Hacker Arrest Stirs Protest
When the FBI arrested a Russian programmer this week on charges of criminal copyright violations, the government unwittingly ignited a powder keg of outrage. Web pages immediately sprouted to demand the release of Dmitry Sklyarov, who was visiting the United States to describe his work at the Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas. Newly minted activists set up a mailing list, launched a defense fund, and trashed Adobe Systems for urging the U.S. government to arrest Sklyarov on charges of circumventing its copy protection methods. This is the latest round in an increasingly nasty battle between Russian firm ElcomSoft and Adobe, which fired off a stiff letter a few weeks ago claiming "unauthorized activity relating to copyrighted materials," and requesting that the $100 e-book decoder be taken off the market.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45342,00.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/20499.html
New Worm Keeps Them Guessing
A new, fast-spreading virus that appears to have the antivirus companies hopelessly confused is in the wild. Depending on which antivirus company you talk to, the new virus is either a Trojan or a worm, destructive or non-destructive and originated in Europe or Russia, Wednesday or last week. The only thing the companies can agree on is its name -– "Sircam" –- and that it's an executable file that arrives via e-mail and propagates by sending itself to everyone in the victim's e-mail address book. According to Panda Software, the Sircam virus is destructive, filling all the empty space on a victim's hard drive with a giant text file. It first appeared on Wednesday in Spain, Panda officials said. But Network Associates, which sells the McAfee antivirus software, had a different story.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,45397,00.html
Researchers Map Pneumonia Genes
Scientists have decoded all of the genes that make up a virulent strain of pneumonia. The bacterium is increasingly resistant to penicillin, especially in countries like Spain and Hungary, where the drug is readily available. Researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) say knowing the entire genome of this bacterium, called pneumococcus, could reveal the secrets of how it becomes resistant, and lead to new treatments. The researchers found nine clusters of genes unique to the particular strain of the bug that they studied, which they collected from the blood of a 30-year-old Norwegian male.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45400,00.html
Napster's Not Up (or Down) Yet
Get used to it Napster fans, because chat rooms and sex talk will be the only activity on the network for the near future, according to sources familiar with the company. This despite Wednesday's ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that granted Napster a stay of execution that allws the Napster to re-open its file-trading activities. Even with the legal victory seemingly in hand, Napster officials have no specific plans on when, or if, the site will open its free file-trading service again -- mainly because nobody is quite sure what this latest twist really means, and what it allows Napster to do.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45364,00.html
Fixing a Hole Where Spam Comes In
ISPs are battling rogue spammers lurking in the back alleys and hidden corners of their networks. As the fighting heats up, more and more legitimate e-mail is getting blocked along with the junk. "It's a guerrilla war that has been escalating for years," said Ray Everett Church, a spokesman for Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE). "ISPs are having to go to greater and greater lengths to keep their networks safe, and there is a collateral damage to legitimate mail that suddenly can't get through."
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45343,00.html
Once It Was Atari, Now It's Art
In the early 1970s, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell launched a revolution when he created the first video game, Pong. The game was groundbreaking despite its aesthetic simplicity: two paddles, a square ball and a vertical line. Video games have come a long way since Pong. Today, games like Doom, Myst and Quake have evolved to create 3-D virtual worlds with lifelike sounds, elaborate graphics and complex plots. But can video games also be considered a form of art? That question will be among the topics discussed Thursday night at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Media Arts Council (SMAC) symposium, "ArtCade: Exploring the Relationship Between Video Games and Art."
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45146,00.html
FBI's Flaws Are Detailed
In the wake of the FBI's admission that it cannot find hundreds of its weapons and laptop computers, several bureau officials joined lawmakers in strongly criticizing the agency's structure, technology and institutional culture during a Senate hearing Wednesday. Senate Judiciary Committee members said the disclosure Tuesday that 449 firearms and 184 computers are missing represents the latest in a string of recent FBI failures that expose the agency's many flaws. At least one of the weapons may have been used to commit a crime, and one of the computers contained classified data.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...951jul19.story
Webcasters claim royalty victory
Internet services allowing listeners to personalize Web radio services will be included in an upcoming arbitration process on music royalties despite the objections of the recording industry, according to a decision by the U.S. Copyright Office. A group of web braodcasters, including Launch Media Inc., hailed the administrative ruling on as a victory in a continuing legal fight to secure the same royalty rights as other Internet radio providers. At issue is whether Webcasters that allow users to customize Internet radio services — by selecting a certain kind of music for example — should be eligible for compulsory licensing like traditional radio, or whether those features should require them to negotiate individual, and potentially more expensive, fees with the record labels.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/601972.asp
Mental illness 'at the root of jazz'
The mental health problems of one musician could have led to the creation of jazz. Without his schizophrenia, Charles "Buddy" Bolden - the man credited by some with starting off the jazz movement - might never have started improvisation, psychiatrists have heard. And without this style change, music might never have evolved from ragtime into the jazz movement we know today. Professor Dr Sean Spence, of the department of psychiatry at the University of Sheffield, was speaking to representatives at the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual conference.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/hea...00/1430337.stm
Computer memories could be over a thousand times smaller if they are made from molecules
Researchers have developed prototype computer memories in which information is recorded, read and erased by molecular switches. Computer memories that store information in single molecules could be far more powerful than those of today's machines. Mark Reed of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues built molecular switches consisting of rod-like organic (carbon-based) molecules that carry a current between two gold electrodes. The molecules are like tiny wires, each more than a thousand times smaller than the miniaturized transistors used as switches in silicon chips.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/010607/010607-7.html
Space Planes, Cheap
In 2001, one space odyssey never made it to the launch pad. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced in March that it was pulling the plug on X-33 and X-34, two space planes whose combined cost exceeded $1 billion. But the market for reusable launch vehicles is still strong, and a number of private companies, with NASA's help, are looking to reach orbit within the next ten years. Many teams see a payoff in launching satellites more cheaply. Others envision space planes handling a variety of tasks from rapid package delivery to suborbital microgravity experiments.
http://www.techreview.com/web/rountr...tree071801.asp
Even more news later on
