The Newspaper Shop -- Wednesday edition

[walktalker]

Microsoft's risky Web services bet
Only a year ago, Microsoft and the rest of the high-tech industry were anticipating huge consumer demand for Web services ranging from shopping to communication. Then reality set in. Originally code-named HailStorm, Microsoft's plan for delivering consumer Web services immediately ran into resistance because of security concerns and confusion. Microsoft made matters worse by publicly christening the program as .Net My Services, a name often mistaken for its broader .Net technology architecture. Now, the company is building its consumer Web services around its MSN Internet access service -- a move that poses yet another set of risks, given that the online property has been a money-losing operation for years. The decision will fall under intense scrutiny this month when Microsoft breaks out MSN revenue from other consumer products for the first time in the company's quarterly financial report.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-962228.html

Beta hack rattles Microsoft
Microsoft is investigating a security breach on a server that hosts its Windows beta community, which allows more than 20,000 Windows users a chance to test software that is still in development. As a result of the break-in, Microsoft advised beta testers to change their passwords late last week. However, company spokesman Rick Miller downplayed the significance of the incident, saying the online trespasser didn't get access to the company's crown jewels: its source code. "They are not grabbing code; they are grabbing product, and it's going to be buggy and it's going to have problems," he said. "This is obviously not good, but it's not terrible either." However, the system does contain yet-unreleased versions of Microsoft Windows products.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-962333.html

SuSE bundles Linux extras for biz
SuSE Linux is bundling e-mail and groupware applications with its Linux server operating system in a new product aimed at the business market. The SuSE Linux Openexchange Server features SuSE's Linux Enterprise Server. Customers of SuSE's Linux eMail Server 3.x and Maintenance Service will be able to migrate to the new product, the company said. Linux, a Unix-like operating system, is open source, meaning developers release their versions for free download and share improvements with others. Companies like SuSE make money primarily by selling support and services. SuSE has been working with other Linux developers on UnitedLinux, a uniform version of Linux for businesses.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-962258.html

Patent office swamped -- "hurting technology"
The head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office acknowledged on Tuesday that many business method patents had been wrongfully awarded in the past, but predicted a more careful approach in the future. "We were granting 65 or 70 percent of these things," patent office chief James Rogan said at an event at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "Now the rejection rate is around 65 or 70 percent." Rogan, who took the job last December, said he's trying to revamp a massive bureaucracy of about 3,400 examiners who review 350,000 to 375,000 patent applications each year and have a backlog of about 430,000 patents. "We want to move away from the status quo," he said. "It is hurting technology. It is hurting our economy." In the last few years, the patent office has suffered from increasing criticism directed at its low, and sometimes apparently nonexistent, standards for granting patents.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-962182.html

CNN.com slips ads into news slots
CNN.com has begun running stripped-down ads that look a lot like editorial links, raising some concern among some journalism ethics experts. The online news site, owned by AOL Time Warner, is featuring advertising text links that appear at the top of Technology, World and U.S. News pages, adjacent to news headlines. Examples of text include: "If you Love Coffee," "Up to 80% off Ink!" or "Avoid Bad Retailers." Though the tags link to marketing Web pages rather than news stories, they are not clearly labeled as having been sponsored, or paid for by advertisers -- a concern for some journalism ethics watchdogs.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962343.html?tag=fd_top_3

Fat times for spam
Spam continues to gunk up the Internet's arteries. In September, more than 17 percent of all e-mail traveling across the Internet could be classified as spam, according to data collected by U.K. e-mail service provider MessageLabs. The company's figures are presented in its latest monthly report. "In speaking with our customers six to eight months ago, (the concerns) were virus, virus, virus. Now, spam is priority No. 1," said John Harrington, director of U.S. marketing for MessageLabs. The company tracked some 63 million messages as part of its anti-spam service and found that about one in every six was junk e-mail. That adds up to more than 11 million of the messages counted.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-962300.html?tag=fd_top_9

Visa roadblock could delay DMCA case
Witnesses in the ElcomSoft trial have been denied visas to enter the United States, a move that could delay a court date in the first criminal test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. ElcomSoft programmer Dmitry Sklyarov and CEO Alex Katalov, both Russian residents, are scheduled to appear in court as early as next Monday. According to people close to the matter, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow have denied their visa applications to enter the United States. ElcomSoft is facing charges of violating the criminal provisions of the DMCA, which prohibits offering technology that circumvents copyright protections. The Russian company created software that could crack protections on Adobe Systems' eBooks.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962296.html?tag=fd_top_10

Honest talk about downloads (RIAA's president opinion
Last month, Consumer Electronics Association CEO Gary Shapiro took the debate over peer-to-peer file sharing to a new level. In brief, he declared that downloading off the Web is neither illegal nor immoral. This pronouncement -- given in a speech at the Optical Storage Symposium and echoed in condensed fashion in a commentary on CNET's News.com -- is breathtaking, both because it is so blatantly wrong and because the arguments Shapiro advances in an attempt to justify his conclusions are so transparently specious. Nonetheless, it deserves a response, because people need to know that Shapiro's proclamation, if not a deliberate and outright attempt to misinform, amounts at best to wishful thinking.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-962279.html?tag=fd_nc_1

Hunting Nazi art online
When the Nazis pillaged tens of thousands of artworks from museums and private collectors in occupied countries during World War II, they didn't just take the loot, they took notes. The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, a major S.S. art-plundering organization, documented their haul on 5-by-8 index cards, meticulously describing each work. A typical ERR index card might include the name of the piece, its dimensions, the artist, scholarly notes on the significance of the work, and where and from whom it was stolen, says Sarah Kianovsky, assistant curator at Harvard University Art Museums. That chilling legacy is now finding its way online, at sites like the National Archives and Records Administration. The goal is to provide new access to the history of ownership, known as "provenance," of some of the millions of art objects and cultural artifacts stolen during Nazi looting.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...t/index.html?x

Claude E. Shannon: Founder of Information Theory
Quantum information science is a young field, its underpinnings still being laid by a large number of researchers. Classical information science, by contrast, sprang forth about 50 years ago, from the work of one remarkable man: Claude E. Shannon. In a landmark paper written at Bell Labs in 1948, Shannon defined in mathematical terms what information is and how it can be transmitted in the face of noise. What had been viewed as quite distinct modes of communication -- the telegraph, telephone, radio and television -- were unified in a single framework.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...5A809EC5880000

Storming the Streets of Baghdad
Assuring Americans that war with Iraq remains an option of "last resort," President George W. Bush used an Oct. 7 speech to prod Congress toward passing a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein -- and to put more pressure on a wary U.N. Security Council to follow suit. But despite the political and diplomatic maneuvers, both the American public and the Arab world increasingly see hostilities as inevitable. Indeed, the U.S. military and defense contractors are still preparing for an offensive that may begin as early as December. If push does come to shove, how will the fighting play out? Pentagon strategists are hoping that the campaign will follow the script of the 1991 gulf war: a pulverizing bombardment followed by a lightning ground attack and capitulation. But this may not turn out to be the antiseptic, largely casualty-free affair the U.S. has grown accustomed to.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...2/b3804045.htm

"Deep Fritz" evens up chess challenge
Deep Fritz, the German-developed chess computer, played a nearly flawless game to outwit world champion Vladimir Kramnik in just 34 moves Tuesday and pull even in the $1 million eight-match series. The second win in a row for Deep Fritz brought the eight-match series to 3-3 in what has been billed the "Brains in Bahrain" challenge. "It had the potential to be the best game I have ever played in my life," the 27-year-old Russian said after the match. The computer, which can evaluate 3.5 million moves in a second, made a Queen's Indian defense, giving the opponent a clear advantage but keeping its pieces--and especially its queen--on the board.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-962274.html?tag=cd_mh

Study: Fiber-optic to make itself at home
Despite obstacles, fiber-optic broadband is set to show up on a growing number of U.S. doorsteps, according to a survey released Tuesday. The new study, conducted by market research firm Render, Vanderslice & Assoc., shows a fiber-optic broadband market growing steadily despite the economy's downturn, with the fast Net connections expected to become available to about 1 million United States homes by 2004. Fiber-optic connections to individual homes are viewed by many in the technology industry as the next leap forward in broadband Internet access, as they are far faster than DSL (digital subscriber line) or cable connections. But because the technology requires expensive investments in new infrastructure, the networks remain relatively rare. This means few mainstream consumers have access to the connections at home, and even fewer actually sign up for the connections, which often cost more than today's average $50 monthly broadband fee.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-962190.html?tag=cd_mh

Apple gives MPEG-4 a new shine
Apple Computer said Tuesday that people are gravitating toward QuickTime 6 and its underlying MPEG-4 standard for digital media playback -- a force to rival momentum for Microsoft's proprietary system. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company said that 25 million copies of Apple QuickTime 6, its multimedia player introduced on July 15, have been downloaded so far -- adoption rates that it says underscore the acceptance of MPEG-4, an audio and video standard for condensing large digital packages into small files that can be easily transmitted online. "We're enabling the world to jump on the standards bandwagon," said Frank Casanova, Apple's director of QuickTime Product Marketing.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962183.html?tag=cd_mh

MusicNet, Pressplay closing in on labels
MusicNet and Pressplay are close to rounding out their music offerings with deals that would allow them to provide songs from all five major labels. Pressplay announced Monday that it has signed a deal with BMG and said it is close to reaching an agreement with Warner Music Group. The service, which is backed by Sony and Vivendi Universal, already has a deal with EMI Recorded Music. Meanwhile, sources close to MusicNet said it's completed a deal with UMG and is within days of striking an agreement with Sony. That service is backed by AOL Time Warner, EMI and Bertelsmann. Although the moves won't provide the services with all songs offered by the labels -- big-name bands such as the Beatles and The Rolling Stones still won't allow their music on the services -- the agreements are a major step toward delivering a more robust roster of music.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962179.html?tag=cd_mh

Court weighs faxed search warrants
The U.S. Justice Department has asked an appeals court to let police fax search warrants to Internet companies during investigations. Last Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bridgid Dowdal told a panel of Eighth Circuit judges that it should be acceptable for police to fax a search warrant to Yahoo -- instead of showing up in person -- during a recent child pornography investigation. "This is a situation that is not the traditional execution of a search warrant," Dowdal said. But, she said, fax-delivery provided "the highest level of protection" of a suspect's privacy rights. The case, USA v. Dale Robert Bach, appears to be the first where an appeals court will rule on the validity of faxed search warrants, a new law enforcement trend that worries privacy advocates because police can gather far more information more quickly than they could under traditional rules.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962113.html?tag=cd_mh

MusicMatch quits Mac service
Starting next week, MusicMatch will no longer support a Macintosh version of its product, the company revealed Tuesday. MusicMatch makes one of the most widely distributed third-party digital music players. Dell Computer, Gateway and Hewlett-Packard distribute the software on new PCs. Gateway and HP also offer access to MusicMatch's Radio MX subscription service, which lets consumers listen to streamed music selected on genre. The development is interesting, say analysts, as the San Diego-based company provides the software Apple Computer uses to synch its iPod music player with Windows PCs.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962120.html?tag=cd_mh

Hard drives: The new VHS tape
There's a replacement for VHS tape coming, say some, and it's called the hard drive. A growing number of hard-drive manufacturers and start-ups are touting a new use for the hoary data vault that's been one of the chief PC components for more than two decades. They want to see it used as a portable storage device for gadgets such as set-top boxes, game consoles and digital stereo receivers. In this vision, consumers would slide drives containing music, digital photos, or recorded TV programs into an empty bay, similar to the bay on PCs that holds CD drives. Drives could also be linked to consumer-electronics devices by way of a USB 2.0 or FireWire connector.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962028.html?tag=cd_mh

Game site back, sans mod chips
Hong Kong video game retailer that ran into legal hot water with Microsoft is back in business, minus the hacking tools that got it in trouble. The Web site for Lik-Sang was working again Tuesday morning, after being shut down for more than three weeks. Lik-Sang was one of the world's leading suppliers of "mod chips," add-ons for game consoles that defeat security systems in the machines, allowing them to play legally and illegally copied game discs, play import games and run homemade software. A message on the Lik-Sang site blamed the shutdown on a lawsuit filed last month in the High Court of Hong Kong by game console makers Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. The suit claimed copyright infringements relating to mod chips and other development and backup devices for the game machines.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962108.html?tag=cd_mh

Compact disc replacement skips out
Start-up DataPlay, which hoped its quarter-size minidisc would replace the compact disc, has shut down and is looking for a buyer. Todd Oseth, the Boulder, Colo.-based company's senior vice president of business and marketing, confirmed that DataPlay's 120 workers were laid off late last Friday. The workers had been furloughed late last month as the company looked for additional financing. DataPlay, which had raised $120 million from supporters including photography giant Eastman Kodak and chipmaker Intel, needed $40 million to $50 million to complete the next phase of operations. Oseth said the company was unable to find the funding, and that plans for the new media format are on hold now, as DataPlay's board of directors searches for someone to buy the company. "It's pretty much just the board now," he said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962131.html?tag=cd_mh

Dogtown: Aibo gets a skateboard
Go, Aibo, go! Sony's Entertainment Robot America division has released a four-wheel "Speed Board" scooter for its Aibo robots that will allow them to skate around, the company said Wednesday. The Speed Boards will be available online and in retail stores in November, and will cost $249. Compatible robot models will also respond to voice commands from consumers, such as "turn right" or "turn left." When the Aibo is not "zipping around" on its Speed Board, it will randomly dance, Sony said. Sony is heavily promoting Aibo for the upcoming holiday season. The robot dogs made their debut in 1999 and have become wildly popular with gadget and dog lovers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962242.html?tag=cd_mh

ACLU Acts Against Patriot Act
The American Civil Liberties Union rolled out a national campaign Wednesday to challenge government anti-terror policies that the group deems undemocratic. Dubbed Keep America Safe and Free, the multimillion-dollar effort was announced by the ACLU at a Washington press conference that highlighted accounts from several peace activists who claimed they'd been singled out by authorities because of their political views. The ACLU has filed 24 lawsuits for civil liberties violations since the Sept. 11 attacks, including several for airline passengers who claim they were kicked off flights or singled out for questioning because of their dark skin.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,55838,00.html

Stress Tests Go Atomic at MIT
Researchers at MIT have developed a predictive model designed to answer the age-old question of why things go crack in the night -- or anytime, for that matter. Using the new methodology, scientists hope someday to be able to forecast the initial appearance of cracks, voids or other defects in materials as small as the sub-microscopic electrical pathways on computer chips and as large as the earth's tectonic plates. "If we understand how atoms break, we can design new materials that will be more resistant to those stresses," said Professor Subra Suresh, head of MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "The model we have proposed is a predictive tool to identify where defects will nucleate and what the nature of those defects will be." Using computer-modeling technology, the new process replicates on the sub-miniature level the type of stress evaluation that is routinely done on finished materials.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,55759,00.html

Bibliotheca Alexandrina to open
Presidents and royalty gathered Wednesday to help Egypt inaugurate the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a modern version of the famous ancient library known for a freedom of thought and expression lacking in today's Middle East. While the new library cannot match the 500,000 scrolls said to have been housed in the Great Library of Alexandria before it burned down in the fourth century, it has a digital archive that includes 10 billion Web pages dating back to 1996. French President Jacques Chirac, Queen Sofia of Spain, Queen Rania of Jordan and Greek President Costis Stephanopoulos are among some 300 dignitaries invited to help President Hosni Mubarak open the library with his wife, Suzanne, a prime advocate of the project.
http://www.salon.com/books/wire/2002...ina/index.html

For Google, innovations withstand downturn
Ask Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, when Silicon Valley and the technology industry will return to robust growth. All he knows is it won't be in the immediate future, and he makes a persuasive case. That's the big picture. But Schmidt's smaller picture, Google itself, is one of those grand exceptions that proves the valley's longstanding rule -- that technological innovation continues no matter what the larger economy is doing. I caught up with him at the annual Agenda conference, a gathering that has been a staple of the tech elite's autumn schedule. This year's gathering, a drastically downsized affair, reflected overall industry trends.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ists/4293569.h

Military spyplanes to help hunt for US sniper
Efforts to capture the Washington-area sniper who has killed nine and injured two are to be boosted by the deployment of military surveillance planes. The Pentagon has agreed to provide a "handful" of RC-7 Airborne Reconnaissance Low (ARL) planes. The craft are heavily modified versions of the civilian DHC-7 fixed wing aircraft, designed to blend in with regular air traffic. They are fitted with a host of military sensor technologies, including infrared imaging systems and radar used to track moving targets. Information gathered by the crew can be shared immediately with agents on the ground. The ARL planes are conventionally used to support troops. The Pentagon also uses them to monitor narcotic trafficking in Colombia and military movements in Korea.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992932

Voiceprints make crypto keys
As we rely on computers for tasks like handling money and keeping secrets safe, it has become increasingly important to give our desktops, laptops and PDAs the means to know for sure who they are dealing with. The classic solution is to lock up the data, and give the user a cryptographic key. The main challenge to improving this type of security is to make it more difficult to steal or reconstruct the keys, but at the same time make it easier for legitimate users to access computing resources. Researchers from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs are tapping the individuality of the human voice to generate unique cryptographic keys for computer users. Under the researchers' scheme, a user speaks a password, and the system listens for both the correct word and the correct voice.
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2002/1...ys_101602.html

Tear-inducing onions get the chop
Onions that taste as good as the original but do not have you weeping over the chopping board are now a possibility, say Japanese researchers. The team have identified the gene responsible for making the tear-inducing substance. They say it would not be difficult to make genetically modified onion varieties that lack the substance altogether. Scientists had thought that the tear-inducing chemical was produced as a by-product of the biochemical processes that create flavour compounds. But Shinsuke Imai at House Foods Corporation in Chiba, Japan, and colleagues have shown that the chemical is manufactured by a separate enzyme altogether. So a GM onion lacking the enzyme would not irritate your eyes, but taste very similar to the original, says Imai.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992935

Stone skimming formula adds new spin
The idle weekend pastime of skimming stones on a lake has been taken apart and reduced to a mathematical formula by a French physicist. Everyone knows a stone bounces best on water if it is round and flat, and spun towards the water as fast as possible. Some enthusiasts even travel to international stone-skimming competitions, like world champion Jerdone Coleman-McGhee, who made a stone bounce 38 times on Blanco River, Texas, in 1992. Intuitively, a flat stone works best because a relatively large part of its surface strikes the water, so there is more bounce. Inspired by his eight-year-old son, physicist Lydéric Bocquet of Lyon University in France wanted to find out more. So he tinkered with some simple equations describing a stone bouncing on water in terms of its radius, speed and spin, and taking account of gravity and the water's drag.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992928

Milky Way's giant black hole pinned down
A star twirling in a tight orbit around the centre of our galaxy has finally pinned down the existence of a monstrous black hole. The size of the orbit and estimated mass of the star S2 rules out all but the most exotic possibilities for the relatively small but massive object lurking at the heart of the Milky Way. Previous observations of X-ray radiation, as well as the movement of other central stars, have strongly suggested that the compact radio source known as Sagittarius A* is a supermassive black hole. But other explanations, such as a cluster of smaller black holes, neutron stars or a ball of heavy neutrinos, could not be ruled out until now.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992936

Now we are two: OpenOffice.org celebrates
OpenOffice.org, the Open Source office suite based on Sun's StarOffice, celebrated its second birthday this week with a couple of new releases: a 1.0 beta for Mac OS X and a new developer release, charting the path for future user versions of OpenOffice.org 1.0. In the battle of the office suites, where there's Microsoft Office and everything else, OpenOffice.org claims 8.5 million downloads in the past two years and near compatibility with MS Office. We thought the second birthday would be a good excuse to chat with Sam Hiser of the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project about the state of the project and of office suite competition.
http://www.theregus.com/content/4/26668.html

MPAA steps up efforts to stop online pirates
As part of an effort to stamp out piracy and avoid the online-trading frenzy that has plagued the music business, the Motion Picture Association of America uses a special search engine to scour the Internet for people who swap digital copyright movies online. When the association finds someone downloading such movies — which circulate on the same peer-to-peer software networks as MP3 music files — it demands that their Internet service be cut off. Since 2001, more than 100,000 customers have been ordered to stop their activities through cease-and-desist letters sent from their Internet service providers, the association says.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/ar.../bz/bz08a.html

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