The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Microsoft kills Net address to foil worm
As part of its effort to stop the progress of the MSBlast worm, Microsoft is killing off the Windows Update address that the self-propagating program was set to attack. Because the worm is programmed to attack only that address and not the site that it redirects to, the software giant has decided to eliminate the Windowsupdate.com address. The move is one of a series of efforts that Microsoft has undertaken to try to thwart an attack on its servers that was expected to be launched by infected computers starting Friday. "One strategy for cushioning the blow was to extinguish the Windowsupdate.com" site, said Microsoft spokesman Sean Sundwall. "We have no plans to ever restore that to be an active site."
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-5064433.html

Sony polishes up flash memory card
Sony has released a smaller, roomier and faster version of its Memory Stick removable flash memory, targeting digital camcorders and cell phones in a bid to keep up with a changing market. The Japanese consumer electronics and entertainment company announced on Friday a new version of its Memory Stick Duo card, called the Memory Stick Pro Duo. The new removable flash memory card has a capacity of up to 512MB, up from a maximum of 128MB in the previous version. It will theoretically be able to transfer data at a rate of up to 20 megabytes per second under optimal conditions, according to Sony. With the new cards, Sony is aiming to broaden the role of its removable flash memory line by tackling what analysts expect will be the next major growth areas for portable devices: cell phones and digital camcorders.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5064570.html?tag=fd_top

Low-tech tools rule in unplugged city
It was a day for flashlights, transistor radios and hard-to-find pay phones as people trapped in Manhattan by the blackout abruptly discovered the failings of high-tech wireless tools. "I'm standing completely idle and cut off even though I have all the latest gadgets imaginable,'' Eric Dawson, an Apple Computer salesman from Marlborough, Conn., said standing outside New York's Grand Central Station. "I have a Bluetooth wireless connection in my cell phone. I can sync to my laptop to get Internet access. But I can't even make a phone call. I can't text message." Stranded commuters dialed and redialed without success to reach friends or loved ones on their mobile phones. Only hours after the blackout began did calls begin to be connected with any frequency.
http://news.com.com/2100-1039-5064277.html?tag=nl

Blackout gives cell phones a black eye
Cell phone service once again failed to step up in the face of calamity. During Thursday's blackout that darkened parts of the Northeast, most cell phone subscribers were unable to make calls when they reached for their handsets. Only the truly persistent were able to get through after the lights went out, the largest U.S. carrier, Verizon Wireless, acknowledged in a statement Friday. In addition, the top six cell phone carriers in the United States said they were still battling outages on Friday morning. The carriers blamed the ongoing outages on their cellular transmitter stations, which handle cell phone call traffic. "We need electricity to power our cell sites, but when you don't have that, it's out of our control," Nextel Communications spokesman Chris Grandis said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1039-5064689.html?tag=nl

Sony unveils 8-megapixel camera for pros
Sony announced on Friday a new digital camera with a filter that it says brings color fidelity closer to human visual perception. The new model in its Cyber-shot F-series of digital cameras incorporates Sony's recently developed four-color filter technology and real-imaging processor. The new color filter in the DSC-F828 model adds an emerald-colored pixel to the filter pattern, in addition to the red, green and blue used in digital cameras. The camera's new imaging processor then converts the four-color signal back into three colors with a linear matrix system. The model's 8-megapixel charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensor offers 3,360 pixels by 2,460 pixels, equivalent to 11-by-17-inch prints at 200 dots per inch or 8.5-by-11-inch prints at 300 dots per inch, the company said in statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5063213.html?tag=fd_top

Beating the software blues
Hollywood's "The Matrix" has achieved systems monitoring nirvana. The intelligent machine architects of this most intricate of networks have developed programs -- uber-sophisticated scripts -- that constantly police and test the system's performance. This matrix never goes down, and the diagnostic capabilities of the monitoring agents render the network self-aware and infallible. We are all still awaiting the final conclusion of the trilogy, but it is obvious that the idea of this matrix's infallible monitoring system has a fatal flaw, one that undermines its entire purpose. Is there a real-world IT lesson to be learned here? In creating the technology world's foremost romantic screen epic, the Wachowski brothers have hit on an important point that the IT community has failed to grasp: No matter how sophisticated a system is, no technology can accurately predict, emulate or control human behavior.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-5064...ml?tag=fd_nc_1

Chaos theories calculate the vulnerability of megasystems
The massive power failure on the East Coast illustrates the risk of building ever-larger power networks to transmit electricity, experts said Thursday. When a system becomes extremely complex, a normally survivable event -- say, a lightning strike like the one Canadians initially suspected in Thursday's blackout -- can trigger what scientists call a devastating domino effect. The effect is well-known to physics experts in the fields of complexity theory, chaos theory and the theory of self-organized criticality.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...5/MN191082.DTL

Iraq war game comes under fire
An American company looks set to attract a storm of controversy next year when it launches a computer game featuring graphic video footage captured by US troops during the Iraq war. The game, called Kuma War, will include licensed frontline footage from ITN, Reuters and Associated Press and is likely to provoke accusations that the company is cashing in on a conflict in which more that 5,000 people have already died. It could also spark a row with the coalition forces as American and British soldiers are still being killed in Iraq. Earlier this year electronics giant Sony was forced to abandon plans to launch a game called Shock and Awe after attracting a barrage of negative publicity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/computerga...019416,00.html

Darn Those Pop-Up Ads! They're Maddening, But Do They Work?
They create as much clutter as those slippery advertising inserts that fatten a Sunday newspaper and are as inescapable as humidity in August. But just how annoying are those pop-up ads that appear unwanted on your computer screen as you cruise the Internet? How effective are they at selling stuff? And do they raise privacy issues in the same way that e-mail spam does? E-commerce experts at Wharton and elsewhere say pop-ups are not universally loathed and irrevocably worthless. But collectively they can indeed be a nuisance. Pop-ups are a lot like other forms of advertising: If they are presented to a consumer at the wrong time and in the wrong way, they can be a big-time turn-off. But if a consumer sees them at the right time, they can provide useful information, or at least be entertaining and non-offensive.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/a...8&homepage=yes

Experts Warned of Weak Power Grid
Scientists and engineers with the National Research Council warned the White House and Congress about the vulnerability of the power grid as recently as November, saying nationwide weaknesses needed to be repaired -- and fast. Little has been done, despite a chorus of experts who've pushed since well before Sept. 11 to fix a grid that's riddled with threadbare links and plagued by chronic shortages. "The power grid has not gotten much more than important conversations since Sept. 11," said Paul Gilbert, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, which worked on the report for the National Research Council. The report, "Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism," was issued in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, but it noted that the systems were "subject to increased stress even without the threat of terrorism."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,60057,00.html

Robo-Doc's Winning Bedside Manner
Patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital laugh every time they spot the new, 4-foot-tall doctor. It's not a size issue. The "doctor" is a robot with a computer-screen head, video-camera eyes and a speaker for a mouth. Doctor Robot is being tested at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and several adult-care facilities around the country to find out how patients respond to robotic medical surrogates. The answer: Patients prefer dealing with the robots. The vast majority of patients have reported that they think interacting with robotic caregivers is far more amusing and interesting than chatting with standard-issue, flesh-and-blood medical personnel. "People love it. I was very surprised how much our patients enjoy remote video interactions via the robot," says Dr. Louis Kavoussi, a Johns Hopkins professor of urology and a pioneer in robotic surgery.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,60017,00.html

Toilet Sensor Aims High (and Dry)
Missed targets at the toilet in the middle of the night may well be a perennial problem, but a southern California company aims to ease the crisis with the latest in sensory technology. Arkon Resources, a consumer products maker based in Arcadia, California, just released the latest version of its night light, LavNav. The lavatory-navigation light, which retails for $30, is a sensor-studded light that customers install at the bottom of a toilet seat. The light detects approaching footsteps, then casts a red shadow on the toilet if the seat is up -- a gentle reminder to women that everything is not as it should be. The toilet shines green when the seat is down. Either way, the lights are bright enough to show the way to the bathroom, eliminating the need to turn on the bathroom light. "There is a need for this type of product," said Aaron Roth, vice president of marketing and sales for Arkon.
http://www.wired.com/news/gizmos/0,1452,60022,00.html

Calif. Eyes Strong Privacy Policy
Faced with the possibility of an expensive campaign to defeat a threatened ballot initiative, California's financial industry set aside its opposition to a comprehensive information privacy law Thursday and announced a last-minute compromise with privacy groups. The deal gives legislators a deadline of Tuesday evening to pass a version of a financial privacy law backed by California State Sen. Jackie Speier (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) which imposes restrictions on how banks and insurance companies can share information about their customers. If the state House and Senate fail to pass the bill, a coalition of privacy groups called Californians for Privacy Now will turn in the 600,000 signatures it has collected and put the issue on the state's March 2004 ballot. The deadline for turning in signatures for ballot initiatives is August 20.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60037,00.html

RIAA Methods Under Scrutiny
A Senate panel will hold hearings on the recording industry's crackdown against online music swappers, the chairman said Thursday. Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota), made the announcement in a letter to the Recording Industry Association of America. He had received information he had requested from the group about the campaign, which Coleman has called excessive. The Senate governmental affairs' permanent subcommittee on investigations is reviewing the group's responses and declined to make them available Thursday. The RIAA was also silent. The association announced plans in June to file several hundred lawsuits against people suspected of illegally sharing songs on the Internet. Copyright laws allow for damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60042,00.html

Why Your ID Is Such Easy Picking
Identity theft skyrocketed 81% in 2002, a statistic so shocking that it seemed unreal -- until it happened to my sister. Last weekend, she had her wallet pinched. Within six hours, the thieves, clearly professionals, had charged $5,000 to each of her credit cards and wiped out much of her bank account by using her debit card to "purchase" limousine services from a nonexistent company. Worse, the thieves also obtained her Social Security number, which was printed on her health-insurance member card. These days, Social Security numbers are gold mines for thieves, since the numbers are widely used as ID and passwords by banks, brokers, even the IRS. My sister immediately put a fraud alert on her account with the credit bureaus to prevent anyone from opening new lines of credit. But experts say she'll still have to check her accounts monthly for the next several years.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...9611_tc073.htm

NASA 'should extend Hubble's lifetime'
NASA should extend the Hubble Space Telescope's lifetime with a second space shuttle service mission in 2010, says a panel of astronomers commissioned by the agency. The upgrade would extend its lifetime well into the next decade. The plan would allow Hubble to overlap with the James Webb Space Telescope, now scheduled for launch in 2011. NASA had planned to service Hubble in 2004 and return the telescope to Earth on the space shuttle in 2010. The agency changed its mind after the Columbia disaster, and decided to instead dump the ageing telescope into the ocean in 2010, after a final service mission in about 2005. But astronomers were dismayed that NASA might destroy Hubble while it was still functional, as the space agency did when it scuttled the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory in 2000.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994061

Web Helps Cities And Businesses Cope With Blackout
Forget for a minute about E-commerce and business transactions and remember that one of the greatest benefits of the Web is the ability to communicate with people. Amid the chaos of the biggest power outage in history on Thursday, some organizations and companies used the Web effectively to help keep their citizens and customers informed. Residents of the New York metropolitan area who lacked electricity but had access to a battery-powered laptop could go to the City of New York's Web site and watch video of news conferences Mayor Michael Bloomberg held Thursday night and Friday morning, with the option of 56K or 300K speeds. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, city IT officials have worked to improve the city's Web site, with the goal of making it a better forum for communicating in the event of future disasters.
http://www.informationweek.com/story...cleID=13100297

Disney hopes new space ride jump-starts attendance
Walt Disney World's most intense ride, Mission: SPACE, a face-jiggling, centrifuge-based ride recreating the experience of blasting into space, opened to the public Friday. Disney officials hope the $100 million ride attracts new interest in Epcot, which hasn't had a major new ride since the test-car based Test Track opened five years ago. But Mission: SPACE also is at the center of a multimillion dollar lawsuit by its outside builders, who say they weren't paid the full amount of their contract and weren't allowed to perform safety tests. A Disney official says the company has the highest safety standards and Mission: SPACE meets all of the company's safety requirements.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas...ss/6543548.htm

Open source confronts IP issues
The SCO Group's legal wrangling with IBM and threats directed at customers likely will have reverberations throughout the open source community beyond just the Linux operating system. As Linux and other open source software, such as the popular Apache Web server, challenge commercial products, open source technologies face an increasing number of IP (intellectual property) threats. In the latest example, Lindon, Utah-based SCO last week terminated its Unix System V contract with IBM, thereby putting a major crimp in the company's ability to sell its Dynix/ptx operating system. Much of SCO's case against IBM appears to rest on its rights to derivative works, specifically the code that SCO had licensed to Sequent Computers. Sequent was subsequently bought by IBM, which in turn used that code in Unix-based products it has released since.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/...32NNsco_1.html

More news later on