The Newspaper Shop --Thursday night edition

[walktalker]

News are hot

Microsoft's open-source civil war?
Microsoft executives took a conciliatory tone as they went behind enemy lines to explain their views on open-source software. But Red Hat and others at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention gave them a hostile reception. Craig Mundie, senior vice president of advanced strategies at Microsoft, said in a speech at the convention in San Diego that his company is embracing several of the beneficial aspects of the open-source movement. But while stating that Microsoft didn't have anything against open source itself, he took issue with the General Public License that underlies much of the code-sharing movement. "Our concern about the GPL is strictly the fact that it creates its own closed community," Mundie said, referring to the license's requirement that new software being added to a GPL-governed program must also be governed by the GPL.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

Lawsuit challenges .biz 'lottery'
The rollout of new Internet top-level domain names hit a speed bump this week with the filing of a class-action lawsuit alleging that the operators of the new .biz domains are running an illegal lottery by charging customers for the chance to register a .biz name. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, alleges that NeuLevel, the operator of .biz, is running an illegal lottery by charging consumers for the chance to obtain the .biz name they seek. NeuLevel will randomize registrations for the same name before choosing only one. There is no guarantee applicants will get the name once .biz names go live on the Internet in October. The suit names as co-defendants the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages the Internet's domain name system.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

DOJ moves to block Microsoft rehearing
Government prosecutors on Thursday asked a federal appeals court to deny Microsoft's request that the court re-examine part of its antitrust ruling. In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld eight separate antitrust violations against Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash.-based company asked for rehearing on one: commingling. The appeals court found that Microsoft's commingling of Internet Explorer code with Windows 95 and 98 was an anti-competitive act. The government had until Aug. 3 to file its legal brief on rehearing.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

SirCam slowing, but threat lingers
The SirCam worm slowed its advance Thursday but remains a threat, antivirus experts warned. "The worst is over, but we won't see a huge drop-off yet," said David White, technical manager for British e-mail service provider MessageLabs. "It is still by far the most prolific virus that is currently spreading." Although the weekend saw a small drop in the rate of infection, the number of copies of SirCam caught daily by MessageLabs continued to grow early this week, topping 10,000 messages on both Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, that growth stopped. Though MessageLabs had not posted final numbers for the day, it had intercepted only about 4,000 worm-laden e-mails by midday.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Hotmail: How much filtering is too much?
A new spam filter for Microsoft's Hotmail service is not only bouncing $198 Florida land deals and instant diplomas from in-boxes, it's also thwarting e-mail sent from subscribers to themselves. One longtime Hotmail user discovered this to her chagrin when she plucked from her overloaded spam box a birthday reminder she'd forwarded to her own account through Hotmail's Calendar service -- two days after her friend Lexi turned 31. "It's not reasonable for me to look into my junk mail folder for reminders that I program Hotmail to send me," said Laura, a Boston-based attorney who has been a Hotmail subscriber since 1996. "I understand that some mail gets dumped inadvertently into my junk mail folder; but Hotmail's in a position to know that's not junk mail. It's their own service."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

SBC unfair on high-speed Net, ISPs charge
A group of Internet service providers in California filed a complaint with regulators Thursday that charges SBC Communications' Pacific Bell with unfairly trying to quash competition in the high-speed Net market. The complaint caps months of grumbling from ISPs, which say SBC has been favoring its own ISP and is forcing service providers to sign insulting -- and they say potentially damaging -- new contracts to keep offering DSL (digital subscriber line) service. Now the California ISP Association is asking regulators to step in and force SBC to let its own customers move to independent ISPs more easily. They're also asking regulators to prevent the phone company from turning off high-speed connections for ISPs that don't sign the controversial new agreements.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Net porn law challenge heads to court
A free-speech challenge to a federal law designed to protect children from pornography on the Internet is headed for trial next February after an appeals court panel refused on Thursday to dismiss the case. A three-judge panel from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a government motion to dismiss the challenge to the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000 that cuts off federal funding to schools and libraries that do not install software designed to block access to pornographic material on personal computers. Three dozen plaintiffs, headed by the American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, filed the challenge to the law in March, alleging it violated free-speech rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

The Webification of TV is happening
"I have seen the future of media. Rigid programming disaggregated into bite-sized chunks. Hypertextual pointers between content elements and between different media. Boundary-blurring. Interactivity. Digital graphics enhancing and transforming the live video experience. The latest product from AOL, TiVo or Microsoft? A research project at the MIT Media Lab? WebTV founder Steve Perlman's hyper-stealth start-up Rearden Steel? None of the above. I'm describing what I saw last night on...television. You know, television? The old-fashioned, monolithic, radio-with-pictures TV that we've had for decades?"
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1276-210...html?tag=bt_pr

Microsoft Ignores Those XP Tacklers
On July 24, Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) aimed a gun at Microsoft Corp.'s future. Calling the company's soon-to-be released Windows XP operating system a threat to America's economic health, he asked trustbusters to seek an injunction halting the launch of the new product. "You can't unring a bell," said Schumer. "If Microsoft proceeds with its current plans and releases XP, there may be no going back." Schumer's high-profile pronouncement has upped the ante for both sides in the now epic struggle between Microsoft and the government. So far, both state and federal officials have remained mum on whether they'll act on the Senator's call. No wonder. Such a momentous move would roil the tech industry -- and it's one that antitrust cops have backed away from in the past. A government source says attorneys general have discussed the possibility of an injunction with Justice Dept. antitrust chief Charles A. James but remain largely divided among themselves. "There are a lot of different points of view," says the source. "Nothing has been resolved."
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/...010726_629.htm

The humiliation virus
Sending a virus to friends, co-workers and family can be an exercise in humiliation. But Sircam, the latest sickness spreading on the Net, creates a whole new way to embarrass yourself online. Instead of simply sending copies of itself, which is what most viruses do, Sircam grabs a random document from your computer's hard drive, hides itself in the code, then passes on the infected document to everyone in your digital address book. That means any document on your hard drive is fair game for distribution to practically everyone you know. In other words, Sircam becomes a potential distributor of personal shame -- opening up the infected not just to a virus but also to ridicule, laughter and scorn. Many are cringing with shame as we speak. Here's a sample of possible worst-case scenarios.
http://salon.com/tech/log/2001/07/26/sircam/index.html

Verizon wants extension on E911 deadline
Verizon Wireless on Wednesday joined the growing number of telephone service providers that have asked for a delay in meeting an October deadline to have a system in place so police can locate a cell phone caller dialing 911. The carrier, which is the largest in the United States with 27 million subscribers, submitted a delay request to the Federal Communications Commission late Wednesday. "Wireless location capability, like any new technology, requires considerable time and effort by service providers, vendors and (police) to ensure that it will work in real-world situations," Verizon attorneys wrote in the request. "Only now are technically feasible complete solutions starting to become available, but this is not in time for Verizon Wireless -- or, it believes, any other wireless carrier -- to meet the deadlines in the rules."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Pop-under ads fail to catch buyers
As pop-under ads gain steam, they fall short of converting Web surfers into buyers, according to a new report released Wednesday. Research firm Jupiter Media Metrix found that camera maker X10 -- which uses pervasive pop-under ads that automatically open a browser window linked to the site -- had the most significant number of people that dropped out of its ad or Web site. While X10 has achieved a mass reach online, with 32.8 percent of the Web's entire audience between January and May, 73 percent of its visitors left the pop-under window or site within 20 seconds, according to Jupiter. The results, according to New York-based Jupiter, reveal that pop-under ads build brand awareness at the expense of brand affinity.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on

[walktalker]

FBI Net Center Blasted Again
It's been two months since congressional investigators said that a highly touted FBI Internet center was about as effective as Al Gore's presidential campaign. During a hearing Wednesday, a Senate panel concluded that the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center had made scant progress since the blistering report released in May. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the top Republican on the Judiciary technology subcommittee, suggested that the NIPC was not using agents contributed to the center from other agencies and said the problem "seemed to be a leadership issue." The panel's Democratic chairman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, called the NIPC "an important hole in our national infrastructure" that must be patched.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45552,00.html

Execs Want Privacy Policy for All
Officials of the companies that sell Chevy pickups, ThinkPad computers, Crest toothpaste and books online told Congress they all agree on one point: Any legislation regulating use of consumers' personal data should apply to every business, not just those conducting commerce on the Internet. The Federal Trade Commission has urged Congress to enact online privacy legislation, and some House Democrats expressed support for it at a hearing Thursday. But Rep. Billy Tauzin, (R-Louisiana), chairman of the House Commerce committee, was happy to hear the corporate executives from General Motors, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Amazon.com and Lands' End say that the Internet shouldn't be singled out in legislation.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,45587,00.html

AOL to Offer Bounty for Space on New PCs
AOL Time Warner Inc. is moving aggressively to take advantage of Microsoft Corp.'s tenuous legal standing, seeking deals with computer makers to target consumers with subtle and direct marketing pitches that would help AOL grab more control of the computer desktop. In internal AOL documents, the media giant lays out a strategy that calls on manufacturers to build into their new personal computers icons, pop-up notices and other consumer messages aimed at pushing aside Microsoft by giving AOL's own products prominent placement on PCs. It's the latest foray in an intensifying feud between the two technology titans over consumers and supremacy on the Internet.
http://www.washtech.com/news/media/11421-1.html

Older wireless tech could rival Bluetooth
An alternative wireless network technology to 802.11b and Bluetooth may emerge next year in the form of the broadband Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) standard. Dect is used extensively in cordless phones, but is not yet widely used in wireless LANs. The ETSI standards group is working to increase Dect's 2Mbit/s bandwidth to 20Mbit/s, above the 11Mbit/s of 802.11b and 721kbit/s of Bluetooth. This, combined with a much longer range, a clearer radio frequency spectrum and low-cost components, could make broadband Dect a powerful, reliable and low-cost technology for local and wide area wireless networks. Bill Pechey of consultancy firm Computancy said Dect is superior to 802.11b and Bluetooth in many respects, but its success will depend on hardware manufacturers adopting it.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Video toothbrush hunts 'debris'
A Japanese company is developing a video toothbrush to help people ensure they clean their teeth thoroughly. When food gets trapped in the teeth and gums it rots and causes bad breath and decay. Poor dental hygiene has also been linked to serious lung disease and problems with premature pregnancy. Regular brushing can reduce the risk of this happening, but it is not always that easy to locate every last scrap of food. Panasonic believes its new product may provide the answer. The company has developed an electric toothbrush which has a camera on a stalk next to the vibrating bristles, New Scientist magazine reports.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/hea...00/1456058.stm

Bionic suit takes pain out of lifting
Back injuries suffered by nurses from lifting heavy patients could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a bionic suit invented by Japanese scientists. The computer-opreated Power Assist Suit designed by scientists at Japan’s Kanagawa Institute of Technology is strapped onto the body and eases the strain of lifting patients. “Sensor pads taped to the major muscle groups calculate how much force you need to pick up a patient,” New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday. “As you lift, the sensors send data to a microcomputer that triggers the business end of the system — a bunch of concertina-like limb and body actuators powered by compressed air.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/605071.asp?0si=-

Faster and cheaper flash memory will empower tomorrow's grabbiest gadgets
Flash memory seemed like a miracle chip when it made its commercial debut a decade ago. A new type of electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), it did not need a constant supply of electricity to store data, unlike random-access memory (RAM). Packaged in standardized formats such as CompactFlash and SmartMedia, it has become ubiquitous in personal digital assistants, digital cameras and audio devices. Unfortunately, flash is more expensive to produce than RAM. And that has generally limited capacities of consumer-priced memory cards to 32 or 64 megabytes — confining in a world where 1-MB photographs routinely flit across the Internet. The highest-capacity type, called NAND for the type of logic gate it predominantly employs, also takes far longer to write data than do competing magnetic and optical alternatives. But cheaper and faster flash memory is on its way.
http://www.techreview.com/web/essex/essex072601.asp

Civil Liberties Group To Ask Feds To Free Programmer
Representatives of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will ask federal prosecutors to drop their case against detained Russian software developer Dmitry Sklyarov when they meet on Friday. "We want to show them that there's just no support for this (prosecution) at all," EFF Executive Director Shari Steele said today. Sklyarov was arrested earlier this month at a hotel in Las Vegas on charges that the "Advanced eBook Processor," which he created, violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by allowing users to circumvent e-book security features.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168396.html

Bills Aimed At Thwarting Online Sex Predators Unveiled
On the same day that Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., introduced a bill to impose mandatory minimum prison sentences on online child sex predators, Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., introduced two bills to prevent the same crime. The two bills come after a 15-year-old girl from Putnam's Florida congressional district, Lindsay Shamrock, flew to Greece after she was lured to Europe by an alleged German sex offender, Konstantin Baehring, via the Internet. According to the U.S. embassy in Athens, authorities found Shamrock on Jan. 31, in a Thessaloniki, Greece, apartment, after she had been missing for several months. Police said that Shamrock was found "unharmed," and Baehring was charged with misdemeanor charges, including "sheltering a minor."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168388.html

Legislation To Can Spam Would Kill Free Speech
If Congress moves to adopt any one of several pending bills to quash unsolicited commercial e-mail – a.k.a. "spam" – it could trample free speech and pave the way for "opt-in" privacy legislation, according to a study released today. "Even if corporate free speech is the initial target, media speech could easily end up in the crosshairs," wrote Clyde Wayne Crews, director of technology policy for The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C. "Spam legislation amounts to a stealth privacy bill, and in such an environment, regulation could lead to better-disguised spam, more annoying than today’s version." The study takes aim at a pair of House bills designed to curb the use of spam: one sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and another measure sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168401.html

Truce Is Over For Australian Software Pirates
The Business Software Association of Australia (BSAA) has announced that it has set the wheels turning on legal action against Queensland Internet service provider Logic-World and an unidentified "major" print and design company. The two companies will both face court this month, the BSAA said in a statement Wednesday. Ever-vigilant BSAA Chairman Jim Macnamara said other settlements and court actions would be announced in coming weeks. The announcement follows a two-month software truce.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168406.html

Piracy of online music widespread, study suggestsPiracy ???
Young Canadians are using CD burners to pirate music on a vast scale, a reality that is unlikely to change regardless of how the music industry reacts, according to the author of a study released yesterday. CD burners, which allow computer users to download MP3 digital music files from Napster-like sources, have been used by 11% of Canadians 12 and older, according to the survey conducted by Solutions Research Group Consultants Inc. The use of CD burners to record music is one factor in several that has rocked the music industry, said Kaan Yigit, research director of the study. "This is an extension of what we've seen in the last two years," he said. "These are all pieces of a bigger puzzle."
http://www.nationalpost.com/artslife...19/622170.html

More news later on...

[TankGirl]

WT, a great batch of news again - here's a for you!

- tg

Nice work. All the news that's fit to print.

Vive le Quebec libre!

[Bright Eyes]

well done, ma boy!