The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

MS Office 11 -- risky business?
Microsoft this week plans to deliver the first test release of a new version of its Office software intended to rejuvenate sales and stave off competitors. The new version of Microsoft's cash cow -- code-named Office 11 -- comes as sales of the desktop software have begun to plateau, said analysts. While Office still controls more than 90 percent of the desktop office market, customers say they see fewer new features that would compel them to upgrade to the latest versions. Although a new licensing plan will help keep customers in the Microsoft fold, any slump in sales could make a big impact on the software maker's balance sheet. Office contributes nearly one-third of Microsoft's overall revenue.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-962835.html

IE flaws leave systems vulnerable
An Israeli Web-application company has warned users of Internet Explorer that nine related security flaws in the program could be used by malicious hackers to gain access to a victim's computer files. GreyMagic Software said Tuesday that the vulnerabilities -- eight of which it deemed critical -- could be exploited using a specially coded Web page that would run malicious programs on a victim's computer if the victim visited the page. "Using these flaws in combination with other known flaws that can silently deliver files to the user's disk could result in full compromise of the client's computer," said Lee Dagon, head of research and development for GreyMagic.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-962966.html

Intel races to break 3GHz
PC makers will show off systems containing Intel's 3GHz Pentium 4 on Nov. 14, a few days before the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas. The 3GHz Pentium 4 will likely be the highest-performing desktop chip on the market when it comes out next month. Not only will the chip run at a higher clock speed than other desktop parts, but it will also contain Intel's hyperthreading technology, which lets one chip act almost like two. Nearly every major computer maker will release or announce consumer systems on that day, according to sources close to the companies. Intel could not be reached for comment.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-962931.html

Google sued over search rankings
Top billing in Google search results has become so coveted that one Web hosting company is suing for it. Search King, an Oklahoma City-based Web site network and advertising seller, filed a lawsuit Friday against Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, alleging the search giant unfairly bumped down its Web addresses from top rankings in search results. The complaint was filed in the U.S. Western District Court of Oklahoma. The popular search service "purposefully reduced Search King’s value, as well as that of Web sites hosted by Search King," according to the complaint. This is "due to the fact that Search King was legally profiting from the page ranking assigned by Google to certain Web sites, with the intent to cause Search King’s clients to cancel contracts with Search King." Google could not be immediately reached for comment.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-962913.html

Microsoft retools Windows XP for devices
Microsoft on Tuesday released an update to the version of Windows XP for embedded devices. Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 1 resolves glitches discovered since Microsoft released the operating system last year and also adds new features to the product. The operating system is a modular version of Microsoft's flagship operating system that can be installed on embedded devices, such as cash registers, slot machines or ATMs. This embedded version uses the same code base as Windows XP, but Microsoft does not license the product for use on PCs. The Redmond, Wash.-based company also announced a six-month $995 promotional price on both the two kits for creating devices using Windows CE .Net and Windows XP Embedded.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-962939.html

DOJ touches "smart" gun control
The U.S. Justice Department is turning to technology to help guns recognize whose finger is on the trigger. The National Institute of Justice, the research and development arm of the Justice Department, is teaming up with Metal Storm, an electronic gun maker, to study how a firearm could be designed to determine whether the person wielding it should be allowed to fire it. "If an officer drops a gun or it is taken away from him during a tussle, a 'smart' gun could not be turned against him because there would be means of specifically identifying the authorized user," said Charles Vehlow, Metal Storm's chief corporate officer. "The study will identify the various technologies that could make this possible and recommend the best ones to use."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-962895.html

Computing project fights bioterrorism
Anyone with a computer can now join the war on terror by allowing excess processing time to be used by the Bioterrorism Antidote Project. The non-profit organization, Find-a-Drug, will use a distributed computing network similar to SETI@home to form its Bioterrorism Antidotes project, designed to find new drugs that are effective against antibiotic-resistant forms of diseases such as plague, smallpox and anthrax. So far the network has 1,982 registrations, defined as successful installs, and 640 members, defined as those who have returned results.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-962937.html

Direct marketers endorse anti-spam laws
The Direct Marketing Association said Monday that unsolicited e-mail has become so noxious that a federal anti-spam law is finally necessary. Until now, the DMA has opposed the majority of anti-spam bills in Congress or offered only lukewarm support. But the ever-rising tide of junk e-mail has made the influential trade association rethink its stand. "Even legitimate business' messages are not being looked at because of the get-rich-quick schemes and pornography and so forth," Jerry Cerasale, the DMA's vice president for government affairs, said in a telephone interview Monday afternoon.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-962821.html

Tech bolsters Webcasting's new era
Can Web radio stations afford to put another dime in the Internet jukebox? Costs for the nascent Webcasting business shot up Sunday when an online broadcast royalty scheme took effect, throwing a spotlight on the economics of an industry that is still struggling to prove its viability. Although much of the news is bad, there is at least one bright spot: Webcasters today pay dramatically less to distribute audio feeds than they did just a few years ago, a trend that is likely to continue because of technology improvements and cheaper carrying costs.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962832...g=fd_lede2_hed

Lotus founder preps Outlook alternative
Can a fledgling nonprofit organization with half a dozen employees challenge the largest software company in the world? Mitch Kapor, co-founder of Lotus Development and a pioneer of personal computer software, thinks so. He is heading up a project to build a free, open-source equivalent of Microsoft Outlook, the set of e-mail, calendar and contacts applications that comes with Microsoft's pervasive Office suite. The organization's "personal information manager" software will have many of the same features as Microsoft Outlook, with an emphasis on tools that allow people to work collaboratively in groups and share information, said Kapor, who is funding the project with $5 million from his own pocket. The software will incorporate Jabber, an open-source instant messaging system, as well as an easy-to-use e-mail encryption system that Kapor's organization is developing, he said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-962974.html?tag=fd_top_2

Brother recalls printers after fires
Electronics conglomerate Brother International is recalling about 100,000 business printers after reports that some have overheated and caught fire. In a statement released on Tuesday in conjunction with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Brother said it had received two reports of overheating printers catching on fire, with one case involving minor property damage. The recall involves laser printers with model numbers HL-1040, HL-1050 and HL-1060, plus the MFC-P200 multifunction device, which combines printing, copying and faxing capabilities. The affected printers were sold between June 1997 and December 2000, at prices ranging from $300 to $700.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962975.html?tag=fd_top_5

Screensavers crack medical puzzle
The spare capacity of thousands of computers has helped scientists solve a complex problem - which could one day help them fight disease. It is one of the first occasions so-called "distributed computing", in which each volunteer machine is given a chunk of data to compute, has led to a research paper published in a top scientific journal. Problems suitable for "distributed computing" are those which would take years of processor time if carried out on just one, or a small group of computers. However, if the task is divided between many thousands of computers, the time it takes to finish the job falls dramatically.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2349247.stm

Encryption gets business boost
Troubled security software maker Baltimore Technologies is hoping to boost the adoption of public-key encryption by building the technology into a new suite of products. Public-key encryption is used to secure electronic transactions and to digitally sign important documents such as contracts and legal forms. Baltimore creates some of the building blocks for conducting such transactions and allows third parties to verify the identity of digital signatures -- a system known as the public-key infrastructure (PKI). Baltimore is one of the leading PKI developers, but it has seen its fortunes crumble in recent years. During the past 12 months, it has halved its work force and the value of its U.K.-traded shares has plunged.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-962945.html?tag=cd_mh

Sharp shines up on-glass circuitry
Sharp, Japan's largest maker of liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), unveiled a screen Tuesday with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to to handle some computing tasks. The company hopes to have products available by 2005 using the advanced circuitry, perhaps even a "display card" that could store data and be carried around for use with various gadgets from games machines to mobile phones to car navigation systems. "This could be something the size of a business card, perhaps with a wireless function and touch-screen input," Mikio Katayama, head of Sharp's mobile display division, said after a news conference here. "We still have to work out the specifics."
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962881.html?tag=cd_mh

Sony to debut portable DVD/CD-RW player
Sony Electronics is wrapping four devices into one portable package for the holidays. The consumer-electronics giant's new MPD-AP20U player can play and record CDs as well as play DVDs and digital audio files, such as MP3s. Sony announced the device Monday, saying it will be available in November for less than $300. "With the benefits of four products wrapped into one portable device, (the MPD-AP20U) can do a multitude of things for the business traveler or the savvy consumer," Sony spokesman Bob DeMoulin said. As a standalone portable player, Sony's new gadget can play back CDs as well as MP3, WAV and WMA files that are stored on CDs, DVDs or the company's own Memory Stick cards.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962826.html?tag=cd_mh

Apple's Stickiest Marketing Ploy
So why would anyone steal an Apple sticker? It's not as if they're rare. Apple provides a couple of free decals with every new machine. The company started the practice in the late 1970s with the Apple II, and continued it through the Apple III and the Macintosh line. During the mid-1990s, Apple provided boxfuls of decals to anyone who asked. It later dropped the rainbow motif when it changed its corporate logo to a solid color, which was red first and is now white. Fred Davis, former editor in chief of MacUser magazine, said the idea of putting a window decal (as opposed to a solid sticker) in every computer box was very clever, since it encouraged people to stick it somewhere public. It was also, at least in the early days, an emblem of cool.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,55887,00.html

An E-Mayor for Virtual L.A. City
When Angelenos vote Nov. 5, they'll be asked to decide whether or not to let the San Fernando Valley secede from the rest of Los Angeles. Secession would split L.A. in two, creating a new city of approximately 1.3 million people, with an annual budget over $1 billion. Internet consultant Marc Strassman, 54, wants to be mayor of that new city. Strassman, president of research and consulting company Etopia, has been an evangelist of e-government for 26 years. He believes that putting government online will vastly increase the quality of life in the Valley and serve as an example for other municipalities.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55911,00.html

Smart Fatigues Hear Enemy Coming
Call it a security blanket for soldiers: GIs may someday march into battle armed with a swatch of fabric rather than bulky electronics. Computer scientists and textile experts are working together to weave fabric with electronics that can assist the military in sound detection and other useful applications. Researchers at the University of Southern California and Virginia Tech have developed a fabric woven with conductive wires and a cluster of seven button-size microphones that can be used to detect the sound of remote objects, like approaching vehicles. A small circuit board attached to the fabric compares the sounds from each microphone and uses algorithms to compute the direction the sound is coming from.
http://www.wired.com/news/gizmos/0,1452,55764,00.html

Swine Sperm Altered for Organ Use
By manipulating swine sperm, Italian researchers have made a strain of pigs that carry human genes in their hearts, livers and kidneys, an advance that could lead to creating herds of pigs that could provide organs for transplanting into humans. In a study appearing Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Milan report they mixed swine sperm with human DNA to transfer a gene called decay accelerating factor, or DAF. The modified sperm was then used to fertilize pig eggs and produce litters of pigs carrying the human gene.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,55946,00.html

Specialized Scan Could Nix Chemo
Doctors running souped-up MRI machines may now be able to predict outcomes for chemotherapy -- before they prescribe the caustic treatment to their patients with cancer. That's the case being made this week by Israeli physicist Dr. Yael Mardor, who is using a technique called high diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWMRI) to measure the velocity and mobility of water molecules within cancer cells. Medical personnel use standard MRI to take pictures of patients' internal organs without using ionizing radiation. Mardor, speaking on Monday at a medical conference in Nice, France, said the mobility, or diffusion, of water molecules in cancer cells can tell doctors whether a tumor will respond to chemotherapy.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,55921,00.html

PopTech: Intelligence Overload?
It's not rare for PopTech participants to call this conference the best of any they've been to. The star-studded speaker list, the bucolic seaside town and the opportunity to ponder and debate technology's effect on society draws an eager crowd each year. Though the audience was a bit smaller this time around than in years past (every other year the conference sold out), PopTech still excited and inspired the faithful. "I love it," said Jim Bueche, who has attended the conference each year. "It's really unique. There's a lot to bring one back." Part of what makes the conference so good is the small scale of the gathering and the opportunity participants are given to mingle with the speakers, he said. On both Friday and Saturday, PopTech participants received a free lunch ticket to local restaurants and could easily join any table to talk.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,55928,00.html

Game Development à la Mod
Like a lot of college seniors, Minh Le had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. In June 2000, on the verge of graduating with a computer science degree from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, the 23-year-old Le really would admit to only one career goal: He didn't want to work in a cubicle. If pushed about his ambitions, though, he might shyly point to a computer game he had built in the basement of his parents' suburban home and given away over the Internet. Today, Le's homespun project, called Counter-Strike, is the most popular multiplayer action game in the world. Bigger than Quake. Bigger than Unreal. The numbers are staggering: Over 1.7 million players spend more than 2.4 billion minutes a month in the game. (The top-rated TV show Friends generates 2.9 billion viewer minutes a month.) In addition to its free Internet distribution, Counter-Strike has sold 1.3 million shrink-wrapped copies at retail; in 2003 a version for Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox will hit the stores.
http://www.business2.com/articles/ma...,43489,FF.html

Biotech Industry Adopts Precaution
Spurred by growing fear that drugs or chemicals made in gene-altered plants will taint the food supply, the North American biotechnology industry is adopting a broad moratorium on planting certain types of crops in major food-producing regions. The voluntary ban, which goes beyond any proposed government regulation, is designed to prevent the spread of exotic genes into field crops likely to be used for food or animal feed. Its most immediate impact will be to bar companies from planting certain types of gene-altered corn in the Midwest farm belt or from planting some types of the rape plant (from which canola oil is produced) on the Canadian prairie, but the ban could eventually apply to numerous crops and regions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002Oct21.html

Umbilical cord stem cells multiplied in lab
A way of dramatically multiplying the number of primitive stem cells in samples of human umbilical cord blood has been developed by a US team. Until now the stem cells from one cord have only been sufficient to treat one child with leukaemia. But the new technique promises to create enough cells to treat adult sufferers as well. "This demonstration is a significant step towards possibly expanding the use of this source of blood stem cells for treatment of an adult," says Ken Campbell of the UK's Leukaemia Research Fund. However, some researchers warn it is as yet unclear whether multiplying these cells at an early stage might diminish their capacity for self-renewal later. If this happened, the transplanted cells might be a source of new blood cells for only a limited period.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992949

Loony Moons: Chaos, Order and Strange Behavior
About the only thing the moons of our solar system have in common is a penchant for strange behavior. A pair of new studies shows that while a number of the more than 100 known satellites take predictable, orderly paths that hint at their origins, other moons are governed by total chaos. In between are all kinds of crazy antics. Much of the lunacy is rooted in the method of a moon’s origin. If you are a planet, there are many ways to make a moon. You can capture a small orbiting companion, as Jupiter and Saturn are suspected of doing more than once. Some of these objects orbit at odd angles and even backward compared to the larger, "normal" moons. You can wait for something to hit you, as Earth most likely did, then assemble the wreckage into a new object that will inspire legend and love.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom..._021022-1.html

Internships go virtual as firms seek ways to save
Some cost-cutting employers are trying a novel alternative to the traditional student apprenticeship: virtual internships. Companies are hiring college students to work on projects from afar rather than relocating them for short-term assignments. The programs, dubbed e-internships, are a new way for companies and pending graduates to get connected. Employers are experimenting with the idea because more college students have access to computers, virtual work has become more commonplace and companies want to tap more-affordable labor sources. Firms can save money because the internships may be short in duration or unpaid.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...-virtual_x.htm

Radioactive battery provides decades of power
Tiny batteries that draw energy from radioactive isotopes could provide 50 years of power for micro-devices and electronics, its inventors say. The battery is fuelled by the radioactive isotope nickel-63. "It might be possible to make really tiny microelectronic sensor systems that can be embedded in a building or even in the body," says Amil Lal, who developed the system with colleagues at Cornell University, New York. Lal thinks any device that requires low power for long periods, but is not accessible, could make use of the battery. He says using an isotope that emits beta radiation, the least energetic radiation associated with nuclear decay, could make it safe for implantation.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992951

Hydrogen Clouds Spotted High above the Milky Way
Huge hydrogen clouds that measure 100-light-years across hover in the void between the Milky Way galaxy and intergalactic space, according to a new report. Previous research had revealed the presence of hydrogen gas floating above the plane of our galaxy. But where it came from or how it was distributed remained unclear due to instrument limitations. Now observations using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have exposed the shape of the neutral hydrogen masses. "These objects were just below the ability of the older telescopes to detect," says F. Jay Lockman of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, "but I looked with the GBT, and they popped right out." In a paper accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Lockman reports that the group of clouds is located toward the center of the Milky Way, 15,000 light-years from the earth, and that each cloud contains between 50 and 100 solar masses of hydrogen.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...E2809EC5880108

Asteroid follows Earth around orbit
Astronomers have discovered a 100-metre asteroid that follows the Earth's path around the Sun in a reversible "horseshoe" orbit. It is the first object found to be closely following Earth's orbit, though other "co-orbital" asteroids follow the planets Jupiter and Mars. The object, 2002 AA29, also becomes a temporary second moon to the Earth from time to time, with the next rendezvous expected in 2600. It was first spotted on 9 January 2002 by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) automated sky survey project. Detailed analysis of the asteroid's movement now shows that it follows the Earth's orbit in a peculiar manner, first approaching the Earth from one side then, 95 years later, sweeping around to the other side.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992953

Microsoft finds marketing outlet in Kazaa
In early September, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates staged a Hollywood gala to impress the music and movie industries with his company's latest software for digital music and video, Windows Media 9. A few weeks later, Microsoft started showing off Windows Media 9 to an audience reviled by the entertainment industry: the Kazaa file-sharing network, where users routinely copy digital songs, films and software for free. Microsoft has picked up the tab to distribute at least two companies' promotional videos on Kazaa in the Windows Media 9 format, representatives of those companies say. The videos not only show off the improved picture quality of Microsoft's latest technology, they also help distribute it -- when Kazaa users download and play either video, their Microsoft media player software is automatically upgraded to Windows Media 9.
http://www.detnews.com/2002/technolo...ogy-617514.htm

Whitney's New Album Leaked One Month Early
It's all over the Web: Whitney Houston's new album, Just Whitney... It was leaked in its entirety sometime over the weekend to lots of Web sites and downloading services. It can be burned onto CDs, distributed for free and will likely turn up on street corners before the end of this week. The record industry, in other words, is about to sink like the Titanic. Houston was paid $100 million by Arista Records last year in a new deal that includes this album. Interestingly, at the same time, Santana's new album, Shaman, which Arista will release on Tuesday, also seems to be all over the Internet. What a situation though for Houston. Her album is not due to be shipped until Nov. 26, and the version available on the Web may not be the finished one. The Web version offers only 10 tracks plus a bonus remix of "Whatchulookinat."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,66212,00.html

More neeeeeeeeeeeews later on

[ssj4_android]

Hrm...Early edition? Isn't this more like tuesday news?

[RDixon]

Damn. About 10 months ago when I built this box, I went with AMD in anticipation of the then soon to be released ClawHammer chip. Now Intel is breaking the 3 gig mark and AMD is still stuck below 2 gigs. Still no clawhammer chip.
I think I may give this box to my brother for xmas and build a new Intel one for me.

[TankGirl]

Thank you very much, Mr. WT!

- tg

ps. here is a very important message, please deliver it to Netcoco: "Peeple of zee wurl, relax!"