The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

'Good' worm, new bug mean double trouble
A "good" Internet worm and a new malicious mass-mailing computer virus are creating an enormous amount of network traffic, slowing some corporate systems, security experts said Tuesday. The Internet worm -- called MSBlast.D, W32.Welchia or W32/Nachi -- started compromising computers Monday and has overwhelmed some corporate networks with its aggressive scans for vulnerable hosts. Meanwhile, a new variant of the mass-mailing Sobig virus, called W32/SoBig.F, took off on Tuesday, swamping many companies' mail servers. The double whammy caused problems on some corporate networks but not for the Internet at large. SoBig.F disrupted e-mail systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while the MSBlast variant, Nachi, disrupted the ticketing systems of Air Canada and the corporate networks at Lockheed Martin.
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-5065...g=fd_lede2_hed

Nokia snaps up Sega.com
Nokia on Tuesday extended its bet on mobile video games, agreeing to acquire multiplayer technology from Sega for its upcoming N-Gage game deck. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Finnish cell phone maker said it will acquire Sega.com and use Sega's Network Application Package in its mobile phone and online games products. Nokia has said its N-Gage combination cell phone and game deck will be available in stores Oct. 7, priced at $299. "Online multiplayer games and mobility are seen as the hottest developments in the games industry today," Ilkka Raiskinen, senior vice president of Nokia's entertainment and media business unit, said in a statement. "This acquisition is a logical step in bringing online elements to mobile games."
http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-5065856.html?tag=fd_top

FTC chair: Antispam proposals lacking
Antispam proposals in Congress are not strict enough and would do more harm than good, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday. In a strongly worded criticism of current legislation, Tim Muris characterized the dozen or so bills as well intentioned, but he warned they "will do little to solve the current spam problems" and could be even "less useful" than existing laws the FTC has been using to sue spammers. "No one should expect any of (the proposals) to make a substantial difference," Muris said. " In fact, they could even be harmful." Muris made his remarks during an afternoon speech at a conference organized by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a group whose stated mission is to "educate policymakers, opinion leaders and the public about issues associated with technological change, based on a philosophy of limited government, free markets and individual sovereignty."
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5065739.html?tag=fd_top

Media groups appeal P2P ruling
Record labels and movie studios said Tuesday that they have appealed an April federal court ruling that held for the first time that some file-swapping software was legal. That ruling, made by a Los Angeles federal court judge, Stephen Wilson, came as a sharp blow to copyright holders' strategy of suing peer-to-peer network operators and software developers in order to curb the explosive growth of file trading. Beginning with a ruling against Napster, all court rulings had been in favor of the record companies and movie studios. "(Wilson's decision) was wrong," Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) President Cary Sherman said in a statement Tuesday. "These are businesses that were built for the exclusive reason of illegally exchanging copyrighted works, and they make money hand over fist from it. The Court of Appeals should hold them accountable."
http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-5065729.html?tag=fd_top

Net video to become a staple for cable?
Video on demand is a growing business for cable companies, according to a new study that predicts that 15 million cable subscribers worldwide will be paying for the feature by 2007. Video on demand (VOD) is a service offered by cable companies that lets subscribers order movies any time of day and control the video like a recording. Unlike pay-per-view services, subscribers can pause, rewind or fast-forward scenes from the movies and TV shows they order. Although VOD is still in its infancy, cable companies could see incremental benefits as they begin to offer these services. Cable companies have been upgrading their systems to digital, which allows them to offer more channels and more features such as VOD. The companies have been pushing their subscribers to upgrade so they can sell new features that can be sold only on a digital network.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5065719.html?tag=fd_top

Sony's Memory Stick beats at rivals
Philips Electronics is the latest major consumer electronics maker to license Sony's Memory Stick technology, which continues to gain support from large manufacturers and expand its potential for wider distribution. Philips announced Tuesday it is licensing Memory Stick technology for use with its Nexperia chips, which are used in consumer products such as DVD players, cell phones and other handheld devices. Nexperia-based products with Memory Stick technology will be available in the second quarter of next year, according to Philips. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. "End-users will then be able to share, exchange and record content on a multitude of consumer devices," Leon Husson, executive vice president of Philips Semiconductors, said in a release.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5065656.html?tag=fd_top

Putting the GPL on trial
w that SCO faces the dissolution of its legal position, claiming to "enforce intellectual property rights" while actually massively infringing the rights of others, the company and its lawyers have jettisoned even the appearance of legal responsibility. Last week's Wall Street Journal carried statements by Mark Heise, outside counsel for SCO, challenging the "legality" of the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL both protects against the baseless claims made by SCO for license fees to be paid by users of free software and prohibits SCO from its ongoing distribution of the Linux kernel, a distribution which infringes the copyrights of thousands of contributors to the kernel throughout the world.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-5065289.html

Social scientists seek technology's human side
Just as Freudian shrinks asked about your childhood, information age psychiatrists are asking people to "Tell me about your e-mail." Patterns of online interactivity -- from how many posts you make on a discussion group to how long you take to answer an e-mail -- say a lot about the people typing the messages, researchers are finding. Joshua Tyler, a 25-year-old researcher at Hewlett-Packard's famed Palo Alto labs, is one of an army of scientists delving into the tech user's psyche at major technology firms. If you thought high tech was only about crunching code, you're wrong. Squishy, left-brain science is slowly gaining its place alongside hard-core technology, as competitive tech firms try to get an edge on what their users are thinking... and therefore buying.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg....DTL&type=tech

Wireless, Linux to help prevent V8 Supercar crashes
Linux-based computer systems are being placed on board V8 Supercars to provide visual information on crashes and relay the data to officials over a wireless network. The systems are central to a program undertaken by organisers of V8 Supercar racing in Australia to obtain more information about Supercar crashes, in the hopes of reducing the number of incidents at races. "AVESCO (Australian Vee Eight Supercar Company Pty Ltd) and TEGA (Touring Car Entrants Group), who control the V8 Supercars racing, [want] to install video cameras into every V8 Supercar," David Douglas from Opia Vision, the company installing the video systems, told ZDNet Australia.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ent...0277456,00.htm

SCO shifts focus from suit to wares
The SCO Group, which lately has garnered more attention for its legal efforts than its products, on Tuesday gave a broad overview of its SCOx Web services framework to attendees of its customer conference here. During a keynote presentation at SCO Forum, the company finally got down to business discussing its SCOx product offerings in a bit more detail. On Monday, the first day of the conference, the company spent much of the time addressing its legal battles over Linux. It's not surprising that SCO has focused on the dispute, given that its intellectual property enforcement effort is its fastest-growing revenue source. In March, SCO sued IBM, claiming Big Blue had illegally incorporated some of SCO's Unix code into its version of Linux. The moves irritated many in the Linux community, who claim that SCO has no rights to the Linux code it is claiming as its own.
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5065666.html?tag=cd_mh

Microsoft puts price, date on new Office
Microsoft set an Oct. 21 release date and announced pricing Tuesday for the next version of its Office software package. The final details came with the expected announcement that the core Office applications are complete and ready for distribution to PC manufacturers, who need to test the software in preparation for loading it on new computers. The "release to manufacturing" (RTM) stage is typically the last milestone before a major new software release becomes available to the public. As expected, retail pricing for various Office packages will be identical to the recently reduced prices for their counterparts in Office XP, the current version of the software. It also matches lower prices Microsoft introduced last week for the Mac version of Office. The standard edition of Office 2003 will sell for $399, the professional edition will go for $499 and the increasingly popular student/teacher version will cost $149.
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5065582.html?tag=cd_mh

Citibank warns customers of e-mail scam
Citibank on Monday warned customers not to fall for an e-mail scam that threatened to shut down their checking accounts if they failed to provide their Social Security numbers. Citibank, a division of Citigroup, said "numerous" people received the e-mail, which purported to advise them of conditions affecting their accounts. It said the e-mail linked to a Web site that looks like Citibank's, and asked customers for their Social Security numbers, a form of identification. Scammers can use such data to obtain credit cards or access to bank and other accounts. "Although the e-mail appears to come from Citibank regarding 'Your Checking Account at Citibank,' it does not, and Citibank is in no way involved in the distribution of this e-mail," a company representative said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017_3-5065394.html?tag=cd_mh

FCC lifts AOL messaging limits
The Federal Communications Commission has agreed to lift restrictions that have barred AOL Time Warner from offering advanced instant messaging services including videoconferencing, according to a source familiar with the decision. CC commissioners voted in a nonpublic meeting to drop the restriction, imposed by the commission when it approved the merger between America Online and Time Warner in January 2001. Reached at an industry conference in Aspen, Colo., Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy declined to comment on the vote, saying only that a decision will be released by the end of the week. AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose declined to comment until the FCC makes the decision public.
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5065650.html

Elvis lives -- on the Web
Digital music service MusicNow and music label BMG on Tuesday announced a digital music channel showcasing more than 2,000 Elvis Presley songs. Dubbed "Elvis 2nd to None," the channel features such songs as "Can't Help Falling In Love," "My Way" and "Suspicious Minds," as well as albums ranging from "Elvis is Back!" to the gospel collection "How Great Thou Art." The launch is coinciding with a new album, also called "Elvis 2nd to None," due to be released Oct. 7. The album will contain a recently discovered Presley track, "I'm a Roustabout." Other high-profile acts have recently begun to move more of their tunes online. On Monday, the music of the Rolling Stones debuted on RealNetworks' Rhapsody subscription service. MusicNow said subscribers will be able to stream, download and burn Elvis hits in the Windows Media 9 Series format.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5065574.html?tag=cd_mh

Dean E-Mail Sends Wrong Message
Presidential hopeful Howard Dean may be receiving kudos for his use of the Internet as a fundraising tool, but he's getting raised eyebrows for a pair of junk e-mails allegedly sent by his campaign staff last week. According to copies of the messages obtained by Wired News, the Dean for America campaign sent the first unsolicited message to an unknown number of recipients on Monday, Aug. 11. The message touted the benefits of a Dean presidency, calling upon readers to register their contact information at the campaign website and to "pass this e-mail along to all of your friends who believe, as you do, that we must act now to take back America." Bill Hotaling, owner of New York-based consulting firm Noreast Technology, was among those who were surprised to be receiving e-mail from the Dean campaign.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60086,00.html

Another Worm Wriggles Online
A new mass e-mail worm that attempts to update itself by downloading files off the Internet and can also potentially leave computers vulnerable to further attack was spreading quickly around the world on Tuesday, antivirus experts said. The new worm, dubbed Sobig.F, is at least the fourth new, major Internet worm to hit computers worldwide in the past week, prompting antivirus vendor F-Secure to declare this the "worst virus week ever." Sobig.F, a variant of an older worm, began spreading on Monday in Europe and has infected an estimated tens of thousands of Windows-based computers, said Patrick Hinojosa, chief technology officer at Panda Software, based in Madrid.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,60103,00.html

Time to Escape From the Grid?
The best way to keep the power from going out is to make your own. That's the line taken by home-power enthusiasts who tout mostly solar power -- along with a bit of wind and even less hydroelectric -- as the ultimate way to avoid grid-induced power shortages, while also reducing pollution and preventing global warming. The rub is that such systems can cost up to $60,000 for a typical home, perhaps the key reason that home-power systems remain niche products. Typical home-power customers are "environmentally interested, and they definitely have to be somewhat upwardly mobile," said Michael Miller, who sells power systems nationwide from his business in Cazadero, California. "They're interested in protecting their future, and backing up their present." The high cost of everything from photovoltaic cells to batteries is likely to keep such home-power systems from becoming widely used any time soon.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,60089,00.html

RIAA: We'll Spare the Small Fry
The Recording Industry Association of America says it will not go after small violators when it sues people who illegally share songs on the Internet. The assurance came in a written response to questions by Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs' Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Coleman plans to hold hearings on the RIAA's campaign, which he has labeled "excessive." "RIAA is in no way targeting 'de minimis' users," wrote Cary Sherman, the group's president, in a letter the subcommittee released Monday. "RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted music." Sherman added that his group "does not condone any illegal copying and does not want anyone to think that even a little illegal activity is acceptable."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60092,00.html

Financial Privacy Bill Advances
The California State Assembly overwhelmingly approved a bill Monday that will impose what could be the toughest financial privacy standards in the nation, barring companies from sharing all sorts of personal data from individuals' phone numbers to their bank balances. The bill, authored by State Sen. Jackie Speier (D-San Francisco), requires insurance companies, banks and other businesses to get customer permission before sharing or selling personal data such as bank balances or credit card activity. A spokesman for California's Senate leader, John Burton (D-San Francisco), said the bill will likely come up for approval in the Senate for approval on Tuesday, where it is widely expected to pass. If it does, it will go to Gov. Gray Davis, who has already said he'll sign it.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,60095,00.html

Moon colony 'within 20 years'
Humans could be living on the Moon within 20 years, says a leading lunar scientist. According to Bernard Foing of the European Space Agency, the technology will soon exist to set up an outpost for visiting astronauts. However, political will is needed to inspire the public to support the initiative. "We believe that technologically it's possible," the project scientist on Europe's first Moon mission, Smart-1, told BBC News Online. "But it will depend in the end on the political will to go and establish a human base for preparing for colonisation of the Moon or to be used as a refuge for the human species."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3161695.stm

Current research gives Adam a charge
A little robot named Adam is teaching himself how to live in his very own Garden of Eden in a revolutionary experiment at Monash University. In an attempt to further the development of home robots, Associate Professor Andy Russell has put Adam (ADAptive Mobile robot) in his own garden named Eden (EDucational ENvironment) where the dish-shaped robot learns how to travel in the most energy-efficient way and feed himself from flowers when his charge dies. The Garden of Eden has three flowers made of aluminium plates and green borders, which he can feed from with his antenna-like nose to acquire the energy he needs. If he bumps in to the red-bordered walls of the garden, he quickly loses energy.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/com...E11869,00.html

U.S. deploys 'Zsa Zsa Saddam'
He has been portrayed as a monster, a murderer, and a genocidal dictator. Now U.S. troops are giving us a whole new vision of Saddam Hussein -- a blonde-haired movie goddess with rouged lips and a low-cut blouse. "Zsa Zsa Saddam" is one of a series spoof images of the ousted Iraqi dictator that are due to be posted on walls and billboards around his former stronghold of Tikrit by troops of the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Battalion 22nd Armoured Regiment. The idea is both to boost the morale of U.S. soldiers, ridicule the deposed leader and, also, help identify those who are still loyal to Saddam. "The bad guys are going to be upset," Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Russell told Reuters. "Which will just make it easier for us to know who they are."
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/...ddam.pictures/

Free online journal gives sneak preview
The non-profit, on-line publisher, the Public Library of Science, has released a sneak preview of the research papers it will be giving away for free from October. Its first journal, PLoS Biology, is a monthly, peer-reviewed journal intended to compete head-to-head with the most prestigious paid-for journals. "I'm delighted with the quality of the papers we're publishing," says Vivian Siegel, the PLoS executive director, who quit as editor of another highly-rated journal Cell to head the new venture. "I think Nature and Science will look at some of these papers and wish they had them." PLoS released two of those papers on Monday as part of the sneak preview. One paper shows Borneo elephants are genetically distinct from other Asian elephants and argues they should be protected.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994071

Blackout investigators search for cause
As northeastern North America finally recovers from the world's worst ever electricity blackout, investigators are starting to narrow down its cause. Under suspicion are faulty computer warning systems, poor maintenance of power lines and human error. Most of the 60 million people affected by last Thursday's massive outage now have power restored. Public transport systems have resumed normal service, but big businesses, including car manufacturers General Motors and Ford, have cut their usage to help the system recover. A significant number of power stations are still closed down. The task of determining what happened will be far from easy. The blackout involved dozens of companies and thousands of systems. Millions of pieces of data need to be trawled through.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994067

Missing eBay DVD claims 'exaggerated', says trader
Zippymilk, the elusive trader who's left hundreds of people waiting weeks for the arrival of DVDs they've paid for after winning auctions on eBay, has denied any wrongdoing. As first reported on The Register earlier this month, patience is wearing thin among the estimated 800 customers of zippymilk (aka Adrian Bailey, 33, of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk). They are growing tired of a succession of excuses he has offered for the non-arrival of goods they secured in eBay auctions. Many have banded together to form a members-only Yahoo! Group called Zippyvictims to share their experiences. Membership of the group has swelled to 360 since its formation in mid-July.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32401.html

Microsoft Mulls Security in Wake of Worm
Too busy to update your flawed software? Microsoft Corp. is considering whether Microsoft, flaws and all, should automatically do it for you. Microsoft said Tuesday it is considering whether to sign up users of future versions of its Windows operating system to a service that automatically downloads and installs software fixes on their computers unless customers specifically opt out of the service. No decisions have been made, but it is one way the company is considering tightening computer security in the future, after the Blaster worm and other variants infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world since Aug. 11.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...ss/6570627.htm

Trojan Horse Attacks GNU Project
Malicious code recently compromised the FTP server for the GNU Project, a developer site for many components in the open-source Linux operating system. The attack originally occurred in March 2003, but went undiscovered until late July, according to a statement from GNU's sponsor, the Free Software Foundation. The compromise was a Trojan horse that was installed on the root system of GNU's servers. The Trojan horse had been on the server system for several months. A local user sparked the attack and was collecting passwords and attempting to use the site as a launching point to attack other machines, the FSF says. After what it deemed a substantial investigation verifying the integrity of the software, FSF representatives say they don't think any GNU source code has been compromised.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112071,00.asp

'Help wanted' to build, manage world's largest telescope
In a most unusual help-wanted ad, astronomers are looking for somebody to manage a project to build the world's largest telescope. When finished about 10 years from now, the instrument will have a light-collecting mirror 30 meters - almost 100 feet - in diameter. It will be three times the size and 10 times more powerful than the top-of-the-line ground-based telescopes of today. Perched on a mountaintop, probably in Hawaii, it will be sheltered from wind and weather in a dome as high as a 30-story building, only a little shorter than the 306-foot-high Statue of Liberty. The ad for the project manager's job appeared last month in the journal Science. According to the text, only applicants with a "proven track record in managing large science and engineering projects" need apply.
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/6569392.htm

More news later on