The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

[walktalker]

Hot till the next time
Protesters declare war on copyright law
Supporters backing Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian programmer accused of five counts of copyright infringement, declared war on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act at a fund-raiser for Sklyarov's legal defense on Wednesday. "This is a war being waged by copyright interests who see each opportunity on the Internet as an opportunity to change the meaning of copyright law," said Lawrence Lessig, director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society and author of Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. "For 200 years, copyright law has been a small limited monopoly granted from the government to the people," he continued. "It has never been understood as a permanent property protection giving them absolute control of their work."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Making Linux usable tops Torvalds' list
The biggest development in Linux in the past year has been a more refined user interface, Linux founder Linus Torvalds said Wednesday, deprecating the deeper work that remains his own domain. "Within the last year, it's progressed past the eye-candy stage," he said during a panel discussion at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo here, praising the KDE user interface and higher-level applications such as KOffice. Torvalds in January released version 2.4 of the Linux kernel, or technical heart, but that's not the most significant part of Linux overall, he said. "I don't think the kernel matters anymore," he said. "For most applications, the kernel is good enough."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Motorola's microscopic chip breakthrough
Motorola says it has developed technology that would allow for mainstream production of computer chips with microscopic circuitry more than 50 percent more densely packed than currently possible. Motorola said Wednesday it had developed photomasks -- material that is applied onto silicon wafers to make chips -- that will allow features on the integrated circuits smaller than 100 nanometers in width to be created. By comparison, a human hair is about 10,000 nanometers wide, and the current next-generation industry standard is for chip etchings of 157 nanometers in width. The chips would be created through a process known as photolithography, in which light is used to burn away excess silicon and create circuitry on the wafer.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

U.S. Army goes to war with P2P
In the future soldiers could share data during combat by using peer-to-peer networking. The U.S. army is developing ways to integrate wireless peer-to-peer technology into its training methods, and is also considering using P2P networking in real military combat situations. The current focus of the army's research is on ways of improving battle simulations. It believes that by linking together hundreds of soldiers, each equipped with a head-mounted display that broadcasts details of a virtual environment, it would be possible for military units to accurately simulate various scenarios. Current computer-based training methods consist of client-server systems. Senior army officials have realized, though, that giving soldiers powerful mobile computers that can wirelessly connect to each other would have considerable advantages.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Programmer claims to crack MS Reader
In another potential blow to online publishing, a U.S. programmer says he has developed software that defeats the most advanced encryption features of Microsoft's Reader, a software program for distributing electronic books. The programmer's claim was reported Thursday on the Web site of MIT Technology Review, a publication of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. Wade Roush, the author of the story, says he has seen a demonstration of the software. He declined to identify the programmer, who he says devised the software for "his personal use and says he has no plans to distribute the software to anyone."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...pt=zdnn_nbs_hl

AOL sued over hate speech
A federal lawsuit filed Thursday against AOL Time Warner alleges that America Online has allowed hate speech to go unsanctioned in chat rooms for Muslims, in violation of federal civil rights laws. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria seeks class-action status and asks for an injunction requiring AOL to enforce its rules that prevent members from sending messages that offend community standards. The complaint cites the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in public accommodations. The only named plaintiff in the case, Saad Noah of Crest Hill, Ill., asked AOL repeatedly to clean up the "Koran" and "Beliefs: Islam" chat rooms but was ignored, said Kamran Memon, a Chicago attorney representing Noah.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Red Hat CEO pushes Linux in schools
Linux developers must take some of the time they now devote to programming and put it toward boosting open-source software in education, Red Hat Chief Executive Matthew Szulik said Thursday. Spreading Linux and other open-source software would have obvious benefits for Red Hat, but Szulik steered listeners' attention toward more altruistic and patriotic motivations in the closing keynote address at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo on Thursday. "What's really happening is money is taking over how our children are being educated," he said. "The industry that has contributed so much to the GDP of this country is all of a sudden finding itself looking at education as a market opportunity and not as a fundamental responsibility."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

MP3.com president steps into top spot
French media giant Vivendi Universal said Thursday that it has tapped Robin Richards to head its recently acquired online music site, MP3.com. Richards, formerly president of the San Diego, Calif.-based company, replaces founder Michael Robertson as chairman and chief executive. As expected, Robertson will act in an advisory role to Jean-Marie Messier, CEO of Vivendi Universal, according to MP3.com. The company added that Robertson is pursuing other interests and plans to start a separate business. The announcement comes shortly after Vivendi Universal completed its acquisition of MP3.com in a deal worth $372 million in cash and stock.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Bill Gates: Hero or fool?
Microsoft executives have long argued that the attempt by the Department of Justice to discipline the company through an antitrust suit has been willfully foolish. Sluggish courts, they declaim at every opportunity, can't possibly keep up with the fast pace of technological innovation. By the time any final judgment can be made, the dynamics of the marketplace will ensure its irrelevance. So best not to even try: The only real solution is to let untrammeled competition decide winners and losers. Never mind, for now, the niggling little fact that Microsoft's actions in previous years (for example, illegally abusing monopoly power to crush other companies) might have a rather significant impact on just how much competition will exist a few years later. There is still a basic truth buried in the somewhat disingenuous argument: High-tech markets change really fast, and court proceedings are a cumbersome way to deal with that problem.
http://salon.com/tech/col/leon/2001/...nks/index.html

Will Consumers Be Willing to Pay for Their Formerly Free Lunch on the Internet?
After offering up an all-you-can-eyeball information buffet to consumers, online publishers are now attempting to rein in the Internet free lunch. Pressured by venture capitalists impatient for returns on their investments, many of these web operators have admitted the failure of advertising-based models that relied on attracting visitors to a site with free content. They are now moving toward charging for access to information. The question is: Will consumers be willing to pay for services that they are accustomed to receiving for nothing? It could be a tough sell.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/a...7&homepage=yes

Lucent: A superconductor breakthrough
Scientists at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have used soccer ball-shaped carbon molecules mixed with other compounds to make a superconductor that works at relatively high temperatures. In research appearing Thursday in the journal Science, a group led by Bell Labs physicist Hendrik Schon inserted molecules of chloroform and bromoform among the carbon spheres, known as bucky balls, to achieve superconductivity that works above the temperature of liquid nitrogen. The team also reported that they were able to manipulate the mixture's properties, from an insulator through to superconductivity, using an electric field, a property which bodes well for using the material in electronic circuits.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Two charged with smuggling encryption gear
Charlson Ho, a 51-year old Singapore citizen, has been accused by the U.S Customs Service for allegedly attempting to export military encryption technology to China. In an interview with CNET News.com, Ho said he was innocent of all charges. Two men were arrested by Customs Service officials in Baltimore Wednesday night and accused of allegedly scheming to smuggle two units of KIV-7HS, devices used to encrypt classified and sensitive national security data transmissions. "The technology that these individuals were attempting to export to China is among the most sensitive items on the U.S. ammunitions list," U.S. Customs agent Allan Doody told the Associated Press. Doody said sale of the technology must be approved by the National Security Agency.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Microsoft learns from enemy Linux
Microsoft has spent a lot of time attacking Linux recently, but the company has learned and benefited from the rival operating system. Linux's success in low-end servers led the company to revise its server product line, said Doug Miller, director of competitive strategy for Microsoft's Windows division. And Microsoft learned that it needs better interactions with the programmers who use Microsoft products. "Any competing technology is good for the industry. It causes us to evaluate our own offerings," he said in an interview at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. "Linux has been a catalyst for doing that at Microsoft."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

People still signing up for broadband
Despite a wide technology downturn, Internet subscriber figures continue to grow in the United States where a majority of homes have at least dial-up access and nearly one in four online households use a broadband connection, according to a new study. The June 2001 survey, conducted by Gartner Dataquest, shows that 65 million U.S. households, or 61 percent of the nation's homes, actively use the Internet on a regular basis. The total represents an increase of 8.4 million customers since November 2000, when the research firm last conducted a similar study. Gartner Dataquest is the market research arm of business consulting firm Gartner.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

FoxSports.com taps into its TV image
Months after News Corp. absorbed its online division into its TV operations, the media conglomerate is taking another shot at the Web in an attempt to catch up with rival sports channel ESPN. On Friday, the company's Fox Network plans to unveil a redesign for FoxSports.com that reflects its TV programming. The new site will sport a flashier appearance with more graphics and video from Fox's sports-related shows. The changes highlight Fox's attempt to rouse its Internet strategy by treating the Web as an offshoot of television. To date, the network has lagged as rivals including ESPN.com and CBS SportsLine gained popularity online. Walt Disney's ESPN.com topped the list of most-trafficked sports sites in July with 6.6 million unique visitors, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, a Web measurement and analysis company.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_pr

U.S. enters free-Web battle in China
The United States is planning to finance the spread of new computer technology designed to help Chinese Web surfers dodge their government's efforts to censor the Internet, architects of the plan said Thursday. The high-tech U.S. reply to Web site blocking by Beijing is being led by the same U.S. agencies that poured billions into piercing the Iron Curtain with Cold War radio broadcasts. The International Broadcasting Bureau, the parent agency of the Voice of America radio station, said it was negotiating with a California start-up called Safeweb, which licenses technology that lets people scan the Web anonymously so no one can pry into their communications.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Digital copyright review seeks changes
A study released on Wednesday on how revised U.S. copyright law is working in the digital age recommends some legislative changes to clarify “fair use” by purchasers of legal copies. But the U.S. Copyright Office study did not find sufficient evidence for a digital provision in that part of traditional copyright law that allows the owner of a legal copy of a work to sell or give it away. There were problems, it said, with ensuring that the sender of a digital work destroyed his or her copy. Physical copies degraded with time while digital formats could be reproduced flawlessly and disseminated nearly instantly to almost anywhere at little cost.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on

[walktalker]

Sklyarov, Boss Plead Not Guilty
In a five-minute hearing that contained an unexpected surprise, a Russian programmer accused of breaking U.S. copyright law and his boss pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment in U.S. District Court Thursday. The surprise was that ElcomSoft President Alexander Katalov appeared alongside Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian arrested in June for distributing an application that bypasses security encryption in Adobe System's Acrobat eBook Reader. The pair entered their plea in front of U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg, who told attorneys to schedule discovery motions in the case by next Tuesday.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46396,00.html

Separating Students From Smut
Over the next year, schools will be in danger of losing precious technology funding unless they can certify they have a filtering system that blocks obscene websites. The Children's Internet Protection Act requires that by Oct. 28, schools must certify that they are either in compliance with filtering requirements, or are in the process of becoming compliant by evaluating blocking software. For many schools, it will be easy to comply. According to the Consortium for School Networking, 75 percent of schools use filtering already.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,45804,00.html

Wireless PCs: Not Just for Cheats
Schools are beginning to scrap hard-wired computer labs in favor of wireless laptops and handheld PCs. Public school administrators are admitting the failure of schools' ubiquitous computer labs, which some experts say have had a negligible impact on education, despite two decades of being in schools. Now schools are experimenting with wireless computing technology. Instead of taking kids to the computers, the computers are coming to the kids. In Maine, every seventh grader will receive a wireless laptop next year, courtesy of the state.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,45809,00.html

Europe Steps Up MS Probe
European Union regulators widened their investigation into Microsoft on Thursday, warning the U.S. software giant may be violating antitrust laws by bundling Media Player into its Windows operating system. The European Commission also alleged Microsoft may have used "illegal practices" to extend dominance in personal computers into server markets. The EU's executive arm said a formal statement of objections was sent to Microsoft following an investigation into its Windows 2000 operating system launched last February.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46436,00.html

Remembering a Tech Humanist
Colleagues of Michael L. Dertouzos, who directed MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science for almost 30 years, remember him as a visionary who strived to make technology more accessible to the public. "Michael argued eloquently for human-centered computing," said John Guttag, the director of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "He thought deeply about how information technology could help everyone, not just the technical elite." Dertouzos died of heart failure Monday after battling a long illness, said MIT spokeswoman Patti Richards. He was 64. He is survived by his wife and two daughters.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,46433,00.html

Radio Waves Zap Zebra Mussels
Low-energy radio waves can help kill invasive zebra mussels, which have caused millions of dollars in damage to boats and power plants in the United States, researchers said yesterday. Zapping zebra mussels with these waves forces them to surrender essential minerals such as the calcium they need to maintain their shells, said Matthew Ryan, Ph.D., a chemist at Purdue University Calumet and principle investigator for the study. Freshwater zebra mussels, not to be confused with the saltwater mussels consumed by humans, suck in liters of water a day. While the mussels absorb large amounts of heavy metals and environmental toxins, they also consume more than their share of beneficial elements, leaving few nutrients behind for other lake dwellers such as crabs, crayfish and other species of freshwater mussels.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,46443,00.html

Striking Gold at Speed of Light
Physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory are on a roll. Last week, an international team of scientists working with one of the lab's particle accelerators announced they had made a batch of "doubly strange" particles. Just weeks earlier, another group said it is very close to recreating the conditions of the earliest universe. Run by the Department of Energy, the lab in Long Island, New York, operates nearly two dozen particle accelerators of varying sizes. One of the largest, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), recently started operating at full energy. At the same time, the sensitivity of its detectors, or eyes, have been significantly upgraded.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,46314,00.html

Internet tapped for 'parasitic computing'
Siphoning the computational power of the Internet, U.S. scientists have figured out a way to induce unwitting Web servers across the world to perform mathematical calculations. Researchers at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana solved a complex math problem with the unauthorized help of computers in North America, Europe and Asia. Using a remote server, the team divided the problem into packages, each associated with a potential answer. The bits were then hidden inside components of the standard transmission control protocol of the Internet, and sent on their merry way.
http://fyi.cnn.com/2001/TECH/interne...ing/index.html

ReplayTV to re-enter DVR box business
ReplayTV, which stopped making digital video recorders last fall, will announce Wednesday that it is taking another shot at the hardware business with souped-up boxes, sources say. The new boxes will include the capacity to store up to 320 hours of TV shows and electronically send the programming to other ReplayTV set-top boxes -- a potentially controversial feature. Digital video recorders are similar to VCRs but record to a hard drive instead of to videotape.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...tml?tag=mn_hd#

Intercepted missiles could fall on Europe
Missiles targeted at US cities and intercepted by President Bush's proposed missile defence shield could fall on Europe, Canada or middle America instead, arms researchers warn. Bush's missile defence plan includes a system to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) just minutes after launch, while their rocket boosters are still burning. This "boost-phase interception" should be easier than targeting missiles in mid-flight because tracking a flaming rocket is easier than homing in on a relatively cool and easily disguised warhead sailing high above the atmosphere, experts say. But destroying only the booster could leave the warhead zinging across the sky, says Ted Postol, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991210

Machines in the Myths: The State of Artificial Intelligence
Use the term "Artificial Intelligence" around most people, and it conjures images of thinking, emotive machines, often in anthropomorphic form. Film and fiction have portrayed AI so often and in such depth, that the meme of "machine consciousness" has become embedded in people's minds. From 2001's HAL to Star Wars robots to Terminator and the sad little boy in A.I., we've been provided with images and mythic tales of machines making informed conscious decisions and exhibiting emotion. Reading consumer-level science journals and corporate press releases can lead one to believe that AI is making huge leaps towards self-aware machines. It is as though mere moments separate us from being able to find out why the answer is 42.
http://www.chipcenter.com/columns/ddewitt/col002.html

More news later on

[walktalker]

The press keeps rolling

[Moist_Funny_Head]

In relation to that AOL court action where the Muslims where offended in the chat rooms.....Muslims are virtually ofended by everything about the western world so what the hell are they supposed to do about that problem. Not trying to ofend anyone but this is just how their religion is.

[Maze]

Some interesting topics indeed there newsman! Since one of them was entitled Bill Gates: Hero or fool?

I feel compelled to post this pic >

[Moist_Funny_Head]

I love that pic.