The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

[walktalker]

Sun expands Unix deal with SCO
A previously secret licensee of SCO Group's Unix intellectual property has revealed its identity: Unix leader Sun Microsystems. SCO's Unix licensing plan got a major boost of publicity in May when Microsoft announced its decision to license Unix from SCO, but Sun actually was the first company to sign on. SCO and Sun confirmed the licensing deal on Wednesday. The pact, signed earlier this year, expanded the rights Sun acquired in 1994 to use Unix in its Solaris operating system. But there's more to the relationship: SCO also granted Sun a warrant to buy as many as 210,000 shares of SCO stock at $1.83 per share as part of the licensing deal, according to a regulatory document filed Tuesday. Sun, the No. 1 seller of Unix servers, declined to comment on the option to take a stake in SCO Group. Fortune first published news of the expanded Sun contract.
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1024633.html?tag=fd_top

Hello, it's your favorite song calling
For those who thought cell phones couldn't get any more annoying, brace yourself. Personalized "ringback tones" are on the way. A ringback tone is what people dialing a telephone number hear between the time they finish entering the digits and when the call is answered. Telephone service providers worldwide all use the same, innocuous "ring, ring" sound to cover what would normally be silence. Now, a small number of Asian cell phone service providers are offering to personalize ringback tones. So instead of ordinary ringing, subscribers can choose a Shania Twain song, for example, or even a recorded personal greeting for their callers to hear.
http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-1024534.html?tag=fd_top

Lindows offers easier-to-install Linux
Lindows.com, which tries to make the Linux operating system more consumer-friendly, has introduced a version of the OS that runs directly from a CD-ROM. The San Diego-based company said Thursday that its new product, LindowsCD, is targeted at people who want to try Linux without altering or removing other operating systems running on their computers. The Linux OS CD is free for those who purchase or already own LindowsOS 4.0, the full-featured version of the company's software. The CD can also be purchased separately for $29.95. The compressed version of LindowsOS 4.0 offers many of the standard features for the OS, including Microsoft-compatible business applications, multimedia support for MP3, Real Audio and Flash. It also allows people to access Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files without additional software, according to Lindows.
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1024474.html?tag=fd_top

Real People Hit the Road to Make Online Maps Better
There's nothing wrong with the townhouse on Heron Ridge Drive in Fairfax, except that you can't get there from here. At least you can't according to the MapQuest online map service. Type in the address and MapQuest reports that "the address you provided could not be found." Which explains why Maureen Clark is trying to navigate her Ford Taurus between pickup trucks and piles of sod to get a view of the place. When she and her colleague Rob Cushing are through, Heron Ridge Drive and the rest of the brand-new Buckley's Reserve development should pop up on MapQuest and other mapping systems when people type in the address.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Jul9.html

Broadband net speeds ahead
The number of Britons with high-speed net access is continuing to grow. According to the Office of National Statistics 17% of net-using households have a broadband connection. Numbers look set to continue growing as firms start offering new ways to get a fast link to the net. BT has also announced that it is equipping more telephone exchanges with high-speed links in response to customer demand. The net is now being used in 47% of British households, according to the Office of National Statistics.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3055389.stm

Organic robot creates art in Australia
A Western Australian art and science collaboration is assisting U.S. neuroengineers with the development of distributed networks and artificial intelligence. The SymbioticA Research Group (SARG) is a collection of artists, computer programmers and scientists based at the University of Western Australia. It has collaborated with the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at Georgia Tech in the US, which recently hooked a few thousand rat neurons to a multi-electrode array to create a 'Hybrot' -- so named because it is a hybrid of living and electronic components.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ebu...0276131,00.htm

IT Myths: Colombian drugs gang's mainframe-assisted assassinations?
Colombian drug running, police raids and the assassination of informants isn't something that has an obvious link to mainframe technology but in the first of our series investigating IT myths this was certainly the most intriguing. The story has it that Colombian drugs cartels in the 1990s were using massive mainframe computer systems to analyse telephone billing records they had 'borrowed' from phone companies to find out which people in their cartels were on the blower to Colombian police and US agents. Reader Chris Payne embellished the tale saying the machine was nicknamed 'Mother'. He wrote: "This is so vast and connected to so many other systems that when you use a telephone line in Colombia, you 'share' the line with Mother."
http://www.silicon.com/news/500009-500001/1/5093.html

RIAA sues vanishing Spanish music site
The Recording Industry Association of American said Wednesday that it had sued the parent company of Puretunes, a Spanish site that briefly offered inexpensive music downloads. Puretunes emerged in May, claiming that it had won rights from several Spanish licensing agencies that gave it the ability to distribute major label music legally online. Label representatives said the site was operating illegally because Puretunes had not acquired the permission of labels, artists or song publishers. However, the service went offline last month. The RIAA suit comes after several weeks of complaints from angry Puretunes customers. "Contrary to everything that Puretunes told the public -- both on its Web site and in news reports--they never obtained nor sought licenses for the music that they were selling to the public," an RIAA representative said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1024382.html?tag=cd_mh

Porn Purveyors Getting Squeezed
Pay me, or I'll crash your porno website. That's the threat Internet smut-slingers say they've been receiving from a hacker with a vendetta against the adult industry. And it appears to be more than just tough talk. Several sites have been temporarily taken offline in the last 10 days, battered by massive denial-of-service attacks, according to website operators. At least one of the blue webmasters, getting as many as 745 million hits in a single day, has contacted the FBI in response. Others are simply girding their electronic defenses. And a third group is plotting ways to take revenge against the assailant -- methods that don't involve a keyboard or a mouse. "Engaging in this level of extortion -- I've never seen that before. It's a disturbing development," said Tom Hymes, at AVN Online, the trade magazine for triple-X webmasters.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59574,00.html

The Super Power Issue: A User's Guide to Time Travel
Did the tech bubble burst in your face? Were you one of those unlucky outsiders who missed the Yahoo! IPO or got stuck with Enron stock long after the execs had dumped theirs? Wouldn't you like to be, just once, in the right place at the right time? Now you can. Follow a few simple instructions to relive the bull market and bail out just in time - then go on to march with Pericles or meet your great-great-great-grandchild. Once confined to fantasy and science fiction, time travel is now simply an engineering problem. Physicists schooled in Newton's laws believed that time moved along a straight, steady course, like a speeding arrow. Then came Einstein in the early 1900s. His equations showed that time is more like a river. The more mass or energy you possess, the more the current around you varies.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...imetravel.html

Linux Reconstructing Tree of Life
Demeter, Mother Earth to ancient Greeks, is now helping scientists unlock the mysteries of life. Demeter is the name of the American Museum of Natural History's supercomputer. Built by biologist Ward Wheeler from off-the-shelf parts, the Linux cluster is now ranked the 107th-fastest computer in the world on the Top 500 supercomputers list. Scientists are now using Demeter to create "The Tree of Life," a collaborative project involving biologists from around the world. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project is attempting to construct a pattern of relationships that biologists believe links all of Earth's present and past species -- from the smallest microbe to the largest vertebrate that existed during Earth's 4 billion-year history.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,59573,00.html

Digital citizen
Digital citizenship could soon be a fact of life if the government gets its way. Paper records of births, deaths and marriages - the legal bedrock of individual identity - are to be phased out in England and Wales. Cradle-to-grave records will be stored on a new database - and the only proof of who you are will be digital. It is not something the government wants to trumpet. A recent white paper hinted at the idea and the publication of an official consultation document brings digital citizenship a step closer. The new system could be introduced from 2005 if it receives parliamentary backing. Under the present system, people give information about births and deaths in the area in which the event happened. The registrar writes the information into weighty, leather-bound books - red for births, black for deaths. This framework - civil registration - has changed little since it was introduced in 1837.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/sto...994662,00.html

Illegal music downloads boosting album sales
MUSIC fans who illegally download their favourite tracks from the internet still buy albums in the shops, according to research. The findings explode music industry fears that such internet file-sharing is killing the record industry. The results suggest most music fans still like to own genuine copies of their favourite albums. Groups such as Metallica, Garbage and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers who try to prevent fans downloading their tracks are "shooting themselves in the foot" according to the research. Patrick Johnston, a music business analyst, said: "Far from damaging the music industry, downloading music from the internet can be a useful and significant marketing tool." Music Research and Programming, industry research experts who surveyed 500 serial downloaders aged between 13 and 45, discovered that 87 per cent of those who "try before they buy" would still buy albums when they were commercially released.
http://www.news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=748832003

Global illegal CD market swells
The battle to stem pirate music appears to be failing as the total number of illegal CDs sold worldwide topped the one billion mark for the first time in 2002. A report published by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) shows that the illegal music market is now worth $4.6bn (£2.8bn) globally. It believes two out of every five CDs or cassettes sold are illegal. The IFPI said much of this money is going to support organised criminal gangs, dispelling the myth that it is a "victimless crime". Jay Berman, chairman of the IFPI, said: "This is a major, major commercial activity, involving huge amounts of pirated CDs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3053523.stm

Logging off ... for good
The latest study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds the American Internet population is growing, but not at the warp speed it once was. According to the study, overall growth has slowed since late 2001. The study says one reason for the leveling off is that the number of people dropping offline roughly equals the number of newcomers logging on each month. The flattening growth didn't surprise me, but the dropouts did. The Internet is not nearly as novel as it once was, and most folks who want to log on have probably done so by now. I had never considered the possibility, however, of logging off completely.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/07/09/h...off/index.html

Marriage may tame genius
Creative genius and crime express themselves early in men but both are turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children, a study says. Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, compiled a database of the biographies of 280 great scientists, noting their age at the time when they made their greatest work. The data remarkably concur with the brutal observation made by Albert Einstein, who wrote in 1942: "A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so." "Scientific productivity indeed fades with age," Dr Kanazawa says. "Two-thirds (of all scientists) will have made their most significant contributions before their mid-30s." But, regardless of age, the great minds who married virtually kissed goodbye to making any further glorious additions to their CV.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s898675.htm

Fingerprinting technology could identify marijuana
DNA fingerprinting technology might soon lay to rest any fears that Canada's newly approved medical marijuana could easily be funnelled into illegal street sales. For the past few years, law-enforcement research scientists in the United States, initially aided by their RCMP colleagues in Canada, have been developing a way to genetically fingerprint pot. The research, discussed in today's edition of the British magazine New Scientist, has taken a plant gene identification technology originally created for patenting strains of corn and rice and expanded it to identify strains of marijuana.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...ry/Technology/

Brains hardwired to underestimate own strength
Human brains are wired to underestimate the amount of force exerted on other people, a study of "tit-for-tat" experiments has revealed. As well as qualifying the teary "she hit me harder" playground argument and explaining why we can't tickle ourselves, the discovery may provide insight into some self-delusional symptoms of schizophrenia. To test the notion that the brain downplays sensations generated by body movements because it can predict what will happen, Daniel Wolpert and colleagues at University College London in the UK engaged six pairs of adult volunteers in "tit-for-tat" experiments.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993929

PS2 gaming service browser hacked
A PlayStation 2 owner has figured out how to access non-Sony web pages using the browser software provided with the console's online gaming service. The PS2 typically points to a Sony server, and displays pages minus the web navigation tools computer owners are accustomed to using to surf the Net. Brook's self-confessed "hack" involves modifying the IP address the PS2 connects to when seeking out web pages, according to a BBC report. Here's Brook's hack: start the Network Access Disc. Select Get Connected and then choose the Advanced Options button. Select Configure External Network Device and edit the settings file. Enter an IP address and away you go. We haven't got a PS2 on which to try it, but we trust the Blair-bustin' Beeb to have tried it out itself.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/31675.html

London police quiz suspected US DoE cracker
An 18 year-old Londoner suspected of commandering US Department of Energy computers to store illicitly obtained music and video files was arrested and questioned by police yesterday. Officers from the Metropolitan Police's Computer Crimes Unit were asked to investigate unauthorised access to 17 unclassified computers at a US Department of Energy research laboratory in Botavia, Illinois during June 2002 when the trail of the attacker led back to the UK. Evidence led police to arrest a 18 year-old from the Woodford Green area of London yesterday. The teenager, who can't be named for legal reasons, was released on police bail until mid-August pending further enquiries, including a forensic examination of a PC seized from his home.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31674.html