The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

Ahhh the joy of reading
MS faces tougher battle in Europe
Tougher antitrust enforcement by European Commission regulators could mean trouble ahead for Microsoft, experts warn. Last week's appeals court ruling lifted from Microsoft the immediate threat of a breakup. But, in the coming months, Microsoft will face a tough battle in Europe, experts said. Two cases are pending there, relating to allegations Microsoft's desktop operating systems gave the company unfair advantage in the server market. The EU's decision to block the proposed $43 billion merger of General Electric and Honeywell on Tuesday due to antitrust concerns is a sign of renewed vigor on the part of regulators, said Peter Alexiadis, an antitrust attorney with Squire, Sanders and Dempsey in Brussels.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093662,00.html

Cell phone rivals team for games
Wireless phone makers Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and a Siemens business unit jointly announced Tuesday a new effort to create common standards for wireless games. The handset giants have created the Mobile Games Interoperability Forum, an outgrowth of the Universal Mobile Games Platform group formed in March by Ericsson, Motorola and Siemens. The new group is charged with designating specifications that would allow developers to create network-based games capable of working on several different wireless networks and various mobile phone handsets.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093677,00.html

Steering cell phones in the right direction
Steering his Range Rover from San Francisco to Mountain View, Calif., Brian Bogosian has a message for politicians and safety advocates who want to stop drivers from talking on cell phones: Don't tell me what to do. The chief executive of mobile access company Visto is irked by mounting political pressure to ban the use of wireless devices in automobiles. Every morning, Bogosian uses his Range Rover as an office on wheels to call colleagues on the East Coast -- while petting the muzzle of Cobey, his faithful Vizsla who commands the front passenger seat.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093625,00.html

Hitachi to cash in on money chip
Hitachi has developed a chip that could be woven into paper money to help identify counterfeits, and which could also have wide ramifications for identification and surveillance technologies. The chip, called Mew, measures just 0.4mm on a side, and stores information such as identification and security code. It includes 128 bits of read-only memory (ROM) and RF wireless circuitry that allows it to transmit over a distance of about 30cm or 12 inches. If inserted in money, a reader unit would be able to instantly detect authentic bills. Most identity chips are currently several millimeters on a side. While the chip currently requires a reader unit to work, its size carries big implications for the future of identity technology.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...782211,00.html

Standard to ease Linux programming
An industry group has released the first version of a standard designed to make it easier to write Linux software by guaranteeing that different versions of Linux work similarly. The Free Standards Group released version 1.0 of the Linux Standard Base specification Friday, a move aimed at reducing the difficulties of getting software such as Oracle's database to run on versions of Linux from Red Hat, Debian, SuSE and others.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093615,00.html

Hackers learning to can spam
Several small Internet service providers have been shocked to see some of their most unlikely users turn into spammers. But it turns out the users are unwitting tools of a new virus that experts say is the first case they've seen of hackers finding a way to commercially exploit their skills. The scheme -- seemingly spread across desktops in the form of a virus -- was tested by hackers throughout June, apparently to explore the possibility of infecting home machines with software that would generate unsolicited bulk e-mail without the knowledge of the machines' owners.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...781893,00.html

Napster keeps music on pause
Napster continued a self-imposed shutdown Tuesday, as the company struggled to fix technical problems related to its efforts to stop unauthorized file swapping on its service. The hiatus comes shortly after Napster disabled old versions of its software. It pushed its members to a new version that rendered the service all but unusable, blocking even the most obscure, uncopyrighted works from being traded. But people logging on this week were unable to trade even the few songs left. The company posted a message on its Web page saying that "file transfers have been temporarily suspended while Napster upgrades its databases."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

GM's OnStar inks deal for speech software
General Motors is taking another small technology company for a test drive. OnStar, GM's mobile communications division, announced a deal Tuesday to purchase text-to-speech software from Boston-based start-up SpeechWorks. The software will eventually help GM translate text-based e-mail, stock quotes, news and sports updates into speech so that drivers do not have to take their eyes off the road to consult a screen or touch pad. SpeechWorks' products, including its flagship Speechify text-to-speech engine, allow people hands-free operation without displays. People can pick from a male or female voice to deliver information in the car.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Innovation Drought
Sixteen months ago, Andy Hertzfeld launched a promising company called Eazel. The idea was to make Linux, the powerful server software, simple enough that consumers could use it in their PCs. And Hertzfeld was no wet-behind-the-ears, freshly-minted MBA: He was one of the key designers of the software that made the original Macintosh easy to use. And he had another startup, General Magic Inc., under his belt. Last year, he raised $13 million from big-name venture investors, including Accel Partners and Dell Computer Corp. Today, Eazel is dead. Hertzfeld had to shut it down in May after failing to raise more money. "It was heartbreaking to see our team of talented developers scatter to the winds," says Hertzfeld. "Especially when I'm pretty sure we could have made a really big difference if we had another year or so to work together." No one will ever know, and that's what's troubling.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...8/b3740602.htm

State puts brakes on GPS speeding fines
A Connecticut group has sided on behalf of consumers in a case where a driver was fined for speeding in a car outfitted with a global positioning system. The state's Department of Consumer Protection sided with renters against car rental company Acme Rent-a-Car, of New Haven. In an administrative complaint filed against the car rental company on Monday, the department charged Acme with violating state law when it fined drivers who exceeded the posted speed limit while driving a rental car. Acme installs global positioning system (GPS) in its cars to find stolen rental cars and charge customers for "dangerous" conduct. When a rental customer drives faster than the posted speed limit, that information is sent to the company.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper
In the end, a year of hard work boils down to this: Echelon exists and the Europeans don't like it, but there isn't much they can do except wring their hands in impotent fury as the Americans continue spying on whomever they please. The resolution approved Tuesday by a European Parliament committee set up to investigate the satellite-based surveillance system condemned Echelon's existence but, aside from agreeing to step up meaningful rhetorical pressure on the Americans, achieved very little.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44984,00.html

Dumped Workers Find Revenge
Some disgruntled, recently laid-off geeks are taking a break from frantically scanning the want ads to file software piracy reports against their ex-employers. The Business Software Alliance (BSA), an international organization that investigates program piracy for software developers, has noted a dramatic increase in the past year in the number of reports filed by ex-employees against technology companies. And there are a lot of employers using illegally obtained programs to report. At least one out of every three software applications installed on computers around the world is pirated, according to a study released last month by the BSA.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,44906,00.html

Taking the 5th on the 4th
The Supreme Court has split Fourth Amendment experts into two camps after ruling last month that cops can't use spy technology to search homes without a warrant. One group believes the ruling dramatically extends the Fourth Amendment's reach, placing new limits on technology-assisted searches in all sorts of cases and places. They interpret the June 11 decision, to mean the use of new, magnetic imaging technology to scan crowds for concealed weapons, for example, could be unconstitutional. Scanning for the faces of felons, as authorities did at the Super Bowl -- or slipping into home computers through Internet connections -- might be, too.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,44785,00.html

Spinning the Biz of Genomics
Genomics has been a buzzword since the Human Genome Project began making headlines, but investors are increasingly uncertain how genomics firms will ever stay afloat. One firm, however, has confidence in its business plan despite being lumped into the genomics category by many reporters and investors. Human Genome Sciences CEO William Haseltine says his company will succeed by sticking to the business model it has always had: old-fashioned drug discovery.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,44972,00.html

Man Receives Artificial Heart
An American on the brink of death has received the first self-contained, mechanical, total- heart replacement in a landmark experimental operation, a source said Tuesday. Surgeons from the University of Louisville implanted the titanium and plastic pump into the patient at Jewish Hospital on Monday, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Experts hope the experimental heart will lead to new hope for patients with failing hearts.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,44980,00.html

Most Hacking Hides Real Threats
The high profile of such relatively inconsequential online political warfare as denial-of-service attacks and playful site defacement has the general public distracted from much graver risks. That's especially true in Europe, according to experts, where many Internet users are newer to the medium and less attuned to the dangers of such threats as smart viruses. "Do Europeans care about information warfare?" asks Christiane Schultzki-Haddouti, a German journalist who specializes in information warfare. "Not much. Compared to America, Europe is still sleeping."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44955,00.html

More news later on

[walktalker]

Slashdot in the balance ?
For the militant advocates of “open source” programming — the movement that holds that software should be shared and collectively improved and that Microsoft must be destroyed — it was as if the world stopped for a while. First there were the troubles at Slashdot.org last weekend, the movement’s virtual water-cooler, confessional and meeting hall, and now there’s the news that the Web site’s parent company, VA Linux, is going to abandon the hardware business and lay off 35 percent of its staff. The very idea that businesses could hope to make money from a movement dedicated to sharing software — considering that the companies selling open-source software have to make the source code available for customers to improve and redistribute if they want to — is a bit hard to get your head around.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/595556.asp?0si=-

Net radio tangos with the law
MTV's Radio SonicNet calls its "Me Music" an attempt to bring radio into the digital age by giving online users more choice of what they listen to. You get to select the genre (jazz, for example) and the style (swing or bebop). The RIAA says that Webcasters who go beyond a preprogrammed listening experience should have to pay more for those rights. So the RIAA is back in court, this time to resolve its differences with services such as MTV's SonicNet, Launch, MusicMatch and Xact Radio. Countersuits have been filed against the labels by Webcasters and the Digital Media Association, a trade group. Unlike the Napster battle, musicians so far are siding with the Webcasters.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/t...radio-usat.htm

Rule May Spur Firms to Waste Energy
The fluorescent lights are burning bright on the top floor of a Hewlett-Packard Co. office building here, even as sunlight streams in from skylights and windows, and it pains HP electricity conservation czar Erik Andres. Although the Silicon Valley computer firm has spent more than $1 million on the latest conservation software and gadgetry and has cut electricity consumption by 12% from a year ago, Andres won't switch off any more lights. If he did, it would make it harder for the company to comply when Pacific Gas & Electric orders Hewlett-Packard to cut its power use by as much as 15% in 15 minutes.
http://www.latimes.com/news/asection...000054600.html

Giant world detected in deep space
Astronomers have found one of the largest objects ever detected orbiting the Sun. It was seen in a deep space survey looking for bodies circling our star out near Pluto, the most distant planet. Only planets are larger than this new object, dubbed 2001 KX76. The icy, reddish world is over a thousand kilometres across and astronomers say there may be even larger objects, bigger than planet Pluto itself, awaiting discovery.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1419508.stm

Kids that are cyber slammed
The first indication that the seemingly obscure practice of cyber-bullying might have reached outrageous proportions was an item in the New Yorker titled "The New Bathroom Wall." As much as one can discern from the understated style of the Talk of the Town section, the incident in question was not so much a harrowing news event as it was an amusing anecdote about teenage life or, at worst, a parable about how affluent Manhattan parents have access to just about anyone they need, including the district attorney. Regardless of the gentility of the prose, however, the details packed a wallop.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/200...ies/index.html

Homestead Eliminates Most Free Web Site Hosting
Homestead, a company that bills itself as a Web site building service for the technically challenged, is changing its price policies from free to fee. The "Homestead Personal" service, which had offered users a Web site with 16 megabytes of storage for free, now will cost $29.99 per year for existing members. New customers will pay a slightly higher price, the company said. To encourage people to switch to paying for the service, the company said the "new" Homestead Personal offers up to 25 megabytes of storage space, access to a downloadable site building program, an online library of 800,000 graphics, no advertisements and a way to remove the Homestead logo that frames the site.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167587.html

CDT, Internews Form Coalition To Fight Digital Divide
U.S.- and Brussels-based media and consumer groups today announced the creation of the Global Internet Policy Initiative, a foundation formed to help developing countries enact policies that narrow the digital divide. The new group is a joint effort by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and Internews, a nonprofit company based in Brussels, that fosters independent media in the developing world. Jim Dempsey, CDT's director of technology, said the Global Internet Policy Initiative will be an effort to assist countries in addressing the digital divide, a phenomenon characterized by the limited access to communications technologies among the world's poorer citizens.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167585.html

Consumers Favor Quick End To Microsoft Case
American consumers want the parties involved with the Microsoft Corp. antitrust case to speedily resolve the dispute, rather than retry the issue, according to the findings of a poll released today by a pro-Microsoft group. Seventy-five percent of poll respondents said the Microsoft case "should be resolved quickly," when asked whether the case should be retried following last week's decision by a U.S. appeals court. Roughly 18 percent of respondents said the case should be retried.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167582.html

Attack Program Exploits New Microsoft Bug
A program that gives remote attackers complete control of vulnerable computers running Microsoft's popular Web-server software has been quietly posted online and may have been in use for nearly two weeks. Source code to the program, which exploits a recently discovered bug in the indexing service (IDA) of Microsoft's Internet Information server (IIS), was posted last week on the Geocities home page of a Japanese hacker who uses the nickname "HighSpeed Junkie." According to the code, it was programmed on June 21. The release of the attack program follows a warning from Microsoft on June 18 that its IIS software, used by nearly 6 million Web sites, contains a buffer overflow flaw that could enable a remote attacker to gain full, system-level control of the server.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167576.html

Hackers, E-Espionage Will Propel Encryption Market
A study released today said that as the amount of classified information transmitted via Web networks rapidly increases, hackers and e-terrorists will help create a burgeoning encryption market. The study by researchers at Frost & Sullivan found that the data-protection industry generated revenues of $176 million in 2000 but projected a steady increase to $457.6 million by 2007. Frost & Sullivan senior analyst Brooks Lieske said in a press release that hackers are no longer mainly focused on disrupting service and implanting viruses.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167566.html

Movie Studios Attack File-Swapping Service Aimster
Seven major motion picture studios have filed a lawsuit in federal court against three defendants that run peer-to-peer file-swapping service Aimster. The suit alleges copyright infringement, unfair competition and trademark dilution. The studios allege the defendants operate the Aimster network, which they say was designed and is operated to "facilitate and encourage millions of purportedly anonymous users to copy and distribute infringing copies of copyrighted works in potentially limitless numbers." The suit seeks $150,000 for each alleged infringement.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167549.html

Firm Launches Net Access Through Electrical Wall Outlets
RWE Powerline has launched a commercial Internet service in the cities of Essen and nearby Mulheim that works through standard AC electrical wall outlets. The companies promise to launch its service in other areas of Germany later this year. The company, a subsidiary of RWE, the German electricity firm, first unveiled its PowerNet technology back in March, when it announced it was hosting a pilot scheme in Essen to hook 200 homes and a local school up to the Internet over alternating current (AC) electrical connections. The experience gained from that scheme has allowed the firm to launch what appears to be Germany's - and possibly Europe's - first commercial implementation of the "Internet-over-mains" technology, as it is known in Europe.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167572.html

Antitrust Enforcement Is Alive And Well
Over the past decade, there has been a hot debate in legal and economic circles over whether the nation’s antitrust laws—passed more than a century ago to curb the power of sugar growers and oil companies—were still relevant to a fast-paced economy based on jet engines, software and microchips. But recent headlines suggest that reports of the death of antitrust enforcement may have been greatly exaggerated.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167571.html

More news later on

[walktalker]

You're still here ? Thank you
Those stories worth reading:

Open season on Web music firms
Like bargain hunters swooping down on a sales rack, giant information and entertainment companies have been moving to snap up online music companies--often at fire-sale prices. The deals, including Vivendi Universal's proposed purchase of MP3.com Inc. and Yahoo Inc.'s pending purchase of Launch Media Inc., signal a wave of consolidation that's thinning the ranks of online music suppliers. And several other online companies already find themselves on the auction block as well. "It's an excellent sign that the digital music space is evolving from a novelty into an industry," said Zack Zalon, general manager of Radio Free Virgin, an online music service tied to Virgin Group.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/techn...gy%2Dheadlines

Hack actors
Swordfish is another in a long line of hacker portrayals that falls a few bytes short of accuracy. Do audiences really want to see realism and quality in a sci-fi film? Hugh Jackman knows he's no hacker. "I can't type faster than 12 words a minute, as you can see in the movie," he acknowledges with a laugh. And he knows he doesn't look like everyone's idea of a hacker, either. "I thought it was very important to understand the world they come from," he says. "I don't have the glasses. But this isn't real. I spoke to quite a few (hackers) and I read ¤ (this character) is an amalgamation of all that. "What are the real hackers like? "These guys play hard and fast," says Jackman. "They're young, they're incredibly cool, many of them are almost revolutionary. They're very idealistic, some destructive, some angry, and they are probably some of the most powerful people on the planet today. And a lot of people are very scared about that; it's a very real issue. It's a whole underground world."
http://it.mycareer.com.au/techlife/r...XHJFNZFOC.html

Editor Argues: You Want the Truth About Book Sales? You Can't Handle the Truth.
As BookScan gives hard sales figures more publicity and greater credibility, Little, Brown executive editor worries what this will mean for 'small' books and careers that take time to build. The pieces are now in place for the book industry's first integrated sales-reporting system. Bookscan would work like the music business's Soundscan system, with publishers paying a fee for access to the data. The benefits could be immense. So could the costs.
http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?arti...33997&pod_id=8

Copyrights and copywrongs
The dawn of the 21st century has illuminated an array of conflicts over the regulation of information in America: Napster, DVD-hacking, the right to create a parody, the rewards for freelance writers in a digital world, and the future of the Microsoft monopoly. Each of these cases rests on several distinct pedestals of ideals. As a nation, we would like to reward enterprise and creativity, allow free and open access to ideas, and benefit from a rich trove of music, literature, journalism, and art. Often these goals conflict, and courts must choose among them.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/594462.asp?0dm=C17NT

Avoiding unwanted solicitations
MSNBC Internet Correspondent Lisa Napoli says parents can teach their children how to protect themselves from unwanted solicitations online while using instant messaging. She advises: don’t talk to strangers; conceal identifying information; and consider using filters.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/595836.asp?0dm=C15NT

Red Hat guns for MS database space
Red Hat European VP Colin Tenwick called in to the IT-Analysis HQ to fill the company in on the impending launch of Red Hat Database. It seems that the firm is gunning for Microsoft.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/20153.html

Broadband Britain: the inside truth
Who would want to be in Peter Radley's shoes today? In the FT yesterday the Government advisor and head of Alcatel UK aired his views about the future provision of broadband services in Britain. He said nothing new in his suggestion that broadband infrastructures - be it DSL, satellite, cable or wireless - could be run by just a handful of companies. After all, the capital costs of creating and maintaining such huge networks exclude all but the most committed players. Competition, he said, would occur with different companies employing different technologies providing broadband services directly to consumers.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/20157.html

Good day

[mike4947]

Well if the garbage can get a bump, so can the good stuff