The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Assorted stories
Windows XP nears the finish line
Microsoft is preparing to clear an important hurdle for delivering Windows XP, but outside forces still could trip up the new operating system. The company on Saturday will issue Windows XP Release Candidate 2 -- the expected final testing version -- Microsoft Group Vice President Jim Allchin said Friday during a media conference call. But as Microsoft puts the finishing touches on the new version of the Windows operating system, the company faces a growing controversy over the new software. Rather than generating the excitement of the Windows 95 launch, where hordes of people lined up outside computer stores for early copies, Windows XP is the focus of competitive and government forces seeking to delay the new operating system's release.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdhpnews01

The truth behind the MS-open source fight
People who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable. I forget who said it first -- I always remember it from a speech by John F. Kennedy. He was talking about governments and their citizens. He might as well have been describing Microsoft and the residents of the industry it dominates so completely. You are doubtlessly aware of the debate over so-called "free software," of which the most visible proponent is the Linux community. However, the real debate isn't so much about technology as economic opportunity, about "little people" who feel disenfranchised and "big people" who don't understand what the fuss is all about.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/co...799071,00.html

Arrest may spark review of copyright law
He's an unlikely poster child for a movement to change a major U.S. law. But the plight of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, who was arrested last week, is again shining the spotlight on a controversial law designed to expand copyright protections into the digital age. Federal agents nabbed Sklyarov at the Def Con hacker conference in Las Vegas after he talked about a program that can crack Adobe Systems' e-book encryption. Prosecutors have filed criminal charges against him because they say the program violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law designed to protect copyrights in the digital age. The arrest has prompted protesters to march on Adobe headquarters and free-speech groups to swoop in and take his case. The Electronic Frontier Foundation met Friday with federal prosecutors in an attempt to get them to drop the charges, but the group did not succeed. And some lawmakers are taking a new look at the DMCA.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

You have not seen the last of SirCam
Antivirus experts expect the SirCam virus to take a breather over the weekend, but it may pick up new steam as vacationing Europeans return to work Monday. "Today looks like it's going to be our biggest day yet for this virus," Mark Sunner, chief technology officer at British e-mail filtering company Message Labs, said Friday. "It should drop off over the weekend, but I would imagine we'll see a big upsurge on Monday that will probably beat this week's numbers. "This one has a lot of staying power because it's using a multilevel approach," Sunner said. The SirCam worm, which surfaced last week, spreads by e-mailing copies of itself to everyone in the infected computer's Windows address book. It also sends itself to any e-mail addresses contained in the Web browser's cache files, which store recently viewed pages.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

'Code Red': What went wrong?
For one moment last week, the Internet stood still. At midnight Thursday, July 19 GMT, more than 350,000 servers infected with the so-called Code Red worm stopped hammering the Internet with scans searching for vulnerable computers. Instead, the servers targeted an Internet address used as the hub for the White House's public Web site with a denial-of-service attack of such proportions that some feared parts of the Internet would shut down, unable to cope with the unprecedented flood of data. "If this goes along what it's looking like, parts of the Net will go down," predicted Marc Maiffret, chief hacking officer at network-protection company eEye Digital Security. A month earlier, the Aliso Viejo, Calif., company discovered the flaw exploited by the worm in Microsoft's Web servers and was the first to decode the malicious program.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Feds will pursue Russian programmer case
Don't expect Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov to walk free anytime soon. Sklyarov, who is being held on criminal charges for allegedly violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was arrested at a hacker convention last week in Las Vegas after he gave a presentation about technology he created that can be used to crack Adobe Systems' e-books. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing Sklyarov, met with prosecutors in San Francisco on Friday, urging them to let him go. Though the EFF characterized the talks as "productive," the organization said in a release that "the U.S. attorney's office gave no indication of dropping the prosecution against Dmitry Sklyarov."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Digital rights company snags patent
Digital rights management company ContentGuard said Friday it has received a patent for a "digital ticket," which lets copyright holders distribute and track people's access to digital goods such as music, video, e-books and images. Bethesda, Md.-based ContentGuard, which is backed by Xerox and Microsoft, said the digital ticket is similar to the way a ticket in the physical world allows people to gain access to a concert or a baseball game. With a digital ticket, people can view an e-book or listen to music for a specific number of times without being locked down to a single device. ContentGuard said the digital ticket is a set of tamper-resistant codes that are put in a computer or embedded onto cell phone chips or plastic cards similar to credit cards. The code validates whether a person has certain rights to access specific digital content.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Net music faces patent squeeze
Online music companies may have a new headache to deal with after a recent court decision on a download-technology patent. While patent adversaries feud publicly over the terms of a confidential settlement and the significance of the ruling, the underlying suit could make it more expensive for companies including AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, RealNetworks and Amazon.com to offer streaming audio, music samples and other services over the Internet. The patent in question belongs to Intouch Group, a 15-employee digital music company in Berkeley, Calif., that has sued Amazon, AOL Time Warner's Entertaindom, Liquid Audio, Muze, Listen.com and Loudeye Technologies' DiscoverMusic, accusing them of infringing its patent covering a potentially wide range of downloadable and streaming music.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Intel aims Pentium 4 at the masses
A new chipset and aggressive pricing may finally push Intel's Pentium 4 processor -- now segregated in high-end PCs -- into the computing mainstream. Pentium 4 sales have lagged behind expectations since the processor was introduced late last year. But analysts say the forthcoming 845 chipset -- which will allow the Pentium 4 to work with standard SDRAM memory rather than with expensive Rambus DRAM -- combined with further processor price cuts should drive down Pentium 4 PCs to prices that will appeal to average consumers. Intel "did what it needed to do. The corporate market didn't want Rambus in the mainstream for better or worse," said Mike Feibus, principal analyst at Mercury Research, which recently bumped up its forecast for Pentium 4 shipments this year.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Laughing All the Way to the Bank
Justatip.com could have easily been just another dot-com casualty. The Web site, which enables users to e-mail colleagues, friends and foes, and even the boss anonymous "tips" about body odor, back hair, and other vexing problems, was a money loser. Big surprise. Four college students, whose only goal was to take their fondness for playing pranks into cyberspace, launched the site last July. There was no real business model to speak of. Just dudes, all avid readers of the humor rag The Onion, looking to have some fun. But the buzz on the site spread through America's dorm rooms and workplaces like an e-mail virus. Two weeks after Justatip's debut, the server that the founders were renting for a mere $50 a month crashed from all the traffic, forcing them to upgrade to a $600 monthly Web-hosting contract.
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz...010726_132.htm

Software scans crowd movement for trouble
Singapore scientists have created new software that may beef up future surveillance efforts by distinguishing between people's normal activities and suspicious behavior. The software, created by researchers at the Nanyang Technological University, can tell the difference between people walking, talking and acting normally, and abnormal behavior such as a fight or someone collapsing. The Singapore team recorded and classified 73 features of human movement, such as speed, direction, shape and pattern. The features were then used with existing "neural network" software, which can learn and remember patterns, to create a new program.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Will technology spawn cell phone backlash?
Image Sensing Systems was quietly going about its business making roadway traffic-management devices about two months ago when the king of Jordan called to complain about cell phones ringing in mosques while he prayed. King Abdullah was beside himself. He knew someone at the Minnesota-based company and called to suggest creating a product that could block cell phones from ringing. Within two weeks, the company had a working prototype for King Abdullah. Word got out about its product. This week, Image Sensing Systems said it had taken orders to ship about 5,000 of these devices to customers around the world.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Start-up to help profile Web surfers
A start-up wants to help Web publishers rake in more advertising revenue. Dave Morgan, the founder and one-time chief executive of Real Media, on Friday launched True Audience, a software company intended to help Web publishers boost advertising income by providing software that interprets audience traffic, the company said in a statement. Online ad revenue has plummeted across a host of Internet-based media companies, which have been scrambling to find ways to measure their audiences and to track the effectiveness of ads. The New York-based start-up builds technology that retrieves and aggregates audience data such as age, gender and ZIP code from various publishing applications that offer content, ads, e-mail, site registration and subscriptions. Web publishers can use that information to construct individual profiles of site visitors and thus identify specific segments of their audience for prospective advertisers.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

IBM lab simulates home of the future
Refrigerators that offer spoiled-milk alerts. Porch lights that home owners can turn off when they're away on vacation. Bathroom counters that announce whether it's safe to mix two medications. Such a future is now on display at an IBM lab in Austin, Texas, where researchers are testing new technology in a fully furnished living room, kitchen and garage. In the kitchen, a screen on the refrigerator door tells what's inside. Digital stoves and microwaves cook automatically, following recipes downloaded from the Internet. In the living room, a miniature, mobile wireless touch-screen replaces remote controls. Servers are built into the decor, allowing wireless devices, appliances, thermostats, security systems and computers to communicate with one another from anywhere.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Xbox's "Shrek" steals Microsoft show
It may not be the key to boosting profits at the world's largest software company, but a flatulent green ogre stole the limelight at Microsoft's annual pitch to Wall Street analysts. After hours of detailed presentations Thursday concerning Microsoft's lineup of upcoming software, the 350 analysts there were treated to new video games that will run on the company's highly anticipated Xbox console. In the first public showing of one exclusive Xbox title, Microsoft games chief Seamus Blackley played "Shrek," a game based on the hit animated movie from DreamWorks. Startling the audience, Blackley showed how players controlling the grumpy green ogre would accomplish missions by stunning their enemies with flatulence. By eating spicy peppers, Shrek can also emit fiery belches, which when combined with the flatulence can produce a gastrointestinal weapon of considerable power, Blackley said.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on... oh yeah... I just can't get a life

[walktalker]

Planet Doesn't Monkey Around
Few films set in the future say as much about life in the present as Planet of the Apes -- the original version, that is, which was made in 1968 and stars Charlton Heston as a tough-talking astronaut who, through some cosmic glitch, gets stranded in a world run by simians. The new Planet of the Apes, which is a slightly different retelling of essentially the same story, is far prettier than the 1960's version. Its apes are more apelike, and they're more imposing for it. But director Tim Burton's film is also far less challenging than the first Planet. Burton's version ends up only scaring us with fabulously violent visuals -- and while that seems scary enough, it's nothing compared to the really awful stuff, like the fact that human beings, armed with knowledge beyond their ethics, may one day destroy everything.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,45604,00.html

MS Scoffs at Windows Worries
Neither flood nor famine nor pestilence nor federal intervention will prevent Windows XP from being released on Oct. 25, according to Microsoft. In a conference call with reporters on Friday, Jim Allchin, Microsoft's vice president for Windows, said that concerns expressed by lawmakers and privacy groups about Windows XP are completely unfounded. "The product that I see written about is not the product that I'm building," he said. He also said the company expects to make the self-imposed deadline and has no contingency plans for the possibility that the government might seek an injunction against the release.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45619,00.html

India Hackers Scared Straight?
Indian hackers always thought they were too sophisticated to fall into the hands of the rough cops in this country, whom various human rights groups routinely accuse of brutality. But that feeling evaporated after one of the four people arrested recently in connection with a hacking incident accused Mumbai police of breaking his hand during interrogation. While the charge hasn't been substantiated, hackers in Mumbai admitted to being petrified. And the police, while denying the incident, don't sound too apologetic. It all started when 23-year old Anand Khare, who calls himself Dr. Neukar, gained control over ccicmumbai.com, the site of Mumbai cops' Cyber Crime Cell, or CCC. He pasted abuses and challenged them to catch him. They did. Three others were arrested and charged with helping Khare. One of them, Mahesh Mhatre, said an officer broke his hand during the interrogation. He also accused the police of torturing him.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45569,00.html

No More Periods, Period?
A new drug being developed would eliminate menstruation altogether, while still allowing women to get pregnant. Another drug would eliminate both periods and pregnancy. A paper published in the July issue of the Journal of Human Reproduction shows that in rhesus macaque monkeys, one drug stopped menstruation while still allowing pregnancy. Another version of it stopped both ovulation and menstruation. If the drugs, called progestin antagonists, are also successful in humans, they could treat women with the painful symptoms of endometriosis, a build-up of too much uterine lining that affects more than 5 million women in the United States. Women who have painful cramps or other problems with menstruation might also be candidates for the drug.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45589,00.html

Reps Warn Parents About Porn
The same technology that allowed Internet users to swap music can be used by children to locate hard-core pornography, and two congressmen are providing parents with some tips to keep it from happening. The programs, which have become popular since the legally embattled Napster began its decline and was finally knocked offline, can transfer much more than the music files that Napster was famous for. They can help users share any type of file, including pornographic movies. Reps. Henry Waxman (D-California) and Steve Largent (R-Oklahoma) released a report Friday alerting parents.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45611,00.html

Secrets of the Atom Revealed
You can find a lot of information on the Web, but you just couldn't find a decent picture of the subatomic universe online. Until now. Scientists at the Fermilab in Illinois, home to the world's most powerful atom smasher, announced Wednesday that data collected during the last big round of experiments into the depths of the atom is now available online. Using a Web interface called Quaero, particle physicists around the world can go online to test their own theories against Fermilab's data. About 500 scientists worked on the project. It's known as the DZero collaboration in honor of the five-story, 5,000-ton DZero microscope used to spot particles after an atom gets smashed.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45588,00.html

M.I.T. Physicist Says Pentagon Is Trying to Silence Him
A leading critic of the military's missile defense testing program has accused the Pentagon of trying to silence him and intimidate his employer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by investigating him for disseminating classified documents. The case has raised questions about whether a document can be considered secret if it is widely available to the public. And it has touched off a dispute between the critic, Theodore A. Postol, and M.I.T. over how to balance academic freedom with the university's obligations to cooperate with Pentagon investigators.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/27/politics/27MISS.html

Cell-phone jamming business takes off
Image Sensing Systems was quietly going about its business making roadway traffic-management devices about two months ago when the king of Jordan called to complain about cell phones ringing in mosques while he prayed. King Abdullah was beside himself. He knew someone at the Minnesota-based company and called to suggest creating a product that could block cell phones from ringing. Within two weeks, the company had a working prototype for King Abdullah. Word got out about its product. This week, Image Sensing Systems said it had taken orders to ship about 5,000 of these devices to customers around the world.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

‘Jam Echelon Day’ protest planned
Internet activists are planning an international day of protest on Oct. 21 in an effort to jam Echelon, the super-secret global surveillance system. But privacy experts warn the protest is unlikely to succeed. ORGANIZERS of the cyber-event are encouraging the Internet community to send as many e-mail messages as possible, containing certain “trigger words” that the Echelon system is believed to pick up on. They theorize that if monitored emails reach a critical mass, the Echelon intelligence system will be overworked. A list of 1,700 suspicious words — including “hackers”, “encryption” and “espionage” — have been listed on the Ciperwar Web site, to be included in email, telephone or fax communications on the “Jam Echelon Day.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/605596.asp?0si=-

Biotech's Glowing Breakthrough
These mice are glowing because scientists inserted a gene found in certain bioluminescent jellyfish into their DNA. That gene is a recipe for a protein that glows green when hit by blue or ultraviolet light. The protein is present throughout their bodies. As a result, their skin, eyes and organs give off an eerie light. Only their fur does not glow. Created by Tony Perry and Teru Wakayama at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., these mice draw attention to how powerful genetic engineering has become. They also underscore the importance of green fluorescent protein, or GFP. The glowing protein is now a widely used biological highlighter that helps scientists find and study genes more quickly. But few noticed when Osamu Shimomura, then a scientist at Princeton, discovered GFP 40 years ago.
http://www.forbes.com/2001/07/26/0726gfp.html

Something to watch over you
WARFARE in space was, for many years, science fiction. No longer. Even as hawks and doves argue about the ballistic-missile defence system (BMD, or “son of Star Wars”) that President Bush is proposing, the Space Warfare Centre of America's air force has been simulating war games in space. The details are classified, but an exercise was carried out in January at Schriever air force base in Colorado.This drove home the point that the senior ranks of America's forces take the prospect of space conflict within a decade or two quite seriously. America's defence is already critically dependent on space technology in the form of satellites. The country has about 150 defence-related machines in orbit at any given moment. These provide reconnaissance information, communications facilities and also the global-positioning system that allows a squaddie to locate himself on the earth's surface to within a few metres. What is more, if a ballistic-missile defence system is ever built, satellites will provide the “eye in the sky” that tells it when to go into action.
http://www.economist.com/science/dis...tory_ID=709428

Spacecraft set to catch the Sun's breath
A spacecraft designed to collect samples of the solar wind, the stream of electrically charged particles flowing from the Sun, is set for launch on Monday. To protect the precious solar samples upon return to Earth, NASA plans a dramatic helicopter rescue. Planetary scientists are keen to measure the atoms, ions and isotopes that make up the solar wind. "By sending this craft into space we hope to discover the starting material of the solar system," says Donald Burnett of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and leader of the Genesis project. The elements wafting from the Sun date back more than five billion years, when a cloud of gas and dust called a solar nebula collapsed and formed the nascent star we now call the Sun. The Sun's outer layer in effect contains a fossil record of its own creation, and the creation of the planets.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991084

Incoming FBI Chief Should Be Grilled On Privacy
An electronic privacy advocacy group is asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask tough privacy-related questions of Robert Mueller when they review his nomination to serve as FBI Director next week. In a letter Thursday to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) urged members of the committee to ask Mueller his stance on the FBI's use of the "Carnivore" e-mail surveillance devices and other emerging law enforcement technologies. "Given the increased public concern over the use of new and potentially invasive technologies by law enforcement agencies, it would be appropriate to solicit Mr. Mueller's views on this issue," EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg and General Counsel David Sobel wrote in the letter.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168456.html

Instant Messaging Isn't Everyone's Next Best Thing
"Instant messaging — the ability to zap text notes back and forth to people in real time — is supposed to be the greatest thing since Coke in a can or beer in a keg. IM users, as my colleague Alec Klein wrote yesterday, adore its convenience and lively immediacy. Microsoft plans to build an entire architecture of Web services around its messaging system. And hyperventilating industry analysts see the trend going nowhere but up. ("Will Instant Messaging Replace All Human Interaction?" asked the subject line of one news release, which I can only hope was written tongue-in-cheek.) So why do so some Internet users want nothing to do with it?"...
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168436.html

[walktalker]

ISPs Must Help Stop Hate Web Content
The number of extreme right-wing German-language Web sites has more than doubled in the past year, now totaling more than 1,000, according to a German politician who often speaks out against racist and hate-group material. Fritz Behrens, interior minister of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said that in an effort to stop the spread of hate Web sites, efforts would be intensified to convince Internet service providers to practice “self control” over content transmitted through their lines. Behrens, who made his comments in a statement released by his office, said Germany should and will use its laws to suppress the distribution of “fanatical propaganda,” even if that material is “disseminated by foreign Web servers.” Germany has strong free speech laws, except when it comes to racist and neo-Nazi material, whose distribution is illegal in Germany.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168444.html

First, Eat Your Rivals
Today, most of the digital music dot-coms have been swallowed up; Napster has been shut down in preparation for its relaunch as a paid service; and the labels are rolling out subscription services later this summer (or, more likely, this fall) with a slew of new names and high hopes. Vivendi Universal and Sony created Pressplay (nee Duet) and BMG, EMI and Warner are behind MusicNet. The labels are also slowly warming up to independent services such as FullAudio, Uplister and Streamwaves. But just like last time, major-label digital music revolution 2.0 appears poised to become another failure. The recording industry is asking consumers to try out a whole new concept of music ownership. Through the services now in the works, most popular music wouldn't be owned at all. Rather, songs would be rented by the month. Consumers would pay a monthly flat fee for access to a predetermined number of songs. Once they stop paying the fee, the downloaded files stop working. It's hard to see how this scheme will add up. The average consumer spends about $90 a year for six CDs and gets to keep them forever, says Gartner Group analyst P.J. McNealy. The new subscription services will ask consumers to pay about $120 a year - and come away with nothing.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,28275,00.html

Spawn of Napster: how the Record Industry screwed it up
Ethan Weinberg is the kind of music fan the record industry doesn't like to hear about. Since a judge ordered Napster in March to block copyrighted songs, the Princeton University junior has become a devotee of peer-to-peer music sites Audiogalaxy and BearShare. "Only if they were shut down would I resort to paying a minimal fee," he says. Or, more likely, he would turn to one of the other free alternatives now reaching critical mass. By crushing Napster without immediately jumping online themselves, record labels created a void that a string of spunky startups has been more than happy to fill. There's Gnutella and the services that piggyback on its decentralized network, LimeWire and BearShare. Then there's iMesh playing the field from Israel and Netherlands-based FastTrack licensing its surging peer-to-peer technology to two other services, MusicCity and KaZaa.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,28280,00.html

Web Radio's Battle Royalty
The recording industry will face off against Webcasters on Monday in the first day of what promises to be spirited testimony over royalty rates for Internet radio. The recording industry, represented by the Recording Industry Association of America, is asking an independent panel to set a royalty rate in the neighborhood of .004 cents per song streamed. Webcasters, represented by the Digital Media Association, will argue for 1/30th of that rate, or .0015 cents per listener hour. The six-month arbitration process will include testimony from 60 witnesses, including Alanis Morissette; representatives from all five of the major labels - Sony, Warner Music, Bertelsmann's BMG, Vivendi Universal and EMI; broadcasters such as Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting; and Internet companies such as Launch Media, Spinner, MTVi and Live365.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,28319,00.html

With Napster Weakened, RIAA Hopes To Settle Landmark Lawsuit
As injunction blocks sharing of copyrighted music, RIAA head feels trial is unnecessary. After driving Napster to its knees in court, the music industry is ready to settle its copyright infringement lawsuit against the now-crippled file-sharing service. Hilary Rosen, president of industry trade group the Recording Industry Association of America — which led the fight against Napster — said Thursday that since a judge has already issued an injunction ordering the service to block copyrighted music, going to trial is unnecessary. Rosen declined to say whether the RIAA has already begun negotiating a settlement with Napster.
http://www.sonicnet.com/news/digital...445467&index=0

Pirate versions of ‘American Pie 2’ hit Net before U.S. movie release
Two weeks before its U.S. box office release, pirated copies of the movie ‘American Pie 2,’ Universal Studio’s sequel to the 1999 hit comedy, are circulating on the Internet on underground file-sharing services. AMERICAN PIE 2’ is scheduled to make its global debut August 10 in the United States, but Reuters has learned that digital versions of the movie are being exchanged between Internet users’ computer hard drives. Universal, a division of Vivendi Universal, was not immediately available for comment. The movie, which has been compressed into a format called DivX, has been trafficked through a popular so-called peer-to-peer file exchange service Hotline, the main product of Toronto-based Hotline Communications Ltd. This technology was developed to transfer large data files, but people who download it have used it to share pirated materials.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/606173.asp?0dm=C12NT

A movie palace on steroids
A U.S. Army Humvee collides with a civilian vehicle in Kosovo, injuring a small child. As a crowd gathers, the young lieutenant in charge must comfort the distraught mother, make a series of difficult decisions or face disastrous consequences. Though the accident is merely a training exercise, it’s no ordinary simulation. In this scenario only the officer is real; the rest are computer-generated characters that can synthesize speech and respond with humanlike gestures and emotions. It’s the first production from the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), a collaboration between the U.S. Army, University of Southern California computer scientists and Hollywood. But ICT promises something grander than simply improving how our fighting forces are trained: it offers a glimpse of what gaming and entertainment will look like on tomorrow’s high-speed networks.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/605150.asp?0dm=C1BNT

Windows ME memory leak
Even though PC memory is literally a dime a dozen nowadays, it is still a finite resource that users want to make the most of. That’s why BugNet took particular interest in reports of a memory leak in Windows Me. With help from our testing partner KeyLabs, BugNet was able to reproduce conditions that cause memory to be allocated, but not freed when the application is closed. The bug, which has been confirmed by Microsoft, would create a condition where the PC could become intolerably slow or unstable.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/606135.asp?0dm=C13NT

[walktalker]