The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

Yesterday was a holiday here in Canada

Microsoft to license Unix code
Microsoft will license the rights to Unix technology from SCO Group, a move that could impact the battle between Windows and Linux in the market for computer operating systems. According to a statement from Microsoft, the company will license SCO's Unix patents and the source code. That code is at the heart of a $1 billion lawsuit between SCO and IBM, which is aggressively pushing Linux as an alternative to Windows in corporate back shops. Microsoft's Windows has a monopoly in the market for desktop operating systems, with a market share greater than 90 percent. Linux, which has been developed by thousands of contributors and can be freely obtained, has caught on as a worthy competitor in the market for corporate servers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-1007528.html?tag=nl
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-1007715.html?tag=nl

Spanish site offers music-file fiesta
A new all-you-can-eat music download service that claims to take advantage of a loophole in Spanish copyright law will launch on Tuesday and piggyback on a popular file-swapping network for distribution. The new Madrid-based company, called Puretunes, is the second Spanish Web service to try offering access to a vast and otherwise unavailable catalog of music online without directly securing the record labels' permission. The company's predecessor, WebListen.com, is still operating despite having been repeatedly sued by European record labels. Puretunes, with a U.S.-based publicity agent, appears to be focusing more heavily on the English-speaking world, however. Each claims to be legal and says it will compensate labels and artists for distribution of their works.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1007...g=fd_lede2_hed

Congressional caucus targets piracy
Three members of the House of Representatives are creating a new congressional caucus devoted to combating piracy and promoting stronger intellectual property laws. A letter sent to some members of Congress on Friday by Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., warned of the threat of "ever-changing technologies" and asked colleagues if they would like to join the caucus. "The concerns of the thousands of Americans whose livelihoods depend on intellectual property protection are not being fully debated or addressed," said the letter, which was obtained by CNET News.com. A representative for Wexler said Monday that planning for the caucus -- formally titled the Congressional Caucus on Intellectual Property Promotion and Piracy Prevention -- is still in its early stages.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1007908.html?tag=fd_top

Cracking the great firewall of China
That's the rallying cry of Bennett Haselton's advocacy group, Peacefire, founded to preserve the rights of young people to surf an unfiltered Web. The group's preferred method? Sabotaging the software ostensibly designed to protect kids. Haselton and his group may wind up in search of a broader motto as they take on a censor even more fearsome than the typical American parent: The People's Republic of China. For the last six years, Bennett Haselton has fought a wide range of adversaries with Peacefire, which now employs a staff of 12 and boasts 7000 members. Haselton started with Web filtering applications like Net Nanny and CyberSitter ("censorware" to Haselton and other critics), then devoted some time to software bug hunting, and more recently began an education campaign to teach the masses how to use state law to sue spammers -- something Haselton himself has done with mixed results.
http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-1007...ml?tag=fd_nc_1

The fear war against Linux
Microsoft's connection to the anti-Linux campaign being waged by the SCO Group is becoming clear. In the latest move, Microsoft has stepped up the battle with an announced agreement to license SCO's Unix patents and the source code, describing the deal as a reflection of its "ongoing commitment to respecting intellectual property and the IT community's healthy exchange of IP through licensing." Nice rhetoric. This comes after SCO just last week sent a letter to big IT customers, threatening legal action. And the reality is that Microsoft is tying SCO's allegations into its own anti-GPL campaign, a mostly unsuccessful effort to convince customers that the sharing and openness methods used in Linux development are unhealthy for the market.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1007758.html

How tech shapes entertainment's future
Entertainment is big business. That's hardly news. But in an age of digital production and global distribution, the economic rewards -- as well as the risks -- of producing popular culture have never been greater. Major studio blockbusters now debut on 3,000 screens and rake in more than $100 million in one weekend -- while a few, like "Spider-Man" did, ultimately become billion-dollar franchises with a web of distribution and ancillary rights and products spread over much of the globe. How can the creative process survive in such an intensely commercial environment? And how will digital technology continue to shape the entertainment industry? Those were among the questions addressed recently by entertainment industry leaders and rising Hollywood stars who gathered at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
http://news.com.com/2009-1087_3-1007950.html

IRC group decrypts Fizzer commands
Members of the chat-network security group IRC/Unity have decoded the manner in which the creator of the Fizzer virus can communicate with the program, a co-founder of the group said on Monday. The Fizzer virus connects from an infected PC to a randomly selected Internet relay chat (IRC) network using a list of more than 300 such networks contained in the virus. Once connected, Fizzer creates a chat channel and listens for commands from a specific user nickname. The IRC/Unity group discovered the algorithm that determines what that name should be. "It's a three-letter nickname that is only valid for the current date," said John McGarrigle, the newly elected chairman of the IRC/Unity group, a collection of administrators from more than 50 different chat networks. "Once you have that, you can control the bot (virus program) through IRC."
http://news.com.com/2100-1009_3-1007743.html?tag=cd_mh

Microsoft drafts allies to squash worms
Microsoft has formed a virus information alliance with antivirus software makers Network Associates and Trend Micro. The alliance, announced Monday, is designed to create a central resource for information on viruses that target Microsoft software, a move that coincides with the appearance of a worm with a bogus Microsoft.com identifier that is working its way through the Internet. "We are focused on security and getting information out as soon as possible," said Andy Erlandson, director of security for product support services at Microsoft. "We plan to do updates when we have new information, and the updates could be hourly. The Virus Information Alliance Web site has been set up to carry latest incident reports on viruses with severity ratings of moderate to high; consumer security updates; best practices for infections and denial of service attacks; tools; and antivirus resources.
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-1007675.html?tag=cd_mh

Gateway to recycle corporate PCs
Gateway on Monday introduced a recycling program aimed at corporations, offering to haul away old PCs, delete data from hard drives and give credit toward future hardware purchases. As part of its Gateway Asset Recovery Services program, the Poway, Calif.-based company said it will break down machines from any manufacturer and recycle them in accordance with local, state and federal guidelines. The service will also scrub hard drives clean to protect the businesses' confidential data. Completely erasing all data is an expensive and time-consuming step that often forces businesses to simply choose to hold on to old machines.
http://news.com.com/2100-1003_3-1007623.html?tag=cd_mh

Worm dupes with fake Microsoft address
A new mass-mailing e-mail worm, which feigns a Microsoft.com origin, is spreading rapidly. Antivirus vendors say it can also spread via a local area network and can install "spyware" on a victim's PC. The Palyh, or Mankx, worm appears to come from support@microsoft.com, a forged address. It contains a file which, upon execution, self-propagates using e-mail addresses from files stored on the targeted system, but which can also spread to other Windows machines on a local area network (LAN). Although the file has a .pi or .pif extension, it is an .exe file. And because Windows processes files according to their internal structure rather than their extension, Windows runs the file as soon as the recipient double-clicks on it.
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-1007603.html?tag=cd_mh

130 arrested in Net fraud crackdown
More than 130 people have been arrested as part of the latest effort by law-enforcement agencies to crack down on Internet fraud, according to the Justice Department. Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Tim Muris announced the arrests Friday, and said that more than $17 million was seized. The arrests were part of a nationwide initiative, called Operation E-Con, that's being coordinated by 43 U.S. attorney's offices, the FBI, the FTC, the Postal Inspection Service, and other state and local law-enforcement agencies within the United States and other countries.
http://news.com.com/2100-1018_3-1003833.html?tag=cd_mh

WorldCom files $500 million settlement
The company formerly known as WorldCom took another step toward corporate normalcy with the filing of a $500 million settlement proposal hammered out with the federal government. WorldCom, which recently changed its name to MCI, flew high as a major Internet backbone provider until last year when an accounting scandal of titanic proportions collapsed its stock price, put its executives in severe legal peril, forced the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and led to a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Under the new stewardship of Michael Capellas, who assumed the CEO title at MCI in November, the company negotiated with the SEC the $500 million settlement, filed Monday with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
http://news.com.com/2100-1035_3-1007977.html?tag=cd_mh

SBC plans public Wi-Fi network
SBC has recently taken steps toward building a public wireless local area network, the company said Monday. The service is an attempt to fend off competition from the cable industry, say analysts, who note that SBC is the second major telephone company to use the popularity of Wi-Fi wireless networks to better compete against such rivals. SBC spokesman Michael Coe said the broadband and telephone provider has begun shopping for the equipment needed to create public hot spots, which are places such as coffee shops or hotels where SBC customers can connect to the Internet or their office computers without wires.
http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-1007820.html?tag=cd_mh

Yahoo searches for the public eye
Yahoo on Monday began blanketing billboards, radio and TV in major U.S. cities to promote its newly updated Web search technology, a move aimed at recapturing ground lost to rival Google and attracting new visitors. The Web giant is shelling out an undisclosed sum to widely advertise its search capabilities for the first time in the company's eight-year history, according to Jennifer Dulski, director of marketing for Search and Marketplace at Yahoo. The campaign is meant to evangelize Yahoo's new search site, unveiled in early April, which packs more information in query results as well as links to advertisers' products and services.
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1007525.html?tag=cd_mh

Pressplay bid points to Napster remix
Roxio on Monday announced that it plans to buy the Pressplay online music service and merge it with another recent acquisition, the long-muted Napster. Roxio, a developer of CD-burning technology, will pay $12.5 million in cash and 3.9 million shares of its common stock to Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, the joint owners of Pressplay. Accounting for Roxio's stock price as of Friday, the acquisition is valued at $39.5 million, excluding $1 million in transaction fees. Sony and Universal will also be able to earn up to $6.25 million in positive cash flow from the new Napster, and each will provide a member to Roxio's board of directors. Pressplay president Mike Bebel will report to Roxio CEO Chris Gorog, and Pressplay's senior management team and its offices in New York and Los Angeles will not change.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1007516.html?tag=cd_mh

Speeding's the ticket for U.S. surfers
More Americans are signing up for high-speed Internet access this year, and cable and digital subscriber line providers are duking it out for their dollars. Nearly 2 million people began using broadband service in the first quarter of 2003, pushing the total U.S. tally to 19 million subscribers, according to a new study by the Leichtman Research Group. More of those subscribers opted for cable Internet access than for access via DSL, the study said. The top cable companies added 1.2 million people for the quarter, for 65 percent of the total market. "Both cable and DSL had a record-setting quarter in the first quarter of 2003, but cable continued the trend of adding nearly twice as many subscribers as DSL," said Bruce Leichtman, president of the research company.
http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-1003915.html?tag=cd_mh

Sony takes leash off robot dog
Electronics giant Sony announced new software Monday that will allow Aibo owners to control the robot dog via e-mail commands. The Aibo Eyes software, set to go on sale Tuesday, will also enable the popular electronic pets to beam digital photos to any PC or e-mail-equipped device. Sony introduced Aibo in 1999, and the high-tech hounds quickly became popular with gadget buffs, thanks in part to software and hardware add-ons that let the pooches tackle new tasks.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-1007660.html?tag=cd_mh

Pioneer broadens DVD support in drives
Pioneer Electronics is aiming to reduce confusion in the DVD rewritable market by incorporating support for several major formats with its next-generation drive. The Long Beach, Calif.-based electronics maker will announce Monday that its sixth-generation drive, the DVR-A06, will arrive in the United States in June. The drive will retail for $329 and support DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, CD-R and CD-RW. The DVD+RW format includes support for DVD+R media. The DVR-A06 will be for use inside PCs; an external version, which can be connected to a PC via a cable, will likely follow in three months to four months, said Andy Parsons, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Pioneer Electronics. "The market has been confused," said Parsons, referring to the confusion the incompatible DVD rewritable formats may have caused in consumers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-1007520.html?tag=cd_mh

A Spy Machine of Darpa's Dreams
It's a memory aid! A robotic assistant! An epidemic detector! An all-seeing, ultra-intrusive spying program! The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index it and make it searchable. What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing? The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58909,00.html

Microbes Pass Valuable Gas
About 10,000 years ago, humans learned how to put yeast to work to brew beer. Now, as the scientific community struggles to develop a way to produce hydrogen for fuel cells, some researchers are including microorganisms in their recipes for making electricity. With a reliable source of hydrogen, fuel cells can produce energy with water as the only byproduct. Here's the problem: While hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it is extremely difficult to capture and store in its pure form. Just as potable water cannot be found in the middle of the ocean, usable hydrogen remains scarce in the sea of organic compounds surrounding us. The methods of manufacturing and compressing hydrogen gas require great amounts of energy.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,58750,00.html

Flatulence Helps Fight Disease
Some day, diagnosing that nasty stomach bug could be as easy as passing gas. British scientists say a hi-tech test focused on flatus -- the pungent gas emanating from stool -- is highly effective in quickly identifying tough-to-spot viral or bacterial infections of the gut. "There are very specific (chemical) 'fingerprints' in the gas, so that you can make specific diagnoses very quickly," lead researcher Dr. Christopher Probert, of the University of Bristol, told Reuters Health. Probert presented the findings Sunday at Digestive Diseases Week, the largest annual gathering of gastroenterologists in the world. While flatulence may be the stuff of jokes, the fight against dangerous gastrointestinal infections is no laughing matter.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,58897,00.html

US plan to shield airlines from missiles advances
A proposal to equip all commercial jets in the United States with missile defense systems moved forward yesterday, when the Department of Homeland Security completed a plan for determining whether a workable technology exists. A report to be issued by the department in Washington today will call for the government to hire two companies to develop prototype systems that protect passenger jets from heat-seeking, shoulder-fired missiles. It will ask other high-tech firms for proposals on the best way to protect aircraft from the threat, which has concerned US officials since an unsuccessful attack on an Israeli passenger jet in Africa last fall.
http://boston.com/dailyglobe2/136/bu...dvances+.shtml

Extent of UK snooping revealed
Officials in the UK are routinely demanding huge quantities of information about what people do online and who they call, say privacy experts. Police and other officials are making around a million requests for access to data held by net and telephone companies each year, according to figures compiled from the government, legal experts and the internet industry. The findings were announced at a public debate into government proposals to widen powers for internet snooping held in London this week. But a Home Office spokesman disputed the figures, telling BBC News Online it estimated that the number of requests were half that suggested.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3030851.stm

Martian aircraft to be built
Soon, a small aircraft laden with sensors and a high-speed datalink could be flying over the mountains of Mars - the first aircraft to fly over the terrain of another world. Called Ares (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey of Mars), it could, if all goes well, be flying over the Red Planet's southern uplands in just five years' time. After a successful series of half-scale tests, the US space agency (Nasa) has ordered a full-scale prototype to be built. Ares is in competition with three other Mars exploration proposals for a Nasa launch in 2007. The final selection of one, or possibly two, missions will be made later this year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3032725.stm

New Life For Undersea Fiber
The generation of submarine fiber-optic cables that revolutionized trans-oceanic telecommunications a decade ago is being retired prematurely. Dramatic advances in optical technology and a glut of fiber capacity make these cables uneconomical for telecommunications. The fibers will not go dark entirely, though: a nonprofit science group says the obsolete cables can be a boon for undersea seismology and oceanographic research. The cables, laid from 1988 to 1993, were designed to operate for 25 years; all but one are in working order. The Washington-based Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), a consortium of universities that collect seismic data to study the Earth’s interior, wants to adapt the working cables to serve sea-floor research stations.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...echt051603.asp

Matrix Sequel Has Hacker Cred
The average American moviegoer taking in the Matrix Reloaded this weekend will likely be wowed by the elaborate action sequences and dazzling special effects. But hackers who've seen the blockbuster are crediting it with a more subtle cinematic milestone: it's the first major motion picture to accurately portray a hack. That's right: Trinity uses a 'sploit. A scene about two thirds of the way through the film finds Carrie-Anne Moss's leather-clad superhacker setting her sights on a power grid computer, for plot reasons better left unrevealed. But at exactly the point where audiences would normally be treated to a brightly-colored graphical cartoon of a computer intrusion, a la the 2001 Travolta vehicle Swordfish, or cheer as the protagonist skillfully summons a Web browser and fights valiantly through "404 Errors," like the malnourished cyberpunk in this year's "The Core," something completely different happens: Trinity runs "Nmap."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30747.html

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