The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

PGP e-mails may become digital bullets
For more than a decade, the United States government classified encryption technology as a weapon. Now that label might actually apply. Security-consulting firm Foundstone said Thursday that e-mail messages encrypted with the Pretty Good Privacy program can be used as digital bullets to attack and take control of a victim's computer. Because of a flaw in the way PGP handles long file names in an encrypted archive, an attacker could "take control of the recipient's computer, elevating his or her privileges on the organization's network," Foundstone said in an advisory.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-956815.html

Netizens: Sept. 11 justifies Web curbs
Americans don't necessarily care if the government removes public information from the Internet in the name of national security, according to a new study examining Web habits one year after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Pew Internet & American Life Project also found the attacks prompted more people to publish on the Web and get in contact with long-lost friends and relatives via e-mail. "For tens of millions of Americans, the Internet became a channel for anguished and prayerful gatherings, for heartfelt communication through e-mail, and for vital information," researchers said. The study found that the attacks had a profound effect on people's opinions about public information posted on the Web, even among those who generally favor disclosure.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-956937.html

PlayStation 3 seeks a radical change
While Sony basks in the success of its PlayStation 2 in the $30 billion-plus-a-year video game market, expectations are rising that its successor will be out by 2005, in an entirely different form. Sony remains tight-lipped about the timing of the next generation's debut, but it is dropping some hints about the product's likely shape -- or more accurately, lack of shape. "We're not thinking about hardware," said Kenichi Fukunaga, spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment, the Sony subsidiary that develops and makes the PlayStation. "The ideal solution would be having an operating system installed in various home appliances that could run game programs."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-956855.html

Warchalking a map for drive-by spammers
The proliferation of insecure corporate wireless networks is fuelling the growth of drive-by spamming, a security expert warned on Thursday. Speaking at the First International Security Users Conference in London, Adrian Wright, managing director of Secoda Risk Management, warned that junk e-mailers are taking advantage of unprotected wireless local area networks to bombard e-mail users with unsolicited and unwelcome messages. "These people simply drive up to a building armed with their pornographic e-mail, log into the insecure wireless network, send the message to 10 million e-mail addresses and then just drive away," said Wright.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-956886.html

HP to unveil nanotech breakthrough
Hewlett-Packard researchers will unveil a major breakthrough in the field of nanotechnology on Monday in Europe, a milestone in the company's goal to build future generations of smaller, faster and cheaper chips based on "molecular grids." Molecular grids are the central concept in HP's nanotechnology plans. In HP's vision, layers of molecular strands, laid down in a crisscross fashion like city streets, will form a mesh of tiny, intelligent circuits. This molecular mesh could be sandwiched between layers of ordinary chip wires to act as a communications network or, eventually, used as the foundation for a complete microprocessor.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-956970.html?tag=fd_top

Back to schoolers make do with old PCs
Students appear to be carrying old PCs to school this year, computer and microchip makers say, confirming glum expectations in the technology industry and stoking fears holiday sales might also falter. The back-to-school shopping season is a short and usually sweet period for personal computer sellers, and after more than a year of sluggish sales, a boost is sorely needed. Intel, which makes the microchips that power most PCs, said Thursday that sales were trending toward the low end of normal seasonal levels. Michael Capellas, president of Hewlett-Packard, the No. 1 PC maker, has said repeatedly that the season began late and was light.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956938.html?tag=fd_top

Terror laws 'eat away at privacy'
The UK is one of the worse places in the world for privacy with the internet playing a huge part in the erosion of rights, a report has found. A 400-page study compiled by Privacy International and the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center paints a grim picture of the state of privacy in a post-11 September world. "The internet is being turned into a surveillance device and eventually surveillance will be a core design component of computers," warned Simon Davies, head of Privacy International. Privacy advocates have been shocked by the swift introduction of terror legislation following the 11 September attacks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2237050.stm

Software pirates sentenced
Four men in the United Kingdom have been sentenced to jail in relation to a multimillion-dollar piracy ring involving Microsoft software. After an 8-month trial, the four ringleaders were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud. The conspiracy is believed to be one of the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom and worth about $78 million (50 million pounds). The men face further court proceedings for potential confiscation of money they are believed to have made through the piracy ring. Akbal Alibahai, 34, of London and Nabil Bakir, 29, of Berkshire, England, were directors of a company called PC Software. They were each sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Two accomplices, Adam Collier, 32, of Berkshire and Chiam Dias, 35, of London were each given custodial sentences of four months.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-956884.html?tag=cd_mh

Real plays ball over cell phones
With the playoffs just a few weeks away, baseball aficionados now can get their games on the go through a deal announced Friday between RealNetworks and Major League Baseball. The new arrangement lets fans listen to games broadcast by RealNetworks over their wireless phones or personal digital assistants. Customers need to have a wireless carrier that supports SMS (Short Message Service), a text-messaging technology. Fans will receive the local radio broadcast for whichever team they select and will be able to switch between games using voice-recognition commands or SMS. The RealNetworks Web site says that "anyone with an SMS-enabled phone" can sign up. Nearly every cell phone sold in the United States is capable of receiving SMS messages, which are wireless e-mails of 160 or fewer characters.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956850.html?tag=cd_mh

All the news that's fit to move
News about technology companies sold papers during San Francisco's dot-com heyday. Now the city's newspaper of record is hoping that technology itself will draw new subscribers. The San Francisco Chronicle, published by Hearst Communications, on Thursday announced it would offer a daily audio edition of the paper through customized CDs and enhanced mobile devices, in a move to reach people during commute hours. To do this, the publisher partnered with MobileSoft, an Atlanta, Ga.-based software developer, to create customized CDs. Subscribers can sign up to have news or columns of interest automatically downloaded to disc via the PC by 6:30 a.m. PDT, then transfer it to a car stereo.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956822.html?tag=cd_mh

Senator pulls support for copyright bill
A key Republican senator on Thursday withdrew his support for an anti-piracy bill that would make it a crime to distribute counterfeit authentication features including digital watermarks. Sen. George Allen, R-Va., said he could no longer support a proposal titled Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002 because of changes that came just before a committee voted in July to send it to the Senate floor. The bill originally targeted the kind of large-scale pirates who manufacture fake Windows holograms and enjoyed broad support from software makers such as Microsoft. But, in a little-noticed move previously reported by CNET News.com, the Senate Judiciary Committee rewrote the bill to encompass technology used in digital rights management. Following the revisions, companies that had previously backed the measure pulled their support for the bill.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956811.html?tag=cd_mh

A Tower in Oz to Touch the Sun
Last week the Australian government added its support, but no cash, to a hugely ambitious renewable energy project: the 1 kilometer-high solar tower. The project is a solar-generated wind farm on a massive scale. It works on the principle of convection -- hot air rises -- and the tower functions like a chimney. In a big chimney, air can rise very quickly. The air reaches 65 degrees Celsius at a speed of 35 mph toward the center of the 7-kilometer collector -- essentially a big greenhouse. As it rises, it turns specially designed wind turbines and produces electricity. Then night falls, heat stored in solar cells during the day is released and continues to turn the turbines. Unlike traditional wind farms, the tower doesn't have to rely on the weather for a good crop. It produces its own wind, 24 hours a day.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,54917,00.html

Pop, Pop, Pop Go Those Web Ads
In the online advertising business, success has a lot to do with maintaining the proper level of intrusiveness. Create a simple, tasteful banner ad and take the chance of being overlooked. Deluge a visitor with multiple pop-up windows, and risk inciting the scorn visited upon such advertisers as X10 Wireless Technology, creator of the omnipresent spy camera campaign. As they confront continued sluggishness in the online advertising market, publishers are increasingly veering toward the obnoxious. Providers of ad-blocking software say this trend has inspired a backlash from the Web-surfing public.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54903,00.html

Google mirror beats Great Firewall of China
China's widely criticised blocking of the web's most popular search engine Google can be defeated by viewing a strange Google mirror site through a mirror, New Scientist has discovered. The mirror site, called elgooG, is a parody of the English language version of Google in which all the text on the web pages has been reversed. The text terms used for searches are also entered in reverse. The site, which returns all the same hits as Google, can be accessed from behind China's "great firewall". Viewing the page using a mirror makes it somewhat easier to read, and would allow someone to find a website. Web site "mirroring" normally involves copying the contents of a site and hosting on a different server. This can be useful if one server is particularly busy.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992768

Secret Satellite Photos To Be Unveiled
Images sent down by U.S. secret satellites in decades past are going up for public viewing. Later this month, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) is set to declassify Keyhole (KH) imagery from the KH-7 and KH-9 satellites, two highly hush-hush intelligence-gathering spacecraft of Cold War vintage. The unveiling of the satellite snapshots is part of the U.S. government's Historical Imagery Declassification Program. Purpose of the program centers on three goals: Promote the spirit of open governance; demonstrate results of taxpayer investment in national security and ensure that researchers -- from environmentalists to historians -- have access to useful and unique sources of information.
http://www.space.com/news/secret_sat_000906.html

Rice code is 'greatest achievement'
Unravelling the blueprint of rice may be the most important breakthrough genetic science has achieved. According to Drs Kevin Livingstone and Loren Rieseberg, of the University of Indiana, US, the recent completion of the genomes of two closely related rice species will allow unprecedented insights into evolution. It will also provide crucial information that will allow rice to be genetically engineered to improve its protein content and to allow it to tolerate harsh conditions. Because rice is mankind's most important food crop - the staple diet for half of humanity - the researchers say reading its genome is of more importance than decoding mankind's own genetic code.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2238943.stm

Universe might yet collapse in 'big crunch'
The Universe might yet collapse in a devastating "big crunch". Physicists have shown that even though its growth is speeding up, it could still start to implode by the time it is only twice its current age. "A few years ago, nobody would even think seriously about the end of the world within the next 10 to 20 billion years, especially since we learned that the Universe's expansion is accelerating," says Andrei Linde of Stanford University. "Now we see it is a real possibility." In 1998, astronomers studying distant supernovae found evidence that the expansion of the Universe is getting faster. This suggests that some kind of "dark energy" is pushing space apart.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992759

Radio ID locks lost laptops
The best security is the kind you don't have to think about. Researchers at the University of Michigan have taken that adage as their guide in developing an encryption system that could reduce the security risk from lost or stolen laptops. The researchers' Zero-Interaction Authentication system combines two well-known security techniques: a hardware token that authorizes the person holding it to use a particular computer, and encryption software that locks and unlocks files on a computer. The user wears the token in the form of a watch or piece of jewelry. Although most people would agree that securing data on a laptop is a good idea, if the system requires them to periodically re-enter their passwords or otherwise interrupt their work, "they'll figure out ways to work around it, or turn it off," said Brian Noble, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan.
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2002/0...ps_090402.html

Breakthrough gives diamond electronics sparkle
Diamonds could be the perfect material for high-performance electronic components in demanding applications such as radars and satellite communications, thanks to a technology breakthrough. Materials scientists have long been interested in diamond as an alternative to silicon. Diamond is harder and more heat-resistant than silicon, which is useful at higher power levels and frequencies. For example, silicon components become unreliable at 150°C but diamond should cope with temperatures in excess of 400°C. Like silicon, diamond can be doped with traces of other materials to control how electrons flow through it. But in its natural form diamond contains too many impurities, while synthetic diamonds are made up of many small crystals whose borders interfere with electron flow.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992766

Interference technique is clean cancer killer
A treatment for cervical cancer that kills tumour cells but does not harm healthy ones has been developed in the UK. The researchers say the results are "absolutely remarkable". The technique, called RNA interference (RNAi), works by knocking out two key genes in the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes the vast majority of cases of cervical cancer. This effectively 'silenced' the virus. The researchers, led by Jo Milner at the University of York, think HPV produces proteins that suppress the activity of genes in the human anti-cancer defence system. This would normally identify the start of cancer in a cell and trigger apoptosis - cell suicide. In test tube experiments, knocking out the virus did indeed lead to apoptosis, but normal cells were untouched. This suggests that RNAi treatments could lack the side effects associated with other cancer therapies, the team says.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992767

More news later on