The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

It's so nice to be home

Copper a perfect fit for speedy chips
The semiconductor industry is in the midst of a massive technological change, converting to mass-producing chips with copper, rather than aluminum, wires. The weird part: Almost no one seems to be having major problems.Copper, which conducts electricity better than aluminum, gives designers an avenue to break through looming physical barriers that could prevent further boosts in chip performance. The first copper Pentium 4's will come out in the fourth quarter of this year at 2.2GHz, for instance, and hit 3.5GHz next year. Working with copper poses several challenges, however. "Sputtering," a process for applying metal to silicon, doesn't work with copper, for example. Neither do traditional techniques for etching circuits. And errant, minute traces of copper rubbed on a wafer can destroy a batch of chips.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

Nvidia sheds new light on graphics
Nvidia on Monday unveiled Titanium, a new family of graphics chips. The graphics chipmaker says the GeForce Titanium family will offer twice the performance for a given price than its previous chips. The chips also match high-end Radeon graphics chip recently introduced by Nvidia rival ATI Technologies. The new Titanium family includes three members: the GeForce3 Ti 500 and GeForce3 Ti 200 for high-end PCs, and the lower priced GeForce2 Ti. Nvidia said the GeForce3 Ti chips were derived from the same graphics-chip technology to be used in the forthcoming Microsoft Xbox game console.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

U.S. taking the slow road to 3G
Japan on Monday kicks off nifty third-generation mobile services (3G) like videos on wireless telephones, but the United States is on a slower path, one likely to take even longer with a possible war and recession looming. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have dashed hopes of negotiating on additional spectrum any time soon with the military and other arms of government, analysts said. "I think the war has changed the whole spectrum management process, timing and decision-making in the U.S. so that 3G is effectively off the table for the investable future in the United States," said Rudy Baca, an analyst for the independent research firm Precursor Group.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Microsoft set to woo Mac fans
Microsofties and Mac lovers -- together at last? In a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign making its debut Monday, the Microsoft unit that makes software for the Macintosh operating system is aiming to get itself seen and heard. Not by the general public, mind you, but by hard-core Apple Computer loyalists, who have long had a love/hate relationship with Microsoft. That's no easy task, especially these days. Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, some of the plans that Microsoft's Macintosh group was counting on to promote its new Office software for the Apple Computer operating system were derailed. A media blitz scheduled for Sept. 13 that would have introduced a key piece of the new Office software, dubbed Office v.X, was delayed a week.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Excite@Home files for bankruptcy
Excite@Home, the leading provider of broadband Internet access, said Friday that it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and sell its high-speed network to AT&T for $307 million in cash. On Monday, shares of Excite@Home were halted by the Nasdaq pending additional information from the company. With the filing, Excite@Home becomes the latest Net highflier to seek bankruptcy court protection while it reorganizes its business. Just last week, Exodus Communications, a provider of Web-hosting services to thousands of companies, also filed for bankruptcy.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=tp_pr

A satellite view from the Web
Looking for a good view of the capital of Uzbekistan? The Web has become a gateway to an immense collection of satellite images of Earth, a place where you can zoom in your favorite Central Asian city or your own backyard in a couple of clicks of the mouse. Images of Antarctic icebergs, the desert in California's Death Valley and virtually anything else on Earth can be found at an array of Web sites, from government space agencies like NASA and private companies such as Space.com. Easy access to images previously available only to the government is made possible, in part, by the Ikonos satellite, launched by a Colorado-based company two years ago.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

FTC shutters thousands of Web sites
A U.S. court shut down thousands of Web sites after it determined that they diverted Web surfers and held them captive while bombarding them with ads for pornography and gambling, the U.S. government said on Monday. According to the Federal Trade Commission, John Zuccarini, of Andalusia, Pa., outside Philadelphia, operated more than 5,500 Web sites that diverted Web surfers from their intended destinations and exposed them to pop-up ads. Zuccarini did not immediately respond to calls for comment. Zuccarini registered many misspellings of popular sites, such as Cartoonnetwork.com, the FTC said, in a bid to draw traffic from sloppy typists.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

U.S. Supreme Court to rule on Net porn
The U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term Monday, with a docket that includes important issues such as Internet pornography, the execution of the mentally retarded and the use of public money to pay religious-school tuition. After their summer recess, the justices return to the bench for their 2001-2002 term, which for the time being has been overshadowed by the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that left more than 6,000 people dead or missing. The court has increased security since the hijacked-plane attacks. But it will be business as usual on Monday as the justices begin issuing orders in nearly 2,000 cases that piled up over the past three months and as they hear oral arguments.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Cybersquatting among the ruins
On Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, while the twin towers of the World Trade Center crumbled and hijacked jetliners hurtled into the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania, Americans were stricken by shock, anger, grief and grim fascination. Glued to televisions, radios and Internet news sites, many of us were uncertain of what was happening or how we should react. But scores of people around the world reacted decisively to the terrorist attacks, in a peculiar and eerily detached way: They registered Internet domain names commemorating the disaster. Within moments after the first hijacked plane careered into the World Trade Center's south tower at 8:45 a.m., even as New York firefighters rushed up the stairwells, quick-thinking Net-savvy citizens pointed their browsers to the Web sites of Internet domain name registrars.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2001/1...ain/index.html

Weapons: From Smart to Brilliant
Only weeks before the horror of Sept. 11, an obscure Defense Dept. agency and a bevy of contractors struck a potential blow against terrorists. For the first time, they demonstrated that remotely guided weapons could target and hit moving vehicles. Even though the technology was aimed at more conventional foes, it could be just the ticket for taking out terrorists fleeing across the desert. The trick: using airborne radars and computer wizardry to steer a missile or guided bomb directly into an elusive target. This is just one example of the leap in weapons technology since the Gulf War 10 years ago. Despite the compelling images of "smart" bombs smashing into their targets, Operation Desert Storm laid bare serious shortcomings.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/...10927_0141.htm

Nimda resurgence falls flat
A resurgence of the Nimda worm failed to materialize Friday, leaving unfulfilled warnings that several security companies made this week. The e-mail component of the worm, which sends infected messages to each entry in an infected computer's Outlook address book, reactivates 10 days after the original infection. That part of the program had antivirus researchers and security experts worried that the Nimda worm was again set to spread quickly. But Friday morning, 10 days after the first infections started to take hold, few signs heralded a return of the worm.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

High-speed Net users fret about service
When Excite@Home filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, visions of excruciatingly slow dial-up service popped into Tim Joiner's mind. Joiner has been using Comcast's Excite@Home high-speed Internet access service since it was introduced to the Little Rock, Ark., area less than six months ago. Like Joiner, many Excite@Home users across the country are concerned. Some are aware that the company is backed by several large corporations, such as AT&T, Comcast and Cox Communications, and are hoping for uninterrupted service, while others are worried about losing their high-speed service. With less competition in the high-speed Internet access market, people also worry about increasing fees.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Sprint offers GPS-enabled cell phones
Sprint PCS on Monday will begin selling mobile telephones equipped to more precisely pinpoint a caller's location when 911 is dialed for help, although service will not be available until November and then only in one market. Sprint, the nation's fourth-largest mobile telephone carrier, said it plans to launch the service in Rhode Island next month and expand to other areas in coordination public safety agencies. Oct. 1 is the deadline for U.S. wireless companies to begin offering improved location capability on their networks, but most companies have asked federal regulators to delay implementation because of troubles they said they have had obtaining the necessary technology and handsets in time.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Compromise for CD copying is in the works
Anti-piracy features making their way onto CDs promise to dramatically alter the online music landscape, potentially handing Microsoft a potent weapon against the leading MP3 format and other rivals in the high-stakes battle over digital-audio standards. The record industry is experimenting with a new strategy for protecting CDs from being copied in CD burners or on computers. Unlike previous anti-copying measures, this plan will place two versions of an album on a single disc: one in standard CD form, modified so that it can't be transferred to a computer hard drive, and another in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio digital format, rigged so that files can be copied to a PC, but with some restrictions on how they can be used.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201...html?tag=cd_pr

Microsoft, CinemaNow show VOD service
Microsoft and online film service CinemaNow on Monday unveiled technology aimed at simplifying the creation of Web-based video-on-demand networks. Marina Del Rey, Calif.-based CinemaNow said the application, dubbed PatchBay, can be licensed to distributors who want the necessary ingredients to manage a Web-based video-on-demand service, including content distribution, digital rights protection, targeted advertising, as well as pay-per-view and subscription services.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

U.S. scouting Afghanistan, official says
President Bush said Friday that the United States is "in hot pursuit" of terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks. A top Bush administration official said U.S. special forces have conducted scouting missions in Afghanistan, where suspected terrorists are hiding. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the work of U.S. and British forces is a prelude to potential military action. The official denied reports that the forces, deployed in the last few days, are actively seeking prime suspect Osama bin Laden. In another development, a Bush Cabinet member said Reagan National Airport outside Washington will definitely reopen when a security plan is worked out despite its proximity to critical government buildings.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

More interesting news later on

[walktalker]

Will It Be Cash, Check or Finger?
Fingerprints, long stigmatized by their association with crime scenes and police stations, may get an image boost when people start using them to pay for everything from Big Macs to groceries. That's the philosophy behind Indivos, an Oakland, California, firm that has invented software that uses fingerprint scanners to process electronic payments. "We're putting this in front of the mainstream consumer," said Indivos spokesman Frank Pierce. "You won't need cash or cards to pay for anything. All you need is your finger and you never leave home without it."
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,47127,00.html

Another Thing to Fear: ID Theft
It's the largest police investigation in history, with a few thousand sleuths hot on the trail of just 19 suspected hijackers, and about 500 people already in jail. But the FBI said in a statement on Thursday that "attempts to confirm the true identities of these individuals are still under way." The bureau released 19 grainy snapshots of the men it believes conducted the Sept. 11 attacks, and Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed Americans to join a "national neighborhood watch" that might give the Feds any more info on the terrorists.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47201,00.html

Virtual Baggage, Real Bucks
Anxious for a competitive edge, or just too lazy to do the work themselves, hardcore gamers are paying $1,000 or more for characters and equipment in online multiplayer games. Sword and sorcery games like Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest, Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo II and Funcom's sci-fi-themed Anarchy Online generally require players to collect equipment, dispatch opponents and advance through new levels. But because they require an investment of vast amounts of time, some players are taking the easy route by buying items such as shields, weapons and spells that would normally have to be earned, found or fought for.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,47181,00.html

Defense to Give New Life to Tech Industry
The military buildup, just beginning in the wake of the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, is going to be bigger than most people think. Indeed, it could be comparable to the great defense buildups of past decades -- during the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the Reagan years -- that set a direction for the whole U.S. economy. The defense budget for fiscal 2002, which begins Monday, already includes added funds authorized last year. Now more additions are being made for the war on terrorism. That could take defense spending to $360 billion in fiscal 2002, up 16% from the previous year, and on to $400 billion in 2003.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...s%2Dtechnology

Cell Phones on Campus Advocated
Hannah Yi sometimes stashes hers in a pocket. Gina Murry daringly carries hers in her hand, crouching behind hallway pillars to use it. Sarah Santos hides hers in a bag or backpack, afraid of teachers who would confiscate it. Escaping detection is an everyday game for these lawbreakers at James Monroe High School in the San Fernando Valley -- and students like them across the country. Their contraband is not drugs or weapons but cell phones and pagers, illegal since a fear of campus drug-dealing led most states to ban them in the mid-1980s.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...s%2Dtechnology

Group would bolster communications after disasters
Sen. Ron Wyden watched as people struggled to communicate on phones and computers after the airplanes struck the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Should disaster strike again, the Oregon Democrat wants to avoid that by setting up a National Emergency Technology Guard — a NET Guard — ready to take action after emergencies, similar to the National Guard. The task force would be made up of people from the government, high-tech companies, nonprofit organizations and the military.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/t.../net-guard.htm

Tiny microscope views rat thinking
Scientists working to understand the way the brain works have built a tiny microscope which looks inside a rat's brain as the animal moves around. Previous studies have seen scientists examining rat brain tissue or even live rats kept in one place under anaesthetic. But now it is possible to see inside a rodent's head as it behaves more normally. "The brain is the organ that controls behaviour and to study the process of controlling behaviour, you have to do this in a situation where the animal can behave - perform tasks, move around and take decisions," Winfried Denk told BBC News Online.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1569257.stm

Distorted bolt holes may delay ISS mission
The discovery of elongated bolt holes on the space shuttle Columbia has left NASA considering whether its sisted shuttle Endeavour is safe to launch, or must be taken apart for safety checks. The next shuttle mission to the International Space Station could be set back from November 2001 until early 2002 after the suspect connection joints were found. The distorted bolt holes are located at the point where two engine pods are joined on to the shuttle. They are used for manoeuvring while in orbit. The defects increase the chance that the join could fail under stress.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991354

New Theory Exposes Cracks in Laws of Friction
"It is one of the dirty little secrets of physics," writes David Kessler of Bar-Ilan University today in Nature, "that while we physicists can tell you a lot about quarks, quasars and other exotica, there is still no universally accepted explanation of the basic laws of friction." Indeed, one particular conundrum involves the amount of force required to overcome friction and slide a solid object across some surface. As counterintuitive as it may seem, Coulomb's law of friction states that this force varies with the compressive force pushing the object and surface together — and not with the amount of contact area between the two. Traditionally, physicists have explained the puzzle as follows: because no two surfaces are in reality flat — they are rough on the atomic scale — the amount of contact between them is much smaller than it appears.
http://www.sciam.com/news/092001/2.html

Doctors examine art
Physicians should be more like Sherlock Holmes," says Irwin Braverman. His new research suggests that art-appreciation classes could teach medical students the sleuthing skills they need: trainee doctors' diagnoses improve after they have learnt how to look at the whole picture. Medical students often miss the details that clinch a diagnosis, says Braverman, of Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. In an effort to overcome this observational blindness, he teamed up with the Yale Center for British Art to give first-year students a fine-art class.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/010913/010913-11.html

Bush Stumps For Increased Law Enforcement Powers
President Bush late last week urged Congress to pass anti-terrorism legislation proposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft in the wake of last month's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. "I'm asking Congress for new law enforcement authority, to better track the communications of terrorists," Bush said in his weekly Saturday radio address. "I will also seek more funding and better technology for our country's intelligence community." Drafted by the Justice Department, the sweeping administration proposal would expand federal electronic surveillance powers; broaden the ability of law enforcers to obtain the phone, computer and business records of suspected terrorists; and stiffen rules surrounding the detention of immigrants.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170694.html

Lobbying Group Protests Copyright-Protection Proposal
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) last week wrote to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., to air its concerns over Hollings' proposal to require computer and electronics manufacturers to include copyright protection technology in some of their products. "As Congress considers legislation with respect to the use of copyrighted works on the Internet and in other digital and electronic contexts, we urge you to recognize that there are many legitimate uses of technology that would be impaired by additional copyright-protection measures," the ACM letter said. Hollings' proposed legislation is known as the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA). In a recent interview with Newsbytes, a Hollings staffer said that the senator has been "floating around" the idea, but has introduced nothing specific.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170692.html

Security Firm Warns Of Bogus Nimda 'Fix'
Computer security company SecurityFocus is telling network administrators that it has nothing to do with an e- mail and file attachment that claims to be a fix for the recent Nimda worm. Instead, the attachment appears to be repackaged version of a older Trojan program designed to spy on those who run the software, says the San Mateo, Calif., clearinghouse for information on such security threats.. In a message posted to the company's own "Incidents" mailing list Sunday night, SecurityFocus said it had learned that a message claiming to be from it and anti-virus company TrendMicro "is being used to deliver what looks like a Trojan horse to unsuspecting users."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170691.html

Lawmakers Put Brakes On Expanded E-surveillance
In the days after Sept. 11, the Bush administration scrambled to write a tough new anti-terrorism bill, with the public squarely on its side. Polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly favor stronger police powers, even at the expense of personal freedom. But Congress is gently applying the brakes. Since its introduction a week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the administration's anti-terrorism package has run into strong bipartisan resistance, reflecting broad concern about its implications for the Constitution as well as lawmakers' desire to protect their role as a check on executive branch power.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170665.html

‘We will not give in,’ Giuliani vows
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, widely praised for his handling of the World Trade Center search and rescue effort, addressed the annual United Nations plenary meeting Monday, vowing before delegates that New York “will not give in.” The first mayor in nearly 50 years to address the General Assembly, Giuliani called the Sept. 11 attacks “a direct assault on the founding principles of the U.N. itself.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/627989.asp

In call before attacks, Bin Laden told mother to expect ‘big news’
Osama bin Laden called his mother two days before the Sept. 11 terror attacks and told her, “In two days you’re going to hear big news and you’re not going to hear from me for a while,” NBC News has learned. Word of the phone call came as President Bush reported “good progress” in the battle against terrorism, saying authorities around the world had frozen $6 million in assets linked to terrorist activities and arrested or detained “about 150 terrorists and their supporters.”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/633205.asp

We've cracked into bin Laden's bank - UK hackers
A group of British hackers has claimed to have broken into the systems of banks in the Sudan, and extracted information on accounts related to Osama's bin Laden terrorist network. Young Intelligent Hackers Against Terror (Yihat) claims to have obtained data on accounts held by members of Al Qaeda, including bin Laden, held at the AlShamal Islamic Bank. Yihat, which is fronted by millionaire ex-hacker Kim Schmitz, told Newsbytes that the information obtained has been turned over to the FBI, but this remains unconfirmed and details of the hack are sketchy.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/21966.html

More news later on

[KevC]

Thanx man hard work well appreciated ;o)

[TankGirl]

Well appreciated indeed, WT! Good job once again!

- tg

Tres interessant Monsieur!