The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

[walktalker]

Via wins another round against Intel
Via Technologies has won another round in court against rival chipmaker Intel, although the trial still hangs by a thread. A judge in the U.S. District Court of Northern California granted Taiwan-based Via a summary judgment on Wednesday in a patent infringement case filed by Intel in 1999. Intel claims that a chipset created by Via to work with Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon processor violates its intellectual property. In the ruling, the court said that Via altered the design of its chipset to get around one of the patents involved in the case before the chipsets were sold in the United States. As a result, Via did not infringe upon Intel's intellectual property.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

China: We'll use XP to control piracy
Four top Chinese PC makers said Thursday that they would officially bundle Microsoft's new operating system with all their new home PCs in an unprecedented pledge to curb piracy in the market where it is most rampant. The decision could help Microsoft curtail lost revenue in China, where more than 90 percent of the software installed on computers last year was pirated, an executive of the world's biggest software maker said.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

States to focus on unbundling Windows
State attorneys general pressing the antitrust case against Microsoft Corp. may ask a judge to order the company to offer a cheaper, stripped-down version of its Windows operating system, a source familiar with the case said on Wednesday. The nine states still suing Microsoft are eying the requirement as part of a proposed antitrust remedy they are scheduled to submit to U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Friday.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

VeriSign: Are you the master of your domain?
VeriSign on Thursday plans to introduce services that help guard companies' brands online, diversifying its own revenue in the face of a potential lag in its Internet registrar business. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is set to start selling a suite of services to domain-name customers that includes guarding a company's brand name in cyberspace and protecting it from intellectual-property thieves.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Goner worm is not quite a goner yet
The so-called "Goner" Internet worm was still infecting computers in the United States on Wednesday, after wreaking havoc there and in Europe on Tuesday, but was leaving Asia relatively unscathed, software security experts said. After slowing down overnight, the worm was making a bit of a comeback, said Michael Callahan, director of marketing for Network Associates Inc.'s McAfee division. The company's online scanning service on Tuesday encountered a peak of 21,000 Goner worms per hour around 6 p.m. EST, he said.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

"Bandwidth hogs" not at home at AT&T
A small but vocal group of former Excite@Home customers is complaining that connections have gotten slower since AT&T switched them to its own high-speed cable network. It's not their imagination. AT&T's network allows customers to receive up to 1.5 megabits of data per second from the Internet to their computer (the downstream speed) and to send up to 128 kilobits of data per second from their computer to the Internet (the upstream speed).
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-8081284.html

Hacker had WorldCom in his hands
The curious hacker strikes again. Internet backbone provider MCI WorldCom has acknowledged that network-intrusion specialist Adrian Lamo used a security hole in a company Web server to grant himself access to its administrative network. The quizzical hacker poked around WorldCom's system four times over the past two months, ending last Friday when he told the company of the hole and helped it secure a misconfigured server.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Wireless carriers do some bonding
U.S. wireless carriers offering high-speed phone service are starting to strike deals so customers can access e-mail or download games in parts of the country their own provider has not yet reached. These so-called roaming agreements are the lifeblood of the communications industry and have been a staple for decades. But the emergence of the roaming deals involving the new, higher-speed networks is the first sign that the same spirit of cooperation still rings true, even though the stakes are higher.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Calif. halts birth-record sales to Web sites
California Gov. Gray Davis late Wednesday suspended the sale of birth and death records to private companies, which have published the data online, on concerns that the records could be used to steal identities. "A person's birth and death records should not be bought and traded like baseball cards," Davis said in a statement. "There is too great a risk that unscrupulous people will use this information for identity theft, to falsify records, or to invade our privacy in other ways."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Lax Net gambling laws may help U.K. thrive
Although its broadband availability trails many other European countries, the United Kingdom could lead Europe in online consumer revenue by 2005 thanks to its relaxed attitude toward Net gambling, according to new research. According to research from Schema Consulting, $38 billion will be spent on online entertainment in Europe in 2005. The figure is based on an estimate that online entertainment will make up 6 percent of entertainment spending, which itself will make up 8 percent of the expected $8 trillion in disposable income in Europe that year.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Quality leap for e-paper developers
This five-centimetre-square (two inches) electronic display represents a leap in quality and brings affordable electronic paper a step closer, say its developers, Philips Research. The tiny display uses active matrix technology, the kind used in good quality laptop computer displays. But this display is made of parts that use flexible plastic instead of silicon and should be cheap to make in bulk, Philips Research spokesman Koen Joosse told BBC News Online.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1692141.stm

Early .info names face challenges
The company that manages the new .info Internet domain said it will tighten registration rules as it prepares to challenge the validity of one out of every five names registered in a special preregistration period. Domain manager Afilias, whose .info Internet suffix joined .com, .net and other established top-level domains this fall, said it would modify its rules to ensure that disputed domains could only be awarded to legitimate trademark holders.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Liquid Audio target of patent dispute
Network Commerce, a provider of Internet commerce tools and services, said it is suing digital music company Liquid Audio for allegedly infringing its patent on a way to conduct online transactions. Network Commerce, which was delisted from the Nasdaq Stock Market in August, said the patent covered a method for online shopping that uses separate servers and a piece of downloaded software to coordinate purchase information.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Bronfman to leave Vivendi Universal
Edgar Bronfman Jr. will step down as executive vice chairman of media giant Vivendi Universal next year, leaving flamboyant Frenchman Jean-Marie Messier solo at center stage. Vivendi said Thursday that Bronfman, head of Canada's Seagram before it merged with France's Vivendi last year, would step down at the end of the first quarter 2002, though he would remain nonexecutive vice chairman of the board.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Sports supplier drops punters' pants in public
An elementary security mistake by the official online supplier of Welsh Rugby and UK Athletics has resulted in the exposure of sensitive customer information on the merchant's Web site. Up until yesterday, Official-merchandise.co.uk was using a database query string for order-checking. This HTTP Get method would allow anyone so inclined to see other people's order details by simply changing the invoice number in the URL.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/23235.html

First complete world map of lightning activity
The first complete world map of lightning activity has been created using observations from two earth-orbiting satellites. Central Africa, the Himalayas and parts of South America experience more lightning than anywhere else on the planet, the map reveals. In an area centred around DR Congo, there are an average of 81 lightning flashes per square kilometre per year. The NASA map also shows that lightning very rarely occurs at sea and is almost never seen at the Earth's poles.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991657

Tracing technology could catch digital pirates
A new watermarking technology could help track down people who make copies of copyrighted digital material. The technique works by concealing information about the identity of the offender inside the copy, according to the company developing the technique. Amino Communications, based in the UK, is developing a specialised microchip and software for use with digital video recorders and future pay-per-view television systems that have digital recording capabilities. Amino's system includes information from a user's smart card in a watermark inserted into the copied file.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991655

EU ministers back spam e-mail ban
European Union ministers stuck to a plan on Thursday for a pan-European ban on unsolicited e-mail, fax and text messages, but introduced provisions to ease the restriction in certain circumstances. The proposal is part of broader legislation on protection of communications and personal data in the digital era, an issue which has become more sensitive in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/668513.asp?0dm=C11PT

Can ‘Hello’ Cost You a Home If You're Black?
It was simple. James Johnson needed a place to live. In April, he saw a "for rent" sign outside a San Francisco apartment building. Although he left several messages, he never heard back. He says he really needed the apartment. It was close to work. It had plenty of room for his two children. It was affordable. So when he never got a call back, Johnson was greatly disappointed. As he explained, "I always thought that if you had good credit and stuff like that, you wouldn't have a problem." But there apparently was a problem: his voice.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/W...ing011206.html

Inspired by Nature
Forget about Ginger, or "IT," or whatever its name is. The invention the world really needs is a gizmo that can swim like a fish while grabbing stuff from the water with several arms, and still be able to smell like a lobster. That may sound a bit strange, but in fact scientists are increasingly turning to animals like the octopus and the lobster for help in designing the robots of the future. The reason is simple. Nature did it first and did it best, so we ought to be able to learn a lot by looking at biological systems that do some things a lot better than we can.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scite...d/dyehard.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Thank you WT - so many interesting stories again!

Quality leap for e-paper developers
This five-centimetre-square (two inches) electronic display represents a leap in quality and brings affordable electronic paper a step closer, say its developers, Philips Research. The tiny display uses active matrix technology, the kind used in good quality laptop computer displays. But this display is made of parts that use flexible plastic instead of silicon and should be cheap to make in bulk, Philips Research spokesman Koen Joosse told BBC News Online.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1692141.stm

This technology is something to watch... btw does this attached demo picture from the above story remind you of any of our members?

- tg

[walktalker]

Space Pajamas Fight Infant Death
Belgian researchers are hoping that pajamas based on space technology may prove to have a down-to-earth application that could help save the lives of babies. Experts at the University of Brussels (ULB) believe the innovation could provide a breakthrough in unlocking the mysteries of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which in developed countries remains the single biggest killer of infants under one year of age.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48188,00.html

Big Stink Over a Simple Link
KPMG, an international business consulting firm, prides itself on its "e-business" savvy, and it charges companies boatloads to improve their Web-based businesses. But this week several website owners were wondering whether KPMG's Internet acumen was really worth anything at all, as it announced a policy that seemed to breach the most basic freedom on the Web -- the freedom to link to any site you want to.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48874,00.html

Video-on-Demand to PCs Near You
While downloading music to PCs has been at the forefront of business development at Internet media companies, similar plans to deliver movies and television have been relatively quiet. So far, consumers can pay for movies on demand from independent companies -- such as DivXNetworks, Intertainer and In Demand -- but there isn't one place where people can pay for all their media entertainment. That is about to change.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,48867,00.html

When Pro Forma Is Bad Form
You'd think unprofitable Internet companies have had enough to worry about this year, what with investors showing absolutely no interest in buying their stocks. But now, U.S. securities regulators are giving them something extra to fret about: getting hit with a fraud charge for trying to make dismal returns look better than they really are. As part of efforts to improve the clarity of information given to investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission warned this week that it will crack down on companies that use creative accounting methods to pump up poor earnings results.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48877,00.html

New Hands-Free Kit Not So Handy
The possibility of buying an off-the-shelf product to make a car talk like the one in the 1980s sitcom Knight Rider is just around the corner. By purchasing and installing MobileAria's "kit" -- not to be confused with Michael Knight's car "K.I.T.T." -- drivers could ask their cars to scan the news, read e-mail and make phone calls for them. The kit, which will cost around $200, is due in retail stores mid-December. But as a demonstration of the technology showed, voice recognition systems such as MobileAria's have a long way to go before they mimic natural conversation.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,47779,00.html

Device Can 'Mimic' Thumb
Singapore students have created a battery-free artificial thumb which may give renewed hopes of flexibility to people missing the digit because of accidents or birth defects. The device, called Mimic, is a small lightweight aluminium gadget that straps onto the back of the hand and wraps round the index finger to hold a moveable metal thumb in place.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,48881,00.html

Scientists Watch Mars Weather
It sounds dire -- polar ice caps disappearing, the sun's rays beating down and sending the ice right into the atmosphere. Up to a third of the ice caps -- tons and tons of ice -- are turning to gas in the atmosphere every summer. On Earth this would be devastating, but this just may be typical of the changing seasons on Mars, scientists said on Thursday. Two separate studies published in the journal Science show evidence of just how extensive this annual change is on Mars.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48895,00.html

Where U.S., Kiwis Are Neighbors
Thursday nights at New Zealand's Scott Base are American nights. Since the New Zealand beer costs just 50 U.S. cents, the bar is always crowded. At McMurdo, 10 minutes from Scott over the hill by jeep, New Zealanders are always welcome; during the past weekend, Americans and Kiwis could dive into the pumpkin pie served up at McMurdo's Thanksgiving celebration. In this tiny corner of a vast, untamed continent, for the past 40-odd years, New Zealand and the United States of America have been neighbors.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48617,00.html

Phone Call to Bottom of Sea
What to do 30 feet under the sea when you realize you've left the oven on? Call home of course, and without delay from France Telecom's underwater phone box. The telecoms giant has tested a prototype system that allows those above water to talk to divers in the deep. The kit is aimed at the military, archaeologists and oil rigs, but the long-term plan could be to net a new breed of clientele in competitive times for the mobile phone industry.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48878,00.html

Does This Really Pose a Security Threat?
A new threat to the nation's safety arrives in stores this month, according to John Ashcroft, the attorney general of the United States. Anybody with 30 bucks soon will be able to buy a bit of technology that puts us all at risk, according to FBI Director Robert Mueller. Is it Cup-o'-Pox, which lets you create a new disease by adding hot water? Nukeman, the pocket-size atomic weapon? E-Z-Bake Nerve Gas, recommended for ages 8 and up? Nope. It's the disposable cell phone.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...s%2Dtechnology

Physicists: No sign of 'God particle'
After years of searching and months of sifting through data, scientists have still not found the elusive subatomic particle that could help to unravel the secrets of the universe, a science magazine reported Wednesday. The Higgs boson, the missing link that could explain why matter has mass and other fundamental laws of particle physics, is still missing -- and physicists fear it may not exist.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science...eut/index.html

House Narrowly Approves President's Fast Track Authority
The House of Representatives today narrowly approved legislation that will give President Bush greater authority to negotiate trade deals with foreign leaders. In a vote that was every bit as close as observers had predicted, the House voted 215-214 to approve presidential trade promotion - or "fast-track" authority. If approved and passed by the full Congress, the measure would give White House negotiators the power to sign off on trade treaties with other countries without seeking input from Congress.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172758.html

How To Punch A Network Sniffer In The Nose
A powerful hacking tool that enables a user to "sniff" data on a local-area network (LAN), including encrypted traffic, contains a flaw that could allow the program to be turned against its operator. The developers of "Ettercap" confirmed today that the free networking monitoring software is vulnerable to an attack that could enable a third party to gain root or administrative control of the Ettercap user's system.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172757.html

Rappers' Songs As Ring Tones Before CD Releases
Rap groups Mobb Deep and Wu-Tang Clan say they are the first artists in the U.S. to premiere music as mobile telephone ring tones before album release, their label says. Two tracks from "Infamy" by Mobb Deep and three songs on Wu-Tang Clan's "Iron Flag" - as well as logos - are downloadable as free ring tones from entertainment portal Zingy.com. Mobb Deep's album is to be released on Dec. 11 and Wu-Tang Clan's is set for Dec. 18, by Loud Records.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172753.html

French Groups Appeal Yahoo's Nazi Lawsuit Victory
Two French humanitarian groups are appealing a U.S. federal court's recent decision in favor of Yahoo [NASDAQ:YHOO] regarding the sale of Nazi memorabilia on the portal's auction pages. The two French groups - Lique Internationale Contre le Racisme et l'Antisemitisme (The League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism) and The Union of Jewish Students - won an initial lawsuit, brought last year against Yahoo France, prohibiting the Web portal operator from allowing the sale of Nazi memorabilia on its pages.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172752.html

MCI Security Hole Put AOL, Others, In Hacker's Crosshairs
MCI WorldCom recently moved to secure several vulnerable portions of their network that allowed a researcher to obtain the keys to private network routers for dozens of Fortune 500 companies. AOL Time Warner, Bank of America, Citicorp, Fox News Corp., JP Morgan, McDonald’s, and Sun Microsystems - to name just a few - were among those firms whose internal systems information was vulnerable to compromise.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172720.html

More news later on

[theflaco]

Originally posted by walktalker

Physicists: No sign of 'God particle'
After years of searching and months of sifting through data, scientists have still not found the elusive subatomic particle that could help to unravel the secrets of the universe, a science magazine reported Wednesday. The Higgs boson, the missing link that could explain why matter has mass and other fundamental laws of particle physics, is still missing -- and physicists fear it may not exist.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science...eut/index.html

Do we exist?

Thanks WT for the news service!

theflaco