The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Hurray it's weekend !!

Ballmer lays down the law on DOJ pact
In an e-mail to Microsoft employees, CEO Steve Ballmer on Thursday sought to explain the terms of the company's legal settlement with the government while also exhorting workers to meet the obligations and restrictions outlined in the settlement. "I take this settlement very seriously and am personally committed to making it a success and ensuring that everyone at Microsoft complies fully with the terms," Ballmer wrote in an e-mail seen by CNET News.com.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Microsoft has bigger plans for Xbox
Microsoft's Xbox video game console is part of a "broader concept," the software giant's Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Thursday, hinting at an oft-guessed-at strategy by the company to turn the machine into a wired entertainment hub. Microsoft originally intended to pitch an all-in-one device that could handle games, interactive TV and computer functions, but that concept was slapped down by software makers, Ballmer told analysts at an investment conference in Phoenix.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Fans weep online for Harrison
Fans crowded online message boards and chat rooms Friday to express their sadness over the death of former Beatle George Harrison. Harrison, 58, died Thursday in Los Angeles after a prolonged struggle with cancer. Harrison wrote some of the Beatles' best-known songs, including "Here Comes the Sun" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," and infused Eastern mysticism into the band's music and trend-setting attitude.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Kazaa can't comply with copyright ruling
A Dutch judge has ruled that Internet company Kazaa must stop its users sharing copyrighted music files, but the company said on Friday it could not comply because, unlike Napster, it does not know who its customers are. In a court case which has upped the ante for copyright abuse over the Internet, the Dutch judge also said Kazaa and music publishing rights organization Buma/Stemra should resume licensing negotiations within two days. Kazaa said it cannot prevent users of its software from swapping copyrighted music files, because unlike Napster it is designed to work without a central computer server that tracks the file sharing between its users.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Free speech shrinking on the Net?
A one-two punch handed down this week by U.S. courts to free-speech advocates may signal that the freewheeling days of unfettered speech on the Internet are numbered, First Amendment experts said. The decisions in two lawsuits testing controversial copyright legislation on Wednesday upheld the ability of content owners to restrict access to their works and showed that U.S. courts are more than willing to limit what can be published online.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Microsoft foes see EU as final hope
Microsoft's opponents see the European Union's antitrust case as their last, best hope to get tough sanctions against the U.S. software giant for allegedly rigging its Windows software to damage competitors. They had been preparing to make their case next month at a hearing on European Commission allegations against Microsoft, but the company -- fresh from settling its U.S. antitrust case -- decided to dump that hearing.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Orbitz campaign to use high-tech switcheroo
Online travel agency Orbitz hopes to coax travelers away from competing Web sites using a new marketing deal with a company that designs specialized computer cursors. Orbitz is expected to announce next week that it has partnered with Comet Systems, a company whose technology changes computer cursors into animated or still images and performs online comparison-shopping. Comet will display fare information from Orbitz whenever a Comet cursor user is searching for fares at Orbitz competitors Travelocity and Expedia.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Cable giant may drop Microsoft software
United Pan-Europe Communications, Europe's largest cable operator, has decided to cancel its plans to install Microsoft software in next-generation set-top boxes, an industry source said Friday. Microsoft, which is a minority shareholder in Netherlands-based UPC, has struggled to get its software ready for use on a new generation of set-top boxes that can offer interactive television. A few months ago, Microsoft delivered the final software code to UPC. Industry watchers widely believe that UPC will solely use software from Microsoft rival Liberate Technologies.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

How the music industry blew it
John Alderman's new book, "Sonic Boom: Napster, P2P and the Battle for the Future of Music," is a useful correction to this new consensus. Just as it was once necessary to criticize dot-com boosters, it is now important to challenge the Net pessimists. In "Sonic Boom," John Alderman tells the cautionary tale of a rich and powerful industry that was determined not to get it -- and how it suffered the consequences of this mistake.
http://salon.com/tech/books/2001/11/...oom/index.html

EchoStar-Hughes deal irks broadcasters
The primary trade group for television broadcasters said on Thursday it would oppose satellite TV provider EchoStar Communications' proposed purchase of Hughes Electronics' DirecTV. The $26.1 billion combination would create the biggest satellite television provider in the United States with 16.7 million subscribers, but has already raised concerns among Federal Communications Commission regulators.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Macau ripe with pirated "Harry Potter" copies
Macau vendors have conjured up a brisk trade in illegal copies of the hit Harry Potter movie, weeks before the film about the English boy wizard is due to open in this Chinese enclave. "Business is great, we sold over 50 VCDs in just an hour last night after we got copies from an agent in Hong Kong," a vendor in Macau's Inner Harbour district said Friday. He had ordered several hundred more copies of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" from Hong Kong to cope with demand. The pirated VCDs were in English with Chinese subtitles.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Fujitsu to close U.S. flash plant
Japan's Fujitsu will shut a flash memory plant in Oregon and lay off 670 workers there as part of its drive to confront the chip market's deep downturn. The 13-year-old facility in Gresham, Ore., fell victim to the company's decision to cut 20,900 jobs, or 11.6 percent of its global work force, and to rein in its ambitious expansion in flash memory. Flash chips are used in consumer gadgets such as cell phones, handheld computers and digital cameras. "Fujitsu has concluded that it must reorganize its worldwide manufacturing structure to eliminate surplus flash memory capacity, a process that unfortunately requires the closing of the Gresham plant," the company said in a statement.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Dreamcast game spreads virus
A Japanese-language version of a Sega Dreamcast role-playing game has become infected with a computer virus. The game, Atelier Marie, includes a screensaver which is infected with the highly damaging Kriz virus. Although the Dreamcast itself is left unscathed by this, anyone loading the screensaver onto their PC from the game's CD-ROM will be in for an unpleasant surprise, when the virus activates on Christmas Day.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/23139.html

Boong-Ga Boong-Ga: this has to be seen to believed
If you ever doubted the Internet was making the world a smaller place, look no further than Boong-Ga Boong-Ga (translated: Smack 'Em), a new arcade game that has taken off in Japan and found its way onto the Internet. The game could only ever have been made in Japan. It consists of the usual gun-on-lead of many shoot-em-ups but the gun is a fist with one finger sticking out. Then there is the legs and posterior built into the game, into which you poke the finger. The harder you poke, the more the face on the console screen grimaces. No, seriously, we're not making this up.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/23135.html

Kabul quickly descends into crime
For Kabul banana seller Abdul Aziz, news reports that Afghan leaders meeting in Germany have reacted coolly to a U.N.-backed peacekeeping force entering Afghanistan are too much to bear. “There is no security in Kabul,” he complained. “My car was stolen just last night. This place is chaos. We need a peacekeeping force in here now!”
http://www.msnbc.com/news/665359.asp

Pioneering artificial heart patient dies
Robert Tools, the recipient of the world’s first fully self-contained artificial heart, died Friday at a hospital in Louisville, Ken., after suffering a series of setbacks, his doctors said. Tools, a retired telephone company worker, was suffering from congestive heart failure, diabetes and kidney disease when he received the artificial heart. At the time of the surgery, Tools was only expected to live one month. Doctors had said if he lived for 60 days with the new heart, it would be a major success. He far surpassed doctors’ expectations by surviving for 151 days on the device. His progress has been followed by millions.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/657293.asp

Russian linked to massive ATM fraud
A flurry of fraudulent ATM withdrawals, resulting in $1.5 million in thefts from Chase and Citibank customers, is now being blamed on a Russian mobster, according to the New York Post. Starting two weeks ago, victims began complaining to authorities about mysterious withdrawals from their bank accounts. In its Thursday edition, the Post reported that the U.S. Treasury’s Secret Service police had arrested a Russian national and was seeking his brother, who apparently have been operating a massive cybercrime ring.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/664990.asp?0dm=C16OT

Faster fast food just a cell call away
McDonald’s is test-marketing McQuick service at three restaurants in the Seattle area. Just press a few buttons on your cell phone when you get a few blocks from the Golden Arches, pull into a special employee-of-the-month style parking spot, grab your bag o’ burgers, and go. No waiting, no fussing, not even any paying!McQuick works a bit like a pre-paid calling calling card, with burger buyers drawing down on a pre-deposited McBank account (our term, not theirs). The service requires an account opened on a Web site with at least a $10 deposit. Don’t worry — future versions of the service may allow direct deposit from your savings account into your McBank account
http://www.msnbc.com/news/663846.asp?0dm=T18OT

More news later on

[walktalker]

Judge Says Excite Can Shut Down
A federal bankruptcy judge has allowed ExciteAtHome to shut down its cable network service by as soon as midnight Friday, but he urged the company to work out a deal with its cable customers to prevent millions from losing their Internet access. Thomas Carlson, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in San Francisco, ruled Friday in favor of ExciteAtHome's creditors, who had argued that a shutdown would force AT&T (T)-- ExciteAtHome's largest shareholder -- to pay much more than what it recently offered for ExciteAtHome's network.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48735,00.html

Gates Predicts a Wireless World
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates on Friday told about 400 of his biggest fans from around the world that wireless networking would become commonplace in the next 10 years. Addressing a group of Usenet-based volunteers -- which Microsoft calls its "most valuable professionals" -- Gates predicted the coming of the "digital decade." "Every business, every home, every convention center will be wired up with high capacity 802.11," Gates said, referring to one of the short range wireless networking standards that has gained wide acceptance in the past year.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48775,00.html

Stem Cells: From Blank to Brain
Two teams of researchers have turned human embryonic stem cells into brain cells, a significant scientific step that could lead to the treatment of nervous system disorders. After coaxing stem cells into becoming brain cells, they were implanted in mice. It will take many steps and probably many years -- not to mention many political hurdles to clear -- before such experiments are undertaken in humans, but so far the results in mice are encouraging.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,48744,00.html

Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Computer
Computers have come in many shapes, sizes and colors, but never, until now, in a test tube. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have created the first programmable "biological computer," using molecules of DNA in solution. Billions of these computers can fit into one drop of water and can perform billions of operations per second. However, right now this "computer" is far removed from the modern definition of the word and closer to the idea of a computing device conceived in the 1930s by Alan Turing, one of the fathers of computer science.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48697,00.html

Nanotech, but Not in a Nanosecond
Nanotechnology boosters have long hyped the field's potential, envisioning a future of nanobots and nanocomputers. But the scientists doing the grunt work in the field say the reality is a little more mundane. "At this point, we have a lot of nanoscience, but there's very little nanotechnology," said R. Stanley Williams, a nanotech researcher at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. "Those who excel at popularizing the field are not necessarily those who actually understand it," said Williams, who delivered the keynote address here at Nanotech Planet 2001.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48737,00.html

Underground Sea in Jupiter Moon?
Recent photographs from NASA's Galileo spacecraft provide supporting evidence to the theory that Jupiter's outermost moon may hold an underground ocean, scientists said Thursday. Callisto, one of four large moons surrounding Jupiter, can be seen to have a surface that sits directly opposite from its Valhalla basin, which was rocked by a collision with a major object. The images were taken during a May 25 flyby.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48752,00.html

Consumers May Demand VOD Yet
For 10 years, the running joke about video on demand over TV sets has been that it's the technology of the future -- and always will be. Countless, expensive trials of the technology failed to blossom into a market. That market now appears to be imminent. Dozens of companies at this year's Western Cable Show -- most compellingly, set-top box leader Motorola -- are demonstrating network-based products that allow consumers to instantly call up movies and TV programs, pause and fast-forward them, and perform other tricks previously relegated to VCRs and TiVo devices.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,48708,00.html

AOL's Wide-Ranging Broadband Plan
AOL Time Warner -- with its online service, television, movies, music and print publications all under one roof -- is doing its level best to make the most of its assets and cross-promote them. "For the next layer of growth, we need to think holistically," AOL CEO Robert Pittman said Thursday at The Western Show, the cable industry's annual gathering of content and hardware providers. "One of the mistakes people make when it comes to synergy is to put a bunch of middle managers together and say 'work together.' Well, they're not authorized to work together."
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48729,00.html

NASA's Eggs-ellent Experiment
When the Space Shuttle Endeavor takes off this week for its rendezvous with the International Space Station, its payload will include hardware, food, three new crew members for the station and 36 Japanese quail eggs. The eggs are part of a new push at NASA to learn more about the effect of near-zero gravity, called microgravity, on biological life. It's an undertaking that the space station, now entering its second year of constant habitation, makes both necessary and feasible.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48656,00.html

Digging Deep for Life's Answers
A group of American scientists want to convert a South Dakota goldmine into the world's deepest underground laboratory where they'll be able to conduct ground-breaking research into the origins of the universe. But the group must get funding before the mine closes on Dec. 31 and groundwater floods the vast network of tunnels that reach 8,000 feet underground. The United States has no "deep" laboratory -- a facility far enough underground to block interference from cosmic rays, which disrupt sensitive experiments -- and the Americans who forged the field of underground science are forced to reserve time at foreign facilities.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,48722,00.html

Brit Law Bans Human Cloning
British lawmakers have approved an emergency bill barring scientists from using cloning techniques to produce babies, and Queen Elizabeth II is expected to approve the measure next week. The Human Reproductive Cloning Bill, which cleared the House of Commons on Thursday, prohibits the planting of cloned embryos in a womb.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48751,00.html

'Mujihadeen' Hackers Take Out US Government Sites
Two Web sites operated by the United States government were attacked Thursday by a group that threatened violence against Americans. The hackers vandalized the home page of the NOAA Office of High Performance Computing and Communications, as well a Web server operated by the National Institute of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute, according to a mirror of the defacements captured by the Alldas defacement archive.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172582.html

Scientists warn of 'super athletes'
Drug cheats are on the verge of using genetic engineering to increase stamina and speed, sport scientists warn. And they estimate that 2012 could be the first Olympics to have artificially produced super-athletes in action. A conference on Friday on genes in sport warns that gene therapy - originally devised to help treat diseases like cystic fibrosis - could be abused to enhance performance. And some sports scientists believe that work must start now on developing a test to catch them out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/hea...00/1683873.stm

Canadian Marketers Seek Muscle For 'Don't Call' List
An organization representing marketing companies in Canada is asking the country's telecommunication regulators to establish a mandatory "dot-not-call" registry to be heeded by all telemarketers. The 800-member Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) also said in a submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that it would volunteer to manage a national do-not-call service if regulators would enforce the same rules for all telemarketers.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172598.html

Bill Would Spawn Panel To Review U.S. Security Efforts
The chairman of a House Government Reform subcommittee has introduced a bill to examine the privacy and security of information collected by the Bush administration's new antiterrorism agency. Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif., introduced legislation on Thursday that would establish a Commission on Homeland Security to scrutinize the government's recent efforts to safeguard U.S. national security.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172597.html

Lawmakers Form ID Theft Task Force
A pair of congressional leaders wants to make it harder for criminals to abuse the identities and credit ratings of the recently deceased by exploiting a loophole in Social Security Administration (SSA) procedures. Despite advances in technology it still takes as long as six weeks for the SSA to notify financial institutions and credit bureaus of recorded deaths through something called the Death Master File, House Financial Services Committee spokeswoman Peggy Peterson said today.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172593.html

Broadband Expense Is Major Barrier To U.K. Adoption
Research into broadband services in the U.K. and Germany suggests that their high price in the U.K. is holding back acceptance of the technology. The research, conducted by support services specialist Support.com, and which took in responses from 430 Brits and 580 Germans, found that 58 percent of U.K. respondents thought that broadband services were too expensive. Only 38 percent of German respondents to the survey, in contrast, told researchers they thought their country's broadband services are too expensive.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172589.html

Digital Cameras Are Hot For The Holidays
By the looks of holiday-shopping statistics released by comparison-shopping site BizRate.com this week, there will be a lot of digital cameras under Christmas trees this year. The Los Angeles company, which collects point-of-sale data from some 2,000 online retailers, said searches for various brands of digital cameras have accounted for at least half of the 10 most popular searches on its own site over the last two weeks.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172579.html

More news later on