The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

Mondays mondays mondays

Users to pay for most XP upgrades
In the past, most PC makers offered free upgrades to a new operating system in the months leading up to the launch of an OS. But don't expect one for Windows XP. Instead, owners of most recently purchased PCs will need to pay $15 to $30 for a coupon to get a copy of XP once Microsoft's operating system is released Oct. 25. Compaq Computer was the first PC maker to break ranks and offer the OS upgrade for free. Compaq announced late Thursday that it will include a coupon with every PC it sells, allowing customers who bought a computer as of Sept. 1 to get the upgrade at no cost.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

Smart phones -- not as quick as they seem?
The so-called smart phones that will flood North America in the next several months may be too smart for their own good. The cell phone industry is about to unleash a wave of new phones that are capable -- at least theoretically -- of tasks ranging from e-mail retrieval to video and music streaming. These combination cell phones/personal digital assistants include the Nokia Communicator, which debuts mid-2002 and will let consumers wirelessly download video e-mails. Microsoft's Stinger-based phones will be unleashed in March with a specially designed Web browser and a way to get to corporate e-mails on the go. But consumers who shell out the extra cash for these phones -- some costing $500 -- will have to wait, in some instances for years, to use all the features in the ways that the manufacturers intended.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

States warn DOJ: Keep the heat on MS
Two states participating in the Microsoft antitrust case have a message for the Justice Department: If you go soft on the software giant, we're ready to push for stronger sanctions on our own. Breaking ranks with the government camp: New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer and California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who late last week said that they are "committed to pressing the trial court for stringent remedies that will change the conduct by Microsoft that the courts have found to be illegal, and that will provide consumers with the benefits of competition." Such a move by the two states, which have the resources to pursue separate actions against Microsoft and which have been among the leaders of the coalition of 18 states arrayed against the software company, could add to the challenge of obtaining a fast remedy or eventually settling the case.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Via countersues Intel
Taiwan microchip designer Via Technologies on Monday began fighting back against an Intel legal action with a barrage of its own lawsuits, including accusations that Intel has violated Via patents, violated Chinese fair trade law and willfully destroyed Via property. Via plans to file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging that the Pentium 4 processor and 845 chipset -- introduced today -- violate Via patents. "Intel processors and the Intel Pentium 4 processor compatible 845 chipset infringe VIA's patents," commented Richard Brown, Via's director of marketing, in a statement. "Starting today, VIA will begin filing a series of patent infringement lawsuits and civil actions in the Taiwan and U.S. courts seeking damages and injunctive relief."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

DivX seeks profitable, legal path
A dark-horse competitor is joining the bitter battle over Internet video standards, promising to bring an MP3-like challenge to market leaders Microsoft and RealNetworks. Known as DivX, the technology has until now has been most closely associated with growing piracy of Hollywood movies on the Internet. But DivXNetworks, the company behind the format, is determined to put its bootleg past behind it and become a viable purveyor of legal downloads and full-blown video-on-demand services.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=tp_pr

IBM cuts price of tiny hard drive
IBM on Monday shrunk the price of its smallest hard drive, the Microdrive. The Microdrive is a one-inch hard drive that acts as removable storage and fits into a CompactFlash Type II slot found in consumer gadgets such as digital cameras, MP3 players and handheld computers. IBM cut prices by as much as 32 percent. The company lowered the price of its 1GB drive to $379. The 512MB version now costs $259, and the 340MB version is $199. The cuts come as more manufacturers are beginning to support the Microdrive, IBM spokesman Michael Kuptz said.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Cell phone users want driving restrictions
Three out of four adults in the United States favor laws to curb the use of cellular telephones while driving, a survey released Monday by a highway safety group showed. Though nearly two out of three people surveyed report owning a cellular phone, the Louis Harris poll found a lopsided 76 percent backed restricting their use by drivers except in emergencies. In addition, cell phone use in vehicles topped the list of concerns that people wanted addressed, closely followed by drunk driving and improving safety at intersections. The poll of 1,001 adults was conducted between July 1 and July 19 for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, an alliance of consumer, health, safety and insurance groups working to make U.S. roads safer.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Where do old computers go to die?
Eli Freedman makes no bones about it. He's a high-tech junkman and he's proud of the title. Actually, he's vice president of operations for Hi-Tech Recycling Canada, a computer and electronics recycling outfit based in Toronto. Like a growing number of entrepreneurs, Freedman has been able to develop a lucrative business by helping to clean up what he describes as an environmental mess in the making: the disposal of obsolete computer systems. Indeed, the disposal and recycling of computer products has become an increasingly controversial issue as municipalities concerned about the potential of toxic danger close their landfill sites to dumping. With branches in Los Angeles; Vancouver, British Columbia; and Montreal, Hi-Tech Recycling has prospered since its founding in the mid-1980s as a family business.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1014-201...html?tag=bt_bh

Proliferation of tiny wireless cameras worries privacy advocates
Peter Karlson, a Boston-area technology executive, bought an X10 wireless color video camera shortly after he drove up the driveway to his Cape Cod vacation house and discovered that a fallen tree had been leaning on his garage for a whole week. Now he has two X10 cameras so he can monitor his Cape house from a computer in his Boston-area home. Visitors to the Voyeurweb Internet site are also buying X10 cameras, but for a different kind of monitoring. The site, one of many devoted to "hidden cameras,'' hosts a bulletin board where users trade tricks and tips for using the X10 cameras for voyeurism. Currently the Web site's regulars are discussing the best places to hide X10s in bathrooms.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/ne...ont/027254.htm

How do rewriteable CDs work?
CD-Audio and CD-ROM were established in the early 1980s as the "new thing" to replace the venerable analog long-playing record. This digital format was very quickly accepted as the standard because it provided compact size, high fidelity and tremendous durability. But soon the consumer, accustomed to recording LPs onto magnetic tapes, demanded the same ability in the new compact disc format. New technology made that possible a few years later with CD-R (recordable CDs) and then CD-RW (rewriteable CDs). CD-Audio and CD-ROM feature a spiral of pits on a molded plastic substrate overcoated with a reflective aluminum alloy. The regular topography on the disc causes the reflected light to "modulate" from bright to dark as the laser beam scans from an area with no pit to one with a pit as the disc spins under the focused laser beam in the drive.
http://www.sciam.com/askexpert/computers/computers14/

In China, Big Brother Is Winning
Contrary to assumptions widely held in the press and in Washington (officials in the Clinton administration were fond of blathering about how the Internet was a force for democracy worldwide, and the Bush White House now says the same), the Chinese government is proving to be pretty effective at keeping the Internet under control. China is doing so, as a recent report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace showed, by being both "proactive and reactive." The former category includes outright censorship. In the proactive department, the government starts at the source: with China's ISPs. Between 17 and 20 million Chinese had access to the Web by the year 2000, most of them through domestic ISPs that only exist with government approval. That's right -- the ISPs themselves don't allow access to sites the government doesn't condone. And that's only part of the story.
http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?...V=artcol.jhtml

More news later on

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ICANN may limit public input
As the U.S. government relinquishes oversight of the Internet, the private organization taking its place is grappling with how much public participation to permit.The debate over the role and influence of the general Internet community took center stage as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held its quarterly meetings in Montevideo. The four-day session ends Monday. Heated discussions raised questions about whether private business interests take precedence over the average Internet user's concerns. Critics also complained of a proposal to let only domain-name owners vote for the group's officers.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Hackers win high stakes at gambling sites
Call it the gambling industry's dirty little secret. Hackers are sabotaging online casinos with greater regularity, security and gambling experts say, in some cases scamming large sums of money from the gaming companies. Last week, CryptoLogic, a Canadian software company that develops online casino games, said a hacker had cracked one of its gaming servers, corrupting the play of craps and video slots so that players could not lose. The company said that for a few hours during the disruption in late August, 140 gamblers racked up winnings of $1.9 million.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

His Memory Returns, Byte by Byte
Many people have referred to the Internet as a lifesaver, but very few invest the expression with the same ferocious intensity as Pascal Triomphe. "There are no two ways about it –- I would not be here today were it not for computers and the Internet," he said. If that sounds like a classic overstatement, Triomphe's story offers convincing evidence to the contrary. In 1997, this one-time professional stuntman was violently assaulted in a Parisian suburb. As a result of a head injury suffered in the attack, he lost his memory, his identity and, ultimately, his will to live.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,46456,00.html

Kids, Academics Share Internet2
Elementary school kids probably have seen images of the space shuttle on television but few have experienced the kind of up-close look that is possible only with a scanning electron microscope. That all could change with the help of Internet2. University of Michigan research scientist John Mansfield hopes to use a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to show students a tile from the space shuttle -- glass fibers crimped together that resemble "a bowl of spaghetti if you break one open." Mansfield believes such experiences will provide kids a better understanding of science and how it relates to them.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,45864,00.html

Wi-Fi Cost May Be Sky High
Customers with the capability to tap into wireless Internet networks at certain universities and Starbucks coffee shops will soon be able to browse the Web five times as quickly. But it will cost them. Starting next week, several companies, including Intel, Intersil, Proxim, Atheros and Intermec, will demonstrate the world's first 802.11a products: chip sets, radios, access points and computer cards that will enable people to peruse the Internet at 54 Mbps without any cables or wires.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46451,00.html

"Secret" email at risk from impostors
People using encrypted email can be tricked into sending messages to bogus recipients, a Dutch computer programmer has discovered. The problem lies with PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a popular program used to encrypt email so that it cannot be read in transit over the internet. It could allow an eavesdropper to impersonate someone else and read their secret messages. "It's not disastrous but it's certainly quite serious," says Brian Gladman, a freelance cryptography expert in the UK. "In a sense it's all a matter of care. If someone is not careful, they could definitely fall foul of this glitch."
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991267

Spy agency plans cryptographic upgrade
The National Security Agency is beginning a 15-year, multibillion-dollar effort to modernize the nation's cryptographic systems, which are rapidly growing obsolete and vulnerable. Cryptographic systems encode messages and include tools such as secure telephones, tactical radios and smart cards. Virtually every federal department and agency — including the military, the White House, intelligence agencies and the State Department — use encryption. But existing encryption algorithms are no longer cutting-edge, and hardware for many systems is becoming obsolete. Replacing them is a top goal for NSA's information assurance directorate, said Michael Jacobs, who heads the directorate.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/fcw1.htm

Nanotech gets in your pants, and soon, your plane
To help soldiers survive, the U.S. Army is developing a new generation of combat uniforms using tiny, doctored fibers that let air through while blocking toxins from chemical and biological weapons. The "chemical protective overgarment," expected to ship in as little as two years, is one of the early uses of nanotechnology: the science of manipulating single atoms and molecules to create new products. While nanotechnology won't be ready to build tiny machines or computer processors for at least 10 years, researchers in materials science are already using it to change the properties of plastics, oils and textiles, giving them breathability, heat-resistance, strength and flexibility.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/0....ap/index.html

Processing power of single cells
One of the oldest forms of life on Earth has been revealed as a natural born computer programmer. Scientists studying a species of single-celled protozoans called Ciliates have found that the organisms are experts at sorting, shuffling and splicing DNA when they reproduce. Some of the repertoire of tricks Ciliates use to untangle their DNA resemble the techniques that computer programmers use to make software more elegant and robust. The researchers believe that by using some of these techniques they can do a better job of harnessing the vast information processing power of DNA.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1535945.stm

Free the Encyclopedias!
Say you are an expert on Fibonacci numbers. Maybe you don't have an academic degree that relates to Fibonacci numbers. Maybe you have never before written about Fibonacci numbers. Still, you love them, you collect them, you dream about them. You've always wanted to write about them. Wikipedia is your chance. All you need do is tap into the Wiki Web site and start writing. You don't even have to give your real name. Or maybe your computer crashes a lot, and you'd like to write about that. The Wikipedia entry called "The Blue Screen of Death" (for the cryptic screen that Windows flashes before it stomps your life) is your chance at fame.
http://www.techreview.com/web/heim/heim090401.asp

The Boringness of Computers
Technologies come and go, but fame is even more fleeting. Back in the 1980s when a few techies with connections to the Defense Department were playing around with computer networks, who cared? It wasn’t until Web browsers made it possible to point and click your way through the Internet that things really got interesting. Likewise, computers in the 1960s rarely made the evening news, but now everybody knows the story of those two kids in a garage who created the first Apple. In each case the technology had become personal. Computing and networking existed before they became popular, and they will continue to exist long after most of us stop thinking about them altogether.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/626004.asp?0si=-

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Ahhh, the bumps