The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

Who is afraid of the news ?

Intel chops chip prices
Intel has halved the list prices of some of its Pentium 4 desktop chips in a sweeping price cut. The weekend price cuts came, as expected, after the company last week began shipping its new 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor for desktop PCs and cut the price of its 2.53GHz Pentium 4 chip. Intel regularly cuts prices, and its dealers and distributors have been selling Pentium and Celeron chips at a discount to help get rid of excess inventories during the summer sales doldrums. But this week's round of cuts includes more than just Pentium 4s. It touches nearly all of the company's chips, ranging from the mobile Pentium 4 to Xeon chips for workstations and servers.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-956307.html

Microsoft shores up Passport security
Microsoft began notifying Passport users Monday night of changes that would give them more control over their accounts and increased privacy and security. The changes could eliminate two of the biggest customer gripes against Passport: That users can create accounts using bogus e-mail addresses and that users cannot easily cancel accounts they no longer wish to keep. "Microsoft is just trying to clean up stuff," said independent security analyst Richard Smith. "They're fixing some problems here in what is a natural evolution of Passport." The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant will begin making the account changes immediately but expects it to take several weeks before all Passport holders will have access to the new features.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-956246.html

New PCs restrict copying
Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday released additional details about digital entertainment PCs coming for the holidays. But new anti-copying technology could hamper sales, say analysts and potential buyers. The new consumer computers run Windows XP Media Center Edition, a variation of Microsoft's flagship operating system. Besides normal PC functions, Windows Media Center PCs offer a second user interface through which people can access the operating systems' digital media features via a remote control. HP, as well as Samsung, will start offering the new systems sometime before the holiday-shopping season, with HP's models selling in the high $1,500 range to around $2,000.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-956285.html

New evidence may ban laptops in planes
Concerns over the safety of Ultrawideband (UWB) could see airplane passengers banned from using laptop computers while onboard a flight. Britain's Civil Aviation Authority is considering implementing the ban following research carried out earlier this year by NASA scientists into UWB. The ban was first reported in Monday's The Times newspaper. The researchers, based at NASA Langley, found evidence that UWB devices could affect a plane's electronics, including its instrument landing system and its collision avoidance systems. Laptops that include a UWB chip are expected to go on sale in 2003. A Civil Aviation Authority spokeswoman told ZDNet UK News that it could ban passengers from using laptops in flight if further evidence emerged that UWB poses a threat.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-956300.html

Report: Anti-terror plans hit privacy
In the year that has elapsed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the world's governments have moved to restrict privacy, boost surveillance and increase linking of databases, according to a survey released by a pair of advocacy groups on Tuesday. The 393-page report, which reviews current and proposed laws in 50 nations, is the first comprehensive survey of how privacy rights have been globally affected after last September's catastrophes. It was released by human rights group Privacy International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Four trends have become apparent, according to the report: the swift erosion of pro-privacy laws; greater data sharing among corporations, police and spy agencies; greater eavesdropping; and sharply increased interest in people-tracking technologies, such as face-recognition systems and national ID cards.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-956286.html

Labels put brakes on CD copy blocks
Fearful of consumer backlash, major record labels in the United States have slowed controversial plans for making CDs more difficult to copy, even as tension over online music piracy mounts. Last year, news that record companies were planning to add technology to CDs that would block people from making copies or MP3 files -- and in many cases might even prevent playback on computers -- sparked considerable controversy online, and even lawsuits. Now major record labels themselves have put the brakes on the drive for copy protection, at least in the United States, even as record stores lobby for the locks to be added as soon as possible.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-956069.html

Napster buyout blocked; fire sale likely
A federal judge Tuesday blocked the $9 million sale of Napster to German media giant Bertelsmann, in a decision likely to force the onetime file-swapping powerhouse out of business entirely. The surprise decision isn’t likely to have much effect on the tumultuous online music world, which has gone on without Napster operating for more than a year. But it appears to close the book finally on the company that, more than any other, pushed the entertainment industry to confront the realities of the online world. Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers said in a statement that the company would likely have to sell off the remainder of its assets in a new bankruptcy proceeding.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956382.html?tag=fd_lede
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,54907,00.html

DirecTV cuts fee for TiVo service
DirecTV has is halving its monthly subscription fee for TiVo's digital video recording service as part of its effort to turn on more consumers to DVRs and satellite television. DirecTV sent an on-screen message to subscribers over the weekend informing them that beginning Nov. 1 the monthly fee for TiVo's DVR service would be cut from $9.95 to $4.99. Since October of 2000, DirecTV has been bundling its satellite television service with TiVo's DVR service to attract viewers. To access DirecTV satellite broadcasts and TiVo's DVR service, customers must have a combination set-top box with a satellite receiver and hard drive. Earlier this year, the two companies restructured and expanded their relationship to change the way the combination satellite and DVR set-top boxes are sold and managed in an effort to boost consumer interest.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956384.html?tag=fd_top

Bertelsmann shedding online units
German media giant Bertelsmann on Tuesday said it plans to sell its European online retail ventures and will focus instead on its book and music media club businesses. The changes affect Amazon.com rival Bol.com, a Bertelsmann unit that sells books, CDs, DVDs, gifts and software. Bertelsmann is trying to sell its Bol divisions in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden to another competitor. Bertelsmann will hold on to its joint ventures in Italy and China because Bol is already folded into their respective book club businesses. The company has initiated contact with competitors but has not begun negotiations for an outright sale of the sites, according to Bertelsmann spokesman Gerd Koslowski.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-949848.html?tag=fd_top

iPod to reach the masses
Best Buy will begin selling Apple Computer's iPod later this month, in a move that analysts say could be instrumental in igniting sales of the digital music player. Starting Sept. 15, Best Buy will carry two Windows models and a Mac iPod in more than 500 retail stores, adding to the 35 Apple retail stores and 225 CompUSAs selling the digital music player. The move comes soon after the first Windows-compatible iPods started selling at Apple retail stores, CompUSAs and independent Mac dealers. In October, Apple unveiled the iPod, a shirt-pocket-sized digital music player built around a 5GB hard drive. The company unveiled in March a 10GB iPod with a 2,000-song capacity. Neither model would sync with Windows PCs because Apple's iTunes software works only with Macs.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956305.html?tag=fd_top

In Greece, use a Game Boy, go to jail
In Greece, playing a shoot-'em-up video game could land you in jail. The Greek government has banned all electronic games across the country, including those that run on home computers, on Game Boy-style portable consoles, and on mobile phones. Thousands of tourists in Greece are unknowingly facing heavy fines or long terms in prison for owning mobile phones or portable video games. Greek Law Number 3037, enacted at the end of July, explicitly forbids electronic games with "electronic mechanisms and software" from public and private places, and people have already been fined tens of thousands of dollars for playing or owning games.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956357.html?tag=fd_top

A burgeoning hacker culture points to promise in Africa
On a Sunday night in July, a light rain is falling on the pot-holed streets of this West African capital city, and Eric Osiakosian is side-stepping rats on his way to the entrance of his preferred hangout, the Java Café on Ring Road, the central drag. He passes up a flight of steps and through a set of glass doors into what looks like a computer graveyard; Old PCs are strewn everywhere, discarded keyboards and hard disks lie in a pile. Hunched near the detritus is Eric’s friend, Michael Akoto who, like Eric, is self-taught in the ways of geekhood. By day Michael runs the PC network for a radio station; by night he does the same for the Java Café. He is 24 years old, one year younger than Eric. Neither has studied at a university; they can’t afford to and besides, technical education in Ghana, even at the country’s premier engineering school in Kumasi, a regional capital, is poor.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...hary083002.asp

Anti-spam group blocks Yahoo stores
An anti-spam group has put Yahoo's storefronts on its list of suspected junk e-mailers, snarling attempts by some customers to access the storefronts. The Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) put the IP address for Yahoo's stores in its database Tuesday. The action came in response to a notice that an alleged spam mail that has been circulating since at least February was directing recipients to a storefront on Yahoo. But the IP address listed in MAPS' Realtime Blackhole List is used by all Yahoo stores, not just one storefront, according to a Yahoo representative who asked not to be identified. Since many ISPs and companies use MAPS and similar lists to block access to suspected spammers, the listing meant that many customers were likely unable to access any of the Yahoo stores since Tuesday.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-956191.html?tag=cd_mh

Catching wireless hackers in the act
It's been a cinch for vandals with an eye on Internet mischief to launch attacks by co-opting an unsecured wireless network, but such break-ins may not go so unnoticed now. A heavily monitored wireless network was quietly set up this summer to lure hackers and keep track of attacks. Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) created the network to study the methods of wireless vandals. It is the first wireless version of a so-called honeynet, networks of servers designed to lure in hackers and then monitor their actions. "It is important to see how the bad guys are breaking into systems using not just wired networks, but wireless networks as well," said Lance Spitzner, founder of the Honeynet Project, the group that first created honeynets.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-956126.html

Post a message to the future
Want to send a message to your future descendants that will be read in 500 centuries' time? The nonprofit 'KEO' program is putting together a time capsule that will orbit Earth in a satellite for 50,000 years and then return to the planet. The group, headed by a French scientist, is in India seeking messages. KEO, which is costing at least $50 million, is funded by more than two-dozen, mostly European, companies, some of which have interests in the space industry. It has also been selected as UNESCO's 'Project for the 21st century.' "It's a gift from the people of today to the people of tomorrow," KEO creator Jean-Marc Philippe, a scientist-turned-artist, told a news conference.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956358.html?tag=cd_mh

Watchdogs rap RIAA's file-trade assault
A federal law that the recording industry is using to unmask a suspected Kazaa music-trader is unconstitutional, a coalition of nonprofit groups said late Friday. A dozen consumer and privacy groups filed an amicus brief in federal court here arguing that the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) request for information about a Verizon Communications subscriber should be denied. Verizon has opposed the request on procedural grounds. The 30-page brief says the RIAA is relying on a portion of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act that violates Americans' right to be anonymous online. "Purported copyright owners should not have the right to violate protected, anonymous speech with what amounts to a single snap of the fingers," the brief said. Groups signing the brief include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Consumer Alert, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and National Consumers League.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956176.html?tag=cd_mh

Malaysia to launch piracy crackdown
Malaysian officials will begin a nationwide crackdown on the use of pirated software by businesses on Sunday, declaring war on the rampant use of illegally copied programs, the official Bernama news agency reported Saturday. "Operation Genuine" will involve some 300 officers from the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry as well as software experts from the Business Software Alliance (BSA), which represents U.S. software publishers, it said. The International Intellectual Property Alliance estimates that U.S. trade losses due to the piracy of movies, music, software and publishing materials in Malaysia last year rose to $316.5 million from $140 million in 2000.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956219.html?tag=cd_mh

Be All That DNA Can Be
Nearly 2,500 U.S. service members were listed as MIA/POW at the end of the Vietnam War. In its commitment to bringing home and identifying all lost soldiers, the Army has pioneered the use of a DNA technology that has quietly changed the scope of forensic science. Mitochondrial DNA testing, a little-understood and somewhat controversial technique, was instrumental in the identification of three servicemen: Lt. Col. Donald E. Parsons, Chief Warrant Officer Charles I. Stanley and Sgt. 1st Class Eugene F. Christiansen, who earlier this month were returned to their families. The technique has caused quite a stir in the POW/MIA community and has also wrought significant changes in America's relationship to its war dead. Some activists claim the Army uses the science too liberally, but the mtDNA test has already become de facto in more than just identifying unknown soldiers.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,54631,00.html

Why FBI Computer Force Ain't Fat
After responding to the agency's appeals for computer security experts, aspiring G-men hackers sadly say that their names will never appear on the FBI's Most Wanted Job Applicants list. Although their technical abilities should allow them to qualify easily as agents, their ethics, age and/or physical fitness levels excluded them. Mike Sweeny, fueled by renewed patriotism after Sept. 11, wanted to offer his 20-plus years of experience in computer security to the FBI. But he was disheartened by job requirements that required him to have a college degree, be under 37 years old, morally irreproachable ... and physically fit.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54850,00.html

Cap Cyborg to chip 11 year old in wake of UK child killings
Captain Cyborg, aka Professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University, is generally a harmless if somewhat tedious self-publicist whose risible 'experiments' pay his rent and provide the less critical elements of the press with a never-ending stream of stupid stories. But an exclusive in today's Daily Mirror serves to illustrate that such maniacs are not always harmless. Following the recent abduction of ten year olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, the Mirror reports that Wendy and Paul Duval have decided to implant their daughter, Danielle, with "a microchip to track her every move. "If she was kidnapped her exact location would be discovered via a computer." And guess who developed the chip?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/26908.html

Tattoo to monitor diabetes
Scientists are developing a smart tattoo that could tell diabetics when their glucose levels are dangerously low. Once perfected, the tattoo will allow glucose levels to be monitored round the clock, and could allow an alarm system that would warn the diabetic if their glucose levels were to fall dangerously. It would also mean that diabetics would no longer have to subject themselves to the finger-prick devices that currently they must use every day. The tattoo has been designed Gerard Cote, of Texas A&M University, and Michael Pishko, of the chemical engineering department at Penn State University.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2225404.stm

Breast cancer trigger investigated
Scientists say they are a step closer to finding out exactly how a single gene can trigger breast cancer. Researchers at Queen's University Belfast believe that a fault in the BRCA1 gene can prevent the body's immune system from fighting cancer cells. A faulty BRCA1 gene has been previously identified as a possible cause of breast cancer. Faults in this gene and another one called BRCA2 are believed to account for up to 5% of breast cancers. Women with a faulty BRCA1 gene have between a 65% and an 85% chance of developing the disease at some point in their lives. They also have an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2231516.stm

Smooth step to superconducting devices
A new superconductor might begin to make good on its promise thanks to a technique developed in the United States for fashioning it into smooth, ultra-thin films. Magnesium diboride (MgB2) astonished researchers last year when it was found to conduct with no electrical resistance at - 234 °C, several degrees higher than similar superconductors. But turning this discovery to practical use has been hampered by the difficulty of making the thin films of MgB2 needed in superconducting electronic circuits. Now Xiaoxing Xi of Pennsylvania State University and co-workers have found a cheap and simple method for making high-quality films of MgB2.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020902/020902-2.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
Who is afraid of the news ?

Not me!

Originally posted by walktalker
New PCs restrict copying
Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday released additional details about digital entertainment PCs coming for the holidays. But new anti-copying technology could hamper sales, say analysts and potential buyers. The new consumer computers run Windows XP Media Center Edition, a variation of Microsoft's flagship operating system. Besides normal PC functions, Windows Media Center PCs offer a second user interface through which people can access the operating systems' digital media features via a remote control. HP, as well as Samsung, will start offering the new systems sometime before the holiday-shopping season, with HP's models selling in the high $1,500 range to around $2,000.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-956285.html

Such crippled computers will cost as much or slightly more to make than fully functional ones. Remote controls can be as easily added to fully functional computers. Besides the obvious anti-p2p motivations sounds like a dead business idea too.

Thanks again, WT!

- tg

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
In Greece, use a Game Boy, go to jail
In Greece, playing a shoot-'em-up video game could land you in jail. The Greek government has banned all electronic games across the country, including those that run on home computers, on Game Boy-style portable consoles, and on mobile phones. Thousands of tourists in Greece are unknowingly facing heavy fines or long terms in prison for owning mobile phones or portable video games. Greek Law Number 3037, enacted at the end of July, explicitly forbids electronic games with "electronic mechanisms and software" from public and private places, and people have already been fined tens of thousands of dollars for playing or owning games.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956357.html?tag=fd_top

Ridiculous and oppressive as this may sound, we have to remember that some U.S. legislators are seriously suggesting much more oppressive measures to guarantee Hollywood profits.

- tg