FBI Net Center Blasted Again
It's been two months since congressional investigators said that a highly touted FBI Internet center was about as effective as Al Gore's presidential campaign. During a hearing Wednesday, a Senate panel concluded that the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center had made scant progress since the blistering report released in May. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the top Republican on the Judiciary technology subcommittee, suggested that the NIPC was not using agents contributed to the center from other agencies and said the problem "seemed to be a leadership issue." The panel's Democratic chairman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, called the NIPC "an important hole in our national infrastructure" that must be patched.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45552,00.html
Execs Want Privacy Policy for All
Officials of the companies that sell Chevy pickups, ThinkPad computers, Crest toothpaste and books online told Congress they all agree on one point: Any legislation regulating use of consumers' personal data should apply to every business, not just those conducting commerce on the Internet. The Federal Trade Commission has urged Congress to enact online privacy legislation, and some House Democrats expressed support for it at a hearing Thursday. But Rep. Billy Tauzin, (R-Louisiana), chairman of the House Commerce committee, was happy to hear the corporate executives from General Motors, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Amazon.com and Lands' End say that the Internet shouldn't be singled out in legislation.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,45587,00.html
AOL to Offer Bounty for Space on New PCs
AOL Time Warner Inc. is moving aggressively to take advantage of Microsoft Corp.'s tenuous legal standing, seeking deals with computer makers to target consumers with subtle and direct marketing pitches that would help AOL grab more control of the computer desktop. In internal AOL documents, the media giant lays out a strategy that calls on manufacturers to build into their new personal computers icons, pop-up notices and other consumer messages aimed at pushing aside Microsoft by giving AOL's own products prominent placement on PCs. It's the latest foray in an intensifying feud between the two technology titans over consumers and supremacy on the Internet.
http://www.washtech.com/news/media/11421-1.html
Older wireless tech could rival Bluetooth
An alternative wireless network technology to 802.11b and Bluetooth may emerge next year in the form of the broadband Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) standard. Dect is used extensively in cordless phones, but is not yet widely used in wireless LANs. The ETSI standards group is working to increase Dect's 2Mbit/s bandwidth to 20Mbit/s, above the 11Mbit/s of 802.11b and 721kbit/s of Bluetooth. This, combined with a much longer range, a clearer radio frequency spectrum and low-cost components, could make broadband Dect a powerful, reliable and low-cost technology for local and wide area wireless networks. Bill Pechey of consultancy firm Computancy said Dect is superior to 802.11b and Bluetooth in many respects, but its success will depend on hardware manufacturers adopting it.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
Video toothbrush hunts 'debris' 
A Japanese company is developing a video toothbrush to help people ensure they clean their teeth thoroughly. When food gets trapped in the teeth and gums it rots and causes bad breath and decay. Poor dental hygiene has also been linked to serious lung disease and problems with premature pregnancy. Regular brushing can reduce the risk of this happening, but it is not always that easy to locate every last scrap of food. Panasonic believes its new product may provide the answer. The company has developed an electric toothbrush which has a camera on a stalk next to the vibrating bristles, New Scientist magazine reports.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/hea...00/1456058.stm
Bionic suit takes pain out of lifting 
Back injuries suffered by nurses from lifting heavy patients could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a bionic suit invented by Japanese scientists. The computer-opreated Power Assist Suit designed by scientists at Japan’s Kanagawa Institute of Technology is strapped onto the body and eases the strain of lifting patients. “Sensor pads taped to the major muscle groups calculate how much force you need to pick up a patient,” New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday. “As you lift, the sensors send data to a microcomputer that triggers the business end of the system — a bunch of concertina-like limb and body actuators powered by compressed air.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/605071.asp?0si=-
Faster and cheaper flash memory will empower tomorrow's grabbiest gadgets
Flash memory seemed like a miracle chip when it made its commercial debut a decade ago. A new type of electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), it did not need a constant supply of electricity to store data, unlike random-access memory (RAM). Packaged in standardized formats such as CompactFlash and SmartMedia, it has become ubiquitous in personal digital assistants, digital cameras and audio devices. Unfortunately, flash is more expensive to produce than RAM. And that has generally limited capacities of consumer-priced memory cards to 32 or 64 megabytes — confining in a world where 1-MB photographs routinely flit across the Internet. The highest-capacity type, called NAND for the type of logic gate it predominantly employs, also takes far longer to write data than do competing magnetic and optical alternatives. But cheaper and faster flash memory is on its way.
http://www.techreview.com/web/essex/essex072601.asp
Civil Liberties Group To Ask Feds To Free Programmer
Representatives of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will ask federal prosecutors to drop their case against detained Russian software developer Dmitry Sklyarov when they meet on Friday. "We want to show them that there's just no support for this (prosecution) at all," EFF Executive Director Shari Steele said today. Sklyarov was arrested earlier this month at a hotel in Las Vegas on charges that the "Advanced eBook Processor," which he created, violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by allowing users to circumvent e-book security features.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168396.html
Bills Aimed At Thwarting Online Sex Predators Unveiled
On the same day that Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., introduced a bill to impose mandatory minimum prison sentences on online child sex predators, Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., introduced two bills to prevent the same crime. The two bills come after a 15-year-old girl from Putnam's Florida congressional district, Lindsay Shamrock, flew to Greece after she was lured to Europe by an alleged German sex offender, Konstantin Baehring, via the Internet. According to the U.S. embassy in Athens, authorities found Shamrock on Jan. 31, in a Thessaloniki, Greece, apartment, after she had been missing for several months. Police said that Shamrock was found "unharmed," and Baehring was charged with misdemeanor charges, including "sheltering a minor."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168388.html
Legislation To Can Spam Would Kill Free Speech
If Congress moves to adopt any one of several pending bills to quash unsolicited commercial e-mail – a.k.a. "spam" – it could trample free speech and pave the way for "opt-in" privacy legislation, according to a study released today. "Even if corporate free speech is the initial target, media speech could easily end up in the crosshairs," wrote Clyde Wayne Crews, director of technology policy for The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C. "Spam legislation amounts to a stealth privacy bill, and in such an environment, regulation could lead to better-disguised spam, more annoying than today’s version." The study takes aim at a pair of House bills designed to curb the use of spam: one sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and another measure sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168401.html
Truce Is Over For Australian Software Pirates
The Business Software Association of Australia (BSAA) has announced that it has set the wheels turning on legal action against Queensland Internet service provider Logic-World and an unidentified "major" print and design company. The two companies will both face court this month, the BSAA said in a statement Wednesday. Ever-vigilant BSAA Chairman Jim Macnamara said other settlements and court actions would be announced in coming weeks. The announcement follows a two-month software truce.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168406.html
Piracy of online music widespread, study suggestsPiracy ???
Young Canadians are using CD burners to pirate music on a vast scale, a reality that is unlikely to change regardless of how the music industry reacts, according to the author of a study released yesterday. CD burners, which allow computer users to download MP3 digital music files from Napster-like sources, have been used by 11% of Canadians 12 and older, according to the survey conducted by Solutions Research Group Consultants Inc. The use of CD burners to record music is one factor in several that has rocked the music industry, said Kaan Yigit, research director of the study. "This is an extension of what we've seen in the last two years," he said. "These are all pieces of a bigger puzzle."
http://www.nationalpost.com/artslife...19/622170.html
More news later on...