The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

That parrot cost me a fortune in cookies... but it worth the while lol
Music companies plug in at Net gathering
Digital music companies Monday unveiled new products aimed at the burgeoning market for commercial online music services at a major industry conference. With Napster reined in by the courts, legal online music services are coming closer to reality, but significant obstacles still remain, including the ongoing threat of online piracy. At Jupiter's Plug-In Forum in New York, several companies showcased wares that attempt to solve such problems with secure software for sharing and playing digital music files.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Jupiter: Web music sales to skyrocket
U.S. consumer online-music spending will grow from $1 billion in 2001 to $6.2 billion in 2006, a 43 percent annual growth rate, according to data released on Monday by Internet research firm Jupiter Media Metrix. Jupiter, which kicks off its annual Plug.In convention in New York on Monday, said 30 percent of online music sales in 2006 will come from digital downloads and music subscriptions, while the rest will be sales of traditional physical products ordered through the Web. That's a big leap from 2001, when digital music sales -- via single paid downloads and digital subscription models -- will comprise only 3 percent of total online music sales, according to Jupiter. Jupiter said music subscription services will dominate online music sales in 2006, while downloads will make up the majority of these sales in 2001.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

InterTrust aims to protect media beyond PC
InterTrust Technologies, one of several companies aiming to build a business out of protecting music, video and other content from digital pirates, is trying to put the PC behind it with a new set of products. InterTrust is one of the oldest and most successful companies in the anti-piracy business, which isn't saying much in a market where almost no product has moved beyond an endless series of fitful trial projects. With its latest product release, InterTrust is expanding its services beyond the computer, looking forward to a world where people will get digital music and movies more though wireless devices, home stereos or TV set-top boxes than through personal computers. The company has radically slimmed down its technology to work in devices with only tiny amounts of processing power and storage space.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Pentagon Shuts Down Websites
The U.S. Pentagon temporarily shut down public access to its Web sites Monday to make sure they are protected against a new computer threat known as the "Code Red" worm. "Most (Department of Defense) Web sites will not be accessible by the public until this worm no longer poses any threat to DOD networks," spokeswoman Lt. Col. Catherine Abbott said. Pentagon computer security experts were instructed to install repair programs, commonly known as patches, to make their computers impenetrable to the worm before making the sites viewable again to the public.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45491,00.html

Go Ahead, Make Ashcroft's Day
Though he smiles often, Attorney General John Ashcroft comes across as a stern man. When he speaks, it's in a slow and menacing fashion, and every now and then he flashes a Dirty-Harry grin which says you'd be wise not to cross him. So on Friday afternoon, when Ashcroft announced a tough-on-hacking initiative to combat the people of "poor and evil motivations" who seek to bring down the world's precious computers, did cyber-punks flinch and ask themselves if they felt lucky? Not likely. Though Ashcroft's program devotes significant resources to tackling "cybercrime," and though it might result in increased prosecutions for such misdeeds, computer security experts and "hackers" said it would make little difference to the strength of the world's networks. And they also worried about the possible adverse effects that Ashcroft's proposal might have on civil liberties.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45445,00.html

Kyoto Salvaged, Without U.S.
Negotiators from 178 nations rescued the 1997 Kyoto Protocol after 48 hours of marathon talks ending Monday, leaving the United States isolated as the rest of the world embraced the first binding treaty on combating global warming. Despite appeals from his closest allies at a summit in Italy this weekend, President Bush refused to reconsider his rejection of the pact, which he deems harmful to the U.S. economy. European envoys said the treaty would be stronger with American participation, but that Washington would be welcome to join at any time.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45462,00.html

Love Bug, SirCam Neck and Neck
"I send you this file in order to have your advice." Does that line sound familiar? If so, you're one of the thousands of Internet users around the world who have received the SirCam virus since it was released into the wild last week. And it continues to spread quickly. One virus watchdog calls it "the sneakiest, smartest virus we've seen in a long time." But even though it has spread like a wildfire on a windy day in a dry forest, at least one high-profile anti-virus company says it's not the current top e-mail threat in the world. That distinction belongs to ILoveYou.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45476,00.html

Subscribing to a New Music Theory
At the end of last year, Joe Fleischer inadvertently found the model for Internet music subscription services. It's a simple mantra, really, culled from the maelstrom of lawsuits that crashed through the digital music industry. "As long as you aren't trying to deliver music to people, you should be OK," Fleischer said during last week's MP3 Summit in San Diego. While it sounds a bit snarky, Fleischer's advice comes from experience. Having weathered two major lawsuits -- first when he was at MP3.com, which survived, and then with iCast, before it was summarily shut down -- Fleischer knows all about business models that don't work.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,45315,00.html

Vaccine Works for HIV-Like Virus
For the first time, scientists have used a modified polio vaccine virus to at least partially block the vaginal transmission of an HIV-like virus in monkeys. They say the achievement opens up the possibility of developing an HIV vaccine that stops the virus at its point of entry during sex. In experiments with monkeys that had been vaccinated against simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a cousin to HIV, all remained healthy up to one year after being exposed to SIV through vaginal transmission. Two of seven monkeys given the vaccine were completely protected from infection, while two others had lower levels of virus in their blood, suggesting at least partial protection.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45486,00.html

Start With Words, Then Add Music
She is a teenage student at Illinois State University; he is a middle-aged programmer in Lafayette, California. On the surface, Melissa and Thelonious don't have much in common. However, a relatively unknown music service called Uplister brought them together –- in cyberspace. There, the two upload their own personal music play lists along with commentaries to anyone who wants to listen. Well, listen might have been the wrong word. The service was originally offered as a place to post digital mix tapes without the actual music. Melissa, Thelonious and the 150,000 users visiting the site were only able to post plays lists of their music: song titles, band names and album names. That's changing now, albeit slowly.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,45378,00.html

Cyber-games make children brighter
Computer games are giving a generation of young Britons a level of co-ordination and powers of concentration equivalent to those observed in top-level athletes, a government-funded study has shown. Youngsters who play computer games regularly but not excessively also tend to have more friends and be better adjusted than those who make do with traditional pastimes such as reading and television. The research, funded by the government's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), challenges the common view of computer gamers as "geeks" who cut themselves off from the world and develop few social or wider academic skills. Instead, it suggests that playing computer games could sharpen young people's mental agility to a level superior to that of previous generations by exposing them to intense stimuli from a young age.
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/p...enws03005.html

As the Boundaries of Reality Expand, Our Thinking Seems to Be Going Over the Edge
Humans are actually a slave race created 200,000 years ago to mine monoatomic gold that creates exotic powers for alien beings from a 10th planet, the overlords of which are now remembered by mankind as ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Hebrew gods. So contended one Neil Freer on May 24 at the Arlington Institute, after its president, John Peterson, had told his audience, conspicuously including uniformed U.S. military officers, that Freer's presentation might change their lives. The institute advises on planning for the future. Its respected client list includes the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Or: The government is using black holes to park stealth space weapons platforms several galaxies away. What the... ?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2001Jul22.html

Concerns for ID Theft Often Are Unheeded
Major financial institutions routinely give out confidential customer account information to callers, using security procedures that authorities say are vulnerable to abuse by fraud artists. Regulators and law enforcement officials warned three years ago that identity thieves and information brokers were tricking clerks into giving them access to individuals' financial information. They urged banks to require customers to use passwords or codes instead of Social Security numbers, mothers' maiden names and other widely available personal information to identify themselves when calling.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2001Jul20.html