The Newspaper Shop -- Wednesday edition

[walktalker]

Sun to give StarOffice Java flavor
Sun Microsystems is building a Java-based development kit for its StarOffice software to help corporate programmers customize desktop applications, a move that better pits it against Microsoft's dominant Office. The software development kit will be available in the middle of next year as part of a minor upgrade to the business version of Sun's StarOffice 6.0, said Joerg Heilig, director of engineering for StarOffice at Sun. Business customers routinely automate tasks such as generating charts in a spreadsheet by writing individual macros, or small programs called scripts. Macros in Microsoft's Office, for example, are written with Visual Basic for Applications, a language that is simple enough for many people to learn and that lets them share scripts with colleagues.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-975529.html

PCs shape up as masters of disguise
Got a burning desire to build a PC out of a gas can? Here's your chance. This week, Via Technologies released a new version of its Mini-ITX motherboard. Because of its comparatively small size, the Mini-ITX -- a circuit board complete with the processor and many of the other components necessary to build a PC -- is altering what desktops look like. Smaller PC manufacturers in Europe and Asia are putting the board into desktops clad with aluminum cases, so they look more like stereo equipment. Universities are using it in class projects, where students have to incorporate PCs into electronics systems inside cars. And do-it-yourself types are also getting into the act, building Mini ITX-based PCs inside shells such as a desk drawer, a cigar humidor and an old E.T. doll, as well as in lunch pails and briefcases.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-975555.html?tag=fd_top

Feds, firms unveil test for security pros
A new certification program for entry-level computer-security professionals will officially get up and running Monday, said representatives of the combined industry-government group behind the exam. The Security+ certification, brainchild of the Computing Technology Industry Association, could become a minimum requirement that would help companies and government agencies hire knowledgeable network administrators. CompTIA is made up of two dozen trade and government security experts, including representatives from Microsoft, IBM and the FBI.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-975556.html?tag=fd_top

State e-tax plans worry taxpayer groups
California will expand government-provided services for online tax filing next year, despite opposition from tax preparation companies and taxpayer groups. The state's Franchise Tax Board voted Tuesday to provide residents with online versions of all major state forms by next year. Currently, only the 540EZ form -- the state equivalent of the federal 1040EZ for the simplest tax returns -- is available for direct online filing. The state's 540A will be ready in an online version by next January, according to Tax Board spokesman John Baird, with the 540 form online by summer, for those filing under an extension.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-975534.html?tag=fd_top

Firms team to win Homeland Security bid
In a deal involving the new Department of Homeland Security, two companies teamed up to win a multimillion-dollar contract to create a system for patching security flaws in software used by U.S. government agencies. Information-system provider Veridian and security company SecureInfo announced the $10.8 million contract this week. Under the deal, they'll create a Web-based service for the secure dissemination of software patches to network administrators within the federal government. The service, as part of the Federal Computer Incident Response Center, will be managed by the Department of Homeland Security, created by President Bush on Monday.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-975523.html?tag=fd_top

Rights group looks at China and techs
Human rights group Amnesty International has fingered a handful of tech companies that allegedly have sold products used in government censorship of Internet speech in China. In a report released Tuesday, Amnesty said 33 people have been detained in recent years for downloading or distributing politically subversive information via the Internet, three of whom died in custody. Many of these detainees are associated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement and with pro-democracy activities. Web surfers in China have long reported problems in accessing Web sites, sending and receiving e-mail, and using search engines. It is unclear what technology, if any, the Chinese government currently uses to filter content.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975517.html?tag=fd_top

BofA sets off on digital check trail
Bank of America's customers are getting a crack at moving checks off the paper trail and into the digital realm, part of a trend that could end up saving banks millions of dollars. The bank announced on Wednesday that online customers in Georgia and Tennessee can view and print images of their canceled checks and deposit slips. This is a first step in a national rollout around the United States, planned for completion by March 2003, which would make the Bank of America the largest bank to provide online digital check imaging nationally.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-975522.html?tag=fd_top

Firm pays $1.6 million in Net scam case
A California billing company has agreed to give up $1.6 million to settle charges that it improperly billed thousands of dollars for Internet pornography, the Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday. Privately held billing company Integretel and its subsidiary eBillit prompted thousands of complaints in September 2000 after they placed charges of up to $4,000 on consumers' home telephone bills without their knowledge. Consumers incurred the charges after visiting a Web site run by U.K. company Verity International that offered pornographic movies, the FTC said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975526.html?tag=fd_top

Immobots Take Control
Deep Space One had something Mars Polar Lander lacked: an onboard robot able to think autonomously and handle the unexpected. Using its engineering knowledge, the robot tried to repair the switch by toggling it on and off. When this failed, it devised a successful plan to complete the navigation maneuver, and the craft proceeded unharmed. The robot that saved Deep Space One was in the vanguard of a new breed of machines poised to have a big impact in space and here on Earth. Quite unlike the metallic contraptions that march stiffly through sci-fi movies or the mindless, stripped-down devices that heft parts on our assembly lines, the new robots have more brain than brawn. Each possesses a detailed picture of its own inner workings — encoded in software-based models — that gives it the ability to respond in novel ways to events its programmers might not have anticipated. Because many of these inward-focused, self-reconfiguring machines don’t move, some computer scientists call them immobile robots, or “immobots.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/roush1202.asp

Forging Terror
Last summer Madrane pleaded guilty to being a key figure in a forgery ring that allegedly helped sustain an al Qaeda terrorist cell with operations in Chicago, Detroit, and Iowa City. According to federal court documents in Chicago, Madrane stole data from his steak-house patrons by swiping their credit cards through a pocket-size magnetic card reader known as a skimmer. Madrane allegedly passed the numbers to Youssef Hmimssa, described by federal agents as a brilliant counterfeiter and an al Qaeda operative. Hmimssa used the card data and some cheap off-the-shelf technology to create scores of bogus credit cards, just part of a counterfeiting operation that also included passports, identification papers, and other documents. The phony credit cards helped Hmimssa raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for his group, which the government, in a separate federal indictment filed in Detroit, has charged is the first "sleeper operational combat cell" ever uncovered in the United States. The money, the government says, was spent "to engage in or support holy war."
http://www.business2.com/articles/ma...,45486,FF.html

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[walktalker]

E-mail virus insults its victims
A new computer virus has managed to infect -- and insult -- less savvy Internet users, antivirus companies said on Wednesday. Known as Winevar, the computer worm arrives in e-mail as an attachment that infects Windows PCs when opened and displays a dialog box pronouncing, "What a foolish thing you have done!" Despite the playful tone however, the virus is no joke. "Winevar has several extremely dangerous payloads, which can lead to the irrecoverable loss of data," Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky Labs said in an advisory released Wednesday.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-975569.html

Group urges limits on open source
The U.S. Defense Department should think twice before embracing open-source software, a trade association is advising. The Initiative for Software Choice, which counts Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Intel among its backers, said in comments filed Tuesday that the department should "avoid crafting needless and potentially detrimental IT policy to promote the use" of open-source software. "Open source" means every software developer can view the source code for software, modify it, and use it for free. The initiative, which launched in May and is chaired by a group called CompTIA, an organization that has close ties to Microsoft, is worried about a recent report that concluded the Defense Department relies on open-source software and recommended its further adoption.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-975578.html?tag=fd_top

Roxio closes Napster asset buy
Roxio, a company best known for creating CD-burning technology, said Wednesday that it had completed its purchase of assets from bankrupt file-swapping company Napster. Napster's technology and brand name have been on the auction block for months, after the company declared bankruptcy in June. German media giant Bertelsmann had initially agreed to purchase the company for $9 million, but the agreement fell apart after a bankruptcy court blocked the purchase. Roxio offers a music subscription service through Pressplay, a service owned by several major music labels.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975627.html?tag=fd_top

Future cell phones to see the light
The University of California at Davis announced this week it has received a grant from the Defense Department to build a new generation of cell phones that transmit and receive optical signals. The optical cell phones could make wireless communications speedier and more secure than existing optical fiber networks, researchers said. U.C. Davis will share the $5 million, four-year grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The researchers hope to build chip-sized devices that use a technology standard already in some cell phones.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-975513.html

Software license tied to human rights
Move over, free software. Step aside, today's open-source licenses. Software distributed under an "enhanced source" license released this week will be legally prohibited from censoring or spying on users. Crafted by Hacktivismo, a hacking group organized by the Cult of the Dead Cow, the license says that anyone using code released under it must respect privacy, free expression, due process and other human rights. Hacktivismo's release comes as concern is growing over governments using technology such as blocking software to restrict what their citizens can do or say online. In September, House Republicans released a report titled "Tear Down This Firewall," and this week, Amnesty International published a report highlighting China's crackdown on Internet use.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975638.html?tag=cd_mh

Sony Pictures forms lobby group
Sony Pictures Entertainment on Tuesday said it has formed a new lobbying organization as the company moves to adopt secure digital formats to distribute its stable of movies and entertainment products. The Digital Policy Group will be headed by Beth Berke, executive vice president of Sony Pictures. The lobbying group will represent the company in negotiations with legislators and regulators, review new technologies, and coordinate Sony Pictures' approach to digital technologies, both internally and with partners. "The goal of the Digital Policy Group is to move forward with a triple win -- for content, for hardware, and for viewers," Berke said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975346.html?tag=cd_mh

Ad firms set rules for Web tracking bugs
In a relatively late effort to promote consumer privacy, a coalition of Internet-advertising companies issued on Tuesday guidelines for Web sites that use tiny electronic tags to track visitors' surfing habits and gather other data. The Network Advertising Initiative, a group of eight Web advertising technology companies, including DoubleClick and 24/7 Media, set industry standards that require Webmasters to notify visitors when they use the surveillance tags, also known as Web bugs or beacons, and what they are used for. The rules also mandate that sites obtain a consumer's permission before using the technology to collect and share data that could identify that consumer. Web site operators use Web bugs -- fairly undetectable strings of code in the form of 1-by-1-pixel tags -- to track site usage, count the number of visitors to a page or monitor visitor behavior.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975385.html?tag=cd_mh

Panama suspends Net-phoning order
Panama's supreme court has suspended restrictions on local Internet service providers that were intended to block Internet phone calls in that country, according to a report. Spanish language Web site La Prensa said Tuesday that the high court asked Panamanian telephone regulators to deliver a report outlining the facts behind an Oct. 25 order that forced ISPs to block several Internet data ports, including those commonly used to carry voice-over-IP phone calls. In addition, the court immediately suspended the order. VoIP enables voice calls between computers or regular telephones using the Internet, and is usually offered at steep discounts compared with standard long-distance telephone service. The technology is currently banned in a number of countries, including Panama, although that could change.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975408.html?tag=cd_mh

Archive: Fresh Spam for Everyone
Is your spouse dissatisfied with the size of your spam? A brand-new website has made several hundred thousand pieces of unsolicited commercial e-mail available for you to download today. Act now! After a quiet online debut last week, the Spam Archive is making quick strides toward becoming the largest public library of junk e-mail on the Internet. Paul Judge, director of research and development for CipherTrust, the e-mail security firm backing the project, says the site received roughly 5,000 forwarded messages a day during its first week. He predicts the archive will amass a corpus of 10 million unsolicited commercial e-mails over the next year. The archive's FTP site will begin to make its spam available, 10,000 at a time, starting Dec. 4.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,56624,00.html

[walktalker]

Atomic Lab Cops Do Job, Get Fired
Senior investigators hired to root out fraud and corruption at Los Alamos National Laboratory have been fired -- just days after revealing what they knew to officials with the Department of Energy's inspector general. Armed guards escorted Glenn Walp and Steven Doran out of their offices on Monday, a half-hour after Stan Busboom, director of security, informed the pair that they were not "suitable fit(s) for the requirements of (their) position(s)" at the lab's Office of Security Inquiries. Over the past several months, Walp and Doran had led a series of high-profile investigations that generated a tide of bad publicity for the birthplace of the atom bomb.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56596,00.html

Fraud Case: Greed Bred Sloppiness
Unbridled greed proved the ultimate undoing of an identity theft crime ring that ripped off thousands of Americans, according to law enforcement officials. The criminals' repeated data downloads coupled with escalating consumer complaints eventually aroused curiosity at credit reporting agencies, leading to the arrest of three men who officials said were the primary perpetrators of the scam. But at least 20 other people may have been involved in the two-year swindle. "The investigation is still in its early stages, but we have found the guys who opened the fire hydrant of fraud," James Comey, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Monday. "How high will the damages go? We don't know yet.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,56593,00.html

The Shake of Things to Come
A series of temblors that has rattled Northern California since Sunday should serve as a reminder that a major earthquake is on the state's horizon, earthquake experts said. The United States Geological Survey recorded more than 60 small earthquakes in the San Ramon Valley –- 26 miles east of San Francisco -- between Sunday and Tuesday morning. The largest, a 3.9 magnitude shaker, kicked off the swarm at 7 a.m. on Sunday, and the region hasn't stopped moving since. The fault which produced the seismic swarm was unknown before Sunday and intersects the active part of the much larger Calaveras fault, said USGS geologist David Schwartz.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56607,00.html

Eyes in the Back of Your Mouth
Don’t fly by the seat of your pants. That mantra is drilled into every pilot’s head in flight school. It means pay no attention to the g-forces pushing against your ass; and keep your eyes on your instruments. If you don’t, and your plane is in a spin or a loop, you could get caught thinking down is up. But as aviation technology evolves, the cockpit is filling up with new instruments, overwhelming the pilot’s ability to take it all in at a glance. Luckily, the eyes aren’t the only way to see. Pilots can now sense other aircraft from a tiny zap on their shoulders. And they’ll soon be able to land a helicopter in a dust storm with infrared images lightly buzzing their tongues. The fact is, visual information doesn’t have to go through the eyes to get to the brain. Our sense organs are mere input devices – wet USB ports.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...tart.html?pg=9

A Juicier Bird in Half the Time
Thanksgiving is a day to gorge on turkey with all the fixings. But, for the cooks, it also means sweating over a hot stove. A new oven that can produce a holiday feast five times faster than today's ovens may offer respite to kitchen slaves as soon as Thanksgiving 2003. The oven, a product of engineers at General Electric, combines three traditional cooking modes -- thermal, convection and metal-safe microwave -- to cook food faster without drying it out. Luckily the newfangled cooker doesn't boggle chefs' minds with lots of programming, said Michael McDermott, GE marketing manager.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,56503,00.html

FBI 'Nets' Cop-Killer Suspect
A fugitive suspected of killing a California police officer in a crusade against police brutality has been captured after confessing to the murder in postings to an alternative news media website. Andrew McCrae, 23, walked out of a hotel room Tuesday after several hours of negotiations. He is charged with killing officer David Mobilio in Red Bluff, California, on Nov. 19. Shortly before he gave up, authorities granted McCrae's request to talk to a Concord Monitor reporter who was in the lobby. Reporter Sarah Vos said the first thing McCrae told her in a phone conversation was, "I killed a police officer in Red Bluff, California, in an effort to draw attention to police brutality." Police believe it was McCrae who confessed to the murder on a San Francisco website.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56616,00.html

Report: More Women With HIV
For the first time in the 20-year history of the AIDS epidemic, as many women as men are infected with HIV, a United Nations report says. The report, presented Tuesday in London, paints a dismal picture of a disease invading regions of the globe where it had for many years tricked experts into believing some populations might be less susceptible, or even immune, to infection. The virus is spreading most rapidly in Eastern Europe, where nearly every country is experiencing a major outbreak. It has also marched swiftly across Central Asia and into China, where it was almost nonexistent a few years ago. But there are signs of hope. The AIDS Epidemic Update, an annual report by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS, says prevention programs appear to be working in the few areas where they have been set up.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56597,00.html

China accused of jailing net users
The human rights group Amnesty International has demanded China release all those it has jailed for expressing views or sharing information online. It says at least 33 people have been detained for internet subversion and two prisoners had subsequently died after apparent torture or ill-treatment. In a report addressing "State control of the internet in China", the advocacy group said Beijing was creating a new category of "prisoner of conscience" by its actions. A government spokesman said he was not aware of the new report, but said Amnesty had published critical claims before "with no basis whatsoever".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2517647.stm

Hi-tech workplace no better than factories
Staff in technology jobs work in the white collar equivalent of a 19th century factory. suffering from isolation, job insecurity and long hours, research has found. Much needs to be done to ease the intense pressure, inequality and exclusion in technology jobs, said the study by Sean O'Riain, Professor of Sociology at the University of California. He looked at the characteristics of hi-tech workplaces, which are seen as a potential model for the future of work. He found that the individualistic, macho culture of tech jobs was putting women off applying for jobs, despite an often critical shortage of skills.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2514771.stm

Some Simple Solutions to Identity Theft
So it has come to this. On Nov. 25, federal prosecutors charged three men with operating an identity-theft ring that had stolen credit reports of more than 30,000 people -- the largest case in history. The defendants include a computer help-desk employee at a Long Island software outfit who had access to sensitive passwords for banks and credit companies. The ring allegedly emptied bank accounts, took out loans with stolen identities, and ran up fraudulent charges on credit cards. The most appalling part of the whole mess? Most of the damage could easily have been prevented if the credit agencies adopted the common-sense practice of directly notifying individuals whenever a change on his or her report occurs, and whenever a third party accesses their credit report. Yes, it might cost the credit agencies more in overhead. But credit agencies spread such costs around to customers, banks, car dealerships, and others that pay to access consumer credit ratings.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...21127_4748.htm

Laser-activated glue attaches skin grafts
Surgeons could use laser-activated glue to attach skin grafts without the scarring and swelling that existing methods can cause. Skin grafts are commonplace in cosmetic surgery, and for burns victims a successful graft can be a matter of life or death. For the new skin to survive, it is essential to quickly establish a strong bond with tissue at the wound site. Surgeons use stitches, staples or tissue glues to secure the graft. But the surgical threads and staples sometimes cause extensive scarring, and chemical glues can trigger inflammation. Robert Redmond and his team of dermatologists at Harvard Medical School in Boston believe they have now found an unlikely alternative that uses a medical dye called rose bengal.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993113

Listening to the internet reveals best connections
The reliability and strength of internet connections can be assessed by listening to the sounds they make, according to Chris Chafe, a cellist and director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University in California. This will be music to the ears of those developing the next generation of interactive internet technologies, like telesurgery, which need excellent connections. Telesurgery involves a surgeon using video screens to guide a remote robot arm to perform intricate operations. The robot and patient could be on the other side of the world, so the patient's life depends on constant and reliable connections. To check the quality of an internet connection, engineers "ping" a data packet to a remote computer, which bounces it back like an echo.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993112

'Eightball' Smacking KaZaA Users
Download the latest skin from KaZaA and you won't get a slick-looking piece of software. Instead, you'll install a virus that wipes out your music files. See what happened to our files when we tried installing the skin, tonight on "Tech Live." Two viewers tipped us to the file, called the Magic Eightball skin. It comes as a Zip file named eightball2.zip. Once opened, the program executes on some systems, erasing music files and causing system crashes, the viewers said. We found the skin by searching the term "eightball skin" on KaZaA. The Zip file did not execute on a Windows 98 SE machine, saying it was missing a required DLL file. But on a Windows XP machine, the file executed and popped up a dialog box asking if we wanted to "see some magic." We clicked on Yes and five more dialog boxes popped up, each one counting down: five, four, three, two, and then one. When we finished, all of the MP3 files stored on our system were gone. The system began popping up error messages, and we had to reboot the machine. Steve Trilling from Symantec's Antivirus Research Center says he's seeing more cases of malicious code designed to exploit peer-to-peer networks.
http://www.techtv.com/news/security/...409350,00.html

Danish anti pirates continue to target copyright theft
The Danish Anti Pirat Gruppen (Anti Piracy Group) is to continue targeting Net users who swap copyright material illegally. Confirmation that the APG is to continue its hard line comes after it issued invoices totalling 1m Danish Crowns (£86,200) to around 150 users of KaZaA and eDonkey for allegedly illegally swapping copyright material. The biggest offenders face bills of around 100,000 Crowns (£8,600). According to Morten Lindegaard, a lawyer for APG, around 80 per cent of those who received the invoices have already agreed to pay up. Those that don't face being sued. "Most were surprised that we were able to discover them," Mr Lindegaard told The Register. And in a clear warning to Danish Net users, he insisted that APG would continue to pursue this approach to crackdown on copyright infringements.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28325.html

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