The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Microsoft warming to open source?
For a long time we were held up as being anti-open source. But the idea of Shared Source came about because of customers telling us: "I am able to do some things in open source because I have access to the source code, and I would like to be able to do the same thing with your code." The fact is that Linux is now competing with Windows. That is good because it is spurring us on and making us compete better, but equally, it is difficult for us to say Windows has better management tools than Linux because all of a sudden people say we are attacking open source.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-958754.html

Calif. puts a lid on mobile phone spam
California's mobile phones should soon be officially freed from unwanted text messages. On Thursday, Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill that would prohibit companies from spamming mobile phones and pagers with unwanted text messages. The law, sponsored by Assemblyman Tim Leslie, R-Tahoe City, goes into effect in January. Davis said he endorsed the plan because he didn't want unsolicited messages on mobile phones to reach the same level of mayhem that spam e-mails have. Representatives from the wireless and text messaging industry did not immediately return requests for comment.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-958789.html

ICANN extended -- with more controls
As expected, the U.S. Commerce Department has extended for one more year its contract with the organization that governs the Internet's infrastructure. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was granted another extension to oversee the administration of domain names -- the third expansion of an agreement originally struck in 1998. The agreement requires closer government oversight of ICANN and more transparency in the organization's plans and actions. Government officials have said this is a crucial year for the organization. Critics have accused ICANN of unnecessary secrecy and failing to include the public in its decisions.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-958801.html

Slapper worm slows to a crawl
A Linux worm that started spreading a week ago has reached a plateau after infecting about 7,000 servers and turning the hosts into a peer-to-peer network that could be used to attack other computers. Known as Linux.Slapper.Worm, Slapper and Apache/mod_ssl, the worm's spread has fallen far short of the biggest attackers in recent times. For example, Code Red infected 400,000 servers last summer. And according to the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, the Nimda virus compromised 86,000 systems last fall. Perhaps most telling, security experts are already talking about Slapper in the past tense. Still, Slapper did take a big evolutionary step by creating a peer-to-peer network.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-958758.html

Search firm takes heat for sharing data
Norwegian-based Fast Search and Transfer, a relatively new talent among search engines, is under fire from privacy advocates who say it's violating its country's laws by collecting data on visitors and sharing the information with third parties. In a complaint filed this week with the Norwegian government, Public Information Research (PIR) charged the search provider's showcase site, AlltheWeb, with failing to notify visitors that it uses tiny electronic tags to monitor search queries in partnership with online portal Lycos and DoubleClick, an advertising technology company. The privacy watchdog said that the practice breaches Norwegian laws requiring companies to disclose if personal data about consumers is shared with third parties.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-958813.html?tag=fd_top

More news later on........

[walktalker]

Cable's ultimate endurance test
Cable modems and digital subscriber lines promise customers high-speed connections to the Internet. What isn't so swift in many regions of the country, however, is the hookup by cable and telephone companies. But the frustration some customers experience in trying to get a high-speed connection pales in comparison with that faced by about 130 scientists and support staff members at the National Science Foundation's research station at the South Pole. Right now these researchers deep in Antarctica's interior have only a sporadic link to the outside world through what is, in effect, a living museum of obsolete and abandoned satellites. Given that some of those satellites are now more than a quarter-century old, the Office of Polar Projects at the science foundation is looking at new ways of linking the Admundsen-Scott South Pole Station electronically to the rest of the world.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-958717.html?tag=cd_mh

Office Depot: Paper, pens...broadband
Office Depot said Thursday that it's now selling high-speed Internet services through its in-store kiosks in all its 820 stores in the United States. The office supplies company said customers can select and sign up for broadband services from a number of Internet service providers (ISPs), including EarthLink, Comcast and America Online. The availability of services varies by location. Office Depot is a straggler to in-store broadband sales. Rivals Circuit City, OfficeMax and Staples have each been selling high-speed Internet services through in-stores kiosks for more than a year. An Office Depot representative said the company began testing the broadband sales system last year.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-958699.html?tag=cd_mh

New Bill: More Digital TV Limits
Digital television is getting a legislative kick in the pants, but consumer groups worry that it's the public that will feel the sting. After spending a year in closed-door sessions with industry leaders, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-Louisiana) released a draft of his long-awaited DTV bill. The controversial measure calls for the adoption of a broadcast flag, an end to analog television compatibility and increased cable interoperability. However, some groups believe that in his effort to jump-start the digital television industry, Tauzin has given Hollywood the keys to control what American viewers do in their living rooms.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,55276,00.html

Stem Cells Key to Diabetes Cure
Diabetes sufferer Bob Marks may never again have to stick himself with an insulin injection. Marks is part of a lucky group of about 100 diabetes patients chosen for a University of Pennsylvania clinical trial of a new procedure called islet cell transplantation. Still, Marks waited a year before doctors called to tell him they'd found a matching donor who could give him islet cells -- the cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin. But the 31-year-old attorney from Danville, Pennsylvania, says it was worth the wait. And even though he takes 18 pills a day to prevent the cells from being rejected, Marks has no regrets.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,55239,00.html

Engineers Meet for Mass Mind Meld
One is an expert in cryptography. Another builds global climate models, focusing on the world's coldest regions. And one is researching how to break down hazardous chemicals using bacteria and other living organisms. While their careers are as different as those of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, these scientists all share one common bond: engineering. This week, about 100 of the country's rising stars in engineering are meeting in Irvine, California, for a three-day conference to discuss heady topics like fuel cells, computational fluid dynamics, nuclear energy and scalable quantum computing.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,55267,00.html

Transparent token is cryptographic key
A transparent token the size of a postage stamp and costing just a penny to make can be used to generate an immensely powerful cryptographic key. Current cryptographic systems use mathematics to generate the numerical "keys" that lock up the protected data. These are produced using "one-way functions", formulas that take simple secret data and generate long keys. The trick is that it is extremely hard to reverse the process and work back to the secret data when given only the key. Now researchers at MIT Media Lab's Center for Bits and Atoms have shown it is possible to use a physical object instead of a mathematical function to generate keys. The trick here is that the object is currently impossible to duplicate.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992828

Greek net cafes face ruin
Greek police have been accused of using "Taleban tactics" after a fresh wave of arrests under a controversial law banning all forms of computer games closed down internet cafes around the country. A judge in the city of Thessaloniki had earlier thrown out the first case brought under the gaming law but prosecutors have appealed against the decision and launched a new crackdown. "The police are acting like the Taleban, closing down businesses, seizing property and stopping people enjoying themselves," one of the two owners awaiting a retrial, Christos Iordanidis, told the BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2271130.stm

The clockwork computer
When a Greek sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny island of Antikythera in 1900, it was the statues lying on the seabed that made the greatest impression on him. The ship's cargo of luxury goods also included jewellery, pottery, fine furniture, wine and bronzes dating back to the first century BC. But the most important finds proved to be a few green, corroded lumps — the last remnants of an elaborate mechanical device. The Antikythera mechanism, as it is now known, was originally housed in a wooden box about the size of a shoebox, with dials on the outside and a complex assembly of bronze gear wheels within. X-ray photographs of the fragments, in which around 30 separate gears can be distinguished, led the late Derek Price, a science historian at Yale University, to conclude that the device was an astronomical computer capable of predicting the positions of the sun and moon in the zodiac on any given date.
http://www.economist.com/displaystor...ory_id=1337165

Wildfire in the Forecast
Wildfire moves with the wind, as firefighters were grimly reminded in Arizona and Colorado last summer. New computer modeling could soon bring greater precision to the art of knowing which way the wind is blowing, potentially helping firefighters control blazes. Computer simulations usually break down weather systems into grids of manageable cells, then calculate the interactions between adjacent cells. Most weather modeling uses a coarse grid, with cells 30 to 50 kilometers on a side. That’s fine for predicting whether it’s going to rain in your town. But when a fire is burning across complicated terrain, the ability to forecast winds, humidity and other atmospheric phenomena with a resolution of one kilometer or less could spell the difference between a fire contained and a fire gone wild.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...ation11002.asp

Zero-emission driving may be more than hot air
Guy Negre, an engineer from the little town of Carros, France, discovered a breath of fresh air, both literally and figuratively. During his career designing formula one engines he became familiar with isotherm dynamics, a process that creates power by expanding air at an almost constant temperature. Negre theorized that by heating and expanding super-cooled compressed air he could power a nonpolluting car. Six years and four prototypes later, it would appear he’s done it. Negre’s company, Motor Development International (MDI), created what it calls the Compressed Air Technology (CAT) car by combining a lightweight automobile body with a new type of small rear-mounted engine.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...rney091902.asp

Supersonic test plane uses 'wing warping'
Nearly 100 years after the Wright brothers' first heavier-than-air powered flight, the US Air Force is testing an experimental plane that uses "wing warping", the steering and control technique that kept Orville Wright aloft in 1903. But this time round, it will be at supersonic speeds. Unlike conventional aircraft wings, which use movable surfaces like flaps and ailerons for control, wing warping bends the entire wing. The USAF calls it "active aeroelastic wing" technology, and is investing $41 million in the project in the hope that it will lead to lighter, more manoeuvrable supersonic planes.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992813

How BayTSP is Enforcing the DMCA
If you look at Mark Ishikawa's business card, you'll notice that it lists no street address for his company, BayTSP, just a post office box. This is for good reason, since Ishikawa is one of the few Silicon Valley CEOs who regularly receives death threats. Uninvited visitors are not welcome at BayTSP, which has a post office box in Los Gatos, CA, but could really be anywhere in the Bay Area. I certainly have no idea where the company lives, but I know why Ishikawa has so many enemies. It is because BayTSP acts as the primary enforcer for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law that is widely reviled in the technical community. The DMCA, which was put in effect in 2000, was an attempt by the U.S. Government to bring copyright law into the cyber age. But many people -- including, oddly, Mark Ishikawa -- think the DMCA goes too far by making it illegal for me to even tell you how to circumvent encryption or copy protection technologies. It makes the very passing of knowledge against the law whether or not that knowledge is ever used.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020919.html

Don't Blame CD Sales Woes on the Internet
The Recording Industry Association of America recently released its latest doomsday report on how online bootlegging is endangering the offline biz. According to the study, compact disc sales dropped by seven percent during the first half of this year, accounting for $284 million in losses. Pollsters blamed the "striking connection" between people who download music online rather than buy it in a store. Once again, this is only part of the story, but let's say at least one thing in the defense of the recording industry: There's no question that many people who hear the new Vines single suck down "Get Free" for nada. It's really is ludicrous for the free music posse to argue anymore that digital downloads boost sales. Just ask yourself -- or your friends -- how many more CDs you or they have bought in the post-Napster epoch and you'll get down to the nitty gritty.
http://rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=16667

More news later on

[multi]

"This is certainly a reasonable way to do a (distributed DOS attack) and the peer-to-peering is an interesting twist, but a straight back-dooring of something important is a better (way) to attack," he said.

[multi]

thanx WT a double helping...

Furthermore, there are many reasons for declining sales -- like, um, the worst American economic climate in years. And the decline of pop music -- from Michael Jackson to Britney Spears -- certainly hasn't helped either. The industry should take the same advice being doled out to Jackson and Spears: Take a vacation, lay low, rethink, then come back bigger and better than ever.

what about all the 100's of thousands of dollars that thay have spent trying to bring down online sharing...

yay for techno and economic downturn....pop stars was a crappy last century sort of thing.....

move along move along ppl there is nothing to see here... all the popstars are dead and buried like elvis....
hehe..