The Newspaper Shop -- Wednesday edition

[walktalker]

Show me the papers -- I'll show you the news

MS bug exposes millions to attack
A software bug in a common component of Microsoft Web servers and Internet Explorer could leave millions of servers and home PCs open to attack, security researchers said Wednesday. The vulnerability, found by security company Foundstone and confirmed by Microsoft, could allow an Internet attacker to take over a Web server, spread an e-mail virus or create a fast-spreading network worm. "There are millions of systems and clients that will be affected by this," said George Kurtz, chief executive of Foundstone. "This is huge." Foundstone originally discovered the flaw and worked with Microsoft to develop a patch.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-966575.html

How Homeland Security impacts tech
The overwhelming vote by the Senate late Tuesday approving a Homeland Security Department clears the way for massive reorganization of the federal government that will have a dramatic impact on computer and network security. The bill, which sets the stage for the largest federal reorganization since the Defense Department was formed in 1947, does more than reshuffle government agencies. It gives the government a major role in securing operating systems, hardware and the Internet, including allowing for more police surveillance of the Net; punishing malicious computer hackers with up to life in prison; establishing a national clearinghouse for computer and network security work; and spending at least half a billion dollars a year for homeland security research.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-966552.html

Google, AOL take lead in Web services
After much hype, confusion and skepticism, a handful of Internet companies are trying to do something that has stubbornly eluded the high-tech industry: Turn the vague concept of "Web services" into a reality for the greater Internet. Amazon, Google and other Web companies have begun giving developers direct access to their databases so developers can create their own "front doors" and other paths to information, such as book listings and search results. These custom APIs (application programming interfaces) allow developers to tailor such content to their specific needs. The experiments, which might seem technical and obscure, carry broad ramifications. Their concept turns the idea of the graphics-based Web on its head, bypassing its heavily designed home pages and sending developers straight to back-end corporate operations.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-966546.html

DMCA reopens for public comment
Foes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have a second chance to tweak a section of the controversial law. On Tuesday, the U.S. Copyright Office began accepting comments from the public on the law's "anticircumvention" section, which limits people's ability to bypass copy-protection mechanisms. Comments are due by Dec. 18. When enacting the DMCA in 1998, Congress ordered the Copyright Office to conduct regular reviews of one portion of the law. The librarian of Congress, who oversees the Copyright Office, may exempt specific groups from being covered by part of the DMCA. In October 2000, two exemptions were set: Filtering researchers could study blacklisting techniques, and obsolete copy-protection schemes could be legally bypassed.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-966525.html

Radical physicist flatters computer fans
Physicist Stephen Wolfram took the stage Wednesday at the Comdex Fall 2002 trade show, evangelizing a computing-centric view of the universe that might sit better with the technology industry than it has with some other audiences. Wolfram believes the universe is composed not of particles and waves, but of simple tiny programs. He believes these myriad programs, or algorithms, give rise to physical phenomena as fundamental as space and as complicated as human beings. Scientists accustomed to explaining the universe's workings through mathematical equations haven't always received Wolfram's ideas warmly. But the computer industry, whose inventions allowed Wolfram to develop his philosophy, could be an easier sell. Wolfram elevates the seemingly mechanistic computing tasks to the central role in the origin and functioning of the cosmos.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-966663.html

Salon.com: Watch ad, read articles for free
For some Web sites, online advertisements make for an atmosphere like a gaudy Las Vegas strip. For Salon.com, they are a new bargaining chip. The news and commentary Web site is allowing visitors to read articles that otherwise would have to be paid for in exchange for watching a four-page commercial from Mercedes. If they interact with the ad, visitors get an all-day pass to Salon.com's premium content areas, for which subscribers usually pay about $6 monthly, or $30 annually. The newest ads dovetail with the rise of subscription services on the Web because they present visitors, who are accustomed to getting content for free, with a choice.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966664.html?tag=fd_top

IBM releases self-fixing software
IBM said it will begin selling new versions of two software products based on autonomic computing, advancing the industry's goal of creating technology that can take care of itself. IBM on Thursday will begin selling a new version of its database software, DB2 Version 8. On Nov. 26 the company will release its WebSphere Version 5, middleware software that forms the foundation on which programmers build and run their applications. Both products incorporate the goals of autonomic computing, which aims to create computer systems that need less human intervention.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-966653.html?tag=fd_top

Sony offers fix for DVD rewritable drives
More than half of Sony Electronics' recently released rewritable DVD drives can't record to low-quality media, the consumer-electronics giant confirmed Wednesday, but the company has made a fix available. Owners of Sony's latest DVD rewritable drives, the external DRX-500UL and the internal DRU-500A, will get an error message and won't be able to record when they try to use low-quality discs with the drives, according to Sony marketing manager Bob DeMoulin. The internal drives are used with PCs and went on sale about 45 days ago. The external drives just started shipping. The company has shipped a total of about 30,000 of both drives, but although more than half could be affected, only a few dozen people have called to complain, according to DeMoulin.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-966661.html?tag=fd_top

Sony Music sets sights on mobile market
Record label Sony Music Entertainment said Wednesday that it purchased a small New York wireless entertainment company as part of a broader move to expand its products for mobile phones. Start-up Run Tones and its executives will form the core of Sony's new Mobile Products group, which will manage products such as ring tones and online listening services aimed at users of cell phones and other mobile device. "This is an interesting way for us to bring some of the technology into the company and flesh out our efforts," said Thomas Gewecke, Sony Music senior vice president of business development.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966662.html?tag=fd_top

Jumping from satellite to cellular and back
A quick new wireless data service combines the worldwide reach of satellite networks with a cellular setup's ability to steer signals through the architectural canyons of big cities. London-based Inmarsat's Regional BGAN service, announced Tuesday, is the second to merge satellite and cellular phone networks. Globalstar Telecommunications has been selling hybrid cellular-satellite phones and services for some time. But Inmarsat's service can deliver data at 176kbps, about twice as fast as Globalstar's, according to both companies. Unlike Globalstar's service, however, Inmarsat's modem-based Regional BGAN is limited to data-specific tasks such as Web surfing and getting behind a corporate firewall; it does not handle voice calls.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-966615.html?tag=fd_top

Jesse Helms: Web radio's hero
For the noncommercial Web broadcasting community, mostly composed of politically left-leaning independent and college radio stations, an unlikely ally has emerged to help in their fight against potentially crippling royalty payments. He is Jesse Helms, the Republican senator from North Carolina, and while his actions may very well be motivated by the interests of small conservative Christian Internet broadcasters, his support for the Small Webcasters Settlement Act (SWSA) has compelled some noncommercial station backers to feel for him what they never imagined they could -- gratitude. Helms first involved himself in late October, when a version of the bill reached the Senate after unanimously passing a vote in the House of Representatives. Several senators, including Helms, voiced concerns that the bill lacked provisions to protect small and noncommercial webcasters. As a result, Helms moved to block the legislation, the only senator to do so.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...dio/index.html

Is it live or is it silicon?
Developers have been itching to create graphics that are more true to life for years now, but graphics cards in desktop PCs simply couldn't handle them. Smooth lines, real-time shadows and accurate skin tones look great, but achieving those effects gobbles up an astonishing amount of processing power. These days we're standing on the precipice of a breakthrough. ATI's Radeon 9700 and nVidia's just-announced GeForce FX could let developers take another step towards creating characters that don't look like a collection of closely-group triangles. The result could be a resurgence in PC gaming software sales – and maybe even a healthy boost to the stock price of those two chipmakers.
http://money.cnn.com/2002/11/18/comm...ming/index.htm

How to be a virtual domestic goddess
Got salt stains on your shoes? Is the cat scratching your wallpaper? Not sure if your Cox's Pippin apple is ripe? Don't know where to turn for advice? Back in the old days, youngsters could learn a great deal about solving such domestic dilemmas direct from their elders. These days, many turn instead to the internet. But that doesn't mean there's no room for the older, wiser generation to share their knowledge online. One caring 58-year-old mother-of-two decided the web lacked a virtual domestic goddess to supply the kind of snippets of information your great-grandmother might have known and acted on without thinking, but which many in the net generation have all but forgotten.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2489269.stm

Loudeye looks for volume with deal
Digital media company Loudeye Technologies said Wednesday it has acquired Streampipe, a privately held provider of live and on-demand Webcasts for corporations and government agencies. Streampipe is the brand name of Technology Education Network, a subsidiary of TT Holdings. Loudeye said it traded 7.9 million shares of unregistered common stock and a $1.1 million secured note for all of the outstanding shares of the parent company, which has offices in Ardsley, N.Y., and Washington, D.C. Loudeye is best known for its digital music services, having struck deals with most of the major record labels to encode music for online promotions and burgeoning commercial services. Following an ill-timed foray into Web radio services late last year, it has begun to stake out a presence in corporate Webcasting services.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966616.html?tag=cd_mh

Left gets nod from right on copyright law
U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner, one of America's most prominent jurists, warned Tuesday of an "enormous expansion" of intellectual-property law, adding a conservative voice to a chorus of criticism that's so far come from the left. During a lecture organized by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution., Posner criticized a 1998 law extending the duration of U.S. copyrights. He also attacked the Patent and Trademark Office for granting "very questionable" business method patents. "These rights keep expanding without any solid information about why they're socially beneficial," Posner said. "At the same time that regulations are diminishing, intellectual-property rights are blossoming -- (two) opposite trends bucking each other." Posner's critique is significant because up to now much of the attack on the steady expansion of intellectual-property rights has come from the left, and the Seventh Circuit judge is a darling of the conservative movement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966595.html?tag=cd_mh

Universal Music unveils download plan
Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, on Wednesday announced it would make more than 43,000 song tracks available for download at retail outlets and music Web sites, opening a new front in the marketing of digital music. The initiative is aimed at attracting fans who may want to buy songs or albums on a one-off basis online rather than through monthly Internet subscriptions, the alternative that major labels have offered to peer-to-peer song-swapping services. Universal Music, a unit of Vivendi Universal, said the downloads will be burnable to CD and transferable to secure portable devices. The digital tracks will be available for purchase by consumers in the U.S. for 99 cents for individual tracks and $9.99 for albums.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966500.html?tag=cd_mh