The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

[walktalker]

And also some chocolate giveaway... take some while it lasts !!
Napster users trade albums to beat filters
Napster fans are beginning to trade entire albums as a way to get around copyright filters that have made it more difficult to find popular tracks on the file-swapping service. At least 50 record albums so far have been found on Napster, as reported by research firm Webnoize. The albums include music from Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Louis Armstrong and a host of other popular artists.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

A third way for software development
Major proprietary software companies such as Wind River Systems and Microsoft have recently taken action on an open-source software reality that threatens their business model. Microsoft launched a campaign against established open-source initiatives, especially the General Public License (GPL). Microsoft also began a questionable "shared source" program of its own. I would like to respond to this challenge and, in the process, clarify a few key aspects of the GPL.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/co...765096,00.html

You've got mail -- from Mars!
E.T. may not be able to phone home anytime soon, but the lovable alien may be able to send e-mail--if a draft proposal released this week for an interplanetary Internet takes flight. Described as a "work in progress," the proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force--the group that sets standards for the Net--calls for terrestrial testing of interplanetary Internet protocols later this year, with a live test onboard the NASA Mars mission in 2003.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...083451,00.html

Net pirates plunder satellite booty
The open deserts of Nevada are perfect for double-wide trailers, 10-foot satellite dishes -- and getting tomorrow's TV shows today. For years, a dwindling crowd of tech-savvy satellite TV subscribers has had the ability to tap freely into the satellite streams meant for affiliate TV stations, seeing shows such as "Star Trek: Voyager" or "The Simpsons" days before the rest of the country. The TV networks have done little to stop this because few people were affected. But now these "pre-air" shows have started appearing on the Internet and are being traded like songs were in the early days of MP3 music.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...083455,00.html

CDDB tug of war--users are the losers?
Earlier this month, when he decided to record a new compact disc, Joe Smith followed a procedure he's done hundreds of times: Insert the CD, get into the online music database and select songs. Yet this time, instead of displaying the usual song information, the popular CD-burning software made by Roxio delivered a different message. Roxio products were no longer supported by Gracenote's CD information service, which housed the database Smith had been using to match song and album titles with a disc placed into his computer -- a collection entered in large part by individuals on the Net.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...764843,00.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201...html?tag=cd_mh

RIAA sues Aimster over file swapping Sounds familiar...
The record industry on Thursday filed a lawsuit against file-swapping company Aimster, charging that it is violating copyrights in much the same way as Napster or Scour, targets of previous lawsuits. The lawsuit caps a bad week for the small company, which lost the rights to its Aimster.com domain name to AOL Time Warner in an arbitration panel Monday. The Motion Picture Association of America was expected to file its own separate suit later.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Piracy: When "Just say no" isn't enough
In the '80s, Nancy Reagan said to "just say no" to drugs. In the '90s, anti-smoking campaigns were everywhere. Will warnings against online piracy be the Internet's equivalent of these public service announcements for the new Web-addicted youths of America? In the debate over the ethics of Napster, much discussion has been devoted to the values of children and teenagers in today's society. Because so many have grown up on the Internet, the thinking goes, the notion of paying for something so easily disseminated as music seems ludicrous, if not downright wrong.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1276-210...html?tag=bt_pr

Ex-employees report piracy for revenge
Disgruntled employees are more likely to turn in their company for using unlicensed software than directors are to report problems voluntarily, according to research from the British Software Alliance. This week the global anti-piracy watchdog settled a 40,000 pound ($56,346) dispute with IT refurbishment company Frazier for the use of pirated software, following a lead from the BSA confidential hotline.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Tech industry needs a geek hero
Silicon Valley's technology industry has a billion-dollar image problem, and some who work within it think Hollywood may have the answer. Give us, they say, a geek hero--a nerd we can love. The issue is that children in the United States tend to see tech workers as drones who live in cubicles and spend their days glued to computer screens or stuck in boring meetings.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Download the Blues, and More
Digital music downloads were available in sizable numbers for the first time on Wednesday. The files aren't free, but the major labels don't control the distribution channels, which is good news for consumers because that means more music will be available than ever before.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,44046,00.html

More news later on

[walktalker]

Let it spin around
Europe Braced for Privacy Battle
A British civil liberties watchdog called Statewatch grabbed headlines last week with dire predictions that the European Union is about to grant Euro-cops sweeping new surveillance powers. The report portrays Europe on the brink of an Orwellian catastrophe, where all phone, fax, wireless and Internet traffic records would be archived and accessible to law enforcement for seven years. Privacy experts and advocates offered differing opinions on the likelihood that such sweeping surveillance measures could ever be implemented in Europe.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,43928,00.html

Viruses? Feh! Fear the Trojan
There may be a ghost in your machine -- a hidden program known as a Trojan horse -- that allows a malicious hacker to spy on you, ruin your data and computer and, in extreme cases, wreck your business or your life. Attackers have used Trojans to surreptitiously observe the users of infected machines over their webcams, and can also listen to conversations transmitted via the infected computer's microphone.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,43981,00.html

Betcha Can't Diagnose Just One
It took 10 years and around $1 billion to produce the first draft of the archetypal human genome, or "book of life." But within the next 20 years, individual genomes may be routinely read out on so-called gene chips for a few thousand dollars as the cost of sequencing DNA plummets, industry experts told a technology conference in Cambridge on Thursday.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,44068,00.html

Text messaging could damage your kidneys
British doctors have warned that text messaging could damage people's kidneys. The British Medical Association (BMA) today raised concerns that radio waves from phones could affect internal organs, especially in children. Concerns about speaking into mobile phone handsets have been well documented - the possibility of microwave radiation frying into the brain etc. But the BMA believes that holding phones in front of the body to send text messages may also be dangerous.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/5/19186.html

The font of all personality
The choice of font used in e-mails and type-written letters could say more about an individual's personality than their creative writing skills. Graphology - the art of studying handwriting - has been used for centuries to try to analyse people's characters, but since the demise of personal handwriting, the experts have moved on to typefaces to look for clues to our identities.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1348871.stm

Nanotubes Fall into Line
For a decade, researchers have explored the strange and fascinating molecules called carbon nanotubes. But so far, no one has solved the field's biggest hurdle: growing the tubes they want, where they want them. In a landmark paper in the May 5 issue of Science, a team from the University of Cambridge reports success at exactly that.
http://www.techreview.com/web/mason/mason052401.asp

Smuggling of radioactive materials is rife, new research reveals
The nuclear arms race has left the world with a terrifying legacy: 3 million kilograms of bomb-grade plutonium and uranium. A terrorist would need no more than a few kilograms to make a devastating bomb, so you'd think this material would be kept under guard in secure military installations. You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Radioactive materials are going missing, border controls are almost non-existent, monitoring equipment doesn't work and smuggling is rife.
http://www.newscientist.com/dailynew...p?id=ns9999782

RecordTV Plans Asset Sell-Off Following MPAA Lawsuit
Forced out of business by a copyright-infringement lawsuit that brought a $50,000 settlement tab, a company that last year launched what it called an "Internet VCR" is selling its remaining assets. RecordTV.com Inc., the creation of Los Angeles-area software developer David Simon, announced this week that it has hired a third party, Y&M Partners, to handled the sale of the software applications behind its former video-capture-and-streaming operation.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/166118.html

Cyberattacks Prompt Computer Disaster Drills
The network is down, computer screens are blank and important client data are lost in cyberspace. But relax - this is only a test. Computer disaster drills are growing in popularity as hacker and virus attacks mount, the threat of power outages in California continue and companies store more data on computer networks that are accessed by more people, increasing their vulnerability.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/166117.html

Win Media Player hole surrenders your machine
The Windows Media Player ASX (Active Stream Redirector) processor contains an unchecked buffer susceptible to an overrun which could enable an attacker to run arbitrary code on a machine with the victim's level of permission, a Microsoft security bulletin warns. Media Player 6.4 and 7.0 are affected; and earlier, currently-unsupported versions 'may or may not be,' the company says.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/19164.html

Microsoft Xbox has lost the console war already - Sony exec
Microsoft's Xbox console is "finished before it even got started". So says Sony's PlayStation supremo, Ken Kutaragi, in an interview with the Financial Times today. Kutaragi's claim is based on two factors. First, the Xbox hardware isn't anywhere near as good as everyone thought it would be, and second, that Microsoft just doesn't fully understand the console business and certainly not the Japanese side of it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/50/19179.html

The Garfield comic strip of the day !
The Dilbert strip of the day !
The Boondocks strip of the day !

[walktalker]

Nothing like a little BUMP !

[thinker]

Good stuff as usual.

[TankGirl]

Thanks WT!

- tg