The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

For the news fanatics within you
Open-source fans to emulate .Net
Open-source fans announced on Monday the first steps in an effort to reproduce Microsoft's .Net's underpinnings so people can use the technology without Microsoft's involvement. As previously reported, the move could increase the importance and popularity of the .Net strategy while diminishing Microsoft's control over the software itself. With .Net, Microsoft plans to sell its services -- such as address books or e-commerce, as well as the software plumbing that powers those services -- over the Internet. The effort to duplicate .Net has two components so far: Mono and DotGNU.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093886,00.html

Messenger woes cast cloud over Hailstorm
A partial outage of Microsoft's MSN Messenger service, now in its seventh day, is casting a shadow over a wide-ranging services strategy that Microsoft hopes will be its future. Not only has Microsoft been struggling to restore full service, but on Thursday the company also shut down MSN Messenger as it restarted the network of servers that handle messaging traffic. That "reboot" failed to immediately fix the problem. The outage, which began Tuesday, affects as many as 10 million people, or roughly one-third of MSN Messenger users. Initially, many people simply lost buddy lists of friends, but as Microsoft tackled the problem more aggressively, service collapsed completely for many of those users. MSN Messenger customers continued to report service problems Monday.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093851,00.html

U.S. military backs open-source security
Continuing its support of open-source operating systems, the U.S. Department of Defense granted $1.2 million to a community project aimed at adding advanced security features to FreeBSD, an open-source variant of Unix. NAI Labs, the advanced research group of security-software maker Network Associates, announced the grant Monday. The group administers the funded Community-Based Open-Source Security, or CBOSS, project. Security can be seen as an investment and a form of insurance," said Robert Watson, FreeBSD Core Team member and a research scientist at NAI Labs. "We're taking a multipronged approach to address a number of parts of the security problem: Some have to do with an immediate short-term payoff, but many of them have to do with exploring how to make FreeBSD a better platform for new security work so as to facilitate future research."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...093868,00.html

Antitrust: Is Microsoft ready to deal?
If the government and Microsoft can't hammer out a settlement soon, a new U.S. District Court judge will be assigned to the antitrust case next month and charged with proposing remedies. The operative word is "if." To hear Bill Gates tell it, Microsoft is eager to settle. Immediately after the split decision on the case June 28, Gates said the company will work to resolve the case "without continued need for litigation." Settlement talks failed before, but the times have changed now that a federal appeals court rejected the trial court's breakup order.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...783145,00.html

Microsoft stumbles with XP preview
As if Microsoft didn't have enough services trouble this week with the MSN Messenger outage, the company stumbled in its delivery of a preview version of Windows XP to more than 100,000 testers. Microsoft unveiled the Windows XP Preview Program on July 2, issuing the first of two final testing versions--or release candidates -- to those willing to pay to get it. But eight days later, many of the people who plunked down $10 for the right to download the approximately 500MB file said they have not received the e-mail containing a user ID and password that would allow them to do so. Microsoft also delivered the wrong passwords to some people, while a server glitch allowed others to download the preview for free, the company said.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Netscape ruling bolsters privacy efforts
People who downloaded Netscape Communications' SmartDownload software are not bound by an online contract because they did not specifically agree to it, a federal judge has ruled. The decision, which touches on the validity of commonly used Web contracts known as click-wrap licenses, clears the way for the plaintiffs to sue Netscape for tinkering with their computers without their consent. In a ruling last week, New York federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the plaintiffs do not have to go through arbitration to solve the dispute--as required by the online agreement--because Netscape never required SmartDownload users to indicate their consent.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Storage Devices Could Get a Whole Lot Cooler
Floppy discs, CD-ROMs, DVDs -- it seems that every time a better way to store your data comes along, you just get more data to fill up all the extra space. And now that people are increasingly looking for places to keep their digital music downloads -- and maybe soon their digital movies -- it's not hard to imagine that even the mighty DVD will one day join the floppy on the scrap heap of storage devices. While current data storage technology continues to advance, optical storage solutions (like DVDs) and their magnetic storage counterparts (like computer hard drives) share the same limitation. . As Hans Coufal, head of the holographic data storage project at IBM's Almaden Research Center, points out in his German accent: “It is only natural that we explore the third dimension.” Storing data in three dimensions instead of two would increase the capacity of a storage system exponentially.
http://www.ecompany.com/articles/web...,12589,00.html

Medical journals to fill health void online
The World Health Organization (WHO) and six publishing companies said Monday that they would provide the latest biomedical research via the Internet to thousands of scientists and researchers in the developing world. Almost 1,000 leading medical and scientific journals and eventually textbooks will be available online for free or at reduced prices to medical schools and research institutions in nearly 100 countries. "The initiative is tremendously important and exciting," Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the WHO, told a news conference in London. "It will enable many thousands of doctors, health workers and researchers to access information that is very important."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Music stores wary of labels' rise online
One of the most intense battles for the soul of the online music business may not involve Internet companies. As the big record labels move toward offering online music-subscription services, tension is increasing in their relationships with powerful retail giants. Stores such as Tower Records, Wherehouse Music and Best Buy are fearful of being cut off from the consumer as people listen to music via Yahoo, RealNetworks or America Online. The retailers, which maintain an influential lobbying presence in Washington, are making their dissatisfaction known in public and -- for the labels -- potentially uncomfortable ways. They're even raising the specter of antitrust concerns in the context of the planned subscription services jointly owned by the major music companies.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

RealNetworks puts price on "Big Brother"
CBS Television has partnered with RealNetworks to charge admission fees for Internet video streams of its voyeuristic TV series, "Big Brother 2," a further sign of content owners attempting to charge for online programming. Streaming media company RealNetworks plans to offer live video of the reality TV show through its Gold Pass subscription service, which launched last August, for $9.95 per month. CBS will sell standalone access for $19.95 to behind-the-scenes footage of the entire show, which runs for 12 weeks. A notice on the CBS Web site says that live, unedited video from the show, which debuted in its second season Thursday night, is available online free throughout the weekend.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

GPS network to monitor Earth's creep
It took a decade, but the last of 250 global positioning system (GPS) monitoring stations was installed this week, allowing scientists to record with unprecedented precision the minute movements of the Earth associated with earthquakes. Unlike traditional networks of seismometers, which record ground shaking, the GPS units will track the subtle creep of the Earth's crust as strain builds on faults -- only to be released later as quakes. Standing on spindly legs and painted a dull gray, the stations pepper a wide swath of Southern California and the Baja California peninsula in Mexico. Seismologists began building the Southern California Integrated GPS Network, or SCIGN, a decade ago; the 250th station was installed this week.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on... I'm hungry... gotta eat something

[walktalker]

Germany Embraces the Sun
Germany is not necessarily known as the sunniest spot in Europe. But nowhere else do so many people climb on their roofs to install solar panels. Since the introduction of the Renewable Energies Laws (EEG) in April last year, Germany has been experiencing a remarkable boom in solar energy. "When my cab driver gives me a lecture about solar technologies, I know I am back home," raved Rian van Staden, executive director of the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) about Freiburg, the sunniest city in Germany and host to the InterSolar conference July 6-8. The little university town in southwest Germany, about 40 miles away from the French and Swiss borders, is Germany's "Solar Valley."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45056,00.html

Messenger Killing the Customers?
Microsoft's MSN Messenger was still experiencing a failure Monday, seven days after the company acknowledged a technical glitch that left about a third of its users disconnected or without access to their online personal address books. The lingering shutdown has analysts speculating that Microsoft's reputation and its customer base may be threatened. Microsoft product manager Bob Visse said less than 10 percent of users were still without service Monday, but could not say when the service would be fully restored. This is the second time this year that MSN Messenger has had a major failure.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45105,00.html

Mr. Tasini, Meet Mr. Greenberg
When Jerry Greenberg agreed to allow the National Geographic to publish his photographs, he didn't think his collection of more than 40 images would be republished in a 30-disc CD-ROM set without his permission or further payment. Greenberg took the Geographic to court. Now, three years after he filed suit and only months after an appeals court victory, his case may be the next battle over e-rights to hit the Supreme Court. The Tasini case could weigh heavily on the Greenberg case. But this time the battle is over images, not just words.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45011,00.html

Car Renter Fines You for Speeding
A rental car company that uses satellites to track its vehicles and fines customers who speed refuses to halt the practice, the state consumer-protection agency says. As a result, a hearing will be held Aug. 22 on a complaint brought against the company by the Department of Consumer Protection. The agency last week accused Acme Rent-A-Car in New Haven of violating state consumer law. The company uses global positioning system satellites to track customers' speed and automatically fines them for each infraction. The state said it had identified 26 customers who were fined.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,45099,00.html

Proposed domain rules under the gun
The draft text of the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement released this week proposes requiring operators of country-code top level domain names in signatory countries to adopt a controversial system for settling trademark disputes over Internet domain names. The FTAA agreement aims to reduce barriers and tariffs in the Western Hemisphere by creating one set of trade rules for the 34 countries in North and South America, except Cuba. The draft agreement is divided into nine areas that are being negotiated such as market access, agriculture, investment services, intellectual property rights and government procurement.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...783118,00.html

Europe signs space deal with China
The European Space Agency (Esa) is to place instruments aboard two Chinese satellites in a project to study "space weather". The agency signed a deal with the Chinese National Space Administration in Paris on Monday, the first time that it has decided to put experiments on board Chinese satellites. "We will integrate the units in Europe and then finally they will be integrated onto the satellites in China," Giuseppe Giampalmo, Esa's head of international cooperation, told BBC News Online. "We think that it may be a world first," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1430369.stm

Atari lives!
It's the summer of 2001 and the video game industry is bigger and hotter than ever. In the feverishly contested hand-held market, Nintendo's GameBoy Advance and Atari's 2600-compatible VCSp are the must-have consoles. But fans are also eagerly awaiting new releases for popular consoles, like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for Sony's PlayStation 2 and Elevator Action for the Atari 2600. Wait just a second. Elevator Action for the Atari 2600? In the 21st century? Isn't the Atari 2600 the archaic console that only plays those games with the rinky-dink graphics and sound and simplistic play, like Combat and that godawful version of Pac-Man? The one with the goofy pseudo wood-grain trim on its casing that started the whole video game console market 24 years ago? Yep.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2001/0...ari/index.html

Why Britain needs more Meccano and less Lego
The failling popularity of Meccano and the rise of Lego has been decried as a "disaster of modern life" that is inextricably linked to "the demise of British engineering" by one of the country's most prestigious scientists. Sir Harry Kroto said last night that playing with Meccano, with its nuts, bolts and perforated metal strips, helped him to win his 1996 Nobel prize for chemistry. A graph plotting Meccano's disappearance from children's toy boxes would, he claimed, match the alleged fall in the quantity and quality of Britain's young engineers and scientists.
http://www.lineone.net/telegraph/200...ws/why_46.html

Napster Blackout Continues
Napster remains out of commission today, more than a week since the embattled company shut down all music-swapping services in order to upgrade its court-mandated file-identification technology. The company now is publicly acknowledging that the latest version of the company's music-sharing client, which supplants all other versions, was encountering problems before it was disabled. Napster halted all file transfers over its network late on the evening of June 1. "There were problems with the database upon which our new file identification technology relies, and those problems were making the technology less effective," says an FAQ published on Napster's Web site. "Because it's important to identify files accurately, we decided to clean up the database before resuming file transfers."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167740.html

Commerce Dept. Safe Harbor Privacy Site Not So Safe
A government Web site encouraging U.S. companies to take part in an international privacy protection agreement underwent a major overhaul last week, after officials realized the pages gave away sensitive information about participating companies. Web administrators at the U.S. Commerce Department on Thursday scrambled to shut down several Web sites containing information on the agency's Safe Harbor program, an agreement drafted to help U.S. e-commerce companies and other corporations comply with an EU policy that prohibits international data transfers to companies that do not adhere to EU-style data privacy policies.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167738.html

Fasttrack Technology 'New Napster' And More
A Dutch company's peer-to-peer (P2P) technology is on a fast track to become the "new Napster" and will make halting Napster's traffic seem like a walk in the park, Webnoize analysts believe. Fasttrack is not only poised to bring the online content industry to its knees, but seems to be growing into a far tougher legal opponent than Napster, a study by the digital entertainment research firm found. Webnoize analyst Matt Bailey told Newsbytes that Fasttrack is faster, easier to use and better than anything on the P2P market. "Fasttrack is so good, that any commercial P2P network will be hard-pressed to equal it," Bailey said.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167737.html

'Little' Brother Is Watching You At Work
More than one-third of the nation's Internet-connected workers are under "continuous" electronic surveillance by their employers, a new study has found. Some 14 million U.S. employees "have their Internet or e-mail use under continuous surveillance at work," according to the survey, released late last week by the Denver-based Privacy Foundation. The low price of monitoring software, coupled with the increasing ubiquity of Internet communication is driving considerable growth in electronic workplace surveillance, study author Andrew Schulman said today.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167736.html

Bertelsmann Projects New Image, IPO Plans On Web
At the stroke of midnight today here in Germany, an Web site technician flipped a switch and media giant Bertelsmann AG began projecting a new online image – and also removed any doubt that it is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO). The company wants to be recognized as a global media and digital powerhouse. Gone from its Web site is the lime green logo. The company now sports a home page steeped in various shades of grayish purple accented with strategic splashes of orange. White text proclaims: "BERTELSMANN, media worldwide."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167734.html

People Want A Reason To Buy Broadband
The broadband market would be much larger than its current size if consumers were able to receive it custom-tailored, and if they knew what the possibilities really were via a high-speed Internet connection, according to a new study. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), in research released today, said consumers want to receive high-speed access, via digital subscriber line or cable, without "restrictive options and penalties." "Consumers also expressed a desire for options that do not include built-in penalties for spreading their purchases around - such as purchasing cable modem service from a company without subscribing to their cable television service," the group said in a statement.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167732.html

Civil Liberties Group Plans Effort To Protect Net Parody
Responding to an upswing in legal attacks against Internet parody sites, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is planning to launch a "Chilling Effects Clearinghouse" to help arm online speakers against "unfounded" attacks by corporate lawyers. The clearinghouse, which EFF intends to develop in conjunction with a handful of law schools, will include a "Hall of Shame for lawyers and law enforcers that write these broad, unfounded letters to people," EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn told Newsbytes today. EFF wants to "make law firms think twice about whether they want to participate in bullying," Cohn said.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167701.html

How Annoying Can Online Ads Get?
Online publishers are growing desperate; with investment dollars dried up they need ad revenues. But nobody's finding the right formula that both works and that advertisers are willing to pay for. And there's evidence that some of the promotions they're trying are only angering users. One example: A message-board discussion today on the ****edCompany.com site is hammering away at what by now is a nearly ubiquitous "pop-under" advertising campaign by the X10 digital camera manufacturer. That discussion follows on the heels of a press release issued Thursday by Unicast Chairman and CEO Richard V. Hopple that blasts X10-styled pop-under ads.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167700.html

Software Battle Lines Drawn In Cyberspace
As chief technology officer for the city of Seattle, Marty Chakoian sits at ground zero of the Internet revolution. Chakoian believes the Internet can help Seattle work smarter. He wants to link disparate computer systems into a functioning network so city departments can exchange data more efficiently over the Internet. Departments could then offer Web-based services to deal with suppliers and the public. Eventually, the Web could surpass the telephone and the mail as the favored medium for doing city business.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167722.html

[walktalker]

BUMP !!!

Originally posted by walktalker
BUMP !!!

Yup.

Thank you!! walktalker!

"Napsterites News" is my browser home page at home.
It's very easy to get info on your page !!

Thanks again

HAL out.