The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday morning edition

[walktalker]

FBI's magic revealed as old tricks
A new tool reportedly being developed by law enforcement agencies to remotely install surveillance programs on a suspect's computer is little more than 3-year-old hacking technology, security experts said Wednesday. On Tuesday, MSNBC reported that the FBI was working on a computer "virus" to install key-logging programs and other surveillance software onto a suspect's computer. Yet if the details of the report are correct, the technique doesn't use a virus, but a Trojan horse, a program that acts without the person's knowledge.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

Top Microsoft lawyer says goodbye
William Neukom, Microsoft's general counsel and head of government affairs, will retire after 22 years with the software giant, Microsoft announced Wednesday. Neukom, 60, in recent years emerged as one of the key players in Microsoft's antitrust battle with the Justice Department and numerous states. Brad Smith, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, will succeed Neukom. Smith had been in the deputy position for five years. Neukom said he felt comfortable leaving "this amazing client" now because of the strength of the legal team in place.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Cybercrime treaty: Lives at stake too
A European treaty to be signed Friday aims to unite countries in the fight against computer criminals, who have moved on from "innocent" hacking to fraud, embezzlement and life-threatening felonies. Interior ministers and law enforcement officials from Europe, South Africa, Canada, the United States and Japan will sign the milestone cybercrime treaty, which has taken four years to draft, here.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Finally! A way to block cell phone rings
A Hong Kong company hopes to sell signal jamming technology, previously used by the military to thwart lethal missiles, to block annoying cell phone calls in places such as hospitals, places of worship and restaurants. "This is a way to enforce the etiquette of mobile phone usage where polite persuasion has failed," Paul Kan, chairman of Champion Technology Holdings, said at the launch of its MuteTone product on Wednesday. Champion, which has modified the device for commercial use, hopes to sell the mobile signal blocking device in about 50 countries. The device sells for around $1,600.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Will Microsoft deal bite Apple in schools?
A proposed settlement agreement in a series of antitrust suits may not only give Microsoft a fairly inexpensive legal resolution--it may also help the company and its PC allies further erode Apple Computer's position in education. Under a settlement proposal in a series of private antitrust lawsuits announced Tuesday, Microsoft agreed to donate approximately $500 million to help bring technology to some of the nation's most disadvantaged schools. The deal will also allow these schools to obtain a virtually unlimited supply of Microsoft software for the next five years.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Mozilla unveils latest browser beta
Mozilla.org has released the latest beta-test version of Mozilla, the open-source browser suite on which AOL Time Warner's Netscape 6 is based. Mozilla 0.9.6 fixes several bugs and adds new features, such as displaying page icons in the location bar and cross-platform support for .bmp and .ico image formats. Although the browser is still in beta form, it is already used widely by the development community. Its page-rendering engine, Gecko, is used as the core of other browsers such as the Linux browser Galeon, from the open-source development project GNOME. When Mozilla reaches its 1.0 release, it will be used as the default browser by Red Hat, distributor of the most popular Linux distribution.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Are you prepared for e-mail overload?
If you struggle to keep up with today’s e-mail volumes, what will you do when you get ten times as many messages, when a variety of devices send you e-mail alerts and when corporate information systems bombard you with data that they ‘know’ you are interested in? That was the question posed by Bill French, chief ingenuity officer of collaboration software developer Starbase, at a seminar hosted by the Victorian branch of the Australian Computer Society. While he did not claim to have the answer to this problem, he did suggest some possible directions.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Retailers spruce up sites for holidays
Mall workers are busy decking the halls with wreaths and piping carols into food courts, but the holiday spirit gripped the online division of FAO Schwarz six months ago. That's when four full-time employees at the New York-based toy retailer began taking surveys and making site upgrades to prepare for what they hope will be a holiday onslaught at FAOSchwarz.com. Throughout the summer and fall, they dressed up the home page and quickened the checkout process. They simplified a 15-item "product parade" that scrolls across the bottom of the site so that dial-up users -- who account for more than half of FAO Schwarz's online customers -- won't get impatient.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=tp_pr

Sony hedges bets with DVD formats
Sony is straddling the fence in the struggle over which DVD rewritable format will eventually dominate the market. The consumer electronics giant has begun shipping to retailers DVD+RW drives and discs, which should be available to consumers by the end of the month. At the same time, Sony is continuing to support competing DVD rewritable formats -- an unusual decision in the industry. Sony's move comes amid an ongoing donnybrook in the DVD rewritable market. There are several formats, including DVD-RW, DVD-RAM and DVD+RW, that are competing to become the industry standard. However, each format offers its own advantages and challenges.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

New hacker tool could target Web servers
Companies with servers running Microsoft's database application should watch out for a new hacker tool that scans and then infects systems, network security experts warned on Wednesday. The hacker tool, named "Voyager Alpha Force," has already been used to infect more than 300 computers, said Elias Levy, chief technology officer at SecurityFocus.com. That is a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of computers that were infected by the Code Red and Nimda computer worms in August and September, and the tool heavily relies on the unreliable Internet relay chat (IRC) system, reducing the threat of the tool.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Researchers build tiny computer from DNA
Following Mother Nature's lead, Israeli scientists have built a DNA computer so tiny that a trillion of them could fit in a test tube and perform a billion operations per second with 99.8 percent accuracy. Instead of using figures and formulas to solve a problem, the microscopic computer's input, output and software are made up of DNA molecules -- which store and process encoded information in living organisms. Scientists see such DNA computers as future competitors to their more conventional cousins because miniaturization is reaching its limits and DNA has the potential to be much faster than conventional computers.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Inventors challenge BlackBerry patent
Research In Motion's patented system of redirecting corporate e-mail to a wireless device came under attack Wednesday from a group of U.S. inventors claiming patent infringement. The Canadian company rejected the claim. A group of inventors, led by Thomas Campana, said in a claim that the sale of RIM's BlackBerry wireless device in the United States infringes on eight patents controlled by a holding company called NTP.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Competitors call Orbitz tactics into question
Airline-backed Web travel site Orbitz has unfair access to the lowest airfares, and the government should act to halt its anti-competitive practices, says a group formed by some of Orbitz's competitors. The Interactive Travel Service Association (ITSA) issued a statement Tuesday calling on the Department of Transportation to investigate Orbitz, the third-largest online travel agency, which launched operations last June. Orbitz is owned by five of the top airlines, including Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines. Orbitz says it operates completely independently, however.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=cd_mh

FBI wants Carnivore powers for phone taps
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has asked telecommunications companies to make changes in their state-of-the-art networks to make it easier for the FBI to conduct surveillance, according to a report. The FBI, which hopes to gain the same access to voice communications that it has gained with e-mail through use of its controversial Carnivore snooping technology, made the request in a 32-page document sent to telecom companies earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

U.N. to combat poverty with technology
The United Nations launched a task force on information technology Tuesday to help harness computers and cutting-edge communications to fight poverty around the world. "The new technologies that are changing our world are not a panacea or a magic bullet. But they are without doubt enormously powerful tools for development," Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. "They create jobs. They are transforming education, health care, commerce, politics and more. They can help in the delivery of humanitarian assistance and even contribute to peace and security," he told the task force at its first meeting.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

GameBoy sales boost Nintendo earnings
Brisk overseas sales of Nintendo's Game Boy software and falling prices of key components for the company's consoles boosted profits by 14.4 percent in the first half of the fiscal year, the Japanese game giant said Wednesday. Defying gloomy consumer sentiment, the world's second-largest home video-game maker said group net profit for the six months through September rose to $280.2 million, compared with $244.5 million in the same period a year earlier. The company also notched up sales to about $1 billion in the period, up 18.4 percent from the same period last year.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

TiVo loses money, gains subscribers
TiVo, which makes digital video recorders, reported on Tuesday a third-quarter loss but said revenues rose sharply as a result of strong subscriber growth. San Jose, Calif.-based TiVo reported a net loss for its fiscal third quarter of $34.5 million, or 81 cents a share. That compares with a loss of $72.7 million, or $1.89 per share, in the same period a year ago. A consensus of analysts expected a loss of 83 cents, according to First Call. Revenues for TiVo increased to $5.3 million. That is up from $4.1 million in the second quarter and from $1.1 million a year ago.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Hehehe... more news later on