The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

[walktalker]

Have you hugged your newsman today ? Well ?

Flaw lets hackers pick Outlook locks
A widely used plug-in for Microsoft's Outlook e-mail client that lets users encrypt and digitally sign messages has inadvertently weakened security and left the mail program open to attack. Security company eEye Digital Security issued a warning late Wednesday to users of Network Associates' Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) plug-in for Outlook, saying that a vulnerability in the add-on could let attackers execute malicious software on a victim's computer. Network Associates released a patch for the problem Wednesday as well.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-943139.html

Copyright bill may severely limit rights
Legislators are readying a bill that could sharply limit Americans' rights relating to copying music, taping TV shows, and transferring files through the Internet. At the same time, the draft legislation seen by CNET News.com would place the struggling Webcasting industry on firmer legal footing. Two key House legislators wrote the double-edged proposal in consultation with the Library of Congress' Copyright Office. They appear likely to introduce it this month. The creation of the two-part draft comes as politicians and judges are grappling with the slippery mix of high-speed Net access, digital content, and the popularity of file-swapping networks.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-943153.html

New bug found in Outlook, IE
A Danish security researcher warned users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Outlook and Outlook Express applications that a recently discovered software flaw could leave their system open to malicious code carried on Web pages or in e-mails. In an advisory released Wednesday, Thor Larholm, a security researcher and partner at risk-assessment company PivX Solutions, warned that HTML objects embedded in Web pages and e-mails could carry code that allows an attacker to check out victims' cookie files, read their documents, and execute programs on their computer.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-943018.html

Marcelo Tosatti: The future is Linux
Marcelo Tosatti, a Brazilian developer working for Linux distributor Conectiva, took over maintenance of the current "stable" Linux kernel, version 2.4, last autumn. He took over from Alan Cox, a major figure in the Linux community and long-time maintainer. In an interview with ZDNet UK, Tosatti talked about his daily job of applying kernel patches from all around the Internet, the way ahead for Linux and his U.S. visa problems.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-943064.html

Micron cranks handle on next-gen memory
Memory manufacturer Micron this week demonstrated the first system running DDR-II SDRAM, the next generation of memory. DDR-II is seen as a necessary redesign to increase memory speeds as predecessor DDR-I runs out of steam. Broadband Internet access, 3D graphics, wireless communications, high-speed networking and higher processor clock rates are all driving the need for more memory bandwidth. DDR-II is expected to be the next mainstream memory standard, although it is not expected to be widely available for at least another year.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-943086.html

China software reclaimed from pirates
"We're going to go public on the Hong Kong stock market soon," Mao, the company's vice president of marketing, said through a translator. Success like this wasn't likely a few years ago. But the industry's outlook has changed dramatically since the chinese government began cracking down on piracy in a substantial way for the first time. Combined with foreign competition and a lack of expertise, rampant piracy had curbed the country's software sales and thwarted new businesses for years.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-943058.html

Standards stalled over royalty disputes
A key Web standards body is bracing for a vote next week that could decide once and for all how it will handle patented technology that comes with royalties attached. Pro- and anti-royalty factions have debated the issue since last fall, in a high-stakes dispute that could determine what technologies may be considered for common use at the most fundamental levels of Web design. That in turn will have strategic fallout for high-tech giants struggling for dominance in creating ambitious new technologies such as interactive services -- a battle in which Microsoft and IBM stand virtually alone with the clout to push proprietary applications on everyone else.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-943038.html

Lawmakers: Keep your tunes to yourself
Legislators are readying a bill that could sharply limit Americans' rights relating to copying music, taping TV shows, and transferring files through the Internet. At the same time, the draft legislation seen by CNET News.com would place the struggling Webcasting industry on firmer legal footing. Two key House legislators wrote the double-edged proposal in consultation with the Library of Congress' Copyright Office. They appear likely to introduce it this month. The creation of the two-part draft comes as politicians and judges are grappling with the slippery mix of high-speed Net access, digital content, and the popularity of file-swapping networks. Last week, record labels hinted they might broaden their legal fusillade to encompass lawsuits against individuals.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-943134.html?tag=fd_lede

ACLU: Don't rat out your customers
A clutch of civil liberties groups is asking small Internet service providers to get a backbone and stand up to companies seeking to unveil anonymous critics. A group including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Center for Democracy and Technology is urging ISPs to alert customers when they are the targets of so-called John Doe legal actions, which try to unmask the identities of people who anonymously air their companies' dirty laundry. The group has sent letters to more than 100 ISPs, asking them to adopt a written policy promising to let customers know if they're targets.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-943160.html?tag=fd_top

Pirates of the Web
Last week, at age 29, John Sankus Jr. moved out of his parents' house for the first time. He and his parents drove 150 miles from their home in suburban Philadelphia to his new one: a federal penitentiary in Allenwood, Pa. Mr. Sankus, who entered the minimum-security prison on July 2 to serve a 46-month sentence, is a soft-spoken, churchgoing computer technician who still has the plush stuffed whales from his childhood. But United States Customs Service investigators and prosecutors say he was also a ringleader of an international gang of software pirates that deprived companies of millions of dollars through the illegal distribution of copyrighted software, games and movies on the Internet. In February, Mr. Sankus pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. The piracy group, known as DrinkorDie, was among the chief targets of more than 100 coordinated raids in the United States and abroad last December.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/te...ts/11WARE.html

Two digital artists bring the organic body onto the computer
There's a mutant hedgehog-like creature living in a South of Market gallery. Its pinkish skin is incompletely covered by patchy coverings of fur. It doesn't quite have a normal snout. Those who dare to touch it may learn that this homely thing has a normal range of animal emotions. Pet it and it purrs like a throaty kitten, poke it and it squeals and snorts like a miniature pig. Leave it alone and it settles into a calming rhythm of breath. It's adorable and repulsive at the same time, a possible new species discovered under a Galapagos rock -- or, more plausibly, a semicute mutant born on the banks of a toxic stream. This little animal would be a lot harder to get close to if it were a real flesh-and-blood blob and not a virtual one on a computer screen.
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/cultural/

Movielink: Bring on the experts
Movielink plans to announce Thursday that it has hired three top executives in a move to rally plans for its delayed video-on-demand service. The Los Angeles-based company named John Godwin, former technology head at DirecTV, as chief technology officer and Bruce Anderson, another longtime tech executive, as vice president of operations. In addition, Kenneth Goeller, former executive at Intertainer, was appointed vice president of business systems. Movielink, now set to launch in December, is backed by Sony Pictures, Viacom's Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, AOL Time Warner's Warner Bros. and Vivendi Universal. The venture's grand opening has been waylaid since earlier this year, when it named media industry veteran Jim Ramo to become CEO.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-942956.html?tag=cd_mh

Gamers invade Army Web site
The U.S. Army announced that more than 400,000 people have downloaded the service's new recruiting game since it became available last week. As previously reported by CNET News.com, "America's Army" is a pair of games, one a squad-based shooter imitating military tactics and another a simulation game that replicates a typical Army career path. The games were developed by teams at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, Calif., and the Army is making them available for free as recruiting tools. An early "Recon" version of the games became available for download July 4 from the Army's main recruiting site and other Web outlets and quickly became a major bandwidth-burner.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-942939.html?tag=cd_mh

F U Cn Rd Ths, So Can Translator
sndN txt msgz on a cell fone iz so popular n Europe dat d new leader of d Methodist church recntly blamed it 4 undermining human relationships. "txt messaging -- w a language of itz own -- replaces d human voice," z d Reverend Ian White n Hs recent inaugural speech. whIl White wil find dat many European teenagers, responsible 4 sndN $MMz of txt msgz evry year, disagree w him, dey have developed a language of their own. d lingo born of DIS "gnr8n txt" iz wot spawned transl8it, a Web engN dat transl8z "emoticons" lIk :-) & othR text-messaging slang in2 proper eng.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,53659,00.html

Mac-Based Artist Rocks New York
Isca Greenfield-Sanders is a hot digital artist whose work doesn't look like digital art. The 23-year-old New York native is beginning to make a splash on the city's art scene with her giant mixed-media paintings of nostalgic family settings. A recent series of paintings depicting family picnics and seaside outings mixes the traditional skills of painting in oil and watercolor with cutting-edge image manipulation on a Macintosh computer.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,53730,00.html

We Want Pluto, Scientists Plead
Pluto and its oddball neighborhood should be NASA's top priority in solar system exploration, scientists said on Thursday, even though the latest federal budget eliminated funding for such a mission. The National Research Council urged an exploration of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt in which it lies because this region of unusual cosmic objects might yield clues to how life came to exist on Earth. This is the latest salvo in a two-year tussle over funding for a mission to Pluto, the only planet in the solar system that has never been directly observed by a robotic probe.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,53791,00.html

Dear Member: You've Been Deleted
Brian McConnell woke up one recent morning to find his entire website gone and a "Dear Community Member" message from his Web hosting company asserting that he had violated his terms of service agreement. The precise reason his site -- which had been hosted by Yahoo GeoCities for two years -- was yanked remains a mystery. The Internet company has refused to pinpoint the offending material, McConnell said, leaving him to root through the roughly 75 pages himself for content that could be deemed off-color. McConnell's experience is not an uncommon one, especially for websites deemed "controversial" by mainstream standards.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53658,00.html

Computer, Heal Thyself
In full conversational flow, Christof Teuscher sounds more like a full-fledged biologist than a self-confessed computer geek. He speaks enthusiastically of cells, tissues and genes: the building blocks of life. But Teuscher is not interested in nature for its own sake. Rather his passion for biology stems from his conviction that living organisms are the stepping stones to a new era of computing -- one in which circuits and chips will be self-healing and self-replicating. Teuscher’s vision takes concrete form in BioWall, a 6-meter-wide concave wall currently on display at the Villa Reuge museum in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,53729,00.html

Cleanup of World's Worst Nuclear Waste Site Funded
A fund to tackle environmental and nuclear waste problems in Northern Europe was launched Tuesday in Brussels at a pledging conference that raised €110 million (US$108.8 million). The Support Fund of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership will be used to leverage loans to tackle the legacy of environmental problems and nuclear waste in northwest Russia. This is a first step towards dealing with the legacy of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste in the Barents Sea region, which is the largest repository of such waste in the world, the European Commission said.
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2002/2002-07-10-02.asp

Bush Panel Has 2 Views on Embryonic Cloning
An advisory committee appointed by President Bush to study modern medicine's bioethical frontiers has completed its highly anticipated report on human cloning without reaching a consensus as to whether U.S. scientists should be allowed to conduct research involving cloned human embryos. The mix of viewpoints in the final report, to be released by the President's Bioethics Council today, reflects the quandary that has stymied the Senate for months as it has debated whether to ban the cloning of human embryos for research. Advocates on both sides of the Senate debate yesterday maintained that the report offered support for their respective positions, a rhetorical crossfire that only added to the uncertainty of whether Congress will pass any cloning legislation this term.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002Jul11.html

ISPs face data interception deadline
From 1 August, ISPs in the UK will be required to be able to intercept your data. Yet the Home Office has failed to explain how they will be reimbursed. And the rules mean that criminals will easily be able to avoid interception. ISPs across the UK will have to start intercepting and storing electronic communications including emails, faxes and Web surfing data from 1 August, but there still appear to be glaring loopholes in the legislation. Not only has the Home Office still failed to tell ISPs how they will be compensated for maintaining their interception capabilities, but the measures, which the government said were introduced to combat terrorism and organised crime, only apply to large ISPs. Any criminal organisation wishing to avoid interception simply has to find an ISP that has fewer than 10,000 customers.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2118894,00.html

Recycling law could mean costly PCs
Computers could become more costly thanks to European laws that force makers to recycle old machines. Soon to be enforced directives make the manufacturers of personal computers responsible for what happens to old machines when customers upgrade their stock of machines. Experts fear that the cost of disposal and recycling and research into new ways to dispose of the obsolete hardware could push up the price of computers. The Department of Trade and Industry estimates that the total bill to British industry of the directives could top £3bn.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/2121954.stm

Hunt for Potentially Deadly Asteroids Underfunded, Panel Says
The U.S. government should invest more money in tracking near-Earth objects that might threaten Earth, said members of a space roundtable on Capitol Hill Wednesday. While the Air Force is not tasked with tracking near-Earth objects, U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. S. Pete Worden said such a mission would be appropriate for the service and an assignment could occur "in the next few years," he said. A warning center could be run by the Air Force and coordinate with non-military groups that currently track objects, Worden said during the roundtable, which was titled "The Asteroid Threat: Identification and Mitigation Strategies" and sponsored by an organization called ProSpace.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...el_020710.html

Audible Magic Keeping Tabs On P2P
With so many people using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology these days, one Silicon Valley-based company is wondering who is minding the store? Media content management provider Audible Magic Corp. Monday said it has acquired a network monitoring technology from the now defunct ipArchive for an undisclosed amount. According to Los Gatos, Calif.-based Audible Magic, the software has the capability to identify peer-to-peer applications, applications users, and specific files exchanged. The platform offers top down and detail views to IT administrators and ISPs for monitoring and managing bandwidth demands generated by P2P application traffic. Audible Magic already offers a suite of software to help manage content, generate broadcast playlists, and assist with anti-piracy.
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/ne...le.php/1381851

Hollywood to Reward For Piracy Tips
To fight rampant piracy of movies in Asia, a major U.S. film industry association is setting up a $150,000 fund to pay rewards for tips that lead to successful raids on manufacturers of fake DVDs. The Motion Picture Association, which did not say how much it would pay for each tip, also has set up a 24-hour confidential telephone hot line and is publicizing an e-mail address to encourage people to report DVD piracy in Asia. The association estimates the film industry has annual losses of up to $598 million in Asia and $3 billion worldwide from piracy.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp..._film_piracy_1

Stop Music for Free, Pleads Record Industry
The record industry pleaded on Wednesday with consumers to stop downloading and recording music for free because piracy was strangling the multi-billion-dollar industry. Profits have plummeted, especially in Europe. CD sales in Germany last year were 185 million whereas the number of blank CDs used to copy music was estimated at 182 million. Record executives also believe there are now more unauthorized music files available on the Internet than at the height of Napster's success in the field. "Music for free means less new music, fewer new artists, less choice, thousands less jobs," said Jay Berman, head of the industry's main trade body, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
http://www.reuters.com/news_article....toryID=1185839

Caught in the Anti-piracy Crossfire
Uncle Sam doesn't want you, but he may want your DVD player and all your other recordable consumer electronic devices to change. As "Tech Live" reports tonight, Hollywood has a few ideas on how that could happen. Rapid advances in popular gadgets such as PCs, DVD players, and digital video recorders have made it easier than ever to steal copyright content, and that fact has the government and the entertainment industry very concerned. As a result, Hollywood is behind a bill called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Act of 2002, which is backed by Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-South Carolina). The bill would require all new digital TV sets and recorders to be manufactured with anti-copying technology that recognizes and responds to copy-protection signals.
http://www.techtv.com/news/print/0,2...391030,00.html

More news later on

[Copyright Queen]

Hiya, WalkTalker! ((hug))

I was a bit surprised to see that BMI won a lawsuit and about $34,000 in damages because cover bands played "Brown-Eyed Girl", "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard", "Daydream Believer" (bleah!), and "Piano Man", among other hits. Sorry I can only give you an old-fashioned case cite Broadcast Music Inc. v. Old Colonial Corp., 62 U.S. Patent Quarterly, 2nd Edition, page 1685, decided January 29, 2002.

I was RATHER SURPRISED that bands would have to get a license to play covers at dives...so I phoned BMI...

BMI said the bar/night club pays an annual license (like $350) and bands that play there can cover anything they want (but they can't record it...that's "mechanical rights" and you have to talk to the owners/producers about that). This bar, the Bell in Hand Tavern in Boston, was made an example of!! Yikes!!

Join me in a pub crawl to warn bar owners of the perils of doing business?

[ab-NORM-al]

that was fat enuff to be a wednesday paper...big edition today

oh yeah, i'd hug ya, but not on this street corner

hi CQ!

me thinks BMI is getting desperate enuff to chase 34 grand

also realizing that since recorded music is now free....maybe the live scene is where the money will be