The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Can Apple deliver on big promises?
Rather than hunkering down and riding out a protracted slump in PC sales, Apple Computer appears to be starting the new year where it left off in 2001: pushing the envelope with sleek new products. Despite an industrywide funk, Apple last year introduced the Mac OS X operating system, the iPod digital music player and two redesigned laptops -- the Titanium PowerBook G4 and iBook.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

Could CD-copying actually be legal?
Record companies' efforts to protect CDs against digital copying are beginning to draw scrutiny from lawmakers concerned that the plans might violate the law. On Friday, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., sent a letter to executives of the recording industry's trade association, asking whether anti-piracy technology on CDs might override consumers' abilities to copy albums they have purchased for personal use. A 1992 law allows music listeners to make some personal digital copies of their music. In return, recording companies collect royalties on the blank media used for this purpose. For every digital audio tape (DAT), blank audio CD, or minidisc sold, a few cents go to record labels.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

PC sales on the rise with consumers
Personal computer sales, long a laggard in the technology sector, came back to life in December as holiday shoppers took advantage of low prices, but sales to businesses failed to reappear, Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Fortuna said on Friday. "The December quarter showed some upside surprise on the consumer side, however the more important corporate side remained weak and really failed to show any signs of improvement," Fortuna said during a conference call. "We believe corporate will remain weak for the first half of '02," he added.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Want to capture a .com? Get in line
VeriSign is working on a proposal that would allow interested parties to get on a waiting list for domain names, with an automatic signup for names that are not renewed. VeriSign operates the registry for Internet addresses that end with the suffixes .com, .net and .org, handling the database where the names and subscriptions are stored. But people can sign up for domain names through multiple companies, known as registrars, that work with VeriSign to assign Web addresses.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

MS sounds Passport IE patch alarm
Microsoft is pressing .Net Passport users to install a patch for some versions of its browser nearly two months after it fixed a security flaw that threatens customers' personal data online. The Redmond, Wash.-based company has sent millions of e-mail notifications in the past month to Passport users, urging them to visit a special Web page to determine whether Internet Explorer needs a security upgrade.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

BSA offers amnesty to software pirates
The Business Software Alliance, the main software trade group enforcing license and copyright restrictions, is offering a limited amnesty program this month to businesses using illegally copied software. Under the program, businesses can conduct a software audit and begin paying proper license fees for all applications in use without the threat of penalties for past use, which can run as high as $150,000 for each incident of copyright infringement.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Call your IM to send that message
Voice messaging company One Voice Technologies released updated software that allows customers to have the words they speak into their cell phone show up as text on instant messenger screens, the company announced Thursday. Companies like One Voice and Jabber are trying to jump-start the use of instant messaging on cell phones, something most carriers already offer, analysts said. But the technology has been relatively slow to catch on, in part because cell phone users have to punch in the text on their keypads. Some companies allow customers to use verbal commands to send prewritten replies, such as "Thanks for the information. I'll call you later."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Was AIM hole report ignored?
Brushing back criticism, a 19-year-old Utah college student said on Thursday he revealed a security flaw in AOL's popular instant messaging service because when he tried to tell the media giant privately, he was ignored. "We never expected it to get this much attention," said Matt Conover, the college student and one of the founders of w00w00, which bills itself as the world's largest non-profit security team with more than 30 members in about nine countries.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Microsoft device to bridge TV, PC
Microsoft will demonstrate on Monday a tablet-shaped device that will serve as a bridge between the TV, the PC and the company's .Net services, according to sources familiar with the plans. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will show off the device, known as Mira, during his eHome presentation Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The device is effectively a cross between a Pocket PC-based handheld computer and a TV remote control. Sources said Mira will depend on Microsoft's Terminal Server, software that governs the exchange of data between a computing device and a central server.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

eBay's charity auction falls far short of goal
eBay has made a habit of beating Wall Street's expectations, but its effort to raise money for disaster relief fell far short of its goals. eBay's Auction for America charity auction, launched to help those affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, raised just $10 million in its 100 days, the company announced Friday. The online auction giant had aimed to raise $100 million in 100 days.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=mn_hd

DOJ revamps antitrust division
The head of the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division on Friday announced plans to streamline the agency and boost enforcement in telecommunications and high-tech industries. Antitrust Chief Charles James said the shakeup would enlarge parts of the division responsible for technology cases and concentrate the its expertise more tightly across other industries. Specifically, James said, the changes would "clarify areas of responsibility, sharpen lines of reporting, increase accountability, and ultimately improve efficiency and productivity."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

DVD player sales take off
By industry accounts, DVD players were the hottest-selling item of the holiday-shopping season and will soon spell the death of the ubiquitous VCR. Last year marked the biggest price decline for DVD players since the devices debuted for about $500 in 1997. And 2002 may prove to be another bumper year despite worries about the U.S. economy, analysts said. The appeal of DVD players is quickly eroding the grip VCRs once had on the home entertainment front. Consumers are finding DVDs to be more versatile than videotapes because of their compatibility with computers and gaming consoles.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Sanyo, Kodak to build ultrathin displays
A venture between Sanyo Electric and Eastman Kodak will get a jump on rivals when it starts making a new type of ultrathin display screen next month. But its top executive is bracing for intense competition. SK Display, set to become the world's first manufacturer of active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, aims to withstand the heat by quickly becoming profitable and by preparing to move on to more advanced technologies, said Hideo Shimizu, the venture's president.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Public money, private code
Hoskins' "privatize it" attitude has become the norm among administrators at many universities and federal labs across the country. As a result, computer-science professors and researchers who want to release their work to the public as open-source software often face an uphill battle. Some familiar with the situation say the problem is that universities and federal research labs have become more interested in making money than serving the public interest. Larry Smarr, a professor of computer science at U.C. San Diego and one of the country's top experts on supercomputing, is one of them.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/0...rce/index.html

Fighting Internet taxes to the end
Virginia Gov. James Gilmore may be about to ride off into the sunset, but he's still taking aim at Internet taxes. Gilmore, who this month will step down as chair of the Republican National Party and leave office as governor, has long been a proponent of keeping the Internet tax-free. As chairman of the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce, Gilmore led a faction that resisted efforts to recommend any kind of Internet taxes to Congress, even though the stance prevented the commission from reaching any kind of consensus. More recently, Gilmore stepped into the Capitol Hill debate over whether to extend the Internet Tax Freedom Act.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1014-201...html?tag=cd_pr

U.K. thieves target mobile phones
Growing U.K. mobile phone use in the past few years has been matched by a surge in phone thefts, as the industry struggles to stay ahead of criminals who can reconfigure handsets and sell them on international markets. Experts said Friday that cell phone thieves range from the professional with a ready market, normally outside the U.K., to the street robber who just grabs the phone and runs away. The shooting of a young woman in a mobile phone robbery in East London on New Year's Day has sharpened the country's focus on this particularly modern crime wave.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Vivendi chief secretly chooses heir
Vivendi Universal Chief Executive Jean-Marie Messier sparked a guessing game Friday after he said he had selected a French successor, should anything happen to him, but stopped short of revealing the name. Seeking to quell fears that the world's second biggest media group is abandoning its French roots and selling out to Hollywood, Messier told French radio he had earmarked a French person to replace him were the need to arise.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

More and more news later on

[walktalker]

Judge OKs FBI Keyboard Sniffing
The Justice Department can legally use a controversial electronic surveillance technique in its prosecution of an alleged mobster. In the first case of its kind, a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey has ruled that evidence surreptitiously gathered by the FBI about Nicodemo S. Scarfo's reputed loan shark operation can be presented in a trial later this year.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,49455,00.html

Trolling the Web for Afghan Dead
For the past three months, Herold has spent 12 to 14 hours a day cruising the Net to compile figures on civilian casualties in Afghanistan, using sources as disparate as the radical Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and the BBC. He said he discovered that Washington's anti-terrorism campaign has killed an average of 65 Afghans a day, information he charges has been blithely dismissed by the American mainstream press. Pundits such as William M. Arkin, a former Army intelligence analyst and Washington Post columnist, have sought to minimize the importance of civilian casualties, he writes. Arkin did not respond to an interview request for this story.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,49475,00.html

Nanotech Fine-Tuning
The versatility of carbon nanotubes, those sheets of graphite rolled into long tubes mere nanometers in diameter, has long been trumpeted. But until recently no one knew the nanotube was like a trombone. According to a team of physicists from the United States and South Korea, nanotubes can be tuned with the movement of molecules rolling around inside -- like a trombone changes its pitch with the up and down motion of its slide. These adjustable electric properties offer a new kind of tunable circuit component, one that will join regular, unfilled nanotubes as the great multi-purpose device of the nanometer-sized world.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,49447,00.html

Making Energy, Making Money
Energy legislation emphasizing renewable fuels could help boost the U.S. economy by $300 billion and create as many as 300,000 new jobs by 2016, according to an independent analysis. The study, paid for by the National Biodiesel Board, concluded that increased use of American made fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol would generate an additional $71 billion over the next 15 years.

Last Stand of Oz Domain Fight
It might be described as the last stand of an Internet volunteer against the advance of 21st century technocrats -- the swan song of a beard against the suits. In one corner sits reclusive, volunteer Australian-network programmer Robert Elz, who communicates only selectively with the outside world by e-mail and avoids being photographed. In the other sits a fledgling Australian national Internet managerial organization known as "auDA." In the middle sits the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the global organization overseeing certain technical aspects of the Internet. It had to play hardball in choosing between the two.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48973,00.html

ACLU frowns on face-recognition tool
Face-recognition technology designed to help catch known criminals proved ineffective during a two-month period, according to a report released Thursday by the America Civil Liberties Union. Using state open-record laws, the civil liberties organization examined system logs at a Florida police department. It discovered that over a two-month period, the software failed to identify a single person photographed in the department's criminal database, according to the report. It added that the software produced many false identifications.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Dolly the sheep has arthritis
Dolly the cloned sheep has developed arthritis at the relatively young age of five and a half, say the scientists who created her. But they say it is impossible to know whether the cloning process is to blame. "The fact that Dolly has arthritis at this comparatively young age suggests there may be problems," Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Scotland told the BBC. But, he added: "We cannot ever know whether this is the result of cloning or just an unhappy coincidence." The average lifespan of a sheep is 12 to 14 years.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991745

Unsolicited e-mail not protected, judges say
In a victory to thrill anyone annoyed by the "spam" that clogs e-mail accounts, an appellate court has upheld the constitutionality of California's tough 1998 law regulating unwanted commercial messages. The state Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that California can require Internet "spammers" to identify their e-mails as advertisements. The court also said they must provide ways for recipients to get off their mailing lists.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...4/MN228257.DTL

Rise of Net 'Borders' Prompts Fears for Web's Future
It is the modern-day equivalent of a border sentry. When visitors try to enter UKBetting.com, a computer program checks their identification to determine where they're dialing in from. Most people are waved on through. Those from the United States, China, Italy and other countries where gambling laws are muddy, however, are flashed a sign in red letters that says "ACCESS DENIED" and are locked out of the Web site.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173389.html

NASA explores electromagnetic space launches
Researchers at NASA are looking into whether electromagnets can be used to send rockets into space, a technological leap that could dramatically cut launch costs. Spacecraft burn hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel to reach orbit. But rocket engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center are investigating whether electromagnetic power can do the job.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/0...hes/index.html

Wireless Phone, Radio Clash Up in the Air
Satellite radio and wireless phone companies are locked into a sometimes nasty battle before the Federal Communications Commission that could limit the power of the satellite radio companies' land-based repeater towers – a restriction that is either needlessly expensive or essential to avoid interference with next-generation pagers and cell phones, depending on which side one believes. Wireless companies, including Verizon Wireless Inc. and BellSouth Corp., want the FCC to force D.C.-based XM Satellite Radio Inc. and its New York-based rival, Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., to replace their powerful repeater towers.
http://www.washtech.com/news/media/14448-1.html

Signs of Life: On the Lookout for Extraterrestrial Sweet Spots
Looking for life elsewhere is a tough task for human or robot. The good news is that the scientific skill and tools to search for, detect and inspect extraterrestrial life are advancing rapidly. A revolution in the field of microbiology is afoot, along with extraordinary progress in understanding the "geobiological" history of Earth. And then there's growing amazement about life on this planet and how it can survive and thrive even in the most extreme and bizarre of environments. For example, within the last ten years alone, more than 1,500 new species of microorganisms have been discovered and genetically sequenced.
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/l...ts_020103.html

Badtrans Victim Database Goes Commercial
Rudy Rucker last month refused to turn over to the FBI his massive database of users infected by a recent Internet worm. But the listing has lately become a treasure-trove for organizations trying to root out Badtrans.B from their networks. According to Rucker, operator of Monkeybrains.net, a small San Francisco-based Internet service provider, companies including Prudential, Motorola, ETrade, British Petroleum and 3M have paid a small fee to receive a list of their customers and employees culled from the database of more than 300,000 accounts infected by Badtrans.B.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173402.html

Legal Fight Costs Federal Agencies Web Access, E-Mail
A protracted legal battle over mismanagement and poor computer security has left the U.S. Department of Interior, the National Park Service and a slew of other agencies without e-mail and Internet access for nearly a month. Now, the hardship of living in the technological dark ages is beginning to take its toll.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173393.html

US Army Web Site Goes Dark In Asia-Pacific Region
The main U.S. Army Web site is unreachable for many Web surfers in the Asia-Pacific region, according to user reports and network test results. Web surfers in Taiwan and New Zealand have reported they are unable to reach the site. Tests conducted today using network trace tools from Internet addresses in other Asian countries, including India, Singapore, Korea and Hong Kong produced similar results. Attempts to access the Army site from Internet addresses in the U.S. were successful.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173391.html

Killer Paid Online Data Broker For Material
On the last day of her life, Amy Boyer could not have known a killer was waiting for her on her way home from work. But her stalker knew exactly where she would be. As the 20-year-old dental assistant slipped into her Honda Accord on a quiet road just off Main Street here one day in October 1999, the obsessed young man pulled up, shot her repeatedly and then turned the gun on himself.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173387.html

More news later on

[walktalker]

I'm in a bumping mood