The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

MS to settle antitrust cases; kids benefit
Microsoft once again may have snatched a victory at the settlement table that it might not have been able to achieve in the courtroom. The Redmond, Wash.-based software titan has cut a deal that would dismiss more than 100 pending private antitrust cases against the company. Lawyers brought the majority of the cases last year after a federal judge ruled that Microsoft had violated two sections of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

Does your cell phone have Monsters?
Walt Disney's online division continued its push into the wireless Web on Tuesday by offering games that are playable on cell phones. Sprint PCS will be the first U.S. carrier to offer the games, which are based on Disney movies "Monsters, Inc." and "Atlantis: The Lost Empire," but others are expected to enter into similar revenue-sharing deals, said Larry Shapiro, Walt Disney Internet Group executive vice president of business development and operations.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Germany speaks out for open source
The German Ministry of Economics and Technology has spoken out against the broadening of software patent laws within Europe, on the basis that it would stifle innovation and the open-source movement. A recent government-commissioned study conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and Informational Patent, Copyright and Competition Law advised that Europe should avoid the U.S. model, which allows patents on software that does not have a technical effect. The German ministry voiced its support for the study last week, concluding a long and controversial consultation period on software patent law within the European Commission.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Sharp launches Linux PDA
Sharp last week started shipping its SL-5000D Linux-based PDA. The device is a developer platform, released ahead of a full-blown product launch, set for the spring. Because it runs Java and C++ applications, Sharp's PDA may attract firms wanting to roll out applications to mobile staff. The SL-5000D is a similar format to Pocket PC- and Palm-based handhelds, but features a small keypad and stylus input. It runs Lineo Embedix, based on the Linux 2.4 kernel, and uses the Jeode PersonalJava environment for Java applications. Qt Embedded provides the graphical user interface as well as an environment for C++ applications. The Opera Web browser is also included.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Is open source fading away?
The ideological purity of the open-source software business is being diluted by a new era of pragmatism as start-ups adjust to the economic slump. Open-source describes a collaborative method of developing software by freely sharing programming code, with no single company owning the rights. Volunteers work on myriad open-source projects, and in many cases companies hoped to harness that talent to compete better with software titans such as Microsoft, with the Linux operating system being the most visible example.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

U.N.: Developing world needs the Web
Electronic commerce has emerged unscathed from the dot-com crash and the Sept. 11 suicide airliner attacks and can be harnessed by developing nations to help them grow, the United Nations said on Tuesday. As far as e-commerce is concerned, we can be fairly optimistic. The growth is continuing as though nothing had happened," said Jean Gurunlian, a senior official of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTAD. Gurunlian is the principal author of an UNCTAD report made public Tuesday.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Consumers splurge on Xbox, GameCube
Consumers may be curbing their spending in some areas, but they apparently don't mind splurging on the two newly released video game consoles from Nintendo and Microsoft, according to new research. A Goldman Sachs survey of U.S. retailers found that 73 percent had already sold out of Microsoft's Xbox and that 47 percent were sold out of Nintendo's GameCube, less than a week after the two systems were released. The survey was conducted among 49 retail chain stores in large cities.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Music publishers file latest lawsuit
A group representing music publishers and songwriters on Tuesday filed a federal suit against some makers of file-swapping software, marking the latest in a string of legal tangles over copyright infringement on the Internet. The National Music Publisher's Association (NMPA), which represents the owners of most songs published in the United States, said its suit, filed in Los Angeles federal court, charges file-swapping services MusicCity, Grokster and Empowerment with copyright infringement.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Playboy says hacker stole customer info
Playboy.com has alerted customers that an intruder broke into its Web site and obtained some customer information, including credit card numbers. The online unit of the nearly 50-year-old men's magazine said in an e-mail to customers that it believed a hacker accessed "a portion" of Playboy.com's computer systems. In the e-mail, a copy of which was reviewed by CNET News.com, Playboy.com President Larry Lux did not disclose how many customers might have been affected.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Soldiers balance virtual life, death
With the click of a mouse, a huge, blank movie screen becomes a seat in a Humvee rumbling through the cobbled streets of a Balkan village where there has been an accident. A turbaned child lies in the street in critical condition. Townspeople glare angrily from a curb. A helicopter circles overhead. An Army lieutenant on the scene looks guilty and meek. And then the two of you begin a discussion on how to proceed. "Sir, we should secure the assembly area," the virtual man says.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

"Hitchhiker's Guide" catches final ride
An unfinished novel by science-fiction writer Douglas Adams will be published next year and released on the anniversary of his death, according to published reports. "A Salmon of a Doubt," the sixth installment in Adams' cult classic, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," is being edited from files found on the author's computer, the U.K.-based Sunday Telegraph reported. A version of the novel will appear in a collection of Adams' work, the Telegraph said. The new story builds on Adams' satirical 1979 "Hitchhiker's Guide," which followed the search by alien Ford Prefect and his human companion Arthur Dent for an answer to "life, the universe and everything."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Tracking money trails with technology
Technology has become an increasingly vital tool in the United States' fight to uproot terrorist financial networks as part of an assault involving the Treasury Department, the FBI and the Federal Reserve. American and foreign banks are under intense pressure to divulge huge amounts of data from which investigators hope to pick up the scent of terrorist activity. But many are balking at the prospect of increased costs and lowered productivity as resources get diverted to tracking cash withdrawals, deposits and wired money transfers.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1014-201...html?tag=bt_bh

The Web -- curse or blessing?
As security problems escalate, businesses must realize that the Internet isn't as reliable or stable as private networks and other utility services. Consequently, businesses should make plans to survive periodic Internet outages until 2006. At the recent annual meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a presenter said that it would not take much for a malicious hacker to shut down the Internet by flooding the Web's master directory servers with traffic.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201...html?tag=cd_mh

SafeWeb sidelines anonymity for security
Online start-up SafeWeb has dismantled its free privacy service, which sheltered individuals' identities and movements as they scanned the Web. The Emeryville, Calif.-based company, which launched its free service last year, said the high cost of bandwidth and a lack of ad-related profits contributed to the closure. The company posted a notice on its Web site last week saying that it has suspended the free service. "For the time being, we are turning off our free consumer service," the notice said. "In the future, we may relaunch the service on a subscription basis."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Microsoft's interactive TV hits snag
The Portuguese cable company that launched the first interactive TV service using Microsoft's advanced software has put plans for mass expansion on hold because of technological snags, its chairman said Tuesday. Abilio Anca Henriques, chairman of PT Multimedia, said the number of clients for the interactive TV service, which was launched with fanfare in June, remains at only a sliver of the 100,000 initially forecast for the end of 2001. "Right now, the number of clients is in the range of 2,500," he told reporters.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on

[walktalker]

Famed Lab Seeks Big Grid
CERN, the famed Swiss high-energy particle physics lab, has a problem. It's about to start generating more data than any computer or network anywhere in the world is able to analyze. That prospect has led CERN to drive a major European project to create a vast "grid" research network of computers across Europe. When completed, the 10 million euro, Linux-based endeavor called DataGRID, will become a principal European computing resource for researchers of many disciplines.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48521,00.html

Osama's Nuclear Plans Half-Baked
In 1979, a smart-aleck writer at the science humor publication the Journal of Irreproducible Results drew up a simple recipe for world destruction. This fellow's obviously facetious piece -- called Let's Make a Thermonuclear Device! in the Journal's "Weekend Scientist" series -- purported to detail the ten steps involved in making an atom bomb, from obtaining "weapons grade Plutonium at your local supplier" to "hiding the completed device from your neighbors and children."
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,48523,00.html

Vote Here for Vaporware
Every year the technology industry promises a raft of revolutionary new products that will change our humdrum lives forever. And invariably, a whole bunch of these hotly anticipated doohickeys are delayed, or never show up at all. And so every year Wired News gives our readers the opportunity to nominate whatever it was they most looked forward to, and were cruelly denied.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48515,00.html

A Tell-All ZD Would Rather Ignore
If you subscribe to any of Ziff Davis' computer magazines, you may want to double-check your credit card bill next month. Ziff Davis Media, which publishes such popular tech titles such as Yahoo Internet Life and PC Magazine, accidentally posted the personal information of about 12,500 magazine subscribers on its website. On Monday, Ziff Davis removed the data, which included hundreds of credit card numbers, and said its engineers had taken steps to prevent additional security leaks.
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,48525,00.html

He's the Real Tourist Guy
The identity of the world-famous "Tourist Guy" has been revealed, but his fear of becoming an Internet freak show means he'll be shunning the limelight. The Tourist Guy, or "Tourist of Death," is a 25-year-old Hungarian man called Peter. He asked that his last name be kept confidential, because he doesn't want to become the next Mahir Cagri, the lovesick Turk. "I'd like to keep my identity incognito," he said in an e-mail. "This was a joke meant for my friends, not such a wide audience."
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,48397,00.html

Online Library Expands Database
Ebrary's card catalog keeps getting bigger. Full-text access to online collections of professional, scientific, medical and business titles from John Wiley & Sons and The Greenwood Publishing Group will be added to Ebrary's offerings. And on Monday, Penguin will become the third new partner to join the list of more than 80 publishers that use Ebrary to distribute their titles through multiple online channels, including libraries, institutions and other online organizations.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,48480,00.html

Search for Bin Laden Will Use U.S. Gadgetry, Afghan Hunters
Pentagon strategists are mapping out a plan to hunt down Osama bin Laden and Taliban leaders in a manner that spares U.S. soldiers the perils of a cave-by-cave search, relying instead on American air power, opposition fighters and bounty hunters. Military planners said Monday that there is virtually no chance that they will risk exposing U.S. special operations forces to underground confrontations that could prove deadly, when new technologies and willing allies can do the job. Instead, military strategists plan to use thermal and gas imaging to find gatherings of cave-dwellers.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...s%2Dtechnology

War Boosts Popularity Of Satellite Telephones
Andrew Marshall, a Reuters staff writer who roams some of the world's most remote regions for the wire service, said a new generation of relatively small, lightweight satellite phones have allowed him to report stories in ways that would have been too cumbersome to manage just five years ago. "In the days before [handheld] satellite phones, Afghanistan would have been a black hole for news," Marshall said.
http://www.washtech.com/news/telecom/13771-1.html

Palm inventor pushes theory of brain
How much can a multimillionaire technology executive alter a field of academic research? Jeff Hawkins is exploring the question. Hawkins, inventor of the Palm handheld computer, is fascinated with the workings of the human mind. He wades through stacks of academic papers devoted to neuroscience, the study of the brain. The 44-year-old takes one day off each week from his job as chairman and chief product officer of handheld device maker Handspring Inc. to bone up on neurons, synapses and other scientific terms.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/660388.asp

Life on Mars claims disputed
Fresh doubts have been cast on claims that fossils of primitive life have been found in a meteorite from Mars. An international team of scientists say that small magnetic grains found in the Martian meteorite are not similar enough to those formed by terrestrial bacteria to be evidence of life. We argue that existing evidence is inadequate to support the inference of former life on Mars," they say in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). But advocates of the life on Mars theory say that the critics suppose that terrestrial and Martian bacteria were identical.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1666053.stm

Nobel winners laud potential of Internet
Nobel Prize winners say the Internet's potential for improving education and global communications outweighs concerns over loss of privacy and unequal access to technology, a new study found. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said the Internet will play a big role in improving educational opportunities regardless of economic status or geography. The first-of-its-kind poll, paid for by Cisco Systems to honor December's 100th anniversary of the prizes, tapped laureates' views of how the Internet has changed their lives and what to expect over the next 20 years. Cisco of San Jose is the largest manufacturer of equipment that directs Internet traffic on corporate networks.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/ne...obel112001.htm

Now Anyone Can Make a Discovery
Astronomy's next great discovery may be found not by telescope, but instead with little more than a laptop computer, an Internet connection and a learned and persistent amateur. In fact, astronomers are already pulling new findings from old data, the start of what some say is a looming change in how science gets done. A team of European researchers has employed a new technique called virtual astronomy to mine vast unexplored telescope data with a new computer software program. The research technique is a break from using telescopes and other instruments for direct observational data gathering.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom..._011120-1.html

Spontaneous, Unedited, Naked
Never mind those anxieties about the Internet's impact on privacy, intellectual property and the recreational habits of 12-year-olds. What is it doing to the future of the English language? Will it really lead to the end of literacy as we know it--not to mention spelling? Not according to David Crystal, a linguist who says in this witty, thoughtful book that, on the contrary, the discourse of the Internet -- with its new, informal, even bizarre forms of language -- neither threatens nor replaces existing varieties of English but instead enriches them, extending our range of expression and showing us "homo loquens at its best."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/20...1reviews1.html

NeuStar Takes Control Of America's '.us' Domain
Washington-based NeuStar Inc. today officially took control of America's sovereign ".us" Internet addressing suffix. NeuStar announced that it had successfully moved the ".us" registry onto its own secure servers and was prepared to officially begin managing the .us domain. The U.S. Commerce Department late last month awarded control of .us to NeuStar. The .us domain is one of the more than 200 two-letter, country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) that are assigned to the world's sovereign nations.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172323.html

Mirror Software Makes It Easier To Spoof Famous Sites
Responding to a deepening legal dispute over a parody of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Web site, a loose-knit band of Internet activists has created software that will purportedly allow technically savvy users to spoof virtually any Web site in a matter of minutes. Called "YesIWill," the software is being made available to Internet users at no cost by The Yes Men, a self-described group of Internet satirists opposed to the "neo-liberal economic policies" of the WTO and other organizations involved in facilitating broader global trade.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172322.html

New Worm Targets Microsoft SQL Servers
A new Internet worm that targets poorly secured systems running Microsoft's SQL Server software is on the loose but unlikely to spread widely, security experts reported today. The worm, which has not yet been named, appears to target Microsoft SQL servers which have no password on the system administrator account, according to a preliminary analysis of the code by participants on Incidents, a mailing list for tracking computer intrusions.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172321.html

Microsoft Warns Of Media Player Security Vulnerability
Microsoft Corp. is urging users of its Windows Media Player software to apply a security patch that plugs a hole in one version that can allow a malicious attacker to take control of a user's PC. The Redmond, Wash., company said in a bulletin published Monday night that code in Windows Media Player 6.4 used to play Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) content is prone to what is known as a buffer overrun.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172315.html

EU Moves To Ratify Cybercrime Terms, Penalties
Spurred by the passage of a global cybercrime treaty and the events of Sept. 11, the European Union has working to fast-track a proposal that would harmonize definitions and penalties for a range computer crimes. The proposal – to be introduced at an EU Commission meeting in Brussels on Nov. 27 – would establish common definitions and criminal penalties among the 15 EU member states for cybercrimes such as unauthorized computer intrusion, denial-of-service attacks, and the dissemination of destructive computer viruses and worms.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172314.html

Vivendi Universal Consolidates Web Entertainment Sites
Vivendi Universal, the French media conglomerate that controls music labels, a European TV company and a major movie studio, today said it is consolidating its U.S. Web entertainment properties into a single Los Angeles-based business unit. The new division will be called Vivendi Universal Net USA Group Inc., and will be fronted by CEO Robin Richards, who currently heads recent Vivendi Universal acquisition MP3.com. Richards served MP3.com as president from 1999 until its formal acquisition by Vivendi Universal in late August.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172293.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

One copy please... thank you Mr. Newsman!

- tg