The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Pentagon backs off on Net ID tags
A Defense Department agency recently considered -- and rejected -- a far-reaching plan that would sharply curtail online anonymity by tagging e-mail and Web browsing with unique markers for each Internet user. The idea involved creating secure areas of the Internet that could be accessed only if a user had such a marker, called eDNA, according to a report in Friday's New York Times. eDNA grew out of a private brainstorming session that included Tony Tether, president of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the newspaper said, and that would have required at least some Internet users to adopt biometric identifiers such as voice or fingerprints to authenticate themselves.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-966894.html

IBM lines up customers "on demand"
IBM has lined up several companies to offer their software to customers on demand using new Big Blue technology. The tech titan's new "computing on demand" program, launched last month, is intended to allow companies to buy information technology the way they purchase electricity, paying a monthly bill for services. Earlier this month, IBM announced a program to help its resellers and software partners get on board. The company said Friday that on-demand applications for human resources, accounting and marketing are now available from HRSmart, Intacct and Onyx.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-966861.html

Researchers: Pull plug on battery attacks
A team of computer scientists is working to prevent new types of denial-of-service attacks aimed at battery-powered mobile devices. Tom Martin, a professor at Virginia Tech's electrical and computer engineering department, has received a grant for more than $400,000 from the National Science Foundation to devise a way to protect battery-operated computers from security attacks that could drain their batteries. Although the researchers concede that such kinds of attacks are extremely rare, the proliferation of notebook computers, personal digital assistants, tablet PCs, networked cell phones and other devices could make them alluring targets.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-966886.html

Tech, entertainment take on copyrights
Technology and entertainment lobbyists will sit down at the negotiating table Friday to seek a resolution to the long-running political spat over digital copyright. About 20 lobbyists are expected to meet at the Eye Street offices of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), just two blocks from the White House, to try and find common ground before the new Congress starts in January 2003. The companies and trade associations represented at the closed-door meeting include Microsoft, Verizon Communications, the Business Software Alliance, AOL Time Warner, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Fox Entertainment Group.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-966833.html

Online dating's new love: IM
Instant messaging is becoming a popular aphrodisiac in the world of online dating. In recent weeks, software company PalTalk introduced a personals service for people on its instant chat network, allowing would-be sweethearts to get to know each other with greater speed than through e-mail. Other matchmaking Web sites such as Match.com and DateCam.com have unveiled instant chat services for those looking to find dates online, but with anonymity. Yahoo, the online hub for personals advertisements, attests to IM's allure. At least half of its Personals couples had around 25 IM conversations, but exchanged only five phone calls and up to 10 e-mails in the first three weeks of meeting, the company said. Yahoo set the stage for better communication among subscribers with new IM features this summer.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-971030.html?tag=fd_top

Microsoft: Xbox Live is living large
Microsoft announced Friday that it has nearly sold out of its initial shipment of 150,000 starter kits for Xbox Live, the new online service for its video game console. The software giant introduced Xbox Live a week ago amid heady expectations that the service would finally set the Xbox apart from competing consoles made by Sony and Nintendo. Xbox Live allows Xbox owners to play supported games against each other over the Internet. The service requires a high-speed cable modem or DSL (digital subscriber line) Internet connection and the $50 Xbox Live starter kit, which includes a one-year subscription to the service, a headset microphone for voice communication, and demo versions of two games.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-966909.html?tag=fd_top

Identity thieves strike eBay
When Deborah Fraser's credit card number was stolen, the thief didn't use it to buy a new car or a high-end laptop. Instead, the number was used to buy something potentially much more valuable -- a domain name with the word "ebay" in it. In Fraser's case, that was the domain name "change-ebay.com," a scam Web site where an unknown number of eBay users may have been tricked into handing over their eBay username and password. "Somebody fraudulently used my credit card (Thursday) to buy the domain name that ended in 'ebay,'" said Fraser, a pharmacy technician in Lockport, N.Y., who until midday Thursday was listed as the registrant and administrative contact for the domain.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-966835.html?tag=fd_top

Assembling the Digital Sky
Scientists in the United States, armed with a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation, are building a National Virtual Observatory (NVO) that will make the world’s huge store of astronomical data available to anyone with a Web browser. “History has shown us that the greatest leaps forward have occurred not when you observe the universe through just one window, but when you compare the views of the universe obtained through different windows,” says Ray Norris, deputy director of the Australia Telescope National Facility in Epping, New South Wales, Australia. “The NVO will enable any astronomer to do this easily, combining all available data on one object or one region of the sky, or perhaps even using data-mining techniques to look for subtle correlations between the properties of a class of objects when viewed through different windows.” The hope is to dramatically advance this computational approach to astronomy.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...ssex112202.asp

South Korea's gaming addicts
South Korea is one of the most wired societies in the world. More than half the population has access to the internet, and there are more than 25,000 cyber cafes - known here as PC Bangs - which are open 24 hours a day across the country. The country is a global leader when it comes to number of people who can access broadband, or high speed internet services, with the number of broadband subscribers exceeding 10 million. It is a paradise for online gamers, who come from all over the world to play in South Korea.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2499957.stm

Report calls for nanotech laissez-faire
Nanotechnology's potential benefit to society is so great, a new report says, that governments should take a hands-off approach to regulating the developing science, despite concern over possible dangers. Nanotechnology, the science of manipulating matter at the atomic and molecular level, could revolutionize everything from computing to medicine to warfare. But some say that if hypothetical nanomachines escape from the lab and reproduce in the wild, they could wreak havoc on the planet. Nevertheless, the governments of the United States and other countries should adopt a regime of "modest regulation, civilian research, and an emphasis on self-regulation," says a report released this week by the free-market Pacific Research Institute, a California think tank.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966766.html

Group tackles OpenOffice desktop spec
A group of companies working on Web services specifications is calling for a new standard to handle desktop application documents. Members of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) have formed a working group to develop an XML file format specification for the OpenOffice project. OpenOffice, an office productivity software package, is an open-source project, meaning it can be modified and distributed for free. Versions are available for computers that run the Linux, Windows, Solaris and Mac operating systems. And companies, including Sun Microsystems, have distributed their own flavors of it.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-966691.html?tag=cd_mh

Report: ISPs must learn from Sept. 11
The Internet sustained relatively little damage during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when the collapsing World Trade Center destroyed lower Manhattan's communications networks, according to a new report. The National Research Council's report, however, warns that Internet service providers must prepare for future emergencies. The attacks have forced businesses and government agencies to reevaluate how they structure computer networks, data backup centers and links to the Internet. Telephone service was greatly affected in parts of lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, while cell phone service suffered more widespread congestion problems, according to the report. Nearly one-third of Americans had trouble placing a phone call on the day of the attacks.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-966681.html?tag=cd_mh

Wi-Fi joins broadband access debate
Souped-up Wi-Fi networks have elbowed into the debate over how to spread broadband Web access to small cities and rural areas, a debate that until recently focused solely on cable modems and digital subscriber lines. U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and George Allen (R-Va.) say wireless networks should be considered as well. The two intend to introduce a bill called "The Jumpstart Broadband Act," which is meant to spur development of more powerful and cheaper long-range wireless networks that can be enlisted to bring broadband to the masses. The Boxer-Allen bill asks the Federal Communications Commission make available more free-to-use spectrum in a bandwidth strong enough to send signals for miles at a time. The bill also would set "rules of the road," so the transmissions won't interfere with other users of the bandwidth, which include the military, the two senators wrote to colleagues on Wednesday.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-966667.html?tag=cd_mh

Government agency pulls Web site
The Department of Energy closed the online research database Pubscience after receiving complaints that it competed too closely with commercial efforts. The Web site, a searchable database of more than 2 million documents on physical sciences and energy-related research, was closed in recent weeks after the government department was pressured by the private sector to reassess its value in a marketplace where commercial interests were at stake. A handful of privately owned sites let researchers pull up abstracts of scientific research documents, as well as buy the full-text documents of thousands of technical periodicals. Proponents of the site's closure said the move fell into line with a federal law that forbids the government to compete with the private sector in business.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966824.html?tag=cd_mh

RIAA: Madster flouting court order
Record labels say file-swapping service Madster is violating the terms of a recent court order and should be shut down or fined until it starts blocking trades of copyrighted music. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) asked a Chicago federal court on Wednesday to hold bankrupt Madster -- formerly known as Aimster -- and its founder Johnny Deep in contempt of court. Deep has made no effort to comply with a court order issued last month that required the company to block trading of music belonging to the major record labels, the trade association said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966800.html?tag=cd_mh

CipherTrust wants your spam
E-mail security company CipherTrust wants your spam. The company is calling on surfers of all stripes to help it wage a fight against spam by sending their unsolicited mass e-mail to its new Web site, Spamarchive.org. The idea is to create a vast public repository of spam, so makers of antispam tools can test their algorithms on the latest mass-messaging trends. "It's kind of like donating your spam to science," Paul Judge, director of research and development at CipherTrust, said. The company is hoping to differentiate its spam database from others by making it both large and public.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966768.html?tag=cd_mh

Auctioneer to play Napster's last waltz
Computers, furniture and memorabilia from failed music-swapping company Napster will go up for auction next month. Dovebid is hosting the auction, which will be Webcast on Dec. 11. Beyond the standard hardware, which includes routers from Cisco Systems, computers from Apple Computer and Dell Computer, and Hewlett-Packard printers, there are hats, shirts and mousepads featuring the company's logo. Napster's peer-to-peer technology allowed music fans to swap files, in what some have claimed was an illegal manner. Although its service was wildly popular, the company never did develop a winning business model.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966686.html?tag=cd_mh

Specs to ease CD, DVD data retrieval
An optical-storage standards group has taken a step forward in efforts to improve compatibility between PCs and consumer electronics devices. The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) on Thursday released MultiPhoto/Video (MPV) 1.0, specifications that aim to make it easier to retrieve data on CD and DVD players from discs created on PCs. The new specs expand on OSTA's MultiPlay standard, which offers a uniform way to organize and display the contents of an audio disc created by a PC's CD burner. The standard helps ensure that discs created on a PC can be played back on CD players and other home electronics devices.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-966891.html?tag=cd_mh

LG Philips sees its screens on TV
LG Philips says it wants to see its liquid crystal displays on television. The company, a joint venture of LG Electronics and Philips Electronics formed in July of 1999, makes LCDs for companies such as Dell Computer and other resellers that sell computer monitors to consumers. But at this year's Comdex Fall 2002 trade show, the company has revealed a new goal: To see more of its screens appear in televisions and on the seat backs of cars. "We're No. 1 in the market for PCs, and we want to be No. 1 in the television market," said Bruce Berkoff, executive vice president at LG Philips. The company is the market leader for 10-inch and larger displays for desktop flat-panel monitors, according to research firm DisplaySearch.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-966745.html?tag=cd_mh

ATI releases Linux graphics software
Graphics chip maker ATI Technologies released on Thursday a new Linux version of the software that's necessary to make its graphics cards work. The Unified Linux Driver -- available for download from ATI -- is a collection of "drivers," software that tells a computer's operating system how to interact with hardware components. A scarcity of ready-made drivers has been one of the most significant factors against adoption of the open-source Linux operating system for desktop PCs. Serious Linux hobbyists will write their own drivers for PC components and swap homemade drivers with other Linux boosters. The new ATI driver collection supports all recent versions of ATI-manufactured graphics boards, from the Radeon 8500 to the company's current speed demon, the Radeon 9700.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-966731.html?tag=cd_mh

[TankGirl]

[walktalker]

No More Music Piracy, Por Favor
When the Mexican Supreme Court moved some of its offices last week to a quieter workspace, few federal officials saw it as anything more than a sensible relocation. After all, the court is located smack in the middle of Mexico City, surrounded by traffic, street vendors and crowds of tourists and commuters. The Recording Industry Association of America, however, saw things differently. According to the RIAA, the court's relocation was directly related to music piracy. Shortly after getting wind of the move, the RIAA drafted an open letter to Mexican President Vicente Fox, urging his government to crack down on vendors of pirated CDs. The recording industry trade group blamed vendors they say were blasting pirated music from boom boxes outside for disturbing the justices' peace.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,56522,00.html

Geek 'Vigilantes' Monitor Border
A group of tech-savvy ranchers in Arizona is using military technology to monitor and apprehend illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico into the United States. Members of the group have spiked their land with thousands of motion sensors. They also use infrared tracking devices, global positioning systems, night vision goggles, radar and other gear to survey movement near the border. The ranchers, members of an organization called the American Border Patrol, said their goal is to use technology to inform the public about the "slow invasion" they claim is happening at the southwest border. But not everyone agrees the group is simply a source of information. The governor of the Mexican state of Sonora said in a statement on Wednesday that he will ask the U.S. government to stop "vigilante groups who are hunting" for immigrants along the border.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56523,00.html

Plot Twist for Indie Filmmakers
Independent filmmaking is a rough business. Of the more than 1,000 American independent features completed each year, only a handful reach theaters. But a more pragmatic and sustainable production model for independent filmmakers may be emerging: the digital film studio. Several companies in New York are attempting to use digital moviemaking tools to produce a steady stream of low-budget, profitable and arty feature films. In at least two cases -- Independent Digital Entertainment (or InDigEnt) and Blow Up Pictures -- the plan seems to be working. InDigEnt, a production company founded by director Gary Winick, attorney John Sloss and producers Jonathan Sehring and Caroline Kaplan, has completed and sold seven features since 2000. Five of those films, including Richard Linklater's Tape and Ethan Hawke's Chelsea Walls, were released in theaters.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56510,00.html

Apple 'It' Girl Breaks Silence
First she turned down David Letterman. Then she said no to Jay Leno. For months, Ellen Feiss, the mysterious Net celebrity who starred in a popular commercial for Apple Computer's "Switch" campaign, refused all interview requests, including those from the two titans of late-night television. But Feiss, whose fame continues to grow even as she eschews the media spotlight, has finally granted her first sitdown with a reporter, albeit from an unlikely publication. The interview with the Brown Daily Herald, the college newspaper of Brown University, will be published Friday. In that article, Feiss reveals she was, as many of her "fans" had guessed, under the influence of drugs during filming of the infamous commercial that shot her to Internet fame, but exactly what she took, editors at the Herald aren't saying; all is revealed in the interview. The best guess is allergy medication, according to online scuttlebutt.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,56528,00.html

A Fan Site's Tome to the Opera
The fat lady coughed at the Metropolitan Opera this week. Whether she'll be able to keep singing is another matter. Last week, John Patterson, the beleaguered creator of an opera fan site called MetManiac, reluctantly shut down the site after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the opera company's legal department. The company claimed the name MetManiac and the contents of the site violated their trademarks and copyrights. Although the threats made Patterson and other opera lovers très misérables, they made their voices heard. Members of the Opera-L e-mail list and watchdog webloggers wrote a flurry of e-mails to the Metropolitan Opera's general manager, Joe Volpe, detailing their disappointment in the opera company.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56532,00.html

ActiveX Control Acting Up
There's a new hole in the slab of security Swiss cheese otherwise known as Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser. Once again, the hole can be exploited when users visit a malicious website or open HTML mail. And once again the hole allows an attacker to take complete remote control over another computer. But this latest hole, which also affects Microsoft's IIS Web server software, has an interesting new twist. Even if Microsoft's patch is applied to close the hole, an attacker can easily unpatch the patch. The hole is caused by a badly coded ActiveX control. Typically, Microsoft would handle the problem by setting a kill bit, which would forever prevent Internet Explorer from being affected by the malformed ActiveX control.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,56526,00.html

Efforts to stop music piracy 'pointless'
Record industry attempts to stop the swapping of pop music on online networks such as Kazaa will never work. So says a research paper prepared by computer scientists working for software giant Microsoft. The four researchers believe that the steady spread of file-swapping systems and improvements in their organisation will eventually make them impossible to shut down. They also conclude that the gradual spread of CD and DVD burners will help thwart any attempts to control what the public can do with the music they buy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2502399.stm

Spam king lives large off others' e-mail troubles
You might call it the house that spam built. Alan Ralsky's brand new 8,000-square-foot luxury home near Halsted and Maple in West Bloomfield has been a busy place this month. Outside, landscapers worked against the November cold to get a sprinkler system installed before the ground freezes. Inside, painters prepared to hang wallpaper. Meanwhile, delivery trucks pulled into the bricked circular driveway with computers, routers, servers and other high-tech gear that will hook up to the high-speed T1 line installed a few weeks ago. In the lower level of the home, tucked away in a still-unfinished room, will soon be an array of 20 different computers -- the control center of what many believe is the largest single bulk e-mailing operation in the world.
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend22_20021122.htm

Cannabis link to mental illness strengthened
The link between regular cannabis use and later depression and schizophrenia has been significantly strengthened by three new studies. The studies provide "little support" for an alternative explanation - that people with mental illnesses self-medicate with marijuana - according to Joseph Rey and Christopher Tennant of the University of Sydney, who have written an editorial on the papers in the British Medical Journal. One of the key conclusions of the research is that people who start smoking cannabis as adolescents are at the greatest risk of later developing mental health problems. Another team calculates that eliminating cannabis use in the UK population could reduce cases of schizophrenia by 13 per cent.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993098

Net activism offers lessons for ministers
The increasing use of the internet by political activists could provide valuable lessons for the UK Government, say experts. At a summit of ministers, business leaders and net experts in London this week, officials acknowledged that the government needed to do more to get citizens engaged in the political process online. And there were plenty of people on hand to offer advice. Dr Ian Kearns, head of the Digital Society Project at think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research told the conference that e-democracy must walk hand-in-hand with e-government.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2496363.stm

Critics See Threat to Medical Freedom and Privacy
On Nov. 13, 2002, the U.S. House of Representatives passed, by a vote of 299-121, legislation to create a cabinet level Department of Homeland Security. Quick approval by the US Senate is expected, followed by President Geoge W. Bush signing the legislation into law before the end of the month. The new department would combine workers from 22 agencies, including the Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, FEMA, and the Customs Service, into one mega-department with expanded powers, a $37 billion budget, and about 170,000 employees. The reorganization is the largest in government since the creation of the Defense Department in 1947. One sticking point that prevented passage of the bill prior to the Republicans' Congressional victories on Nov. 5 involved disagreements about the creation of an independent panel to review possible government lapses prior to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
http://naturalhealthline.com/

Peer-to-Peer Lawsuit Faces Legal Hurdle
In a case that tests global jurisdiction issues, a U.S. federal judge is set to consider Monday whether entertainment companies can sue in U.S. courts the off-shore distributor of the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing software. The company behind the popular P-to-P software, Sharman Networks, is incorporated in the island nation of Vanuatu, operates out of Australia, and distributes the software from servers located outside of the U.S. Los Angeles District Court Judge Stephen Wilson is slated to decide if the entertainment companies may sue Sharman Networks for allowing the illegal trading of their copyrighted works over the company's P-to-P network in U.S. courts. Sharman Networks is arguing that it has no substantial contacts in the U.S. and therefore the companies lack jurisdiction to take it to court here.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,107276,00.asp

RIAA apparently published copyright material by mistake
Over enthousiastic folk at musicunited.org, which issues stern warnings on its Web site about the unauthorised reproduction and distribution of copyrighted music, found itself with egg on its face yesterday when it appeared to have accidently published some copyright material belonging to the University of Chicago. The RIAA – noted for its exceedingly fierce stance on music copyrights – owns the musicunited.org web site. The pages have now been removed but that watchdog of Internet freedom – our old pal Mr Google – has a copy of the some of the content of the removed pages cached on its site.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=6337

More news later on