The Newspaper Shop -- Wednesday edition

[walktalker]

You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals
So let's do like they do on the CNN channel

Intel has big nano plans
Intel will unfurl its nanotechnology strategies at its developer conference next week, shedding light on what will power its chips for the coming decades. Sunlin Chou, senior vice president of the technology and manufacturing group at Intel, will discuss the company's plans for nanotechnology, or the science of making chips with elements that measure less than 100 nanometers, next Thursday morning at the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, Calif. Chou will review some of Intel's previously announced strategies for nanotechnology manufacturing, but he'll also touch on as-yet-unannounced plans in this area, according to company representatives. And right now, there are two major blank spots when it comes to Intel's nano plans: multi-gate transistors and carbon nanotubes.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-956443.html

Resources drained by e-mail hoaxes
The old adage that 'a fool and their money are easily parted' is still tempting more and more would-be fraudsters to run e-mail con tricks, such as the notorious Nigerian money scam. Increasingly we are seeing more and more e-mails -- offering us everything from natural Viagra to a share of Bill Gates' fortunes -- and those sending them clearly still see a market for their ludicrous scams. Similarly a second threat from spam e-mail is that posed by hoax virus warnings, which can be as dangerous as genuine viruses once they begin to spread like wildfire through e-mail servers worldwide - taking up important human and computer resources.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-956504.html

Groups implore FTC to outlaw spam
Spam has become such a menace to the Internet that the Federal Trade Commission should take swift steps to stanch the flow of bulk e-mail, three consumer groups said Wednesday. In a 14-page set of proposed rules that already has drawn fire as overly regulatory, the groups suggest that the FTC outlaw commercial e-mail that misrepresents the content of the message or fails to provide a way to unsubscribe from the mailing list. "Spam is threatening the value of the Internet," said Samuel Simon, chairman of the Telecommunications Research and Action Center (TRAC). "We believe there is regulatory authority for the Federal Trade Commission to act and do something. It's not perfect, but if the rule we ask for is enacted, spam will be reduced significantly."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-956502.html

VeriSign may lose domain sales
The Internet's governing body has threatened to pull VeriSign's contract to sell Web addresses unless the domain name company maintains more accurate records of its customers. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Tuesday accused VeriSign of breaching its contract because it failed to correct inaccurate customer information in a timely fashion. At issue is the Whois database, which contains personal contact information of people who register Web sites. ICANN cited 17 specific violations over the past 18 months that have yet to be corrected, including one customer who registered a domain name using the fictitious name of "Toto" with the fake address of "Yellow Brick Road" in "Oz, Kansas." ICANN is giving VeriSign 15 days to correct the problems or face the prospect of losing its ability to sell domain names.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-956433.html

Web surfers pay to make connections
Web site operators have been searching for years for that elusive formula to attract paying subscribers, experimenting with an alphabet soup of business relationships such as B2B (business-to-business), B2C (business-to-consumer) and P2P (peer-to-peer). Now it seems that a few crafty companies have found a winning formula in M2Y, as in "me-to-you." Sites that help surfers reach out -- whether to old high school buddies, long lost relatives or potential dates -- are emerging as some of the most popular subscription sites on the Web. Classmates.com, genealogy site Ancestry.com and dating site Match.com continually rank in the top 10 of paid sites, based on subscriber numbers. Other connection sites topping the charts provide interactive games and greeting cards.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-956495.html

Microsoft unveils Windows Media 9
Microsoft on Wednesday introduced its long-awaited digital media software, Windows Media 9, in an effort to establish dominance for its operating system in distributing high-quality digital content. Company founder Bill Gates will formally launch the software Wednesday evening at an extravagant party in Los Angeles. In true Hollywood fashion, Gates will be joined by "Titanic" director James Cameron, Beatles producer Sir George Martin, and musician LL Cool J in showing off the technology. Windows Media 9, formerly code-named Corona, has been in development for nearly four years and improves on earlier versions of Microsoft's digital player and server technology on a number of fronts. For businesses, the technology includes improved media management features, for example. For consumer media playing, the system is updated for speed and seamless playback to create a more TV-like experience on the PC.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956643.html?tag=fd_top

University to challenge copyright laws
Duke University's law school has received an anonymous $1 million gift to fund advocacy and research aimed at curtailing the recent expansion of copyright law. The school, which plans to announce the gift at a conference in Washington on Thursday, is using the money to fund a center focused on finding "the correct balance" between intellectual property rights and material that should be in the public domain. James Boyle, a Duke law professor and co-director of the school's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, says that the center is likely to look skeptically at recent laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and a measure that extended copyright's duration by another 20 years.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956637.html?tag=fd_top

Server attacks stump Microsoft
Microsoft released further details of a rash of attacks on Windows 2000 servers that has so far stumped the software giant's research team. In an advisory posted Aug. 30, Microsoft warned customers that several companies had recently observed an "increased level of hacking activity." Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS) told system administrators to be on the lookout for Trojan horses -- programs that appear to be legitimate but aren't -- and for several specific kinds of odd network behavior. On Wednesday, Mark Miller, security specialist for the Microsoft PSS, said that the attacks seemed to be ongoing, but at a much reduced level.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-956647.html?tag=fd_top

Another file-swapping site to fall silent
An Illinois federal judge said Wednesday that he would order the Madster file-trading system, formerly known as Aimster, to halt song-swapping in the next few days. The decision marks the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) second substantial court victory against a file-trading company, just a day after the RIAA's legal victory in bankruptcy court shut Napster's doors for what appears to be the last time. In a detailed and often pointed opinion, Judge Marvin Aspen said that Aimster, which played a brief but colorful role on the file-trading stage not long after Napster's appearance, was clearly responsible for large-scale copyright infringement. As with Napster's final loss Tuesday, the immediate result of the Madster-Aimster case will have little impact on the file-swapping world.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956644.html?tag=fd_top

Red Hat founder joins the circus
Bob Young has traded in his Red Hat for a top hat. Known for sporting a crimson fedora at trade shows, the founder and one-time chairman of Linux software maker Red Hat now plans to don the duds of a ringmaster when he kicks off his latest venture, Lulu Tech Circus, at the end of this month. Half technology classroom and half geek funhouse, the Circus aims to put the enthusiasm back into technology trade shows, said Young. Unlike other trade shows, which focus on a common -- and often times narrow -- theme, Lulu Tech Circus will be a menagerie of all things technology, Young said. The conference is structured around five tracks, called "experiences," which will each have a specific focus.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-956636.html?tag=fd_top

Sony gadget picks TV shows for you
Sony on Wednesday gave a fresh peek into its strategy for linking consumer electronics to the Web, unveiling a Net-connected video recorder that can seek out and record TV programs it thinks its owner would like. The device, which uses a hard-disk drive to record, instead of optical discs or magnetic tapes, will be the first of Sony's "Cocoon" line of products that aim to become an alternative to the PC for accessing Internet content. The recorder includes a 160 gigabyte hard-disk drive -- which can record 15 hours of high-definition TV or up to 100 hours of standard quality programs -- with a possible expansion to 320 gigabytes.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956641.html?tag=fd_top

Is this the way to fight copyright infringement?
What could have been one of the most important Internet intellectual property lawsuits ever came and went in less than a week, but someday another lawsuit like it could jeopardize the stability and freedom of cyberspace. The lawsuit was filed by 13 players in the music industry -- all large, well-known companies including Arista Records, Sony Music and Warner Bros. Records -- against four important Internet backbone providers -- AT&T Broadband, Cable & Wireless, Sprint and UUNet. Although the plaintiffs accused the backbone providers of no wrongdoing, they asked a federal district court in New York to order them to block access to one Web site. The Web site was Listen4ever.com, described by the music industry as offering the ability to download entire albums from a central server without permission of the copyright owners.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-956418.html

AI helps gamers keep on playing
Every computer game player knows that real life can intrude at the most inopportune moments. Just when you are completing a tricky flanking manoeuvre, or have got to the darkest point of a dungeon, the phone will ring, a partner will want to talk or your dinner will be on the table. But Israeli game maker Majorem could have a solution to this problem, at least for players of its forthcoming Ballerium online game. The company has developed an artificial intelligence system that learns a gamer's style of play and can take over and play for them if they have to spend time away from the game.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2225281.stm

Toyota, Honda to Compete in IT-Equipped Cars with Internet Access via Cell Phones
Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., Ltd. will provide information services for drivers through the Internet, beginning this autumn. Toyota announced on Aug. 28 that it will initiate an information service called "G-BOOK," in which music, electronic-commerce and other contents are distributed to car-navigation systems, using the third-generation (3G) mobile-phone network of KDDI Corp. Honda followed suit by revealing on Aug. 29 its "InterNavi Premium Club" service, in which it will distribute nationwide traffic information, news and other contents by connecting the mobile phone or PHS to the car-navigation systems.
http://www.nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com/...t/cover/204769

Ogg Vorbis tunes in to hardware
Ogg Vorbis, an audio format created to provide a royalty-free alternative to MP3, could at last be making its way into portable digital audio players. The format reached a milestone 1.0 release earlier this year, and now the Xiph.org Foundation, which coordinates Ogg Vorbis development, has released an open-source Ogg Vorbis player that will work with ordinary digital music player hardware. Xiph has also offered to give hardware makers free engineer time to help them integrate the format into their offerings. Ogg Vorbis is an open-source project maintained by volunteer developers around the world. Unlike most mainstream audio formats such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis does not use patented technology, allowing it to be offered under an open-source license. This means that developers can have free access to the software and its original source code and can modify and redistribute the software, as long as any modifications are returned to the community.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956540.html?tag=cd_mh

Pop-up ads few and far between?
Pop-up ads may seem like they're everywhere, but they account for only a small portion of online advertisements, according to a new study. During the first seven months of this year, pop-up and pop-under ads amounted to just 2 percent of all online advertising impressions, according to a study released Wednesday by Nielsen/NetRatings. However, more than 9 percent of all companies that advertise online are now using such ads, including household names such as Dell Computer, Morgan Stanley and Providian Financial. Online advertisers served 11.3 billion pop-up and pop-under ad impressions in the first seven months of 2002, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. About 58 percent of those impressions were used to drive traffic to a particular Web site, while 26 percent were aimed at boosting sales through use of incentives. Just 13 percent of pop-up and pop-under advertisements were used to build brand awareness.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956503.html?tag=cd_mh

Listen.com inks another broadband deal
Listen.com on Wednesday announced an agreement to sell its online music service to Charter Communications' broadband subscribers. It is the latest deal that the Internet start-up has established with a broadband provider. In July, Listen struck partnerships with Hughes Electronics' DirecTV Broadband and AOL Time Warner's Road Runner high-speed Internet services. Like the DirecTV and Road Runner deals, Wednesday's agreement will allow the St. Louis-based cable giant to sell subscriptions of Listen's Rhapsody service to its broadband subscribers. Listen is partnering with broadband providers in hopes of luring more high-speed Internet users to Rhapsody.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956498.html?tag=cd_mh

Analysts upbeat on game industry
Wall Street analysts painted bright pictures for the video game industry in reports released Wednesday. Bear, Stearns analyst Jeff Vilensky said that after generating a record $9 billion in revenue last year, video game sales have grown 20 percent so far in 2002 and look to be on track to at least maintain that growth through the holidays. Vilensky noted that unemployment among teenagers, one of the key demographics for the game industry, has risen to 17.9 percent this year. But, he said, a loss in discretionary spending shouldn't hurt game sales too much. "As far as leisure goes, this is still one of the most inexpensive forms of in-home entertainment," Vilenksy wrote.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956603.html?tag=cd_mh

When Text Messaging Turns Ugly
"We are watching you ... we are going to kill you ... we are going to kill your mum." This message would make anyone uneasy, but British children regularly send messages like this to each other as systematic bullying enters the 21st century through SMS -- the short message service that comes with all mobile phones in Europe. The government and children's advocacy groups have stepped in to help harangued kids cope. But so far no one's come up with a way to put the bullies in their place. One in four children in the United Kingdom have been bullied or threatened through their mobile phone or PC, according to a survey commissioned by British children's charity NCH.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54771,00.html

MS Pushes New Tablet on Students
On Nov. 7, the first Windows XP-powered tablet PCs and so-called digital pens will hit the market. These machines will be lighter than most present-day mobile notebook and tablet computers and offer perks such as wireless Internet access, voice-recognition software and loads of educational programs. Users will write on them directly with the digital pen. While Microsoft plans to target all consumers with the tablet, the company considers it ideal for school. "We really see it replacing the notebook computer," said Kelly Berschauer, the tablet PC product manager at Microsoft. "Just like you can't live without your computer mouse today, we think the digital pen will replace the mouse." That is, if it's deemed affordable.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54545,00.html

FBI Says Hotmail Hard to Find
The government said Wednesday that a vigorous investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui's computer activity turned up no sign of an e-mail account the accused Sept. 11 conspirator said he used. In response to a judge's questions, prosecutors and an FBI computer expert said "xdesertman@hotmail.com" was not found because Microsoft's free Hotmail service does not verify an account user's identity. The Hotmail service also is unable to provide the account of a particular user on a particular computer at a specific date and time, according to the government's written motion. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema last week ordered the FBI to explain how it examined the computers Moussaoui said he used prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, and to tell her why it could not find the account.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54935,00.html

Using Terror as a Pretext
Several Western democracies have become "predators of digital freedoms," using the fight against terrorism to increase surveillance on the Internet, an international media-rights group said Thursday. Reporters Without Borders criticized not only authoritarian states such as China that tightly police Internet use, but also Western governments including the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Denmark and the European Parliament. "A year after the tragic events in New York and Washington, the Internet can be included on the list of 'collateral damage,'" the Paris-based group said in a report. "Cyber-liberty has been undermined and fundamental digital freedoms have been amputated."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54939,00.html

That Was the Day That Was
Farley's story is just one example of the thousands of e-mails, text messages, weblogs, videos and other digital snapshots captured in The September 11 Digital Archive. "Sept. 11 was the first major event of the Internet age," said Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director of the archive. "For the first time in history, people experienced this major world event online, through all kinds of media and computer technologies. Someone had to quickly mobilize to preserve a digital record of the attacks." While previous world-scale events such as Pearl Harbor were primarily documented by vast written records, the majority of materials documenting public reaction to Sept. 11 are now online.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54729,00.html

A Sound WTC Remembrance
Wedding cassettes from the top of the World Trade Center, tourists' video e-mails from the 110th floor, sounds of wind blowing through the elevator shafts, piano music at Windows of the World, corporate conference calls and voicemails from the last day of the buildings' existence. These recordings are among the artifacts assembled in The Sonic Memorial Project, a cross-media documentary of first-person accounts chronicling the life and history of the World Trade Center and its neighborhood before, during and after Sept. 11. The project is a collaboration among the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR's Lost & Found Sound, WNYC, the Smithsonian Institution, Picture Projects, dotsperinch, the September 11 Digital Archive and independent radio producers across the nation.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54796,00.html

Airwave camouflage to stop drive-by hacking
Software that generates a blizzard of bogus wireless network access points could bamboozle hackers trying to access corporate and home computer networks. This would stop them stealing wireless surfing time and exploring corporate wireless networks, say the two US computer programmers behind the scheme. It would certainly complicate matters for most wireless assailants, says one security expert. But the extra challenge may well spur some on to improve their attack methods, he adds. Wireless network hacking has become an increasingly popular activity in the last few years. Networks have sprung up across cities and many are vulnerable to well-documented holes in their default set-ups.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992760

Real Time
More than 200 years ago Benjamin Franklin coined the now famous dictum that equated passing minutes and hours with shillings and pounds. The new millennium -- and the decades leading up to it -- has given his words their real meaning. Time has become to the 21st century what fossil fuels and precious metals were to previous epochs. Constantly measured and priced, this vital raw material continues to spur the growth of economies built on a foundation of terabytes and gigabits per second. An English economics professor even tried to capture the millennial zeitgeist by supplying Franklin's adage with a quantitative underpinning.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?art...880000&catID=2

Foolproof flat-pack warns of assembly errors
A flat-pack furniture kit whose parts are fitted with cheap microprocessors that monitor what you are doing during assembly has been developed in Switzerland. The kit will warn you if you are doing something wrong or dangerous. Stavros Antifakos and his colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have found 44 different paths that someone working without the instructions can take to fit the pieces of an IKEA wardrobe together. But only eight of these result in a safe construction. Other paths lead to something that looks stable, but is not, or come to a dead end. While IKEA's instruction sheets lead to a safely constructed unit, Antifakos thinks that the order in which parts should be assembled often seems arbitrary to the buyer. "People find this annoying so they don't follow them," he says. He will describe his team's alternative approach later in September at a conference in Sweden.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992758

Rainstorms could trigger killer eruptions
The most dangerous type of volcanic eruption can be triggered by heavy rain, UK researchers have found. This suggests that simply watching the weather forecast could be used to save lives. The type of eruption in question is a "dome collapse". This form of eruption has caused more than 70 per cent of volcano-related deaths over the past century. "They tend to be big, violent eruptions," says John Murray, a volcanologist at the Open University in Milton Keynes. The Mount St Helens eruption on 18 May 1980, for example, sent a cloud of 520 million tonnes of ash 25 kilometres into the air. Rock and debris fell to Earth up to 30 kilometres from the volcano. The build-up to an eruption is often easy to see months or years ahead, as magma pushing from below produces a visible dome on the side of the mountain. Small eruptions of lava add to the bulge, making it more unstable until eventually it collapses, releasing the pressure in a massive explosion. But it is extremely difficult to tell exactly when this will happen.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992755

Adobe Files Suit to Protect Customers' Rights to Use Fonts
Adobe Systems Incorporated, the leader in network publishing, today announced it has asked the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., for declaratory relief to resolve a contractual dispute that Adobe has the right to permit its customers to embed ITC (International Typeface Corporation) fonts in electronic documents. Adobe is also filing an arbitration proceeding in London seeking affirmation of the same contractual rights with respect to Monotype fonts. Adobe attempted to resolve this matter informally with Monotype and ITC, but was unsuccessful. By taking these actions, Adobe hopes to resolve these issues for its customers. In addition, Adobe has asked the court to declare that Adobe's popular Acrobat product does not violate certain provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) as claimed by ITC and Agfa Monotype.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/020903/30424_1.html

Recording industry site hit again
For the third time in five weeks, the Recording Industry Association of America has come under online attack, apparently by activists irate about the group's legal efforts to curtail music-swapping. As of Tuesday afternoon, access to the RIAA.org site was sporadic. Over the weekend, it had been defaced to include a faux announcement that it would "offer the latest albums for download from RIAA.org" and a small collection of MP3 files. "The RIAA wishes to apologize for the heavy-handed manner in which the popular Chinese site Listen4Ever was closed down, and would like to present the following items for free download as a token of its goodwill," the defacement said. That was a reference to a lawsuit that the RIAA filed to force U.S. network providers to block access to the Listen4ever site, which is now offline.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956398.html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on