The Newspaper Shop -- huge headache edition

[walktalker]

... ouch ...

DoS worm invades Microsoft servers
A program created to automatically overload Microsoft's Web and e-mail servers has been discovered on several corporate networks and may have spread further on the Internet, antivirus researchers said Friday. First reported this week, the worm -- dubbed DoS.Storm -- spreads on Web servers running Microsoft software and is designed to use the infected servers to level an Internet attack against the company.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...chkpt=zdnn_tp_

Technology and the corruption of copyright
In 2010, the concept of copyright will celebrate its 300th anniversary dating back to England's Statute of Anne. Over the past three centuries, copyright laws promoted intellectual freedom and discourse while ensuring a small incentive for the creative author. Interestingly, with the onslaught of technology and promises of greater opportunity to share and communicate, copyright is now a hindrance to these ideals, serving only the moneyed interests of owners.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/co...770541,00.html

Piracy battles have ISPs stuck in crossfire
As Napster's heyday fades into Internet mythology, its influence is being etched in an increasingly tense game of cops and robbers that has Internet service providers caught in the crossfire. ISPs are stuck in an uncomfortable digital dragnet as record companies, Hollywood studios and independent copyright bounty hunters target their subscribers as pirates. Increasingly, service providers are even being asked to cut their subscribers' connections, a last-ditch proposition that these companies ordinarily avoid at all costs.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...092376,00.html

Privacy group pushes Web bug finder
A privacy group hopes to scare Web bugs out of hiding. The Privacy Foundation released free software Thursday that helps consumers detect when a site or e-mail contains a Web bug--a barely visible tracking tag, also known as clear GIFs, used mainly by marketers to monitor consumer habits online. Consumers can download the software, a browser add-on for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, at the site Bugnosis. The software does not work with other browsers. The release comes as an increasing number of Web sites and marketers adopt Web bugs.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...092354,00.html

Coming soon? Napster -- the movie
It's got plenty of the right ingredients: lawsuits, money and rock 'n' roll. That's right. Napster the movie may be coming to a screen near you. "I can confirm we're in development on a project called 'Napster,'" said Marc McCarthy, a spokesman for Starz Encore, a provider of movie programming for the cable television operator that is aunit of Liberty Media Group. McCarthy said there is no commitment for production of the movie on Napster.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...092220,00.html

Battle rages over Windows XP security
A row has broken out between a top security expert and Microsoft over whether Windows XP contains a feature that threatens the security of the Internet by making denial of service attacks easier. Steve Gibson, president of Gibson Research Group, is convinced that Microsoft is making a serious mistake by fully implementing support for what are known as "raw sockets" in its Windows XP operating system, due for release on 25 October.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...770517,00.html

IM rivals can't connect on messaging plans
Barriers between instant messaging products are proving hard to dismantle, sparking new tactics in a brewing standards war over the nascent technology. Talks held by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that aimed to set technical specifications allowing rivals such as AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Yahoo and others to develop a joint IM platform have stalled, according to people close to the discussions. AOL Time Warner, the leader in instant messaging, says it is continuing to work on solutions to connect its AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and ICQ services to competitors but that it has no firm deadline for implementation.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=tp_pr

"AOL virus" joke fooling some
Created as a spoof of the recent sulfnbk.exe hoax, a joke warning people of a virus named AOL.exe has some deleting the Internet program from their computers.After posting a farcical virus advisory on his Joke-A-Day site warning people to delete the "insidious" AOL.exe virus, Webmaster Ray Owens found that quite a few of his readers actually believed it. Worse, they forwarded it to their friends. The result: Owens received more than 700 letters, some congratulating him on the joke, but quite a few others asking him if the "warning" was real.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Microsoft, Red Hat set open-source debate
After claiming last month that the open-source model is flawed and "responsible for releasing unhealthy code," Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie is set to debate the issue at an open-source conference in July. Mundie is expected to explain why Microsoft's vision of "shared source" software, where the software giant makes the source code of some of its products available to customers and partners while still maintaining the intellectual property rights, is better than open source. An open-source application is one where people have the right to see and change its code and are bound to freely distribute any changes they make.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Pentagon to X-out data on old computers
The Pentagon believes it has found a way to give its old computers away to American schools and still protect information locked in the machines' hard drives. Officials announced Thursday that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was reversing an unpopular five-month-old order to destroy the hard drives on unclassified computers, which rendered the computers practically unusable. Henceforth, hard drives should be destroyed on classified machines but only overwritten on unclassified ones, Wolfowitz said. The overwriting entails printing series of ones and zeros over the stored material.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=ch_mh

State Department behind the Internet times
At the State Department, where government officials are responsible for watching the world, thousands of employees must get in line to use the Internet. Stuck without Internet access from their desks, State Department employees can find it a challenge to eavesdrop on a Chinese chat room, check the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa, or read a German newspaper editorial that has people buzzing. "When it comes to information technology, the State Department is mired in the late 1940s," Brookings Institution scholar James Lindsay said. "Which is good, because they used to be mired in the late 1800s. So there's some progress."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Napster to add fingerprinting to filters
As it moves toward a subscription-based model, Napster on Thursday said it is working with digital media company Loudeye Technologies to support its efforts to filter copyrighted material from its popular music file-swapping service. Under the multiyear agreement, Loudeye intends to provide Napster's upcoming membership service with so-called digital fingerprints for a music listing of some 2 million titles. The service will combine a catalog of songs along with new releases, in connection with Napster's licensing deals with major labels such as EMI Recorded Music, AOL Time Warner and Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment, along with independent labels.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Free-speech lawsuit targets record industry
The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of a group of scientists, asking that they be allowed to publish research on anti-copying technology despite protests from the entertainment industry. The paper, which discusses weaknesses in some watermarking technology that record companies were considering as protection for their music, was quashed in April after the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) and the Recording Industry Association of America discouraged Princeton professor Edward Felten from presenting his findings, saying he risked breaking copyright laws.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

This Swordfish Is Half-Baked
Operation: Swordfish could have been this summer's must-see geek thriller. The Warner Brothers film includes the right elements: clandestine federal agencies, an unbreakable government network, and the world's best hacker, who's on parole for breaking into and disabling the FBI's Carnivore spyware, and who's recruited by a suave megalomaniac who just might be a terrorist as well. But Enemy of the State or Sneakers this isn't. Flawed though they were, at least those films made attempts to avoid the most glaring technical errors.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,44373,00.html

OK, aspirin time for me... more news later on