Some Fresh News...

[TankGirl]

The Napsterite News
Monday May 14

Watching Aimster's "private" network


MediaForce - one of several companies that tracks people trading files through Napster, Gnutella and similar services - announced Thursday that it had found a way to find copyrighted works by evading the encrypted network, exposing a serious hole in Aimster's claims to privacy.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-5902733.html?tag=mn_hd


Documents Show FBI Web Surveillance
The FBI has used Internet eavesdropping tools to track fugitives, drug dealers, extortionists, computer hackers and suspected foreign intelligence agents, documents show. FBI's main tool, Carnivore is a set of software programs for monitoring Internet traffic - e-mails, Web pages, chat room conversations and other signals - going to or from a suspect under investigation. Civil liberties groups contend that Carnivore can collect too much information and put ordinary citizens at risk. Some Internet service providers have raised concerns that since Carnivore's inner workings are secret, it may damage or slow down their networks while it's capturing e-mails.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20010504/pl/internet_eavesdropping_1.html

Check also CarnivoreWatch.org, a web site dedicated to promoting public awareness of the FBI's
Carnivore e-mail surveillance system.


Torvalds blasts Microsoft's Mundie on open source

"Not worth the newspaper it's been printed on," retorted Linus Torvalds, Linux developer, in response to the charges made by Craig Mundie, Microsoft's senior vice president, that there are "significant drawbacks" to open source code. Says Torvalds: "He's talking about the need to protect intellectual property, when the code he's describing isn't his intellectual property to protect. How does it cause Microsoft to fail if I make my intellectual property available to everyone, including Microsoft?"
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2717873,00.html

Here's another interesting interview from Torvalds:

Torvalds: Software subscriptions doomed

Microsoft and a host of other software companies are trying to convince customers to buy software through subscription-like contracts. And the vast majority of them will fail, Linux creator Linus Torvalds said in an interview with CNET News.com. "Everyone wants to go into this 'Let's not sell software. Let's license it,' but that's horrible. It is the most stupid thing because nobody wants it."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-5903958.html?tag=mn_hd


'Aaron': Art From the Machine


Aaron - an artificial intelligence program created by artist and University of California at San Diego art professor Harold Cohen- draws and paints stylized still lifes and portraits of human figures out of its programmed "imagination" - no images or additional human input necessary. One byproduct of Aaron's work - which has hung in museums around the world - is the lingering question of the nature of art and creativity itself.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,43685,00.html


E-verybody Must Get Stoned


Hundreds of thousands of similar-minded souls are turning to the Web for weed. "Marijuana" is the 16th most searched for term on Lycos (of whose network Wired News is a part). And a seemingly endless array of sites cover every conceivable aspect of herbal life, from ganja-inspired music to marijuana politics to drug testing to hemp clothing to girls covering themselves with nothing but sinsemilla leaves. If you look hard enough, you can find the real deal.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,43524,00.html

The porn crusaders

How a small group of media moralists busted Yahoo - after years of failing to make a dent anywhere else.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/05/11/yahoo/index.html


Student's Version Of 'Hot For Teacher' Gets An F
Dubois, a high school freshman from Cumberland, Rhode Island, wrote and recorded a ribald, Adam Sandler-influenced song in which he graphically imagined a sexual relationship with a young substitute teacher who had taught him English the year before. He called it "The Mrs. Dunn Song" and made it available to the world on Napster, where it's still floating around. This led to sexual harassment charges for Dubois and a public war with his high school that shows no sign of ending anytime soon.
http://www.mtv.com/sendme2.tin?page=/news/articles/1443545/20010510/index.jhtml

- tg

[chupacabra]

thanks for the Torvalds storys...

[I'll_Do_It_For_A_Dollar]

thanx for that miss TG !

[Cash--]

Excellent news articles!!!!!!!!!

THanks!

[knorretje]

As always on top of the news

[relic]

just had to bump this to get it above boobless's thread