The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

Ashcroft warns of possible attacks
Attorney General John Ashcroft warned Monday that the FBI has received information about possible attacks “within the United States and against United States interests abroad within the next week.” He didn’t give details on what the planned attacks might be, but asked Americans and law enforcement officials to be on their highest guard. The FBI issued a similar alert earlier this month.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/633205.asp

Patent holder could derail tech titans
A patent held by a little-known programmer from New Jersey may complicate -- at least temporarily -- the grand visions of Web services touted by titans such as IBM, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. Charlie Northrup, the chief executive of software developer Global Technologies, holds one of the earliest patents that describe how diverse computer systems can talk to servers connected to the Web and run software on multiple platforms. Sound familiar? That's just the kind of service Microsoft is pushing with its .Net strategy, a wide-ranging plan for moving business computing applications such as calendars, word processors and e-mail onto the Web.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

AOL volunteers lose battle
The Labor Department has decided not to further investigate charges that AOL Time Warner unfairly used volunteers at its Internet unit. "We decided not to pursue the case from an enforcement angle due to the limited resources here at the Labor Department," said Stuart Roy, a spokesman for the government agency. AOL has traditionally used volunteers, or "community leaders," to monitor chat rooms, solve problems and act as guides throughout the service. Volunteers are given free membership to AOL in exchange for their services and get access to many proprietary areas of the site. For this reason, volunteer accounts have been targets for hackers trying to access confidential information.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Is Microsoft losing its grip in Asia?
These days, any abnormal behavior in your PC or server will likely be blamed on that ubiquitous "bug in the system." Sadly, the never-ending task of downloading patches only seem to delay the inevitable, as new security holes -- in Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) software, for example -- are still being discovered. The problem appears more pronounced for Microsoft operating systems, as the software giant controls over 90 percent of the global operating systems and desktop productivity software markets.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Song-swappers stay in tune
The downing of the popular Internet music site Napster has curbed Europe's song-swapping appetite, Jupiter Media Metrix reported on Monday. According to the report, Jupiter said that the level of Internet file-sharing activity has dropped by 50 percent in Europe since February, the point at which the popular song-swapping service Napster hit its peak. The decline in Europe coincides with an upswing in the United States during the same period, the company said.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Gamers compete in pre-holiday frenzy
Mitch Bartlett whooped it up when he thought his quest for Nintendo's new GameCube was over. "Yes, I got it!" he hollered at his PC. "It's mine." Legions of video game enthusiasts are logging on at Web stores all over the Internet, hoping to snag an advance order of one of the hot new game consoles debuting next month. Nintendo's GameCube goes on sale Nov. 18, three days after Microsoft's Xbox.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Small companies mute Net radio
Even as its audience grows by leaps and bounds, the Internet music industry is facing a swift contraction that is causing numerous companies to curtail their services or close outright. In a scenario familiar to other sectors of the Internet business, many smaller online music ventures are watching their limited treasuries run dry as investors increasingly view their businesses as radioactive. This month alone has seen the demise or reduction of nearly a dozen services, with consumer-oriented Web radio stations bearing the brunt of the shakeout.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=tp_pr

[b]Yahoo set to charge for streamed content[/b
Yahoo said Monday that it has added more free video programming to its site, but the Web portal said it would start charging consumers for some streamed content by the end of the year. Through a syndication deal with Carsey-Werner Distribution, Yahoo visitors can now watch episodes of the little-known sitcom "Townies" as well as classic commercials, celebrity interviews, movie clips and music videos. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company also said it plans to Webcast a Sting concert, air a conference for victims of the Sept. 11 tragedies, and Webcast cooking videos through a deal with Allfood.com. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Microsoft belatedly opens access to MSN
After being shut out of one of the most popular sites on the Internet last week, many non-Microsoft browsers on Monday were finally able to access the software giant's MSN.com page. As first reported by CNET News.com, some Mozilla and Opera users were enraged Thursday when they could not reach the upgraded MSN site. Instead, they were given the option of downloading a version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. That same day, Microsoft buckled to protests and said it would open its site to other browsers. But the uproar spilled into Friday as many Mozilla and Opera users found themselves still locked out.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

eBay sees Taiwan, China in its future
While the world has hit the brakes on expansion, eBay has set its eyes on Asia. The San Jose, Calif.-based online auction company, which last week launched eBay Singapore, also plans to extend its reach into Taiwan and/or China, according to a company executive. However, Matthew Bannick, eBay senior vice president, declined to say when or how these plans will be carried out. "China and Taiwan are rapidly growing markets with huge potential, and we are an established name with the right kind of formula for success," he said.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Gamers compete for new video consoles
Legions of video game enthusiasts are logging on at Web stores all over the Internet, hoping to snag an advance order of one of the hot new game consoles debuting next month. Nintendo's GameCube goes on sale Nov. 18, three days after Microsoft's Xbox. Bartlett was among the lucky few to put a GameCube in his virtual cart at a presale earlier this month at Toysrus.com. All he needed to ensure that he would be shipped a console once it was available was to press one last button. He clicked and... nothing. The GameCube had vanished from his cart. In less than four minutes, the site had sold out.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=cd_pr

Car sites pick up speed
Sparked by special zero-percent financing rates and other incentives for new cars, Web surfers swarmed to carmaker sites last week, according to Internet audience measurement service Nielsen/NetRatings. The incentives are drawing visitors to the Web sites of DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor, General Motors and Toyota Motor. "After the events of September 11, several car manufacturers established special zero-percent financing rates in an effort to help stimulate the economy,'' said Dawn Brozek, Internet analyst for NetRatings. "In recent weeks, we've seen traffic to the manufacturer sites grow, with the promotions attracting potential car buyers online to research car models, price quotes and financing.''
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Report: Qualcomm's anti-hijack setup
Wireless-technology company Qualcomm is working on a satellite-based system that would be able to broadcast real-time jetliner cockpit conversations, flight data and video of passengers to controllers on the ground. The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition Monday that the system would be unveiled in San Diego the same day. It will combine Qualcomm's digital technology with satellite-telephone company Globalstar Telecommunications' low earth-orbit satellite constellation to provide high-speed security links for commercial aircraft, the report said.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

MTV to cut at least 8 percent of staff
Music-video pioneer MTV Networks, owner of the popular cable TV stations MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon, said Monday that it would cut between 8 percent and 9 percent of its work force. According to an internal memo, the cuts entail absorbing MTV Networks' online operations into its core business and moving out of separate downtown Manhattan offices. Jeanine Smartt, a spokeswoman for MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom, said she did not know the exact number of jobs that would be eliminated under the plan.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Community colleges to apply for .edu
The U.S. government said Monday that it plans next month to hand the education-focused .edu Internet domain to Educause, a nonprofit group representing college technology departments. Educause will expand the domain to allow the nation's 1,600 community colleges to register for .edu addresses, the group said in a statement. The domain has been reserved until now for four-year colleges and universities. Community colleges will be able to sign up for .edu names starting Nov. 12, the day of the handover, the Commerce Department said in a statement.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on

[walktalker]

Tiny Capsules Float Downstream
A Chicago researcher has created a nano-scale capsule that could literally provide a magic pill for diabetes patients. Tejal Desai, an assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has cured rats with diabetes in tests using the insulin-secreting devices. She could be the first to bring biological microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) into the realm of medical therapies.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,47934,00.html

New Army Soldiers: Game Gamers
Video-gaming armchair generals will soon get the same leadership and command training as combat-ready infantrymen. The U.S. Army, working with a University of Southern California research lab and a team of game-making firms, is developing two games, set on urban battlefields, that will be used both to train grunts and entertain geeks. Players will command a nine-person team in C-Force, which is being developed for one of the "next-generation" gaming systems, like the X-Box, Game Cube or Playstation 2. CS XII, the other game, is a PC title in which players lead a company of about 100.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47931,00.html

Getting a Read on Anthrax
Researchers at the forefront of genome science will map the deadly bacterium's DNA, hoping to discover whether it's been engineered to be more virulent. The National Science Foundation has awarded The Institute for Genomic Research an emergency fund of $200,000 to tackle the project, The Wall Street Journal reported. A map of the entire genome of the anthrax bacterium could give federal investigators and health authorities clues into whether the anthrax found recently in Florida, New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. has been engineered to resist certain antibiotics.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47967,00.html

Wayback Goes Way Back on Web
Imagine being able to travel back in time to an era when the digital publishing euphoria had just begun and the dot-com boom was in full swing. Now that may be possible with a new digital library tool called the Wayback Machine, which goes "way back" in Internet time to locate archived versions of over 10 billion Web pages dating to 1996. The Internet Archive and Alexa Internet recently unveiled the free service, which provides digital snapshots from its archives that reveal the origins of the Internet and how it has evolved over the past five years.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,47894,00.html

Military Shows Off Smart ID Card
Top U.S. military officials on Monday unveiled a new generation of "smart" identity cards, but were still weighing whether to add medical data and other information to the chip-based ID cards. The Defense Department said it expected to issue the chip-based "common access cards" to 4.3 million military personnel -- including active military, selected reserves, civilian employees and some contractors -- within the next 15 months.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47971,00.html

Loony Balloonist Sets Record
An eccentric Englishman has set a new record for the highest-ever flight powered by ordinary toy balloons. Ian Ashpole, 46, filled 600 toy balloons with helium and sailed gracefully to a new world record of 11,000 feet. As he reached 11,000 feet and the balloons started popping, he cut himself free with a knife and parachuted to the ground. Ashpole broke his own previous record of 10,000 feet, which he set five years ago. He set the new record on Sunday, Oct. 28, near the town of Chatteris in Cambridgeshire, England.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,47965,00.html

Streaming But a Trickle in Europe
Arriving at Streaming Media Europe 2001 via the Docklands Light Railway, one can't help but see London's Millennium Dome hovering like a big white elephant in the distance -- a reminder that some things just don't turn out as hoped. This week's trade show, like the dome, is missing some big-name attractions. Since the event is generally a good barometer for the health of the sector, this doesn't portend well for the streaming media sector in Europe. Fear of more terrorist attacks kept some sponsors away, but, as one forlorn-looking exhibitor exclaimed, "I mean, where's Apple, where's Akamai"?
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,47884,00.html

Sing a Song of America
A new education program hopes to share a century's worth of classic American songs with kids whose musical knowledge is often limited to pop princess Britney Spears. The Recording Industry Association of America's "Songs of the Century" program has chosen 365 American songs like "America the Beautiful," "Take the A Train," "On Top of Old Smokey" and "We Shall Overcome" for the curriculum. The program is designed to develop music appreciation in kids. Teachers are encouraged to pair songs with historical lessons. Songs are classified by decade and divided into categories like The Jazz Age, The War Years and The Sixties.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,47922,00.html

Robot See, Robot Kill
Every second of every day, your brain evaluates raw information from your five senses and causes you to react, often involuntarily. A self-aiming camera being developed by scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is learning to respond to audio-visual stimulation in the same way. The camera is able to detect movement and sound, compute the probability that what it's sensing is worth responding to and then turns (or doesn't turn) toward the stimulus accordingly.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,47629,00.html

Joint Strike Fighter faces future competition
Lockheed Martin may have won the largest ever military contract to develop the Joint Strike Fighter, but the losers, Boeing, could still have the last laugh. The Pentagon's announcement on Friday that Lockheed Martin had won the $200 billion, winner-takes-all contract was met with jubilation in President's Bush's home state of Texas, where the company is based. But experts are warning that the JSF is unlikely to be delivered on time and could be soon made obsolete by Boeing's programme to build uncrewed combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), the pilotless robotic planes of the future.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991488

Today's Germ War, Yesterday's Weapons
Kadlec is talking about a form of smallpox that doesn't exist yet -- so far as we know. But recent research in Australia on genetically engineered mousepox virus shows that such a Stealth-fighter agent may be simpler to create than Western experts used to think. Genetically modified smallpox adds additional terror to a weapon that's already deadly -- a weapon we now understand could actually be used against us. As we have learned in recent weeks, terrorists have already used biological weapons on our soil: highly refined anthrax delivered in a simple but lethal way. Smallpox would be no harder to distribute: Like anthrax spores, smallpox is durable in the external environment and could easily be dried, turned into powder and enclosed in a letter. But as a weapon it's far more frightening.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...ent%2Dopinions

Dusting for Cancer's Protein "Fingerprint"
Even before researchers finished sequencing the human genome, many shifted their focus to proteomics, the study of the proteins encoded in that sequence. Understanding how proteins work and how to manipulate them could provide new ways to diagnose and treat disease. This summer, proteomics took an important step toward medical application when the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began using proteomic tools as part of human trials for new cancer treatments.
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/n...nnovation2.asp

Digital photos 'endanger the past'
Experienced photographer Jayne West wrote her degree dissertation on the historical impact of digital capture. She argues that the use of digital photography in news reporting means we could lose a valuable pictorial record of history.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1620067.stm

Disputed Dot-Biz Sees Daylight - Injunction Dissolves
A clutch of Web addresses registered in the newly minted ".biz" Internet domain have been cleared to go live after an injunction freezing those domains dissolved this week. Earlier this year a pair of plaintiffs filed suit against NeuLevel - the company chosen to operate .biz - claiming that the system NeuLevel had established to allow Internet users to pre-register .biz addresses constituted an illegal lottery under California law. The judge in the case granted a preliminary injunction forcing NeuLevel to freeze a batch of disputed addresses, but at the same time ordered the plaintiffs to post a $1.6 million bond in the event that they lost the case and NeuLevel suffered financial losses stemming from the injunction.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171573.html

Bankrupt dot-coms ask to sell user data
As bankruptcies sweep the Internet sector, many Web users are fielding an unexpected request from the dot-coms that once collected their names, e-mail addresses and billing information: Will they allow these companies to sell their data? With no laws or broad court rulings to guide them, defunct e-tailers and Web content sites are trying to navigate a particularly thorny dilemma of liquidation. How can they raise as much money as possible from one of their most valuable assets -- customer and membership lists -- without violating users' privacy?
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/ne...list102901.htm

No Napster Relaunch Until Next Year
Napster will not relaunch until early next year, the company's CEO told technology industry leaders today at conference in Los Angeles. A Napster spokesman confirmed this afternoon reports that Hilbers told attendees of the Webnoize 2001 conference Napster is waiting to get "a critical mass of content" before offering a secure, subscription version to consumers. The delay, in part, is also the result of ongoing music licensing negotiations that are under way with record labels, the spokesman said. Napster, which faces a massive copyright-infringement lawsuit from the five major recording companies, has been offline since mid-summer.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171616.html

High Court To Hear Arguments In Virtual Kiddie-Porn Case
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear opening arguments on Tuesday in a First Amendment challenge to a law that expands the definition of child pornography to include computer-generated images. Congress passed the Child Pornography Prevention Act in 1996 in response to the emergence of technologies that allow pornographers to create images that look like child pornography by digitally superimposing children's faces upon adults engaged in sex acts. The Free Speech Coalition - a group of adult content companies - immediately challenged the law, calling the statute "unconstitutionally vague and overly broad."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171613.html

E-Mail Targets Terrorism With Bursts Of Laughter
Within days of the World Trade Center's collapse, one of the first humorously defiant e-mails began hopscotching around the country. The electronic image showed the trade center complex rebuilt to resemble a giant hand, with the middle tower rising like an upraised finger. Not subtle, but perhaps effective. As the war has been carried to Afghanistan in the weeks since, dozens of e-mail jokesters have pitched in. Some anonymous Web artist, for instance, created Taliban Singles Online, a mock dating service featuring eight burqa-clad women under such headings as "I declare a Jihad on U, Baby." Another contributed the "Taliban TV Guide," with such entries as "Mad About Everything" and "Children Are Forbidden From Saying the Darndest Things."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171587.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Thank you so much again, dear Mr. Newsman!

- tg

[Maze]

tg ...you are so very supportive! How are ya dear one? ...and yes, thanky walktalker ...I hope people click on those newslinks you assimilate. Good goin'

[Maze]

PS: I know what your working on Tanked One. I can hardly wait ...I've only been looking forward to it for about a year now. Take yer time and let me know if I can help in any way.

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by Maze
PS: I know what your working on Tanked One. I can hardly wait ...I've only been looking forward to it for about a year now. Take yer time and let me know if I can help in any way.

Hi Tom Maze & thanks for the greeting!

Doing just fine, glad to see you around!

- tg
I'll sure let you know when the time is due and help is needed... and the special promise I made to you is not forgotten, you sweet and kind soul!

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Ok, now I'm insanely jealous ...unless of course...

I get to watch...

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
Ok, now I'm insanely jealous ...unless of course...

I get to watch...

No reason to be jealous lover.... this is all innocent... my heart is pure as always!

- tg
- and we have a date at Ground Zero when the time shall stop...

[Maze]

(edit ...oops drunken post) ...