The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Thanks God for summer time
Sayonara, Code Red, for now
System administrators have 10 days to fix nearly 300,000 Web servers infected by the Code Red worm before the malicious program halts its largely unsuccessful but ongoing attack on Whitehouse.gov and starts spreading again. New research has indicated that a variant of Code Red worm, released Thursday, likely saturated the Internet, infecting almost all the vulnerable servers before it redirected the approximately 300,000 infected computers to attack an Internet address used by the White House Web site. By the end of Thursday, any given numerical Internet address had been attacked on average more than 20 times, said Stuart Staniford, president of security consulting firm Silicon Defense, who did a statistical analysis of the worm's spread.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

Microsoft tries to block speedy appeal
Microsoft on Friday filed a motion opposing a government request to speed its antitrust appeal. The Justice Department and 18 states last week asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to forgo the normal waiting period before returning the case to a lower court. Otherwise, the government would have to wait 52 days from the appellate court's June 28 decision. The move was seen as possibly clearing the way for the government to seek injunctions that could delay the scheduled Oct. 25 release of Windows XP, the company's new operating system.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Hotmail's redesign spurs complaints
Hotmail came out with an upgraded service Thursday after it aborted attempts to launch it earlier this week. The Microsoft Network experienced glitches Tuesday after the company implemented the new upgrades. But by Thursday, Microsoft said that the issues had been resolved and the new version was available. The upgraded version of Hotmail has an interface similar to MSN Explorer, with new buttons, icons and tabs. The Web site also introduced a new junk mail filter and added two languages -- Dutch and Swedish. In addition, the service has a quick address-list function that provides Hotmail members with fast access to their five most frequently used contacts.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

SirCam virus hides in the trash
A new virus has been discovered that has the possibility to fill up users' hard drives, delete files, distribute private documents, hide itself from typical virus scanners, and propagate itself across the Internet using the Microsoft Outlook address book. The Symantec Anti-Virus Research Center (SARC) has ranked the threat of the virus, entitled SirCam, a four, with five being the most serious. The McAfee Anti-Virus Emergency Response Team (AVERT), as well as the Trend Micro Virus Information Center, ranks the virus as a medium threat. SirCam also joined Trend's Worldwide Virus Tracker Top 10 list at number 3. The virus usually comes as an e-mail attachment with the file name "SirCam32.exe." There are several payloads of the virus that randomly occur. One user could actually be a carrier of the virus but never be infected.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Information overload: The new Y2K bug
The new millennium "bug", according to industry players, is the mishandling of information within a company's storage systems, which can lead to hardware failure, staff inefficiencies and higher costs overall. Data is increasing at a phenomenal rate, according to US-based storage provider Brocade, which says is becoming a challenge for technology departments to keep up with no matter what size the business is. "It is said in the industry that it takes one IT person to manage about five terabytes of data, "Industry is predicting data will grow by several petabytes a year, one petabyte equating to 1000 terabytes of storage requirements," Brocade vice president James LaLonde said.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Linux, Microsoft struggle looms over .Net
A fledgling effort to replicate Microsoft's .Net architecture on Linux, called Mono, could quickly become mired in intellectual property difficulties. Tony Goodhew, a program manager in Microsoft's developer products group, has warned that licensing problems might result if open source code is mixed with Microsoft's .Net software. The Mono project founders plan to exploit key .Net technology specifications that Microsoft has submitted to standards body ECMA. However, Goodhew said ECMA allows technology submitters to license their intellectual property, to retain control over implementation. Goodhew said Microsoft will publish licence terms covering "all the intellectual property we believe will be required to implement [the core dot-Net] standard" prior to the ECMA general assembly in December.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Digital copyright tug o' war
The European Union wants desperately to transform its 15 member nations into an "information society" capable of not just competing in, but leading the world economy. But manufacturers of computers, cellular telephones and other electronic equipment say that goal will be impossible to achieve unless the EU's copyright laws are changed. At the core of the debate are "collection societies," powerful private-sector groups authorized by law in most European nations to impose levies on equipment that can be used to copy commercial products. The fees raised by the societies are disbursed among copyright holders as compensation for unauthorized copying of their works.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...784806,00.html

Napster loses fans
Napster usage worldwide has taken a nosedive as new file-sharing alternatives are climbing the charts, according to a new report that confirms what many former users of the beleaguered service realized long ago. In 14 leading wired countries, the total time spent using Napster plunged 65 percent among home consumers, from 6.3 billion minutes in February to 2.2 billion minutes in June, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. The New York City-based research firm added that the number of Napster users declined 31 percent, from 26.4 million to 18.3 million over the same period. While the popular file-sharing program is losing fans worldwide, the report found that several new alternatives are hitting the radar screen among music fans in the United States as Napster's legal battle with the record industry continues. Such alternatives include Bodetella, Audiogalaxy and iMesh.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Got bandwidth? A new program shares it
An all-volunteer effort is keeping graphics-intensive noncommercial sites alive by matching them up with Web hosts who truly provide unlimited bandwidth. As I reported last week, many Web hosting companies advertise offers to provide unlimited bandwidth to the sites they host even though their contracts actually impose strict caps. One host, for instance, changed its online contract to limit Web sites to as little as 2GB of throughput per month. It then billed one customer over $16,000 for a single month of "excess bandwidth" charges. That customer, Al Sacui, was able to get his bill cancelled. As an alternative, he now hosts Nosepilot -- the home of his animated, multi-megabyte mini-movies -- through an arrangement called the Spoke and Axle Project.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1278-210...html?tag=bt_pr

Revenge of the file-sharing masses!
It's now nearly three weeks that Napster has been out of commission. The music file-sharing service had already seen some drop-off in usage as it tried to tighten up controls on the trading of song files that record companies had specifically requested be barred. But at the beginning of July, Napster announced that it was going offline for some "technical upgrades." It remained out of commission as the judge presiding over the case brought against it by the RIAA, the recording industry trade association, decreed that it cannot open its doors until it has achieved 100 percent effectiveness at banning copyrighted files. Given the size of Napster, this may well constitute the largest service outage ever in online history. But those millions of Napster users aren't just sitting on their hands: They're spreading out across the Net. They're picking and choosing among the myriad new "peer-to-peer" file-trading offerings that have sprung up in Napster's wake. They may be excited by the new wrinkles the developers of these new services have devised; they may be frustrated by the limitations they encounter. Either way, they're still swapping files.
http://salon.com/tech/col/rose/2001/...ora/index.html

More news later on !!

[walktalker]

Hackers wreak havoc on Aussie banks
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is just one of a long list of banks that have been the target of a security breach, with one industry expert claiming there were more than 20 banks hit in Australia last year. But who is to blame, the banks' or the customers? An anonymous hacker has reportedly breached the security of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s Quickline Internet service and taken money from customers' accounts. Ajoy Ghosh, Unisys Australia architecture director, IT security consulting services, told ZDNet that this is not the first time Australian banks have been the subject of a security attack, saying that more than 20 banks were hacked into last year.
http://cms.zdnet.com.au:88/news/inte...0244375,00.htm

U.S. to cybercriminals: You're going down
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said federal officials would crack down on an increasing wave of cybercrime by beefing up 10 specialized units so they can better concentrate on catching hackers and pirates. The squads, dubbed Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property, or CHIP, units will focus on copyright theft, computer fraud and hacking. Ashcroft, speaking after meeting with Silicon Valley CEOs at VeriSign offices in Mountain View, Calif., said he wants to send a message to cybercriminals that they're not immune to prosecution.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Microsoft charity dispute draws attention
An Australian charity said it has received applause from around the world after standing up to Microsoft in a dispute over software licences. "It is clear that the international audience is concerned that a well known philanthropist company and its major stakeholder (Microsoft CEO Bill) Gates must understand that their hard line on charities is very damaging to their record," PCs for Kids president Colin Bayes said. The nonprofit organization said it has received overwhelming support on an international scale in regards to the software giant's refusal to support the charity. PCs for Kids recycles old computers and donates them to children. The organization reformats Windows 3.11 or Windows 95, both of which are no longer supported by Microsoft.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

China cracks down on Internet cafes
China has shut down nearly 2,000 Internet cafes across the country and has ordered 6,000 to suspend operations and make changes, state media said on Friday. Anonymous cybercafes are popular because they allow people to evade tough content laws, whose infringement is more likely to be traced by authorities when perpetrated on a personal homepage or message board. The Shanghai Daily said the move, China's second major clampdown on the popular cafes in a little more than a year, aims to regulate the Internet service market in line with rules set by the Ministries of Information Industry, Public Security, and Culture, and by the State Administration of Industry and Commerce.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

What Pops Up Must Come Down
The more advertisers shout, scream and try to coerce users to pay attention to them -- be it swooping shadows of Jurassic creatures hovering over text or jumbo-sized XCam2 pop-up ads -- the more software developers are shouting back with products to block them out. These programs come in a host of assorted flavors with names including AdsOff, Close Popup, Mr. KillAd, Advertising Killer, PopNot, AllGone, PopUp Hunter, Nagger, AdDelete, AdPurger, AdStopper, Pop-Up Stopper, Pop-Up Killer and PopUp Eraser. And since the arrival of the X10's XCam2 pop-ups, users are downloading and installing them in droves. According to CNET’s Download.com, the numbers are now in the hundreds of thousands.
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,45306,00.html

An Old City Turns to Technology
The Italians are going to extraordinary lengths to guarantee the safety of the world's top leaders in Genoa for the G8 conference of industrialized nations. But there are concerns other than security. Besides the heavy police and military presence, the hosts have to make sure that the medical facilities are up to the task of handling not only those inside the conference, but the hordes of demonstrators who have descended on the old port city as well. To that end, Ligurian authorities have cobbled together a network of seven local medical and communications companies to provide tech support to both the hospitals and Genoa's equivalent of the 911 system.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45350,00.html

Cosmos 1 Sails Into Space
A Russian nuclear submarine has successfully launched a prototype spacecraft that sails on the solar wind. But it is unclear whether results of the pioneering mission will ever be known because a "black box" data capsule that records details of the flight may never be found. Cosmos 1, a converted nuclear-missile carrying the first solar sail, was launched from a Russian submarine as it cruised beneath the Barents Sea on Thursday. The Cosmos 1 spacecraft is the first solar sail to be sent into space.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45414,00.html

Cryonics Over Dead Geeks' Bodies
Many geeks will survive death and go on to a glorious future -- assuming that medical science figures out a way to defrost and reanimate them. According to a new book, The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession and the Everlasting Dead, techies make up a large percentage of those who have signed up for cryonic suspension, an experimental procedure used to preserve legally dead bodies in the hopes that future medical breakthroughs will allow them to be brought back to life.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45188,00.html

Missing black hole forces galaxy rethink
Astronomers have found a galaxy that is missing a vital component at its heart - a supermassive black hole. The discovery challenges the prevailing view that these black holes are crucial to galaxy formation. Supermassive black holes have more than a million times the mass of the Sun and astronomers have found them in every one of the thirty or so galaxies they have examined, usually by observing the gravitational effect they have on stars. But David Merritt and colleagues at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US, have used the Hubble Space Telescope to image the centre of a disc shaped galaxy called M33. They calculated that the largest black hole it can possibly contain is thousands of times smaller than the smallest supermassive black hole.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991049

Second tourist aims for space holiday
South African information technology billionaire Mark Shuttleworth, 27, has said he intends to become the second tourist in space. He confirmed that he had undergone initial space training in Star City outside Moscow - the heart of the Russian space programme - but had yet to sign a contract. Andrei Maiboroda, a spokesman for the cosmonaut training centre, said Shuttleworth was undergoing a one-month orientation. If he goes into space, he will be the second fare-paying passenger the Russians have launched. US billionaire Denis Tito bought a ride into orbit earlier this year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1448711.stm

Civil Liberties Group Postpones Anti-Adobe Rally
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said today that it would postpone its plan to rally outside the headquarters of Adobe Systems pending the outcome of a Monday meeting between Adobe and EFF officials over the fate of detained Russian software developer Dimitry Sklyarov. EFF had planned to protest Adobe's participation in Sklyarov's arrest in a rally Monday at Adobe's San Jose, Calif., offices. EFF Online Activist Will Doherty said today that EFF would temporarily hold off on the march in hopes that Adobe would help secure Sklyarov's release. Sources for Adobe confirmed earlier this week that the company alerted the FBI to their concern that the "Advanced eBook Processor" - which Sklyarov developed - violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by allowing users to circumvent the security features in Adobe's Acrobat eBook Reader.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168198.html

Privacy Supporters Clash Over P3P
Although hailed by many as an important technological advance that will allow Internet users to exert more control over their personal data, the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), remains a source of debate within the privacy community as some leaders question its usefulness in safeguarding consumers. In a paper published last week by the Internet Law Journal, "P3P - An Imperfect Tool for Privacy," that debate is highlighted as author Yair Galil argues that the tool may give consumers a false sense of security. Galil further argues that P3P should not be viewed by lawmakers as a substitute for federal Internet privacy regulations.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168194.html

Get Ready To Pluck Your Data From Thin Air
Say goodbye to the personal computing era. Just on the horizon is the era that comes next — the personal information era. PI instead of the PC. Right now, when you think about your information (documents, spreadsheets, music, photos) and applications (Word, Excel, America Online, RealJukebox), they are one with your machine, which is almost always a PC or laptop. Though some of your stuff might be stored online, for the most part, data and machine need each other. To get your data, you have to have your machine. PI cuts the two apart. What becomes important to you is just your information, which is floating out there on a combination of networks and computers. You can get it, use it, run it or play it on any kind of machine or device anywhere you are — a computer in someone else's office, a terminal in a Starbucks, your home PlayStation, your mom's Palm and so on.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168184.html

Napster Time Way Down, Alternatives Emerge
Even before Napster shut down for repairs, time spent using the embattled song-swapper plummeted 70 percent in the U.S. and fell 65 percent worldwide between February and June, according to a survey of online file-sharing services released today. Meanwhile, Bodetella, Audiogalaxy and Imesh have emerged as rapidly growing alternatives for music downloaders, said the Jupiter Media Metrix study. The survey found that globally, total time spent using Napster fell 65 percent among home Web users in 14 countries surveyed, dropping from a peak of 6.3 billion minutes in February to 2.2 billion minutes in June. Unique users during the same period dropped 31 percent, from 26.4 million to 18.3 million.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168173.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Hey mr. Newsman - great work again. Here is a and cheers!

- tg

[walktalker]

Originally posted by TankGirl
Hey mr. Newsman - great work again. Here is a and cheers!

- tg

Yay, the blessing from the cute and smart TankGirl !

[mike4947]

Again here's your tip (BUMP)