The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

To help you to get from to LOL

Red Hat Tux 2.0 blows away Apache
In most cases, a public benchmark is really nothing more than a transaction race where bragging rights and platform pride are the prizes. But every so often, a revolutionary performance breakthrough comes to the forefront during a test. In the case of eWeek Labs' Web server benchmark, Red Hat Inc.'s Tux 2.0 Web server running on a Linux 2.4 kernel has taken performance far beyond what was previously possible and blazes the way for future Web servers built on the same architecture.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...774242,00.html

Freenet: Surfing without a name
The fate of the free Net may rest in the hands of a university student in Sweden making less money than a coffee slinger at Starbucks. While the first generation of file-trading technologies fights over Napster's leavings, more radical Net programmers are still committed to building a wholly anonymous, virtually untraceable way of communicating and trading files online. Chief among these is Freenet, an open-source project viewed by many as the ultimate inheritor to Napster's original promise of free online file swapping.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...092870,00.html

Gates: Open-source GPL is 'Pac-Man-like'
While he has no objection to open-source development efforts, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is concerned about the "Pac-Man-like nature" of the license that governs the distribution of such software. In an interview Tuesday with CNET News.com at the TechEd 2001 conference, Gates observed that Microsoft routinely shares the source code for its Windows operating system with its partners. In addition, the company uses some open-source software in its Hotmail e-mail service. However, Gates said, "there are problems for commercial users relative to the (GNU General Public License), and we are just making sure people understand the GPL."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...pt=zdnn_nbs_hl

7 Steps to Crass Commercialism
Health and wellness guru Gary Null's new e-book contains more than his seven-step program to optimum health and new-found youth. It also contains a store. Every product mentioned in The 7 Steps To Perfect Health, published by LiveReads.com is a click away. Other books, videos, audios, supplements, juice, air-purifiers and whatever else is relevant to Null's program can be purchased online.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,44579,00.html

Intel starts shipping new Pentium III
Intel has begun shipping the Pentium III processor desktop version, a chip that was produced using an advanced manufacturing process that cuts power consumption while boosting speed. The new Pentium IIIs, code-named Tualatin, are the first Intel chips to use the 0.13-micron manufacturing process, which replaces the 0.18-micron process currently used for most PC processors. Miniaturizing the chip geometry allows the processor to run at faster speeds while consuming less power and emitting less heat, making such chips ideal for mobile computing.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Famed open-source compiler upgraded
The foundation of the open-source movement has just shifted. On Monday, programmers released version 3.0 of GCC, a software project not as well-known as open-source projects such as Linux but one that's key to all of them. GCC is a compiler -- the critical software that converts programs written by humans into instructions a chip can understand. GCC is used to create everything from Linux and its various BSD Unix cousins to higher-level software such as the Apache Web server, the Gnome user interface and the Jabber instant-messaging software. And it can run on and create software for more than 40 different chip families.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Sucks.com operator scores rare victory
A message board operator and pornographer who's registered hundreds of domain names has won the rights to keep Michaelbloombergsucks.com, bucking a trend that usually favors trademark holders in disputes involving the word "sucks." A dispute resolution panel has refused to turn the domain name over to financial news service Bloomberg, meaning Dan Parisi, who also runs the porn site Whitehouse.com, will continue as owner. Parisi owns about 700 domain names containing the word "sucks," including Microsoftsucks.com and Chinasucks.com.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Gates pledges $100 million to fight AIDS
The charity foundation of computer billionaire Bill Gates said on Tuesday that it would donate $100 million to a global fund that aims to stop the spread of AIDS and other diseases ravaging developing countries. "As we reflect on 20 years of AIDS and the 22 million lives it already has claimed, we believe that there is no higher priority than stopping transmission of this deadly disease," the Microsoft founder said in a statement. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will pay the money over an unspecified number of years to support a new campaign against AIDS launched by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in April.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Juneteenth highlights digital divide
It took two and a half years for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Galveston, Texas, in 1865, but today that information can be accessed in seconds -- for those who can, or who bother, to connect to the Web. On Tuesday, African-Americans and others are celebrating Juneteenth, the day when word of the abolition of slavery belatedly reached the far corners of the United States. A symbol of African-American pride and history, the event is being promoted online. It's also drawing attention to the online disparities between whites and some racial minorities, referred to as the digital divide.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Online group to develop privacy symbols
A technology industry group plans to develop a set of symbols that would summarize online privacy policies, enabling Internet users to quickly assess the data practices of Web sites they visit. Internet privacy-compliance program Truste will announce the program Tuesday with the hopes that it will effectively summarize the often lengthy, legalese-choked documents many Web sites post to explain what they do with the names, addresses and other data they collect from visitors. Privacy symbols would especially come in handy for consumers who access the Web through cell phones, personal digital assistants and other mobile devices with limited display space, Truste spokesman Dave Steer said.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Netscape Denies Browser Escape
Netscape Communications is denying reports that it's bailing out of the PC browser market it once dominated. To further that point, the company has issued the first beta of its new Netscape 6.1 browser. Earlier this month, Reuters quoted Netscape president Jim Bankoff as saying that "six months from now, you won't consider Netscape to be a browser company," and the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Netscape was "stripped of responsibility for creating its namesake browser." Those reports set off rumors that Netscape was ready to throw in the towel on the browser market.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44617,00.html

Condom Broke? Head for Web
Few sights incite more terror than a ripped, dripping condom. The heat of the moment quickly devolves into a heated discussion: Now what?! You've got 72 hours to take the so-called morning-after pill, your best bet for preventing pregnancy. But first you need to make an appointment with your doctor (assuming you have one), get a prescription and find a pharmacy that carries the drug. But say it's Friday night, your doc's on vacation, or the town pharmacist has no idea what you're talking about. Are you screwed all over again? Not necessarily. Several Internet sites now sell prescriptions for the emergency contraception, and at least one will Fed-Ex it directly to your home.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,44536,00.html

The Tower of Babel Is Crumbling
Among the world's 6,800 tongues, half to 90 percent could become extinct by the end of the century, linguists predict. One reason is because half of all languages are spoken by fewer than 2,500 people each, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a private organization that monitors global trends. Languages need at least 100,000 speakers to survive the ages, says UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,44631,00.html

HQ for Exposed Credit Numbers
Consumers who refuse to make online purchases for security concerns have another story to reinforce their fears. This one involves computer goods site ComputerHQ.com, where a small mistake in a JavaScript code exposed the credit card numbers and other personal information of thousands of its customers -- perhaps for as long as a year. The programmer who discovered the problem was using a URL the company included on his invoice when he went to check an order of his own -- and has spent the past few days unsuccessfully trying to get the company to acknowledge and then fix the hole.
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,44613,00.html

Tune In, Turn On, BLIP Out
Just hanging around the mall? Ericsson's BLIP device wants to zap some info your way. Every billboard, storefront display and ticket counter is aching to reach out and touch someone. That's the idea behind Ericsson's Bluetooth Local Infotainment Point, a small, rune-shaped Bluetooth-enabled hub that can communicate with Bluetooth devices operating within 10 meters.
http://www.techreview.com/web/brown/brown061901.asp

Can the Net be trusted?
Most experienced Net users filter forwarded e-mails according to at least one simple rule: Sad stories probably aren't true, and really sad stories that ask for donations aren't just false, they're probably scams or viruses. Last month, online friends of 19-year old leukemia patient "Kaycee Nicole" were crushed to discover that the plucky teenager they'd been sending Beanie Babies and Amazon gift certificates to for a year was actually a healthy woman named Debbie Swenson. Swenson wasn't asking for donations, but her fictional accounts of a bout with cancer earned "Kaycee" hundreds of devoted fans around the world. The Kaycee Hoax, as it's now known, confirmed the need for suspicion on the Web, but it also points to more general questions. Is there room on the Web for pleas from people who actually need help?
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2001/0...son/index.html

Legislation urged to protect corporate data
A congressional subcommittee exploring the need for new cybercrime legislation was urged by private-sector officials to back laws protecting the confidentiality of security data shared with the government and to prohibit the "harvesting" of e-mail addresses from Web sites by spammers. "We are constantly subjected to individuals who come to our site, steal our addresses, and then use those e-mail addresses to send illegal spam," said Robert Chesnut, a vice president at online auction site eBay in San Jose, Calif., at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/industr...idg/index.html

Cyberspace: The next battlefield
They don't drive tanks, fly jets or even wear boots. But the computer technicians hunkered down in virtual foxholes in a pale yellow building here in suburban Washington might well be the frontline soldiers in the nation's next war. They work for the Defense Information Systems Agency, which figures that future conflicts won't be won by shooting down the enemy's aircraft but by shutting down its computers.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/t...erwar-full.htm

More news later on

[Dawn]

Thanks newsman! Tomorrow I will finally have time to read some news.