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

walktalker · 02-07-01, 05:00 PM

End of supper time

Spy-tech on Tampa streets
Tampa is using high-tech security cameras to scan the city's streets for people wanted for crimes, a law-enforcement tactic that some liken to Big Brother. A computer software program linked to 36 cameras began scanning crowds Friday in Tampa's nightlife district, Ybor City, matching results against a database of mug shots of people with outstanding arrest warrants. European cities and U.S government offices, casinos and banks are already using the so-called face-printing system, but Tampa is the first American city to install a permanent system along public streets, The Tampa Tribune reported Sunday. A similar system was used at Super Bowl XXXV, which was held in Tampa last January.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

PCs vs. TVs in the 21st Century
Residential broadband access was slow to take off, but companies are making major bets on building broadband applications to reach all those potential customers. The technology and its potential uses have been the main points of interest to date, but now companies need a realistic view of the economics that underlie broadband applications, the ways those applications will affect the industry’s development, and the size of the opportunities likely to emerge over the next few years. Some long-cherished beliefs -- such as the idea that broadband would finally bring about the convergence of PCs and TVs in a single device -- will be dashed.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201...html?tag=cd_mh

Report shows lack of faith in Bluetooth
The majority of businesses polled by consulting company Frost & Sullivan say they have no plans to purchase products using the Bluetooth wireless data-transfer standard. Frost & Sullivan interviewed network managers and other IT executives at 120 large companies across the world, including 40 Asian business. Questions focused on plans for Bluetooth, a growing technology for wirelessly connecting computing devices over short distances. Only three out of the 120 companies were testing Bluetooth products and all were Europe-based. "It was clear from other parts of the research that Europe is likely to be the early market to target," Frost & Sullivan said in a statement.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Spam Blockers Pass It On
A controversial list that helps e-mail administrators block traffic from spam-friendly servers has now passed to a third generation of volunteer activists after a second-generation operator was sidelined. Earlier this month, New Zealander Alan Brown closed down his Open Relay Behavior-Modification System (ORBS) after two local companies won legal injunctions against him for listing them. Now, at least three volunteer foot soldiers elsewhere have picked up where Brown left off. Open mail relays are Internet e-mail servers that forward -- without restriction -- e-mail aimed at third parties. Thus, the activists' strategy for plugging this spam hole in the Internet is simple: Test the relays. If they're open, publicize them so server administrators elsewhere can refuse e-mail from them.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,44876,00.html

The Truth Behind A.I.
It seemed like a good idea: Take an artificial intelligence expert to see the new Steven Spielberg movie A.I., then pepper the fellow with questions about what in the film is conceivable -- given the state of "machine intelligence" today -- and what's outright rubbish. Alas, as soon as the movie began, the brightness of the whole idea seemed to dim. It turns out that despite its title, A.I. isn't really about artificial intelligence at all. It's a heavy-handed, saccharine film about what might happen when man meets machine eye-to-eye: Man kicks machine around is what happens, and machine -- while trying desperately to pinch its voice and sound cute so man will love him -- ends up junked.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44946,00.html

Quantum Mechanics' New Horizons
Seventy-five years have passed since the physicist Neils Bohr said, "Anyone who isn't shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." Of course, back then people could still remember a time when just a glimpse of stocking was considered something shocking. Today, the University of Michigan hosts a quantum conference that brings Bohr's old saw into the shock-jock age. The first Quantum Applications Symposium proposes to address the question, "Will quantum effects dominate the course of technology development in the 21st century?"
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44891,00.html

Who Owns What at Media Lab Asia?
Media Lab Asia -- a joint venture between the Government of India and Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- was created to take technology to the masses. But while producing products to enhance the quality of life in this country is a goal Indian corporations would love to help achieve, the fuzzy issue over intellectual property rights (IPR) appears to be an obstacle.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44823,00.html

Anybody Got Some Spare Spectrum?
Three months ago, Michael Powell told University of California at Berkeley students that the FCC had no "clear vision" of how to regulate the telecom industry. Now Powell is head of the Federal Communications Commission -- and the FCC still doesn't have a clear-cut policy on spectrum allocation. In October, Powell criticized the FCC for giving away airwaves to the broadcast industry, which is migrating from an analog system to a digital one. Spectrum is a scarce resource and 80 percent of Americans have satellite dishes or cable, he said. Yet even though U.S. telcos are willing to pay billions of dollars for such airwaves to offer next-generation wireless services, the FCC has nothing to give them.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,44885,00.html

More Hope for Wannabe Moms
Scientists appear to have found a way for women to become mothers after they no longer can produce viable eggs, a potential advance in breaking the last great barrier to fertility treatments. The technique, described Monday at a conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lausanne, involves taking a cell from an infertile woman's body, and inserting it into an emptied donated egg. The resulting egg contains the genetic material of the woman wanting the baby, not of the donor. Scientists warned that the work is still in the preliminary stages, and it could be years before the technique produces a healthy baby, if ever.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,44963,00.html

The feds crack down on a human cloning lab
For Brigitte Boisselier, cloning a human being isn't just good science –it's a religious imperative. As a trained chemist and a bishop of a sect that believes scientists from another planet created all life on Earth, Boisselier and other followers of the "Raelian" religion say cloning is key to humanity's future. Despite warnings from scientists who say such practices are fraught with potential health risks, some Raelians have built a secret U.S. laboratory and vowed to create the first human clone this year. They also believe the feds have no legal right to stop them. Washington, unsurprisingly, disagrees.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/0...news/clone.htm

Building a Database of Specimens
In a windowless back room of the Australian Museum, there's a place called the "Spirit House." Thousands of animal specimens are kept there, preserved in jars of alcohol. Most are identified by little more than dusty paper cards or crusty labels --# a tribute to pre-computer-era science. Around the world, roughly 3 billion such animal and plant specimens sit in places like the Australian Museum,# with no comprehensive electronic means for researchers to share data about them. Now, after nearly five years of negotiations, a major effort is underway to create an international electronic lingua franca for this sleeping scientific bounty.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44777,00.html

Open Season on Web Music Firms
Like bargain hunters swooping down on a sales rack, giant information and entertainment companies have been moving to snap up online music companies--often at fire-sale prices. The deals, including Vivendi Universal's proposed purchase of MP3.com Inc. and Yahoo Inc.'s pending purchase of Launch Media Inc., signal a wave of consolidation that's thinning the ranks of online music suppliers. And several other online companies already find themselves on the auction block as well. Price is driving the deals. Another factor, some say, was the labels' aggressive use of copyright-infringement lawsuits. MP3.com has paid more than $100 million to settle copyright infringement claims, and Launch was hit with a lawsuit the day it was due to close a life-preserving $5-million loan.
http://www.latimes.com/business/2001...000054578.html

Microsoft Wages War on Open Source
Microsoft's battle against open source software has reached a fever pitch. Company officials have called open source software a "cancer" and "potentially viral software" that threatens intellectual property. All of the name calling, however, only highlights the notion that Microsoft considers open source software a threat to its own business rather than a scourge on the entire software industry. With open source software, programmers can view and modify the source code, or the underlying blueprints, of the program. That's precisely why Microsoft has a problem with open source. Microsoft believes that if you include open source code with its own proprietary code, the open source software could infect Microsoft's.
http://www.business2.com/ebusiness/2...opensource.htm

Upstream: Video Searching
Every day, a river of video floods the airwaves, courses through cables and streams over the Internet. Add to that all the films ever made, plus all of the video material created for private use, and you've got an ocean of light and sound. But how can you ever find and retrieve a particular video clip? With text documents, you can type in a query, and a piece of software finds the matching text strings. Searching video is much tougher. Unless someone has gone back and somehow marked the video data, it's now nearly impossible to find a specific image.
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/jul01/upstream.asp

more news later on

02-07-01, 05:00 PM	#3
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	End of supper time Spy-tech on Tampa streets Tampa is using high-tech security cameras to scan the city's streets for people wanted for crimes, a law-enforcement tactic that some liken to Big Brother. A computer software program linked to 36 cameras began scanning crowds Friday in Tampa's nightlife district, Ybor City, matching results against a database of mug shots of people with outstanding arrest warrants. European cities and U.S government offices, casinos and banks are already using the so-called face-printing system, but Tampa is the first American city to install a permanent system along public streets, The Tampa Tribune reported Sunday. A similar system was used at Super Bowl XXXV, which was held in Tampa last January. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh PCs vs. TVs in the 21st Century Residential broadband access was slow to take off, but companies are making major bets on building broadband applications to reach all those potential customers. The technology and its potential uses have been the main points of interest to date, but now companies need a realistic view of the economics that underlie broadband applications, the ways those applications will affect the industry’s development, and the size of the opportunities likely to emerge over the next few years. Some long-cherished beliefs -- such as the idea that broadband would finally bring about the convergence of PCs and TVs in a single device -- will be dashed. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201...html?tag=cd_mh Report shows lack of faith in Bluetooth The majority of businesses polled by consulting company Frost & Sullivan say they have no plans to purchase products using the Bluetooth wireless data-transfer standard. Frost & Sullivan interviewed network managers and other IT executives at 120 large companies across the world, including 40 Asian business. Questions focused on plans for Bluetooth, a growing technology for wirelessly connecting computing devices over short distances. Only three out of the 120 companies were testing Bluetooth products and all were Europe-based. "It was clear from other parts of the research that Europe is likely to be the early market to target," Frost & Sullivan said in a statement. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh Spam Blockers Pass It On A controversial list that helps e-mail administrators block traffic from spam-friendly servers has now passed to a third generation of volunteer activists after a second-generation operator was sidelined. Earlier this month, New Zealander Alan Brown closed down his Open Relay Behavior-Modification System (ORBS) after two local companies won legal injunctions against him for listing them. Now, at least three volunteer foot soldiers elsewhere have picked up where Brown left off. Open mail relays are Internet e-mail servers that forward -- without restriction -- e-mail aimed at third parties. Thus, the activists' strategy for plugging this spam hole in the Internet is simple: Test the relays. If they're open, publicize them so server administrators elsewhere can refuse e-mail from them. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,44876,00.html The Truth Behind A.I. It seemed like a good idea: Take an artificial intelligence expert to see the new Steven Spielberg movie A.I., then pepper the fellow with questions about what in the film is conceivable -- given the state of "machine intelligence" today -- and what's outright rubbish. Alas, as soon as the movie began, the brightness of the whole idea seemed to dim. It turns out that despite its title, A.I. isn't really about artificial intelligence at all. It's a heavy-handed, saccharine film about what might happen when man meets machine eye-to-eye: Man kicks machine around is what happens, and machine -- while trying desperately to pinch its voice and sound cute so man will love him -- ends up junked. http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44946,00.html Quantum Mechanics' New Horizons Seventy-five years have passed since the physicist Neils Bohr said, "Anyone who isn't shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." Of course, back then people could still remember a time when just a glimpse of stocking was considered something shocking. Today, the University of Michigan hosts a quantum conference that brings Bohr's old saw into the shock-jock age. The first Quantum Applications Symposium proposes to address the question, "Will quantum effects dominate the course of technology development in the 21st century?" http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44891,00.html Who Owns What at Media Lab Asia? Media Lab Asia -- a joint venture between the Government of India and Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- was created to take technology to the masses. But while producing products to enhance the quality of life in this country is a goal Indian corporations would love to help achieve, the fuzzy issue over intellectual property rights (IPR) appears to be an obstacle. http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44823,00.html Anybody Got Some Spare Spectrum? Three months ago, Michael Powell told University of California at Berkeley students that the FCC had no "clear vision" of how to regulate the telecom industry. Now Powell is head of the Federal Communications Commission -- and the FCC still doesn't have a clear-cut policy on spectrum allocation. In October, Powell criticized the FCC for giving away airwaves to the broadcast industry, which is migrating from an analog system to a digital one. Spectrum is a scarce resource and 80 percent of Americans have satellite dishes or cable, he said. Yet even though U.S. telcos are willing to pay billions of dollars for such airwaves to offer next-generation wireless services, the FCC has nothing to give them. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,44885,00.html More Hope for Wannabe Moms Scientists appear to have found a way for women to become mothers after they no longer can produce viable eggs, a potential advance in breaking the last great barrier to fertility treatments. The technique, described Monday at a conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lausanne, involves taking a cell from an infertile woman's body, and inserting it into an emptied donated egg. The resulting egg contains the genetic material of the woman wanting the baby, not of the donor. Scientists warned that the work is still in the preliminary stages, and it could be years before the technique produces a healthy baby, if ever. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,44963,00.html The feds crack down on a human cloning lab For Brigitte Boisselier, cloning a human being isn't just good science –it's a religious imperative. As a trained chemist and a bishop of a sect that believes scientists from another planet created all life on Earth, Boisselier and other followers of the "Raelian" religion say cloning is key to humanity's future. Despite warnings from scientists who say such practices are fraught with potential health risks, some Raelians have built a secret U.S. laboratory and vowed to create the first human clone this year. They also believe the feds have no legal right to stop them. Washington, unsurprisingly, disagrees. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/0...news/clone.htm Building a Database of Specimens In a windowless back room of the Australian Museum, there's a place called the "Spirit House." Thousands of animal specimens are kept there, preserved in jars of alcohol. Most are identified by little more than dusty paper cards or crusty labels --# a tribute to pre-computer-era science. Around the world, roughly 3 billion such animal and plant specimens sit in places like the Australian Museum,# with no comprehensive electronic means for researchers to share data about them. Now, after nearly five years of negotiations, a major effort is underway to create an international electronic lingua franca for this sleeping scientific bounty. http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44777,00.html Open Season on Web Music Firms Like bargain hunters swooping down on a sales rack, giant information and entertainment companies have been moving to snap up online music companies--often at fire-sale prices. The deals, including Vivendi Universal's proposed purchase of MP3.com Inc. and Yahoo Inc.'s pending purchase of Launch Media Inc., signal a wave of consolidation that's thinning the ranks of online music suppliers. And several other online companies already find themselves on the auction block as well. Price is driving the deals. Another factor, some say, was the labels' aggressive use of copyright-infringement lawsuits. MP3.com has paid more than $100 million to settle copyright infringement claims, and Launch was hit with a lawsuit the day it was due to close a life-preserving $5-million loan. http://www.latimes.com/business/2001...000054578.html Microsoft Wages War on Open Source Microsoft's battle against open source software has reached a fever pitch. Company officials have called open source software a "cancer" and "potentially viral software" that threatens intellectual property. All of the name calling, however, only highlights the notion that Microsoft considers open source software a threat to its own business rather than a scourge on the entire software industry. With open source software, programmers can view and modify the source code, or the underlying blueprints, of the program. That's precisely why Microsoft has a problem with open source. Microsoft believes that if you include open source code with its own proprietary code, the open source software could infect Microsoft's. http://www.business2.com/ebusiness/2...opensource.htm Upstream: Video Searching Every day, a river of video floods the airwaves, courses through cables and streams over the Internet. Add to that all the films ever made, plus all of the video material created for private use, and you've got an ocean of light and sound. But how can you ever find and retrieve a particular video clip? With text documents, you can type in a query, and a piece of software finds the matching text strings. Searching video is much tougher. Unless someone has gone back and somehow marked the video data, it's now nearly impossible to find a specific image. http://www.techreview.com/magazine/jul01/upstream.asp more news later on __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies