news; Halloween Edition

[gazdet]

Netscape upgrade jumps on XP bandwagon
AOL Time Warner's Netscape Communications division is the latest to jump on the Windows XP publicity bandwagon with the release of an upgrade to its Navigator browser, version 6.2. The company is touting better integration with Windows XP for the new browser, which includes several new features and minor tweaks. When XP users set Netscape as their default e-mail application and browser, they can view the number of new e-mail messages in the Windows XP startup screen. Netscape Mail can also now embed itself in XP's contextual right-click menus, so that it can be used to e-mail attachments without the need to first open the application.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

AOL preens ICQ for smiley face-off
America Online has released a new version of its ICQ instant messenger, its first facelift of the service in a year. The ICQ 2001b Beta v5.15, released Tuesday, offers a new file-sharing function that enables people to swap directories with their ICQ buddies; a two-way messaging feature with cell phones; multilingual support; a spell checker; and new graphical renditions of emotions and smiley faces. The upgrade also lets people save a contact list on a computer and make requests to friends to send part or all of their contact lists.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

States granted right to fight spam
Opponents of junk e-mail are claiming victory in a high-profile spam case this week, saying recent action in the U.S. Supreme Court effectively grants states the right to rein in spammers in the absence of federal anti-spam laws. On Monday, the high court declined to hear a constitutional challenge to a tough Washington state anti-spam law, one of the nation's first measures that sets standards for junk e-mailers and levies stiff fines for violators. Enacted in 1998, the law bans "deceptive" e-mail and has drawn immediate attention as a test case for the role of states in regulating the Internet.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

UK trade group rallies to save cookies
The cookie, a simplistic identification tag that most Internet users unknowingly carry when surfing the Web, runs the risk of being outlawed under a proposed privacy directive from the European Commission. The legislation has triggered concern in Europe's Internet advertising community. The Interactive Advertising Bureau U.K. (IAB) said British companies could lose $271.8 million (187 million pounds) if the directive is ratified.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Powerpuff DVD spreads "FunLove" virus
The latest DVD featuring cartoon sensation "The Powerpuff Girls" may boast fun games for young PC users, but three computer programs on the disc have also been infected by the "FunLove" virus, CNET News.com has learned. Warner Bros. confirmed Wednesday that the "Meet the Beat Alls" disc, released a week ago by Warner Home Video, has been recalled because the DVD spreads the "FunLove" computer virus to any PC that installs the supplemental software.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Radio Free Virgin slims down
Internet radio service Radio Free Virgin said Wednesday that it cut its staff nearly in half, joining a growing list of media companies that have laid off employees in attempts to reduce costs. Los Angeles-based Radio Free Virgin, part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group conglomerate, said it has dropped to 15 employees from 26. The company said the layoffs affected people working with content programming. Zack Zalon, general manager of Radio Free Virgin, said in a statement sent to CNET News.com that the layoffs were in "response to a shift in current internal business needs." He added that Radio Free Virgin intends to bring back a portion of its staff on an as-needed contract basis.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

NY Times laid low by Nimda offshoot
The mysterious "storm of data" that swamped computers at The New York Times was not caused by a malicious attack aimed at the paper but rather by a reemergence of the Nimda worm, company officials said Wednesday. A New York Times network administrator said in an internal e-mail Tuesday that the company's Internet connection was "interrupted by a storm of data" and that the "denial-of-service" activity may have been a deliberate attack. In a denial-of-service attack, thousands of fake messages are sent to server computers, tying up the recipient's network.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Privacy expert resigns to focus on security
Well-known privacy watchdog Richard Smith said Wednesday that he is leaving his post at the Privacy Foundation to research security issues following the Sept. 11 attacks, one sign of the country's shifting focus from protecting privacy to ensuring safety. A veteran computer programmer, Smith will leave his position as chief technology officer at the Denver-based Privacy Foundation to become independent consultant. Smith gained prominence early in the Net economy boom for revealing potentially harmful tracking technologies within software programs and operating systems, including high-profile privacy flaws at RealNetworks and Microsoft.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Google tests snapshots of Web pages
Google has been quietly testing a new feature that offers snapshots of Web pages alongside ordinary search results. Google spokeswoman Cindy McCaffrey on Wednesday told CNET News.com that the experimental pages have so far been shown to a random test group made up of less than 1 percent of its audience. She added that the company routinely tests new ideas in this way and has not yet decided whether it will adopt the graphical cues as a standard feature.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

TV networks sue Sonicblue's ReplayTV
Major TV networks ABC, CBS, NBC and their parent companies filed a copyright suit Wednesday against Sonicblue's ReplayTV, alleging that its new digital video recorder violates copyright laws. The move by Walt Disney's ABC, Viacom's CBS and General Electric's NBC sends another shot across the bow of companies looking to exploit new digital technologies and Internet distribution. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, claims Sonicblue's new ReplayTV 4000 recorder allows viewers to make digital copies of shows "for the purpose of -- at the touch of a button -- viewing the programming with all commercial advertising automatically deleted." http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Asian women unite on the web
The internet has been a boon in breaking women's isolation, creating networks that crisscross national borders, spanning the whole world," says Chat Garcia Ramilo. As project manager for an international women's organisation based in the Philippine capital, Manila, she relies on the internet every day. The web is making it possible for her and other women spread across the region to work together via the Association for Progressive Communications Women's Networking Support Programme.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1627691.stm

Morpheus, others: Playing to Napster's audience
The downing of the popular file-swapping service, Napster, has had little impact on the Australian market thanks, in part, to the emergence of some solid competition. According to reports by Jupiter Media Metrix, the number of unique users accessing song-swapping applications in Australia has increased slightly in the months following Napster's demise. Napster was shut down in July after a legal crackdown by music industry trade group the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Industry experts predicted its groumding would lead to the demise of song-swapping applications overall.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ebu...0261580,00.htm

Wireless firms target celebrity voyeurs
You know you're a wireless celebrity junkie when your mobile phone buzzes every time Reese Witherspoon has been sighted on the streets of New York City. The 1,000-odd members of "Celebrity Sightings," one of thousands of mobile messaging groups offered by New York-based Upoc, submit their celebrity bird-doggings on the firm's Web site or via their wireless phones. Subscribers receive the dispatches as wireless text messages on their phones. The cyber-paparazzi are given up-to-the-minute dispatches that, for example, veteran newscaster Walter Cronkite is walking down 58th St. near Madison Ave. ("he looks good"), or that Kyle MacLaughlin of "Sex and the City" is meandering south on 7th Avenue.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Top court mulls porn law's relevance to film
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned whether a law aimed at computer-generated pictures that "convey the impression of child pornography" may be applied to popular, award-winning movies such as "Traffic," "Lolita," "Romeo and Juliet" and "Titanic." The justices grappled with a 1996 federal law covering computer-generated images that do not involve real children and whether it may be applied to very young-adult actors and actresses who look like minors in a movie.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Court: AOL can't distribute version 6.0
A federal judge has ordered America Online to temporarily stop distributing a recent version of its popular service, AOL 6.0, saying the software likely violates copyrights for computer code used to play back MP3 files. If upheld, the ruling could force the AOL Time Warner division to pay millions of dollars in damages, marketing expenses, and costs related to retrieving or altering existing copies of AOL 6.0. At issue is software copyrights owned by PlayMedia Systems. AOL subsidiary Nullsoft holds a software license from PlayMedia for use in its Winamp MP3 player, but the court found AOL may have gone too far by including the code in a different media player bundled with AOL 6.0. According to the decision, the agreement limited Nullsoft's right to use the software "within Winamp."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

SanDisk files patent-infringement suit
SanDisk, a leading maker of flash memory used in consumer electronics, said Wednesday that it has filed a suit alleging patent infringement against top digital-media manufacturers. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against four leading makers of digital-recording media in the United States, Japan and Taiwan. The suit names Memorex Products, a pioneer of computer data storage based in Santa Fe Springs, Calif.; Pretec Electronics, a unit of Japan's Asahi Pretec; Ritek of Hsin-Chu, Taiwan; and Power Quotient International of Fremont, Calif.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Hackers bypass Microsoft copy protection
Hackers in Hong Kong are routinely breaking Microsoft's digital media copyright protection system and helping themselves to broadband encrypted content, including games, films and music videos, according to a report in the South China Morning Post today. The content is hosted on now.com.hk, which belongs to major Asian broadcaster Network of the World, and is protected by Microsoft's digital rights management software, DRM 2. The hackers are using FreeMe, a DRM 2 cracker developed by pseudonymous programmer "Beale Screamer" and recently distributed across the Web following exposure on the U.S. security site Cryptome.org. FreeMe first appeared earlier this month, and this is believed to be the first time it has been put into wide use.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Pirated Copies Of Windows XP Pose Security Risk
Microsoft has confirmed that pirated copies of its Windows XP operating system exist on the Web, but warned users of the potentially serious security risks they run if they download and install the software. Microsoft's warning comes in the wake of IT security firm Bit-Arts' claims that cracked versions of the commercial edition of WinXP started appearing on the Net within hours of the new operating system being put on sale last week.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171651.html

Berners Lee: WWW royalties considered harmful
WWW creator Tim Berners Lee has given his strongest hint yet that the W3C organization he created ought to shun the idea of accepting royalty-bearing patents as web standards. He also acknowledges that the move could lead to the fragmentation of the Web. Berners Lee's comments were made in a presentation to the W3C's Patent Policy Working Group (PPWG) earlier this month, the minutes of which were finally published yesterday. The W3C has been under pressure from some of its constituents to add the option of blessing royalty-bearing patents as Web standards in the form of a new RAND license.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/22561.html

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