The Newspaper Shop -- Wednesday edition

[walktalker]

There's no way I can get out of the news train I came on

Windows XP: Too much for some PCs?
The new features will demand more PC horsepower than previously anticipated. Windows XP beta testers may have found Microsoft underestimated its recommended minimum configuration -- a 300MHz Pentium II processor and 128MB of RAM (random access memory). The final version of Windows XP is expected to carry more stringent requirements. Officially, Microsoft says any PC purchased from late 1999 onward should comfortably run Windows XP. But Gartner analyst Michael Silver sees this as way too conservative. "You want to avoid installing Windows XP on a system more than a year old," he said.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...chkpt=zdnn_tp_

Angry users slam Creative Labs 'spyware'
Irate users are accusing Creative Labs, the maker of popular soundcards and music players, of spying on them. The dispute revolves around a piece of software called newsupd.exe, installed with the software that comes with most Creative products, which many users say is connecting to the Internet without their authorization and relaying data secretly back to Creative servers. Users say newsupd.exe installs itself on the sly, and doesn't give users the option of turning it off. Creative admits the feature needs tweaking, but says it is basically there to help users.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...774385,00.html

Buy Net access from the checkout line
With the Internet's free ride screeching to a halt, some jilted free-ISP users need a discount alternative for Internet access. Enter prepaid Net cards. Long-distance callers searching for bargains are used to the idea: Pay a few bucks up front, get a cache of minutes that can be used anywhere. Credit-challenged callers who can't get a long-distance discount plan are particularly fond of them. A few start-up firms think the same logic can be applied to Internet access. But analysts say the target market - Internet wannabes without credit cards - is slim pickings.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...774259,00.html

HP computers take up chip design
In a world where semiconductor designers can't keep up with the demand for their services, Hewlett-Packard researchers are working on letting computers design themselves. The Silicon Valley stalwart, opening the doors to its HP Labs on Tuesday, showed a glimpse of a technology that converts a computer program into a chip tailored to run that program -- a method that bypasses laborious human fiddling with the abstruse rules of electronic circuit design. For now, though, the technology works only for some types of smaller chips.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...092609,00.html

Bertelsmann opens full catalog to music site
Online music subscription company FullAudio has reached an agreement with BMG Music Publishing, a unit of Bertelsmann, for a catalogwide license from the major publisher. New York-based FullAudio until now remained independent of the world's biggest record labels. Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, AOL Time Warner's Warner Music Group, EMI Recorded Music and Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment have been readying new alliances to deliver Internet-based subscription services in recent weeks.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Online vandals take on security sites
In what appears to be a response to the geek-chic equivalent of a dare, a notorious group of online vandals has begun defacing security company Web sites. The group, known as PoizonB0x, put its online graffiti on 12 sites in the past week, according to hacking and security site Alldas.de. The targeted sites span the globe, with little in common except for the word security in their domain name. The group's graffiti consisted of simple text messages. Many merely stated "PoizonB0x was here," but others bragged about the ease with which the Web sites were falling. "I told ya PoizonB0x owns any security!" the group said on one site.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=cd_mh

As cybercrime rises, officials seek help
Citing an increasing number of cases -- including one in which hackers had the ability to shut down the 911 emergency system -- law enforcement officials asked Congress for more money and expanded powers to fight cybercrime. Speaking Tuesday before the House subcommittee on crime, an official with the Secret Service described several of that agency's cases to illustrate the rise in different flavors of computer crimes. As part of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service investigates crimes against financial institutions.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Online ads get in your face
Like many recent visitors to The New York Times' Web site, Mike Brittain was surprised to find an extra browser window loitering on his PC after he took his daily dose of news. The window, which held an ad promoting X-10's "Tiny Wireless Video Camera," is known as a "pop under" ad, or a lurking page that loads behind the requested one, springing up once the reader exits. "It was surprising but confusing -- a distraction more than anything else," said Brittain, a student in digital media studies at the University of Denver. Readers such as Brittain aren't the only ones struggling to understand such techniques.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_pr

MP3.com sets sights on subscriptions
MP3.com said Tuesday it has launched a new subscription service in a move to raise money and reach profitability. MP3.com's Premium Listener Service, or PluS Express, combines the My.MP3.com online music-storage service with a player that includes features such as the ability to burn songs to CDs, transfer music to a portable device, view ad-free streaming and browsing, manage a personal library, and stream up to 50 CDs per year to an online account.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Lost Films Found on the Road
A traveling digital film festival run by a punk rocker continues to tour the country, harkening to a time when freaks ruled the Internet and major media corporations refused to contemplate a future online. The Lost Film Festival has been on the road for the last two years, making rounds in Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, and even north of the border, in Ontario, Canada. Put together by Scott Beiben, the show comes with a heavy dose of activist films with socially conscious themes that are spun together by Beiben himself. Viewers are treated to the visual equivalent of a House DJ spinning records.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,44454,00.html

The Battle for Defining the future of books in the digital world
Commercial publishing interests are presenting the future of the book in the digital world through the promotion of e-book reading appliances and software. Implicit in this is a very complex and problematic agenda that re-establishes the book as a digital cultural artifact within a context of intellectual property rights management enforced by hardware and software systems. With the convergence of different types of content into a common digital bit-stream, developments in industries such as music are establishing precedents that may define our view of digital books. At the same time we find scholars exploring the ways in which the digital medium can enhance the traditional communication functions of the printed work, moving far beyond literal translations of the pages of printed books into the digital world. This paper examines competing visions for the future of the book in the digital environment, with particular attention to questions about the social implications of controls over intellectual property, such as continuity of cultural memory.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_6/lynch/index.html

Mobile firms patent 'brain shields'
Mobile phone companies have been developing their own devices to reduce the amount of radiation absorbed by the brain. The industry's official line is that there is no proven link between mobile phones and health problems. However, patents unearthed by US campaigners suggest that the biggest companies - Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola, have been working on "protective" devices for a large part of the last decade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/hea...00/1382873.stm

Experts: Birds are imitating cell phones
The electronic tweeting of mobile phones is so widespread that some Australian birds are mimicking the sound as part of their mating and territorial songs, a bird expert says. Australia has six so-called mimic birds which commonly imitate sounds in nature, particularly other bird calls, as part of their mating and territorial displays. Australia has one of the highest rates of mobile phone use. Common Australian mimic birds are increasingly hearing the ringing of mobile phones in rural areas, Queensland Museum bird expert Greg Czechura said Tuesday.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science....ap/index.html

New Tool Will Expose Security-Slacker ISPs
The problem of denial of service attacks could be solved overnight if Internet service providers cleaned up their act, a security gadfly said Tuesday. Steve Gibson, president of Gibson Research Corp., is developing a free tool that will hold ISP's feet to the fire if they have not implemented a security technique known as "egress filtering." Gibson's utility, which will be called Spoofarino, enables Internet users to test whether their ISPs allow them to send forged or "spoofed" packets of data to Gibson's Web site.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/166814.html

IFPI Logs Significant Rise In Music Piracy
Music piracy grew by 25 percent and is now worth three billion pounds ($4.11 billion) a year, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) says in its annual report. Coming in a year that has seen the rise of Internet music file-sharing services like Napster, the IFPI's findings may not seem surprising. But the music copyright organization says that the 25 percent hike relates mainly to pirated CDs and CD-R (recordable) discs. The IFPI estimated that sales of pirated music discs has risen from 510 million units in 1999 to 640 million units in 2000.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/166785.html

More news soon, friends