The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

MS Passport takes on credit cards
Microsoft hopes to extend its Passport online identification system into authorizing credit card payments. The software giant will strike a partnership Tuesday with security-software maker Arcot Systems, which builds online payment systems for merchants and for banks that issue Visa and MasterCard credit cards. Arcot makes the systems behind Visa's own Verified by Visa program as well as a similar program in development at MasterCard. Under the deal, Microsoft and Arcot plan to offer, later this fall, a service that will let banks require computer users to type in their Passport username and password to authenticate Visa or MasterCard credit cards.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-942344.html

Linux tries iPod on for size
Windows users have recently been given access to the popular Macintosh music player, iPod. Now Linux users may soon be able to take a bite out of Apple's gadget too. Last week Tex9, a small software development firm in San Francisco, began beta testing an iPod plug-in for its xTunes music player software, which is itself a Linux clone of Apple's iTunes. The plug-in will allow drag-and-drop access to iPod, which holds up to 10GB of music, according to Tex9. Tex9 did not announce when it expects the software to be out of the testing stage. When it is released, it will be sold for a "minimal" charge, while xTunes itself will remain free.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-942434.html

Cable in hot pursuit of Wi-Fi pirates
Broadband providers are cracking down on popular Wi-Fi networks, threatening to cut service to customers who set up the inexpensive wireless systems and allow others to freely tap into their Internet access. Time Warner Cable of New York City has given 10 customers less than a week to stop using their accounts to provide a wireless local area network available to anyone within 300 feet. The letters are just an initial volley; Time Warner expects to send additional letters, while AT&T Broadband also is preparing similar letters for some of its customers.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-942339.html

'Jihad' site owner charged with terrorism
A London man has gone on trial under a new U.K. terrorism law, for running a Web site that prosecutors said offered to send would-be terrorists to the United States to learn about guns. Sulayman Balal Zainulabidin, a chef arrested last October in a crackdown following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, has denied offering firearms courses with the aim of training terrorists. The case is an important test of the U.K's sweeping antiterrorism law, which came into effect last year. Civil liberties groups have criticized the law as too broad and say it gives vast new powers to the police.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-942492.html

Hacker cracks Apple downloads
A security mailing list has alerted Apple Computer OS X users to a program that could let a hacker piggyback malicious code on downloads from the company's SoftwareUpdate service. According to the BugTraq mailing list, a hacker named Russell Harding has posted full instructions online for how to fool Apple's SoftwareUpdate feature to allowing a hacker to install a backdoor on any Mac running OS X. The exploit takes advantage of SoftwareUpdate, Apple's software updating mechanism in OS X, which checks weekly for new updates from the company. According to Harding, who claims to have discovered the exploit, the feature downloads updates over the Web with no authentication and installs them on a system. So far, there are no patches available for this problem.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-942282.html

Flash! Macromedia tools speak up
Macromedia's quest to make the Web work better enters new and uncharted territory Tuesday with the release of server software for adding communications functions to Web sites. Flash Communications Server MX, a new addition to the MX family of Web development and server products Macromedia has built this year, is meant to further encourage Web developers to add chat, interactive video and other communications features to their sites, said Kevin Lynch, chief software architect for Macromedia. "There are other technologies that are delivering parts of this experience, but it tends to be very segmented," Lynch said.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-942354.html

New IBM tech removes the jitters
IBM plans to unveil a new server hard drive Tuesday that takes the shakes out of complex technology and just might help put Big Blue back on solid ground in the drive market. The company's Ultrastar 146Z10 hard drive incorporates anti-vibration technology that IBM calls "rotational vibration safeguard" -- technology designed to improve the performance of increasingly denser and faster hard drives. Drives are made up of components called platters and heads. Platters are the magnetic, rotating plates that store data, while heads pull the data off the rotating platters. To improve performance, manufacturers have increased the speeds at which platters rotate, and in turn, the rate at which heads pull information from those platters.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-942348.html

Judge OKs suit against Kazaa parent
A federal judge said Monday that record labels and film studios could expand an ongoing copyright lawsuit to include Sharman Networks, which distributes the popular Kazaa software. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sued three prominent file-swapping companies in October in Los Angeles federal court. The suit named Morpheus parent StreamCast Networks, Grokster and Kazaa BV, the Netherlands-based company that originally created the Kazaa software. But in February, Kazaa BV sold the Kazaa file-swapping software to Sharman, a company later revealed to be based for tax reasons in Vanuatu, a small island in the South Pacific. The recording and movie industry trade groups asked permission to add that company to the lawsuit in June.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-942533.html?tag=fd_top

Vivendi units harmonize in digital deal
Vivendi Universal-owned EMusic said Tuesday that Universal Music Group will add albums from its back catalog to the download service. Under the agreement, EMusic will include 1,000 albums from its corporate cousin in its digital music service. The songs will come from the label's back catalog, which includes artists Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Eric Clapton, The Judds and Sonic Youth. The announcement comes as a slew of online music services court the Big Five record labels: Universal, Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment, AOL Time Warner's Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Recorded Music.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-942529.html?tag=fd_top

Spotting a scam in sheep's clothing
There is a new threat to consumer's freedom and privacy, as well as to the future of the Internet. Hollywood Congressman Howard Berman has proposed legislation that would effectively shut down peer-to-peer networks. His proposal calls for "technological self-help measures" such as interdiction, redirection, decoys, spoofing and file-blocking. This sort of action is a blatant declaration of cyberwarfare against consumers. The battle over technology vs. content is nothing new. While it is natural to resist change, it is necessary for growth. This ongoing battle is best described in relation to the Betamax lawsuit in the 1980s in which two movie studios filed a lawsuit hoping to stop the manufacturing and distribution of Sony Betamax VCRs.
http://news.com.com/2010-1078-942330.html

Just desserts for scofflaws
Songwriters are the creators of the music we know and love. They pour their hearts and souls into their songs, knowing that often the voices and instruments of others end up better known to the listener. They write because they love music. And some also dare to dream that their work will pay their bills. A few particularly gifted, diligent -- and more than a little lucky -- ones achieve this dream. For those few, one of the ways they get paid for their work is through the "mechanical" statutory license, which requires that those who make a physical or electronic copy of a copyrighted musical composition pay the songwriter 8 cents.
http://news.com.com/2010-1078-942325.html

Replace your mouse with your eye
Computers of the future could be controlled by eye movements, rather than a mouse or keyboard. Scientists at Imperial College, London, are working on eye-tracking technology that analyses the way we look at things. The team are trying to gain an insight into visual knowledge - the way we see objects and translate that information into actions. "Eye-trackers will one day be so reliable and so simple that they will become yet another input device on your computer, like a much more sophisticated mouse," said Professor Guang-Zhong Yang of the Department of Computing at Imperial College.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/2098030.stm

It ain't heavy; it's my laptop
Toshiba on Tuesday launched the mother of all notebooks. The company's Satellite 1955-S801 weighs 9.6 pounds, sports a 2.2GHz Pentium 4 desktop processor from Intel, a huge 16-inch display and a removable wireless keyboard. The new Satellite is meant to replace a high-end desktop PC with a more portable alternative. The machine's design also aims to promote greater ease of use, by allowing owners to detach the wireless keyboard and also use a wireless mouse to sit farther back from the 16-inch screen. Toshiba estimates that the Satellite 1955 will spend about 80 percent of its time in use as a desktop, but it can also be packed it up and moved fairly easily in the home or office.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-942396.html?tag=fd_top

Telecom firm leaks student data to Web
A company that provides intra-campus telephone services to small colleges inadvertently posted online the names, addresses and social security numbers of thousands of its student customers, the firm acknowledged on Monday. In the latest of what has become a common Internet problem, the information about more than 2,000 students whose schools use telecommunications management firm Resicom may have leaked out from the company's Web site. Database files containing students' personal information had the wrong permission settings and could have been accessed using any Web browser as late as Monday afternoon.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-942274.html?tag=cd_mh

EarthLink offers subscribers FullAudio
Internet service provider EarthLink said Monday that it has tapped FullAudio and MusicMatch to launch a new digital music hub that offers both streaming and downloadable music. EarthLink said subscribers to its Digital Music Center will have access to a custom version of Microsoft's Windows Media Player. Through the service, people can download up to 50 music tracks each month for a $9.95 monthly fee or up to 100 tracks each month for a $17.95 monthly fee. The service does not yet offer any burning capabilities. Subscribers can connect to their accounts from up to three PCs.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-942200.html?tag=cd_mh

U.S. Rep Hooted Off AIDS Stage
About 50 AIDS activists shouted, whistled and booed their way though a speech Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson, who delivered the entire, inaudible address shielded by nearly a dozen Secret Service and other security agents. Thompson was supposed to discuss how the Bush administration planned to deal with the U.S. AIDS epidemic, which currently affects 950,000 people. He was also expected to talk to delegates here at the 14th international AIDS conference about America's role in the worldwide pandemic, which has killed more than 22 million people and is expected to kill an additional 68 million by 2020.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,53728,00.html

Get Yer Ice-Cold Afterlife Here
A semi-permanent deep freeze doesn't have to break the bank. That's the message of a human cryogenics company engaged in a price war with the folks who are planning to put former baseball star Ted Williams on ice. "Cryonic suspension" -- the freezing of a dead body in the hope that it can be resurrected in the future -- isn't cheap. Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the Arizona company reportedly working to store all or part of the former Boston Red Sox slugger, charges as much as $120,000 per cold-storage job.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,53709,00.html

Universal Music Goes Online
Responding to the rampant spread of unauthorized music swapping on the Internet, Universal Music Group plans to put a large chunk of its vast music library online through a subscription service. Unlike most other initiatives announced during the last six months, UMG's (V) partnership with Emusic.com, a downloadable music subscription service, gives customers the same ownership rights as if they had bought the music on a CD.
But UMG is selecting the content it makes available selectively. Rather than offering the work of best-selling artists like Eminem and U2, UMG has chosen older, less-popular content that doesn't sell quickly in stores.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53721,00.html

EU report calls for widespread open source adoption
A European Commission funded report into the pooling of software across the EU's administrations has recommended that governments share and adapt software via the Open Source model. The study, conducted by (arf arf) sometime Microsoft buddies Unisys, calls for a development program lasting six years, starting with a clearing house to which governments could 'donate' software for reuse, with a total investment of E6 million over the period.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26102.html

Search for "holy grail" HIV vaccine begins
A major five-year programme to develop the "holy grail" of HIV vaccine research has been launched by a team led by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). Their goal is a vaccine that stimulates the production of antibodies to destroy the virus before it can take hold, as well as triggering the immune system to kill infected cells. The experimental vaccines that are currently most advanced in clinical trials are mostly designed to stimulate the production of antibodies against specific proteins on the surface "coat" of the HIV virus. In general, those vaccines have not proved very successful.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992519

Government Watchdog: Software That Sniffs
When most people fight city hall, they attend meetings, circulate petitions or file lawsuits. When Murray Craig, a retired programmer, fought his town council in British Columbia, he picked up his old craft and wrote code. In the end, he created software that his company claims can "detect government corruption in five minutes." The software, called Minutes-N-Motion, applies artificial intelligence to the problem of finding needles in the haystacks of government documents. While standard document-searching software can pinpoint keywords, Mr. Craig's program makes connections to draw conclusions on issues like whether a public official may have acted on a matter presenting a conflict of interest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/04/te...ts/04CORR.html

Satellite radio tests out well
Last week, I drove around the Bay Area testing the new Sirius Satellite Radio service and was impressed by the eclectic selection of programs available, including rock, reggae, soul, sports, tejano, financial news and Broadway tunes. Sirius' digital signal was consistently clear almost everywhere I drove and far superior to standard AM or FM signals. The drops in coverage -- for example, inside the Caldecott Tunnel -- were minor. Of course, I said almost exactly the same thing last November after testing out a rival service by XM Satellite Radio.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...8/BU114147.DTL

Sackings for porn surfing on the rise
A quarter of UK companies have dismissed an employee for misusing the internet at work and 69 per cent of cases were linked to internet pornography, a new study has revealed. Companies are now hoping that increasingly sophisticated content filtering software could help them keep control over what their workers view. This is highlighted by the report, which says that the number of companies monitoring employee's internet activity has risen from 17 per cent to 45 per cent in the last three years. Frank Glen, hotline manager at the UK Internet Watch Foundation, which reports illegal internet content to the UK authorities, says more and more companies are turning to content filtering software.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992520

Wild New Theory for Building Planets
A radical and controversial new theory of planet formation suggests our solar system was created in a faraway, chaotic environment that has in recent years come to be viewed as largely inhospitable to planets. The idea is a wild one, and its originator is the first person to say so. Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington is trying to plug two gaping holes in the standard model of planet formation by explaining how Uranus and Neptune could have formed. If correct, his theory would also help justify the growing population of known extrasolar planets, all of which are very massive. And it would also imply that solar systems like our own are common.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom..._020709-1.html

Labels to Net Radio: Die Now
Jim Atkinson is cannon fodder in the digital-music wars. Five years ago he and his wife, Wanda, began 3WK, a virtual radio station that streams tunes of their beloved alt/indie rock to listeners over the Internet. Unlike broadcast radio, which requires astronomical investments in licenses and broadcast equipment, a Webcaster needs only software and a server. The result is a rich universe of more than 10,000 alternative Web stations, many of which cater to narrow if not bizarre tastes: from Hawaiian ukulele music to Tanzanian drumming. It’s the exact opposite of broadcast radio, where the vast majority of stations are owned by a few media giants, who restrict playlists to the lowest-common-denominator ears.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/777023.asp

R.I.P. Audiogalaxy: one programmer speaks out
As you've probably already heard, Audiogalaxy decided to settle out of court with the RIAA for a lot of money and now is blocking ALL songs. While I'm sure they're working on ways to stay in business, I'm guessing that most of their users will be gone within a couple of weeks. I was a programmer at Audiogalaxy for almost two years; read on to learn about the history of Audiogalaxy and hear my opinion about why Audiogalaxy was a cut above the rest of the peer-to-peer apps. Audiogalaxy started out as the Borg Search, an FTP search engine written by Michael Merhej. While working in the physics lab at UT, Michael met David McArthur, and they decided to go into business together as Audiogalaxy.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/6/21/171321/675

Humanity's "massive overdraft" with Earth
Humanity is currently overusing the Earth's resources by 20 per cent and, if current trends continue, then by 2050 we will need two planet Earths in order to live sustainably. These warnings come in a report by WWF, the World Wildlife Fund, and are based on a new assessment of our "ecological footprint" - the amount of productive land and sea we need to sustain our current economies and lifestyles. The world's average citizen has a footprint of 2.3 hectares, according to the study. The problem is that the available productive surface of the planet for each of us works out at just 1.9 hectares. The analysis assumes that only a quarter of the planet is productive and ignores deserts, ice caps and the deep ocean.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992521

Russians leave door open for singer
Russian space officials confirmed Tuesday that ’NSync singer Lance Bass will be training at the Star City cosmonaut complex for the next month, and that talks are continuing on a deal to send him to the international space station. If the deal goes through, the adventure would be chronicled in a TV series. Negociators on the American side of the talks have said for weeks that progress was being made — and have repeatedly hinted that an agreement was imminent. But the Russians have generally been more pessimistic: A month ago, one space agency spokesman said it was too late for Bass to get a seat on the Russian Soyuz craft that’s due to go to the space station in October.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/765523.asp?0dm=C13MT

More news later on

[TankGirl]

A very interesting issue again - thanks WT!

- tg