The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

UnitedLinux defends open-source roots
Conectiva, one of the four members contributing to the upcoming UnitedLinux operating system distribution, has moved to reassure developers that the consortium is following standard open-source practices, despite the introduction of a "closed" test version of the software. UnitedLinux recently began circulating a beta-test version of its distribution to select partners, and is planning to make the software available for free public download later this month. For the "closed" beta test, users signed a non-disclosure agreement forbidding them from sharing information related to the software. But such practices immediately set off warning bells in the open-source developer community, where many companies -- MandrakeSoft is one example -- publish software as soon as it is out of development.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-958995.html

When is hacking a crime?
Kevin Finisterre admits that he likes to hew close to the ethical line separating the "white hat" hackers from the bad guys, but little did he know that his company's actions would draw threats of a lawsuit from Hewlett-Packard. This summer, the consultant with security firm Secure Network Operations had let HP know of nearly 20 holes in its Tru64 operating system. But in late July, when HP was finishing work to patch the flaws, another employee of Finisterre's company publicly disclosed one of the vulnerabilities and showed how to exploit it -- prompting the technology giant to threaten litigation under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Finisterre, who was not hired by HP, now says he'll think twice before voluntarily informing another company of any security holes he finds.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-958920.html

Logitech sends new mice after Microsoft
Logitech on Monday debuted a new line of sleek, curvy computer mice with styling reminiscent of sports gear. The mouse motif matches new PCs from Gateway and Hewlett-Packard. The new mice, the MX Series, come as Logitech looks to recapture its lead in retail market share for mice from technology giant Microsoft. The two companies are engaged in a battle for dominance in the category, where Logitech has held its ground against its larger rival, say analysts.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-958939.html

New Kazaa likely to raise labels' ire
An overhauled version of the popular file-swapping software Kazaa was unleashed Monday on the Internet, with features sure to make record and movie studio executives' blood boil. The new software shows clear ambitions on the part of Kazaa parent company Sharman Networks to spread beyond its file-swapping origins, while expanding the utility of basic file-trading functions. Sharman's management, which still faces lawsuits by the big record labels and movie studios, had little to say beyond the new features' ability to make file swapping easier. "We've given users better options and more tools than ever before," said Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming, in a statement.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-958912.html

Aussies protest MS security advice
Citing Microsoft's own somewhat patchy security record, Australian industry commentators have called into question the software maker's worthiness to advise the Federal Government on the country's cyber security policy. Recent industry reports have suggested that despite its being snubbed by US government officials during formulation of America's official cyber security efforts, Microsoft Australia is playing a key advisory role in relation to Australia's first cybersecurity framework. Graham Ingram, managing director of AusCERT, pointed out that the Australian government has some of the best IT security units in the country to advise them, such as the Australian Federal Police high-tech crime unit and the Defense Signals Directorate (DSD).
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-958969.html

Who's letting the spam in?
Have you helped a spammer today? According to operators of spam-filtering lists, an alarming number of people are unwittingly helping junk mailers shuttle spam, or unsolicited bulk e-mail. Those unassuming victims are running software meant to allow multiple connections over a LAN (local area network) to the Internet through a single line, or what's known as proxy servers. Many proxy servers are installed insecurely, and spammers have discovered tricks to tap into them to send junk mail with little trace -- an occurrence relatively unseen a year ago, experts say. The problem has grown so quickly that some blocklist owners estimate that between 30 percent and 80 percent of the spam attacks today are caused by open proxies.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-958847.html

HP cuts price on DVD-rewritable drives
With the holiday selling season approaching, Hewlett-Packard has cut the price on two of its DVD-rewritable drives. HP on Monday lowered by $100 the cost of its dvd200i and dvd200e, effective immediately. The 200i is an internal drive and will now sell for $349, while the dvd200e is an external drive and will cost $449. HP spokesman Dean Sanderson said the price drop indicates the drives are selling well and the company expects the upcoming holiday season to be significant for selling more units. "The first couple hundred (drives) always cost more," said Sanderson. "Price cuts are typical, as you ramp (volumes), you can spread out fixed costs...this will be a big retail holiday season."
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-959047.html?tag=fd_top

Amazon seeks patent for payment system
Amazon.com is hoping to use more than the honor system to protect a payment method it established online last year. The e-commerce giant filed two patent applications related to its Honor System, an online payment system that allows Web sites to accept small, charitable donations and to charge for content. Filed last year, the applications were published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Aug. 29. Amazon has filed applications to protect its ideas through patents in the past. The company has received patents on its 1-Click purchasing process, its affiliates program and its recommendation service. Other companies have imitated Amazon's strategy. Companies such as Priceline.com CoolSavings and Keen have looked at the patent process as a way to protect various business methods.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-959046.html?tag=fd_top

WorldCom blocks access to child porn
Bowing to an order from Pennsylvania's attorney general, WorldCom will block customer access to some offshore Web sites by the end of the day. Last week, a Pennsylvania judge, at the request of Attorney General Mike Fisher, ordered WorldCom, the bankrupt Internet and voice provider, to block access to five purported child pornography sites. Among those was a site hosted by Terra.es, Spain's largest Internet portal and a division of Terra Lycos. Because it doesn't have the technical capability to stop residents of a particular state from viewing specific Web sites, WorldCom plans to block all of its North American subscribers from some of the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses. Other sites were taken down over the weekend, including the pages hosted by Terra Lycos. As a result, WorldCom won't have to block North American access to all Terra.es sites.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-959045.html?tag=fd_top

Servers With a Smile
Microsoft's Bill Gates may be richer, but when it comes to unvarnished business aggression, no one in the high-tech world can top Larry Ellison. This is a man cocky enough to fly his own fighter jet, competitive enough to have his minions pilfer Gates' trash, and mean enough to verbally flog his executives in public. He's worth $14 billion, making him the fourth-wealthiest American at last count, and unlike his peers who demur on the subject of money, Ellison isn't afraid to admit that he loves being rich. So explain this contradiction: Last month Ellison spent an hour in front of 1,000 programmers in San Francisco talking about the merits of free software. A charity? A breakdown? No. Ellison was sucking up to this group for a simple reason. Developers of free software, in particular the hundreds of thousands of Linux programmers, are hot commodities these days.
http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?...&doc_id=209583

At Robocup 2002, humanoids battle it out in soccer
Foot-Prints, the Japanese striker, and Tao-Pie-Pie, the New Zealand goalkeeper, eyed each other as the ball was placed for the penalty kick. At the whistle, Foot-Prints sprang toward the ball, step by agonizingly slow step. Tao-Pie-Pie wobbled out to narrow the angle. Foot-Prints finally unleashed a nudge that shot the ball oh-so-slowly past Tao-Pie-Pie and just barely into the goal. The crowd went wild, almost as if it were a World Cup match. Actually, it was RoboCup 2002. The annual robotic soccer tournament was held in Fukuoka, Japan, this past June as the World Cup was getting under way.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...B9809EC588EEDF

Warner whistles a new digital tune
RioPort, a music technology company, will begin selling digital tracks from Warner Music Group artists. The agreement, announced Monday, will let RioPort sell more than 30,000 titles from Warner Music's catalog online for as little as 99 cents a song. Warner Music, a subsidiary of media giant AOL Time Warner, will let these singles be burned onto CDs or transferred onto portable devices. RioPort will not sell the songs directly but will offer them for sale through Web sites that use its retail technology, such as BestBuy.com and MTV.com. The songs will be encoded in Microsoft's Windows Media technology, which limits the use of music files. The agreement marks the latest partnership between a record label and a technology company. The relationship between the two industries has generally been contentious, given the record companies' animosity towards file-sharing technologies that have arguably hurt their CD sales.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-958962.html?tag=cd_mh

Google search gets newsier
Google unveiled on Monday an expanded test version of its search engine for current events and news, the latest step in the company's move into new markets. The new Google News search tool replaces an earlier test version introduced in April. Although the new version is still in beta, it is being billed on the company’s home page as offering new features, such as a continuously updated index of news from 4,000 publications around the world. Previously, the site had searched 150 publications every hour. The search tool brings the company's highly respected statistical methods for ranking the relevance of information on the Web to the specific category of news -- an experimental approach compared with traditional methods of news selection, said Google product manager Marissa Mayer.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-958927.html?tag=cd_mh

Yahoo to launch new game service
Yahoo on Monday will unveil a new service that lets people pay to play popular PC games, many of which are not available anywhere else on the Internet. The company is hoping the service, called Games on Demand, will bring more of the die-hard gaming community to its site and drive demand for the new broadband service it launched earlier this month through a partnership with SBC Communications. Games on Demand will offer 40 action, adventure, simulation, sports and arcade and family games. They include "Grand Theft Auto," "Tomb Raider Chronicles" and "Skateboard Park Tycoon." Although there are a number of popular games in the selection, some of those offered are older versions that were hot a few years ago, and titles from some key game makers, such as Electronic Arts, are not included in the selection.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-958897.html?tag=cd_mh

Online Gaming Illegal (Wink Wink)
Despite the defection of several big-name credit card issuers and a recent Justice Department "advisory" declaring all Internet gambling illegal, many watchers of online casino operations remain convinced the industry is still on a roll. As proof, they cite a federal court decision in Louisiana that could de-fang the Justice Department's virtual bite, Congress' repeated repudiation of such measures as the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act and a successful Nevada ballot initiative directing the state legislature to begin issuing online gambling licenses.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55202,00.html

A Vote for Touch and Go Away
Florida found itself in another voting debacle during last week's primary election: Tens of millions of dollars spent to abolish hanging chads and they still can't get it right. Now, wisps of fear are emerging. The folks running some elections are asking if it was such a great idea to rush into high-tech touch-screen voting systems like those used to replace many of the punch-card systems in Florida. With another election just weeks away and sobered by the reports from Florida, California's Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters is trying to apply the brakes -- however slightly -- to avoid rapid deployment of touch-screen voting machines. The systems were purchased to fulfill a voting-modernization court order.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55241,00.html

Welcome to your future as PC plugins
Computers are supposed to work for humans, right? PDAs help us remember things, instant messaging lets us chatter endlessly, TurboTax figures our deductions. We’re the masters – they’re the slaves. Or maybe not. Now consider how deeply strange this is. Instead of a machine augmenting human ability, it’s a human augmenting machine ability. In a system like this, humans are valuable for the specific bit of processing power we provide: visual recognition. We are acting as a kind of coprocessor in much the same way a graphics chip works with a main Pentium processor – it’s a manservant lurking in the background, rendering the pretty pictures onscreen so the Pentium can attend to more pressing tasks.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...tart.html?pg=2

Study Boosts Case for Flex Time
Consider this potentially life-altering employment option: a workplace where employees labor intensely for a few months, then are rewarded with several weeks off at a time. That's how 4 percent of British workers do it, and the first study examining the effects of an annual hours schedule indicates that it's a propitious setup across the board. The most compelling employer perk is a 50 percent reduction in overtime. But unfortunately for Americans who get paid by the hour, this fabulous-sounding arrangement is illegal in the United States. It flies in the face of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which says only salaried workers can work on an annual hours contract.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,55302,00.html

Government Wants More Fun Online
Almost all U.S. families live in areas where a high-speed Internet connection is available, but many see no compelling reason to pay extra for it, the government reports. A Commerce Department study, compiled from a variety of analyst surveys, cites a need for more music, movies and games on the Internet in order to make broadband connections more popular. Only 10 percent of U.S. households subscribe to high-speed access, lower than the rate in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong or Canada. About half of American families have some type of Internet access at home. Several technology lobbying groups have endorsed different approaches to a national broadband strategy to encourage further use of technology that would allow even faster connections than current high-speed home networks.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55323,00.html

Calif. Defies Bush on Stem Cells
Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation Sunday to allow embryonic stem cell research in the state, a direct contradiction of federal limits on the research. Davis has said the legislation is essential to keep California at the forefront of medical research. He was joined by actor Christopher Reeve, who has become a medical research activist since he was paralyzed in a horse riding accident seven years ago. The bill was opposed by the Roman Catholic church and anti-abortion groups, who say the research is tantamount to murder because it starts with the destruction of a human embryo. Stem cells, which are found in human embryos, umbilical cords and placentas, can divide and become any kind of cell in the body.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55312,00.html

Gene therapy keeps blood flowing
Gene therapy given after treatment to unblock clogged-up arteries could help them stay clear, according to research. Narrowing of blood vessels can increase the chance of heart attack or stroke, and one treatment is to insert and inflate a balloon in the affected section, then put in a metal tube to stop it closing again. However, the insertion of the tube, called a stent, can actually trigger a reaction in some patients which leads to rapid re-blocking of the blood vessel. Researchers at the University of Kuoppio in Finland believe they understand why the stent causes this process. They also think they can halt this reaction by introducing an extra gene into the blood vessel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2271551.stm

U.S. Agriculture Vulnerable to Bioterror Attack
A large scale agricultural bioterrorism attack would quickly overwhelm existing laboratory and field resources, warns a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. The report, released Thursday, warns that the nation cannot rapidly detect and identify many pests and pathogens, and needs a comprehensive plan to defend against bioterrorism. The report says that while a bioterrorism attack on U.S. agriculture is highly unlikely to result in famine or malnutrition, it could harm people, disrupt the economy, and cause widespread public concern and confusion.
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2002/2002-09-20-06.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

Worldwide Focus on Going to the Moon
Earth's scuffed up and trampled Moon is once again targeted for high-tech visitors. Robotic spacecraft from several nations, as well as NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense, will be first to chalk up lunar return mileage. All the planned new attention -- close-up picture sessions, hits by pinpricking penetrators, radar sweeps of the cratered terrain, and even snag-and-bag rock collecting by automated machinery -- puts the Moon back on the exploration map. Armed with new data, human visitors may once again visit Earth’s only natural satellite, this time to survey the scene and set up a permanent science outpost.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnol..._020923-1.html

Phones and laptops to shrink?
A new electrode material for rechargeable lithium batteries could mean smaller, lighter, longer-lasting laptops and cell phones. Yet-Ming Chiang and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have made a substance called lithium phospho-olivine conduct electricity much better than the materials currently used as terminals in commercial batteries. "This may allow the development of lithium batteries with the highest power density yet," they say.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020916/020916-20.html

Bright dust rings highlight Earth-like planets
Astronomers have shown how new telescopes will soon be able to conduct a census of small, rocky worlds orbiting distant stars. Such Earth-like planets are too dim to be observed but new research shows their presence can be inferred from the bright rings of debris created while they form. Data from the first infrared satellites suggested that discs of rock and dust, in which planets were forming, must be present around some stars. More recently, eight-metre telescopes have allowed astronomers to actually see these discs. However, instead of smooth, continuous discs, many are characterised by concentric patterns of bright and dim rings. A new computer simulation of the early stages of planet formation implies that such features are the 'smoking guns' of recent planet formation.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992832

Earth's magnetic field 'boosts gravity'
Hidden extra dimensions are causing measurements of the strength of gravity at different locations on Earth to be affected by the planet's magnetic field, French researchers say. This is a controversial claim because no one has ever provided experimental evidence to support either the existence of extra dimensions or any interaction between gravity and electromagnetism. But lab measurements of Newton's gravitational constant G suggest that both are real. Newton's constant, which describes the strength of the gravitational pull that bodies exert on each other, is the most poorly determined of the constants of nature. The two most accurate measurements have experimental errors of 1 part in 10,000, yet their values differ by 10 times that amount. So physicists are left with no idea of its absolute value.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992814

When porn permeates Web personals
Her online personal ad said she liked the outdoors, camping, hiking, biking, blading, and “yes, even fishing.” Don was online looking for love, like millions of other men, and thought “Amyloov” was sexy, so he dropped her a note through Yahoo.com’s personals. But finding out if Amyloov was “the one” came with a price tag — $4 a minute, in fact. Amyloov turned out to be just a cleverly disguised advertisement for a pay-per-minute sex line. And Amyloov is hardly alone. Two of the three women Don tried to contact through Match.com, the top personal ad Web site, turned out to be fakes, too. In both cases, the members wrote back to Don — who requested anonymity — with flirty notes, suggesting a very personal interest in a real-world meeting. Only at the end of those enticing e-mails did the sales pitch appear.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/805678.asp?0dm=T1ALT

More news later on

[TankGirl]

- tg