What, you thought that it was all ?!? Five minutes in the penalty box !!
Revised Cybersecurity Plan Issued
The Bush administration has reduced by nearly half its initiatives to tighten security for vital computer networks, giving more responsibility to the new Homeland Security Department and eliminating an earlier plan to consult regularly with privacy experts. An internal draft of the administration's upcoming plan also eliminates a number of voluntary proposals for America's corporations to improve security, focusing instead on suggestions for U.S. government agencies, such as a broad new study assessing risks. "Governments can lead by example in cyberspace security," the draft said.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,57109,00.html
Take Wing, Not Flight, on EBay
Ever wanted your very own personal flying machine? Now's your chance to get one, but you'll have to shell out some serious cash — and resist the urge to take it for a spin. The SoloTrek XFV, which made its maiden "flight" in December 2001, is scheduled to go on sale Friday on eBay with a starting bid of about $50,000. Michael Moshier, chief executive of Trek Aerospace, the military-funded company designing the machine, expects the final price in the seven-day auction to exceed $1 million. The prototype has only hovered a few feet off the ground in tests. But it is built to zoom up to 69 mph for 100 miles, carrying a person who weighs up to 180 pounds. Two overhead fans lift the gas-powered machine, and a standing operator steers with a joystick in each hand.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,57099,00.html
Russia battles against CD piracy
In spite of sub-zero temperatures, Maxim is feeling confident about his outdoor business on the frozen streets of Moscow.
Several buyers are browsing his wares, displayed on a folding table just five minutes walk from the seat of the Russian government, in the centre of Moscow. But what he is selling causes a terrible headache for the government, not to mention international recording companies, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and law enforcement agencies in Russia and abroad. Maxim, who is in his twenties, is selling CDs, or to be precise, pirated CDs. Each of them costs just slightly more than a pound - so it is no wonder that buyers are in abundance.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2578989.stm
A defining moment for TV
More than two decades after the nation's TV industries started tinkering with the next generation of broadcasting, pieces of the transition finally seem to be clicking into place. Sales of the sets needed to receive the crystal-clear signals are rising rapidly as prices fall, though they're still expensive (averaging $1,700) and only 4% of U.S. homes have them. Networks and cable channels are supplying more programming to watch on them. Squabbling factions, such as set makers, cable operators and Hollywood studios — under government pressure to speed things up — recently have been reaching key agreements on such issues as compatibility, signal carriage and copy protection. In a reinforcing cycle, each of these factors feeds the others. When all are weak, as they have been, progress is slow. As they strengthen, acceleration is likely.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...gital-tv_x.htm
Playstation3 architecture revealed
Sources said that the architecture of the Sony Playstation3 is patently clear when you've found the US patent that it filed September 26th last year. A reliable source close to Sony's plans explained the way the Playstation3 works to the INQUIRER. He said that the computers are made of cells, each one containing a CPU, which will probably be a PowerPC, and eight APUs (vectorial processors) each with 128K of memory. It will run at 4GHz, producing a not inconsiderable 256Gflops, with the cells connected to the central 64MB memory through a switched 1024 bit bus. It's still not clear how many of these "cells" will be used in the Playstation3, but Sony reckoned some time ago it could be as many as one teraflops, probably making it a four cell architecture.
http://inquirerinside.com/?article=7078
New technique finds farthest known planet
Researchers say they have spotted a planet thousands of light-years away by watching how it dims the light from the star it orbits. The technique could eventually be used to check millions of stars for the presence of Earthlike planets, a member of the research team said Monday. “We believe the door has been wide open to go and discover a new Earth,” Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said at this week’s American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. In the past decade, astronomers have detected 100 planets orbiting stars other than our own sun, primarily by analyzing the faint signs of a wobble in the stars’ motion that is caused by the planets’ gravitational pull. Increasingly powerful telescopes have made such discoveries almost routine.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/855684.asp?0cv=TA01
Practical quantum computers are another step closer 
The dream of the mechanics who design quantum computers is to take a problem — the increasingly spooky behaviour of electronic components as they grow smaller, due to the effects predicted by quantum theory — and turn it into advantage. These quantum mechanics hope to use one of that theory's main planks, the uncertainty principle, to allow them to design machines that can do “massively parallel” calculations which are beyond even the theoretical capabilities of conventional computers. That, in turn, would allow currently insoluble problems (including some in the field of cryptography) to be crunched reasonably conveniently. Building a practical quantum computer will be hard. But another step towards one has just been announced in Nature. Stephan Gulde, of the University of Innsbruck, in Austria, and his colleagues have built a prototype machine whose chief working part is a single atom of calcium, and they have run a program on it.
http://www.economist.com/science/dis...ory_id=1511921
First speed of gravity measurement revealed
The speed of gravity has been measured for the first time. The landmark experiment shows that it travels at the speed of light, meaning that Einstein's general theory of relativity has passed another test with flying colours. Ed Fomalont of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri in Columbia made the measurement, with the help of the planet Jupiter. "We became the first two people to know the speed of gravity, one of the fundamental constants of nature," the scientists say, in an article in New Scientist print edition. One important consequence of the result is that it places constraints on theories of "brane worlds", which suggest the Universe has more spatial dimensions than the familiar three. John Baez, a physicist from the University of California at Riverside, comments: "Einstein wins yet again." He adds that any other result would have come as a shock.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993232
Police find deadly toxin in London
Ricin, a deadly toxin derived from castor oil seeds and previously used as a bioweapon, has been discovered by police in north London. Anti-Terrorist Branch police officers raided a one-bedroom flat on Sunday morning, following intelligence reports. A small quantity of material was removed and taken to the UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratories at Porton Down for testing and on Tuesday was confirmed as ricin. Six men of North African origin and one woman were arrested, though the woman has since been released. The discovery comes after a number of warnings from the UK government about terrorist activity.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993236
Former KGB agents go to war against music pirates
A squad of former KGB operatives will emerge this month at the forefront of the battle against music piracy with the launch of a new technology which "watermarks" digital content. Internet experts reckon the music industry is losing far more money through internet piracy than it is making from its own online distribution channels. Although online music is seen as a big factor in the attractiveness of broadband services to consumers, music companies are wary of putting a significant proportion of their catalogues online because of the pirates. This month, music distributor Apex Entertainment Group will introduce watermarking technology developed by former Russian spies in St Petersburg, in the hope of attracting more music companies on to the web.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/...869241,00.html
Net users may be willing to pay for content after all
The Internet's reputation as a haven for freeloaders is beginning to lose some meaning as research released on Monday suggested the majority of Western European online users are willing to pay for digital content. A survey conducted by Jupiter Research said Internet users' reluctance to pay for online content, ranging from music downloads to news articles, dropped from 47% in 2001 to 41% last year, suggesting media companies may finally see their digital subscription ventures begin to pay off. With online advertising in the doldrums the past two years, media outfits from newspaper publishers to Internet service providers (ISPs) have rolled out a variety of subscription-based offerings aimed at increasing revenues.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...ng-users_x.htm
MS to license Media Player 9 for Linux, others?
Microsoft will today announce cheaper, more flexible terms for its Windows Media Player 9 Digital Rights Management software, according to a Reuters report, and allegedly, this will allow the development of Linux WMP 9 clients, among others. Provided Linux developers promise not to steal our stuff, VP for new media platforms Will Poole told Reuters (although we concede, not in quite those words). Given The Beast's oft-stated views on the viral nature of the GPL, Poole's readiness to discuss Linux WMP 9 client software is not a little perplexing. GPL-toting communists get their paws on MS DRM technology, build it into their products, and the whole Microsoft DRM shooting match gets open-sourced? It's a treasurable thought, but regrettably, as Microsoft's eccentric interpretation of the GPL is about 90 per cent marketing spin and 0.5 per cent reality, this is not going to happen.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28755.html
More news later on
