The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition - P2P-Zone

walktalker · 01-08-03, 08:09 PM

Senator Wants Answers From RIAA
Sen. Norm Coleman is concerned the recording industry is taking an extreme approach in its attempt to quash online file trading and may hurt innocent people in the process. On Thursday, Coleman (R-Minn.), chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, asked the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA, to provide detailed information about the more than 900 subpoenas it has issued so far. The RIAA has issued the subpoenas to universities and Internet service providers in order to obtain the names of file traders it suspects are violating copyrights. At the end of the month, the music trade group plans to file lawsuits against those caught offering "substantial" amounts of music for others to share. Penalties could run up to $150,000 per song.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59862,00.html

Patriot Act Legal Attacks Pile Up
Nazih Hassan is deliberately noncommittal when asked whether the Muslim organization he leads in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been targeted by federal investigators. "Even if I have been asked, I cannot tell you," he says, noting that under provisions of the USA Patriot Act, he isn't allowed to discuss pending investigations. According to the act -- drafted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to broaden government powers in fighting terrorism -- organizations are prohibited from revealing requests for records by federal agents. The obligation to secrecy, however, hasn't prevented Hassan from taking action to prevent future investigations carried out under the Patriot Act. Hassan's 700-member Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor signed on as lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed this week by the American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of U.S.-based Islamic organizations seeking to dismiss provisions of the Patriot Act on constitutional grounds.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59863,00.html

Wonders Aplenty at Siggraph
The Mona Lisa picture has been projected onto screens millions of times. But it's safe to say it's never been projected like it is at this year's Siggraph: onto a fog bank. "We've had some military people interested in it," said Ismo Rakkolainen, the Finnish creator of the walk-thru fog screen, neatly stepping through Mona Lisa's nose and reappearing on the other side. "You can imagine many possibilities." The fog screen is one of 21 new technologies on display at Siggraph's Emerging Technologies exhibition where some of the world's weirdest -- and occasionally useful -- new technologies are vetted each year. The world's largest and most prestigious conference on computer graphics and interactive technologies, Siggraph attracted about 25,000 people this year from 75 countries.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,59857,00.html

Data Dump Required Before Flights
The Transportation Security Administration on Thursday revealed details of the newest version of a computerized system designed to prevent terrorists from boarding airplanes by checking passengers' backgrounds against several databases. The second-generation Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, as outlined in a notice to be published Friday in the Federal Register, will rate every passenger by checking dates of birth, home addresses and phone numbers against commercial databases and the government's terrorist watch lists. The system also would allow the Transportation Security Administration to look for people wanted for "crimes of violence." It could look for domestic groups accused of terrorism, including members of radical groups such as the Animal Liberation Front.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59860,00.html

RIAA Rocks Around the Clock
The Recording Industry Association of America's dragnet for people who illegally swap copyrighted music online is the story that just keeps on giving. And like any good epic about money, theft and greed, this one is gaining all sorts of new angles as it rolls along, from college students to senators to pornographers. Let's start with the college students. The RIAA still is serving hundreds of subpoenas on students and colleges and universities, where high-speed Internet connections make it easy to trade music and other digital files. Earlier this year, several students settled lawsuits with the RIAA for allegedly setting up Napster-like trading systems. But the trade group, which represents the major music labels, is aware that it could be scaring off potential customers, considering that college-age students are a sweet spot demographic for music sales.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Aug1.html

Hold on, it's not over yet...

multi · 03-08-03, 05:32 AM

Quote:

Hold on, it's not over yet...

it not over till the" fat lady" sings..

walktalker · 03-08-03, 09:39 AM

End of the road for SMTP?
The protocol that has defined e-mail for more than two decades may have a fatal flaw: It trusts you. Developed when the Internet was used almost exclusively by academics, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP, assumes that you are who you say you are. SMTP makes that assumption because it doesn't suspect that you're sending a Trojan horse virus, that you're making fraudulent pleas for money from the relations of deposed African dictators, or that you're hijacking somebody else's computer to send tens of millions of ads for herbal Viagra.
http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5058...g=fd_lede1_hed

Hackers get lesson in the law
Security researchers and black-hat hackers could face legal troubles if they publish detailed information about vulnerabilities and exploits, according to a presentation at a conference here. Jennifer Granick, director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, warned the audience at the Black Hat security conference late Thursday that they could run afoul of recent laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as centuries-old common law restrictions. One possible way for researchers to escape liability is to be careful not just of what they say, but how they say it. "How you market what you publish could be just as important as what you're publishing," said Granick, a criminal defense lawyer. "The law may treat that circumstance differently if you're sending this information out to help people."
http://news.com.com/2100-1009-5058918.html?tag=nl

Attack bot exploits Windows flaw
Online vandals are using a program to compromise Windows servers and remotely control them through Internet relay chat (IRC) networks, system administrators said Saturday. Several programs, including one that exploits a recent vulnerability in computers running Windows, have been cobbled together to create a remote attack tool. The tool takes commands from an attacker through the IRC networks and can scan for and compromise computers vulnerable to the recently discovered flaw in Windows. Files left behind on a compromised server by the worm were posted to a security mailing list. Computer security company Symantec analyzed the files and determined that what was first thought to be a worm was actually an attack program.
http://news.com.com/2100-1009-5059263.html?tag=nl

The week in review: Subpoenas' sour note
The recording industry's wave of subpoenas targeting individual file swappers may be headed for a wipeout as a major Internet service provider and a prominent congressman issue challenges. One of the largest broadband providers in the United States is challenging the recording industry's current campaign of targeting song swappers with a lawsuit charging that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is violating its customers' right to privacy. Pacific Bell Internet Services (PBIS), operated by telecommunications giant SBC Communications, challenged the subpoenas served against it by the RIAA on procedural grounds, arguing that hundreds of them were served improperly. However, the group made it clear that its action was taken in order to protect the privacy of its customers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1083_3-5058643.html?tag=fd_top

Microsoft.com suffers outage
A denial-of-service attack rendered Microsoft's corporate Web site inaccessible for more than an hour on Friday afternoon, amid heightened fears that a major Internet attack could be on the horizon. Microsoft's Web site became largely inaccessible at about 12:50 p.m. PST, according to reader reports received by CNET News.com. The site appeared to be back up and running around 2:15 p.m. The outage occurred as system administrators and security experts were bracing for a potentially large Internet attack. The U.S. federal government warned earlier this week that an attack could be brewing that exploits a widespread flaw in Microsoft's Windows operating system. Microsoft spokesman Sean Sundwall said Microsoft was the victim of a denial-of-service attack, but he stressed that no Windows vulnerability was exploited.
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-5059056.html?tag=fd_top

LCD TV shipments up sharply
Worldwide shipments of liquid-crystal display TVs grew rapidly in the first quarter compared with the same period a year before, according to a report released this week. Worldwide shipments of LCD TVs hit 734,000 in the first quarter, up 223 percent from the first quarter of last year, according to market research firm DisplaySearch. The LCD TV growth rate for the first quarter is as high as it is partly because DisplaySearch added a new product category to its data. For the first time, the research firm included multifunction monitors that are sold through information technology distribution channels, which include stores such as CompUSA and the computer section of Best Buy. Multifunction monitors can be used as either a TV or a computer monitor. Excluding these monitors, the growth rate was 183 percent.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5059149.html?tag=fd_top

What time is it? Well, no one knows for sure
Working Group 7A of the International Telecommunication Union's Study Group 7 may sound like an anonymous international committee like any other. But this is no quango of grey bureaucrats in greyer suits arguing over the desired colour of toilet paper. At the heart of this group's discussions is something of fundamental importance to anyone who has ever taken a second to fall in love or to score a goal: time itself, and how to define it. Unbeknown to most people there is not a single accepted way of telling the time, but several different scales running concurrently. The differences are usually small, but the scales can be as much as 30 seconds apart and the gap between them is growing steadily. Aircraft navigation systems tell a different time from the watches of passengers, pilots and air traffic controllers. Experts are warning that this could spell disaster.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/st...985020,00.html

Microsoft broadens licensing terms
Microsoft on Friday outlined new terms under which other companies can gain access to Windows protocols, an important element in its antitrust settlement with the federal government. Last week, Microsoft said it would alter the terms to make it cheaper and easier for software developers to license protocols that allow other products to work with Windows. Following the concessions, Microsoft received approval from U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that it was in compliance with the terms of its landmark settlement. Under that deal, Microsoft is supposed to license such code on "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms. So far, EMC, Network Appliance, VeriSign and Starbak Communication have licensed the protocols, but other companies have complained that Microsoft's terms have been unreasonable. Massachusetts regulators had also argued that more court intervention was needed.
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5058903.html?tag=cd_mh

Second quarter mixed for broadband firms
U.S. broadband growth lagged overall expectations in the second quarter but handed the two biggest cable and DSL providers sizable gains, cementing their respective leads over competitors. SBC Communications startled analysts last month, reporting 304,000 new DSL (digital subscriber line) customers, dwarfing its closest DSL competitors, Verizon and BellSouth, which added 101,000 and 103,000 new subscribers, respectively. SBC's DSL service is co-branded with Yahoo and marketed heavily throughout the Web portal. SBC pays Yahoo a percentage of the fees paid by every access customer, while Yahoo shares advertising and e-commerce revenues. Analysts said they are still trying to figure out whether SBC's partnership with Yahoo played a significant factor in SBC's quarterly uptick.
http://news.com.com/2100-1034_3-5059126.html?tag=cd_mh

Colleges explore legal Net music setups
Universities are considering ways to bring legal Internet jukeboxes to dorm rooms, including entering deals with commercial service providers that would see online music charges included alongside tuition fees or picked up by the schools themselves. The effort is proceeding on several fronts, the most advanced charge being led by a committee of university and entertainment industry officials that is now collecting information from music services on behalf of individual colleges. Pilot projects could start as early as this fall, but insiders say that next year is more likely. Recording industry officials and music services see the drive as a promising way to entice students away from free download services as well as a way to create a new, potentially significant source of income for the music industry and its nascent online efforts.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5059030.html

Study: U.S. swappers shrug off copyrights
More than two-thirds of Americans who swap songs online don't care whether the music is copyrighted, according to a study, despite the record industry's antipiracy crackdown. The Pew Internet and American Life Project study, released Thursday, found that 67 percent of U.S. Internet file swappers are indifferent to copyright concerns, a jump from 61 percent of respondents in a survey taken the summer of 2000. The survey, of 2,515 adults in the United States, took place from March through May -- just a few months before the recording industry began gathering evidence to sue individual file swappers. "The struggle to enforce copyright laws in the digital age continues to be an uphill battle for content owners," researchers wrote in the report.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5058933.html?tag=cd_mh

Judges OK evidence from hacker vigilante
A federal appeals panel ruled this week that the government did not violate search and seizure laws when it used evidence that a hacker gathered to establish a child pornography case. The opinion reverses a lower court ruling in which a U.S. District Court judge in Virginia suppressed the evidence, saying the government had violated a defendant's rights. The decision stems from a case in which a hacker uploaded a file to a child porn newsgroup that made it possible to track who downloaded files from the service. The uploaded file contained the SubSeven virus, which the hacker used to remotely search people's computers for porn.
http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-5058835.html?tag=cd_mh

European firms threaten mass P2P lawsuit
Legal services giant Landwell says it will prosecute 4,000 peer-to-peer file-traders in Spain because they have been identified as "serious" unauthorized downloaders of copyrighted songs, films and software. If it goes ahead, the action will be the largest crackdown on P2P users in Europe to date. Landwell, the legal arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers, earlier this month issued the threat on behalf of clients that have remained unnamed to avoid a backlash by consumers. The company said it had gathered data such as IP addresses on 95,000 file-traders by tapping into P2P systems with older versions of the P2P clients, which don't encrypt such information. Landwell said it is working with Spain's Technological Investigation Brigade (BIT) on the prosecutions and expects the case to appear in court next month. The action mimics a large-scale assault on alleged file-swappers in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which is in the process of filing several hundred lawsuits against them.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5058666.html?tag=cd_mh

Animators Show Off at Siggraph
If you can imagine it, you can create it. Never has that goal seemed more possible than at this year's Electronic Theater at Siggraph, where the world's top computer animators vie for recognition. Consider scenes from just three of the 21 winning entries: Sculptor Alberto Giacometti, seconds from death, watches his creations come alive and bow their heads to him; a squirrel attempts to gather nuts while tumbling through the air; and a DNA production line replicates nucleic acids in real time. "This all centers on Moore's Law," said Darin Grant, chair of this year's animation festival and an executive at Hollywood visual-effects powerhouse Digital Domain.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59870,00.html

Educators Turn to Games for Help
Video games have come under tremendous political pressure in recent years because of an increase in violent and sexual content. But schools soon may be using the technology that powers those games to help teach America's children. Earlier this year, Washington state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, a Democrat, tried to ban the sale of violent games. While the courts continually have struck down these types of initiatives, both state and national politicians continue looking for ways to regulate the video-game industry. Academics, though, want to use the underlying software that powers the games to create learning simulations. The Digital Media Collaboratory, one of several technology laboratories at the University of Texas at Austin's IC2 Institute, works with partners from the public and private sectors to develop computer games that can be used by schools, businesses and governments.
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,59855,00.html

Science graduates live long and prosper
Science and medicine students go on to live longer and healthier lives than those studying other subjects, according to a survey of men attending university between 1948 and 1968. Peter McCarron, at Queens University Belfast, Northern Ireland, and colleagues examined the medical records of nearly 10,000 male graduates of Glasgow University. The researchers found that science, engineering and medical students had a substantially lower risk of mortality than arts students. However, medical students went on to have the largest number of alcohol-related deaths and death from suicide or violent means. They were also the heaviest smokers as students, followed by lawyers. Nonetheless, arts students had greatest risk of contracting lung cancer or a cardiovascular disease. "We speculate that medics changed their social habits after leaving university," McCarron told New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994013

Did Loyola University Chicago lose its innocence to the RIAA?
A U.S. law professor has exposed the feeble backbone of Loyola University Chicago - an institution that handed its students' names over to the pigopolist mob's subpoena machine without so much as a grumble. The precedent set by the university's nonchalance toward privacy bodes poorly for students should the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) get its way and place the children before a court of law. Northwestern University law professor Anthony D'Amato has issued a strong caution to universities, calling on them to consider students' privacy before shipping them off to the RIAA sponsored legal gulag. Lawyers could turn Loyola's willingness to work with the RIAA into a black mark against students suspected of trading copyrighted files. More than that, however, D'Amato questions why Loyola - unlike MIT - was so ready to help the RIAA instead of its own tuition-paying kids.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32126.html

Police: Teen abduction foiled by cell phone cam
A quick-thinking 15-year-old boy used his Sprint cell phone camera to take pictures of a man who allegedly tried to lure him into his car, leading to the man's arrest, police said. The boy, who escaped from his alleged captor after a struggle, gave pictures of the man and his car license plate to police in Clifton, New Jersey, after the incident Tuesday. Armed with that evidence, police arrested William MacDonald, 59, of Passaic, on Wednesday. Det. Capt. Robert Rowan of the Clifton Police Department said as the boy was walking home Tuesday evening, MacDonald approached him in a white car and asked him to get in. The boy refused, Rowan said.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/0...one.abduction/

More cookies for my birdie later on

JackSpratts · 03-08-03, 10:47 AM

anthony d'amato is half right. while copying music is hardly the same as breaking into your house, nor is it theft (and he should know – he’s a law professor so i guess he's exaggerating to establish his tough pro-law and order credentials), he is right to take loyola u. to task for caving in to the riaa - or any group using these new subpoena techniques to circumvent due process.
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/dept...=920&pagetype=

- js.

01-08-03, 08:09 PM	#1
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition Senator Wants Answers From RIAA Sen. Norm Coleman is concerned the recording industry is taking an extreme approach in its attempt to quash online file trading and may hurt innocent people in the process. On Thursday, Coleman (R-Minn.), chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, asked the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA, to provide detailed information about the more than 900 subpoenas it has issued so far. The RIAA has issued the subpoenas to universities and Internet service providers in order to obtain the names of file traders it suspects are violating copyrights. At the end of the month, the music trade group plans to file lawsuits against those caught offering "substantial" amounts of music for others to share. Penalties could run up to $150,000 per song. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59862,00.html Patriot Act Legal Attacks Pile Up Nazih Hassan is deliberately noncommittal when asked whether the Muslim organization he leads in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been targeted by federal investigators. "Even if I have been asked, I cannot tell you," he says, noting that under provisions of the USA Patriot Act, he isn't allowed to discuss pending investigations. According to the act -- drafted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to broaden government powers in fighting terrorism -- organizations are prohibited from revealing requests for records by federal agents. The obligation to secrecy, however, hasn't prevented Hassan from taking action to prevent future investigations carried out under the Patriot Act. Hassan's 700-member Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor signed on as lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed this week by the American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of U.S.-based Islamic organizations seeking to dismiss provisions of the Patriot Act on constitutional grounds. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59863,00.html Wonders Aplenty at Siggraph The Mona Lisa picture has been projected onto screens millions of times. But it's safe to say it's never been projected like it is at this year's Siggraph: onto a fog bank. "We've had some military people interested in it," said Ismo Rakkolainen, the Finnish creator of the walk-thru fog screen, neatly stepping through Mona Lisa's nose and reappearing on the other side. "You can imagine many possibilities." The fog screen is one of 21 new technologies on display at Siggraph's Emerging Technologies exhibition where some of the world's weirdest -- and occasionally useful -- new technologies are vetted each year. The world's largest and most prestigious conference on computer graphics and interactive technologies, Siggraph attracted about 25,000 people this year from 75 countries. http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,59857,00.html Data Dump Required Before Flights The Transportation Security Administration on Thursday revealed details of the newest version of a computerized system designed to prevent terrorists from boarding airplanes by checking passengers' backgrounds against several databases. The second-generation Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, as outlined in a notice to be published Friday in the Federal Register, will rate every passenger by checking dates of birth, home addresses and phone numbers against commercial databases and the government's terrorist watch lists. The system also would allow the Transportation Security Administration to look for people wanted for "crimes of violence." It could look for domestic groups accused of terrorism, including members of radical groups such as the Animal Liberation Front. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59860,00.html RIAA Rocks Around the Clock The Recording Industry Association of America's dragnet for people who illegally swap copyrighted music online is the story that just keeps on giving. And like any good epic about money, theft and greed, this one is gaining all sorts of new angles as it rolls along, from college students to senators to pornographers. Let's start with the college students. The RIAA still is serving hundreds of subpoenas on students and colleges and universities, where high-speed Internet connections make it easy to trade music and other digital files. Earlier this year, several students settled lawsuits with the RIAA for allegedly setting up Napster-like trading systems. But the trade group, which represents the major music labels, is aware that it could be scaring off potential customers, considering that college-age students are a sweet spot demographic for music sales. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Aug1.html Hold on, it's not over yet... __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies

03-08-03, 09:39 AM	#3
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	End of the road for SMTP? The protocol that has defined e-mail for more than two decades may have a fatal flaw: It trusts you. Developed when the Internet was used almost exclusively by academics, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP, assumes that you are who you say you are. SMTP makes that assumption because it doesn't suspect that you're sending a Trojan horse virus, that you're making fraudulent pleas for money from the relations of deposed African dictators, or that you're hijacking somebody else's computer to send tens of millions of ads for herbal Viagra. http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5058...g=fd_lede1_hed Hackers get lesson in the law Security researchers and black-hat hackers could face legal troubles if they publish detailed information about vulnerabilities and exploits, according to a presentation at a conference here. Jennifer Granick, director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, warned the audience at the Black Hat security conference late Thursday that they could run afoul of recent laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as centuries-old common law restrictions. One possible way for researchers to escape liability is to be careful not just of what they say, but how they say it. "How you market what you publish could be just as important as what you're publishing," said Granick, a criminal defense lawyer. "The law may treat that circumstance differently if you're sending this information out to help people." http://news.com.com/2100-1009-5058918.html?tag=nl Attack bot exploits Windows flaw Online vandals are using a program to compromise Windows servers and remotely control them through Internet relay chat (IRC) networks, system administrators said Saturday. Several programs, including one that exploits a recent vulnerability in computers running Windows, have been cobbled together to create a remote attack tool. The tool takes commands from an attacker through the IRC networks and can scan for and compromise computers vulnerable to the recently discovered flaw in Windows. Files left behind on a compromised server by the worm were posted to a security mailing list. Computer security company Symantec analyzed the files and determined that what was first thought to be a worm was actually an attack program. http://news.com.com/2100-1009-5059263.html?tag=nl The week in review: Subpoenas' sour note The recording industry's wave of subpoenas targeting individual file swappers may be headed for a wipeout as a major Internet service provider and a prominent congressman issue challenges. One of the largest broadband providers in the United States is challenging the recording industry's current campaign of targeting song swappers with a lawsuit charging that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is violating its customers' right to privacy. Pacific Bell Internet Services (PBIS), operated by telecommunications giant SBC Communications, challenged the subpoenas served against it by the RIAA on procedural grounds, arguing that hundreds of them were served improperly. However, the group made it clear that its action was taken in order to protect the privacy of its customers. http://news.com.com/2100-1083_3-5058643.html?tag=fd_top Microsoft.com suffers outage A denial-of-service attack rendered Microsoft's corporate Web site inaccessible for more than an hour on Friday afternoon, amid heightened fears that a major Internet attack could be on the horizon. Microsoft's Web site became largely inaccessible at about 12:50 p.m. PST, according to reader reports received by CNET News.com. The site appeared to be back up and running around 2:15 p.m. The outage occurred as system administrators and security experts were bracing for a potentially large Internet attack. The U.S. federal government warned earlier this week that an attack could be brewing that exploits a widespread flaw in Microsoft's Windows operating system. Microsoft spokesman Sean Sundwall said Microsoft was the victim of a denial-of-service attack, but he stressed that no Windows vulnerability was exploited. http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-5059056.html?tag=fd_top LCD TV shipments up sharply Worldwide shipments of liquid-crystal display TVs grew rapidly in the first quarter compared with the same period a year before, according to a report released this week. Worldwide shipments of LCD TVs hit 734,000 in the first quarter, up 223 percent from the first quarter of last year, according to market research firm DisplaySearch. The LCD TV growth rate for the first quarter is as high as it is partly because DisplaySearch added a new product category to its data. For the first time, the research firm included multifunction monitors that are sold through information technology distribution channels, which include stores such as CompUSA and the computer section of Best Buy. Multifunction monitors can be used as either a TV or a computer monitor. Excluding these monitors, the growth rate was 183 percent. http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5059149.html?tag=fd_top What time is it? Well, no one knows for sure Working Group 7A of the International Telecommunication Union's Study Group 7 may sound like an anonymous international committee like any other. But this is no quango of grey bureaucrats in greyer suits arguing over the desired colour of toilet paper. At the heart of this group's discussions is something of fundamental importance to anyone who has ever taken a second to fall in love or to score a goal: time itself, and how to define it. Unbeknown to most people there is not a single accepted way of telling the time, but several different scales running concurrently. The differences are usually small, but the scales can be as much as 30 seconds apart and the gap between them is growing steadily. Aircraft navigation systems tell a different time from the watches of passengers, pilots and air traffic controllers. Experts are warning that this could spell disaster. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/st...985020,00.html Microsoft broadens licensing terms Microsoft on Friday outlined new terms under which other companies can gain access to Windows protocols, an important element in its antitrust settlement with the federal government. Last week, Microsoft said it would alter the terms to make it cheaper and easier for software developers to license protocols that allow other products to work with Windows. Following the concessions, Microsoft received approval from U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that it was in compliance with the terms of its landmark settlement. Under that deal, Microsoft is supposed to license such code on "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms. So far, EMC, Network Appliance, VeriSign and Starbak Communication have licensed the protocols, but other companies have complained that Microsoft's terms have been unreasonable. Massachusetts regulators had also argued that more court intervention was needed. http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5058903.html?tag=cd_mh Second quarter mixed for broadband firms U.S. broadband growth lagged overall expectations in the second quarter but handed the two biggest cable and DSL providers sizable gains, cementing their respective leads over competitors. SBC Communications startled analysts last month, reporting 304,000 new DSL (digital subscriber line) customers, dwarfing its closest DSL competitors, Verizon and BellSouth, which added 101,000 and 103,000 new subscribers, respectively. SBC's DSL service is co-branded with Yahoo and marketed heavily throughout the Web portal. SBC pays Yahoo a percentage of the fees paid by every access customer, while Yahoo shares advertising and e-commerce revenues. Analysts said they are still trying to figure out whether SBC's partnership with Yahoo played a significant factor in SBC's quarterly uptick. http://news.com.com/2100-1034_3-5059126.html?tag=cd_mh Colleges explore legal Net music setups Universities are considering ways to bring legal Internet jukeboxes to dorm rooms, including entering deals with commercial service providers that would see online music charges included alongside tuition fees or picked up by the schools themselves. The effort is proceeding on several fronts, the most advanced charge being led by a committee of university and entertainment industry officials that is now collecting information from music services on behalf of individual colleges. Pilot projects could start as early as this fall, but insiders say that next year is more likely. Recording industry officials and music services see the drive as a promising way to entice students away from free download services as well as a way to create a new, potentially significant source of income for the music industry and its nascent online efforts. http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5059030.html Study: U.S. swappers shrug off copyrights More than two-thirds of Americans who swap songs online don't care whether the music is copyrighted, according to a study, despite the record industry's antipiracy crackdown. The Pew Internet and American Life Project study, released Thursday, found that 67 percent of U.S. Internet file swappers are indifferent to copyright concerns, a jump from 61 percent of respondents in a survey taken the summer of 2000. The survey, of 2,515 adults in the United States, took place from March through May -- just a few months before the recording industry began gathering evidence to sue individual file swappers. "The struggle to enforce copyright laws in the digital age continues to be an uphill battle for content owners," researchers wrote in the report. http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5058933.html?tag=cd_mh Judges OK evidence from hacker vigilante A federal appeals panel ruled this week that the government did not violate search and seizure laws when it used evidence that a hacker gathered to establish a child pornography case. The opinion reverses a lower court ruling in which a U.S. District Court judge in Virginia suppressed the evidence, saying the government had violated a defendant's rights. The decision stems from a case in which a hacker uploaded a file to a child porn newsgroup that made it possible to track who downloaded files from the service. The uploaded file contained the SubSeven virus, which the hacker used to remotely search people's computers for porn. http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-5058835.html?tag=cd_mh European firms threaten mass P2P lawsuit Legal services giant Landwell says it will prosecute 4,000 peer-to-peer file-traders in Spain because they have been identified as "serious" unauthorized downloaders of copyrighted songs, films and software. If it goes ahead, the action will be the largest crackdown on P2P users in Europe to date. Landwell, the legal arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers, earlier this month issued the threat on behalf of clients that have remained unnamed to avoid a backlash by consumers. The company said it had gathered data such as IP addresses on 95,000 file-traders by tapping into P2P systems with older versions of the P2P clients, which don't encrypt such information. Landwell said it is working with Spain's Technological Investigation Brigade (BIT) on the prosecutions and expects the case to appear in court next month. The action mimics a large-scale assault on alleged file-swappers in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which is in the process of filing several hundred lawsuits against them. http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5058666.html?tag=cd_mh Animators Show Off at Siggraph If you can imagine it, you can create it. Never has that goal seemed more possible than at this year's Electronic Theater at Siggraph, where the world's top computer animators vie for recognition. Consider scenes from just three of the 21 winning entries: Sculptor Alberto Giacometti, seconds from death, watches his creations come alive and bow their heads to him; a squirrel attempts to gather nuts while tumbling through the air; and a DNA production line replicates nucleic acids in real time. "This all centers on Moore's Law," said Darin Grant, chair of this year's animation festival and an executive at Hollywood visual-effects powerhouse Digital Domain. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59870,00.html Educators Turn to Games for Help Video games have come under tremendous political pressure in recent years because of an increase in violent and sexual content. But schools soon may be using the technology that powers those games to help teach America's children. Earlier this year, Washington state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, a Democrat, tried to ban the sale of violent games. While the courts continually have struck down these types of initiatives, both state and national politicians continue looking for ways to regulate the video-game industry. Academics, though, want to use the underlying software that powers the games to create learning simulations. The Digital Media Collaboratory, one of several technology laboratories at the University of Texas at Austin's IC2 Institute, works with partners from the public and private sectors to develop computer games that can be used by schools, businesses and governments. http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,59855,00.html Science graduates live long and prosper Science and medicine students go on to live longer and healthier lives than those studying other subjects, according to a survey of men attending university between 1948 and 1968. Peter McCarron, at Queens University Belfast, Northern Ireland, and colleagues examined the medical records of nearly 10,000 male graduates of Glasgow University. The researchers found that science, engineering and medical students had a substantially lower risk of mortality than arts students. However, medical students went on to have the largest number of alcohol-related deaths and death from suicide or violent means. They were also the heaviest smokers as students, followed by lawyers. Nonetheless, arts students had greatest risk of contracting lung cancer or a cardiovascular disease. "We speculate that medics changed their social habits after leaving university," McCarron told New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994013 Did Loyola University Chicago lose its innocence to the RIAA? A U.S. law professor has exposed the feeble backbone of Loyola University Chicago - an institution that handed its students' names over to the pigopolist mob's subpoena machine without so much as a grumble. The precedent set by the university's nonchalance toward privacy bodes poorly for students should the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) get its way and place the children before a court of law. Northwestern University law professor Anthony D'Amato has issued a strong caution to universities, calling on them to consider students' privacy before shipping them off to the RIAA sponsored legal gulag. Lawyers could turn Loyola's willingness to work with the RIAA into a black mark against students suspected of trading copyrighted files. More than that, however, D'Amato questions why Loyola - unlike MIT - was so ready to help the RIAA instead of its own tuition-paying kids. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32126.html Police: Teen abduction foiled by cell phone cam A quick-thinking 15-year-old boy used his Sprint cell phone camera to take pictures of a man who allegedly tried to lure him into his car, leading to the man's arrest, police said. The boy, who escaped from his alleged captor after a struggle, gave pictures of the man and his car license plate to police in Clifton, New Jersey, after the incident Tuesday. Armed with that evidence, police arrested William MacDonald, 59, of Passaic, on Wednesday. Det. Capt. Robert Rowan of the Clifton Police Department said as the boy was walking home Tuesday evening, MacDonald approached him in a white car and asked him to get in. The boy refused, Rowan said. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/0...one.abduction/ More cookies for my birdie later on __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

03-08-03, 10:47 AM	#4
JackSpratts Join Date: May 2001 Location: New England Posts: 10,017	anthony d'amato is half right. while copying music is hardly the same as breaking into your house, nor is it theft (and he should know – he’s a law professor so i guess he's exaggerating to establish his tough pro-law and order credentials), he is right to take loyola u. to task for caving in to the riaa - or any group using these new subpoena techniques to circumvent due process. http://www.law.northwestern.edu/dept...=920&pagetype= - js.