The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

[walktalker]

My readers deserve nothing but the best
Microsoft: The Tonya Harding of technology
What do you do if you can't win a fair competition? Club your opponent in the knees. That seems to be Microsoft's tactic against Java, a programming standard Microsoft doesn't control. Microsoft's next version of the Internet Explorer browser, set to ship with Windows XP, will no longer include a Java Virtual Machine. That means that Java applications will no longer run in the browser without the user downloading additional code. Additionally, Microsoft will treat mobile Java code the same way it handles viruses in IE and Outlook. In other words, Microsoft is playing monopoly once again by taking its browser ball home.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/co...792086,00.html

Court: DOJ must respond to Microsoft
A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the government to respond to Microsoft's request for rehearing. The Justice Department and 18 states have until Aug. 3 to respond to Microsoft's request for rehearing on one section of the appeals court decision. Microsoft filed its petition Wednesday. "That's just the court being prudent," Silicon Valley lawyer Rich Gray said of the order. "It doesn't signal at all what their decision is going to be." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Columbia Circuit upheld eight separate antitrust violations against Microsoft, which is asking for rehearing on only one point: commingling.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

New standard gives Web a voice
The race is on to give the Web a voice. A budding standard, the brainchild of tech giants AT&T, IBM, Lucent Technologies and Motorola, is fueling new software that allows people to use voice commands via their phones -- either cell or land-based -- to browse the Web. Users of the technology can check e-mail, make reservations and perform other tasks simply by speaking commands. The technology, called VoiceXML, is now winding its way through the World Wide Web Consortium Internet standards body, which is reviewing the specification and could make it a formal standard by year's end.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Microsoft to ease XP antipiracy feature
Microsoft said Wednesday it will ease up on planned anti-piracy measures in its upcoming Windows XP operating system amid fire from critics who say the measures will needlessly hassle innocent users. The change centers on a new feature called Windows Product Activation that asks for a unique code when first using the product, effectively tying the software to a single machine. Intended to prevent users from installing the software on more than one computer, the feature in essence takes a snapshot of hardware components in a user's computer. If the hardware profile changes too drastically, Windows will think it has been installed on a second machine and will stop working until the user calls Microsoft for a new key.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Fire damage spreads to Net
A fire sparked by a train derailment in a tunnel in downtown Baltimore raged for a second day Thursday, and its impact rippled onto the Internet. The fire, which has caused power outages in the area, has also brought segments of WorldCom’s UUNet Internet network to a grinding halt, affecting customers along the Eastern corridor, a WorldCom spokeswoman confirmed. "WorldCom technical teams had to work through the night and into this morning on our traffic on our networks because of the derailment and fire," said company spokeswoman Jennifer Baker. "The technical teams continue to work, so it is very possible that some of our customers have experienced interruptions since late yesterday afternoon."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Slow response to 911 wireless
New evidence suggests that local police will share the blame for what will likely be a failure by the wireless industry to meet a federal deadline for new technology capable of locating people dialing for help from a mobile phone, analysts and law enforcement officials say. The Federal Communications Commission told wireless service providers that by Oct. 1 they must offer police departments the ability to locate a cellular phone caller who dials 911. Currently, police can locate regular telephone 911 callers but can't do the same for mobile phone users. With the October deadline less than three months away, less than 10 percent of the 4,300 police departments in the United States have the service up and running, according to a recent survey conducted by the Association of Public Safety Communication Officials.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

"Code Red" worm set to flood Internet
An analysis of the fast-spreading "Code Red" computer worm reveals that infected computers are programmed to attack the White House Web site with a denial-of-service attack Thursday evening, potentially slowing parts of the Internet to a crawl. The worm has compromised more than 100,000 English-language servers running Microsoft's Web server software as of late Thursday. In addition, each of those infected computers are expected to flood the Whitehouse.gov address with data starting at 5 p.m. PDT, according to an analysis by network-protection company eEye Digital Security. While the direct target of the worm's denial-of-service attack is Whitehouse.gov, the indirect effect is that an avalanche of data will hit the Net. Each infection -- a server can be infected at least three times -- will send 400MB of data every four hours or so, possibly leading to a massive packet storm.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=tp_pr

Free-speech lawsuit charges ahead
A professor who backed out of giving a speech amid legal threats is charging ahead with a lawsuit that would allow him to present his paper at an upcoming conference, even though his opponents say they have no plans to prevent him from giving his speech. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it will continue to pursue its lawsuit asking a judge to clear the way for Princeton professor Edward Felten to present his hacking paper at the USENIX conference next month. The Secure Digital Music Initiative, the Recording Industry Association of America and Verance, one of the companies that created the technology Felten plans to talk about, have told the judge they never planned to sue and have filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Underground video code seeks legitimacy
A new version of the Divx video codec is online, helping to push the once-underground technology further toward a split personality. The Divx video codec, distributed by Los Angeles company DivxNetworks, is still best known online as one of the most popular ways to encode high-quality pirated videos and movies. Codecs are the mathematical codes that compress large audio files into smaller, more usable packages that can be streamed or downloaded over the Web. But the technology's creators are boosting the video format as a way to do professional film encoding and video-on-demand services, with funding from several high-profile venture capitalists.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Freelancers protest outside Times building
Shortly before noon EDT Thursday, a 12-foot, red-eyed rat was inflated in front of the venerable home of The New York Times. The infamous Corporate Rats appear around the city during labor protests. This time, freelance writers were making it known that the Gray Lady's policy toward freelancers needs to change. The protest comes shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that publishers must compensate freelancers for reprinting their articles on the Web and in electronic databases. In response, major publishers such as the Times and AOL Time Warner's Time Inc. began purging their electronic databases of freelance articles.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

The invisible security threat
Three of every four attacks are committed by insiders. Whether it's a denial of service attack, a malicious break-in, or data theft, most likely the perp is an employee or a former employee. Yet companies continue to focus their attention on preventing external attacks. How many companies want to publicise this image-deflating fact? Very few. So few, in fact, that security analysts at the Hurwitz Group estimate that as many as 50 insider attacks occur for every one detected -- testimony to the insider's intimate knowledge of your systems and procedures.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/biztech/secu...0243817,00.htm

Teens use Web to browse, not buy
Most teenagers online are just window shopping, a new study indicates. Two-thirds of online users aged 13 to 17 are using the Internet to research products before making purchases offline, according to a study released this week by Jupiter Media Metrix. Eighty-nine percent of online teens have never made a purchase on the Internet, the study indicates. "At first glance, teens are not a solid market to go after because they're not using credit cards," said Jared Blank, a digital commerce analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix. "In fact, companies should be using their Internet sites as another touchpoint for teenagers."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Teens teaching peers about Web safety
They might not be faster than a speedy cable modem, or even able to leap a row of computer terminals in a single bound. But their mission does sound a little like a job for a superhero. They are the Teenangels, a growing team of young volunteers worldwide who--armed with Internet savvy and a little common sense -- protect their peers online. Their biggest goal is to teach young Web surfers how they can avoid criminals who prey on children by using e-mail, online chat rooms and even instant messages to contact them.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Pressplay to use MP3.com technology
Pressplay, an online music-subscription service backed by Vivendi Universal and Sony, Thursday said it will use MP3.com's technology as the blueprint of its offering. The agreement is not surprising, given public statements of this intention since Vivendi Universal agreed to acquire MP3.com for about $350 million in May. Vivendi Universal painted the MP3.com acquisition as a technology buy, saying the online music company's technology could facilitate the digital distribution of various forms of content. Vivendi Universal has a large stake in creating content. It owns the largest record company, Universal Music Group, major television and film studios in Canal+ and Universal Studios, and international publishing ventures, including a recent acquisition bid for Houghton Mifflin.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Apple: Machines are more than megahertz
Several months back, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs spoke of narrowing the clock-speed gap between the chips in Macs and Windows-based machines. But as the gulf continues to widen, Apple is once again trying to convince consumers not to judge its computers on megahertz alone. In an October conference call with analysts, Jobs said the company would unveil machines with faster G4 processors in an effort to close the "megahertz gap" with Intel chips during the first half of 2001 and would look to "make substantial progress in the remainder of the year." Perhaps as a result, Apple is again making the pitch that megahertz doesn't matter and that its machines are still faster at the tasks many people perform.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on... nope, you're not done reading yet

[adealaara]

Ummm... great stuff as always.
BTW, anyone knows the name of the record label (or labels) responsible for the Macrovision copy protected CD's? Fans at Slashdot are still debating about it but no one is giving names, yet. Grr...

[walktalker]

Hacker Arrest Stirs Protest
When the FBI arrested a Russian programmer this week on charges of criminal copyright violations, the government unwittingly ignited a powder keg of outrage. Web pages immediately sprouted to demand the release of Dmitry Sklyarov, who was visiting the United States to describe his work at the Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas. Newly minted activists set up a mailing list, launched a defense fund, and trashed Adobe Systems for urging the U.S. government to arrest Sklyarov on charges of circumventing its copy protection methods. This is the latest round in an increasingly nasty battle between Russian firm ElcomSoft and Adobe, which fired off a stiff letter a few weeks ago claiming "unauthorized activity relating to copyrighted materials," and requesting that the $100 e-book decoder be taken off the market.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45342,00.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/20499.html

New Worm Keeps Them Guessing
A new, fast-spreading virus that appears to have the antivirus companies hopelessly confused is in the wild. Depending on which antivirus company you talk to, the new virus is either a Trojan or a worm, destructive or non-destructive and originated in Europe or Russia, Wednesday or last week. The only thing the companies can agree on is its name -– "Sircam" –- and that it's an executable file that arrives via e-mail and propagates by sending itself to everyone in the victim's e-mail address book. According to Panda Software, the Sircam virus is destructive, filling all the empty space on a victim's hard drive with a giant text file. It first appeared on Wednesday in Spain, Panda officials said. But Network Associates, which sells the McAfee antivirus software, had a different story.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,45397,00.html

Researchers Map Pneumonia Genes
Scientists have decoded all of the genes that make up a virulent strain of pneumonia. The bacterium is increasingly resistant to penicillin, especially in countries like Spain and Hungary, where the drug is readily available. Researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) say knowing the entire genome of this bacterium, called pneumococcus, could reveal the secrets of how it becomes resistant, and lead to new treatments. The researchers found nine clusters of genes unique to the particular strain of the bug that they studied, which they collected from the blood of a 30-year-old Norwegian male.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45400,00.html

Napster's Not Up (or Down) Yet
Get used to it Napster fans, because chat rooms and sex talk will be the only activity on the network for the near future, according to sources familiar with the company. This despite Wednesday's ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that granted Napster a stay of execution that allws the Napster to re-open its file-trading activities. Even with the legal victory seemingly in hand, Napster officials have no specific plans on when, or if, the site will open its free file-trading service again -- mainly because nobody is quite sure what this latest twist really means, and what it allows Napster to do.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45364,00.html

Fixing a Hole Where Spam Comes In
ISPs are battling rogue spammers lurking in the back alleys and hidden corners of their networks. As the fighting heats up, more and more legitimate e-mail is getting blocked along with the junk. "It's a guerrilla war that has been escalating for years," said Ray Everett Church, a spokesman for Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE). "ISPs are having to go to greater and greater lengths to keep their networks safe, and there is a collateral damage to legitimate mail that suddenly can't get through."
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45343,00.html

Once It Was Atari, Now It's Art
In the early 1970s, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell launched a revolution when he created the first video game, Pong. The game was groundbreaking despite its aesthetic simplicity: two paddles, a square ball and a vertical line. Video games have come a long way since Pong. Today, games like Doom, Myst and Quake have evolved to create 3-D virtual worlds with lifelike sounds, elaborate graphics and complex plots. But can video games also be considered a form of art? That question will be among the topics discussed Thursday night at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Media Arts Council (SMAC) symposium, "ArtCade: Exploring the Relationship Between Video Games and Art."
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45146,00.html

FBI's Flaws Are Detailed
In the wake of the FBI's admission that it cannot find hundreds of its weapons and laptop computers, several bureau officials joined lawmakers in strongly criticizing the agency's structure, technology and institutional culture during a Senate hearing Wednesday. Senate Judiciary Committee members said the disclosure Tuesday that 449 firearms and 184 computers are missing represents the latest in a string of recent FBI failures that expose the agency's many flaws. At least one of the weapons may have been used to commit a crime, and one of the computers contained classified data.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...951jul19.story

Webcasters claim royalty victory
Internet services allowing listeners to personalize Web radio services will be included in an upcoming arbitration process on music royalties despite the objections of the recording industry, according to a decision by the U.S. Copyright Office. A group of web braodcasters, including Launch Media Inc., hailed the administrative ruling on as a victory in a continuing legal fight to secure the same royalty rights as other Internet radio providers. At issue is whether Webcasters that allow users to customize Internet radio services — by selecting a certain kind of music for example — should be eligible for compulsory licensing like traditional radio, or whether those features should require them to negotiate individual, and potentially more expensive, fees with the record labels.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/601972.asp

Mental illness 'at the root of jazz'
The mental health problems of one musician could have led to the creation of jazz. Without his schizophrenia, Charles "Buddy" Bolden - the man credited by some with starting off the jazz movement - might never have started improvisation, psychiatrists have heard. And without this style change, music might never have evolved from ragtime into the jazz movement we know today. Professor Dr Sean Spence, of the department of psychiatry at the University of Sheffield, was speaking to representatives at the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual conference.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/hea...00/1430337.stm

Computer memories could be over a thousand times smaller if they are made from molecules
Researchers have developed prototype computer memories in which information is recorded, read and erased by molecular switches. Computer memories that store information in single molecules could be far more powerful than those of today's machines. Mark Reed of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues built molecular switches consisting of rod-like organic (carbon-based) molecules that carry a current between two gold electrodes. The molecules are like tiny wires, each more than a thousand times smaller than the miniaturized transistors used as switches in silicon chips.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/010607/010607-7.html

Space Planes, Cheap
In 2001, one space odyssey never made it to the launch pad. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced in March that it was pulling the plug on X-33 and X-34, two space planes whose combined cost exceeded $1 billion. But the market for reusable launch vehicles is still strong, and a number of private companies, with NASA's help, are looking to reach orbit within the next ten years. Many teams see a payoff in launching satellites more cheaply. Others envision space planes handling a variety of tasks from rapid package delivery to suborbital microgravity experiments.
http://www.techreview.com/web/rountr...tree071801.asp

Even more news later on

[walktalker]

Online Sex Offers Escape, Learning
While half of those Web surfers who engage in online sex do so to escape their daily routines, others pursue cybersex to explore fantasies, relieve stress or spice up their offline sex lives, a survey has found. One in 10 respondents said they are addicted to sex and the Internet, according to an online survey of 38,000 Internet users done by MSNBC.com and Dr. Alvin Cooper, director of the San Jose Marital Services and Sexuality Centre in California. Results show that respondents devote three hours each week to online sexual exploits. Twenty-five percent have felt that they lost control of their Internet sexual exploits at least once or that the activity caused problems in their lives.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168150.html

Web Metrics Begs Common Touch
A panel discussion at Internet World 2001 on whether Web advertising analysis is flawed, failed to reach a consensus Wednesday. Brian Milne, managing director of AC Nielsen said: "The downfall of the Internet industry is that it had tried to be too different by using different measurement metrics outside the traditional metrics of business. What is plainly needed is commonality of terms and once this has been reached then there will be room for a number of e-metrics firms to compete." RedSheriff's Shefik Bey begged to differ, saying that flawed Web metrics is way off the mark. Jason Hinkin, vice president of technology for spiderlight.com, threw in his own two cents' worth, suggesting that the best way to measure results has not yet been devised.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168108.html

Unix/Linux Viruses Tackled By New Russian Software
Unix and Linux users now have access to e-mail scanning and filtering technology via one of the first multi-threaded anti-virus packages developed for their operating systems. Russia's Kaspersky Lab has developed a version of Kaspersky Anti-Virus (KAV) for the OpenBSD (v2.8) and Solaris 8 for Intel environments, as well as the exim e-mail gateway. Denis Zenkin, Kaspersky's head of communications, told Newsbytes that, although most variants of the Unix and Linux operating systems have integral IT security features, most of them are quite basic.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168124.html

Old-Time Radio: From Golden Age To Internet Age
Holed up in a lonely lighthouse, you lie in darkness, waiting for death. Outside you hear them clawing, crawling, thousands of them. Rats. And all that stands between you and them is a wall of glass that, even now, is slowly beginning to crack. This scene from Three Skeleton Key, one of the most famous audio productions in radio history, kept audiences shivering in their living rooms throughout the '40s and '50s. And Glenn Carlson sees no reason why it can't do so again — online. Carlson, 39, is executive director of The One Act Players, a troupe of professional voice actors in San Francisco that re-enacts radio mysteries and dramas of yesteryear for an Internet audience.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168137.html

Java is Essential to the Software Ecosystem
The personal computer is the ubiquitous computing platform. It is the center of the average user's computing experience and increasingly critical as a server, connecting to pagers, personal digital assistants, mobile telephones, set-top boxes, and other devices. Thus, the public has a strong interest in having easy access to new and innovative applications for the PC, particularly network-aware applications that take advantage of the PC's functions as a server as well as a client. Seen in this light, the recent announcement by Microsoft not to include a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) with its future operating systems is a terrible blow to the computing ecosystem. This decision threatens to lower the diversity of programs that can easily run on the PC, and it raises unnecessary barriers to interconnecting the world's devices.
http://www.oreilly.com/news/jvm_0701.html

The incredible vanishing book review
The Chronicle's Sunday circulation is a little over half a million, making it the most widely read paper in the Bay Area. And it's not the only metropolitan daily to trim its book coverage this year. The Seattle Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Boston Globe have all put their papers on a diet by cutting back on book reviews. Even the nation's most influential Sunday book supplement, the New York Times Book Review, killed two pages, resulting in the loss of six "In Brief" write-ups and one full-page review.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2...ews/index.html

What's wrong with the music biz?
With the scourge of Napster -- now in the throes of a mercilessly slow demise -- nearly behind them, you'd think that the nation's music-industry executives would be able to relax. Too bad that their traditional cash cows of CD sales and concert tickets (the businesses most of them grew up on) are both looking a little gaunt. Or, as renegade bluesman R.L. Burnside might put it, "It's bad, you know." Taken together, recent CD-sales and concert-ticket surveys paint a bleak picture of an industry grappling with change, but not the technological kind. "What we're seeing is a downward trend of the business," says one industry veteran from the touring side. "It's continuing to implode. And folks don't really have a clue. The leadership at labels, senior management of the business, doesn't have a clue where the industry is going, tech issues aside."
http://www.salon.com/ent/music/featu...urn/index.html

IT worker sacked for piracy on the job
A County Durham IT employee has lost his job for copying software while at work. The 39-year-old was found to have copied computer software following an investigation by the European Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA). Counterfeit CDs containing music and PlayStation games software were found in his work area. His employer was allowed to remain anonymous after co-operating with ELSPA. It is believed the man sold the goods to friends and work colleagues on the premises in company time.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/51/20488.html

OK. I'll leave you alone now... Enjoy your reading time

[walktalker]

Bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump ...

and, uh.... oh yeah, bump !!

[thinker]

Actually, good thing you bumped - would have been all for naught otherwise. This is one of the more colossal editions, I see.