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

[TankGirl]

Thanks WT - and now take a good care of yourself!

- tg

[walktalker]

Thanks TankGirl...
My headache teared my brain apart lately, but fortunately I feel better now... plus the Weather Channel foresees an entire week of sun and warm winds, so I've got enough energy to go through all this

Allright, time to get the lost time back

Real Artists Paint by Numbers
Sometimes, a commercial software program like Flash or Photoshop doesn't offer artists all of the creative tools they need. So some, like the duo of Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, write their own programs -- and along the way arguably turn the tedious task of writing code into an art form. "There isn't a shortage of visual and sonic effects offered in commercial programs. But when we want to combine different processes to achieve a certain aesthetic or performative effect, we often can't," said Jennifer McCoy.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,44377,00.html

Hot on the Scent of Information
Animals hunt for prey using, among other things, scent. It turns out that humans searching for info on the Web use, among other things, scent as well. So say Xerox PARC researchers.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44321,00.html

IBM claims chip speed breakthrough
International Business Machines Corp. said Friday it made a breakthrough in semiconductor technology that can boost chip speeds by as much as 35 percent, while also reducing power requirements. The new technology takes advantage of the natural tendency for atoms inside compounds to align with one another. When silicon is deposited on top of a substrate with atoms spaced farther apart, the atoms in silicon stretch to line up with the atoms beneath, stretching — or "straining" — the silicon.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/584407.asp

A spam cop goes AWOL
Spam fighters all over the world have lost a controversial weapon in the battle against unsolicited e-mail. Since June 1, the Web site for ORBS -- the Open Relay Behavior Modification System -- has been gutted. Visitors to the site now find nothing more than a gray blank page and a simple message: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, the ORBS website is no longer available."
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...rbs/index.html

MP3 Goes Pro
MP3's creators ready a better-sounding version of the ubiquitous online music format and finally reveal their licensing scheme for streaming MP3. MP3Pro is backwards compatible with MP3. Threatened by the growing success of competing audio formats like Microsoft's Windows Media, Thomson Multimedia will debut MP3Pro on June 14 and detail its long-awaited plan to charge royalties for streaming MP3.
http://www.techreview.com/web/kiang/kiang060701.asp

Microsoft 'Smart Tags' Could Violate Law
Technology embedded in the upcoming version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser could run afoul of the law by placing unauthorized links on privately owned Web sites, an intellectual property attorney said today. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) attorney Robin Gross said today that the Microsoft "Smart Tag" technology could violate both copyright law and federal rules prohibiting deceptive and unfair business practices.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/166676.html

Music-Swap Services Lean Away From Napster Model
Napster founder Shawn Fanning may be the father of peer-to-peer music swapping, but the embattled company's imitators are increasingly rebelling against Napster's model in favor of what they say is a superior technical architecture. In recent months, many of the most popular alternatives to Napster have repudiated the centralized system pioneered by Fanning and are building purely distributed systems.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/166674.html

Napster Suits Up Legal Team For A New Line Of Business
Hiring legal muscle is getting to be old hat for Napster, which has been defending litigation over its music-sharing network for more than a year and a half. However, the company says its latest hire, Jonathan Schwartz, a former advisor to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, will be on staff and general counsel in charge of legal affairs for a born-again Napster with legitimate content and a fees-paying membership. Schwartz, who was most recently an Associate Deputy Attorney General in Washington, also will oversee Napster's attempts to comply with the terms of court-ordered injunctions in copyright-infringement lawsuits still being played out in a San Francisco federal court.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/166669.html

Senate Passes Bill To Ease Copyrights For Net Learning
The U.S. Senate Thursday passed a bill that would ease copyright restrictions on Internet-based content to allow more opportunities for distance learning. S. 487, which unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, passed the Senate in a voice vote. Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Ranking Republican Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, extolled the measure, which they sponsored.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/166653.html

Power shift: The digital media lobby grows up
A story about the Digital Media Association, a lobbying group that would represent them in Washington, D.C., against old media conglomerates, who were fighting to strengthen copyrights. These days, the association has more than 60 members, including digital media titans like AOL Time Warner (AOL) and Yahoo (YHOO), and is an emerging force in the nation's capital. It is a central player in the battle over how dotcom broadcasters should pay for music they stream across the Internet and an advocate for copyright reforms to encourage or even force record companies to open their catalogs to broad, online licensing.
http://www.upside.com/DigitalMedia/3b1c1c37280.html

Record Industry Sues MTVi as Part of Flurry of Suits Over Webcasting Fees
Add to MTV to the record industry's ever-growing rogues' gallery of digital-music abusers. The Recording Industry Association of America on Friday, acting on behalf of a variety of music labels in Federal District Court in Manhattan, sued three webcasters -- San Diego-based MusicMatch, Denver-based Xact Radio and, most notably, MTVi, the interactive division of the Viacom-owned music channel. The action was largely retaliation for a series of lawsuits involving the webcasting industry.
http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?arti...2625&pod_id=13

In Cybersquatting War With AOL, File-Sharing Service Aimster Has One Last Chance to Keep Its Name
Though Aimster lost its domain dispute with America Online last month, a recent federal court ruling would indicate that the Napster-esque file-sharing service is not quite dead yet. Aimster offers its users a way to swap files within AOL's Instant Messaging system. The service -- already bogged down in a pair of federal court cases with the Recording Industry Association of America over whether its service facilitates copyright infringement -- has also been scrapping with AOL over whether its URL ''cybersquats'' on a domain name that AOL says it ought to control.
http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?arti...2604&pod_id=13

Survival of the losers
The revolution is over. Or so it might appear to anyone reviewing the wreckage wreaked in the past month in the digital music industry. As chronicled in Salon, the purchases of MP3.com by Vivendi Universal and Myplay.com by Bertelsmann were only the latest in a series of sad stories about Scour, Launch Media, Liquid Audio, Emusic, CDnow, Listen.com, Aimster, Gnutella and even Napster. The revolution has choked on litigation, drifted toward bankruptcy and sold out to the establishment at rock-bottom prices.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...web/index.html

If restaurants functioned like Microsoft...




http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/19583.html

Sony, MusicMatch form CD burning alliance
Sony's peripherals division has followed 'big five' recording company EMI's lead and signed a deal that effectively legitimises copying music onto blank CDs. Sony Electronics today said it has licensed online music company MusicMatch's Jukebox software and will bundle it with internal and external Sony CD-R and CD-RW burners. Initially, seven models will ship with Jukebox, but all of them will include the code by the end of the year.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/19571.html

SDMI crack team launches preemptive suit
The Princeton University team which rose successfully to the SDMI challenge is asking the US District Court in New Jersey to issue a declaratory judgment absolving them of liability before releasing the results of their research into cracking several anti-piracy technologies. Arrangements had previously been made to release the results, but legal threats from the music industry citing the dreaded Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) caused the team to withdraw. In this case, the team is asking the court to rule before the fact that they have the right to release their paper.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/19555.html

[walktalker]

Ahh, the magic of bumping....
I'm going much better now, thanks everyone