The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

Law aims to reduce identity theft
A California law that requires e-commerce companies to warn consumers when their personal information may have been stolen could provide a boost for security firms. The Security Breach Information Act (S.B. 1386), which goes into effect Tuesday, requires companies that do business in California or that have customers in the state to notify consumers whenever their personal information may have been compromised. Companies that fail to properly lock down information or to notify consumers of intrusions could be sued in civil court.
http://news.com.com/2100-1019_3-1022...g=fd_lede1_hed

Technology overturns five major businesses
Massive technology initiatives are fundamentally changing major industries looking for ways to cut costs through efficiencies in today's unforgiving economic climate. These multibillion-dollar campaigns, some mandated by law, are generating new business for hardware, software and service companies desperate to dig themselves out of the prolonged high-tech slump. In an occasional series this month, CNET News.com examines five industries in the midst of technology evolution: life sciences, finance, health care, security and entertainment.
http://news.com.com/2030-6678_3-1001...g=fd_lede2_hed

New Java aims to simplify
Sun Microsystems released a new version of its Java for desktop computers on Friday that aims to make the software faster, more familiar in appearance, and less daunting for nonprogrammers. Among other changes, the new version 1.4.2 of Java 2 Standard Edition will include buttons, menu bars, and other graphical elements that match the feel of Windows XP or the Gnome interface to Linux. Version 1.4.2 also offers a new control panel, an automatic update feature, and a swifter response when taking actions such as displaying a list of files stored on a hard disk.
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-1022406.html?tag=fd_top

BMG tinkers with CD copy controls
Music label BMG said Monday that it has licensed new technology from SunnComm Technologies aimed at preventing legal music buyers from making unlimited digital copies of songs from its CDs. The Bertelesmann AG division, which produces contemporary artists including Norah Jones, Avril Lavigne and No Doubt, said it plans to begin selling CDs in the United States protected with SunnComm's MediaMax CD-3 product. The software lets listeners transfer music from a CD to a computer but prevents them from then distributing that music to file-sharing services. It also allows music companies to include extras on the disc, such as artist information, song lyrics, bonus tracks, video clips and special offers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1022369.html?tag=fd_top

Intel can't block ex-worker's e-mail
Setting a new precedent in Internet law, the California Supreme court ruled Monday that an ex-Intel worker did not trespass on company computer systems when he e-mailed thousands of messages critical of his former employer to staffers at work. The 4-3 decision hands Ken Hamidi a victory in his six-year dispute with the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant and generally curtails the ability of employers to police their e-mail systems. Legal experts said the decision could have wide-reaching effects on a growing number of cases that rely on California's "trespass to chattels" law to prohibit people from unauthorized use of computer systems.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1022279.html?tag=fd_top

Putting open source on trial
I suppose the folks running SCO Group have pretty tough hides by now. After raising questions that go to the heart of open-source software development, they have been accused of being everything from low-rent hustlers to shameless flunkies for Microsoft. But what if SCO is right? That's clearly not the politically correct view these days, which is to dismiss SCO's lawsuit against IBM -- alleging breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets -- as the frivolous invention of congenital scalawags. After examining earlier this month what SCO claims is offending code, however, I think the open-source community better prepare itself to face tough criticism of its practices and ethics.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1021630.html

Microsoft may be scoring own goal with IE plans
Customers and analysts say Microsoft is forcing its most important partners to use competing browsers by its move to integrate IE with Windows. Microsoft may have unwittingly started a revolt against its Internet Explorer (IE) browser by discontinuing it as a standalone product and blurring the future of the current version, IE 6. Earlier this month, Microsoft admitted it would not release any new versions of IE as a standalone browser. Instead, the software giant said that the next version of IE will be an integrated part of the Windows operating system.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2136732,00.html

Making it tough on digital thieves
For most people, a broadband Internet connection costs $35 to $50 a month. But Brian Ford can get all of the bandwidth he wants simply by strolling the streets of Cambridge with a handheld computer and a wireless Internet card. Outside one large apartment building, the screen of his Compaq iPaq comes to life. At least three residents have wireless digital routers, with a high-speed Internet connection. And none of them have programmed their systems to block unauthorized access. ''Nobody's configuring their routers,'' said Ford, owner of Blue Island Technology, a Somerville-based residential wireless networking company. ''Most don't have passwords.'' Instead, they brought them home, switched them on, and invited the unwelcome attention of any computer criminal within the router's 300-foot transmission range.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/18...thieves+.shtml

2003 is becoming a virus writers playground warns Sophos
Virus writing and high-profile infections have been on the rise this year, with significant activity over the past couple of months in particular. Figures from Sophos reveal the first six months of 2003 have seen a 17.5 per cent increase in virus activity over the same period last year - and this shows no sign of abating. Bugbear and Klez have done much to boost the figures, but Sobig variants and viruses which have employed specific social engineering, such as the Avril worm, have also added to the tide of malicious attacks. Bugbear has so far been the biggest irritant of 2003, accounting for 11.6 per cent of all virus reports, according to Sophos.
http://www.silicon.com/news/500013-500001/1/4909.html

Software patent vote delayed
The European Parliament, facing mounting controversy over U.S.-style software-patenting legislation, has delayed a key vote until September. A Monday vote on a controversial software patents proposal in the European Parliament has been put back until September, amid criticism that the legislation would institute a U.S.-style patent regime that would be detrimental to European small businesses and open-source software developers. The proposed software-patenting legislation is the result of a European Commission effort to clarify patenting rules as they apply to "computer-implemented inventions," a term that includes software. The patent offices of various EU member states currently have different criteria for accepting the validity of software-related patents, a situation that the commission's proposal aims to remedy.
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-1022181.html?tag=cd_mh

NEC develops notebook fuel-cell battery
Japanese chips-to-computers giant NEC said Monday that it has developed a small fuel cell that will dramatically improve the battery life of notebooks and that the company aims to test on the market within two years that. The fuel cell would enable notebooks to operate for 40 consecutive hours, or around 10 times the life of regular lithium-ion batteries, a company representative said. The company is locked in fierce competition with domestic rivals such as Toshiba, as well as United States and South Korean rivals that are rushing to bring fuel-cell technology for notebooks to the mass market. NEC aims to test the market in 2004, introducing a notebook that has a built-in fuel-cell battery with a life of five hours, the representative said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1008_3-1022130.html?tag=cd_mh

Spam may sprout viruses in home PCs
Junk e-mailers are spreading viruses that let them send spam anonymously through home computers, according to an e-mail security firm. The company, MessageLabs, operates servers that block spam and viruses for its clients. Its analysis of data shows that mass distributions of junk e-mail are increasingly coming from the Internet addresses of computers that have in the past sent out viruses as e-mail attachments. "There is a high correlation," said Matt Sergeant, senior antispam technologist for the New York-based company. "About 30,000 machines have both open-proxy software and are responsible for sending viruses." Open proxies, also known as open relays, are computers that can resend e-mail or other network data, erasing the original address information that could identify the source of the traffic.
http://news.com.com/2100-1009_3-1021636.html?tag=cd_mh

Tech companies push home networking
Major consumer electronics, personal computer and mobile devices manufacturers are looking for ways to link their networking efforts. As previously reported, the Digital Home Working Group, a group of major companies including Microsoft, Intel, Sony and Hewlett-Packard, announced Tuesday at a press conference in San Francisco that they are working together to draft guidelines they hope will help promote home networking products. The guidelines will outline how the companies should use networking standards such as Wi-Fi and Universal Plug and Play in products. The guidelines are expected to be completed by the end of the year, and products using the guidelines should be available by the second half of next year.
http://news.com.com/2100-1035_3-1020605.html?tag=cd_mh

File-swap firms form lobbying group
Internet file-sharing companies are forming a lobbying group in Europe to defend their interests against media companies trying to force them out of business, a member of the coalition told Reuters on Monday. The move is the latest sign that file-sharing outfits, which until recently operated far away from the public eye to avoid litigation, intend to fight for their right to distribute software that enables computer users to share files online. Media and software companies say the technology is a threat to their business because it lets users exchange copyright-protected materials such as video games, music, film and software for free.
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1022237.html?tag=cd_mh

StreamCast vows peer-to-peer protest
Facing the threat of a legal crackdown against people who swap songs online, the head of the parent of file-sharing software Morpheus on Thursday promised to launch a lobbying campaign in Congress. Based on the continued popularity of Morpheus, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer systems, the Recording Industry Association of America on Wednesday announced it would take the unprecedented step of suing people who distribute illegal copies of songs online. Privately held StreamCast Networks distributes the Morpheus software, which a federal judge recently found does not violate copyright laws, in a ruling that marked a major legal setback to the recording industry.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1021641.html?tag=cd_mh

May the Force be with Sony servers
"Try? There is no try. There is only do or not do." Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is learning a little Yoda-style wisdom Friday, after a crowded and glitch-filled opening day for its new online game based on "Star Wars." After years of development and testing, SOE and game developer LucasArts on Thursday released "Star Wars Galaxies," a multiplayer online game based on the movie. Highly anticipated by "Star Wars" buffs, the game is seen by industry analysts as one of the most significant opportunities yet for subscription-based online games to reach a broader audience.
http://news.com.com/2100-1043_3-1021900.html?tag=cd_mh

Group claims Linux advance on Xbox
A group of Xbox security researchers say they have found a way to run Linux on the Xbox game console without a so-called mod chip and will go public with the technique if Microsoft won't talk to them about releasing an official Linux boot loader. The group, which has asked not to be named in this article, approached ZDNet Australia after repeated attempts to contact Microsoft independently failed. The researchers say they want Microsoft to release a "signed" Linux boot loader -- software that runs when a computer starts up to load and give control to the operating system -- that would allow Xbox users to run the open-source operating system on the console without installing a chip.
http://news.com.com/2100-1043_3-1021692.html?tag=cd_mh

Navy to Defend Sonar in Court
For more than a year, the U.S. Navy and environmentalists have been in close combat over sonar and its effect on marine mammals. On Monday, their fighting will culminate in court. The Navy says it needs a wide berth to test its controversial, ultra-loud, low-frequency sonar system. The Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, and other green groups counter that the military has to be more mindful of whales and other marine mammals when it runs the tests. Whales depend on their ears to make their way around the oceans, after all. The sonar in question can be as deafening to marine mammals as a Saturn V moon rocket. Today, the two sides will begin the final phase of their legal tussle in U.S. District Court over the sonar program: Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active -- or LFA for short.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59426,00.html

West Recruits Bacteria Assassins
Bacteria-eating viruses could be the answer to antibiotic resistance, and the first treatment to use the therapy could be available by 2004. Half a century ago, antibiotics revolutionized medicine by turning many once-deadly infections like tuberculosis into minor impediments. But overuse is rapidly rendering antibiotics ineffective, and scientists know they need a replacement fast. One of the most promising options is one that's been used in Eastern Europe and Russia for decades: bacteriophage therapy. The word bacteriophage comes from bacterium, plus the Greek phagein, to eat. Phages, as they're also called, were never thoroughly studied as therapies in the West, mainly because antibiotics proved to be so effective. But with resistance mounting fast, researchers have begun aggressively studying phage therapy, and the first treatment could enter the Western market as soon as 2004.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,59430,00.html

Bloggers Gain Libel Protection
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers. Online free speech advocates praised the decision as a victory. The ruling effectively differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists. One implication is that DIY publishers like bloggers cannot be sued as easily. "One-way news publications have editors and fact-checkers, and they're not just selling information -- they're selling reliability," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59424,00.html

Dept. of Interior Ordered to Disconnect from Web
For the second time in less than two years, a federal judge has ordered the Interior Department to disconnect from the Internet in order to protect $1 billion in American Indian money managed by the agency. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Interior's refusal to cooperate with a court-appointed master who wanted to test the security of Interior's systems, prompted the decision. The government claimed it did not cooperate with Security Assurance Group of Annapolis, Md., because they could not agree on the "rules of engagement." In ordering Interior to unplug from the wired world, Lamberth granted exceptions to "any system essential for protection against fires and other threat to life or property." The order did not make clear whether Interior sites such as a the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, which do not maintain or contain any Indian records, were part of the shutdown order.
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2229391

Key sub-atomic particle slips away again
The most elusive particle in physics has skipped even further out of reach. Pinning down the Higgs boson, or proving that it does not exist, would be a huge step towards understanding why our Universe has mass. But fresh predictions from Fermilab, home to the world's most powerful particle accelerator, have dashed hopes of achieving that goal for at least the next six years. Current understanding of the Universe is summarised in physicists' standard model, but this lacks any explanation for why things have mass. The popular Higgs theory says that a gooey "Higgs field" pervades the Universe and endows matter with mass through the effect of Higgs particles. So finding the Higgs has become a matter of urgency: its discovery would confirm the theory, while disproving its existence would pave the way for a new theory, such as a slew of higher dimensions.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993871

RIAA hit by EFFing music campaign
The Electronic Frontier Foundation will formally announce today a campaign aimed at persuading American citizens to demand changes in the copyright laws. The "Let the Music Play" campaign, said the EFF, will counter the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) bid to file thousands of lawsuits against people who use file sharing software. Shari Steele, head of the EFF claimed that copyright law in the USA is out of kilter with the views of the American public. She said: "Rather than sue people into submission, we need to find a better alternative that gets artists paid while making file sharing legal". The campaign will place adverts in a number of publications and attempt to make it easy for voters in the USA to write Congress politicians.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10252

Los Alamos lends open source hand to life sciences
Researchers at Los Alamos National Labs have struck computing gold once again with an open source project that could benefit genetic research. Three scientists have tried their hand at improving the popular BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) search algorithms. The group decided to chop up a BLAST database and spread it across a number of servers instead of throwing lots of horsepower at a single data set. In so doing, the need to run I/O requests to disk was eliminated and the researchers saw huge, super-linear performance gains. The experiment to put little bits of a database in memory instead of on disk proved a success and has since drawn considerable attention to mpiBLAST from pharmaceutical companies, researchers and even Microsoft.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/31471.html

[JackSpratts]

wow, wt, thasalada news! another great issue.

Senior lawyer Fred von Lohmann claimed: "Congress needs to spend less time listening to record industry lobbyists and more time listening to... 60 million Americans who use file sharing software today".

yep. sure do.

- js.

[multi]

great...

BMG tinkers with CD copy controls
Music label BMG said Monday that it has licensed new technology from SunnComm Technologies aimed at preventing legal music buyers from making unlimited digital copies of songs from its CDs. The Bertelesmann AG division, which produces contemporary artists including Norah Jones, Avril Lavigne and No Doubt, said it plans to begin selling CDs in the United States protected with SunnComm's MediaMax CD-3 product. The software lets listeners transfer music from a CD to a computer but prevents them from then distributing that music to file-sharing services. It also allows music companies to include extras on the disc, such as artist information, song lyrics, bonus tracks, video clips and special offers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1022369.html?tag=fd_top

what is going to stop ppl from swapping
the music...as its been said countless times b4...
if you can hear it u can copy it...

or maybe these cd's can be released as iso or bin/cue....

including extras on the disc, such as artist information, song lyrics, bonus tracks, video clips and special offers...

sounds more like the right direction..
make it packed..and cheaper than existing cd's but jam pack at least 4gigof stuff into it..1 hr concert
3albums...selection of singles an clips...
all the lyrics...and make them unique...collectable...and stuff it so full that ppl will never be bothered to pull it all apart..or create 4gig images of it...if its cheap enough..