The Newspaper Shop -- Wednesday edition

[walktalker]

Hackers organize vandalism contest
A call for online vandals to take part in a Web site defacement contest has some companies warning clients to beware over the holiday weekend. The contest awards points to vandal groups for defacing Web sites, with higher points awarded for sites that are run on less common servers. The winner of the contest will be the group that defaces 6,000 servers in the shortest time. The numbers had some security companies warning clients to be on guard for defacement activity. "Due to the large scope of the contest, normal Internet activity could be disrupted," Internet Security Systems (ISS) wrote in an advisory sent to media outlets.
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-1023172.html?tag=fd_top

Spam-bot tests flunk the blind
An increasingly popular technique for preventing e-mail abuse is frustrating some visually impaired Net users, setting the stage for a conflict between spam busters and advocates for the disabled. Many companies have recently begun requiring users to pass a verification test in order to access their services -- typically by typing into a Web form a few characters that appear on the form in a guise that prevents a computer or software robot from recognizing and copying them. The technique, now used by Web giants Yahoo, Microsoft, VeriSign and others, seeks to block software bots from signing up for Web-based e-mail accounts that can be used to launch spam and from scraping e-mail addresses from online databases.
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1022...g=fd_lede2_hed

Linux lab hires second guru
A day after Linux founder Linus Torvalds joined the Open-Source Development Lab, the group has hired another top programmer, Andrew Morton, the developer who will assume responsibility for the upcoming 2.6 version of Linux. The move further elevates the importance of the Beaverton, Ore.-based group, which is sponsored by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and numerous other companies. Torvalds began his OSDL employment Tuesday after taking a leave of absence from chipmaker Transmeta. "That's some serious heavy hitters on board," said RedMonk analyst James Governor. "This makes ODSL look stronger and more influential." Morton will assume responsibilities for maintaining the coming 2.6 version of the Linux kernel when it's released, after which Torvalds will shift his attention from the 2.5 development branch to the new 2.7 branch.
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1023062.html?tag=fd_top

Torvalds: Linux 2.6 beta coming
Although Linus Torvalds didn't meet a goal to release the upcoming 2.6 version of the Linux operating system in June, the Linux leader said a test version could come as soon as next week. "I'm planning on starting the so-called 'pre-2.6' series in early July, and that is kind of a beta series," Torvalds said Wednesday in an interview. He and Andrew Morton, the programmer who will maintain the 2.6 version, "are talking about starting a pre-2.6 series next week," Torvalds said. "It will most likely take a few months after that for the real 2.6.0," he said. "And, as usual, the thing doesn't stop there. It usually takes at least half a year before vendors really switch over." IBM executives said in June that the company expected products using the 2.6 kernel to be released in the first half of 2004. Previously, they had hoped for the second half of 2003.
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1023130.html?tag=fd_top

Microsoft offers free e-book downloads
In a move aimed at bolstering the use of its Microsoft Reader program, the software giant announced on Wednesday that it would offer free downloads of e-book bestsellers over a 20-week period. Although Microsoft has launched similar promotions in the past to boost users' familiarity with Reader and attempt to snag market share from Adobe's omnipresent Acrobat software, the new promotion is the largest in scope and duration that the company has offered, Microsoft eReading group product manager Cliff Guren said. "Customers are satisfied with the reading experience once they engage with it, but we wanted to build awareness of e-books and Microsoft Reader. We want to expose more people to this," Guren said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1046_3-1023134.html?tag=fd_top

Billboard tracks Net music downloads
Billboard magazine is charting new territory this week, adding data for the first time on sales of Internet music downloads to its lists of top-selling albums. Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks retail music sales and is the source of Billboard's top music charts, will make data available Wednesday on music downloads sold at several digital-tunes services. These include Apple Computer's iTunes, Roxio's Pressplay, MusicNet, Liquid Audio and Listen.com. It also plans to track sales from the upcoming Napster service. Nielsen SoundScan's announcement that it will begin recording download sales lends credence to Web music-retail efforts and could help raise the general profile of online services among consumers and the recording industry.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1023140.html?tag=fd_top

Where did SARS come from?
In April, when Canadian scientists sequenced the genetic code of the SARS virus, they discovered a microbe unlike any other ever seen in humans or animals. On its genome "there is a long stretch of nucleotides and then one big piece that sticks out," says University of Hong Kong microbiologist Malik Peiris, who first linked SARS to a novel coronavirus. "When we then looked to see if antibodies for it exist in human blood samples, there were none." So where did the SARS virus come from? At press time, eight months after the first case was diagnosed in a bird and snake merchant in the Chinese city of Shunde, the source of the virus was still unknown. But researchers are narrowing the suspects to animals found in southern China, where humans and critters often live cheek by jowl.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/medicin...462456,00.html

Microsoft moves U.S. jobs to India
Microsoft is starting to shift U.S.-based jobs to India as it seeks to lower technical support and development costs, the company said Wednesday. The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant, long seen as a growing company immune to job losses, is now considering cutbacks in the United States while increasing staff in India, which turns out tens of thousands of English-speaking software engineers each year. "With lots of English-speaking talent, we were thinking of a better way to tap into that," said S. Somasegar, Microsoft's vice president of Windows engineering services.
http://news.com.com/2100-1011_3-1023213.html?tag=cd_mh

Kazaa parent forms P2P alliance
The company behind the popular Kazaa file-swapping software on Wednesday launched a trade group to push the case for peer-to-peer networking. As previously reported, Kazaa distributor Sharman Networks and partner Altnet hope their new group, called the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), will help legitimize the much-maligned peer-to-peer industry, which has come under fire from Hollywood, politicians and the recording industry for being a haven for pirates. Martin Lafferty, the DCIA's chief executive, said the group is hoping to provide a neutral forum where companies that are affected by or involved in peer-to-peer or distributed computing technology can meet to establish business practices, to encourage the adoption of standards and to help shape public policy.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1022984.html?tag=cd_mh

Another Tool for Big Brother?
Police can envision limited domestic uses for an urban surveillance system the Pentagon is developing but doubt they could use the full system which is designed to track and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a city. Known as "Combat Zones That See," the project is intended to help the U.S. military protect troops and fight in cities overseas. Scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology also could easily be adapted to keep tabs on Americans. The project's centerpiece would be groundbreaking computer software capable of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license tag, or drivers and passengers by face.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59471,00.html

EU Approves Biotech Food Label
Seeking to avoid a trade battle with Washington, the European Parliament on Wednesday paved the way for new biotech foods to be sold in Europe if they are clearly labeled. European consumers, however, might not buy the genetically modified products -- anything from dog food to pizza dough to popcorn -- because of widespread public fears of what critics deride as "Frankenfood." The 626-member EU assembly, meeting in Strasbourg, France, gave final approval to legislation introducing tougher labeling of new genetically altered food products. That will enable consumers to tell whether products contain biotech ingredients and allow the European Union to do away with its five-year freeze on the introduction of new biotech products.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59480,00.html

There's oil in them thar sands!
EVERYONE knows that Saudi Arabia is the undisputed king of the castle of oil. After all, the official statistics have long made it clear that the country sits on top of a quarter of the world's proven reserves of petroleum. Moreover, four of its neighbours — including Iraq — can claim about a tenth apiece. In contrast, the United States (which consumes a quarter of world oil production) controls a mere 3% of the world's reserves. So the Middle East remains the only place that really matters in the oil world, right? Wrong, according to the Canadians. For decades, they have been complaining that the official bean-counters have unfairly neglected the energy trapped in the Athabasca tar sands of Alberta — rock formations laced with hydrocarbons that can be mined and processed to yield barrels of oil.
http://www.economist.com/science/dis...ory_id=1875182

Behold the pentaquark
Physicists have discovered a new class of subatomic particle that will provide unexpected insights into the fundamental building blocks of matter. The discovery involves quarks - particles that make up the protons and neutrons usually found in the nuclei of atoms. The new particle is the so-called pentaquark - five quarks in formation. Until now, physicists had only seen quarks packed into two- or three-quark combinations. They say the discovery of this new particle should have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of how the Universe is put together.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3034754.stm

What Makes Virus Writers Tick?
What do you think of when you think of someone who writes computer viruses? A teenager out of the movie "Hackers"? A disgruntled employee? Or a misanthropic hermit -- the online version of the Unabomber? We may visualize virus writers in different ways, but when we are not upgrading our e-mail security, bolstering firewalls, and the like, it is natural to wonder what motivates a person to commit these crimes -- which can -- and do -- devastate businesses. Malicious virus writers have been responsible not only for wreaking havoc on businesses on a global scale, but also for spawning a massive antivirus industry to combat them. So, what exactly is in it for the individuals who perpetrate these crimes?
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21837.html

Wanadoo is caching your KaZaA
Subscribers of Wanadoo Netherlands can download MP3s and videos twice as fast, thanks to a PeerCache set up by the company for users of KaZaA and other peer to peer networks. Wanadoo's Dutch subsidiary has stored 0.8 terabyte of frequently asked files on local servers, and this cache reduces the volume of international traffic by 25 per cent or more, according to Wanadoo business development manager Lammert van Raan. Most Wanadoo subs in Europe are set to introduce PeerCache. PeerCache is developed by Joltid, the Swedish company behind the P2P content distribution platform FastTrack, which most file sharing companies now use. Joltid was established by Niklas Zennström, co-founder of KaZaA.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31532.html

More news later on

[floydian slip]

So whos gonna win the hacker contest hehe thats sounds like the freaking merry pranksters of the 60's reborn into cyberspace. (1st article)

although the prize is only 500MB of webspace

but it would be a great resume for a internet security firm, but then again, would that person want to join a corporation?