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

walktalker · 08-01-02, 08:11 PM

Charities Say No to Obsolete Crap
Tucked into corners and collecting dust in the closets of nonprofits worldwide, you'll find them: stacks of ancient computers, cracked monitors, tangled cords and drives without floppies. The hardware comes from well-meaning donors who hope their castoffs can do others some good. But while secondhand technology is indeed a blessing for some struggling agencies, for most it's quickly becoming a costly curse.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,49537,00.html

D.C. Plays a Little Lobby Music
The future of music, it seems, is right here in the nation's capital. When about 200 music executives, artists and lawyers gathered at Georgetown University, the topics on the conference agenda were lofty enough: What new business models may emerge? How are other countries handling things? Should unions be involved? The one common note, however, at the second Future of Music conference was that everyone from record labels to Napster will be lobbying Congress more furiously than ever.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49520,00.html

Lawmakers Deaf to Music Reform
Legislation to force music industry reforms ranging from limits on artists' contracts to bolstering consumer access to digital music is unlikely to pass Congress this year, a top Democrat said Tuesday. Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said he supported some reforms but did not expect Congress to take action as long as the House remained under Republican control.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49577,00.html

U.S. Cyber Security Weakening
U.S. computer systems are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks, partly because companies are not implementing security measures already available, according to a new report released Tuesday. "From an operational standpoint, cyber security today is far worse that what known best practices can provide," said the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, part of the National Research Council.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,49570,00.html

Net Gives Paper New Dimension
Making models out of paper is a hobby with a long, long history. But thanks to computers and the Internet, it is becoming as popular today as during its heyday in Victorian times. Paper was invented in China more than 2,000 years ago as a cheap alternative to silk, the primary writing medium of the time. But paper sculpting didn't appear until 1,500 years later.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,49507,00.html

U.S. considers encoding data on driver's licenses
The government is taking its first steps with the states to develop driver's licenses that can electronically store information — such as fingerprints — for the 184 million Americans who carry the cards. Privacy experts fear the effort may lead to de facto national identification cards that would allow authorities to track citizens electronically, circumventing the intense debate over federal ID cards.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/t...s-licenses.htm

Telescope Technology May Yield Images of Extra-Solar Planets
Ground-based telescopes equipped with computer-controlled, flexible mirrors to counteract the blurring turbulence of Earth's atmosphere are on the verge of being able to photograph large planets orbiting nearby sun-like stars, astronomers reported yesterday. While about 80 extra-solar planets have been discovered using indirect techniques -- measuring the effects of an unseen planet's gravity on the parent star, for example -- no one has directly made an image of a planet orbiting another sun.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2002Jan7.html

In Dark Matter, New Hints of a Universal Glue
Sometimes, defying its wont, science makes the cosmos look a little simpler. Recently it seems as if astronomers have been sprung from a long cosmological nightmare. Last month a consortium of astronomers announced that an analysis of some 130,000 galaxies showed that the the universe, at least on large scales, is structured pretty much the way it looks. That might sound unremarkable, but it didn't have to come out that way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/08/science/08DARK.html

Japan scientists 'grow artificial eyeball'
Japanese scientists have succeeded in growing artificial eyeballs for the first time in the world, Kyodo news agency said on Saturday. A group of researchers led by Makoto Asashima, biology professor at Tokyo University, succeeded in growing eyeballs in tadpoles using cells taken from frog embryos, Kyodo said. "Since the basics of body-making is common to that of human beings, I think this might help enable people to regain vision in the future," Asashima was quoted as saying.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapc...eut/index.html

"Alien" message tests human decoders
A message that will be broadcast into space later in 2002 has been released to scientists worldwide, to test that it can be decoded easily. The researchers who devised the message eventually hope to design a system that could automatically decode an alien reply. Unlike previous interstellar broadcasts, the new message is designed to withstand significant interference and interruption during transmission.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991757

Prof Renews Free Speech Fight Against US Encryption Law
A computer science professor is renewing a constitutional challenge to U.S. encryption laws, arguing that the government's policy on restricting the export of domestic cryptographic research violates the First Amendment. Daniel Bernstein, the University of Illinois computer science professor who resurrected the lawsuit in a San Francisco district court on Monday, said he is only trying to help protect computer systems against terrorists and other criminals.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173483.html

Go Hack Thyself, Urges NRC
To defend themselves against a rising tide of electronic attacks, companies, agencies and other organizations should routinely try to crack their own secure systems, according to a report released today. To ensure cybersecurity, individual organizations should "conduct frequent, unannounced red-team penetration testing of deployed systems and report the results to responsible management," wrote the authors of "Cybersecurity Today and Tomorrow," a report issued today by the National Research Council (NRC).
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173481.html

U.K. Mobile-Phone Theft Rate Rises Rapidly
The rate of mobile phone thefts in the U.K. is much higher than numbers officially recorded by the police, a British government report says. Today's study from the British Home Office, says 710,000 handsets were stolen during 2001, more than double the 330,000 stolen mobiles recorded by the police. And, while mobile phone theft has soared 500 percent in recent years, the report says young people are also five times more likely to have their mobile phones stolen than their older peers.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173476.html

Virus Threatens Shockwave Flash Files
The first virus that infects files in the popular Macromedia Flash format has been discovered, raising concerns that malicious code writers will gain a new method for infecting Internet users. Anti-virus software vendor Sophos said it received a copy of the virus, which it has named SWF/LFM-926, in a Flash "movie" file attached to an e-mail from an anonymous sender. According to Sophos's Graham Cluley, the virus appears to be a "proof of concept" and contains a "relatively harmless" payload.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173474.html

Bush OK's Education Act With Privacy Clause, Tech Grants
President Bush today signed into law a massive education reform bill that aims to strengthen children's Internet privacy rights in public schools, and makes more than $7 billion in school technology grants. The $7 billion in technology grants will be made available to states over a seven-year period, along with $450 million in math and science partnerships. It also makes available $250 million over five years for school libraries to buy technology for literacy improvement.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173469.html

Teen Was Million-Dollar Scammer Online, SEC Says
A 17-year-old high school student who lives at his parents' California home defrauded unwitting investors of more than $1 million in an online scam, according to the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). The securities regulator said Monday that it had already recovered some $900,000 from Cole A. Bartiromo of Mission Viejo, who the SEC claims ran a business called Invest Better 2001 online and stockpiled some of his gains in an account at a Costa Rica-based casino.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173466.html

More news later on

08-01-02, 08:11 PM	#2
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	Charities Say No to Obsolete Crap Tucked into corners and collecting dust in the closets of nonprofits worldwide, you'll find them: stacks of ancient computers, cracked monitors, tangled cords and drives without floppies. The hardware comes from well-meaning donors who hope their castoffs can do others some good. But while secondhand technology is indeed a blessing for some struggling agencies, for most it's quickly becoming a costly curse. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,49537,00.html D.C. Plays a Little Lobby Music The future of music, it seems, is right here in the nation's capital. When about 200 music executives, artists and lawyers gathered at Georgetown University, the topics on the conference agenda were lofty enough: What new business models may emerge? How are other countries handling things? Should unions be involved? The one common note, however, at the second Future of Music conference was that everyone from record labels to Napster will be lobbying Congress more furiously than ever. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49520,00.html Lawmakers Deaf to Music Reform Legislation to force music industry reforms ranging from limits on artists' contracts to bolstering consumer access to digital music is unlikely to pass Congress this year, a top Democrat said Tuesday. Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said he supported some reforms but did not expect Congress to take action as long as the House remained under Republican control. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49577,00.html U.S. Cyber Security Weakening U.S. computer systems are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks, partly because companies are not implementing security measures already available, according to a new report released Tuesday. "From an operational standpoint, cyber security today is far worse that what known best practices can provide," said the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, part of the National Research Council. http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,49570,00.html Net Gives Paper New Dimension Making models out of paper is a hobby with a long, long history. But thanks to computers and the Internet, it is becoming as popular today as during its heyday in Victorian times. Paper was invented in China more than 2,000 years ago as a cheap alternative to silk, the primary writing medium of the time. But paper sculpting didn't appear until 1,500 years later. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,49507,00.html U.S. considers encoding data on driver's licenses The government is taking its first steps with the states to develop driver's licenses that can electronically store information — such as fingerprints — for the 184 million Americans who carry the cards. Privacy experts fear the effort may lead to de facto national identification cards that would allow authorities to track citizens electronically, circumventing the intense debate over federal ID cards. http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/t...s-licenses.htm Telescope Technology May Yield Images of Extra-Solar Planets Ground-based telescopes equipped with computer-controlled, flexible mirrors to counteract the blurring turbulence of Earth's atmosphere are on the verge of being able to photograph large planets orbiting nearby sun-like stars, astronomers reported yesterday. While about 80 extra-solar planets have been discovered using indirect techniques -- measuring the effects of an unseen planet's gravity on the parent star, for example -- no one has directly made an image of a planet orbiting another sun. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2002Jan7.html In Dark Matter, New Hints of a Universal Glue Sometimes, defying its wont, science makes the cosmos look a little simpler. Recently it seems as if astronomers have been sprung from a long cosmological nightmare. Last month a consortium of astronomers announced that an analysis of some 130,000 galaxies showed that the the universe, at least on large scales, is structured pretty much the way it looks. That might sound unremarkable, but it didn't have to come out that way. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/08/science/08DARK.html Japan scientists 'grow artificial eyeball' Japanese scientists have succeeded in growing artificial eyeballs for the first time in the world, Kyodo news agency said on Saturday. A group of researchers led by Makoto Asashima, biology professor at Tokyo University, succeeded in growing eyeballs in tadpoles using cells taken from frog embryos, Kyodo said. "Since the basics of body-making is common to that of human beings, I think this might help enable people to regain vision in the future," Asashima was quoted as saying. http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapc...eut/index.html "Alien" message tests human decoders A message that will be broadcast into space later in 2002 has been released to scientists worldwide, to test that it can be decoded easily. The researchers who devised the message eventually hope to design a system that could automatically decode an alien reply. Unlike previous interstellar broadcasts, the new message is designed to withstand significant interference and interruption during transmission. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991757 Prof Renews Free Speech Fight Against US Encryption Law A computer science professor is renewing a constitutional challenge to U.S. encryption laws, arguing that the government's policy on restricting the export of domestic cryptographic research violates the First Amendment. Daniel Bernstein, the University of Illinois computer science professor who resurrected the lawsuit in a San Francisco district court on Monday, said he is only trying to help protect computer systems against terrorists and other criminals. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173483.html Go Hack Thyself, Urges NRC To defend themselves against a rising tide of electronic attacks, companies, agencies and other organizations should routinely try to crack their own secure systems, according to a report released today. To ensure cybersecurity, individual organizations should "conduct frequent, unannounced red-team penetration testing of deployed systems and report the results to responsible management," wrote the authors of "Cybersecurity Today and Tomorrow," a report issued today by the National Research Council (NRC). http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173481.html U.K. Mobile-Phone Theft Rate Rises Rapidly The rate of mobile phone thefts in the U.K. is much higher than numbers officially recorded by the police, a British government report says. Today's study from the British Home Office, says 710,000 handsets were stolen during 2001, more than double the 330,000 stolen mobiles recorded by the police. And, while mobile phone theft has soared 500 percent in recent years, the report says young people are also five times more likely to have their mobile phones stolen than their older peers. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173476.html Virus Threatens Shockwave Flash Files The first virus that infects files in the popular Macromedia Flash format has been discovered, raising concerns that malicious code writers will gain a new method for infecting Internet users. Anti-virus software vendor Sophos said it received a copy of the virus, which it has named SWF/LFM-926, in a Flash "movie" file attached to an e-mail from an anonymous sender. According to Sophos's Graham Cluley, the virus appears to be a "proof of concept" and contains a "relatively harmless" payload. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173474.html Bush OK's Education Act With Privacy Clause, Tech Grants President Bush today signed into law a massive education reform bill that aims to strengthen children's Internet privacy rights in public schools, and makes more than $7 billion in school technology grants. The $7 billion in technology grants will be made available to states over a seven-year period, along with $450 million in math and science partnerships. It also makes available $250 million over five years for school libraries to buy technology for literacy improvement. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173469.html Teen Was Million-Dollar Scammer Online, SEC Says A 17-year-old high school student who lives at his parents' California home defrauded unwitting investors of more than $1 million in an online scam, according to the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). The securities regulator said Monday that it had already recovered some $900,000 from Cole A. Bartiromo of Mission Viejo, who the SEC claims ran a business called Invest Better 2001 online and stockpiled some of his gains in an account at a Costa Rica-based casino. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173466.html More news later on __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies