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Author Walktalker

Congress Tables Stem Cell Issues
Lawmakers pulled controversial proposals on stem cell research and cloning Thursday after they threatened to gridlock a Senate hurrying to complete work on must-pass spending bills. Moderate Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter had included language in a labor and health spending bill that would have bent President Bush's new policy on stem cell research to allow couples to donate unused embryos from fertility clinics. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), an ardent abortion foe, rejected the stem cell language because "it goes further than the president's position." Brownback said he would counter the proposal with several amendments, including one on the contentious issue of banning human cloning.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48070,00.html

The Politics of Enforcing DWY
Despite a shift in priorities since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, New York officials still plan to enforce a law that prohibits driving while talking on a cell phone. But law enforcement authorities and talkative New Yorkers say the law, which takes effect Thursday and is the first statewide restriction of wireless phones in the country, won't curb driving while yakking (DWY) on mobile phones. Many New Yorkers already use headsets to talk on their cell phones -- allowed under the law -- while many police officers lack an efficient way to detect the law's violators.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,47972,00.html

News That's Fit to Download
Flipping through the pages of the daily newspaper is a ritual that many are reluctant to forgo, even if it arrives late, wet and ink-stained on the doorstep. But what if you could replicate the experience of reading the print edition electronically? Earlier this week, the venerable print icon The New York Times launched The New York Times Electronic Edition, an exact digital replica of its New York edition that is normally not available in print outside the metropolitan New York area.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,48051,00.html

Who's No. 1? Depends Who Counts
Whether it's ballots, beans or Internet traffic, the science of counting tends to follow the same principle: The more folks there are compiling the numbers, the more likely it is that disagreement will arise over whose figures are correct. That is a lesson many Americans learned in the recounting drama following last November's presidential election.
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,48041,00.html

IndyMedia in a Snit With CNN
Apparently, CNN was "censoring" its chat rooms, Schlosser decided, because -- as he later wrote in an article that appeared on the Indymedia site -- the cable channel wanted to "protect its interests from the likes of nasty, decentralized, non-profit organizations like the Independent Media Center that are composed of regular, working people." To hear CNN tell the story, however, the folks at Indymedia are throwing around dangerous words like "censorship" and "bias" without being entirely truthful.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48058,00.html

World's nuclear facilities vulnerable, warns UN agency
Nuclear plants are vulnerable to attacks by terrorists, according to a stark new warning by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Plutonium, uranium and even medical radiation sources are now much more likely to be targeted by terror groups seeking to cause mayhem, the IAEA believes. On the eve of a special meeting in Vienna on combating nuclear terrorism, the UN's normally cautious nuclear agency says the risk has risen sharply since the atrocities on the US on 11 September. It is asking its 132 member states to increase its $330 million annual budget by $30m to $50m to help meet the threat.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991506

Hacker 'Doctor Nuker' Claims FBI Fingered Wrong Person
A computer hacker who vandalized a pro-Israeli group's Web site said law enforcement officials have issued an arrest warrant for the wrong person. In an online interview today, a Pakistani hacker who calls himself Doctor Nuker said he was responsible for the Nov. 2000 attack on the Web site of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). But the hacker claimed a federal grand jury made a mistake last week in indicting Misbah Khan of Karachi on four computer crime-related counts.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171726.html

Berners-Lee slams 'blatant' MS browser tactics
Tim Berners-Lee, The father of the World Wide Web and director of the W3C standards organisation, has attacked Microsoft over last week's blocking of people with non-MS browsers from using its MSN.com site. In an email interview with CNET, Berners-Lee said: "Obviously this was a blatant attempt to use the leverage of some content to produce domination at the software layer." He continued: "I have fought since the beginning of the Web for its openness: that anyone can read Web pages with any software running on any hardware. This is what makes the Web itself. This is the environment into which so many people have invested so much energy and creativity. When I see any Web site claim to be only readable using particular hardware or software, I cringe - they are pining for the bad old days when each piece of information needed a different program to access it."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/22611.html

Whatever happened to fair use?
Like any college student, Tony Tran knows his rights. He has the right to sample music for free over the Internet. He has the right to download an entire CD to his computer's hard drive and listen to it for days to determine whether to buy it. And he has the right to make copies for his friends. "If I like it, I buy it. If I don't, I delete it,'' said Tran, an 18-year-old computer engineering student at San Jose State. "Obviously, the artists and record companies aren't worried about consumers like me. They're worried about the kids that download and don't buy.'' But record labels are indeed worried. Sharing music is a practice as old as cassette tapes and college dorms. But Internet song-swapping sites and technological advances in CD authoring turned what was once a limited campus pastime to pandemic. And the recording industry is determined to stop it.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/ne...ruse110101.htm

Digital Audio Revolution Speeding Toward Cars
Nearly four years ago, Microsoft Corp. honcho Bill Gates wowed the International Consumer Electronics Show with a new computer-powered car audio system called AutoPC. Some were impressed by the features, such as the voice-activated maps and address book. But others were stunned by the thought of people putting Windows in their cars. As it turns out, not many did. But Gates wasn't completely wrong--he just missed the target. "There is going to be a computer in the car," said Andrew Wolfe, chief technical officer of Sonicblue, "and the killer app is entertainment. It's not Web access."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...s%2Dtechnology

Who is Osama bin Laden?
The American readers who have put Yossef Bodansky's "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America" on bestseller lists across the nation are probably hoping that the book will tell them something about the inner Osama, the psychology of the man thought to be behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. As my mother asked when I told her what I was reading, "Does it explain what makes him so crazy?" But like all of the books and in-depth reports on bin Laden currently available, Bodansky's was written before the attacks and published by a small specialty press; it wasn't created with the demands of a general readership in mind.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2...ner/index.html

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