MS Judge Faces Split Decisions
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is about to make a Solomon-like choice: Deciding what to do when precisely half of Microsoft's adversaries are no longer interested in the antitrust case. Nine of the states suing Microsoft joined the Justice Department on Tuesday in halting the protracted legal proceedings, which began three-and-a-half years ago, by opting for a settlement instead of more litigation. The remaining states, including California and Connecticut, vowed to continue. That leaves Kollar-Kotelly in the unusual -- perhaps even unprecedented -- position of overseeing a bifurcated antitrust case that will proceed on two separate tracks, as she put it during a hearing Tuesday afternoon.
http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/...,48198,00.html
Holiday E-Sales Prospects Not Bad
You might think that with the economy in the tank, a war raging in Afghanistan and a scourge of deadly Anthrax bacteria loose in the mail system, most people wouldn't be putting online shopping high on their list of holiday plans. Logic, however, can be deceiving. With the busiest retail buying season of the year nearly underway, online market research companies are predicting that Net sales will be up sharply from last year.
http://www.wired.com/news/holidays/0,1882,48081,00.html
IE Bug Can Lead to Strange Search
If a plethora of pornography pop-up ads appear on your screen whenever you try to do a search, if misspelled URLs lead to you to strange corners of the Internet -- your computer may have been commandeered by a malicious bit of code planted by a greedy website owner. Internet Explorer is configured to load Microsoft's own MSN search page whenever users click the browser's search button or enter a wrong URL. But a small program embedded in a website or an e-mail can automatically change the system's default settings to direct users to websites that they may prefer not to see.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,48177,00.html
UN: We're Destroying the Earth
The human race is plundering Earth at an unsustainable rate, but the growing power of women over their own futures could save the planet from destruction, the United Nations said on Wednesday. "We are looking over a cliff here. It is a crisis of global proportions that needs to be addressed with some urgency," Alex Marshall, editor of the U.N. Population Fund's annual report for 2001 told a news conference. The report, "Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change," said bluntly more people were using more resources more intensively than ever before.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48208,00.html
Solar System on a Floppy 
Scientists say it took millions of years. Creationists say the whole process lasted a week, plus a leisurely day off. But now you can whip up an intricately detailed planet in a matter of hours -- complete with oceans, mountains, fog, sun and three glowing moons. The MojoWorld Generator from Pandromeda is an ambitious piece of terrain-generating software. Based on user specifications, the software constructs entire planets that can be explored, filmed and altered by visitors. MojoWorld is based on the mathematics of fractals, which can conjure realistic synthetic landscapes from mathematical algorithms. As a result, an entire planet can be rendered with less than 200 KB of data. Put another way, seven planets could be stored on a standard 1.4 MB floppy disk.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48155,00.html
'Warning, This Is a Stolen Phone'
Police in Amsterdam have cracked down on mobile phone theft by sending short text messages to the thieves. About four months ago Dutch police began using short messaging service (SMS) to dissuade thieves from keeping the phones. When a stolen phone was reported, police would send an SMS message every three to five minutes, saying, "Warning, this is a stolen telephone, using it is against the law -- stealing it is a felony." The police sent the repeated messages to an average of five phones per day. Although phone companies cringe at the cost of bandwidth strain from the anti-theft campaign, police say the use of SMS has helped curb mobile phone theft by a third.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48202,00.html
FTC, FDA target bioterrorism Web sites
The government is investigating hundreds of Internet sites offering products to counter bioterrorism. The Federal Trade Commission disclosed the widening investigation Tuesday, telling a lawmaker that more Web sites claiming to fight bioterrorism are being launched every day. The Food and Drug Administration last week took the first step in shutting down 11 foreign pharmacies illegally selling Cipro via the Internet. The FDA said it had no way to tell if the alleged Cipro sold on those Web sites was real or had been manufactured safely. It is illegal to sell antibiotics over the Internet without a proper doctor's prescription.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/t...hrax-sites.htm
Web Mishap: Kids' Psychological Files Posted
Detailed psychological records containing the innermost secrets of at least 62 children and teenagers were accidentally posted on the University of Montana Web site last week in one of the most glaring violations of privacy over the Internet. The 400 pages of documents describe patient visits and offer diagnoses by therapists of mental retardation, depression, schizophrenia and other serious conditions. In nearly all cases, they contain complete names, dates of birth and sometimes home addresses and schools attended, along with results of psychological testing.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...1private.story
Torvalds settles Linux tussle
The battle over the Linux kernel that has divided the developer community appears to be over -- at least for now. Last week, Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Linux developer Alan Cox told eWEEK that they will both embrace a new Virtual Memory manager and implement it in forthcoming iterations of the operating system. Cox has, until now, continued to use the existing VM in the version of the 2.4 kernel he maintains. The unified front is good news for the Linux community, given the need for Linux to be seen as an enterprise, mission-critical operating system.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...822789,00.html
Nasa considers shuttle sell-off
The American space agency (Nasa) is considering privatising its fleet of space shuttles in an attempt to save money. The move would remove the shuttle operation from direct control by Nasa and make it a customer. But the proposal is not without controversy. One senator has questioned the timing of such a move given the US war in Afghanistan, but the Bush administration is keen to press ahead with the money-saving scheme.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/wor...00/1642505.stm
Scientists look inside a sunspot
The first detailed look deep inside sunspots has uncovered planet-sized whirlpools of intense energy that explain why sunspots are dark and how each one holds itself together in the face of energy that ought to blow it apart. Sunspots are cooler, dark regions of the sun that sometimes grow to several times the size of Earth and then fade away. Scientists have long known that the dark blemishes, first spotted by the astronomer Galileo in the early 1600s, involve twisted fields of magnetic energy and clouds of plasma, or superheated gas.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/653571.asp?0si=-
Online Index Documents Censorship, Free Speech Incidents
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) today unveiled an online index of what it calls, "various censorship and free expression incidents" stemming from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The NCAC claims in a press release it is the, "only organization that is actively tracking how the events of Sept. 11 have affected political dissent and free expression in schools, entertainment, news, media and art." "Throughout U.S. history, threats to national security have tested the tolerance of our nation for different ideas and opinions," Joan Bertin, executive director of the NCAC said in a prepared statement.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171976.html
Terrorist Crackdown Leaves Al-Barakaat Site Online
Federal agents today shut down offices operated by two terrorist organizations in the United States, but the Web site of one of the groups is still online and hosted by Internet media giant Yahoo. President Bush announced today that 62 names have been added to a list of organizations that support terrorism. As part of the crackdown, Treasury, IRS, and Customs agents raided several offices operated by the Al-Barakaat Group of Companies in the U.S. Al-Barakaat's Internet home page, was still functioning this afternoon. The site, which offers information about the group of companies operated by Al-Barakaat, as well as a link to online banking, is hosted on servers operated by California-based Yahoo Website Services, according to domain registration records.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171968.html
Porsche Laps Mitsubishi In Race Against Cybersquatters
Lawyers for Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors Corp. may be scratching their heads this week after failing to outmaneuver the alleged cybersquatter behind the Internet address Mitsubishi-Motors.com at the same time that Germany's Porsche AG was rolling home with two wins over holders of Porsche- related domains - one of which wasn't even spelled correctly. For Stuttgart-based Porsche, it was just another day in the race against online trademark infringers, having already notched two victories - encompassing five Internet addresses - under a dispute- resolution procedure established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171958.html
U.S. Anti-Terrorism Sweep Nails Net, Phone Companies
President Bush and his top cabinet members today announced that several small Internet and telephone companies operating in the U.S. have been implicated as participants in the global terrorist network operated by Osama bin Laden and suspected of carrying out the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. The investigation into global terrorism has resulted in evidence seizures and raids at several businesses across the country and throughout the world. Bush said that companies operating inside several loose financial networks have provided secure Internet and satellite phone services, among other communications facilities.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171955.html
Labels, Artist Groups Reach Music Royalty Agreement
An agreement was reached today by numerous parties regarding payment of performance royalties, an agreement which may impact on the future of music on the Internet. The dealmaking brought together various major record labels and recording industry interests with several artists' unions and musicians' groups. SoundExchange - a licensing collective operated by the record industry - will be under the joint control of recording artists and record companies, according to a media release issued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171977.html
Sept. 11 Archive Preserves 2,500 Web Sites
The Library of Congress, which has drawn occasional fire for ignoring digital documents in favor of paper, has created a Web archive about the events of Sept. 11. Working in collaboration with the Internet Archive, webArchivist.org and a charitable trust, the library selected about 2,500 Web sites to preserve. They were the work of individuals, institutions and the media reacting to the terrorist attacks. Library staff chose all the sites that appear in the archive, at September11.archive.org. They include press, government, university, corporate, religious and foreign pages, all with thumbnail images and clickable uniform resource locators.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171961.html
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