The Newspaper Shop -- Monday Edition

[walktalker]

Don't forget to the newsdude

Win XP to debut on new PCs
The industry will soon find out whether Windows XP will encourage wary consumers to spend their money on new systems for home and office. On Monday, PC makers including Compaq Computer, Dell Computer and Gateway unveiled a host of new systems preloaded with the Microsoft operating system. The PCs bring together the new operating system with beefy hardware and attractive prices, with many desktops starting at about $750 sans monitor and with notebooks starting at $999. However, economic uncertainties may mean that the computer-buying public -- millions of PC owners whose machines have processors at 500MHz or slower -- could be browsing but not buying anything for now.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Win XP buyers face activation dance
Buyers of new PCs may have to grapple with Microsoft Product Activation, a controversial new Windows feature. Users who buy PCs with Microsoft Windows XP could find their setup disabled if they change or upgrade as few as three components. Details of the Microsoft Product Activation (MPA) technology, a copy-protection measure, are contained in a Microsoft document designed to debunk fears surrounding the technology. But some industry observers are predicting that the process could turn into a headache for users, as they may have to go through a relatively complicated telephone transaction or to rely on an Internet connection to activate their Windows XP software.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Pirated XP selling like 'hotcakes' in Malaysia
Fake copies of Windows XP are selling like hotcakes here in the Malaysian capital. And as if in tandem with the economic crisis, vendors have been dishing out huge discounts for these versions, some starting as low as US$1.50. Pirated software and bootleg movies usually cost around US$3. All this despite the Malaysian government's continuing clampdown on copyright infringement and Microsoft's controversial new product activation feature -- a key part of the software giant's crackdown on piracy. "Piracy is a tough nut to crack in Malaysia.... The root of the problem is, and always will be, corruption," said one industry watcher, who asked not to be named. He cited instances of a vendor, despite being raided several times, being back on the street in a matter of days. But one Microsoft executive blamed the situation on technology and not low-tech greed.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Music deal on the way for Napster?
Napster is close to announcing an agreement with music publishers that will help clear the way for its planned subscription service, sources said Monday. The fallen file-swapping company has been hunting for legitimacy for months, striking deals with record companies in an attempt to win rights to distribute music through its new service, which is slated to launch later this year. But publishers, part of the group still suing Napster for its file-trading past, have been left out of those discussions so far. Napster declined to comment on the possibility of a deal with publishers, which was first reported by the Los Angeles Times. The company has scheduled a conference call for later Monday to announce a "major agreement." A representative for the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) could not immediately be reached for comment.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Data recovery centers in motion after attacks
As rescue crews sorted through the rubble at the World Trade Center site, employees from retail brokerage Tucker Anthony were in the midst of moving to a bucolic setting 40 miles away in the woods of New York state. Tucker Anthony had about 300 employees in 1 World Financial Center, across the street from the two World Trade Center towers that were hit by hijacked airplanes on Sept. 11 and then collapsed, leaving a total of more than 6,500 people dead or missing. In the weeks following the disaster, the brokerage firm's ability to access critical data and rebuild its systems underscored the disaster recovery business's evolution from a simple insurance policy for back-up equipment to one focusing on highly orchestrated emergency services.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

RealNetworks turns up the volume
Internet media company RealNetworks on Monday will unveil a new service melding its two popular consumer programs, RealPlayer and RealJukebox, into a single digital media destination. The combination has been long expected and marks the latest step by RealNetworks toward the nuts and bolts of Web content delivery as well as its continued effort to compete with archrival Microsoft's Windows Media Player. The new product, called RealOne, fuses RealPlayer's audio and video streaming software with RealJukebox's software, which lets people record, organize and play music on PCs.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Attacks chill online ad market
Online and traditional media stocks were pounded last week as the United States declared an open-ended war on terrorism, but some advertisers and analysts say it's unclear whether the effects will delay a long-awaited recovery. Media companies including AOL Time Warner, Viacom, Walt Disney and Yahoo saw double-digit declines the week after the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, when hijacked commercial airliners were used to destroy New York's World Trade Center and damage the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The attacks brought record audience numbers to online news outlets, but short-term revenues declined as some publishers and marketers temporarily suspended advertising.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=tp_pr

Laid-off techies swiping goods on way out
When a Cleveland-based business-to-business start-up failed several months ago, executives planned to follow a well-paved dot-com death pattern: Lay off workers, sell assets and reimburse creditors. Employees had a different plan. Between the layoffs and the asset auction, they stole $35,000 worth of laptops, handheld computers, monitors and laser printers. That left some executives, venture capitalists and other uninsured creditors in a financial lurch. "Ex-employees thought they were entitled to it," said Timothy Dimoff, head of SACS Consulting and Investigative Services. Executives at the failed start-up called the Akron, Ohio-based security company to protect the remainder of its assets -- larger items such as desks and office chairs that employees did not steal -- but much of the damage had already been done.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Nimda still a global threat
The multifaceted Nimda worm continued to spread over the weekend, hitting North America on average five times harder than any other region. Antivirus company Trend Micro's World Virus Tracking Center reported that 120,000 new infections were detected worldwide in a 24-hour period ending noon Monday PDT, bringing the total number of copies of the Nimda worm found by Trend Micro to 1.3 million. "With most of our corporate customers, we are really in cleanup mode," said Trend Micro spokeswoman Susan Orbuch, adding that the numbers indicate it's one of the largest epidemics that the antivirus firm had ever seen. "It's hard to explain the spike. Many corporations could be directing their end users to our (online) House Call service to clean their home PCs."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Upside shutters Web site
Technology news site UpsideToday said it will cease operations because of "insufficient funds," making it the latest casualty in the rapidly contracting world of New Economy publications. The site posted a notice Saturday informing visitors of the changes. However, the note said the company's print publication, Upside Magazine, will continue to publish on a monthly basis. "We have fought long and hard to stay afloat, but now we must say good-bye," read the message on the site. Publications, particularly those covering the Internet and technology industries, have come under the gun since the flurry of shutdowns among Internet start-ups drained online advertising dollars.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Aust mobiles could jump sky high following US attacks
Mobile phone sales have surged in the US since the September 11 terrorist attacks - a trend that looks likely to hit Australian shores too. Figures already released in the US show mobile phone sales around New York City have quadrupled in the two weeks since the tragic attack. After terrorists commanded passengers on board four US domestic flights to call loved ones on their mobile phones to tell them they were about to die, some market analysts said the surge in mobile phone sales that followed was directly connected to the attacks.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/com...0260656,00.htm

America: The end of liberty
The Department of Justice's bill introduces a host of surveillance and detention measures that have been immediately denounced by civil libertarians. The proposal includes intrusions on e-mail privacy, extensions of the government's ability to use information gathered by dubious means (such as torture) and the relaxation of safeguards against intrusive government surveillance. Some critics are accusing the Justice Department of taking opportunistic advantage of the national security crisis to push aside the judicial checks and balances that hold law enforcement accountable.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2001/0...rty/index.html

It's Time for Clockless Chips
Megahertz, shmegahertz. A few iconoclasts are building computer chips that dispense with the traditional clock. But they face big barriers in bringing their idea into the mainstream. "We're replacing dictatorship with anarchy!" Karl Fant tells me emphatically. "Eventually every chip will be designed this way," he declares. "It's inevitable!" By throwing out the clock, the fundamental way that chips, since the dawn of the Computer Age, have organized and executed their work. Even those of us who know nothing about microprocessors know something about their clocks — Intel for years has used the clock speed of its microprocessors as a marketing tool, where faster is better.
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/oct01/tristram.asp

Storage giants make Internet headway
A group of storage industry companies announced the successful demonstration of a long-distance storage network that runs using Internet technologies. Eight companies, lead by Nishan Systems, played a role in making a storage network that was able to transmit data from Newark, N.J., to Sunnyvale, Calif., at speeds of 2.5 gigabits per second using Internet protocol (IP), the language used to carry information on the Internet. Storage networks primarily use the Fibre Channel protocol, which is fast and reliable but expensive and complex to build. The drawbacks have led several companies to work on replacing Fibre Channel with IP to make storage cheaper and capable of working better over long distances.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Satellite phones in demand after attacks
As the United States pursues terrorist networks in remote regions mostly in the Near East, demand is growing for handheld satellite phones -- giving an ailing industry a needed boost. Soldiers and intelligence agents are spreading across the globe, reporters are following, and businesses are building emergency communications networks in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "We have been inundated with requests," said D. D'Ambrosio, executive vice president of Iridium Satellite, which last year bought a 66-satellite network from the failed Motorola spinoff Iridium.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Bush looks to stymie bin Laden's finances
President Bush is trying to choke off Osama bin Laden's money flow as the White House prepares for military action and steps up diplomatic efforts to build an international anti-terrorist coalition. An order to be signed by Bush on Monday will freeze the U.S. assets of terrorists and terrorist organizations and prohibit American companies from doing business with them. The order lists several individuals and organizations, including bin Laden and his al-Qaida network. The order will squeeze the lifeblood from bin Laden's organization and it "will ultimately not be able to function if it cannot have access to money," said Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Taliban claims bin Laden is missing Yeah, right
Faced with U.S. demands to hand over Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan's Taliban leadership claimed Sunday it has been unable to find the alleged terrorist mastermind and advise him of a recommendation to leave the country. American officials dismissed the claim, which came as a U.S. Defense Department team arrived in Pakistan to discuss military cooperation for a strike against bin Laden and his Taliban allies. The Taliban's ambassador to neighboring Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said the militia's chief, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had sent emissaries to inform bin Laden of a decision Thursday by Afghanistan's Muslim clergy that he should leave the country voluntarily at a time of his choosing.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

More news later on

[walktalker]

Why Liberty Suffers in Wartime
Anyone worried about the fate of civil liberties during the U.S. government's growing war on terrorism might want to consider this Latin maxim: Inter arma silent leges. It means, "In time of war the laws are silent," and it encapsulates the supremacy of security over liberty that typically accompanies national emergencies. Consider this: During all of America's major wars -- the Civil War, World War I and World War II -- the government restricted Americans' civil liberties in the name of quelling dissent, silencing criticism of political decisions and preserving national security.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47051,00.html

This Hack's Sites Set on AIM
Users of America Online's popular Instant Messenger Service may actually be communicating with malicious hackers. Hackers say it's easy to take over AIM accounts and pose as the user whose account has been commandeered, using several hacking programs that are in wide circulation on the Internet. America Online's Instant Messenger program allows users to send instant text messages and transfer files to each other. Most AIM users create a "buddy list," a personal directory of their friends and family who use the service. Hackers who take over an account have full access to that account's buddy list.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,47072,00.html

Taliban Threatens U.N. Techies
The Taliban have threatened to execute any U.N. worker who uses computers and communications equipment in Afghanistan, forcing a near halt to the remaining relief work in the country, U.N. officials said Monday. The militia raided U.N. offices in Kabul, the capital, and Kandahar, where the Taliban leadership is based, during the weekend and sealed their satellite telephones, walkie-talkies, computers and vehicles to bar them from use, according to U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker. "They warned our staff that if they use these things they will face execution," said Gordon Weiss, the spokesman for UNICEF in Islamabad.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47074,00.html

NASA Probe 1, Comet 0
NASA probe Deep Space 1 defied scientists' expectations Saturday by surviving a dangerous rendezvous with a comet just inside the orbit of Mars. Mission planners had predicted that Deep Space 1 would be destroyed by dust and debris hurtling at 36,900 miles per hour as the probe raced through comet Borrelly's gaseous outer layer. But Deep Space 1 managed to snap dozens of black-and-white pictures of the comet's nucleus, take infrared spectrometer readings and measure the magnetic field and plasma waves around the comet --# and live through the encounter. The data from the flyby will be made available to the public on Tuesday, after the information has been fully downloaded 137 million miles away, back on earth.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,47067,00.html

GPS Races to Speeders' Rescue
There have been two opposing forces in automobile history: drivers who lust for speed and the people who try to slow them down. The arsenal of gizmos on either side of the law enforcement equation has grown increasingly sophisticated, with cops and drivers trying to outwit each other with the latest jamming and detection devices. But a British company has pushed the feud to a new front with technology that pinpoints the location of stationary cameras used to catch speed demons by using the Global Positioning System. Morpheous' Geodesy uses a constellation of 24 satellites orbiting Earth to map out the position of the speed cameras relative to the client's car.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,46677,00.html

Oracle boss urges national ID cards, offers free software
Broaching a controversial subject that has gained visibility since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison is calling for the United States to create a national identification card system -- and offering to donate the software to make it possible. Under Ellison's proposal, millions of Americans would be fingerprinted and the information would be placed on a database used by airport security officials to verify identities of travelers at airplane gates. "We need a national ID card with our photograph and thumbprint digitized and embedded in the ID card,'' Ellison said in an interview Friday night on the evening news of KPIX-TV in San Francisco.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/ne...llsn092301.htm

Terror Cripples Anti-Globalization Movement
At first blush, it seemed like one of those town meetings staged for Dateline: about 35 people, sitting at neatly arranged desks, explaining how they first reacted to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The answers were somber and heartfelt. The emotions -- rage, fear, sadness -- were familiar. Except that these weren't generic middle Americans. They were left-wing activists, meeting in a classroom at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And when they talked about rage and fear, they weren't only referring to the terrorists. They were also referring to their rage at the U.S. government, and fear at its likely response.
http://www.tnr.com/100101/cohn100101.html

Calls for Microsoft investigation
A trade body representing some of Britain's largest companies has asked the UK government to investigate Microsoft's new software pricing policy, which could double costs over the next four years. The Infrastructure Forum (tif), sent a letter on Friday to Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, asking the government to refer Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), a tif spokesman told Reuters on Sunday. Tif represents the technology interests of companies like GlaxoSmithKline, BP, Shell and Marks & Spencer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/bus...00/1560267.stm

Some See 'Ghost' of Towers at Night
For many New Yorkers, the Twin Towers are legendary. But for some, there is now talk about the buildings, the kind that sometimes spurs urban legends. Some residents of the Lower East Side, who for decades have had an unobstructed view of the majestic 110-story towers simply by glancing down East Broadway or Madison Street, say they see the outlines of the two destroyed buildings. "It was amazing," said Mike Atta, who works at a grocery store at Rutgers and Madison streets. "It was a light, a straight light going up into the sky. It actually looked like the Twin Towers." Atta said many people have stood outside his store on evenings to admire the "ghost" and have spoken to him about it. "Some people say it's just a light," Atta said. "Some people say it's an amazing thing." Whether it's a light that rescue workers are using to illuminate Ground Zero as they dig for survivors or an inexplicable phenomenon, people say they do not fear what they see.
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedi...=ny-news-print

Scientists looking for ways to prevent terror in the skies but remote control from ground leaves pilots unimpressed
The recent terrorist attacks have sparked the imaginations of aviation visionaries, who are seeking high-tech ways to prevent such tragedies in the future. They include a high-tech scheme that would allow ground controllers, in the event of a hijacking, to remotely control an airplane via wireless computer transmissions. That way they could fly the plane to a safe landing, even if every last person on board is disabled or dead. The remote-control scheme "is technologically feasible" and under study by aircraft manufacturers, although no decision has been made whether to implement it, said Air Force Gen. John Douglass, retired, president of the Aerospace Industries Association.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...24/MN24120.DTL

Dolly scientists target biomedical research
Dolly the sheep might never have been created if current attitudes to genetically modified food had prevailed in the 1990s. The pioneering Roslin Institute, which made the famous clone, says public hostility towards GM food in the UK has forced it to reassess its research goals. It intends to focus on biomedical applications of cloning technology rather than pure agricultural research like that which led to Dolly. "An institute likes ours can no longer sustain itself entirely on agricultural research," Professor Grahame Bulfield told BBC News Online. "We have decided we need to build on our strengths by developing products for use in the biomedical industry," he added.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1560870.stm

Experts Issue Warning On WTC Worm
A destructive new mass-mailing Internet worm with an anti-American message is in the wild and spreading rapidly, virus researchers warned today. The worm, which experts have named W32.Vote.A@mm or simply the Vote worm, targets Windows computer users and arrives in an e-mail with the subject line "Fwd:Peace BeTweeN AmeriCa and IsLaM!" and bearing an attachment named wtc.exe. An an apparent attempt to trick users into running the program, the message body reads "Is it a war against America or Islam. Lets Vote to live in peace." If run, the attachment places and runs two Visual Basic scripts on the computer, ZaCker.vbs and MixDaLaL.vbs, according to a description of Vote from Symantec Corp.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170438.html

Hotline Out Of Money? Network's File-Sharing Lives On
The Canadian company behind popular peer-to-peer file sharing software known as Hotline Connect is apparently so short on cash that it has laid off most of its staff at its Toronto, Ont., offices. Reports that Jack Kay, appointed a year ago as chief executive officer of Hotline Communications, had terminated all but a handful of staff were circulated on discussion boards Friday. However, Kay has yet to respond to Newsbytes' request to confirm the reports. Still, any financial problems at Hotline Communications aren't expected to bring an immediate end to the swapping of music and video files - and other software - as long as users continue to fire up their freely available Hotline Connect programs.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170436.html

Facial Recognition Systems Mulled For U.S. Airports
Government and aviation officials are poised to begin using facial recognition systems to scan airport terminals for suspected terrorists, possibly including Reagan National Airport when it reopens, according to people involved in deliberations about how to improve security. A government committee, which was appointed by Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta to revamp airport security, received a briefing Thursday from the inventor of a leading facial recognition system, who said equipment could be installed and operating within a few weeks. Joseph Atick, president of Visionics Corp. of Jersey City, N.J., described to the committee how his FaceIt system could be linked to cameras at security checkpoints and transmit information about suspected terrorists to government officials via the Internet, creating what he called a "nationwide shield."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170410.html

FBI Ill-Equipped To Predict Terror Attacks
Grimaldi, Washington Post. The FBI in the past decade has tripled its spending to stop terrorism, quintupled the number of intelligence gatherers and revamped its bureaucracy to share information about terrorists across the government. None of it was enough to stop the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history. Long before Sept. 11, the urgency was growing: In the past two years, the CIA cabled to the FBI names of about 100 suspected associates of Osama bin Laden thought to be bound for or already in the United States. An Aug. 23 cable bore the names of two, Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi. The FBI sought the men, but failed to locate them before they boarded the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170402.html

Copy-control Senator sleeps while fair-use rights burn
Picture a future where distributing Linux is a crime punishable by a hefty fine and a prison sentence. If that sounds ridiculous, then you haven't run into the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act. It's the very latest - and most bizarre - word in political back-scratching from one of South Carolina's U.S. senators. And he'd rather not talk about it, thank you very much. It is unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies that adhere to the security systems standards adopted under section 104. This is the heart of the new Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), a draft of legislation proposed by U.S. Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, a Democrat from South Carolina.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21830.html

Terror's first victims: women
Feminists and human rights activists have been concerned about the Taliban's oppression of women for years, and in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks they might be expected to be having a "We told you so" moment. Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, warned three years ago of the potential danger to the rest of the world of Taliban fanaticism, demanding, in a petition organized with a coalition of feminists, that the U.S. government not recognize the Taliban government because of its treatment of women. (The United States, owing in part to this pressure, never recognized the Taliban government.) Smeal and her supporters were not merely complaining of sexism, but insisting that the oppression of women in Middle Eastern Muslim countries is a sign of a greater fanaticism that could be expected to use terrorism to attack its enemies.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/200...men/index.html

The greatest TV benefit show ever
Last week, a day after the World Trade Center fell in New York, the band Weezer went ahead with a scheduled concert in Oakland, Calif. The band would have canceled, they said, but they didn't know how to do anything except play music. That's part of what made Friday night's unprecedented celebrity telethon so good. None of the musicians pretended that they had made any sense out of the attacks -- they just played their songs. Television and movie actors read surprisingly understated and tasteful tributes to those who had died and singled out heroic teachers or friends or firefighters or cops who acted with courage and grace. The two-hour show, put together in just days, was flawlessly conceived, directed, edited and produced. It played without commercials on 31 television and cable networks in 161 countries.
http://www.salon.com/ent/music/featu...hon/index.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

A great news package, WT!

This technology article was particularly interesting:

Originally posted by walktalker
It's Time for Clockless Chips
Megahertz, shmegahertz. A few iconoclasts are building computer chips that dispense with the traditional clock. But they face big barriers in bringing their idea into the mainstream. "We're replacing dictatorship with anarchy!" Karl Fant tells me emphatically. "Eventually every chip will be designed this way," he declares. "It's inevitable!" By throwing out the clock, the fundamental way that chips, since the dawn of the Computer Age, have organized and executed their work. Even those of us who know nothing about microprocessors know something about their clocks — Intel for years has used the clock speed of its microprocessors as a marketing tool, where faster is better.
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/oct01/tristram.asp

From article:
Perhaps the most pressing problem with conventional microprocessors, though, is that you can only speed up the chip's clock so much before banging into some inconvenient physical realities. In today's one-gigahertz chips, electronic pulses signifying binary ones and zeroes can—just barely—make it across the chip within a single beat of the clock. But in the two-gigahertz chips expected to arrive in the next couple of years that will no longer be true. The role the clock plays now, synchronizing all the work on a chip, will begin to break down.

- tg

[walktalker]

Thanks, sweet cake

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
Thanks, sweet cake

- tg