The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

FCC eases rules on media ownership
The Federal Communications Commission on Monday voted 3-2 to relax rules limiting ownership of TV stations, radio stations and newspapers, saying that decades-old regulations are obsolete in part because of the rise of the Internet and other new technologies. Under the new rules, broadcast networks may own TV stations that reach 45 percent of the national audience, an increase of 10 percentage points, and in most cases a company may now own both a newspaper and a radio station in the same area. Media mergers still must be approved by the FCC and the Justice Department.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1012...ml?tag=fd_lede

Latest AOL 9.0 beta released
America Online began testing new features for an upcoming version of its proprietary service, including support for its own multimedia formats in its video and audio playback software, sources close to the company said. The features were made available on Monday in the second beta release of a software upgrade tentatively called AOL 9.0 and code-named Blue Hawaii. They include a media player that adds support for a new streaming media format developed in-house by AOL's Nullsoft division. Other highlights include a new e-mail interface with a spam folder built in, and a Web page accelerator dubbed "Velocity."
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1012428.html?tag=fd_top

TiVo service tracks viewer data
TiVo announced on Monday that it will sell limited information about the viewing habits of its subscribers to advertisers and broadcasters. The company's new service will let broadcasters and advertisers subscribe to a quarterly audience-measurement report that will track viewing habits during prime-time shows. TiVo, which provides digital video recorder (DVR) services and devices, eventually plans to use its technology to provide data on consumer patterns for any show or commercial.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-1012372.html?tag=fd_top

Law school serves spam as main course
Law students at Chicago's John Marshall Law School are getting a new dose of spam -- on their course schedule. The spam serving comes courtesy of John Marshall associate professor David Sorkin, who's offering what he and his peers say may be the first law school course devoted to the subject of unsolicited commercial e-mail. "This seminar will investigate legal and policy issues raised by e-mail marketing and spam," Sorkin wrote in describing the summer seminar, titled "Current Topics in Information Technology Law: Regulation of Spam and E-mail Marketing."
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1012404.html?tag=fd_top

Corporate inboxes choking on spam
Spam has officially overtaken legitimate e-mail in the workplace, and there’s little relief in sight. The month of May marked the first time that commercial e-mail comprised 51 percent of all messages received by workers, according to MessageLabs, a provider of managed e-mail security services. MessageLabs only analyzed 133.9 million messages sent to its global network of business customers. "The volume of spam now facing computer users every day has now far surpassed the point of being a nuisance and is now causing significant productivity losses and (information technology) costs at businesses across the world," MessageLabs Chief Technology Officer Mark Sunner said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-1012418.html?tag=fd_top

SCO actions prompt Linux warning
Analyst firm Gartner has recommended that customers minimize their use of Linux on important systems because of questions resulting from SCO Group's warnings about legal liability. "Although Gartner has reservations on the merits of (SCO's claims), don't take them lightly," Gartner analyst George Weiss advised in a May note. "Minimize Linux in complex, mission-critical systems until the merits of SCO's claims or any resulting judgments become clear." Two weeks ago, SCO sent 1,500 letters to the world's largest companies, warning that they could face legal action for using Linux, which SCO says includes its own proprietary source code that was copied from Unix. The move grew out of a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM that alleges Big Blue broke its contract with SCO by misappropriating trade secrets that it moved from Unix into Linux.
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1012162.html?tag=fd_top

Microsoft's new Linux gambit
Listen closely to what Microsoft is not saying about SCO Group's open-source operetta. Microsoft is not telling corporate managers that the use of open-source applications might land them in hot water with patent attorneys. And Microsoft is not saying that the open-source development community is a hotbed of misappropriation of private property. This is not because Microsoft disagrees with the above. But it's just so much easier to give the dirty work to SCO. Ever since SCO filed a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM for allegedly misappropriating Unix technology that wound up in the Linux operating system, rumors have been rife about Microsoft secretly bankrolling the litigation. Oliver Stone has yet to uncover a connection, but conspiracy buffs who already see the hand of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates everywhere have since seized upon Microsoft's deal, announced last earlier this month, to license Unix technology from SCO.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1010057.html

The gray area around green PCs
The electronics industry is paying more attention to the environmental friendliness of its products. But environmentalists worry that the concern is just "green washing,'' or lip service with minimal environmental benefits, meant to spur sales to green-conscious consumers. In the past decade, companies have made products that cause less environmental harm or use less energy. But the environmentalists want them to look beyond profit motives when it comes to deciding whether to implement environmentally friendly changes to their product lines.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/5995702.htm

Computers replace petri dishes in biological labs
A few years ago Jim Roehr, a senior scientist at Aventis, found himself wasting precious hours chasing down members of his drug research team just to collect their latest findings. With experiments generating up to 40 million pieces of data each year, Roehr and his colleagues had their hands full, and Aventis was forced to make a substantial investment in new technology to streamline the research process and handle the heavy information load. "There's been an explosion of data," says Roehr, who nowadays sits in his New Jersey branch office behind an advanced computer system that automatically pulls together all relevant project data onto a single screen.
http://news.com.com/2030-6679_3-998622.html

Cloud hangs over communications show
Communications equipment makers gather in Atlanta on Monday for their largest annual convention amid fresh signs that their most important customers -- corporations, telephone companies and cable providers -- are still pinching pennies. Spending has been down for at least a year, but there were some signs of recovery lately, with the return to profitability, however unsteady, by the nation's largest phone companies. But Oren Shaffer, chief financial officer at Qwest Communications International, said last week that Qwest spent "significantly" less in the first quarter on capital improvements than expected. The company has also "yet to see an increase in demand for information technology and telecom services from our large business customers," he said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1037_3-1011977.html?tag=cd_mh

Nokia teams with Warner Music
Nokia on Monday struck an agreement to offer Warner Music Group songs through its upcoming Nokia 3300 music phone. The deal will allow Warner to offer song clips from emerging artists, ring tones, multimedia message templates and wallpaper graphics for Nokia 3300 owners. Nokia will also include a CD-ROM with full-length tracks from Warner Music International artists that can be downloaded onto the 3300. Nokia unveiled the 3300 in March as part of a line of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phones. The 3300 is the model that focuses on music, offering digital playback in the popular MP3 format and AAC (Advanced Audio Coding).
http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-1012147.html?tag=cd_mh

Altnet to pay Kazaa users for swapping
A year after launching its sometimes-controversial alliance with Kazaa, Brilliant Digital Entertainment subsidiary Altnet is kicking off a new, ambitious stage of its peer-to-peer marketing campaign. Later this week, Kazaa parent Sharman Networks and Altnet will jointly release a new bundle of file-swapping software that will include components of a new high-security peer-to-peer network and a program that will pay users to be a part of it. The idea, says Altnet CEO Kevin Bermeister, is to harness the computing resources of the tens of millions of Kazaa users to distribute authorized files such as games, songs and movies. Giving people an incentive to host and trade paid files could create a powerful medium for distributing authorized content and could diminish file-trading networks' role as hubs of online piracy, he said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1011827.html?tag=cd_mh

Yahoo issues IM, chat security patches
Yahoo issued on Friday security patches for its Yahoo Instant Messenger and Yahoo Chat clients in an effort to fix a buffer overflow vulnerability discovered in the software. When users of the software log on to the IM network or enter a chat room, Yahoo is prompting them to install the patches. In addition, the company posted the patches on its Web site. A buffer overflow is a common security vulnerability in computer programs written in C and C++ that allows more information to be added to a chunk of memory than it was designed to hold. Buffer overflow attacks in Yahoo IM and Yahoo Chat could lead to a number of problems, according to a Yahoo representative. For example, people could be involuntarily logged out of an application. More seriously, it could allow the introduction of executable code, allowing a malicious programmer to take control of a user's machine, delete files and otherwise wreak havoc with a victim's computer system.
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1011847.html?tag=cd_mh

Judge dismisses suit against Google
A federal judge this week granted Google's motion to dismiss a suit that alleged the company manipulated search results in its powerful Web index. U.S. District Court Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange on Tuesday denied a motion for a preliminary injunction brought by SearchKing, an Oklahoma City-based Web hosting and advertising network that claimed Google unfairly removed links to its site and those of its partners from the index, causing financial losses. The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that Google's formula for calculating the popularity of a Web page, or "PageRank," constitutes opinions protected by the First Amendment. " PageRanks are opinions -- opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query," according to the decision filed in the U.S. Western District Court of Oklahoma.
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1011740.html?tag=cd_mh

AOL pulls Nullsoft file-sharing software
A day after developers at America Online's Nullsoft unit quietly released file-sharing software, AOL pulled the link to the product from the subsidiary's Web site. The software, called Waste, lets groups set up private, secure file-sharing networks. The product became available on Nullsoft's Web site on Wednesday, just days shy of the four-year anniversary of being acquired by AOL. Waste is a software application that combines peer-to-peer file sharing with instant messaging, chat and file searches. Users can set up their own network of friends and share files between each other.
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1011585.html?tag=cd_mh

Sony sets movies to self-destruct
A subsidiary of electronics maker Sony is to sell downloadable movie files that self-destruct after a given time. According to Japanese newspaper Nikkei Business Daily, the company's So-net Internet service provider will soon trial the service in Japan. Many digital content providers currently use encrypted streaming to prevent people from saving and copying movie files. The downside is that the quality of the video suffers, as it is reduced in size for Web transmission. In addition, people must stay online to view the feed. However, allowing downloads of movie files opens the door to illegal copying.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1011581.html?tag=cd_mh

Free vs. fee: Underground still thrives
Mark Ishikawa was eating dinner at the Los Angeles Hilton a few weeks ago when he overheard a couple discussing the virtues of downloading music using free services like Kazaa. As CEO of BayTSP, a company that tracks copyright infringement on file-swapping networks for record labels and movie studios, Ishikawa had a professional interest in the subject. So when he walked around the corner, expecting to see two college students, he was stunned to find a pair of senior citizens -- a sign, he says, of how far the practice has spread.
http://news.com.com/2009-1027_3-1009541.html?tag=cd_mh

T-rays could be more versatile than x-rays
Just as x-ray technology came along in the 1890s — allowing doctors to peer beneath flesh to see bones and organs — another promising imaging technology is now emerging from an underused chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum: the terahertz frequencies. These so-called t-rays can, like x-rays, see through most materials. But t-rays are believed to be less harmful than x-rays. And different compounds respond to terahertz radiation differently, meaning a terahertz-based imaging system can discern a hidden object’s chemical composition. Thanks to this power, “terahertz imaging is getting hotter and hotter,” says Xi-Cheng Zhang, a terahertz pioneer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Potential applications range from detecting tumors to finding plastic explosives. And since t-rays penetrate paper and clothing, a terahertz camera could detect hidden weapons.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...ation40603.asp

[b]

[theknife]

FCC eases rules on media ownership
The Federal Communications Commission on Monday voted 3-2 to relax rules limiting ownership of TV stations, radio stations and newspapers, saying that decades-old regulations are obsolete in part because of the rise of the Internet and other new technologies. Under the new rules, broadcast networks may own TV stations that reach 45 percent of the national audience, an increase of 10 percentage points, and in most cases a company may now own both a newspaper and a radio station in the same area. Media mergers still must be approved by the FCC and the Justice Department.

dunno which is more aggravating - the fact they went ahead with this or the whole dog-and-pony public comment show they put on beforehand even though you know and they know they're gonna do it anyway

[multi]

^virtual sticky news..lol
great stuff again....