The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

I have a tight schedule, so I'll write this piece by piece...

Attack targets .info domain system
An Internet attack flooded domain name manager UltraDNS with a deluge of data late last week, causing administrators to scramble to keep up and running the servers that host .info and other domains. The assault sent nearly 2 million requests per second to each device connecting the network to the Internet -- many times greater than normal -- during the four hours of peak activity that hit the company early Thursday morning, said Ben Petro, CEO of UltraDNS. "This is the largest attack that we've seen," Petro said. He stressed that it didn't affect the company's core domain name system (DNS) services, but administrators had to work fast to get the attack blocked by the backbone Internet companies from which UltraDNS gets its connectivity. "From a network management perspective, it certainly kept us on our toes," he said.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-971178.html

Linux companies name new CEOs
SuSE and MandrakeSoft, two sellers of the Linux operating system, on Monday named new chief executives whose goals will be to attain profitability. Both companies are selecting new leaders after completing months-long restructuring operations. SuSE has solidified partnerships with software and hardware companies, joined the UnitedLinux collective, and put an emphasis on selling through business partners such as IBM. MandrakeSoft has returned to its roots, selling a desktop version of Linux. SuSE, the No. 2 Linux company after Red Hat, named Richard Seibt its new CEO. The 20-year IBM veteran was CEO of Big Blue's software sales in Germany, general manager of its software group in North America, and most recently executive board member of German Internet service provider United Internet.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-971151.html

Updated Macromedia tool goes old school
After months of focusing on improving Web services and design, Macromedia is returning to an old favorite -- the CD-ROM. The software maker is set to announce on Monday a new version of Director, the multimedia authoring tool that is one of the company's oldest franchises and helped kick off the CD-ROM boom of the early 1990s. While the new Director MX ties in with Macromedia's Flash animation software and other Web tools, it is primarily designed for putting together packages of sound, graphics, video and animation for delivery via CDs and other static media. One key market is in companies building custom educational and training software. Another is in developers creating simple games and other animation for Macromedia's Shockwave player.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-971085.html

Court blocks state DVD-cracking suit
The California Supreme Court handed Hollywood's antipiracy efforts a setback Monday, ruling that a Texas resident who posted controversial DVD-cracking code online can't be sued in the Golden State. The ruling, released by the court Monday, deals with just one part of Hollywood's multifaceted attack on DeCSS, a controversial bit of computer code that can assist in the copying of DVDs. The justices didn't address the legality of posting the software program online, saying only that Texas resident Matthew Pavlovich couldn't be sued in California for doing so. "There is no evidence in the record suggesting that the site targeted California," the judges wrote in their majority opinion. But that didn't mean he couldn't be sued elsewhere, they noted. "Pavlovich may still face the music -- just not in California," the court wrote.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975285.html?tag=fd_top

Major test of copyright law set to start
The first big courtroom test of a U.S. law that makes it illegal to offer software for cracking digital copyright protections should finally begin next week, after visa delays for two of the case's main players. Dmitry Sklyarov, a programmer at Moscow-based software company ElcomSoft, and Alex Katalov, the company's CEO, have been granted special permission to come to the United States for the court proceedings. "They are ready to go," ElcomSoft attorney Joseph Burton told a judge at a hearing Monday in federal court in San Jose, Calif. In a widely publicized case, ElcomSoft faces charges that it violated criminal provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by offering software that could be used to circumvent the copyright locks in Adobe Systems' eBooks digital books.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975280.html?tag=fd_top

Feds charge 3 men with identity theft
Calling it the largest such bust ever, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan and the FBI apprehended an alleged ring of identity thieves, accusing three men of stealing tens of thousands of credit reports. The ring is alleged to have operated over a period of three years, suspected of pilfering credit reports from the three major commercial credit reporting agencies and using that information to siphon funds from bank accounts and make fraudulent purchases. Authorities have accounted for $2.7 million in losses so far. At the center of the alleged scheme as outlined Monday by Justice Department and FBI officials is a help-desk employee of Teledata Communications (TCI), a company in Bay Shore, N.Y., that lets banks and other lenders access credit histories compiled by Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-971196.html?tag=fd_top

Flat-panel sellers perk up monitors
Two flat-panel monitor companies launched new displays Monday, looking for ways to branch out their business. Planar Systems introduced its PX line of liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors, the first of which is a 17-inch model with a resistance-free swivel arm that pivots and adjusts for height. Meanwhile, competitor Sharp Systems of America unveiled a 17-inch flat-panel monitor with a high screen resolution. The announcements come as the market for LCD monitors continues to grow. Flat-panel display makers are adding features to distinguish their screens from myriad rival products, while making sure not to tip the balance too far away from the No. 1 priority for consumers: price.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-971181.html?tag=fd_top

IBM Liberates the Brain Trust
Last week, IBM (IBM) made a startling announcement: Big Blue is pulling some of its best researchers away from their laboratories to create a new research division called On Demand Innovation Services. Instead of focusing on software and hardware development -- the traditional centers of technology research -- the new division will assist IBM employees who provide technology services. In practical terms, that means some of IBM's best brainiacs will be available to meet with clients and assist with service implementations. "We've never seen anything like this before," says Martin Reynolds, a research fellow at Gartner. "This gives IBM something other service organizations don't have." IBM calls the move its "biggest organizational shift" since the early 1990s.
http://www.business2.com/articles/we...,45530,FF.html

Australia fires up tech anti-terror initiative
The Attorney-General's office has teamed up with Queensland-based AusCERT to create a national information security alert scheme, which will lead to the creation of a centralised information source on IT security issues ranging from viral outbreaks to serious hack attacks. The initiative is part of a broader scheme which will also include a national incident-reporting system foreshadowed at the launch of the 2002 Australian Computer Crime and Security Survey in September this year. While the details have yet to be confirmed, a source within AusCERT told ZDNet Australia the group will be promoted as the first line of reporting for IT security breaches and incidents and provide an important information source for the technology community.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/sec...0270175,00.htm

Argentina bets on cyberspace
Buenos Aires is the capital of a country that was experiencing its own miniature Latino dot.com boom until the economy here went disastrously wrong. But Argentines in the information technology industry are still optimistic. They say the future opportunities in Spanish-speaking cyberspace are simply too large to ignore. Despite the real world problems with the economy, Argentina's internet world is still growing, with 14% more people online than a year ago, according to local market researchers. "The internet in Argentina created a need for information and, like computers, everybody has to live with it," said Gaston Cardey, a web designer and computer consultant.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2502669.stm

Group calls for revamped disaster warnings
The diffused emergency warning systems in the United States need to be revamped and include the use of a mandated messaging standard, a panel of emergency-response experts concluded in a report Monday. The panel -- formed of experts in disaster response from the government, academia and the private sectors -- maintained that the current hodge-podge of warning systems, including the Emergency Alert System and the NOAA Weather Radio, don't work well. "While many federal agencies are responsible for warnings, there is no single federal agency that has clear responsibility to see that a national, all-hazard, public warning system is developed and utilized effectively," stated the Partnership for Public Warning in the report, which called for the newly formed Department for Homeland Security to take charge.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-975287.html?tag=cd_mh

[walktalker]

Course cancelled ! Yippie !!!

Intel plans flash memory price hike
Intel plans to raise prices for processors that contain flash memory technology by as much as 40 percent by the end of the year in response to increased demand. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker said Monday that demand for processors with flash memory -- used to store information in handhelds, cell phones and other devices -- is rising as equipment makers add new features, such as digital cameras and color screens. Intel spokesman Tom Beerman said the company plans to raise prices on Jan. 1. High-performance flash chips that can store the most data will see prices jump around 40 percent, Beerman said. Yet the company expects price hikes ranging from 20 to 40 percent across the product line, he added.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-975284.html?tag=fd_top

TeraGrid supercomputing project expands
A project to build and interconnect mammoth supercomputers has landed a $35 million National Science Foundation grant that will take the "grid" beyond its original Itanium 2 designs. In 2001, an alliance of academic supercomputing sites won a $53 million NSF grant to build the Distributed Terascale Facility, known for short as the TeraGrid. Now a $35 million supplement this year will expand the TeraGrid in a project formally known as the Extensible Terascale Facility. The expansion will connect different varieties of supercomputers at five different sites, with an eye to adding more later. Last year's design called for four computers with a total of 3,300 Itanium 2 processors, code-named McKinley, from Intel in servers built by IBM and installed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the California Institute of Technology and Argonne National Laboratory.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-975286.html?tag=fd_top

Free-software gadfly takes on Net group
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em--in large numbers. That's the logic behind free-software advocate Bruce Perens' idea to pack the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a key Internet standard body, with like-minded members in advance of the group's spring meeting in San Francisco. "The nice thing is that the IETF is an open-enrollment organization," said Perens, a Linux developer who co-founded the Open Source Initiative, founded a group called Software in the Public Interest and helped develop the Debian version of Linux. "The real business of the working group is carried out on a mailing list. We just need to get the free-software community better represented, which takes little more than my asking them to subscribe to this mailing list."
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-971124.html?tag=cd_mh

National Geographic's wild about digital
National Geographic's vivid photos of flying frogs, endangered monkeys and the like are newly for sale in digital format, as part of the nature society's push into e-commerce. The National Geographic Society, in partnership with IBM, is digitizing more than 10,000 of its classic wildlife and culture photos and making them available for professional use through the Web. The two companies will announce their multiyear partnership Tuesday. "The industry has changed such that agencies, designers and publishers now expect the convenience and accessibility to images offered online, so they can download them anytime," said Maura Mulvihill, vice president of image collection and sales for the National Geographic Society. "For us, the timing is right to provide this."
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975289.html?tag=cd_mh

Navy cracks down on student pirates
The U.S. Naval Academy has seized about 100 student computers that are suspected of containing unauthorized copies of copyrighted works. The students were in class on Thursday when the raid occurred, according to an academy representative, who would not elaborate on other details of the investigation. Each student gets a computer when they enter the academy. Illegal possession of copyrighted material could carry punishment including court-martial or a loss of leave, according to academy policy. The seizure comes just a few weeks after movie and music industry trade groups sent a letter to more than 2,000 university and college presidents across the country, including officials at the Naval Academy, requesting help in cracking down on unauthorized file swapping.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-971130.html?tag=cd_mh

Court to decide Kazaa's U.S. liability
A Los Angeles federal judge will hear arguments Monday as to whether record companies and movie studios can sue the parent company of Kazaa, the most popular online file-swapping service, in the United States. Much of Kazaa's future, from a business and legal perspective, hangs on the judge's decision. The parent company, Sharman Networks, is headquartered in Australia and incorporated in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, and has tried to keep business contact with the United States to a minimum in order to decrease its legal risk. If a judge says Sharman can be sued in the United States, Kazaa will get sucked into the same legal maelstrom that has grabbed Napster, Aimster, Audio Galaxy, Grokster and Morpheus, closing some of the popular services and threatening the existence of the others. The Kazaa case is the biggest yet in the recent copyright wars that have been testing the international reach of U.S. courts.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-971086.html?tag=cd_mh

Holiday price drop seen for digicams
Prices for midrange digital cameras could drop below $100 next month, according to a new report by market researcher IDC. Prices for digital cameras have been steadily declining as the market grows, but with camera makers competing to pump up holiday sales, more drastic cuts could be in store, IDC analyst Chris Chute said. Cameras with resolution of 2 megapixels--usually considered the minimum for good snapshot-size prints--could be selling for as low as $99 in a few weeks, Chute said. Current prices for such cameras bottom out at around $199. Chute said camera makers would likely be losing money at such prices. "I don't think it's possible when those cameras were made that the bill of materials would allow you to put it together for under $99," he said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-971161.html

Home is where the computer is
Computers are playing a more central role in the home, with more and more people citing them as the most important electronic device in their household. A Harris Interactive study backed by Microsoft and Dell Computer found that 50 percent of respondents said the computer was more important than any other digital device they own, including CD players, cell phones and DVD players. The 2002 International Digital Lifestyle study polled 1,500 people in the United States and Europe who own a computer and at least one other digital device -- a prime target market for many consumer electronics makers. The study did not ask people about their television use, however. "We're seeing a lifestyle shift from almost exclusive television use to a higher percentage of people's lives spent on a computer," said Mark Oldani, director of marketing at Dell.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-971060.html?tag=cd_mh

Parents Abuse Kids' Good Credit
It was her first credit card application, or so she thought, prompted by an offer on her Ohio college campus for a free T-shirt. But a rejection letter uncovered troubling news someone had already opened four credit cards in her name and racked up $50,000 in debt. That someone, it turns out, was her father. "I couldn't believe it," says the young woman, who asked not to be named for fear of humiliating her father, who was never charged criminally. Now 25 and living in Chicago, she says she knew her father was struggling financially after his divorce from her mother and the failure of his restaurant. But she never imagined he'd fill out credit card applications sent to his home in her name. "He completely violated my trust and my privacy and my future," she says.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56570,00.html

Shopping by Cell Phone? No Thanks
Students at Missouri Western State College in St. Joseph, Mo., don’t need to fumble for change in order to buy a Pepsi from local vending machines. All they have to do is punch a number on their cell phone, and they'll be billed for the drink. It's one of dozens of experiments underway nationwide that let consumers make "mobile payments," or m-commerce, on their cell phones and PDAs. And so far it's a complete failure. Ever since the novelty of the Pepsi machines wore off in October -- when they were first installed and 2,000 of the school's 5,000 students tested them -- only 50 students continue to maintain the prepaid accounts necessary to use the service. Everybody else still ponies up old fashioned U.S. currency to buy soft drinks at the school.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56511,00.html

Rebuilding Tomorrowland
Fifty years ago this month, Walt Disney tapped a few of his animators to develop an idea he had for a new kind of amusement park. The group, which came to be known as the Imagineering unit, began sketching out plans for Disneyland in 1952. Imagineering served as Walt's personal skunk works, and it grew into his company's main engine of innovation. Today, Imagineering is one of the world's largest design studios — a creative corps charged with conjuring the future of fun. The group has developed an uncanny ability to tap into our deep-seated desires, to fuse age-old stories with brand-new technologies, all while keeping the wires and hydraulics artfully concealed. But as the Imagineers race to get Mission: Space ready for vacation season, the group is wrestling with challenges serious enough to send Happy reaching for the Zoloft.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...ebuilding.html

Global Network Battles Bioterror
Dr. Alan Zelicoff is willing to go many extra miles to combat the threat of bioterrorism. The Albuquerque physician-turned-researcher just returned from a trip to the NATO Summit in Prague, where he hoped to persuade President Bush and the other 19 member nations that a global health surveillance network is the best way to protect people from manufactured disease. A former internist who is now a senior scientist at Sandia National Labs, Zelicoff said the current system of disease reporting is too slow and haphazard for a world in perpetual danger of bioterror attacks. The self-described "recovering physician" said his internist wife "learns about outbreaks of disease by reading the newspaper." Public health officials receive information only after physicians have confirmed cases of disease, Zelicoff said, which is far too slow to counteract the distribution of biochemical agents like the bacteria that causes anthrax.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,56546,00.html

Now Here's a Really Big Idea
The scope of human ideas is infinite, some might say. But one researcher says he can count them, and he intends to do just that. Darryl Macer, associate professor at the Institute of Biological Sciences at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, plans to create a human mental map -- a database that would contain a log of every human idea. Macer formally proposed in the November 14 issue of Nature that researchers from various disciplines, including genetics, sociology and history, meet next year in Japan to discuss the project. "If we define an 'idea' as the mental conceptualization of something -- including physical objects, an action or sensory experience -- then the number of objects in the universe of a living being is finite," Macer said in an e-mail interview from his Tokyo office.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,56374,00.html

Europe Primed for Quick Rescues
The next time a natural or terrorist disaster strikes, first responders in European Union countries might be better able to communicate than those in the United States. In 2003, the European Space Agency is planning to release the Disaster Emergency Logistics Telemedicine Advanced Satellites System, a multi-platform communication system for rescue workers. DELTASS was developed by the ESA in cooperation with Alcatel, the French Institute for Space Medicine and Physiology and various European national medical and emergency services agencies. When a DELTASS-equipped search-and-rescue team locates a disaster victim, they'll enter the person's identification, GPS location and urgency of evacuation into their PDA. The information is sent from the PDA, through a Globalstar portable satellite phone link, to a mobile field hospital near the disaster site.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,56418,00.html

Foreign countries blocking Net calls
For many people outside the United States, making telephone calls over the Internet using a personal computer is much cheaper than using traditional phone service. But in a number of nations, this more affordable alternative is illegal and is being blocked by government edict. The latest country to cut off Internet telephony service to the United States and elsewhere is Panama, which issued the order late last month. Soon after the directive, many people in that Central American nation who tried to place online calls got busy signals. As with other countries, Panama's blockade is intended to enforce an exclusive contract the government has with its national telephone monopoly.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...25/BU15282.DTL

Volunteers Wanted For IT National Guard
Calling all technology and science experts. Uncle Sam is looking for volunteers for a new IT National Guard that will be established by the landmark legislation package that creates the Department of Homeland Security. President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law today. The Science and Technology Emergency Mobilization Act, or NET Guard Act for short, proposes the formation of the National Emergency Technology (NET) Guard, which will consist of rapid response volunteers that stand ready to help restore communications/technology in the event of terrorist attacks. The idea for an IT National Guard was sparked in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, as communications all over the city and northeast were jammed and cut off after New York's Twin Towers fell, knocking critical phone infrastructure out at the same time.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/1547751

The spy inside your home computer
Your home computer is a pretty dumb device that usually does what it is told. But with the right help this mute machine can become disturbingly "talkative". So-called "parasite programs" are logging what you do online and, like a nest of busy gossips, sharing the information with anyone who will pay to listen. As concern mounts over these sneaky tactics, privacy experts, cyber watchdogs and many concerned net users have started to compile lists of these programs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/...fe/2487651.stm

Frequent sex reduces pregnancy complications
Low fertility and frequent pregnancy complications may be the price that humans have paid for evolving a large brain. For the fetus to get enough nutrients to grow a hefty brain the placenta has to aggressively invade a mother's uterus, says a new theory. But that can also provoke her immune system, causing dangerous complications. However, recent research suggests that exposure to a man's semen helps a women's immune system prepare for pregnancy (New Scientist print edition, 9 February, p 32). So low rates of conception in humans reduce complications during pregnancy by giving a woman's immune system more time to adapt.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993086

Bush Administration Eases Air Pollution Controls
The Bush administration has enacted changes to clean air rules that will allow power plants and refineries to avoid new pollution controls when they expand operations. The decision drew sharp criticism from Congressional leaders, state officials, environmental groups, public health organizations and the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who charge the administration has put industry interests ahead of public health and the environment. Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, criticized the Administration's "shameful record of abandoning environmental protection" and called on EPA Administrator Christie Whitman to resign in protest.
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-22-10.asp

UK primate research inquiry set to begin
A public inquiry into controversial proposals to build a new primate research facility on the outskirts of Cambridge, UK, is set to begin on Tuesday. Leading the opposition to the centre are animal welfare groups. Not only do they object on moral grounds to experiments on primates, they also plan to challenge the entire scientific rationale for such research. Ranged against them are the centre's supporters, who say that failure to build it will stymie neuroscience across Europe. Without it, they say, progress towards badly needed new treatments for stroke, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and substance abuse will be delayed. The stakes are huge.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993102

Congress Adjourns, Digital Copyright Fight Remains
Despite a lot of sound and fury, not to mention a raft of competing and conflicting legislation, the 107th Congress ultimately passed no laws to resolve the long-running and bitter digital copyright feud between the entertainment industry and peer-to-peer file swapping services. Events outside Capitol Hill, however, are pushing the issue to an acrimonious brink with lawsuits stacking up like cordwood in the courts and lobbyists for both sides already preparing battle plans for the 108th Congress which convenes on Jan. 7. Despite the giga dollars spent by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and their allies to shut down sites like Napster, piracy is still endemic on the Internet with Kazaa, Morpheus, Madster and other file swapping sites still operating.
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/1546891

Anti-pirates hit Danish P2P users with huge bills
The Danish Anti Pirat Gruppen (Anti Piracy Group) has issued invoices of up to $14,000 apiece to approximately 150 users of KazaA and eDonkey for illegally downloading copyright material. APG monitored the file sharing networks for available files with Danish IP addresses - and went to court to get the users' personal details from their ISPs, armed with screen shots of, for example, the KaZaA window showing the files on the user's hard-drive. The courts obliged and ordered the ISPs to deliver the personal details of the incriminated users. Then the bills were in the post ... landing on the mats of the unfortunate over the last few days. The users are charged about $16 per CD and about $60 per full length movie. If they pay now - and delete the illegal content from their hard drives - then the amount is cut in half and they don't get sued. Those who don't pay the AGP invoice are to be sued.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28286.html

Lawyers fear misuse of cyber murder law
A genuine cyber murder may never happen outside the pages of tabloid newspapers and Tom Clancy novels, but defense attorneys say that won't keep federal prosecutors from getting some mileage out of a provision in the newly-passed Homeland Security bill that dictates a maximum sentence of life imprisonment without parole for computer hackers with homicide in their hearts. One of many information security and cybercrime measures in the 484-page bill - which won final approval in the Senate Tuesday - the life sentence is reserved for those who deliberately transmit a program, information, code, or command that impairs the performance of a computer or modifies its data without authorization, "if the offender knowingly or recklessly causes or attempts to cause death".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/28274.html

The race to create the first blue
Roses are red, and a variety of other colors. But they’ve never been blue — an omission legions of rose breeders have sought for centuries to remedy. “It would be a beautiful thing to see,” said James Armstrong, an award-winning flower show exhibitor and consultant with the San Francisco Rose Society. Breakthrough in biotechnology may finally resolve the quest for the elusive blue rose, which alas does not exist because roses lack the corresponding pigment genes. Technology also promises to restore sweet smells to the rose and other flowers. Generations of commercial breeding has led to beautiful but bland-smelling roses. Their colors are stunning and vase lives long, but they’ve little fragrance. Genetic engineers are also busy bringing science to bear on diseases and pests that affect the world’s 120 different rose species, which have blossomed into a $10 billion-a-year business worldwide.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/838646.asp?0dm=C15MT

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Thank you WT for the pristine first copy!

- tg

[color=royal blue]can i start whipping you now? [/color]

[walktalker]

Originally posted by TankGirl
Thank you WT for the pristine first copy!

- tg

[color=royal blue]can i start whipping you now? [/color]

Whipping me ! Are you crazy ? No way !!