The Newspaper Shop -- wednesday edition

[walktalker]

Hello you marvelous people
Security showdown: Black Hat vs. Def Con
Las Vegas plays host to two separate security conferences this week -- one for people who guard computer systems, another for those who break into them. System administrators and hackers, CIOs and script kiddies will all gather in the desert to trade information, swap stories and take each other's measure. At the Black Hat Briefings security conference Wednesday and Thursday at Caesar's Palace, security experts will teach network administrators and information-technology managers how to protect their critical systems. Yet starting Friday, hackers emerge at Def Con, with many from the underground culture coming out into the hot Las Vegas sun to trade code, learn new tricks and, in some cases, finally meet in real life.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093968,00.html

Torvalds tome is more than just fun
If you're involved in the IT industry in any way, Just For Fun, the story of Linus Torvalds by David Diamond, is a must read. It gives as good a portrait of Torvalds as you need or are likely to get, and it offers a frame of reference for the software industry of today and tomorrow. Where the book did it for me was in explaining how the unique outlook of Linus Torvalds came to be. First, many of Linus' immediate family members, including his father, are journalists. Journalists by nature tend to be against the control of information and expression. For Linus and others in the open-source/free software community, writing software is in the realm of information and self-expression.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/co...783684,00.html

Hollywood blockbusters pirated over Web
Three current box office hits -- "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," "Shrek" and "Pearl Harbor" -- are among the most-pirated movies over the Web for the month of June, researchers said Tuesday. The announcement underscores Hollywood's susceptibility to copyright piracy on the Web. The Motion Picture Association of America has filed a handful of lawsuits aiming to stop illegal downloads of films, including a high-profile case that charged an online hacker magazine with posting code that could theoretically be used to copy DVDs.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093957,00.html

NEC plans 0.10 micron chips
NEC Corp. on Wednesday unveiled technology for next-generation 0.10 micron chips that it aims to have ready by early 2003 for use in goods from supercomputers to mobile phones. NEC said design rules for most of the transistors in the large-scale integration (LSI) chips would be set jointly with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker. It is two companies' closest cooperation to date in chip technology. "If we can have it ready in the first quarter of 2003, I think we'll be in the top group globally," said Osamu Kudo, an NEC general manager for device development.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...784024,00.html

MSN outages let IM foes in
Even though Microsoft has claimed victory in restoring its MSN Messenger service, some problems linger--including the opportunity the outage provided for the company's competitors. On Tuesday, the Redmond, Wash.-based company said the weeklong interruptions to the service had been put to an end. But regardless of the service's status, Microsoft could be cleaning up the mess made by the outage for months to come. And while the company battled its service problems, at least one instant-messaging rival said it has gained converts. The most serious ripple effect is that there isn't a ton of loyalty among IM users.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093946,00.html

Privacy: Win XP activation 'innocuous'
A German copy-protection company has published details of Microsoft's technology for preventing casual copying of Windows XP but concluded the technology allows for reasonable upgrades and doesn't threaten customers' privacy. Microsoft's product-activation technology -- included in the new Office XP software package and slated to appear in the new Windows XP operating system--requires people to activate their PC online or by telephone to continue using the software. It has attracted criticism from both privacy advocates and customers.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093939,00.html

Look, officer -- no hands!
The ban on talking on cell phones while driving in New York has spurred a flurry of activity among developers of hands-free and voice recognition products, and is expected to stimulate the market for such devices. Enterprises are already considering how to outfit mobile workers with gear to comply with such regulations, because other states are expected to enact similar legislation soon. Managers who want to upgrade mobile workers with hands-free products won't have an easy job.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...783140,00.html

Looking at the AOL/Microsoft rivalry
In 1996, America Online carpet-bombed the nation with 3.5-inch floppy disks in a battle to build its brand and grab more of the online services market. At the same time, Microsoft waged "the Browser Wars," the media’s moniker for the struggle between established Netscape Navigator and upstart Internet Explorer. In those days, the two companies were vicious rivals. AOL then helped sow the seeds that blossomed into the government antitrust suit against Microsoft. AOL Chairman Steve Case hammered Microsoft, demanding equal access to the consumer’s computer desktop, referring to it as the "dial tone" of the online services industry. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates volleyed back, quoted as saying he would either buy AOL or bury it.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201...html?tag=cd_mh

The day the brands died
In recent months, newspapers have devoted hundreds of column inches to the economic, social and sartorial impact of the dot-com collapse. Top-flight reporters have been dispatched to Silicon Valley to document the pathos of the boarded-up lofts, the shuttered trattorias, the boy millionaires who have gone back to working at Starbucks. But one aspect of the crash has gone unexplored: the effect of the death of so many brands on consumers themselves.
http://news.cnet.com/exredirect/temp...in dex%2Ehtml

Windows XP activation technology revealed
A German copy-protection company has published details of Microsoft's technology for preventing casual copying of Windows XP but concluded the technology allows for reasonable upgrades and doesn't threaten customers' privacy. Microsoft's product-activation technology--included in the new Office XP software package and slated to appear in the new Windows XP operating system--requires people to activate their PC online or by telephone to continue using the software. It has attracted criticism from both privacy advocates and customers.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Microsoft enlists VeriSign for .Net security
Microsoft said on Tuesday that it has signed up VeriSign, a leading provider of Internet security services and technology, to help build defenses for its .Net array of Web services. Under the agreement, Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign will provide authentication and security technologies for forthcoming .Net services and will adopt .Net technologies into its Internet trust services. Microsoft's .Net initiative entails a transformation of the company's software into Web-based services that businesses can rent for e-commerce and other transactions. In addition, the security provider will distribute Microsoft's Windows 2000 Server software to all of its registrar-hosted domain names and Web sites, the companies said in a statement.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Group sets cybercrime-fighting priorities
State and local law enforcement agencies looking to fight high-tech crimes need to set up special crime units, work with technology companies, and push for updated laws, according to a list of recommendations by a national cybercrime organization. The National Cybercrime Training Partnership issued its top 10 recommendations Tuesday for preparing and aiding law enforcement agencies in their cybercrime fight. Crimes range from online auction fraud like eBay encountered last year, when three men allegedly sold a fake Richard Diebenkorn painting, to a Los Angeles man who allegedly engaged in cyberstalking after a woman spurned his advances.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Police end search at Massachusetts Lucent plant
Employees at a Lucent Technologies plant in central Massachusetts returned to work Tuesday after police failed to find a former employee who allegedly threatened workers at the company, authorities said. A state police SWAT team earlier searched the building, which was evacuated after a worker reported that a former employee, wearing a black trench coat and carrying a duffel bag, threatened several of his former co-workers and then fled. Police did not find the suspect and said they would continue to investigate the incident at the plant where Lucent, one of the world's leading manufacturers of telecommunications equipment, makes switches and routers.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-6536249.html

Napster serves as crystal ball
No longer the poster child for free online music, Napster's flagging file-swapping service has turned into a testing ground for ways to control other services that are capturing its one-time popularity. After rapidly signing up millions of people for its service, Napster has seen its audience melt away just as quickly under a stringent filtering policy and, more recently, a week-old file-trading blackout. Nevertheless, legal experts say that experiments aimed at controlling the distribution of content on Napster's network may have an effect beyond the company. They added that the record industry is closely watching Napster's efforts as a possible template to be applied in future lawsuits against rivals that have risen in its wake.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_pr

Weighing employee privacy
A newly released study by the nonprofit Privacy Foundation shows that 27 percent of workers worldwide are having their e-mail monitored. At first glance that may seem alarming, but the statistic shows only one side of a tricky question. It's tricky because companies are increasingly faced with balancing the privacy rights of workers, consumers, patients -- the list goes on -- against the possible liabilities the company might incur if it takes insufficient precautions against preventing its workers from doing anything illegal or immoral.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-6538762-0.html

Microsoft may accompany Pressplay
Pressplay, a joint venture of music giants Vivendi Universal and Sony, is nearing a deal to distribute its service on the Microsoft Network, sources close to the venture said Tuesday. Microsoft, Vivendi Universal and Sony all declined to comment. Sources close to all three companies confirmed that negotiations -- which have been ongoing for months -- have intensified and an announcement is expected soon. According to one of the sources, Pressplay is near a deal with the software giant that is similar to its deal with Web portal Yahoo that will let people stream and eventually download music. Pressplay is expected to launch its music subscription joint venture later this summer.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Kodak takes wider angle with digital images
Eastman Kodak is trying to expand the popularity of digital images by moving beyond the PC to the TV set. The photography giant announced Tuesday an agreement with chipmaker LSI Logic to allow people to view photo CDs on televisions via DVD players. The move could greatly expand the number of people who can view digital images, IDC analyst Chris Chute said. "Kodak's strategy has been somewhat dependent on PCs because the PC was the hub where photos had to be uploaded and viewed," Chute said. "That limited them to half the U.S. population. But to get to a larger share, (Kodak) had to get away from the idea that the PC is essential to viewing digital photos, and this LSI announcement feeds into that." Kodak has been trying to attract consumers to its digital products for years.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-6537186.html

It's not even all !

Edit: links now fully operationnal

[walktalker]

Mulling Reins on Net Campaigns
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote Thursday on a campaign finance bill that would, for the first time, regulate Internet advertisements and e-mails targeted at voters. The new rules aimed at online political activity are part of a Republican effort to overhaul U.S. election law that has received little scrutiny -- which, if enacted, would roil the fast-growing online campaign industry and impose obstacles on candidates' use of the Internet. Jonah Seiger, co-founder of Mindshare, a 16-person Internet consulting firm in Washington, said he understands why the legislation was written to cover "any communications" directed at voters, and not just traditional methods.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45138,00.html

Americans Say Yes to Net Taxes
Give people the option of buying something and not paying taxes on it, and you'd think they'd go for it. But interestingly, that wasn't the finding in a recent study by the Markle Foundation, a media research group that surveyed U.S. residents on whether they believe online commerce should be exempt from taxation. The survey found that 60 percent of the American public do not believe that Web purchases should be free of taxation. Only 34 percent of those surveyed think online buying should be tax-exempt.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45144,00.html

Scientists Make Embryos for Cells
Scientists here have become the first researchers to create human embryos in the lab for the sole purpose of harvesting their stem cells. Until now, scientists had derived stem cells only from excess embryos donated from infertility treatments. In this case, the scientists approached donors and informed them that their eggs and sperm would be used to develop embryos for stem-cell research. The work, conducted by researchers at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, drew criticism from religious conservatives opposed to embryo research.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45152,00.html

Mother Jones Goes to Prison
The online counterpart to Mother Jones magazine published a special feature on Wednesday that showcases how the Web can turn a vast and potentially tedious assortment of statistics about a forgotten story into a powerful piece of advocacy journalism. Called "Debt to Society," the Motherjones.com project uses interactive maps and graphs to assess what the United States' obsession with locking people up has cost each state since 1980. The project pays particular attention to the rising percentage of prisoners who are drug offenders.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45141,00.html

Online Crime a Tough Collar
Few state and local police departments are prepared to handle the onslaught of electronic crimes because of a lack of resources and training, according to a nationwide survey of law enforcement agencies. "These are very complicated cases to prosecute. We're not talking about street crimes," said Ronda Ellcessor, the spokeswoman for the National Cybercrime Training Partnership, a joint effort between the Justice Department and the National White Collar Crime Center. The NCTP arrived at its conclusions after organizing a series of focus groups with state and local authorities and interviewing top-level law enforcement agents across the country.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45129,00.html

A Band in the Hand
A Spanish band and an American singer are embarking on the world's first real-time, wireless rock tour, and began transmitting tunes and tales of the road over the Internet on Monday. Elliott Murphy, an American singer and songwriter, and the Stormy Mondays, a Spanish roots band, will use a Handspring PDA equipped with cell phone and digital camera attachments to upload photos, concert reports, songs and road stories to the band's website during its two-week tour of Italy.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,45068,00.html

U.S. Loves, Fears Net
Americans generally have an overwhelmingly favorable view of the Internet as a source of information. However, most Net users are still skeptical about the truthfulness of what they read online and are worried about the threats the medium poses to personal privacy. Those were some of the conclusions reached in the one of the most expansive surveys ever of the U.S. population's views on how the Internet should be governed. The survey, released Tuesday by the non-profit research group Markle Foundation, combined online and telephone polling with focus groups of the general public and Net experts to gauge the public's views on many Internet-related issues.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45132,00.html

UN Reeling From Nastygrams
Americans concerned that the United Nations is conspiring to deprive them of their constitutional right to pack heat are firing hundreds of heated e-mails at a UN conference on small arms trafficking. Officials at the conference, which hopes to create an international system for tracking small arms sales, are so unnerved by the hundreds of angry e-mails that they are forwarding some of the nastygrams to the UN internal security department for "risk assessment." They did not know exactly how many of the roughly 400 messages received had been sent to security, but one official said "a lot" had been passed on.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45134,00.html

Norge: Where Technology Rules
Norway is the best place in the world for geeks to live, according to The Human Development Report 2001, commissioned by the United Nations Development Program. The 264-page report released Tuesday ranks countries according to how they are currently using technology to improve the quality of life. The report insists that technology is the key for countries seeking to make their citizens' lives better.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,45130,00.html

Gnucleus = The New Napster: The Record Industry Has Met its Match
If the recording industry thought Napster was a headache, it's going to get a genuine migraine from the latest version of Gnucleus, a free Windows-based open source software program released last month for the Gnutella file-sharing network. The recently improved Gnucleus software is one of several clients such as LimeWire and BearShare that run on the Internet's self-organizing Gnutella network. The software programs combine the shared contents of constantly shifting clusters of about 10,000 or so linked personal computers into searchable interactive archives.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...0/gnucleus.DTL

ISP wins Bulger injunction challenge
Internet service provider Demon Internet today won a legal challenge to the injunction that prohibits UK media from publishing information about the new identities or location of James Bulger's killers. Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the president of the family division at the high court, agreed that the injunction was "inappropriate" as it currently read when applied to ISPs. She approved changes to the injunction that will let ISPs escape prosecution if they unwittingly allow information about the whereabouts of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables to be posted somewhere on their service.
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/i...519548,00.html

Europe holds key vote on spam tomorrow
The future of unsolicited commercial email in Europe could be decided in Brussels tomorrow as a key committee sits down to debate the issue. Under existing European law the treatment of junk email - or spam - depends on the position already adopted by individual countries. Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Italy have all signed up to an "opt-in" approach to spam, which should ensure that people only receive junk email if they request it first. The other ten member states - including France and the UK - believe spam is a legitimate business activity. Their only concession is that users should be able to "opt-out" if they do not want to receive junk email.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/23/20290.html

Testing the trains of the future
Virgin is heralding the return of the tilting high-speed train two decades after Britain abandoned the technology. The company began tests on Friday on its new trains, which tilt left or right on bends to enable them to go faster without making passengers uncomfortable. Virgin's Pendallino takes its name from the pendulum - it swings in and out of bends, smoothing the journey for passengers at high speeds. The Pendallinos will be able to travel at up to 140 miles an hour, compared with current speeds of around 110mph.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/...00/1428902.stm

Moan, moan, moan: how to complain online
IF YOU were among the 610m passengers who travelled by air in the United States last year, you probably have something to complain about. Record numbers of flights were delayed, cancelled or oversold. Needless to say, nothing has changed. But now you can grumble publicly. Complaining online is particularly popular. “The airlines have spawned an industry,” says Joe Brancatelli of BizTravel.com. There is now ample opportunity for disgruntled passengers to, as he says, “be your own Don Quixote”. PassengerRights.com and AirTravelComplaints.com are devoted to griping about airlines. Planetfeedback.com, BitchAboutIt.com and ScrewedCentral.com also feature air travel prominently.
http://www.economist.com/business/di...tory_ID=687686

Nope, not all yet

that's great, but i can't get into the first set.

[walktalker]

Originally posted by JackSpratts
that's great, but i can't get into the first set.

Mega bummer... The URLs has been altered.
Ok, I'll have to do some edition work. Hold on...

[adealaara]

An effort such as the newspaper shop has to be at the top (or near the top) by whatever means neccesary. Long live Walktalker!

[walktalker]

Long live the newspaper readers too... A long life would be useless without them
Hi Adealaara

<marquee></marquee>

[TankGirl]

Great work as always WT!

Here's a beer for the hard-working newsman! Cheers!

- tg

heres one you missed walktalker

Garden gnomes gather for freedom
July 11, 2001 Posted: 2:50 PM EDT (1850 GMT)

STRASBOURG, France - More than 100 garden gnomes and other statues have been found assembled on a roundabout in eastern France, a police spokesman said.

Some were set up to spell out "Free the Gnomes," leading police to believe that the prank culprits are members of a group known as the Garden Gnome Liberation Front .

Residents around the town of Chavelot reported the miniatures stolen the night before. Soon after they were found set up on the roundabout.

The spokesman said: "It was a bit like a giant creche. Everything had been carefully set up."

The group, which advocates "freeing" gnomes and "returning them to the wild," gained public attention in the 1990s.

But after a ringleader was fined and sent to prison in 1997 for his part in the disappearance of 150 gnomes, the group faded from the limelight.

In 1998 it came back into the public eye after staging a mass "suicide" with 11 gnomes dangling by their necks under a bridge at Briey in eastern France.

A letter found nearby said: "When you read these few words we will no longer be part of your selfish world, where we serve merely as pretty decoration."

A Paris garden exhibition was the group's target last year, where they stole about 20 gnomes during a night raid.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe...nce/index.html



wooooooooooooooooo hahahahhaa free the gnomes baby!!