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

walktalker · 31-07-01, 06:11 AM

Hehe, I know, but I like cuties to repeat it to me

Icons Cluttering up Windows Space
This apparent interference came in the form of Microsoft's announcement Monday that computer manufacturers who put any icons on the desktop of Windows XP -- the new version of its operating system -- must also include an icon for MSN, Microsoft's ISP. The decision was made public only after Compaq said last Friday it had struck a deal with AOL to exclusively feature AOL's Internet service on the startup sequence of computers featuring Windows XP. Microsoft had previously announced that it would loosen restrictions on the new desktop operating system to let computer makers remove the icon for Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and replace it with that of a rival browser such as Netscape Navigator. But Vivek Varma, a spokesman for Microsoft, insisted that this new point was not at all a reversal of its earlier statements.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45716,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/...,45695,00.html

Face Scanners Turn Lens on Selves
A leading maker of facial recognition software is calling for federal regulation of the controversial technology to avoid misuse. The technology, which converts facial images into an easily compiled and searched numerical code, has been criticized by privacy advocates who say the scans amount to facial frisking. "Like all powerful technologies, it should be used responsibly," said Frances Zelazny, a spokeswoman for Visionics Corporation. "We believe systemic oversight is the best way to ensure our principles are translated into responsible policies and uses of technologies." The technology first gained public notoriety in January, when Tampa, Florida, police used it to scan the faces of unsuspecting football fans at the Super Bowl and compare their mugs with terrorists and other criminals.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,45687,00.html

Web Music Fight Plays Out in D.C.
The U.S. government is about to dramatically alter the business of streaming audio on the Internet by deciding how much the recording industry should be paid each time someone listens to a song. On Monday, the Copyright Office convened a long-awaited series of hearings to set a standard fee that webcasters must pay to the copyright owners of songs. A panel will hear testimony for the next 180 days, and the recommendations most likely will be incorporated into the eventual decision of the Copyright Office. This Byzantine, bureaucratic process will end in an agreement that will determine, among other things, whether advertising-supported online music sites can be profitable or not.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45703,00.html

New Laws: Thou Shalt Patch
With no real power to force action, the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center often finds itself waving its arms, hoping for attention when a threat like the Code Red virus emerges. Often, the warnings go unheeded. But that may be changing. Federal rules that will make it obligatory for specific sectors to download virus patches are already here, and more are coming. "There is a justification for these regulations having been implemented," said Dean Harvey, who specializes in Internet law at Vinson & Elkins in Dallas. "There's a patch for Code Red, but it's still on a quarter-million servers. It should be an eye opener to businesses that they need to keep their systems secure."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45692,00.html

One Giant Leap for Spacekind?
Supporters of the theory of Panspermia -- which posits that life on Earth originated in space -- have unveiled fresh research indicating the existence of living matter in the planet's upper atmosphere. In a paper presented Monday at an engineering conference in San Diego, California, a team of scientists from India and Britain said they had isolated a sample of air collected from Earth's stratosphere that contained clumps of living cells.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45704,00.html

Expo Focus on Securing E-Books
The publishing industry was supposed to have learned from the music industry's mistakes with Napster. But with the recent arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov -- the alleged hacker who wrote a program that bypasses encrypted Adobe Acrobat files -- some are questioning whether e-books, and the nascent e-publishing industry, are truly secure. Nash will moderate a panel, "Copyright Issues for E-Books," at this week's BookTech West Expo in San Francisco on Tuesday.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45635,00.html

Modified Tomatoes Hold the Salt
A genetically modified tomato could be the answer to dangerously decreasing acres of farmable land caused by salty soil. Researchers at the University of California at Davis and the University of Toronto say they have created the first tomato plant that can grow in salty soil, an increasing problem for farmers of all types of crops. Salinity in soil is caused mostly by irrigation, which is necessary for the survival of many crops but also distributes salt that can kill plants. The genetically altered tomato removes salt from the soil and stores it in its leaves. And because this action takes place in the leaves, the scientists say the quality of the tomato is not affected.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45694,00.html

Gov't Dept. Erases Indian E-Mail
The Interior Department destroyed e-mails that may have dealt with mismanaged Indian land royalties, despite repeated court orders that the files be preserved, according to a court-appointed investigator. The data was supposed to be retained at the request of attorneys representing hundreds of American Indians in a lawsuit alleging that the government mismanaged at least $10 billion in royalties collected since 1887 from the use of Indian lands. But from June 1998, when the court first ordered the data tapes preserved, until November 2000, tapes at a number of field offices were routinely overwritten and the information on them destroyed, said Alan Balaran, a court-appointed special master. He issued his report Friday.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45717,00.html

Post-Napster Pirates Commandeer Computers
There's been a wild party at the New York City Board of Elections. With plenty of movies -- "The Green Mile," "Braveheart" and "Unbreakable" -- and pop music from Willa Ford and R.E.M., plus MTV videos. All free and all illegal. To join the fun, online party-goers just directed their Web browsers to an election board computer site. Then they made their own copies of the entertainment stash before officials noticed this virtual rave party erupting in their computers. Episodes like this one, which went on for weeks until the Board of Elections shut down the site last weekend, are part of an online piracy wave that is sweeping across the Internet. When the online music-sharing service Napster was shut down by a judge four weeks ago, its millions of users had to go somewhere. Many shifted to the dozen or so legal online alternatives still in operation. Others moved underground.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...%2Da%5Fsection

Bush plans 'space bomber'
The United States is exploring the development of a 'space-bomber' which could destroy targets on the other side of the world within 30 minutes. As part of a weapons modernisation strategy personally directed by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon is drawing up plans for a 'sub-orbital vehicle' launched like a spacecraft, which Rumsfeld describes as 'valuable for conducting rapid global strikes'. The craft - which would set the scene for a new generation of stratospheric warfare - would be able to drop precision bombs from a height of 60 miles, flying at 15 times the speed and 10 times the height of America's current bomber fleet. It is unclear whether it would be manned.
http://www.observer.co.uk/internatio...529208,00.html

Hacking activity at all-time high
Hacking activity is at an all-time high, according to stats compiled by The Honeynet Project. It bases this conclusion on the number of attacks perpetrated against a network of servers, set up by the organisation specifically to collect data on hacking attempts. The intrusion detection system placed on the Honeynet's servers generated 157 alerts during May 2000 but this figure had escalated by a factor of almost nine to 1,398 alerts by February 2001. The Honeynet's firewall showed a doubling of alerts from 103 to 206 per month between May 2000 and February 2001. Much of what the project discovered chimes in with the increasing incidents of corporate Web site defacement and other hacking attacks but it also throws up some interesting insights in the techniques used by black hat hackers.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/20714.html

Happy 40th, computer games
Ah, the summer of 1961. United States President John F Kennedy was coping with the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Berliners were learning to live with the wall, the Beatles were singing up a storm at the Cavern club, and in Boston a small group of programmers were about to invent the computer games industry. Yes, it's 40 years since a band of pioneering computer enthusiasts created Spacewar!, in which players battled to save the Universe. Most computers at that time were huge, expensive machines tended by men in white coats who defended their whirring, clicking charges with all the high-minded zeal of, well, zealots.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_...00/1464171.stm

New Web advertising tool gets results, draws criticism
After Douglas Hoppe downloaded the hot new online file-sharing program called KaZaa two weeks ago, random yellow hyperlinks began appearing on his fledgling music site. Hoppe became hopping mad when he realized words such as "jazz" and "hip hop" had become hyperlinks, sending potential customers to the site of BMG Music, one of the world's biggest record labels. Someone was hijacking his visitors, he thought. But Hoppe soon learned that when he installed KaZaa, he also unknowingly installed a bundled program called TOPtext, part of a new online advertising technology called ContextPro developed by EZula Inc. of San Francisco.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...0/BU231339.DTL

Wearable computing comes off the peg
Wearable computers could become more than a curiosity with the launch of a system for the mass market. The Wearable Internet Appliance (WIA) consists of a 300 gram (11 ounce) palm-top-sized computer and a head-mounted screen. The display is manufactured by a Japanese company called Shimadzu and fits over one eye like half a pair of sunglasses. The viewable screen is then equivalent to a 33 cm (13 inch) monitor, according to Shimadzu. A small handheld controller allows the user to scroll around the screen and make selections. The miniature computer will be powered by Hitachi's new 128 MHz RISC processor, providing power close to that of a desktop computer. It will run Microsoft's CE operating system for handheld computers, which features cut-down versions of email and word-processing applications.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991086

31-07-01, 06:11 AM	#3
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	Hehe, I know, but I like cuties to repeat it to me Icons Cluttering up Windows Space This apparent interference came in the form of Microsoft's announcement Monday that computer manufacturers who put any icons on the desktop of Windows XP -- the new version of its operating system -- must also include an icon for MSN, Microsoft's ISP. The decision was made public only after Compaq said last Friday it had struck a deal with AOL to exclusively feature AOL's Internet service on the startup sequence of computers featuring Windows XP. Microsoft had previously announced that it would loosen restrictions on the new desktop operating system to let computer makers remove the icon for Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and replace it with that of a rival browser such as Netscape Navigator. But Vivek Varma, a spokesman for Microsoft, insisted that this new point was not at all a reversal of its earlier statements. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45716,00.html http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/...,45695,00.html Face Scanners Turn Lens on Selves A leading maker of facial recognition software is calling for federal regulation of the controversial technology to avoid misuse. The technology, which converts facial images into an easily compiled and searched numerical code, has been criticized by privacy advocates who say the scans amount to facial frisking. "Like all powerful technologies, it should be used responsibly," said Frances Zelazny, a spokeswoman for Visionics Corporation. "We believe systemic oversight is the best way to ensure our principles are translated into responsible policies and uses of technologies." The technology first gained public notoriety in January, when Tampa, Florida, police used it to scan the faces of unsuspecting football fans at the Super Bowl and compare their mugs with terrorists and other criminals. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,45687,00.html Web Music Fight Plays Out in D.C. The U.S. government is about to dramatically alter the business of streaming audio on the Internet by deciding how much the recording industry should be paid each time someone listens to a song. On Monday, the Copyright Office convened a long-awaited series of hearings to set a standard fee that webcasters must pay to the copyright owners of songs. A panel will hear testimony for the next 180 days, and the recommendations most likely will be incorporated into the eventual decision of the Copyright Office. This Byzantine, bureaucratic process will end in an agreement that will determine, among other things, whether advertising-supported online music sites can be profitable or not. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45703,00.html New Laws: Thou Shalt Patch With no real power to force action, the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center often finds itself waving its arms, hoping for attention when a threat like the Code Red virus emerges. Often, the warnings go unheeded. But that may be changing. Federal rules that will make it obligatory for specific sectors to download virus patches are already here, and more are coming. "There is a justification for these regulations having been implemented," said Dean Harvey, who specializes in Internet law at Vinson & Elkins in Dallas. "There's a patch for Code Red, but it's still on a quarter-million servers. It should be an eye opener to businesses that they need to keep their systems secure." http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45692,00.html One Giant Leap for Spacekind? Supporters of the theory of Panspermia -- which posits that life on Earth originated in space -- have unveiled fresh research indicating the existence of living matter in the planet's upper atmosphere. In a paper presented Monday at an engineering conference in San Diego, California, a team of scientists from India and Britain said they had isolated a sample of air collected from Earth's stratosphere that contained clumps of living cells. http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45704,00.html Expo Focus on Securing E-Books The publishing industry was supposed to have learned from the music industry's mistakes with Napster. But with the recent arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov -- the alleged hacker who wrote a program that bypasses encrypted Adobe Acrobat files -- some are questioning whether e-books, and the nascent e-publishing industry, are truly secure. Nash will moderate a panel, "Copyright Issues for E-Books," at this week's BookTech West Expo in San Francisco on Tuesday. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45635,00.html Modified Tomatoes Hold the Salt A genetically modified tomato could be the answer to dangerously decreasing acres of farmable land caused by salty soil. Researchers at the University of California at Davis and the University of Toronto say they have created the first tomato plant that can grow in salty soil, an increasing problem for farmers of all types of crops. Salinity in soil is caused mostly by irrigation, which is necessary for the survival of many crops but also distributes salt that can kill plants. The genetically altered tomato removes salt from the soil and stores it in its leaves. And because this action takes place in the leaves, the scientists say the quality of the tomato is not affected. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45694,00.html Gov't Dept. Erases Indian E-Mail The Interior Department destroyed e-mails that may have dealt with mismanaged Indian land royalties, despite repeated court orders that the files be preserved, according to a court-appointed investigator. The data was supposed to be retained at the request of attorneys representing hundreds of American Indians in a lawsuit alleging that the government mismanaged at least $10 billion in royalties collected since 1887 from the use of Indian lands. But from June 1998, when the court first ordered the data tapes preserved, until November 2000, tapes at a number of field offices were routinely overwritten and the information on them destroyed, said Alan Balaran, a court-appointed special master. He issued his report Friday. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45717,00.html Post-Napster Pirates Commandeer Computers There's been a wild party at the New York City Board of Elections. With plenty of movies -- "The Green Mile," "Braveheart" and "Unbreakable" -- and pop music from Willa Ford and R.E.M., plus MTV videos. All free and all illegal. To join the fun, online party-goers just directed their Web browsers to an election board computer site. Then they made their own copies of the entertainment stash before officials noticed this virtual rave party erupting in their computers. Episodes like this one, which went on for weeks until the Board of Elections shut down the site last weekend, are part of an online piracy wave that is sweeping across the Internet. When the online music-sharing service Napster was shut down by a judge four weeks ago, its millions of users had to go somewhere. Many shifted to the dozen or so legal online alternatives still in operation. Others moved underground. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...%2Da%5Fsection Bush plans 'space bomber' The United States is exploring the development of a 'space-bomber' which could destroy targets on the other side of the world within 30 minutes. As part of a weapons modernisation strategy personally directed by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon is drawing up plans for a 'sub-orbital vehicle' launched like a spacecraft, which Rumsfeld describes as 'valuable for conducting rapid global strikes'. The craft - which would set the scene for a new generation of stratospheric warfare - would be able to drop precision bombs from a height of 60 miles, flying at 15 times the speed and 10 times the height of America's current bomber fleet. It is unclear whether it would be manned. http://www.observer.co.uk/internatio...529208,00.html Hacking activity at all-time high Hacking activity is at an all-time high, according to stats compiled by The Honeynet Project. It bases this conclusion on the number of attacks perpetrated against a network of servers, set up by the organisation specifically to collect data on hacking attempts. The intrusion detection system placed on the Honeynet's servers generated 157 alerts during May 2000 but this figure had escalated by a factor of almost nine to 1,398 alerts by February 2001. The Honeynet's firewall showed a doubling of alerts from 103 to 206 per month between May 2000 and February 2001. Much of what the project discovered chimes in with the increasing incidents of corporate Web site defacement and other hacking attacks but it also throws up some interesting insights in the techniques used by black hat hackers. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/20714.html Happy 40th, computer games Ah, the summer of 1961. United States President John F Kennedy was coping with the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Berliners were learning to live with the wall, the Beatles were singing up a storm at the Cavern club, and in Boston a small group of programmers were about to invent the computer games industry. Yes, it's 40 years since a band of pioneering computer enthusiasts created Spacewar!, in which players battled to save the Universe. Most computers at that time were huge, expensive machines tended by men in white coats who defended their whirring, clicking charges with all the high-minded zeal of, well, zealots. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_...00/1464171.stm New Web advertising tool gets results, draws criticism After Douglas Hoppe downloaded the hot new online file-sharing program called KaZaa two weeks ago, random yellow hyperlinks began appearing on his fledgling music site. Hoppe became hopping mad when he realized words such as "jazz" and "hip hop" had become hyperlinks, sending potential customers to the site of BMG Music, one of the world's biggest record labels. Someone was hijacking his visitors, he thought. But Hoppe soon learned that when he installed KaZaa, he also unknowingly installed a bundled program called TOPtext, part of a new online advertising technology called ContextPro developed by EZula Inc. of San Francisco. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...0/BU231339.DTL Wearable computing comes off the peg Wearable computers could become more than a curiosity with the launch of a system for the mass market. The Wearable Internet Appliance (WIA) consists of a 300 gram (11 ounce) palm-top-sized computer and a head-mounted screen. The display is manufactured by a Japanese company called Shimadzu and fits over one eye like half a pair of sunglasses. The viewable screen is then equivalent to a 33 cm (13 inch) monitor, according to Shimadzu. A small handheld controller allows the user to scroll around the screen and make selections. The miniature computer will be powered by Hitachi's new 128 MHz RISC processor, providing power close to that of a desktop computer. It will run Microsoft's CE operating system for handheld computers, which features cut-down versions of email and word-processing applications. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991086 __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies