The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

Tons of goodies today... as every day
Antitrust: Win XP threatened with delay
Lawmakers, trustbusters and competitors are turning up the heat on Microsoft, indicating they could seek to delay the company's Windows XP operating system, due to ship in October. During a Tuesday press conference, Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked federal and state trustbusters to consider taking action that would delay Windows XP's release. He also called on Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to hold hearings on the matter. Also on Tuesday, software maker InterTrust amended an existing lawsuit against Microsoft, asking for an injunction against Windows XP. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company charges that controversial product-activation technology found in Windows XP violates four InterTrust patents.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

.Net: Microsoft targets college students
Microsoft hopes to recruit a new wave of developers loyal to its technology from colleges and universities. The software maker plans to ship software development tools aimed at college-level computer science students, a move the company hopes will result in a new wave of software programmers loyal to its technology. Microsoft on Tuesday announced plans to ship by year's end a version of its forthcoming Visual Studio.Net tools with features specifically targeted to educational use. Visual Studio.Net is the new version of Microsoft's development tools that will allow people to write and build Web-based software and services.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

NASA robot to use Linux, Pentium III
NASA's Ames Research Center is building a "personal satellite assistant", powered by a Pentium III with the Linux operating system, to help out astronauts on space shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) missions. The robot is a six-inch sphere inspired by the sparring droid that Luke Skywalker fights in the movie "Star Wars", but NASA engineers say its functionality is closer to the "tricorder" tool used in Star Trek: it senses the pressure and temperature of the ambient atmosphere, and detects concentrations of gases like carbon dioxide and oxygen. It will also contain fans for movement and video cameras for sight, and will be able to be controlled from the ground, making it possible for mission controllers to have a "virtual presence" in orbit. Engineers also envision speech capabilities, a small LCD screen for displaying lists and a wireless network connection to the on-board computer.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Study: Women drivers do the talking
Highway-safety officials say about 3% of the drivers on U.S. roads at any time of day are talking on hand-held cellphones. The survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found most of these 500,000 talkers are drivers of sport-utility vehicles and minivans on the road during nonrush hours. Female drivers are more likely than male drivers to talk on their mobiles, with female drivers of light trucks almost twice as likely to use their cellphones as males driving the same type of vehicles. User rates were higher for drivers during the week than on weekends, and more suburban drivers than rural ones used phones.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Disney moves to block movie trailers
The company that brought you "Lady and the Tramp" and "Pinocchio" is cracking down on online movie trailers, sparking a legal case that could help clarify how far film studios can go to compete with retailers by selling their own products on the Web. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, a unit of Disney, will go to court next week to ask a judge to stop trailer distributor Video Pipeline from providing some parts of its movie trailers online. Buena Vista, which is trying to increase its share of the home-video retail market, hopes to become a major online destination for people who want to buy its movies. If the company succeeds in getting a preliminary injunction, online movie retailers such as Netflix and others might not be able to offer some movie previews to their customers.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Wiring the help: My butler, my robot
The Jetsons had it easy. After a refreshing ultrasonic shower, old George could dial up a dinner, delivered by a fork-tongued robot maid. While Rosie's attitude may not be on the menu just yet, you might be surprised to learn how far the home robot has come in the last decade. No longer glorified toys for children, personal robots are on the loose — and they only want to help. Today's robots can mow the lawn, serve drinks, and vacuum the floor. Some even climb stairs and negotiate roomfuls of furniture to make your life easier. And these mechanical servants don't just mutely multitask. Many include digital video cameras and teleconferencing technology, letting you look around the house, make sure the kids are doing their homework, and chat with the baby-sitter — all via remote computer connection. Some robots are capable of recognizing your voice or face, responding to verbal commands, and even showing "emotions."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...781505,00.html

TV to double as digital-photo frame
Sharp unveiled on Tuesday a television built into a liquid-crystal display that can double as a digital-photo frame via a PC card slot. The TV set, added to Sharp's low-cost Aquos line of LCD TVs, is part of the company's aim to build flat-panel TVs into a core profit maker. "You no longer have to turn on your PC to see digital photos. It's an alternative to PCs that fits more nicely into a living room," Toshishige Hamano, a Sharp corporate executive director, told a news conference in Tokyo. LCD TVs are thin enough and light enough to hang on a wall or move around easily, and manufacturers hope their slender frame will make them a hit in Japan's notoriously cramped living spaces.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Radio Free Virgin partners with RioPort
Internet radio service Radio Free Virgin on Tuesday said it has inked a deal with Internet music service provider RioPort to offer music fans the ability to buy digital music. Under the deal, the companies will offer a co-branded digital store at Radio Free Virgin, which will let listeners purchase a single download or an entire digital album provided by RioPort, or a hard copy through the Radio Free Virgin store. The announcement is the latest sign that companies and record labels are changing the face of online music by attempting to woo music fans from free file-swapping services. Last week, Scour.com, known as one of the early pioneers of controversial file-swapping services, partnered with online radio-programming provider RadioCentral to offer music fans Internet radio stations.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

No easy way to protect content
The arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov highlights the turmoil that the Internet has created in businesses intent on protecting their content. Businesses must find the right mixture of technical and tactical approaches. For allegedly writing software that could crack the copy protection used in Adobe Systems' e-book format, Sklyarov was charged with violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Sklyarov's arrest represents the lengths to which content owners will go to protect their copyrights -- whether the material is in digital form or hard copy. Publishers of software and digital books and music feel a growing threat to their businesses from an Internet environment that favors easy access and free content. Accordingly, they have become more aggressive in taking legal action against those they deem copyright violators. This approach largely represents a rearguard action.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201...html?tag=cd_mh

Playing on a TV near you
A TV ad shows Martin Luther King Jr. entoning "I have a dream," and then the camera pulls back to reveal an empty Washington Plaza as TV viewers hear: "Before you can inspire, before you can touch, you must first connect. And the company that connects more of the world is Alcatel." Alcatel makes equipment for international telecom carriers such as Deutsche Telekom, AT&T Latin America and Telecom Italia, and it's a safe bet that most TV-watching consumers will never see an Alcatel product. Yet the company has invested millions into an ad campaign that includes print and TV spots. And Alcatel is not alone. Other technology companies such as Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, EMC and Applied Materials also have embarked on pricey TV advertising campaigns. Applied Materials will spend $30 million on a campaign that will run until the end of this year.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_pr

Napster names new CEO for next phase
Napster on Tuesday tapped Konrad Hilbers, a Bertelsmann executive, as its new chief executive, replacing Hank Barry. Hilbers, who will lead the embattled music-swapping company into its new incarnation as a membership-based service later this summer, was most recently the executive vice president and chief administrative officer of BMG Entertainment, Bertelsmann's music division. With Tuesday's appointment, Barry steps down after serving as Napster’s "interim" chief for the past 13 tumultuous months at the company. He will remain on Napster's board of directors. "Napster and its founder Shawn Fanning created a cultural paradigm shift, using the Internet to bring together through file sharing the largest group of music fans ever assembled," Hilbers said in a statement. "
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

It's only the beginning

[walktalker]

New Napster Chief Looks Ahead
Napster may be dead, but its new CEO proclaimed the music-swapping service will live a long time. Appearing in public within hours of the news that he was tabbed to replace interim CEO Hank Barry, Konrad Hilbers didn't reveal much in his first day on the job. But he told a packed hall of music and technology executives at Jupiter Media Metrix's Plug.In Forum that the "Napster brand cannot be killed." Furthermore, Hilbers, the former chief administrative officer of BMG Entertainment and former CEO of CompuServe, said Napster is "on the track toward becoming a legitimate service ... that rewards artists and copyright holders."
http://www.wired.com/news/exec/0,1370,45504,00.html

Sklyarov Release in Feds' Hands
Hundreds of hackers, programmers and system administrators decamped from their cubicles on Monday and took to the streets to argue, in dozens of different ways, that Dmitry Sklyarov should not be in jail for creating code-breaking software. Some geekavists, who turned out in at least 10 cities, targeted FBI and Justice Department offices. The largest crowd, with about 100 demonstrators, marched on the San Jose headquarters of Adobe Systems, whose copy protection scheme Sklyarov has been charged with penetrating. Board members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has taken up Sklyarov's cause, were meeting behind closed doors with Adobe to try to broker a deal that would let the 27-year-old Russian avoid a trial. It seemed to work. After over two hours of tense talks that began at 11 a.m. PDT, Adobe and EFF negotiators struck a deal: Adobe would agree to recommend Sklyarov's release. It was not just a preliminary victory for geek activism, but music to the ears of the Free-Dmitry activists who were hoping that Monday's unusual public outcry would prompt Adobe to say precisely that.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45484,00.html

Human Cloning Ban Advances
Legislation to outlaw creation of cloned human embryos cleared a U.S. House of Representatives committee on Tuesday over objections from Democrats who said the bill's broad scope would hinder promising medical research. The measure written by Florida Republican Rep. Dave Weldon would make it a federal crime to clone humans for reproduction or research with embryos. Punishment would include fines and up to 10 years in prison. The House Judiciary Committee voted 18-11 to approve the measure, with all yes votes coming from Republicans and all Democrats voting no.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45511,00.html

Plug.In Tunes In to Kids
There's a rule in show business -- never follow the kid act. The first day of Plug.In, the music and technology conference hosted by Jupiter Media Metrix and Billboard magazine, showed why. In a day filled with high-powered rhetoric from high-powered executives and opinion leaders, a panel of teens -- mostly Jupiter analysts' young relatives and their friends -- stole the show with their down-to-earth opinions of the music business that tries so hard to cater to them. Typical of the teens' performance was a response to a question about MTV: "Back in the day, it had music and it was good. Now it's crap," said Dan, a 17-year-old Long Islander. When a stuffed-shirt later asked, "What's your favorite way to consume music?" the panel erupted in giggles as Dan, 17, pantomimed stuffing his face. Once they settled down, the teens made smart comments about how they all prefer live shows to studio recordings. And how they liked trading live show bootlegs on Napster "before it died."
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,45477,00.html

Sounds From the Satellite
It used to be the province of a few lonely scientists who strained to catch strange sounds broadcast from outer space. But this fall, U.S. residents who tune in with special radios will hear different sounds beamed from space -- like Nashville honky-tonk, BBC news and the chatter of teen-age talk shows. On Tuesday, broadcaster XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., one of two satellite radio companies licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, announced a cavalcade of radio programming for its coming 100-channel service. The Washington-based company plans to expand service to the Southwest in October, and across the rest of the nation except for Alaska and Hawaii by November.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45520,00.html

Famous Photos Frozen Forever
Talk about creepy. Bill Gates' minions are currently laying the floor for a 10,000 square foot, tomblike facility in rural Pennsylvania to preserve, in part, an image of Albert Einstein's tongue. It's the future home of the Bettmann Archive, a renowned collection of more than 11 million historic photographs and negatives -- including such iconic images as Einstein sticking out his tongue and the Wright Brothers in flight. It's a symbolic declaration that physical photographs are dead and should literally be buried. Gates' plans call for more than mere burial. The Bettmann Archive will be stored in specially engineered, subzero rooms -- a first in the history of photo preservation.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45379,00.html

AOL Begins to Explore IM Sharing
AOL Time Warner Inc. said Monday that it has recently begun an internal test to open its coveted instant-messaging service to rivals, and it remains on track to launch a trial with another firm later this summer. The long-awaited trial could lead the way for a major overhaul in instant messaging, allowing different services to communicate in one massive network. Instant messaging allows Internet users to receive notes almost as fast as they are sent. The notes appear as pop-up windows on a user’s computer screen. AOL said its trial involves a "leading technology company" it did not name in a report to the Federal Communications Commission. The New York media giant said it is drafting a contract to address such issues as system-performance requirements and cost sharing.
http://www.washtech.com/news/media/11362-1.html

Noisy solution to crime problem
Scientists in Britain have developed a new kind of noise which they hope will help to catch criminals. Leeds University
It is already being used to make security alarms more effective, and to stop mobile phone users being confused by other people's phones ringing. The new sound has been developed by Professor Deborah Withington of Leeds University, UK, for use in conjunction with security cameras. It works by using a rich mixture of frequencies that enables listeners to pinpoint exactly where it is coming from.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1454737.stm

Technology thins the plot
Modern telephony has robbed film and TV thrillers of many tried and trusted plot devices writes BBC News Online technology correspondent Mark Ward Distraught parents cling to each other on the sofa. Flanked by frowning detectives, the couple stare at their phone waiting for the kidnappers to call. The dramatic logic of countless films and TV shows demand that the kidnapper must talk for at least 30 seconds to allow the call to be traced. But always the taunting villain hangs up before being pinpointed. Well, no longer. Caller ID has made all calls instantly traceable.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_...00/1452800.stm

Fault-Tolerant File Storage
For Marvin Theimer, it all started with an earthquake. The aftermath of 1989's massive Loma Prieta earthquake in Silicon Valley "was sort of surreal," Theimer remembers. "I got in my car and had my radio on . . . silence! The radio stations within a 20-mile radius were out." And so were almost all the computers. That earth-shaking experience got Theimer, then an operating systems researcher at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, thinking about how to make computer file storage systems radically more fault tolerant. His work has helped to lead to Farsite, a fail-safe storage technology being created at Microsoft.
http://www.techreview.com/web/johnst...ston072401.asp

More news very very soon, my dear readers

[walktalker]

Hackers Hit Again With Hitler Mustache, Music
A cyber-battle has broken out between Austria's right-wing Freedom Party (FPOE) and Web site hackers. The hackers have struck the FPOE's Web site a second time; this time, it was not only a defacement, as occurred over the weekend, but an audio-visual attack: defacement plus an audio feed added to the Web site. As reported Monday by Newsbytes, hackers gained access Saturday to the home page of the Salzburg branch of the party posting a photo of the party's former leader – Joerg Haider – bearing a Hitler-like mustache drawn on his face. Robert Bammer, a spokesman for the FPOE in Salzburg, told Newsbytes Monday that technicians were having trouble removing the page.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168290.html

Stolen Program Cracks BSD Servers
A free operating system used by thousands of Web sites has a serious new security hole that is being exploited by hackers, according to the developers of FreeBSD. An advisory released Monday by FreeBSD.org says that a bug in the Telnet program included with FreeBSD and related operating systems can allow remote attackers to gain complete control of the Web server. A listing at the FreeBSD site reveals that the operating system is used by high-profile companies including Yahoo, Sony and Microsoft's Hotmail. The Telnet daemon is enabled by default on all FreeBSD installations, "and is being actively exploited in the wild," according to the advisory. Telnet is an Internet protocol that allows a computer user to log onto another computer terminal remotely. The program commonly is used by administrators to remotely control Web servers.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168280.html

Napster Still No. 1, Other Sites Gain In Popularity
Embattled file-swapping service Napster has managed to retain its title as the most popular file-sharing site, but according to a new study, competitors are gaining ground - especially with Napster's recent legal troubles. The study was released today by Nielsen//NetRatings, an Internet audience measurement service from Nielsen Media Research, ACNielsen eRatings.com and NetRatings Inc. For the seven-day period ending July 15, Napster had just over 2.6 million unique visitors to its site, Nielsen//NetRatings said. The number of visitors was down 36 percent from the measurement period eight weeks earlier, May 21 to 27, when Napster drew over 4 million surfers. Of course, Napster's legal status has been a major factor in the drop in visitors. The file-swapping service has been the target of numerous lawsuits alleging copyright infringement.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168243.html
http://iwsun4.infoworld.com/articles...nnaprivals.xml

Morissette Equates Artists' Rights With 'Woman's Right To Choose'
Alanis Morissette stopped publicly unleashing her fury at ex-boyfriends after Jagged Little Pill, but the singer/songwriter has found a new target for her ire: the music industry. In a speech delivered Monday morning at the online music conference Plug.In, Morissette called for artists to band together and fight what she described as the increasingly profit-driven atmosphere at record companies. "Many of the most widely respected artists of the last 30 years would be dropped from their record labels in today's current climate," Morissette said. She argued that labels' bottom-line focus is depriving artists of the chance to experience "natural ebbs and flows" in their careers. More importantly, she said, the music industry is making it increasingly hard for unknown artists to reach the public and make a living.
http://www.sonicnet.com/news/digital...445351&index=2

Payola City
As a recent series of articles in Salon has made clear, payola is alive and well in the music business. But urban radio remains a world apart, the Wild Wild West of the music industry. In the world of white pop and rock radio, virtually everything on the air is bought and paid for, but in an increasingly corporatized way, with the money going to the station's budget. In urban radio, by contrast, the cash still goes into the personal bank accounts of powerful programmers and consultants, sources say. Crucial airplay "reports" to the industry's trade magazines, sources say, are up for sale. Some stations are paid for songs that are never even played on the air. And as for the money, these same sources say the business is rife with overnighted packages stuffed with cash and shipped off to recipients with phony names, or money orders made out to programmers and sent to home addresses.
http://www.salon.com/ent/music/featu...dio/index.html

Save Java!
Clay Shirky didn't fret when Microsoft announced last week that it would no longer include the Java Virtual Machine in its upcoming Windows XP operating system. The Hunter College professor and Net pundit understood that the move could hurt competition and diversity on the desktop. He also knew that the company's abandonment of the JVM, which lets computers run applications written in the Java computer language, threatened to make it harder for Java programs to proliferate. How many users would bother with Java programs if they had to download the JVM to use them? How many programmers, given the additional hurdle, would write Java programs when they couldn't be sure of who would access them? Would Microsoft successfully cut off Java's air supply as it had done to so many other competitors? While others pondered the fate of Java, Shirky saw an opportunity: He figured that PC manufacturers could trump the software giant.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ava/index.html

Fireball rattles the East Coast
James Mennig’s story of what he saw Monday evening was so incredible his own mother didn’t believe him. To him, the bright lights in the skies above Pennsylvania looked like a plane engulfed in flames. But authorities said it was likely a meteor shower or phenomenon known as a fireball or “bolide.” People from Virginia to Canada said they saw the lights and heard loud noises. This is a natural event, which is called a bolide or a fireball. It is similar to the shooting stars you see sporadically at night in its appearance, but as far as the physical nature of this object is concerned it’s quite different from the periodic meteor showers we get,” U.S. Naval Observatory spokesman Geoff Chester said.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/586894.asp?0dm=C17PT

DVD Forum to stamp out region-crackable players
The DVD Forum, the movie and consumer electronics business-backed consortium that controls the DVD standard, has begun taking steps to eliminate Chinese-made players and drives that play fast and loose with DVD region encoding. Its tactic: to threaten Taiwanese DVD player makers with legal action to enforce a ban on all unofficial DVD products, the prohibition to take effect on 1 October. To beat the ban, consumer electronics companies must have their DVD machines certified by that date. After that, if they haven't been certified by the DVD Forum, they will have to cease using the 'DVD' logo on their products.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/20589.html

Infamous porn site gets a hacker makeover
The Stile Project, a gross-out comedy-cum-sex site that has grown infamous on the Net, claims to have been defaced. The home page of the site, which won a Webby award in the weird category last year and has a cult following, was replaced by a profane message from hacker Fluffy Bunny, which featured a toy pink rabbit sticking its arse in the air. Charming, especially when you consider its bottom clearly needed wiping, and the people behind the Stile Project (which some describe as postmodern pornography) aren't amused. A rant from the site's administrator, Stile, threatens dire (and depraved) retribution against Fluffy Bunny, who is best known as the hacker who caused chaos by breaking into the servers of SourceForge and the Apache Project earlier this year.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/20615.html

Well, it's all for today... enjoy your reading!

[ab-NORM-al]

good reads...thanks WT!!!

[walktalker]

Originally posted by ab-NORM-al
good reads...thanks WT!!!

You're welcome