The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Vrooom vrooooom

Wandering penguin finds a flock
Efforts to prevent the Linux from splitting into several incompatible versions -- a problem that has in the past hobbled Unix, the operating system upon which Linux is modeled -- moved several steps ahead this week. On Wednesday, three versions of Linux -- Red Hat 7.3, SuSE 8.0 Professional and Mandrake ProSuite 8.2 -- became the first products certified to comply with the guidelines of the Linux Standard Base (LSB). The LSB, administered by the Free Standards Group, a nonprofit organization of software developers and information technology industry members, in effect standardizes many of the basic parts of Linux while allowing companies to add their own features atop that foundation.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-950180.html

Gamers wired for LAN party marathons
It was Friday night, and like any self-respecting college student, Michael Duarte had his mind on partying. Instead of kegs and coeds, however, the 19-year-old San Jose, Calif., sophomore's plans revolved around a couple of midrange servers, a bounty of caffeine-loaded drinks and a half a mile or so of Category 5 cable. Duarte was hosting a LAN party, a growing phenomenon among devoted PC game players who take over private garages or rented hotel ballrooms for no-sleep weekend marathons playing games such as "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" and "Warcraft III." Although they're still largely grassroots affairs, LAN parties are attracting larger numbers of attendees and even large corporate sponsors, who've learned that success in the $6.35 billion gaming business often revolves around word-of-mouth recommendations from intense hobbyists and select Web sites.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-950054.html

Linux looks to pass government standards
A technology think tank is campaigning to win Linux a greater role in government by offering to act as a central repository for a federally certified version of the open-source operating system. The Cyberspace Policy Institute, a decade-old technology policy think tank established at George Washington University, plans to push for Linux to be certified under the Common Criteria, a standard grading of technology required by the United States and other countries before products can be sold into sensitive government applications. If successful, the initiative would lead to a single, standard version of Linux acceptable to the government, and hence make it easier for Linux companies to compete against Microsoft and other large software makers.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-950083.html

Military computers -- easy prey
Tens of thousands of U.S. military and government computers containing sensitive information are easily accessible over the Internet, a computer security firm that cracked the networks said on Friday. Military encryption techniques, correspondence between generals, recruits' Social Security and credit-card numbers and other sensitive information is often stored on Internet-connected computers that use easily guessed passwords or in some cases no passwords at all, said an official at San Diego security firm ForensicTec Solutions Inc. "We were kind of shocked at the security measures, or lack thereof," said ForensicTec President Brett O'Keefe.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-950226.html

Sony scientist: Robots need culture
Luc Steels, a professor at the University of Brussels and director of Sony's Computer Science Laboratories in Paris, wants to make robots more like living things by teaching them how to express themselves. It is a concept that has met with resistance from some quarters. In Steels's view the breakthrough that will take robots beyond the Aibo stage will come from allowing them to interact, form their own languages and even "cultures" rather than focusing strictly on how individual machines behave. This is in contrast to those who see the path to robotic intelligence simply as a matter of constructing increasingly complex machines. If Steels's theories gain the upper hand it would mean a new direction for the robotics field. Today development tends to focus on machines that have increasingly complex behaviors and can learn new behaviors.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-950178.html

Russia accuses FBI agent of hacking
Russia has accused an FBI agent who nabbed two Russian hackers of downloading evidence against the pair from a server based in Russia without authorization. The charges come nearly two years after FBI investigators lured two Chelyabinsk, Russia, residents suspected of hacking to Seattle with false offers of jobs with a fictitious security firm. The FBI fooled the suspects into accessing their overseas computers from the United States, and then used the same passwords to download large files that were subsequently used for evidence. A directorate from Russia's Federal Security Service on Thursday alleged that FBI Special Agent Michael Schuler, who was in charge of the Seattle investigation, illegally accessed Russian Internet servers to gather evidence. Special Agent Marty D. Prewett, who also led aspects of the investigation, has not been mentioned in the case.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-950719.html?tag=fd_top

Judge hits rewind on ReplayTV case
In a nod to consumers, a federal court ruled Friday that five ReplayTV owners will be heard in a legal debate over technology that lets TV viewers skip commercials. U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper granted permission to combine a copyright lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of the device owners and one filed by consumer electronics manufacturer Sonicblue, maker of ReplayTV. With its ruling, the judge denied a motion by the entertainment industry to dismiss the EFF lawsuit. Sonicblue and the EFF joined together in defense of a suit filed by several major TV networks and movie studios. In its suit, the entertainment industry alleged that Sonicblue's ReplayTV digital video recording (DVR) device infringed on copyrights by permitting consumers to skip commercials and send shows to other ReplayTV owners over the Internet.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-954169.html?tag=fd_top

Record labels sue Web heavyweights
The world's largest record companies sued a number of major Internet service and network providers on Friday, alleging their routing systems allow users to access a China-based Web site and unlawfully copy musical recordings. The copyright-infringement suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks a court order requiring the defendants to block Internet communications that travel through their systems to and from the Listen4ever site. The suit says the plaintiffs have not been able to determine who owns the Web site. Plaintiffs in the suit include such major labels as UMG Recordings, a unit of Vivendi Universal; Sony Music Entertainment, a unit of Sony; the RCA Records Label, a unit of Bertelsmann's BMG; and Warner Bros. Records, a unit of AOL Time Warner.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-954176.html?tag=fd_top

Movie freebie to lure AOL newbies
America Online is giving new dial-up customers 12 free video rentals for one year through a joint promotion with Blockbuster video stores. It's the latest AOL partnership with a big brick-and-mortar company to lure new customers with giveaways. The strategy is timely, as growth in new Internet service subscriptions declines and competition grows. In March, the leading Internet provider offered subscribers coupons for a free slice of apple pie at Burger King for the 45th anniversary of the Whopper. Under the Blockbuster deal, customers who sign up for AOL 7.0 through free discs available at Blockbuster's 4,300 stores in the United States are sent coupons via e-mail every month for a year.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-952165.html?tag=fd_top

Brilliant Digital takes a hit
Brilliant Digital Entertainment on Thursday said it collected $375,000 in net revenue for the second quarter, down 42 percent from $652,000 in the comparable second quarter of 2001. Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Brilliant Digital, whose Altnet peer-to-peer software comes bundled with the popular Kazaa file-swapping client, reported a net loss of about $2 million, or 9 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $1.2 million, or 8 cents per share, for the same period last year. Brilliant Digital Chief Executive Kevin Bermeister attributed the drop in revenue to initial costs associated with a shift in corporate strategy from 3D animation production to advertising and content distribution services offered through Altnet.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-950003.html?tag=cd_mh

Robot takes a whack at weeds
Tired of mowing the lawn? New Zealand researchers say they have a device that could make your neighbors green with envy.
It's a lawnmower operated via the Internet. The robotic grass cutter is controlled through a Web page which monitors the mower by a small camera on the side of a house. “What our technology allows us to do is to control lawnmowers and other robotic devices while people are away at work,” Massey University's Glen Bright said. The electric mower, smaller and more compact than the average mower, moves in a sequence across the grass, stopping in places that require trimming.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-950135.html?tag=cd_mh

These Machines Feel Your Pain
Where does it hurt and how much does it hurt? Only patients can answer those questions, and their responses aren't always precise. But brain-scan technology is on the verge of allowing doctors to assign a number to a person's pain, just like a body temperature or blood count. This weekend, Chaplan and thousands of other pain experts will meet in San Diego at the l0th World Congress on Pain and examine ways to use body scanning machines to evaluate pain. But the world of hurt is so complex that some doctors say the colorful blobs on a brain scan monitor could miss the big picture and mislead everyone who looks at them. Or the scans might work just fine but provide no more information than someone could get from what doctors call a "good historian" -- a patient who accurately reports how he or she feels.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,54519,00.html

Racing to the 'God Particle'
Physicists from all over the world are racing to prove the existence of a particle that's surmised to be at the heart of the matter. Literally. Dubbed the "God particle" by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman, the Higgs boson is a controversial particle believed to bestow mass on all other particles. Scientists are hoping to discover traces of its presence in Fermilab's Tevatron, a 7-mile-long circumference particle accelerator that smashes opposing beams of protons and antiprotons around a circular track, sifting through the debris with two immense detectors called CDF and D0. Because it plays a key role in the standard model of physics (the theory on which physicists base their whole understanding of matter), proving the existence or absence of the Higgs boson could rock the entire foundation of physics, indicating the existence of particles and forces not yet imagined and paving the way for an entirely new set of laws.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,54507,00.html

Green: A Thing Raitt Talks About
Bonnie Raitt is bringing a different type of energy to her shows this summer. The blues rocker, along with the Green Mountain Energy Company, will provide solar and wind-generated power to the 42 cities on her current tour that kicked off on July 27. The goal is to promote sustainable living and teach people about clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels. The Raitt camp says its efforts will wipe out 327 tons of carbon dioxide emissions that would have been produced from traditional power generation. Raitt's Green thumb is the latest cause in her 30-year career as a rocker and social activist.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54557,00.html

Nasa space probe missing
One of Nasa's space probes appears to be missing. The science probe was scheduled to depart Earth orbit on Thursday for a 2003 encounter with a comet. The Comet Nucleus Tour, or Contour, spacecraft was to have fired its manoeuvering engine at 2349 GMT on Wednesday for 50 seconds and contact its ground control team at the Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland, 45 minutes later. "So far, we've heard nothing," said Mike Buckley, a spokesman for the school's Applied Research Laboratory which built the $159 million probe and manages the mission for Nasa. The team is trying to contact the probe through Nasa's Deep Space Network along the path Contour would have taken if the engine firing had worked.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2196102.stm

Hypersonic scramjet test a success
An experimental hypersonic jet engine has been successfully tested in flight for the first time, Australian scientists have announced. The HyShot supersonic ramjet combustion or "scramjet" engine ignited briefly during a 10-minute flight above the Australian outback on 29 July, flight data shows. "To the best of our knowledge, we've achieved supersonic combustion in flight for the very first time, and we have measured it," HyShot programme leader Allan Paull at the University of Queensland told AAP. Scramjet engines use oxygen from the atmosphere for combustion. This makes them far lighter than conventional rocket engines, which need to carry oxygen supplies. Scientists hope this very light design could revolutionise spacecraft launch vehicles, and potentially jet aircraft design.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992685

BT Broadband accuses P2P users of copyright abuse
BT is threatening to kick users of P2P applications off its broadband service, citing copyright abuse. This is a new development at the monster telco which has already shown its commercial antipathy to file-sharing sites. Last week, Reg reader Robert Brown received a letter from the BTBroadband abuse team accusing him of distributing copyrighted material via his account. The letter ordered him to stop distributing such material within 24 hours of face having his account terminated, for breaching the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for the no-frills ADSL service. Brown could find no mention of not being allowed to use P2P in the policy, though in the Usenet section there is an injunction to observe copyright issues and not to "post material that you did not create, unless you have the permission of the owner of the relevant rights in that material".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26674.html

MP3s are good for music biz - Forrester
Forrester Research has surveyed a thousand music customers and concludes that MP3 downloads are good for the music business. Twenty per cent of those surveyed - two groups Forrester describes as "music lovers and music learners" - buy 36 per cent of CDs, and these enthusiastic downloaders said MP3s had no effect on their CD purchasing. "The idea that digital music is responsible for slump is completely false," concludes Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff. Forrester attributes the 15 per cent slump in music sales to a number of other factors. The economy is in a slump, there's much more competition from games, from DVDs - which saw an 80 per cent rise in sales - and most interestingly - from the "limited playlists" rotated by commercial US radio stations.
http://www.theregus.com/content/6/26012.html

Exemptions exempted in Europe's DMCA
The European equivalent DMCA is a done deal, but the implementation of opt-outs could make all the difference in each EU member state. And the United Kingdom is missing out. Section 5.2 of the EU Copyright Directive provides a long list intended to protect cryptographers and academics, and preserve some notional 'fair use' for press and satirists, amongst others. But the UK draft, published last week, has some key omissions. "The Government has given us several but not all of the optional ones," says Julian Midgely, spokesman for the Campaign for Digital Rights. The opt-outs are important: cryptographer Dmitri Sklyarov could not have been prosecuted under the EUCD for revealing details of Adobe's eBook encryption, but his employer Elcomsoft, most probably would have been liable for distributing software to bypass the crypto.
http://www.theregus.com/content/6/26014.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Hey WT, your shop will go bankrupt if nobody is paying any virtual dollars for their newspapers.... so here is one with a kiss!

Thanks again!

- tg

[MagicMorpheus]

I love the news! Thanks walktalker!