The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

Vacations are almost done for me: I'm two week away from an official return to the university... What I can say is my vacations were sunny: we haven't seen a single raindrop for week !!! (My lawn is turning yellow, but so do my neighbours', so no jalousy there )

My virtual parrot also used the time I was enjoying the summer to sneak into my cookie jar many times... Darn Netcoco

Okay, here's the news:
H-1B workers face ugly backlash
Purnima Srinivasan is looking for work as a market researcher so she can stay in the United States after her student visa expires. But even though she has a master's degree in marketing from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Srinivasan gets tapped for more jobs in computer programming and engineering than in her own field. Her plight is a testament to the strong reputation among foreign programmers that has driven much of the federal government's labor immigration policy through the so-called H-1B visa program. It also is a telling example of the penchant for stereotyping that pervades the American workplace.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

It's a plane, it's broadband
The world's first unmanned plane intended as a telecom tower in the sky is attracting interest as a new way to get broadband Internet connections to businesses. Helios, an aircraft resembling a giant wing, was built with funding and research help from NASA, and has flown successfully. Backers claim its transmission services will be far cheaper than satellites and more efficient than wireless towers. "We have very poor broadband last-mile coverage in the world, and we are looking to provide a wireless link to do it," said Earl Cox, SkyTower Telecommunications' director of telecommunications. SkyTower is a young subsidiary of solar-powered vehicles pioneer AeroVironment, which built and designed Helios. SkyTower hopes to begin mass production of the flying wings in 2003, and is in talks with potential partners, Cox said.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Microsoft, Kodak settle XP dispute
Microsoft and Eastman Kodak have reached a settlement that could take some political pressure off the software maker and its plans to launch the Windows XP operating system. Kodak had accused Microsoft of unfairly designing Windows XP in the way it handles digital photos. The photo products maker said Windows XP limited consumer choice in the default application for manipulating photos and steered consumers to Microsoft's preferred online photo processors. The companies' CEOs -- Steve Ballmer from Microsoft and Daniel Carp of Kodak -- resolved many of their major differences last week, although some issues remain, sources close to the companies said.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Napster's legacy: P2P poised to rule
The growth of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications will mean a major transformation for the Internet, and a decline in the relative importance of centralized Web applications. By 2004, most large corporations and enterprises will have carried out large-scale deployments of P2P technologies -- taking advantage of its ability to let users communicate and swap data spontaneously. This is the feeling of research group Gartner, which forecasts in a new research note that the Napster model of letting employees interact directly with each other will increasingly appeal to businesses. Gartner believes the Web will soon change from today's server-centric model into a "Supranet" -- an even more decentralized structure than today's Internet.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

In the year 20 PC: A look back
The competition to make history was tough in 1981: Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president, the U.S.-Iran hostage crisis ended, the economy slid into a recession, and scientists discovered a mysterious disease that would later be known as AIDS. Few could have imagined that an instrument of revolution was sitting innocuously on the shelves of local Sears Roebuck stores. Twenty years later, however, it's clear that the personal computer has changed life in modern society, from simple "word processing" to the introduction of the Information Age. "I can hardly think of an element of society that hasn't been changed by the PC," said Charles B. Kreitzberg, CEO of Cognetics and an expert on the relationship between people and computers. "Corporate culture has begun to shift into a new paradigm. The World Wide Web links us all in a way never possible before. None of this could have happened in the same way without the PC."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Online anonymity wins again
In another victory for online anonymity, a California judge has ruled that Yahoo does not need to reveal the identities of some message board posters. In a ruling Friday, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Neil Cabrinha said online critics who posted messages about Oklahoma-based legal company Pre-Paid Legal Services can keep their names under wraps. Pre-Paid said it needed to know the identities of the posters to determine whether they had revealed company trade secrets. However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented the posters, argued they were merely exercising their First Amendment right to criticize the company, and Pre-Paid was trying to silence its detractors by bullying them. According to the EFF, Cabrinha ruled from the bench during a hearing Friday to quash a subpoena requiring Yahoo to turn over the names.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Net users put online trust in familiar hands
Most people feel better giving out their personal information online to traditional banks and other well-known merchants than to portals or their Internet service providers, new research has found. A Jupiter Media Metrix study released Monday said that the majority of online consumers replicate their relationships with traditional merchants on the Web, storing personal and financial information with banks, credit card companies and other institutions they already know. The study also found that online consumers tend to gravitate toward traditional companies on the Web as the amount of time they spend on the Internet increases. For instance, 36 percent of consumers who have been surfing the Web for more than five years have stored their information with traditional merchants, compared with just 12 percent of online consumers with less than one year of Web surfing experience.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Companies use online games to lure traffic
Why would auto giant Honda launch an interactive video game aimed at fickle Generation Xers? In one word, branding. The game, which will be launched next month, is just the latest effort by a big-name corporation to use online fun to build brand loyalty among tech-savvy Americans. Like the trend to place branded products in movies and music videos, branded online games were born of the idea that companies can build consumer loyalty by associating their brands with entertainment.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Candy from strangers <---
The wish list is the perfect tool for cam kids because it allows them to ask for exactly what they want and have it sent to their house without ever revealing a home address -- the e-commerce vendor, whether it's Abercrombie & Fitch or Amazon, doesn't reveal the "wisher's" location. So the relationship between the online pen pal or fan can remain entirely virtual, yet still produce the goods. The Internet may not be, as it is so often caricatured, one big cesspool of pedophiles and pervs searching for unsuspecting and underage kids to prey upon. But the spectacle of teenagers displaying themselves online in exchange for material favors is something that could make anyone a little queasy. Still, in the search for online sugar daddies, young or old, it's the kids who understand what power they have -- through what they choose to reveal and what they conceal -- to titillate and suggest, with just a smile, or a bit of a tummy, or more.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2001/0...rls/index.html

Australia says ONYA! Napster
Even amid copyright disputes and legal proceedings, Napster has proven that it may be down, but not out, Down Under. The file-swapping site has beat out rivals to take home a major Australian online music award. Napster picked up an award for the Most Popular Overseas Digital Downloads Site at the prestigious Australian Online Music Awards, known to the industry as the ONYA!s. It shrugged off competition from MP3.com and Audiogalaxy for the honour. Judging by the results, Napster is just as popular as ever in Australia, regardless of media commentary about how its planned outages, decreased libraries and policed activity would reduce its fan-base.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/biztech/ebus...0252777,00.htm

FBI arrests four in Microsoft piracy case
Four suspected software pirates arrested in Los Angeles this week with counterfeit Microsoft products were running a big, sophisticated operation but failed to fake the anti-piracy hologram on the disks, a company security executive said Saturday. On Thursday, the FBI seized $10.5 million in counterfeit Microsoft software and arrested four men who allegedly smuggled several different versions of fake software products from Asia and sold them at deep discounts. A fifth man is still at large. "They were a very sophisticated group," said Richard LaMagna, Microsoft's senior manager of worldwide piracy enforcement. LaMagna said the group was well-organized, well-funded and appeared to be "distributing millions of dollars of software."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Cable industry says new services are selling
The number of subscribers getting high-speed access to the Internet through their cable television line jumped by almost a million during the second quarter, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said on Monday. The 920,000 new subscribers brings the total number of U.S. cable modem users to more than 5.5 million, about 8.5 percent of the 65 million homes able to receive the service, the industry group said, citing a survey of its members. Cable operators also signed up 1.3 million digital video subscribers during the second quarter, bringing the total to 12.2 million customers, according to the survey.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Investors follow trail of geo-tracking firm
As geographic targeting gains momentum, a Net-mapping technology company on Monday said it received a $10.5 million investment from AOL Time Warner Ventures and other investors. Digital Envoy received first-round investments from strategic partners including Siemens Venture Capital and H&Q Asia Pacific, as well as venture capitalists Frontier Capital, Cordova Ventures and CrossBow Ventures. The company said it is using the funds to expand its work force and market its products. The Atlanta-based company's growth contrasts widespread cutbacks at tech-focused companies. Its technology and competing products have caught on with online businesses because they localize content and advertising, improve the delivery of Web pages, and help organizations stay within legal boundaries increasingly being imposed online.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Malaysia extends ban to political CDs
First, it was pirated and pornographic CDs. Now, the government will take harsh action against CDs with political content and speeches by opposition politicians. After a much-publicized announcement last week against street peddlers who deal in illegal copies of CDs with movies, music and pornography, the Home Affairs Ministry has warned that the government will initiate legal action against those producing and selling "political" CDs and cassette tapes. Deputy Home Affairs Minister Chor Chee Heung said authorities recently confiscated hundreds of such video CDs in the city, many containing speeches made by opposition leaders. He claimed that the speeches are inflammatory and a danger to society.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on