P2P-Zone - View Single Post - The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

walktalker · 06-09-01, 05:29 PM

Napster Eclipsed by Newcomers

Months after shutting down its file-trading service, Napster has finally been displaced by four new applications that allow users to trade music, movies and software, a new study concludes. Four new file-sharing systems -- FastTrack, Audiogalaxy, iMesh and Gnutella -- were used to download 3.05 billion files during August, according to research firm Webnoize. That's more copyrighted material than was ever shared using Napster. At the beginning of this year when it was at the height of its popularity, Napster users traded nearly 3 billion files. That's bad news for the major record labels hoping to stop the trading of digital music.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46596,00.html

Bush Could Brush Up on Stem Cells
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Thursday that President Bush did not know how many of the 64 existing stem cell lines were fully developed and ready for research when he decided to limit federal funds to these lines. Thompson said the president's decision was made on moral grounds, and would not have changed had Bush known that fewer than half of these cell colonies are fully developed today. Thompson's comments come a day after he met critics on Capitol Hill who argue that research may be hampered if there are not enough stem cells that qualify for the funds. Thompson acknowledged for the first time that just 24 or 25 of the 64 lines are fully developed.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46616,00.html

Uncle Sam Wants His Geeks Back
If you're an out-of-work geek, Uncle Sam wants you. A U.S. Army general said Wednesday at the annual InfoWar conference that the military would be delighted to hire programmers, system administrators, and other specialists who left for the private sector and are searching for jobs after the dot-com bust. Created in 1998 and organized under the U.S. Space Command, the task force is responsible for defending Defense Department computer networks against intruders and other attacks.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46569,00.html

Who's Reading Your Resume?
People who post their resumes on Monster.com, the world's largest job-seeking site, "face considerable threats to their privacy," according to a watchdog group. In a 24-page report, The Privacy Foundation on Wednesday accused Monster of discussing the sale of users' private data to marketers, failing to completely remove resumes after job-seekers deleted them, and sending user information to America Online to satisfy the terms of a business agreement. The group also said that resumes submitted to corporations that use Monster's technology are "routinely sent to Monster.com without disclosure to job seekers." Monster.com flatly denied these accusations, saying that the company adheres to its posted privacy policy, which says that no selling of information occurs.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46559,00.html

Science Tracks Influenza Genes
In separate studies published this week in Science, researchers found the genetic causes of two deadly flu viruses: the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and a strain of flu that struck Hong Kong in 1997. Now that they have genetic markers, researchers will be able to identify and prevent the spread of deadly cases of influenza much more quickly. "This information can be used to develop tests that can rapidly differentiate virulent vs. avirulent viruses," said Yoshi Kawaoka, a professor in the department of pathobiological sciences in the school of veterinary medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,46608,00.html

Big Blue Puts On the Scare
Computer hackers come in many shades: extortion artists, corporate saboteurs, determined teenagers and legitimate IT professionals. But according to security experts at International Business Machines, they have one thing in common: Every office has at least one. Seizing upon the timely topic of Internet security risks, IBM launched a global advertising and public relations initiative this week to plug its e-business security software and consulting expertise. Business managers, concerned at the threat of attack, are fortifying their internal computer systems. Last week, a Corporation for British Industry survey revealed that two-thirds of British businesses have been the victims of serious computer-related incidents, whether they be hacking, a virus attack or some form of cyber fraud.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46587,00.html

Filmmakers Say: Hi, Resfest
When the Resfest film festival began five years ago, digital filmmaking was still an underground phenomenon. "Before it was like, 'What do you mean? Are you crazy? Shoot a film on a DV camera?' And now of course Lars von Trier and Mike Figgis and Spike Lee and all these big directors are shooting digital film," said Jonathan Wells, Resfest's director. He reflected on how Resfest has ridden the wave of digital film's popularity. "We were the first festival to use a digital projector and now every film festival is projecting at least some of their films digitally," he said.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,46533,00.html

Man Charged: E-Snooping on Wife
When Steven Paul Brown and his wife separated, authorities say he installed spy software on her computer that would allow him to track her every keystroke and read every file and message. Buying the software is perfectly legal, but if a court determines Brown used it the way Michigan Attorney General Jennifer Granholm thinks he did, it could land him in prison for up to five years, Granholm said Wednesday. "Just like breaking into someone's home, breaking into a person's computer is a crime," Granholm said. "These are crimes that hurt people because they make them feel vulnerable."
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,46580,00.html

The Miss Manners of Cell Phones
Jacqueline Whitmore opened a protocol school in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1997 to teach professionals how to dine in high-end restaurants, shake hands with business associates and dress for success. While Whitmore's business networking and dining courses remain the school's top-billing classes, some CEOs lately are forking over thousands of dollars for Whitmore to dispense advice on how to get rid of a modern-day headache -- How to yak on cell phones in public without annoying anyone? "The participants want clarification on when it is appropriate to use a cell phone," Whitmore said. "My response is 'Yes, you can take it to the restaurant, just don't use it. And if you want to use it, step out.'"
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,46448,00.html

Space Junk Brightens Morning
A fiery object streaked across the sky over much of the East Coast early Thursday, and Navy officials said it was a Russian rocket that re-entered the atmosphere after orbiting Earth since 1975. The SL3 rocket body re-entered the atmosphere shortly before 6 a.m. about 100 miles off Delaware, said Navy Commander Rod Gibbons, a spokesman for the U.S. Space Command at Colorado Springs, Colorado. "The object was not designed to survive re-entry" and likely burned up before any pieces could reach the ground, Gibbons said. The rocket was one of 8,300 man-made objects the center was tracking in space. Some 17,000 such objects have re-entered Earth's atmosphere since the late 1950s, he said.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,46593,00.html

All-but-secret battle rages over fate of airwaves
Forget Star Wars, the moniker for missile defense, which looms ahead as one of the classic Washington battles, pitting skeptical Democrats in Congress against a determined president and his Republican congressional leaders. It has already received tons of ink and airtime. There is another battle ahead that has been virtually ignored in newspapers and on the airwaves that will dwarf Star Wars. Call it "Spectrum Wars." Here are the basics. The world is moving rapidly toward a new era in telecommunications: the wireless world. Already close to reality in Europe, this new world will integrate cellphones, personal data assistants such as PalmPilots, computers and the Internet, allowing one to communicate with anybody and get instant information from anywhere no matter where one is in the world.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment...5-ncguest1.htm

Official: Bush high-tech policy coming soon
After months of silence, the Bush administration will weigh in "shortly" on a range of high-tech issues ranging from junk e-mail to online privacy, a senior administration official said Wednesday. Nancy Victory, who heads the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said the Bush administration has been working on an inclusive policy and would announce its position on several high-tech issues, including proposed limits to the junk e-mail known as spam.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/industr...eut/index.html

Scientists score scramjet success
The first ever free-flight of a scramjet - a revolutionary new type of "air-breathing" rocket propulsion - has been carried out by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). The scramjet grabs most of its fuel from the air it rushes through. Mechanically simple - it has no moving parts - it has proved very tricky to develop, chiefly because it only starts to work at speeds above Mach five. The test was of a ten centimetre (four inch) diameter, 20-percent scale model of a conceptual missile fired from a gun. The projectile experienced a peak acceleration of approximately 10,000 Gs, and emerged from the gun at Mach seven.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1528849.stm

Rumble In The (Linux) Jungle
At last week's LinuxWorld Expo, a very different crowd, compared to previous years, gathered at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Sure, the usual gang of pierced and ponytailed geeks and hackers were in attendance, albeit in thinner numbers than at past events. But it was the list of commercial attendees that was perhaps the most telling. A year or so ago, Linux-based start-ups like Red Hat and VA Linux Systems would have been the darlings of the show. But with the stock of each now trading at a paltry fraction of last year's highs, the luster of Linux IPOs has faded.
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/expound/

Kids mobile phone ads 'irresponsible'
Advertising campaigns to encourage children to buy mobile phones are "irresponsible", according to Sir William Stewart, who led a working group investigating mobile phone hazards. Speaking at the British Association Science Festival in Glasgow, he said mobile phones should be more expensive to discourage children from using them. There were around 40 million mobile phones in circulation in the UK, he said, but he would not let his own grandchildren use them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_...00/1525676.stm

06-09-01, 05:29 PM	#3
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	Napster Eclipsed by Newcomers Months after shutting down its file-trading service, Napster has finally been displaced by four new applications that allow users to trade music, movies and software, a new study concludes. Four new file-sharing systems -- FastTrack, Audiogalaxy, iMesh and Gnutella -- were used to download 3.05 billion files during August, according to research firm Webnoize. That's more copyrighted material than was ever shared using Napster. At the beginning of this year when it was at the height of its popularity, Napster users traded nearly 3 billion files. That's bad news for the major record labels hoping to stop the trading of digital music. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46596,00.html Bush Could Brush Up on Stem Cells Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Thursday that President Bush did not know how many of the 64 existing stem cell lines were fully developed and ready for research when he decided to limit federal funds to these lines. Thompson said the president's decision was made on moral grounds, and would not have changed had Bush known that fewer than half of these cell colonies are fully developed today. Thompson's comments come a day after he met critics on Capitol Hill who argue that research may be hampered if there are not enough stem cells that qualify for the funds. Thompson acknowledged for the first time that just 24 or 25 of the 64 lines are fully developed. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46616,00.html Uncle Sam Wants His Geeks Back If you're an out-of-work geek, Uncle Sam wants you. A U.S. Army general said Wednesday at the annual InfoWar conference that the military would be delighted to hire programmers, system administrators, and other specialists who left for the private sector and are searching for jobs after the dot-com bust. Created in 1998 and organized under the U.S. Space Command, the task force is responsible for defending Defense Department computer networks against intruders and other attacks. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46569,00.html Who's Reading Your Resume? People who post their resumes on Monster.com, the world's largest job-seeking site, "face considerable threats to their privacy," according to a watchdog group. In a 24-page report, The Privacy Foundation on Wednesday accused Monster of discussing the sale of users' private data to marketers, failing to completely remove resumes after job-seekers deleted them, and sending user information to America Online to satisfy the terms of a business agreement. The group also said that resumes submitted to corporations that use Monster's technology are "routinely sent to Monster.com without disclosure to job seekers." Monster.com flatly denied these accusations, saying that the company adheres to its posted privacy policy, which says that no selling of information occurs. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46559,00.html Science Tracks Influenza Genes In separate studies published this week in Science, researchers found the genetic causes of two deadly flu viruses: the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and a strain of flu that struck Hong Kong in 1997. Now that they have genetic markers, researchers will be able to identify and prevent the spread of deadly cases of influenza much more quickly. "This information can be used to develop tests that can rapidly differentiate virulent vs. avirulent viruses," said Yoshi Kawaoka, a professor in the department of pathobiological sciences in the school of veterinary medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,46608,00.html Big Blue Puts On the Scare Computer hackers come in many shades: extortion artists, corporate saboteurs, determined teenagers and legitimate IT professionals. But according to security experts at International Business Machines, they have one thing in common: Every office has at least one. Seizing upon the timely topic of Internet security risks, IBM launched a global advertising and public relations initiative this week to plug its e-business security software and consulting expertise. Business managers, concerned at the threat of attack, are fortifying their internal computer systems. Last week, a Corporation for British Industry survey revealed that two-thirds of British businesses have been the victims of serious computer-related incidents, whether they be hacking, a virus attack or some form of cyber fraud. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46587,00.html Filmmakers Say: Hi, Resfest When the Resfest film festival began five years ago, digital filmmaking was still an underground phenomenon. "Before it was like, 'What do you mean? Are you crazy? Shoot a film on a DV camera?' And now of course Lars von Trier and Mike Figgis and Spike Lee and all these big directors are shooting digital film," said Jonathan Wells, Resfest's director. He reflected on how Resfest has ridden the wave of digital film's popularity. "We were the first festival to use a digital projector and now every film festival is projecting at least some of their films digitally," he said. http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,46533,00.html Man Charged: E-Snooping on Wife When Steven Paul Brown and his wife separated, authorities say he installed spy software on her computer that would allow him to track her every keystroke and read every file and message. Buying the software is perfectly legal, but if a court determines Brown used it the way Michigan Attorney General Jennifer Granholm thinks he did, it could land him in prison for up to five years, Granholm said Wednesday. "Just like breaking into someone's home, breaking into a person's computer is a crime," Granholm said. "These are crimes that hurt people because they make them feel vulnerable." http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,46580,00.html The Miss Manners of Cell Phones Jacqueline Whitmore opened a protocol school in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1997 to teach professionals how to dine in high-end restaurants, shake hands with business associates and dress for success. While Whitmore's business networking and dining courses remain the school's top-billing classes, some CEOs lately are forking over thousands of dollars for Whitmore to dispense advice on how to get rid of a modern-day headache -- How to yak on cell phones in public without annoying anyone? "The participants want clarification on when it is appropriate to use a cell phone," Whitmore said. "My response is 'Yes, you can take it to the restaurant, just don't use it. And if you want to use it, step out.'" http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,46448,00.html Space Junk Brightens Morning A fiery object streaked across the sky over much of the East Coast early Thursday, and Navy officials said it was a Russian rocket that re-entered the atmosphere after orbiting Earth since 1975. The SL3 rocket body re-entered the atmosphere shortly before 6 a.m. about 100 miles off Delaware, said Navy Commander Rod Gibbons, a spokesman for the U.S. Space Command at Colorado Springs, Colorado. "The object was not designed to survive re-entry" and likely burned up before any pieces could reach the ground, Gibbons said. The rocket was one of 8,300 man-made objects the center was tracking in space. Some 17,000 such objects have re-entered Earth's atmosphere since the late 1950s, he said. http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,46593,00.html All-but-secret battle rages over fate of airwaves Forget Star Wars, the moniker for missile defense, which looms ahead as one of the classic Washington battles, pitting skeptical Democrats in Congress against a determined president and his Republican congressional leaders. It has already received tons of ink and airtime. There is another battle ahead that has been virtually ignored in newspapers and on the airwaves that will dwarf Star Wars. Call it "Spectrum Wars." Here are the basics. The world is moving rapidly toward a new era in telecommunications: the wireless world. Already close to reality in Europe, this new world will integrate cellphones, personal data assistants such as PalmPilots, computers and the Internet, allowing one to communicate with anybody and get instant information from anywhere no matter where one is in the world. http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment...5-ncguest1.htm Official: Bush high-tech policy coming soon After months of silence, the Bush administration will weigh in "shortly" on a range of high-tech issues ranging from junk e-mail to online privacy, a senior administration official said Wednesday. Nancy Victory, who heads the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said the Bush administration has been working on an inclusive policy and would announce its position on several high-tech issues, including proposed limits to the junk e-mail known as spam. http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/industr...eut/index.html Scientists score scramjet success The first ever free-flight of a scramjet - a revolutionary new type of "air-breathing" rocket propulsion - has been carried out by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). The scramjet grabs most of its fuel from the air it rushes through. Mechanically simple - it has no moving parts - it has proved very tricky to develop, chiefly because it only starts to work at speeds above Mach five. The test was of a ten centimetre (four inch) diameter, 20-percent scale model of a conceptual missile fired from a gun. The projectile experienced a peak acceleration of approximately 10,000 Gs, and emerged from the gun at Mach seven. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1528849.stm Rumble In The (Linux) Jungle At last week's LinuxWorld Expo, a very different crowd, compared to previous years, gathered at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Sure, the usual gang of pierced and ponytailed geeks and hackers were in attendance, albeit in thinner numbers than at past events. But it was the list of commercial attendees that was perhaps the most telling. A year or so ago, Linux-based start-ups like Red Hat and VA Linux Systems would have been the darlings of the show. But with the stock of each now trading at a paltry fraction of last year's highs, the luster of Linux IPOs has faded. http://www.sfgate.com/technology/expound/ Kids mobile phone ads 'irresponsible' Advertising campaigns to encourage children to buy mobile phones are "irresponsible", according to Sir William Stewart, who led a working group investigating mobile phone hazards. Speaking at the British Association Science Festival in Glasgow, he said mobile phones should be more expensive to discourage children from using them. There were around 40 million mobile phones in circulation in the UK, he said, but he would not let his own grandchildren use them. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_...00/1525676.stm __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies