The Newspaper Shop -- Wednesday edition

[walktalker]

Beware: entering my shop can expose you to heavy dose of news radiations

Bush security could get privacy czar
President Bush's proposed Department of Homeland Security is likely to get its own privacy czar. A panel in the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote this week on a plan to add a chief privacy officer to the planned agency. A draft of the legislation seen by CNET News.com states that the Secretary of Homeland Security must appoint a privacy officer to ensure that new technologies "sustain and do not erode" privacy protections and to verify that the agency's massive databases operate within federal guidelines.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-942758.html

Moore's Law will continue to rule
Moore's Law, which postulates that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years, will slow down a bit but continue to chug along, said Gordon Moore, the law's namesake and an Intel co-founder. "The doubling will slow down," Moore said during a telephone interview Tuesday following a ceremony at the White House, at which he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S.'s highest civilian award. "You really get bit by the fact that the materials are made of atoms." The ability of semiconductor designers to regularly squeeze more transistors onto a single silicon chip to increase computing performance has largely been the engine fueling the technical and economic growth of the computer industry.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-942688.html

Studios sue defunct $1 movie site
The movie studio's trade association filed suit Tuesday against Film88.com, a would-be Internet video Web site that has allegedly popped up in several incarnations around the world. Calling the site a "piratical, virtual 'video-on-demand' business," the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its member studios sued the company and an individual allegedly associated with it in a California federal court. The suit largely appears to be aimed at stopping the site's owners from reappearing online in another incarnation. Film88 itself, whose operations were allegedly based at least partly out of Iran, has already been shut down and replaced with a message board and a note from the company's owners.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-942856.html?tag=fd_top

Writing file sharing's final chapter
Each time a new concept was unearthed during the boom days of the Internet, venture capitalists would chase it. Checkbooks in hand, they backed countless start-ups, flogging each one as the next big thing. But every time something new came along, it also triggered a Darwinian process of natural selection. The start-ups making the best use of the new technology tended to be the long-term winners; the many who misunderstood the technology ended up as inevitable losers. The Internet encouraged people to find ways of turning things upside down and challenge the predominant client-server computing model. One of these new ways of thinking about personal computing was peer to peer, a technology that quickly outgrew its humble beginnings when it was seized upon during the waning days of the New Economy.
http://news.com.com/2010-1078-942681.html?tag=fd_nc_1

Black-and-blue in ones and zeros
Digital imaging, used for mug shots and in fingerprint analysis for years, has edged its way into the touchy territory of domestic violence investigations. "Any agency that has used digital photography for general crime-scene photography is using it for domestic violence, with only a rare exception," says George Reis, whose company, Imaging Forensics, trains federal, state, county and city police forces throughout the country. "Think of all the agencies that have traditionally used Polaroids for domestic violence. Digital is certainly a cheaper and better way to do it." Convenience isn't the only advantage a digital camera has over its predecessors. For example, Polaroid photographs, taken just after an assault, often fail to depict incipient bruising or the red marks that become more conspicuous in the following days.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...e/index.html?x

Whole worlds are rewritten by the players themselves
Alterations of a PC game are called "mods." Although modifying began among hard-core hackers, it's not illegal. In fact, mods are often encouraged by game producers. Mods feed an endless appetite for variety and evolution in the gaming world, an appetite no software company could satisfy on its own. Because players must buy the original game CD-ROM to use the (usually free) mod, the original game producer continues to profit. "For a company like ours, the benefits of mods are enormous," says Gabe Newell, whose company Valve has seen more than 300 mods created for its game Half-Life. "A mod extends the shelf life of the product over time." Games released several years ago, like Doom and Quake, are still being modified today. Each mod enriches the play. "These people are just ingenious," says John Romero, co-creator of Doom and Quake. "They have figured out all the weird little bitty tricks in the code that we didn't even know about."
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/compute...281377,00.html

Small Wonders: The world of nanotechnology
Nanotechnology focuses on the miniature, but one thing about it is massive: the hype. Boosters have long panted about a coming age of tiny machines that will enhance human intelligence, cure disease, wipe out poverty -- and create fortunes. The National Nanotechnology Initiative, a federally backed research program, has forecast that nanotech will spawn a $1 trillion market by 2015. The froth has sparked an inevitable backlash: Some doubters now dismiss nanotech as sci-fi fantasy and a business bust in waiting. What's the real story? Simply this: What is happening in nanotech is indeed revolutionary, but it's happening on a level far removed from products and markets.
http://www.business2.com/articles/ma...,41548,00.html

IBM loses $515 million on hard drives
IBM's hard drive business, which the company is selling to Hitachi, lost $515 million in the five most recent quarters, Big Blue disclosed Tuesday in a regulatory filing. The business lost $423 million in 2001, with $232 million of that in the fourth quarter alone, IBM said. In the first quarter of 2002, the hard drive business lost $92 million. IBM reported the loss while detailing how the $2.05 billion sale of the unit will change previous financial statements. IBM and Hitachi announced June 4 that the two companies would transfer their hard drive business to a separate company, to be majority-owned by Hitachi. The 24,000-employee company will be based in San Jose, Calif., with Hitachi making payments to IBM for three years before taking full control.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-942629.html?tag=cd_mh

New AIDS Drugs Face Curvy Road
At least one new drug that would attack HIV at an earlier stage of the infection process than those currently on the market could be available by next year, and other similar medicines also show promise, according to studies presented this week. But despite increased momentum in the field, the Holy Grail of a vaccine against the AIDS-causing virus is, at the earliest, six years away, scientists said Tuesday. Lawrence Corey, principal investigator of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, notes that financial investment and political support for a preventive HIV vaccine, along with new scientific approaches, has increased over the last five years.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,53742,00.html

The Ultimate Running Machine
Browne and Johnson are among the half-dozen runners on a Nike team dubbed the Oregon Project, a stealth experiment headed by onetime marathon star Alberto Salazar to create a radically better runner. Over the last eight months, they've lived in a five-bedroom Portland bungalow, training pretty much like other top-tier racers. They run about 105 miles a week, sleep 10 hours a night, and wolf down pasta by the bowl. But the rest of their regimen is highly unusual - a multimillion-dollar lab project that relies on up-to-the-minute, sometimes untested, scientific theory and technological gizmos.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/nike.html

Senate Votes to Entomb Nuclear Waste in Nevada
The vote means the Bush administration's plan to bury 77,000 tons of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas has surmounted its final legislative hurdle. Without Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste would have to remain in temporary storage at the nation's 103 operating nuclear power plants, decommissioned plants, and Department of Defense weapons production sites - 131 sites in 39 states. The state of Nevada will now fight the Yucca Mountain repository in the federal courts and through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing process.
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2002/2002-07-09-01.asp

Digital copyright protection goes mobile
Technology designed to prevent mobile phone users sharing copyrighted ring tones, graphics and games is to be developed under a new agreement between IBM and Nokia. It is the first step towards the protection of copyright of the music, video and console-quality games that could be shared between future mobile devices. The companies will develop a new open standard for copyright protection on mobile devices through the Open Mobile Alliance, a new consortium of more than 200 companies developing mobile phone software and hardware. Copyrighted songs and films can currently be copied using personal computers and shared easily via the internet. For the entertainment industry, file-sharing networks such as Napster epitomised this effortless copyright infringement.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992530

Another Saturn-like planet found
Astronomers have found another planet outside our Solar System that has a mass less than that of our own Saturn. This makes it one of the smallest so-called exoplanets ever detected. It joins just four others that have masses smaller than Saturn's. The new planet circles the star designated HD 76700, which is 194 light-years distant and is visible with a small telescope. The planet orbits HD 76700 every four days.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/2118391.stm

Increased Traffic Around Earth Calls for Stronger Spacecraft; Earlier Warning
More than 40 years of an increasingly global push into space have placed hundreds of artificial satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and at the same time created a cloud of hazardous debris around the planet. A small bolt or a chunk of metal leftover from a spent upper stage can become a lethal weapon to the expensive and sophisticated machines should any orbiting debris strike. Impossible as it might be to believe, the traditional protection against unavoidable collisions is eminently low tech: essentially, aluminum siding. However, the U.S. Air Force Space Command, NASA and other space agencies are seeking more innovative solutions for spotting potential threats and eliminating them before they happen -- or if they do, increasing the odds the satellite will survive by modifying the protective materials used.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnol..._020710-1.html

Audiogalaxy Muffled by Legal Setback, Mum on Plans
Back in 1999, Audiogalaxy was a thriving Internet business on its way to drawing millions of visitors a month to swap MP3 files and read reviews of music both obscure and esteemed. Now the Austin-based Web site appears all but shut down, silenced by a recording industry copyright infringement lawsuit. But it does have a legacy: the gradual, tentative steps currently being taken by some of the music labels toward offering uncomplicated MP3 downloads. Audiogalaxy agreed to settle last month just three weeks after being sued. As a sequel to the music labels' success in their lawsuit against Napster, the outcome surprised analysts only in the swiftness of Audiogalaxy's capitulation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2002Jul9.html

Laser-armed Humvee to blast mines
An armoured car fitted with powerful laser beam designed to blast landmines and cluster bomblets from the battlefield will shortly begin testing at an army proving ground near Waynesville, Missouri. The US Army is developing the laser-based de-mining method, dubbed Zeus, as a way of clearing mines left on airfields and roads during battles or by retreating enemy forces. The trials will be the first chance for the Army's de-mining experts to see if the technique works as planned. The idea is to clear the numerous devices that modern warfare leaves strewn around on the ground. Small mines are often scattered from helicopters and trucks, and cluster bombs spray out hundreds of smaller bomblets, many of which fail to explode on impact.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992528

Space station fails science exam
The International Space Station cannot do useful science unless it is expanded, concludes a major new report. And if it is not expanded beyond the "core complete" stage the US has agreed to finish in 2004, "NASA should cease to characterise the ISS as a science-driven program". The report was commissioned by NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe soon after he took office. NASA had already said that massive budget overruns meant it would not build the habitation module needed to expand the crew from three to seven people. O'Keefe ruled out restarting building work until NASA showed it could finish the station core on budget. Yet the Research Maintenance and Prioritization Task Force led by Rae Silver of Columbia University said that science needs more crew time - at least the full time equivalent of one person in a crew of three. Other studies say current ISS schedules leave only half of one crew member's time for science.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992532

Candidates turn to e-mail strategy
In the Internet’s early days, campaign managers played with Web sites as if they were new toys. Georgia gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes offered viewers a live Web cam of his headquarters — a harmless but pointless gimmick. Now e-mail strategies are overshadowing Web sites as political tools, with consultants designing “friend-to-friend” e-mail networks to keep candidates in touch with voters and to get them to the polls on Election Day. Much of the creative energy among political Web site designers is now focused on what Allen calls the “faux campaign Web site” that uses a candidate’s name but is run by his adversaries.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/772125.asp?0dm=C16LT

Oldest hominid skull shakes human family tree
The wind-blown Djurab Desert of Chad has opened a new window on early human evolution - a hominid skull six to seven million years old, at least two million years older than any skull previously discovered. The stunning find was unearthed by Michel Brunet of the University of Poitiers in France and his team. "It's a lot of emotion to have in my hand the beginning of the human lineage. I've been looking for 25 years." Named Sahelanthropus, the new species is close to the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. It and other recent discoveries "strongly shake our conceptions of the earliest steps of hominid history," Brunet says. "The divergence between chimp and human must be even older than we thought."
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992533

More news later on

[TankGirl]

First copy, thank you.

- tg

Hey - what is this radiation???