural history is on the verge of extinction. Farhad Azad is hoping to bring it back. With his website, he wants to archive what he believes to be a vital piece of Afghanistan's history.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,47842,00.html

One Company's Bogus Bonus
John Schuett got laid off from a Silicon Valley telecom firm and was asked to repay $1,250 of a signing bonus because he didn't stay at the firm a full year. Schuett got a $2,500 signing bonus when he joined San Jose-based Valiant Networks. He lost his job in October after six months. Soon after, the company sent a letter threatening to send a collection agency after him if he didn't return half the bonus. "I'm furious," said Schuett. Valiant CFO John Zavoli said the troubled firm is just sticking to agreements employees signed. The firm has cut about 90 jobs, or 75 percent of its work force, in a series of layoffs. Schuett's employment letter stipulated that he repay the money if his employment was "severed," and the firm is obliged to collect on debts.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48190,00.html

Molecular Farming Under Fire
The next wave of genetically altered plants are on the horizon, and activists are warning the hue and cry over plant molecular farming will dwarf any previous controversy over other such products. The new outcry over plant molecular farming coincides with a public forum currently underway in Ottawa. The federal government's Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has called for the public's views on plant molecular farming -- or "pharming" as it's sometimes referred to in the industry. The one-day forum and three-day technical conference are meant to help the CFIA as they draft new regulatory directives for 2002. While no plants for molecular farming are currently approved in Canada, the government wants its regulatory framework in place before the practice takes off.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,48108,00.html

Anti-U.S. Hackers May Step Up Attacks - FBI
The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center warned Friday of an increased threat of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on computer networks. According to an advisory released at the NIPC Web site, the organization "has reason to believe that the potential for future DDoS attacks is high." The NIPC advised network infrastructure operators to "take a defensive posture and remain vigilant at a higher state of alert." The warning did not say whether any specific networks were at particular risk of DDoS attacks, nor did it identify any groups or individuals suspected of launching potential attacks.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171850.html

Anthrax outbreak to be simulated at UK post room
The UK Health and Safety Executive plans to release non-harmful bacterial spores into a postal sorting office to understand how biological weapons such as anthrax can spread. The initiative follows the anthrax terrorist attacks in the US, in which a small number of letters have led to widespread contamination. This is due to dispersal of the agent through the postal system, and the UK test will look for ways of preventing this. The common bacterium Bacillus globigii will be put into envelopes and packages and processed through normal postal sorting equipment at a secret location in the UK. Bacillus globigii is found naturally in soil and has been used to simulate anthrax attacks in the past.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991523

Global warming 'altering genes'
Global warming is leading to changes in the genetic make-up of animals, say scientists. They have found that mosquitoes have altered their genes in response to climate change. According to biologists at the University of Oregon, US, many plants and animals are adapting to a warming environment by taking advantage of the longer seasons. British birds now lay their eggs more than a week earlier than they did in the 1970s. And frogs are spawning about 10 days earlier. But the Oregon study is the first clear evidence that the genes of animals are changing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1639284.stm

Man eats worms to win GameCube

Nintendo of America has announced the winner of its "What would you do for a GameCube?" contest. Corey Olcsvary beat out four other finalists from across the nation to become the contest's grand-prize winner. Olcsvary performed the most outrageous stunt, as he became a Pikmin by shaving his head, donning a leaf, painting himself blue, and eating a bowl of Pikmin food, which included worms and crickets. As his prize, Olcsvary took home a Nintendo GameCube, a Game Boy Advance handheld, a video game software package, and $5,000 in cash.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...822490,00.html

EFF Counsels 'Betamax Defense' For Morpheus

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is backing the distributor of a popular file-swapping program targeted in an entertainment-industry lawsuit, comparing MusicCity's defense of its Morpheus peer-to-peer software to Sony's epic battle with Hollywood on behalf of its Betamax VCR nearly 20 years ago. However, Sony is one company that doesn't agree with the comparison. Its Sony Music Entertainment record company and Columbia Pictures motion picture business are two of some 29 music and movie outfits behind a copyright-infringement lawsuit naming Tennessee-based MusicCity and two other peer-to-peer technology companies.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171903.html
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171896.html

'White Hat' Hackers Threaten Information Anarchy
Responding to an effort by Microsoft to squelch the full disclosure of software vulnerabilities, a group of "white hat" hackers is putting out a call to other experts, asking them to deluge software vendors with bug reports. "Let's flood the security department of every vendor with new issues. Let's show the world what they would miss and what information could just as easily have stayed in the underground," wrote a security researcher who uses the nickname "HellNbak," in an announcement posted to several security mailing lists last week. So far, only one prominent organization has signed on to the "Information Anarchy 2K01" initiative - a group known as Nomad Mobile Research Center, of whom HellNbak is a member.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171900.html

Dumpster diving on the Web
Brewster Kahle may be the last Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur in the waning days of 2001 who isn't embarrassed to boast about his Big Idea. Maybe that's because he's not trying to make any money with it. "The last time someone really tried to do this it was 2,000 years ago. It's the chutzpah of the Greeks," he bragged at the launch party for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine on Oct. 24. "There are only 5 billion people in the world and they can only be typing 60 words a minute, 24 hours a day. So, that bounds it," he said to an admiring audience of librarians, academics and computer scientists gathered at UC-Berkeley's Bancroft Library.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ack/index.html

Software that puts porn in the trash
Can a computer be programmed to recognize pornographic images? Several firms are betting on new software that opens e-mail attachments, recognizes porn, and throws it in the trash before it even gets to you. The various programs are designed in part to clean up corporate e-mail, which they say often contains porn — one firm claims between 1 and 2 percent of all work e-mail can be described as pornographic. Acting as a sort of e-mail go-between, MessageLabs is in a prime position to poke through the digital missives checking for illegal or unwanted pornography. Doing so by hand is impractical, so the firm decided to do the next best thing — it licensed software from a company that claims it can teach computers to recognize and ferret out unsavory pictures.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/653155.asp?0dm=C17NT

More news later on

06-11-01, 03:27 PM	#2
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	EMI Has No Fears of Peers While the recording industry continues to sue file-trading networks that allow consumers to download music for free, one major label has broken from the pack in its search for business models geared toward those very networks. Within the next month, the FastTrack file-trading network should pass Napster in terms of volume and use, according to a report by Internet research firm Webnoize. That continued growth in popularity of peer-to-peer technology has prompted EMI Recorded Music to offer a limited selection of videos from its Priority Records label through the Gnutella network. http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,48147,00.html Crazy Finns Forge 3-D for PDAs In Viking mythology, the gods blunted their weapons to get results. Thor wielded his hammer, Mjollnir, to smash the skulls of his enemies. And ogres conjured storms by pounding the earth with their iron clubs. Now a group of battle-hardened developers, the Odins and Friggs of Helsinki's coding underworld, are shaping plain-old PDAs and smart phones into 3-D gaming devices. Helsinki's Fathammer has created a near-desktop-quality 3-D multimedia gaming platform, X-Forge, for devices that run Microsoft's PocketPC operating system, the Symbian OS and mobile Linux. An interactive demo of X-Forge, which runs smoothly on a Compaq iPAQ PDA, is loaded with equal parts peppy music, 3-D wizardry and Norse fantasy. http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,47850,00.html Afghan Archivist of Culture A brightly colored fresco lines the halls of an old temple, depicting images of a thriving culture. A museum with an impressive modern art collection attracts tourists from all over the world. This was Afghanistan 25 years ago. "At that time, it was a beautiful country filled with lush flowers," said Solaimon Olumee, an Afghan-American painter. "Women weren't covered. National Geographic called it a 'great vacation spot.'" But because the majority of Afghanistan's intellectual and artistic community has left, the country's cultural history is on the verge of extinction. Farhad Azad is hoping to bring it back. With his website, he wants to archive what he believes to be a vital piece of Afghanistan's history. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,47842,00.html One Company's Bogus Bonus John Schuett got laid off from a Silicon Valley telecom firm and was asked to repay $1,250 of a signing bonus because he didn't stay at the firm a full year. Schuett got a $2,500 signing bonus when he joined San Jose-based Valiant Networks. He lost his job in October after six months. Soon after, the company sent a letter threatening to send a collection agency after him if he didn't return half the bonus. "I'm furious," said Schuett. Valiant CFO John Zavoli said the troubled firm is just sticking to agreements employees signed. The firm has cut about 90 jobs, or 75 percent of its work force, in a series of layoffs. Schuett's employment letter stipulated that he repay the money if his employment was "severed," and the firm is obliged to collect on debts. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48190,00.html Molecular Farming Under Fire The next wave of genetically altered plants are on the horizon, and activists are warning the hue and cry over plant molecular farming will dwarf any previous controversy over other such products. The new outcry over plant molecular farming coincides with a public forum currently underway in Ottawa. The federal government's Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has called for the public's views on plant molecular farming -- or "pharming" as it's sometimes referred to in the industry. The one-day forum and three-day technical conference are meant to help the CFIA as they draft new regulatory directives for 2002. While no plants for molecular farming are currently approved in Canada, the government wants its regulatory framework in place before the practice takes off. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,48108,00.html Anti-U.S. Hackers May Step Up Attacks - FBI The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center warned Friday of an increased threat of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on computer networks. According to an advisory released at the NIPC Web site, the organization "has reason to believe that the potential for future DDoS attacks is high." The NIPC advised network infrastructure operators to "take a defensive posture and remain vigilant at a higher state of alert." The warning did not say whether any specific networks were at particular risk of DDoS attacks, nor did it identify any groups or individuals suspected of launching potential attacks. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171850.html Anthrax outbreak to be simulated at UK post room The UK Health and Safety Executive plans to release non-harmful bacterial spores into a postal sorting office to understand how biological weapons such as anthrax can spread. The initiative follows the anthrax terrorist attacks in the US, in which a small number of letters have led to widespread contamination. This is due to dispersal of the agent through the postal system, and the UK test will look for ways of preventing this. The common bacterium Bacillus globigii will be put into envelopes and packages and processed through normal postal sorting equipment at a secret location in the UK. Bacillus globigii is found naturally in soil and has been used to simulate anthrax attacks in the past. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991523 Global warming 'altering genes' Global warming is leading to changes in the genetic make-up of animals, say scientists. They have found that mosquitoes have altered their genes in response to climate change. According to biologists at the University of Oregon, US, many plants and animals are adapting to a warming environment by taking advantage of the longer seasons. British birds now lay their eggs more than a week earlier than they did in the 1970s. And frogs are spawning about 10 days earlier. But the Oregon study is the first clear evidence that the genes of animals are changing. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1639284.stm Man eats worms to win GameCube Nintendo of America has announced the winner of its "What would you do for a GameCube?" contest. Corey Olcsvary beat out four other finalists from across the nation to become the contest's grand-prize winner. Olcsvary performed the most outrageous stunt, as he became a Pikmin by shaving his head, donning a leaf, painting himself blue, and eating a bowl of Pikmin food, which included worms and crickets. As his prize, Olcsvary took home a Nintendo GameCube, a Game Boy Advance handheld, a video game software package, and $5,000 in cash. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...822490,00.html EFF Counsels 'Betamax Defense' For Morpheus The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is backing the distributor of a popular file-swapping program targeted in an entertainment-industry lawsuit, comparing MusicCity's defense of its Morpheus peer-to-peer software to Sony's epic battle with Hollywood on behalf of its Betamax VCR nearly 20 years ago. However, Sony is one company that doesn't agree with the comparison. Its Sony Music Entertainment record company and Columbia Pictures motion picture business are two of some 29 music and movie outfits behind a copyright-infringement lawsuit naming Tennessee-based MusicCity and two other peer-to-peer technology companies. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171903.html http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171896.html 'White Hat' Hackers Threaten Information Anarchy Responding to an effort by Microsoft to squelch the full disclosure of software vulnerabilities, a group of "white hat" hackers is putting out a call to other experts, asking them to deluge software vendors with bug reports. "Let's flood the security department of every vendor with new issues. Let's show the world what they would miss and what information could just as easily have stayed in the underground," wrote a security researcher who uses the nickname "HellNbak," in an announcement posted to several security mailing lists last week. So far, only one prominent organization has signed on to the "Information Anarchy 2K01" initiative - a group known as Nomad Mobile Research Center, of whom HellNbak is a member. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171900.html Dumpster diving on the Web Brewster Kahle may be the last Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur in the waning days of 2001 who isn't embarrassed to boast about his Big Idea. Maybe that's because he's not trying to make any money with it. "The last time someone really tried to do this it was 2,000 years ago. It's the chutzpah of the Greeks," he bragged at the launch party for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine on Oct. 24. "There are only 5 billion people in the world and they can only be typing 60 words a minute, 24 hours a day. So, that bounds it," he said to an admiring audience of librarians, academics and computer scientists gathered at UC-Berkeley's Bancroft Library. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ack/index.html Software that puts porn in the trash Can a computer be programmed to recognize pornographic images? Several firms are betting on new software that opens e-mail attachments, recognizes porn, and throws it in the trash before it even gets to you. The various programs are designed in part to clean up corporate e-mail, which they say often contains porn — one firm claims between 1 and 2 percent of all work e-mail can be described as pornographic. Acting as a sort of e-mail go-between, MessageLabs is in a prime position to poke through the digital missives checking for illegal or unwanted pornography. Doing so by hand is impractical, so the firm decided to do the next best thing — it licensed software from a company that claims it can teach computers to recognize and ferret out unsavory pictures. http://www.msnbc.com/news/653155.asp?0dm=C17NT More news later on __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies