The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

News en vrac

Big computing flexes Linux muscle
Even for those who don't like it, Linux has become an unavoidable part of the computing landscape. The growing influence of the Linux operating system and the open-source software movement will be on display as several large companies announce products and plans at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. Not only will staunch Linux advocates such as IBM and Red Hat be at the four-day convention in San Francisco, so will recent convert Sun Microsystems and even Linux's sworn enemy, Microsoft. An adaptable clone of the Unix operating system for servers, Linux has graduated from being a hobby for independent programmers to a tool companies use to advance their products. IBM and HP are working on Linux for mammoth servers. Sun is working on Linux for desktop computers as well as servers to take on Microsoft. Oracle is working on file-storage software to make Linux databases better.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-949276.html

Should government mandate open source?
Open-source software advocates will unfurl a legislative proposal next week to prohibit the state of California from buying software from Microsoft or any other company that doesn't open its source code and licensing policies. Named the "Digital Software Security Act," the proposal essentially would make California the "Live Free or Die" state when it comes to software. If enacted as written, state agencies would be able to buy software only from companies that do not place restrictions on use or access to source code. The agencies would also be given the freedom to "make and distribute copies of the software." "The legislative intent is that for software to be acceptable to the state, it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that the contractual condition for purchase and/or licensing must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license," the proposal states.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-949241.html

Are Virus writers getting scared away?
The first half of 2002 has been an eerily quiet period for the computer experts on watch for worms and viruses, leaving some to trumpet their effectiveness even as their predictions of doom are now looking overblown. Nobody has a bullet-proof explanation, but theories range from the introduction of enhanced anti-virus software to stiffer anti-hacker laws to more vigilant computer users. Last year, security experts calculate, the Code Red, Nimda and Sircam worms caused billions of dollars worth of damage, knocking out computer networks for days and forcing companies to scramble for patches to prevent recurring attacks.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-949411.html

Sun gambles on new Linux computer
Sun Microsystems on Monday unveiled its first general-purpose computer running the free Linux operating system in what is seen as both a turning point for the company and a potential threat to its traditional products. Known for its million-dollar machines that powered dot-coms during the Internet boom years, Sun aims to grab a piece of the market for cheap, commodity servers, but analysts say it runs the risk of hurting its higher-margin business if it embraces Linux too fully. Sun's LX50 computer holds up to two Pentium III microchips from Intel, runs a Sun version of Linux and will start at a price of $2,795.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-949337.html

PGP encryption defect uncovered
Messages encrypted with the Pretty Good Privacy algorithm could fall prey to a technique that fools senders into decoding their own secret messages, according to researchers. The attack is known to work against the widely used open-source encryption software GNU Privacy Guard but requires that the would-be spy first intercept the message and then convince the sender to decrypt what seems to be a second message. A noted cryptographer, however, stressed that PGP is not broken.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-949368.html

Web geeks rally for the disabled
Calling all do-good developers! Organizers of a unique technology rally are looking for computer programmers and designers to build Web sites useful to people with disabilities. The first Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR) California will be held on Sept. 21 at a San Francisco high school, and coordinators hope to make it an annual event. The rally, hosted by CompuMentor and Knowbility, pairs nonprofit organizations in need of Web sites with groups of professional Web developers. About a dozen 10-member teams will be asked to build sophisticated Web sites that are easy for people with physical or mental disabilities to navigate -- including people with visual impairments and those who cannot use keyboards or mice.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-949378.html

U.K. looks to copy DMCA
The United Kingdom is preparing its own version of a digital anti-piracy law, following the publication of proposals designed to implement the European Union Copyright Directive. In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has received widespread criticism for restrictions that, among other things, have been used to stop researchers from lecturing on anti-copying technologies and from publishing information on holes in those technologies. Responses to the U.K.'s proposed law are due Oct. 31. According to the EU, the new rules must be incorporated into law by Dec. 22. Significant parts of the law include new legal protection for digital watermarks, copy protection systems and other measures used to protect copyright material online.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-949421.html

Cell phone chip shrinks
Chipmaker RF Micro Devices on Monday unveiled what it claims is the smallest version yet of an integral part of a cell phone known as a "front end receiver." The Greensboro, N.C.-based company said it's shaved a half-millimeter off all four sizes of the receiver, which is the first semiconductor that a phone signal passes through when it reaches a handset. RF Micro Devices spokesman Michael Coady said the new chip designs are to meet the growing demand by cell phone makers for tinier components. That creates room for handset makes like Nokia or Motorola to increase the size of a phone's screen or add new functions, like the ability to watch videos.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-949385.html

AOL upgrade brings Netscape to Mac
America Online has released a new version of its Internet access software designed for Apple Computer's Mac OS X operating system. New features in AOL for Mac OS X include a message counter that displays the number of new e-mails and instant messages on the AOL icon in the Mac OS X Dock; support for e-mail with rich HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) features; a new search service; and a new welcome screen with one-click access to e-mail. The software integrates Netscape Communication’s Gecko browser and supports Apple's QuickTime media player. It also supports Apple's iChat messaging program and will allow users of iChat and AOL Instant Messenger to communicate with one another.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-949345.html

Lawmakers lend an ear to tech worries
Improving the economy and boosting homeland security topped the agenda at a meeting between Democrat lawmakers and Silicon Valley executives on Monday. The New Democrat Network's West Coast retreat, an annual event, provides a chance for members of Congress to listen to concerns of those in the tech industry. Much has changed since the last gathering, including the Sept. 11 attacks, a deepening tech slowdown, and a slew of corporate accounting scandals. "The whole country's a more humble place," said NDN President Simon Rosenberg, who called the event the political group's most important yearly gathering. Discussions focused on improving homeland security through technology, resolving the fight over digital rights management and piracy, and recovering from the loss of faith in the markets.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-949448.html?tag=fd_top

Geeks in government: A good idea?
There's a lot for a politically aware geek to be alarmed about nowadays. Big companies are wielding copyright threats to stifle legitimate security research. Hollywood is itching to hack your PC. Your privacy is vanishing as fast as Al Gore's 2004 presidential hopes. And the merry band of technophobes in Congress is just getting started. Too often, though, programmers, system administrators and other IT pros become understandably outraged by the latest attempts to restrict technology -- and react by doing precisely the wrong thing. They set up irate Web sites, launch online petition drives and tell all their friends to write to their congressional representatives. Here's the bitter truth: These efforts are mostly a waste of time. Sure, they may make you feel better, but they're not the way to win.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-949275.html?tag=fd_nc_1

A fresh breath of Oxygen
Feel free to try this at home. It won't work unless you're exceedingly clever. Brooks qualifies on that score: He's director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. And even he needed help from dozens of colleagues and students to put his system together. Far from an exercise in self-gratification, Brooks's automated office is part of a major MIT research project called Oxygen, a project aimed at finally creating the kind of interaction between computers and people that we see every summer in Hollywood blockbusters, but never in real life.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/22..._Oxygen+.shtml

We must engage in copyright debate
If you can set the rules, you can win the contest. That's the major reason the entertainment cartel is winning the debate over copyright in the Digital Age. Average people are not part of the conversation, not in any way that matters. To the cartel and its chattel in the halls of political power, we are nothing but "consumers'' -- our sole function is to eat what the movie, music and publishing industries put in front of us, and then send money. It's long past time for the rest of us to challenge the cartel's assumptions, actions and overall clout. Over the next few weeks and months I'll offer some suggestions.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ts/3847297.htm

Baby-sitting via satellite
Satellite technology is being used in the US to keep track of children and offer peace of mind to parents. A wristwatch containing miniature Global Positioning System (GPS) technology has just gone on sale. The GPS Personal Locator developed by Silicon Valley company Wherify Wireless uses advances in satellite tracking and wireless technologies to allow parents to find their child within a minute. The hope is that a device like this one could act as either a deterrent to potential kidnappers, or at least aid police investigating a missing child case. The GPS Personal Locator allows parents to track a child's location and movements via the internet.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2181469.stm

AOL media player goes mainstream
AOL Time Warner has updated its popular Winamp MP3 player, adding video capabilities that bring the program into direct competition with streaming media giants Apple Computer, Microsoft and RealNetworks. With the addition of video playback and streaming, Winamp graduates from being a mere audio player to a full-fledged media player. And with its current ability to stream Microsoft's Windows Media formats, and its intention to add RealNetworks formats, Winamp could put AOL Time Warner in a position to muscle its way up in the fight for media player dominance. Should a video-enabled Winamp start to cut into the market share of its media player competitors, that could spell trouble for a key alliance forged between AOL Time Warner and RealNetworks to thwart Microsoft's aggressive media ambitions.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-949191.html

Flash flaw opens Windows for attack
Macromedia has warned that its Flash Player, a ubiquitous application for playing multimedia files, has a vulnerability that could allow attackers to run malicious code on Windows and Unix-based operating systems. Separately, researchers discovered a flaw in the player that could allow an attacker to read files on a person’s local hard drive. The software flaws are serious because the Flash Player is so widespread. Macromedia estimates that more than 90 percent of PCs are capable of playing Flash content. The file-execution vulnerability, discovered by eEye Digital Security, uses a modified header in a SWF movie file to create a buffer overrun in Flash Player. Macromedia noted that the malformed headers could only be created by hand-editing the file with a binary editing tool, and could not be created by the Flash authoring tool.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-949364.html?tag=cd_mh

Tuning in to digital radio
A company whose technology will serve as the basis for most digital radio broadcasting announced Monday a number of deals for compatible radios and the chips that will power them. Columbia, Md.-based iBiquity Digital, backed by most of the nation's major radio broadcasters, also announced a new brand name for its technology: HD Radio. Radio stations in six major markets, including New York and Los Angeles, will begin digital broadcasts later this year, though consumer radios that can actually receive the broadcasts will not be available until spring 2003.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-949335.html?tag=cd_mh

Soccer game kicks Sony into court
A unit of Sony is going to court in the Netherlands next week over claims that it wrongfully used the trademarks of three top Dutch professional soccer clubs in its video game. A representative for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) in London, the Sony division that publishes the games, declined on Friday to comment on the matter "so as not to prejudice the August 15 court case.” Dutch clubs Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord allege that SCEE wrongfully incorporated the teams' trademarks in the "This is Football 2002" game, said Sven Klos, an attorney for the clubs. The soccer clubs are asking a Dutch court to order SCEE to immediately suspend Dutch sales of "This is Football 2002" and halt this autumn's launch of the 2003 version of the game in the Netherlands, Klos said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-949101.html?tag=cd_mh

RIP: Alba, the Glowing Bunny
Alba, the glowing rabbit that made headlines two years ago for being, well, a glowing rabbit, has met an untimely death, according to the French researcher who genetically engineered her. Alba the glowing rabbit was 4 years old. Or 2-1/2, depending on who's talking. The bunny died about a month ago for reasons that are not clear, said Louis-Marie Houdebine, a genetic researcher at France's National Institute of Agronomic Research. "I was informed one day that bunny was dead without any reason," Houdebine said. "So, rabbits die often. It was about 4 years old, which is a normal lifespan in our facilities." Alba was an albino rabbit engineered by splicing the green fluorescent protein (GFP) of a jellyfish into her genome. Houdebine said he did not believe the GFP gene played a role in the animal's demise.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,54399,00.html

Be It Ever So Humble: Trash Home
Earthships, the funky home-architecture developed in the United States, are witnessing a major surge in popularity among homebuilders around the world -– and the grudging approval of politicians. The United Kingdom is the latest country to catch on to Earthship design, and the first country in Europe to build Earthship dwellings with full planning approval. Planning authorities had previously been loathe to approve a building made of trash: bottles, cans and, primarily, old tires stuffed with dirt. Two Earthships in the United Kingdom -- one in Fife, Scotland, and the second in Brighton, England -- are designed to prove that affordable, sustainable living is not only possible, but preferable to the typical alternatives. The demonstration model already in action in Fife has proved immensely popular.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,54301,00.html

Pseudo Meat Called Unhealthy
A health advocacy group accused the government Monday of allowing fake meat made from fungus to be sold even though it makes people sick, and demanded that the product, known as Quorn, be recalled. The Center for Science in the Public Interest said it received reports from 33 people who had suffered vomiting, diarrhea and other ailments after eating Quorn. A North Carolina man broke out in hives and had trouble breathing, the group said. Quorn is the trade name for mycoprotein, which is used as a substitute for ground beef and chicken. It's also used in lasagna and fettuccine Alfredo.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54487,00.html

DVDs Could Spark Digital TV Sales
Forget Washington politicking, the 30 million people who own DVD players will be the ones who cast the deciding votes on the success of digital television. Congress and the FCC say that broadcasters will begin sending out their shows in digital form by 2006. Consumers have been unwilling to wait until then, gobbling up digital movies and music videos on DVD as fast as they're churned out. That's because DVDs deliver everything DTV promises -- from theater-quality pictures to Internet interactivity, without the added cost of upgrading your cable or satellite network.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,54442,00.html

Net Visionaries Seek New Vistas
In some fields, getting a blank stare means you're on the right track. When they invented the Internet, blank stares were commonplace. And now Vinton Cerf (co-designer of the TCP/IP protocol upon which the Internet is built) and Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Worldwide Web) are each generating the now-familiar quizzical expressions as they promote their latest vision of tomorrow's computer networks. One is currently mapping out plans for an Interplanetary Internet; the other is drawing upon the Web's potential as a worldwide data bank for intelligent agents. Both men were honorees at this year's Telluride Tech Festival in Colorado, which ended Sunday. Both are innovators whose contributions to society will be greater still if their current visions pan out.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54416,00.html

An IM Chat Imbroglio in India
Until recently, ISPs in India were battling with policy makers for permission to offer Internet telephony. Now voice chatting on instant messenger, a free service, is hitting them where it hurts. Internet telephony is one of the popular pastimes at Internet cafes despite poorer voice quality compared with regular telephone use. It's all the rage with youngsters, who talk mostly for fun. The service is also popular because it's much less expensive than the telephone. It costs (U.S.) 10 cents per minute for international calling by telephony, while the comparable service offered by telephone costs 49 cents per minute. ISPs estimate that the industry will have earned $6 million from the service in its first year. But while Internet telephony has a big advantage over the telephone, instant messaging has an even bigger advantage over Internet telephony because it's free.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54184,00.html

Hollywood's private war for social control
A July 25 letter sent to Attorney General John Ashcroft by 19 American legislators asked him to devote more Justice Department resources in the fight against peer-to-peer networks and users swapping digital media without permission. Forget the fact that the FBI is neck-deep in an internal crisis of confidence and competence, having a hard time recruiting and keeping qualified agents, and shifting from a diverse federal law enforcement entity to one in-line with the emerging threats to American society from terrorism. No, it seems that one of the highest priorities for the Justice Department - behind that simple task of securing America's Homeland - should be copyright enforcement....at least in the eyes of the Recording Industry Association of America.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26618.html

Cloned cows produce human antibodies
Cloned cows producing human antibodies could soon be drafted into the battle against a wide variety of microbes, including those attractive to terrorists. James Robl at the Connecticut-based company Hematech and his colleagues used artificial chromosomes and cloning technology to create cattle that contained a full suite of functional human antibody genes. However before any antibodies the animals produce can be used in patients, the researchers need to knock out the cows' own antibody genes. This would make it possible to harvest pure human antibodies from the animals.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992658

Tune in to terahertz
From a human point of view, the terahertz frequencies are a curiously barren region of the electromagnetic spectrum. They lie, unexploited, between microwaves at long wavelengths and infra-red at short. They are neglected because no one has developed a convenient source of terahertz radiation. Not yet, anyway. But a laser unveiled by Alessandro Tredicucci of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, at the recent International Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors, in Edinburgh, lights the way to the future. Research into terahertz sources has been driven hard by demand from industry. Terahertz frequencies have great potential in medical imaging because they are strongly absorbed by large biological molecules and by water, and so promise to reveal tissues in astonishing detail. Research carried out by a company called TeraView in Cambridge, England, for example, has indicated that terahertz imaging might distinguish cancerous skin cells from healthy cells.
http://www.economist.com/science/dis...ory_id=1270490

EMI Music sues AOL Time Warner
EMI Group filed suit against AOL Time Warner Wednesday, claiming the world's largest media company has been playing songs on its Turner Broadcasting network and America Online Internet service without paying for them. The dispute pits the owners of two of the major recording companies against each other at a time when they are working together with the rest of the recording industry to fight against copyright violations by various online operations. EMI's publishing unit contends that AOL Time Warner is illegally using songs for promotional purposes from "The Wizard of Oz," "Singin' in the Rain," and other classic Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movies.
http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2002/...aol/index.html

Coble wrong about Hollywood hackers
Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of the Internet, with the voters of North Carolina's sixth Congressional district leading the charge. A bill cosponsored by our own representative, Howard Coble, would give too much power to the entertainment industry at the expense of your privacy and freedom. If passed, the law would allow record companies and others to hack into the personal computers of people who may have obtained music or other data from one of the popular file-sharing services. The proposed new Section 514 in Title 17 of the U.S. Code is meant to serve the laudable end of protecting copyright holders and safeguarding their property rights. But the remedy under consideration gives Hollywood vigilantes power over private citizens, and that cure would be worse than the disease. According to the bill, companies would not be legally liable for "disabling, interfering with, blocking, diverting, or otherwise impairing" files on private computers.
http://www.news-record.com/news/colu...aff/cone04.htm

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[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
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