The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

[walktalker]

Some guys have all the luck

Microsoft grant: Strings attached, eh?
Microsoft's Canadian subsidiary has established a $10 million fund to support technology research and development at Canadian universities. But the first grant awarded from the fund has already caused an uproar, after one of the recipients agreed to require a class in a Microsoft programming language as part of the deal. The Microsoft Canada Academic Innovation Alliance was formally launched Wednesday, with a $2.3 million grant to University of Waterloo. The grant will fund, among other projects, a research program developing a mathematical recognition engine for the Tablet PC, for which Microsoft has developed operating system. The grant includes access to other Microsoft technology, such as Microsoft's .Net technology.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-949945.html

Ellison hails open source
Linux is making inroads against Microsoft, but to become a real threat there must be a concerted effort to build an open-source offering that's competitive to Microsoft Office, Larry Ellison said. Oracle's chief executive officer, speaking at a Linux conference here Wednesday, told the crowd of loyalists that Oracle was committed to the open-source operating system, but rained on dreams of Linux on every desktop unless there was a strong or popular open-source alternative to Office. Sun Microsystems has open-sourced its StarOffice product -- but when Ellison asked for a show of StarOffice users and whether they were happy, he received a tepid response, even from the partisan crowd.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-949877.html

Apple eases multi-Mac home licenses
Aiming to reward those households with more than one Mac, Apple Computer will introduce a family plan for licensing OS X. Under the plan, which will coincide with next week's release of Mac OS X version 10.2 (also known as Jaguar), consumers can buy a $199 a copy of the operating system and install it on up to five Macs in a single household. "We've been getting feedback over the last while that more and more families are adding second and third Macs," said Mac OS X marketing director Ken Bereskin. Some Mac owners have been miffed by Apple's decision not to widely offer an inexpensive upgrade version of Jaguar to Mac OS X owners.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-949996.html

Is Iomega's new Zip zapped?
Can Iomega put zip back into Zip? The San Diego-based company, which introduced a faster, 750MB Zip drive Thursday, seems to think so. But analysts have their doubts about how much life is left in the speedy line of detachable drives. The new Zip 750 drive is available immediately in a version that supports USB (universal serial bus) 2.0 connections. Iomega plans to unveil a FireWire model at next month's Apple Expo in Paris. The USB 2.0 drive sells for $180, while a disk goes for $14.95 singly or $12.49 in packs of eight. When available, the FireWire Zip 750 will sell for $200. Zip technology was one of the runaway PC product success stories in the days before the dot-com boom made intangibles the hot commodity among technology consumers and Wall Street investors.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-949827.html

New Yahoo IM pushes video, 'emoticons'
Yahoo on Thursday will launch a new version of its instant messaging software that will offer a boosted Webcam feature for broadband users, the Web portal's latest effort to distinguish itself from rivals America Online and Microsoft. The new Yahoo Messenger 5.5 will allow much higher transmission quality for Webcam users with broadband connections. The new feature will allow people to transmit video at 20 frames per second, just shy of the movie industry standard of 24 frames per second. That's an improvement from Yahoo's current Webcam resolution of just 1 frame per second, which is geared toward people with dial-up connections. Another added feature is a new collection of "emoticons," some of which are animated. The software will also include more IMVironments, which allow people to download custom backgrounds from advertisers and other Yahoo properties.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-949876.html

Pay-tracking tools a sign of the times
Before an accounting scandal forced WorldCom into bankruptcy court this year, the company faced another kind of bookkeeping shenanigan: As much as $4 million in phony sales commissions was pocketed by more than a dozen employees. According to numerous reports, WorldCom has fired several employees over the problem -- one of many cracks in the telecommunications company's finances, which are now the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. Though WorldCom's financial woes are certainly more rare and massive than most companies will ever encounter, its experience with the administration of commission plans is a common problem. On average, companies that don't use information technology to track payments from customers overpay their employees by 3 percent to 8 percent of their bonuses and commissions, according to technology research firm Gartner.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-949844.html?tag=fd_lede

RealNetworks mulling adult pay-per-view
RealNetworks is considering adding adult programming to its multimedia subscription service. The company is in discussions with several audio and video producers to expand the lineup on RealOne SuperPass, the company's fast-growing content subscription service, said Dave Richards, RealNetworks' vice president of consumer systems, in an interview this week. Although Richards said there are no immediate plans to launch an adult channel on SuperPass, he added the possibility would not be ruled out.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-950053.html?tag=fd_top

Talk City users upset by site's shuttering
The shutdown of Talk City has left many of its former customers upset and at no loss for words. Saying they were given no warning of the closure, many users whose Web sites were hosted by online chat company Talk City are upset that they were unable to back up those sites. Meanwhile, other users are simply saddened by the end of Talk City's popular chat services. "I'm so sick about this," said Tamara Latham, whose poetry Web site disappeared when Talk City shut down. "All that work for nothing." Talk City shuttered its site last week after filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy several days earlier. The company, which had been involved since January in a legal dispute with LiveWorld, the former owner of the Talk City site, could no longer afford to continue the litigation, said Robert Young, Talk City's chief executive.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-950060.html?tag=fd_top

IBM flexes its supercomputer muscle
IBM said Thursday that it inked a deal to build Germany's largest supercomputer to date. The new computer, worth well over $10 million, was purchased by Germany's Juelich Research Center and will be installed next year at its Central Institute for Applied Mathematics, otherwise known as ZAM. There, scientists from a number of disciplines will use the supercomputer to conduct research in physics, chemistry, life sciences and environmental sciences. The new computer, which will be based on 37 IBM eServer p690 systems using IBM's Power4 processor, will offer a peak performance of 5.8 teraflops, meaning it will be capable of making 5.8 trillion mathematical computations per second.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-949973.html?tag=fd_top

Digital Cinema Take 2
Film offers the best color and clarity, but in Hollywood's effects houses, computers rule. Moviemakers must expertly blend both media. Hollywood being a star-making machine above all else, it was not surprising that the buzz on 2000’s release of Cast Away was all about the weight Tom Hanks gained and then dropped to give life to his character’s years of privation. The real magic behind the film wasn’t revealed until much later — that the island peak over which the hero clambered was a mud pile overlooking a California parking lot, and that much of the tropical environment seen on screen, from breakers to mountaintop, had been fashioned inside a computer. That a tropical island could be manufactured so seamlessly out of pixels and algorithms testifies to the ascendancy of digital technology in Hollywood, where it has all but superseded the optical and photochemical manipulations that were state of the art as recently as 10 years ago.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...iltzik0902.asp

Linux users march on city hall
A small but enthusiastic crowd of Linux lovers hit the streets of San Francisco on Thursday, hoping to trumpet the virtues of open source to lawmakers and voters. Led by Michael Tiemann, chief technology officer of Linux seller Red Hat, the group marched the mile-long stretch from the LinuxWorld conference to San Francisco City Hall. There Tiemann unveiled the Digital Software Security Act, a proposal that would prohibit the state from buying software that doesn't open its code. Tiemann, wearing a red fedora and clutching a map so he could find his destination, said he also wanted to point out the hypocrisy of the state, which is one of the holdouts in the antitrust battle against Microsoft even as it runs the company's software in government offices. "While they're spending money suing the monopolist, they're also feeding the monopolist with the other hand," Tiemann told the crowd.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-950074.html?tag=cd_mh

Schools not making the grade in Web use
Computers may now be nearly as common as blackboards and lockers in U.S. schools, but they are not meeting the needs of Internet-savvy students, according to a study released Wednesday. Students hoping to research science projects or term papers online face a "digital disconnect" in the classroom as they are often stymied by restrictive access policies and content filters, the report said. Many students have a limited ability to explore on their own because they are not taught basic typing and computer skills and homework assignments do not push them to develop their skills, the report said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-949829.html?tag=cd_mh

N.Y. Pol: No Cell Phones for You
New York was the first major city in the United States to prohibit driving while talking on a cell phone. Now a city councilman wants cell phones banned in public places throughout the city, including libraries, movie theaters and museums. In a move lambasted by the cellular phone industry, Councilman Philip Reed introduced legislation that prohibits the use of cell phones in "any place to which the public is invited or permitted and where members of the public assemble to witness cultural, recreational or educational activities." While the bill makes an exception for emergency calls, it punishes anyone who infringes on the rule with a $50 fine.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,54582,00.html

A Gartgantuan Gathering of Gamers
Players from around the globe are gathering in a Dallas suburb hoping to be the last person standing in a four-day video game tournament. The event is QuakeCon, a yearly ritual for players of id Software's most popular games. Players will battle against each other in two games: Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Quake. Both pit players against each other in a virtual battle to the death, where winners of the individual and team competitions will walk away with $25,000 each. The team event will feature 64 four-person clans playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein. At the same time, 256 players will square off in single-player Quake tournament.
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,54484,00.html

Disputed Air ID Law May Not Exist
A recent lawsuit filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation founder John Gilmore against U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, United Airlines and several others challenges the requirement that airline flyers present government-issued identification in order to travel within the United States. The suit claims unpublished federal regulations have created an "internal passport" for Americans in violation of the U.S. Constitution. As it turns out, there may be no such law on the books. Instead, carefully worded rules and statements allow airlines to make it seem that way. Under current federal regulations, they're only required to ask for ID, not to make it a condition of travel.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,54464,00.html

The Age of Assisted Cognition
Pervasive computing's earliest adapters will be old people, according to medical experts and AI gurus at a conference here hosted by Intel Research. Speakers at "Computing, Cognition and Caring for Future Elders" discussed infrared badges that track patients, mirrors that spot suspicious moles, accelerometers that detect falls, and computers that remind the incontinent to visit the toilet at regular intervals. Most described an aging, increasingly demented America, who forgets to take her pills and is forever misplacing the TV remote control. The medical experts said age-related dementia, most notably Alzheimer's disease, is the price we're paying for staying healthy.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,54515,00.html

Take These Genes and Call Me in the Morning
Riemenschneider is part of a team of military scientists experimenting with so-called gene vaccines as a weapon against the growing threat of bioterror. Her revolver? A medical device known as a gene gun, which fires capsules containing thousands of DNA-coated gold pellets designed to inoculate the bunnies against anthrax. Propelled into the rabbit's skin cells by a blast of compressed helium, the DNA fragments are supposed to train the animal's immune system to recognize and combat the actual disease. Six months later, when Riemenschneider exposes the rabbits to what should be a deadly dose of anthrax, she's ready to declare success: Nine out of 10 remain healthy. Gene vaccines may be relatively new, but they're the logical outgrowth of two familiar strands of medical science. First is the 200-year-old practice of vaccination, in which the body is infected with a weakened form of a disease that prepares the immune system for a future encounter with the real thing.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/gvaccines.html

Intel case tests e-mail as free speech
When Ken Hamidi was fired from Intel Corp. in 1995 after a long workers’ compensation battle, he didn’t go quietly. Mr. Hamidi, 55 years old, spent the next two years criticizing the company in e-mails sent to thousands of co-workers. Convinced he was a victim of age discrimination, Mr. Hamidi even publicized his campaign by dressing as a cowboy and going on horseback to distribute printed versions of his messages to employees entering Intel’s Folsom, Calif., facility, where he once worked. Now, the California Supreme Court will determine whether the former employee’s e-mail is a form of electronic trespassing, as Intel claims, or an expression of free speech.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/794127.asp?0si=-

First language gene discovered
Scientists think they have found the first of many genes that gave humans speech. Without it, language and human culture may never have developed. Key changes to a gene in the last 200,000 years of human evolution appear to be the driving force. A "mistake" in the letters of the DNA code causes a rare disorder in humans marked by severe language and grammar difficulties. The gene was discovered last year but now scientists have studied the DNA of apes to see what sets us apart from our closest animal cousins.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2192969.stm

Human tissue company ordered to shut down
The US's largest processor and supplier of donated human tissue for transplantation has been ordered to shut down a key part of its operation. The Food and Drug Administration says this is because CryoLife cannot guarantee the tissue it supplies is free from fungal and bacterial contamination. The FDA says 27 people have developed serious infections after receiving CryoLife tissue, and one has died. CryoLife says this does not mean the tissue was the source of the infections. But the company has been ordered to recall or stop the distribution of all soft tissue, including tendons or cartilage, processed since 3 October 2001. Its supply of heart valves and veins will continue.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992681

Autism link to 'geek genes'
An upsurge in autism cases diagnosed in the Silicon Valley area of California may be due to genes more common in its high-tech workers, say experts. As many as one in 150 children in the region have some sort of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), a rate which far outstrips other areas of the US. There has been a 273% increase in the number of autistic children attending 21 regional centers in California between 1987 and 1998. And there is some evidence that a similar situation is developing in the "Silicon Fen" of high-tech industry surrounding Cambridge in the UK. Scientists strongly believe that autism is greatly influenced by genes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2192611.stm

The Likelihood of Extraterrestrial Democracy
Although it’s still two years until the next presidential election, we’re already seeing signs of politicians positioning themselves for the Oval Office. If extraterrestrials some day pick up our radio and television broadcasts, hearing the latest news of political jockeying, will they be flabbergasted by our methods of choosing a leader? Would the idea of one vote per person seem hopelessly quaint to an advanced alien nation? Maybe not. If psychologist Albert Harrison is correct, ETs might feel very much at home with the notion of going to the ballot box. Or at least they would be familiar with the process of having input into the control of their lives, even if it doesn’t take the form of presidential elections. According to Harrison, a Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, if we detect a signal from advanced extraterrestrials, there’s a good chance that the basic principles of democracy play a role in their society.
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/s...te_020815.html

Crypto lockdown secures lost laptop data
Stolen or lost laptops can now automatically encrypt all their data, thanks to new equipment that creates a wireless bond between the machine and its owner. When its "master" is out of range, it locks down, keeping the data from falling into the wrong hands. Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed the system and say it should protect data even if files have been left open on screen. A radio transceiver installed inside the laptop's casing is programmed to identify its owner by means of a small transmitter worn like a wristwatch. This lets the laptop know how far away its master is. Whenever separated by a set distance, automatic encryption of data is triggered.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992683

More news later on

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