The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

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Ruling may sway Microsoft's other trials
Friday's antitrust ruling may give Microsoft powerful ammunition to defend against more than 60 private lawsuits pending against the software giant, legal experts say. In separate actions Friday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved with few changes a November 2001 settlement between Microsoft, the Justice Department and nine states and then she issued the revised settlement as her remedy in continued litigation brought by nine other states and the District of Columbia. In the 344-page memorandum supporting her decision, Kollar-Kotelly potentially set limits on the use of U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's "findings of fact" in other cases.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-964366.html

SBC has plans for Internet security
SBC Communications announced Monday that it is forming an Internet security project designed to improve network defenses. The project, known as the Internet Assurance and Security Center (IASC), will be designed and managed by SBC Technology Resources, the company's research and development center in Austin, Texas. The Baby Bell said it is launching IASC in response to the growing threats from viruses, worms, denial-of-service attacks and other sources. IASC will focus on developing security technologies and standards that can be applied at different levels of large telecommunications networks that handle Internet, voice and data traffic for millions of consumers and businesses.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-964425.html

Europe says it won't back off Microsoft
Microsoft hopes to use its Friday antitrust victory as a starting point for resolving legal troubles in Europe. In separate actions Friday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved, with few changes, a November 2001 settlement between Microsoft, the Justice Department and nine states and then she issued the revised settlement as her remedy in continued litigation brought by nine other states and the District of Columbia. Her ruling, which University of Baltimore Law School professor Bob Lande described as "basically appeal-proof," is likely to bring the four-year-old antitrust case to an end. But that doesn't mean Microsoft's problems with trustbusters are over.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-964361.html

Borland retools JBuilder8
Borland Software, which leads the market for Java development tools, on Monday announced a new version of its toolset. The company said JBuilder 8, the new release of its Java tools, includes support for Jakarta Struts, which is an open-source Web development framework. It also offers better tools for testing Enterprise Java Beans applications, as well as support for new Web services standards and the Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.4 specification. Borland said the new release also is intended to make code management and debugging easier through links to tools such as Borland's TeamSource, Rational's ClearCase and the Concurrent Versioning System, or CVS. JBuilder 8 can now also debug non-Java code, such as Oracle's OracleJSP code.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-964404.html

Site problems hit eBay
eBay experienced site problems for several hours on Monday morning, delaying or preventing people from accessing parts of the popular auction site. The troubles started at 8 a.m. PST and continued until about 12:45 p.m. PST, the company said in a series of notes to consumers on one of its announcements boards. The company said it has resolved all the problems. "We have identified and corrected the issue that caused this situation, and full access has been restored to all members," the company said on one of its announcement board notes. "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this issue has caused and thank you for your patience while we resolved this situation." eBay representatives did not return calls seeking comment.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-964480.html?tag=fd_top

Braid virus winds its way through e-mail
A new mass-mailing computer virus known as W32.Braid has slowly spread among PCs over the weekend, said U.K. e-mail service provider MessageLabs. Although the company has seen only 43 copies of the virus -- indicating an extremely slow start -- W32.Braid shares some attributes of the widely spread Klez family of viruses and could have similar success. Among the similarities, both viruses forge a fake sender address in the e-mails they use to propagate themselves, which makes finding infected PCs more difficult. The Klez.h variant of the Klez virus has sent out millions of e-mail messages with a copy of itself attached. Since it was first placed on the Internet in April, the virus has topped the charts of malicious e-mail attachments found by antivirus firms and e-mail service providers, which filter junk e-mail for companies and also zap messages that have viruses attached.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-964476.html?tag=fd_top

Nokia makes play for wireless gaming
Nokia plans to start selling a combination game console and cell phone in February next year, hoping to break open a lackluster wireless gaming market. The all-in-one "N-Gage" device allows a game to be played over a cellular telephone network among several N-Gage users, Nokia said. The device also has a Bluetooth connection, so gamers located within about 10 feet of each other can compete for free without using a costly cellular network. It will run on the Nokia Series 60 platform and the Symbian operating system. The multiple-player gaming that N-Gage offers is the next step in cell phone games, said Nokia spokesman Keith Nowak.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-964478.html?tag=fd_top

Start-up: The more the merrier on Wi-Fi networks
Network-infrastructure start-up Vivato said Monday it's developing a new switch that can extend a Wi-Fi wireless network's range from 300 feet to four miles and allow for far more simultaneous users than most networks can handle. The company said the new switch is aimed at businesses because networks that feature the switch will be able to host "thousands" of simultaneous users, over distances suitable to a large building or campus of buildings. With conventional gear, Vivato said, every floor of an office building requires its own Wi-Fi network, and most networks bog down after more than 20 users sign on. Wi-Fi is the name given an emerging wireless-networking technology. In-Stat/MDR researchers have said that by 2005, more than 55 million Wi-Fi-based wireless networks will be in homes and offices.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-964479.html?tag=fd_top

Intel gives health care a dose of tech
Intel is working with health care and technology companies to improve the role computing can play in caring for people. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker has formed a division, called the Proactive Health Research group, to look at how computing can be used in the health care industry and specifically how current technologies can be applied to help take care of the quickly growing population of senior citizens. Part of the group's goal is to find untapped markets where its products, such as the tablet PC, media adapters and portable video players, can be used. "What we kept coming up with -- when we were trying to identify the new areas to develop -- was that health and wellness was a chief area of concern" for consumers, said Eric Dishman, manager of Proactive Health Research.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-964447.html?tag=fd_top

Software trains officials to respond to massive terror attacks
A public health official working in San Francisco faces a tough decision. Several hospitals have just reported possible Anthrax-related deaths to her office. Her dilemma: Should she distribute the antibiotic Cipro evenly to clinics and hospitals throughout the Bay area or only to hospitals reporting cases? She chooses the latter. The Cipro arrives at the same time as the lab results: positive for Anthrax. Four thousand people die. If she had distributed the drug evenly, instead of to specific areas, that number would have been closer to 5,000. Had she waited to get the lab results before acting, the toll could have easily reached 10,000.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...eron110102.asp

Canadians brew up a supercomputer
Thousands of computers across Canada are being interconnected to create a supercomputer that will operate for only a day. The 1,380 processor strong supercomputer will be used to tackle a problem in computational chemistry that would otherwise take years to complete. When tied together the computers will, briefly, form the world's fifth largest supercomputer. If successful the cluster will be used in the future to tackle other tasks that demand the application of huge amounts of computer power.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2400811.stm

Full speed ahead for IBM transistor
IBM on Monday will unveil a new transistor design for wireless chips that promises enough power to build future networks that will change the way people use wireless at work and at home. The new transistor design, based on its silicon germanium, or SiGe, chipmaking technology, delivers a threefold increase in speed. The company's microelectronics division will detail the design at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco in December. The new IBM transistor, which runs at 350GHz, will result in communications chips that run at roughly 150GHz and will be able to send data at rates of hundreds of gigabits per second. That's enough juice to send high-quality video from a set-top to a high-definition screen, an IBM representative said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-964288.html?tag=cd_mh

Online music sales kinda blue, file sharing blamed *yamn*
The embattled record industry got more bad news on Sunday as a study showed online sales of recorded music dropped 25 percent in the first nine months of 2002. The survey by research firm ComScore Networks, which monitored more than 1.5 million Web users, showed online sales of music -- in the form of physical singles, albums, CDs and tapes -- fell to $545 million from $730 million in the same period a year earlier. Sales of digital downloads were also included in the survey but accounted for a tiny portion of the total, ComScore said. As the music industry has tried to thwart unauthorized Web services such as Kazaa, Morpheus and the now-idle Napster, it has also tried to step up online sales either through established retailers such as Amazon.com or through new label-backed subscription services such as MusicNet or Pressplay.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-964390.html?tag=cd_mh

Net movies: Ready for prime time?
The major Hollywood movie studios are finally getting serious about delivering movies over the Internet, but their performances still could end up on the cutting-room floor. Movielink -- a joint venture among MGM, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros. -- last week announced technology partnerships with Microsoft and RealNetworks to help power its movie-rental service on the Net, set to launch by December. The deals represent crucial final edits to a venture long overdue, and they lend credence to promises that the movie studios will open film vaults to widespread Internet distribution. By offering a legal service, Movielink could also thwart online piracy of movies and help Hollywood evade "Napsterization" -- that is, tumult like that which file-swapping site Napster let loose in the music business.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-964285.html?tag=cd_mh

Universal in Net download deal
OD2, the British technology company co-founded by recording artist Peter Gabriel, has signed a licensing agreement to distribute songs from Universal Music Group to a variety of European Web sites, the companies said Monday. The agreement gives OD2 access to 50,000 songs from Universal's repertoire including Eminem, Sting and jazz legend Louis Armstrong, bringing the total in OD2's library to 150,000 tracks. Universal, a division of Franco-American media conglomerate Vivendi Universal, is the fourth major music label to partner with OD2. Universal, along with the other major labels, have been beset by digital piracy over the past two years. The major labels blame free download sites such as Kazaa and Grokster for a sharp decline in the sale of recorded music. The majors have fought back in the past year, offering their music in a piecemeal fashion to a variety of subscription-based Internet download services including industry-backed services PressPlay and MusicNet in an effort to cash in on the craze for downloading music off the Internet.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-964364.html?tag=cd_mh

Mystery game lures players with cash
Plenty of companies have tried and failed to attract a broader audience for pay-to-play online gaming, but Keith Griffin thinks he has the answer -- money. The former pharmaceuticals executive on Monday will launch the first installment of "TerraQuest," an online game with a plot designed to appeal to anyone who enjoys a good mystery and a jackpot of at least $250,000 for whoever solves the case first. With a tagline of "It's what you play when you grow up," the game is intended to appeal to customers who aren't interested in most of what the game industry offers, said Griffin, founder of Henderson, Nev.-based start-up MindQuest Entertainment.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-964260.html

New Stores Make Fast Mac Friends
About once a month, Tadd and Nancy Torborg of Orlando, Florida, load their two kids into the car and drive halfway across the eastern seaboard to attend the grand opening of a new Apple Store. In the last year, the family has graced a dozen openings of Apple's new stores. They'll drive up to five hours through the night. Then they'll wait in line for hours with hundreds of other Mac fans for the store to open. That, in fact, is the point: They like hanging out in the queue with like-minded Macintosh users. Nancy estimated there are at least a couple dozen people who regularly attend Apple store openings on the East Coast. One of them recorded a video from a dozen visits on the stores' machines and posted them to his website.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,56123,00.html

U.S. Lures Iraqi Weapons Experts
The U.S. government wants to fight Saddam Hussein -- with green cards. Under a bill proposed by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware), 500 Iraqi scientists and engineers -- and their immediate families -- could be given permanent residency in the United States if they supply information on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Supporters, including former arms inspectors, said the bill could help "take the heart out of" Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological research programs. Skeptics see the Iraqi Scientists Liberation Act of 2002 as well-meaning, but ineffectual, posturing. The federal government already has the power to give out visas and grant asylum. But the bureaucratic process for determining who qualifies for such protection can drag on and on.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56160,00.html

Word Up: Keeping Languages Alive
When Napoleon's troops discovered a granite slab in 1799 containing Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphic translations of ancient text dating back to 100 B.C., they unearthed more than 1,000 years of history. Now, a group of scientists and engineers are crafting a modern Rosetta stone that will preserve more than 1,400 of the world's 7,000 languages on a 3-inch nickel disk. Fifty to ninety percent of the world's languages are predicted to disappear in the next century, according to the The Rosetta Project, a collaborative, open-source endeavor by language specialists and native speakers around the world who are creating a "near permanent" archive of the world's languages.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54345,00.html

Net protests mount in Ireland
Consumers are fed up with paying per minute for net services in Ireland and urgent action needs to be taken if the so-called Celtic Tiger is to stay competitive, say critics. Both IrelandOffline, a campaign group lobbying for unmetered net access, and telecom operators desperate to introduce new services to their customers, want to see radical changes soon. The government is backing the campaign with Dermot Ahern, Minister for Communications in Ireland, calling for flat-rate internet access to be introduced in the Irish Republic as a matter of priority.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2377447.stm

Comet-chasing spacecraft performs test run
A NASA spacecraft has zoomed past an asteroid in deep space in a final test of the instruments it will use to capture dust from the tail of a comet in 2004. NASA's Stardust probe flew to within 3300 kilometres of comet Annefrank at 0450 GMT on Saturday, travelling at a relative speed of seven kilometres per second. The fly-by was used to test the spacecraft's comet-tracking system, its communications links and on-board dust capturing instruments. Stardust will perform its main task in January 2004 when it will fly to within 100 kilometres of comet Wild 2. It will attempt to capture dust from this comet's tail and should then return to Earth with the first ever comet samples in 2006.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993002

Online companies find ads can be counter-productive
Pop-up ads may be slowly popping off. Consumer backlash against these often irritating online ads has recently prompted companies such as America Online, IVillage and Ask Jeeves to eliminate some of them from their Web sites. This saves users from "pop-up hunting" -- clicking away the ads as soon as they appear -- while surfing cyberspace. But analysts say other forms of intrusive advertising will probably take their place. In this depressed market, Internet companies have to find ways to lure advertisers while ensuring users aren't turned off by intrusive sales tactics. Most of the Web sites that claim to have eliminated pop-ups haven't gotten rid of them entirely. Such companies have left the door open to run ads from previous marketing contracts and from sister firms, as well as to run their own in-house surveys and announcements.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...4/BU211419.DTL

Astronomers Untangle Source of the Prettiest Pictures in Space
Among Nature’s most beautiful constructs are symmetrical planetary nebula, huge cocoons of gas surrounding old stars. But astronomers have not been sure why the streaming filaments of color come in myriad shapes, such as the classic hourglass, instead of being spherical. The so-called Hourglass planetary nebula. The inset image is of an old red giant star, similar to those in the new observations. Both photos were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The prime suspect has long been magnetism, and a new study provides the first conclusive proof in the case, astronomers said Friday. An international team of astronomers has made new observations that show that the magnetic fields close to four aging stars are at least 10 times stronger than that of our own Sun. This magnetism directs the shape of the nebulae.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...es_021104.html

Rocket-powered bug caught in the act
A dangerous tropical bacterium has been caught in the act of deploying its homemade "rocket", most probably to infect other cells. Other pathogenic bacteria use a similar form of attack and researchers hope that vaccines designed to interfere with the process might be adapted for use with Burkholderia pseudomallei. B pseudomallei is endemic in southeast Asia. It can cause severe pneumonia and inflammation of the brain and other organs in humans and a wide range of animals. Existing antibiotics can kill it. "But there is no vaccine for this bacterium. To understand how better to deal with it, we need to understand the mechanisms of how it operates," says Edouard Galyov of the UK's Institute for animal Health.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993005

Alaska hit by giant earthquake
The largest earthquake to rock the world for almost 18 months hit central Alaska on Sunday. The magnitude 7.9 tremor struck a relatively unpopulated area and no casualties have been reported. By contrast, a quake 100 times smaller hit southern Italy on Thursday and killed 26 children and three adults after a school collapsed. The Alaskan earthquake occurred at 1312 local time (2212 GMT), about five kilometres beneath the surface. Its epicentre was 280 km north of Anchorage and 90 miles south of Fairbanks. Two major roads are reported to have large cracks and supports for the 1300-km-long Trans-Alaskan oil pipeline were also damaged.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993003

Math discovery rattles Net security
Will Manindra Agrawal bring about the end of the Internet as we know it? The question is not as ridiculous as it was just two months ago. Prof. Agrawal is a 36-year old theoretical computer scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India. In August, he solved a problem that had eluded millennia of mathematicians: developing a method to determine with complete certainty if a number is prime. Prime numbers are those divisible only by themselves and 1. While small primes like 5 or 17 are easy to spot, for very large numbers, those hundreds of digits long, there never had been a formula of “primality testing” that didn’t have a slight chance of error. Besides being a show-stopping bit of mathematics, the work was big news for the Internet. Very large prime numbers are the bedrock of Internet encryption, the sort your browser uses when you are shopping online.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/830300.asp?0dm=C11KT

Nonlethal weapons research urged
Development of nonlethal weapons such as bad smelling chemicals to control crowds or psychological methods to calm them, energy beams to stop vehicles and underwater barrier systems should be given a high priority by the Navy and Marine Corps, the National Research Council recommended Monday. “In particular, nonlethal weapons are an additional way to provide greater security for military bases and protect our security,” said Miriam E. John of Sandia National Laboratories, chair of the committee that prepared the report. The recommendation comes just over a week after about 120 captives died when Russian forces pumped incapacitating gas into a theater where about 40 Chechen separatists had taken more than 750 people hostage. Russian officials said the gas was not supposed to cause deaths.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/830405.asp?0si=-

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