The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

[walktalker]

Rivalry bogs down Web services
Web services -- the technology heralded as a way to connect incompatible software -- is suffering from a communications breakdown as rival alliances jockey to establish standards.
In a mark of an increasingly contentious standards-setting process, two factions -- represented by Microsoft on one side and Sun Microsystems on the other -- have developed competing proposals for the reliable delivery of messages in Web services applications. Web services, an umbrella term for a set of programming standards that allows disparate systems to exchange information easily, hasn't lived up to early hype as the underpinning for futuristic online retail scenarios and for building-block services of rentable applications for business. But the technology has made strides within big companies as the basis of more mundane but increasingly important links between business systems.
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-1026...g=fd_lede1_hed

Twin flaws have security pros worried
Security experts worried on Thursday that a flaw in Microsoft Windows and another in Cisco's ubiquitous network routers could lead to serious Internet attacks. The two flaws -- both made public on Wednesday -- affect a large number of computers and devices connected to the Internet, and that could make the two weaknesses prime targets of attack, said Oliver Friedrichs, senior manager for incident response at security software firm Symantec. "The ultimate concern is that we see something like Slammer or Code Red," he said. The Code Red worm and the Slammer worm were two of the worst Internet attacks in the past few years and disrupted corporate networks by infecting servers and inundating parts of the Internet with data.
http://news.com.com/2100-1009_3-1026910.html?tag=fd_top

Can you decipher kitty chat?
Japanese toy maker Takara looks set to herald a new age of communication between humans and felines with a device that converts a cat's meows into human speech. The Meowlingual, a gadget that promises to give cat owners Doctor Dolittle-like powers of discerning their pets' emotions, will be launched in Japan this November, a Takara spokeswoman told newswire AFP. The announcement comes a year after the company introduced a similar device -- Bowlingual -- which translates a dog's woofs into words through voice-pattern recognition. Bowlingual consists of a wireless microphone that is attached to the dog's collar and a terminal that analyzes and matches each bark with a set of preprogrammed phrases. The device detects feelings -- including happiness, frustration and sadness -- and displays the associated expressions on the terminal's liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-1027070.html?tag=fd_top

The Dirty Little Secret About Spam
Andy Sernovitz has the bluster of a guy who knows he is right -- and the slightly desperate air that comes when not everyone agrees. He is a New Yorker, a smart and funny and profane guy who absolutely cannot resist a spotlight. He is not afraid to share his opinions, or to act on them. He is bursting with anger -- and with hope. He is, in short, a professional crusader. At this moment, it just so happens that he has chosen a particularly gripping crusade. It is a cause that resonates in hundreds of millions of homes and office cubicles around the world -- and one whose resolution could be worth billions of dollars. That cause is unsolicited commercial bulk email. Andy Sernovitz wants to rid the Internet of spam.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/73/spam.html

VOIP -- a Tower of Babel?
Jeff Pulver is the top cheerleader for voice over Internet Protocol, a cheaper form of telephoning that's winning a few thousand converts every week. He should be happy. But instead he thinks he's helped create a Tower of Babel. Pulver's new venture, Free World Dial-Up, is among a new class of providers of voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) that sell or give away Internet telephone calling plans. While the services can differ dramatically in price or quality, one thing is constant: Many subscribers of different VOIP services can't talk to each other. There is no technological hitch as to why VOIP providers are "little islands," as Pulver put it recently. VOIP carriers are being overprotective with the customer information they must share to connect with another VOIP provider's customers, he said. They "are running their networks like fortresses; they won't let anybody else in," he added.
http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-1026975.html?tag=fd_top

Japan firms to test radio-tagged luggage
Singapore's Changi, Amsterdam's Schiphol and New York's John F. Kennedy International airports will later this year take part in an experiment testing radio-tagged luggage. The test is part of a plan by a newly formed consortium of Japanese firms to promote RFID (radio frequency identification) tags on passenger luggage, according to a report on Nikkei Electronics News. Radio tagging of luggage could revolutionize the sorting and routing of luggage, the report said. If RFID technology were fully integrated into currently disparate systems, bags could be picked up from travelers' homes by courier, processed and then loaded into the aircraft without further involvement of the passenger, the report added.
http://news.com.com/2100-1009_3-1026860.html?tag=cd_mh

House proposal targets file swappers
Peer-to-peer users who swap copyrighted files could be in danger of becoming federal felons, under a new proposal backed by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Their legislation, introduced Wednesday, would punish an Internet user who shares even a single file without permission from a copyright holder with prison terms of up to five years and fines of up to $250,000. Written by Michigan's John Conyers, the senior Democrat on the House judiciary committee, the Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act (ACCOPS) represents Congress' boldest attempt yet to shutter peer-to-peer networks, which the major record labels and movie studios view as a serious threat. Currently, under a little-known 1997 law called the No Electronic Theft Act, many P2P users are technically already violating criminal laws. But if the ACCOPS bill were to succeed, prosecutors would not have to prove that a copyrighted file was repeatedly downloaded. Conyers' proposal would require them to prove only that the file was publicly accessible.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1026715.html?tag=cd_mh
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,59654,00.html

Your house may track your movements
Australian researchers are studying methods of tracking people as they move around a building by the sound they make, which could improve the usefulness of pervasive computing. Dr Arkady Zaslavsky, associate professor at the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University supervised student Daniel Hagglund in undertaking the project, which studied the feasibility of "tracking and to some degree predicting the movements, direction, pace of an object, for example, a human that makes some sound…says a word or a sentence." "The main aspect [of the project was] to address some aspects of pervasive computing, namely, use the ability of mobile software agents to track objects of interest, and in this particular case, using sounds those objects make," Zaslavsky told ZDNet Australia.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ebu...0276322,00.htm

Making Friendsters in High Places
Friendster, the popular social-networking service that cleverly assimilates real-life social groups into a large virtual network, just keeps getting bigger. The service, which opened to the public in March and is still in beta, will hit 1 million users this week, and is expanding at a rate of 20 percent a week, according to the company. Friendster helps users find dates and new friends by referring people to friends, or friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends, and so on. When signing up, users post a picture of themselves and a list of their interests. Crucially, they are also asked to provide a list of their friends and their e-mail addresses. If their friends also sign up, they are asked to confirm their relationship to the inviter. Once these social links are established, users can traverse the entire web of contacts, finding people they'd like to meet and sending them a message.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59650,00.html

The Anxiety of Depression
Your genes may determine whether difficult life experiences will lead to full-blown depression, researchers say. In a 26-year study of the genetic profiles and hardships of 847 New Zealanders, researchers found that people with one version of a specific gene were protected from falling into depression, while those with another variation became depressed twice as often. Individuals with the "long" version of the gene, which regulates serotonin, could cope with challenges such as the death of family a member, a major breakup or getting fired. People with the "short" version of the gene were much more likely to fall into depression following a major life crisis.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,59656,00.html

Aquabots to Explore Ancient Wreck
Robert Ballard found the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean floor. He rediscovered the Bismarck, the infamous Nazi battleship. He mapped the Lusitania, the sinking of which became a World War I rallying cry. And he located John F. Kennedy's boat, PT-109. Now, Ballard is traveling to the Black Sea to investigate what may be the best-preserved ship from the ancient world ever found. He's bringing a robotic archaeologist to scour the vessel. And anyone with an Internet connection will be able to watch the $7 million, 41-day mission live. The 1,500-year-old ship sits mast-up off the coast of Turkey, buried in Black Sea mud. What makes the craft -- unimaginatively called Wreck D -- remarkable is how intact it is. Usually, shipwrecks decompose rapidly after falling under the surface. But the main mast and stanchions of the Byzantine-era ship have remained whole, despite centuries on the sea floor.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59651,00.html

Neo-Nazis, Extremist Jews Unite
French neo-Nazis formed an alliance with extremist Jewish groups on the Internet to publish a torrent of hate messages directed against Arabs and Muslims, according to a report by a leading anti-racist group. Members of extreme-right groups were prepared to set aside their anti-Semitic feelings to share Web space and know-how with extremist pro-Israeli campaigners, amid a rise in violence in the Middle East, the report said. "This is a new phenomenon," said Mouloud Aounit, head of the MRAP group which published the 170-page report. "We wanted to ring an alarm bell over the worrying development of this form of racism which is not only virtual, but has also spread to everyday life."
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59662,00.html

RIAA's Flurry of Subpoenas
The Recording Industry Association of America said Wednesday it sent out subpoenas to Internet service providers prior to filing lawsuits against hundreds of individuals who illegally distribute songs over the Web. "This should not come as a surprise to anyone," said an RIAA representative. "Filing information subpoenas is exactly what we said we'd do a couple of weeks ago when we announced that we were gathering evidence to file lawsuits." Sharply escalating the industry's battle against online piracy, which had so far focused on shutting down peer-to-peer services, the trade group in late June said it would track down the heaviest users of these services and sue them. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ISPs are required to provide copyright holders with such information when there is a good-faith reason to believe those copyrights are being infringed, according to attorneys for the RIAA.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59663,00.html

Big brother better back off
Companies which screen employees' e-mails without their permission face fines of up to R2m. Most firms use electronic filters to screen e-mails for keywords such as obscenities and block them if necessary. E-mails are also scanned for viruses. In terms of legislation on communication interception, which could be passed by the end of the year, it is a criminal offence to intercept any communication in South Africa. This includes scanning e-mails. Internet legal expert Reinhardt Buys said scanning and blocking of e-mails is considered interception. Although the law allows for interception of "business related communication", there remains uncertainty about the interpretation of this clause. Buys said companies should receive written permission from employees to scan e-mails before the law comes into effect. Riaan Jordaan, senior manager of Media24's information technology department, said the legislation could cost the company dearly. He said Media24 has just bought very expensive software for improved e-mail scanning and to control internet use.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technol...388536,00.html

DirecTV dragnet snares innocent techies
In recent months the satellite TV giant has filed nearly 9,000 federal lawsuits against people who've purchased signal piracy devices. But some of those devices have legitimate uses, and innocent computer geeks are getting caught in the crackdown.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31793.html

The Chili Peppers' Sour Grapes Over iTunes
These guys call themselves rock musicians? Where, I ask you, is their sense of storming the Establishment ramparts, of thumbing their noses at authority? Instead, by refusing to let Apple sell their music online at the new iTunes Music Store, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are leading a vanguard in the wrong direction. They might as well put their clothes back on. Of all the iTunes holdouts, the Chili Peppers, with their longstanding popularity and reputation for artistry, are perhaps the most respected. Others include bands spanning hip-hop to metal rock, from Linkin Park to Metallica. All of them fret that they would lose creative control if they let Apple sell their songs individually on iTunes. "Our artists would rather not contribute to the demise of the album format," Mark Reiter of Q Prime Management Co., which manages the Chili Peppers, Metallica, and several other artists, told Reuters recently. It's a bogus argument that makes these bands sound like shills for the music-industry's suits.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...6812_tc056.htm

Indie Auteurs Bond With Software
There are guerrillas at Macworld CreativePro Expo. They lurk in the aisles, and they linger at the booths. Show even a vague interest in movie making on a Mac and the guerrillas swoop in. They drag the curious off to a digital den where they extol the joys of making movies with Apple hardware and Final Cut Pro software. They describe themselves as "guerrilla filmmakers," independent directors who create for both fun and profit, and they see themselves as a resistance force battling the banality of mainstream movies. "There's a world full of weird and important stories to tell, so I'm not sitting around waiting for scripts or budgets to be approved," said filmmaker Laszlo Balogh. "I roll my own movies."
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,59657,00.html

Fellowship of the online gamers
The Plane of Fear is a dark and ancient land. Stonelike Golems lurk in the shadows and pounce on unwitting passersby, and Kelldal Daggerblade is having trouble warding them off. Never mind that Daggerblade is really the online alter ego of Darrel Austin, a high school junior in Southwick, Mass., and that a brilliant summer day lies just beyond his basement door. Darrel hunkers down, pet iguana Donatello at his side, immersed in the world of EverQuest, the most popular online video game. "Southwick is a small town," he says matter-of-factly. "There's nothing to do here." In such fantasy worlds, players who've never met in person form tight allegiances - and the ties are based on tests of individual character, not gender, class, or race. While critics decry the violence in many of these games, or worry about the social maladjustment of adolescents who spend hour upon hour playing them, the popularity seems rooted in the fellowship of the players, not in the virtual mayhem and carnage. In fact, even as video games become less violent and more interactive, more and more players are logging on.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0715/p13s02-lecs.html

Film fan sites can now really influence a Hollywood release
The colour of the Incredible Hulk's trousers is not something that preoccupies most of us. However, last year, when Ang Lee, the director of The Hulk, suggested the monster might not wear purple ones in the film, he provoked outrage on specialist comic book websites. Regular visitors to online destinations such as SuperHeroHype and DarkHorizons don't like Hollywood studios messing around with their beloved superhero characters, and they made their views clearly known. When the film opens in the UK tomorrow, the Hulk will be kitted out in his traditional purple trousers. No one at Marvel will admit that specialist film websites are forcing Hollywood studios to make changes to the portrayal of comic book characters, but they do accept that their influence is now growing in a number of ways.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/sto...999227,00.html

Australians copying 'more music'
More than 11% of music in Australia is obtained through illegal means, the country's music industry has said. The Australian Record Industry Association (Aria) said a survey found that 3.6 million of Australia's 20 million people had illegally "burned", or copied, a music CD in the past six months. And it also found that 3.4 million Australians had also downloaded tracks illegally using file-sharing software. "Ultimately, the consumer is the loser," said Stephen Peach, chief executive of the association, in a statement. "File-sharing and CD burning contributes to the slow but steady weakening of the local and international music industry," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/3070657.stm

Congressman pocketed $18,000 for RIAA 'lobbying trip'
The powerful Congressman at the center of the controversy over royalty rates for small webcasters took $18,000 from the Recording Industry Association of America. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner was instrumental in forcing the deal that could result in an antitrust suit against the RIAA being filed by small webcasters. The trouble is, Congressmen are forbidden from taking private donations to lobby abroad. Sensennbrenner recorded the visit to Taiwan and Thailand back in January, as a "fact finding mission". According to the House Ethics Committee's advisory booklet on Gifts and Travel, "Members and staff may not accept expenses from a private source for travel the primary purpose of which is to conduct official business." "If he's dictating policy, he should be a representative of the United States, not the RIAA," Boycott-RIAA founder Bill Evans told us.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31812.html

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