The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

[walktalker]

AMD fielding 64 bits for PCs
Advanced Micro Devices is building a 64-bit field of dreams. As Intel accelerates the launch date of its 3GHz Pentium 4 chip, arch rival AMD continues to build the foundation for "ClawHammer." The 64-bit Athlon processor is expected to come out early next year, giving desktop PCs a performance similar to that of workstations used in research labs at DaimlerChrysler or NASA. To make sure ClawHammer arrives on solid footing, AMD is working with a long list of partners who will build that hardware and software that can take advantage of such a chip. The company has already sent tens of PCs fitted with the upcoming chip to game developers and multimedia software creators, said John Crank, a senior branding associate for the Athlon.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-946228.html

Hollywood hacking bill hits House
Copyright owners would be able to legally hack into peer-to-peer networks, according to a bill introduced in the House of Representatives on Thursday. As previously reported by CNET News.com, the measure would dramatically rewrite federal law to permit nearly unchecked electronic disruptions if a copyright holder has a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is occurring. The bill, sponsored by Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C., would immunize groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from all state and federal laws if they disable, block or otherwise impair a "publicly accessible peer-to-peer file-trading network."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-946341.html

Lawsuit aims to derail the DMCA
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Thursday in an attempt to overturn key portions of a controversial 1998 copyright law. The suit asks a federal judge to rule that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is so sweeping that it unconstitutionally interferes with researchers' ability to evaluate the effectiveness of Internet filtering software. By suing on behalf of a 22-year-old programmer who's researching the oft-buggy products, the civil liberties group hopes to prompt the first ruling that would curtail the DMCA's wide reach.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-946270.html

More news later on... My sister is taking over

[walktalker]

Intel puts Imagination into 3D graphics
Intel has licensed the PowerVR MBX graphics and video core from Imagination Technologies in a move that may bring higher-end graphics to mobile devices based on Intel architectures. The PowerVR architecture is best known as the 3D technology used -- in an earlier incarnation -- in Sega's Dreamcast gaming console.
The deal is also a boost for Imagination, which lost the gaming console market when Sega discontinued Dreamcast, but has recently signed on such embedded giants as Hitachi and ARM Holdings. Imagination did not reveal the terms of the deal, but said the cores were licensed to be integrated into Intel chips. Imagination will receive license and development revenues initially, with the addition of royalties if Intel ships products using PowerVR.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-946303.html

Group unveils flash memory spec
A group of electronics manufacturers is looking to expand the uses for removable flash memory cards with a new security specification. Five companies known as the 5C announced on Thursday the creation of the Mobile Commerce (MC) Extension Specification for flash memory cards. The companies -- Hitachi, Ingentix, Matsushita Electric Industrial, SanDisk and Toshiba -- hope the security specification will push removable flash memory cards beyond just devices for storing digital content to secure depositaries for personal information, such as medical records or bank account information. The companies are hoping that the security specification will provide more consumer appeal for the cards helping to continue the growth of the removable flash memory card market.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-946364.html

Infineon cuts deals for wearable chips
Chipmaker Infineon reports it has seen "huge" interest from the textile industry in its wearable computing technology, paving the way for everything from identification chips to MP3 players that can be built into ordinary fabrics. Infineon's technology, announced in April as the culmination of two years of research, allows for microprocessors, sensors and connectors to be integrated into ordinary fabrics that can be washed or dry-cleaned, according to the company. "We did a lot of tests. We used washing machines, we also ironed it," said spokesman Reiner Schoenrock. "It is durable." Since Infineon gave the first demonstrations, more than 200 textile manufacturers have stepped up to find out about using the technology in their products.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-946138.html

E-mail's not free? Mac owners flee
Apple Computer's plan to start charging for its Mac.com e-mail service has Mac owners scrambling for alternatives. Even as a petition circulates to try to get Apple to change its mind, many users are shopping around for a lower-cost way to get their mail before Apple pulls the plug on the free service at the end of September. Although Apple never explicitly said that the accounts would be free for life, many Mac users had counted on it and were not happy when CEO Steve Jobs announced that, starting in September, the e-mail accounts will become part of Apple's $99 per year .Mac service. While many are likely to go to Yahoo or Microsoft's Hotmail, a number of choices have emerged that allow Mac owners to still proclaim their love of the Mac despite their displeasure with Apple over the new fees.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-946379.html?tag=fd_top

MP3 rival Ogg Vorbis gets Real
RealNetworks, the most recent corporate convert to open-source religion, has pledged to embrace streaming media's open-source stalwart in a move that could threaten the popular MP3 format. RealNetworks said Wednesday that it would support the Xiph.org Foundation's Ogg Vorbis format and audio codec, or compression formula, in its own open-source offering, the Helix DNA client, and that the RealOne Player and the Helix Universal Server would play and serve Ogg Vorbis. That means that people could play Ogg Vorbis content through the widely distributed RealPlayer without having to download special Ogg Vorbis software, a potentially big win for the now-obscure technology.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-946384.html?tag=fd_top

Net Users Try to Elude the Google Grasp
The gradual erosion of personal privacy is hardly a new trend. For years, privacy advocates have been spinning cautionary tales about the perils of living in the electronic age. But it used to be that only government agencies and businesses had the resources and manpower to track personal information. Today, the combined power of the Internet, search engines and archival databases can enable almost anyone to find information about almost anyone else, possibly to satiate a passing curiosity. As a result, people like Ms. Crick are trying to reduce their electronic presence — and discovering that it is not as simple as it would seem. The Internet, which was supposed to usher in an era of limitless information, is leading some people to restrict the information that they make available about themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/25/te...ts/25GOOG.html

Incubating Defense Technology
When the U.S. Army tested new wireless technology this spring at Fort Monmouth, NJ, it was also testing a new way to foster commercial development of military technologies. The ultrasecure cell phones used in the test were developed by Secureant — one tenant in a new army-funded incubator established specifically to nurture companies that could deliver information technologies for the battlefield of the future. The Applied Communications and Information Networking project set up shop last fall. Each of the four firms sharing the project’s Camden, NJ, facility is working on technology for “networked warfighting” — information sharing during the chaos of battle. The project’s creators — the Army Communications and Electronics Command in Fort Monmouth, Sarnoff of Princeton, NJ, and Drexel University — hope that it will help the military out of an innovation dead end created by 50 years of reliance on big defense contractors.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...ation70702.asp

Linux publication to close
LWN.net, a Web site that has chronicled the roller-coaster fortunes of the Linux operating system, will shut down Aug. 1 after failing to find a way to finance the operation. The publication, originally called Linux Weekly News, was founded in January 1998, the same month that Netscape Communications decided to release its Web browser's source code, the underlying blueprints of the program. That move fueled interest in open-source projects such as Linux -- a clone of Unix that in recent years has become popular in lower-end servers and has won the backing of IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and others.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-946289.html?tag=cd_mh

Tech pros: Cyberbomb's ready to go off
Almost half of information technology professionals believe there will be a major Internet attack on U.S. businesses in the next year, an event for which they believe corporations are unprepared, according to a survey released Wednesday. The Business Software Alliance's survey found that 47 percent of corporate network administrators believe that U.S. businesses will be attacked in the next year, compared with 19 percent who believe that such an attack would not occur. Moreover, only 19 percent believe their company was ready for such an attack, while 45 percent thought their company was unprepared.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-946161.html?tag=cd_mh

Naval Noise: Whale of a Problem
The U.S. Navy wants to keep tabs on the seas. But it's facing a whale of a problem: The technologies it says it needs to spy on enemy subs are so loud that they can ruin the lives of nearby leviathans, which rely on their ears like we use our eyes. Next Monday, lawyers representing the Navy and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) will square off in U.S. District Court over a program that tests new sub-detection techniques in coastal waters -- the most heavily populated part of the oceans. The technologies operating in these crowded neighborhoods can be ear-splittingly loud -- more than 238 decibels, according to Navy test plans.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54077,00.html

Deep Linking Takes Another Blow
Using a search engine to locate stories on newspapers' sites violates European Union law, according to a recent ruling by judges in Munich's Upper Court. The ruling is the latest legal decision in a two-year battle between German newspaper Mainpost and German search service NewsClub. Mainpost charges that NewsClub violated the law by searching through and linking directly to Mainpost content. The law in question is the "Database Directive," a piece of European Union legislation that grants copyright protection to database creators for "selecting and arranging" the information contained in a database, even if the creator does not hold the copyrights on the collected information. "The situation is very dangerous for the whole Internet," said NewsClub founder Christian Kohlschütter. "It's absolutely insane."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54083,00.html

A Robot to Grace One's Presence
A 6-foot-tall robot that courteously steps aside for people, smiles during conversation and politely asks directions shouldn't be blamed for being too eager to please. After all, it's programmed to act that way. The robot, named GRACE (short for Graduate Robot Attending Conference), will wander a symposium on artificial intelligence that begins this weekend, where it will demonstrate basic human social skills. It will try to sign in at the registration desk, find a conference room, give a speech and answer questions.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,54113,00.html

Web Security May Hide Biz Secrets
Bush administration officials called on Congress to relax open-government laws Wednesday to help fight computer crime, drawing a sharp response from a Democratic lawmaker who said the move would create a haven for corporate abuses. Computer security experts from the FBI and the Commerce Department told a House of Representatives subcommittee that the move was necessary to encourage private firms to share information about Internet-based attacks.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54088,00.html

ICANN moves against VeriSign retired domain land grab
The Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers may block a controversial proposed service from VeriSign Inc that would allow the company and its partners to offer customers chances to register expiring domain names, Kevin Murphy writes But VeriSign and its allies say that ICANN would be overextending its mandate if it does try to block the service. ICANN's influential Names Council yesterday voted 6-1 to advise ICANN's board of directors to reject VeriSign's proposal to implement a potentially lucrative "Waiting List Service". The board will meet some time before October to make a decision on whether to amend its contracts with VeriSign to allow the WLS.
http://theregister.co.uk/content/6/26363.html

Fuel cell car gets environmental OKs: Honda expects it on road by year's end
Before the year is over, someone somewhere in California will be driving a vehicle powered by hydrogen. That was the forecast delivered by Honda on Wednesday, when it announced that the state and federal governments had certified its new fuel cell cars. Honda's FCX is the first fuel cell car to be certified by the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board as a low-emissions vehicle. The car is awaiting safety and occupant protection certification from the federal government. Art Garner, a spokesman for Honda, said certification was forthcoming and that at least one fuel cell car would be on the road by the end of the year.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...25/MN13709.DTL

Artificial intelligence tackles breast cancer
Techniques borrowed from artificial intelligence could help doctors assess just how serious a particular case of breast cancer is and, therefore, how to treat it. Breast cancer affects one in 10 women in the West, and kills more women than any other form of cancer. The disease itself can be relatively easy to treat if caught in time. As with most cancers, the danger is that it will spread to other parts of the body, especially if treated incorrectly. When tested on 100 women, the new technique proved to be nearly 90 per cent accurate at predicting the extent of this spread and whether they would survive for five years. The approach, developed by a team led by Raouf Naguib at the University of Coventry and Gajanan Sherbet at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, builds on an existing analytical method called image cytometry.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992587

Laser communications crucial for space exploration
New spacecraft and satellites must be fitted with lasers to transmit digital signals back to optical telescopes on Earth, argue astronomers in a new analysis. The alternative is that the ever-increasing amount of data collected by their improved sensors will get jammed in a serious communications bottleneck, cramping the exploration of the Earth and Solar System. Space missions currently being planned will collect several billion bits (gigabits) of data per second. Since the data can only be transmitted back to Earth for a short time every day or two, the satellites will need to transmit about 100 gigabits per second. But the radio bandwidth used for satellite communications now is limited to a tiny fraction of that, warns Martin Harwit, an astronomer with Cornell University, and his co-authors in a policy paper in Science.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992594

New gadgets wreak havoc on people’s living rooms
Clark Lehman, a financial analyst in Marin County, Calif., recently got a great deal on a new audio-video system for his home. Then he got out his electric saw. The 37-inch JVC television was a bargain at $400, he says, but was too deep to fit on his living-room shelves, so he used the saw to cut a hole in the back of the shelf. It still didn’t fit, so he cut a hole in the wall behind the shelf, too. The recent explosion in the range and shape of home electronics — think televisions as big as surfboards, and wafer-thin computer screens — is leaving furniture in the dark ages. Television sets are getting as big as 65 inches, but furniture makers are building almost nothing that can hold them. Sales of DVD players recently surpassed VCRs for the first time, putting a new strain on entertainment centers that haven’t changed much in design since the demise of Betamax. And speakers are multiplying like rabbits.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/785572.asp?0dm=C11MT

A new view of the famous Face on Mars
NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter has sent back the first infrared image of a long-debated formation known as the “Face on Mars.” Observers who expected the infrared picture to provide new revelations about the features voiced their disappointment, saying they were hoping for “night-vision” imagery as well as daytime views. The Debate over the Face was sparked a quarter-century ago when NASA’s Viking orbiters sent back pictures of the Cydonia region that appeared to show a half-shadowed, helmeted face. Since then, additional formations have been identified as the “Pyramid,” “the City” and so forth — and fans of the Face have argued that the formations showed evidence of artificial construction.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/785526.asp?0dm=C12MT

New cell feature helps find friends
Mobile phone users may never again have to ask a caller, “Where are you?” With federal e911 regulations requiring that all cell phones be able to be precisely located, companies are using the same technology to launch commercial “location-based services.” For example, consumers will be able to locate friends’ cell phones, or get walking or driving directions to the closest Mexican restaurant or police station. Or find out where they are, if they’re lost. But whetever Americas' 140 million cell phone users will embrace such services remains to be seen, especially since earlier non-calling services, such as wireless e-mail, are still struggling to catch on years after being introduced. Location-based services in particular also have privacy advocates on edge, though carriers say consumer information will be kept safe.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/785546.asp?0dm=C13MT

Linux icon plans to violate DMCA at O'Reilly Open Source Convention
The advocate and developer of free software isn't wearing a gray suit like the rest of them, and he's not overly optimistic about the announcement being made here -- that media software maker RealNetworks is making some of its vital source code freely available to developers. That's because Perens sees through the business of the software industry. He is more engaged in its social aspects. In addition to making many technical contributions to open source and free software projects such as the Linux operating system, Perens also is the primary author of "The Open Source Definition," a syllabus of sorts that outlines the philosophy of the development model, which says software code should be free to view and modify. Among the throngs of software executives at that San Francisco event on Monday, Perens explained in an interview that he is planning to embark on another cause -- an assault on the controversial digital copyright legislation known as the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn...23hnperens.xml

Piracy and free software not always counted
A flaw in the way annual software usage statistics are compiled may have led to legal distribution of open-source programs being lumped with illegal trafficking in desktop applications, inflating losses to industry through "phantom" piracy. The annual software piracy statistics - published by trade groups the US Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Business Software Association of Australia (BSAA) - are compiled from several sources but none take into account the growing use of open-source desktop applications. The figures are potent weapons in a public relations war to chide users into registering software, lobby governments for stricter enforcement of intellectual property laws and to justify harsher legal penalties. Piracy has become an increasing problem with the spread of broadband networks and software, such as Napster and KaZaA, that allow users to easily share digital content such as software, music and video.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...898931824.html

More news later on

[ab-NORM-al]

you are a god

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by ab-NORM-al
you are a god

Dunno if he is god but he is certainly good...

Thanks again WT... you serve us so well. Cheers to the Newsdude!

- tg

[Ðiego]

You are a god..you beat me by a minute


(grin)

Ð

[multi]

good stuff..

[daddydirt]

Originally posted by walktalker
Hollywood hacking bill hits House
Copyright owners would be able to legally hack into peer-to-peer networks, according to a bill introduced in the House of Representatives on Thursday. As previously reported by CNET News.com, the measure would dramatically rewrite federal law to permit nearly unchecked electronic disruptions if a copyright holder has a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is occurring. The bill, sponsored by Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C., would immunize groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from all state and federal laws if they disable, block or otherwise impair a "publicly accessible peer-to-peer file-trading network."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-946341.html

"The draft bill doesn't specify what techniques, such as viruses, worms, denial-of-service attacks, or domain name hijacking, would be permissible. It does say that a copyright-hacker should not delete files, but it limits the right of anyone subject to an intrusion to sue if files are accidentally erased."

So, if they damage your computer in this vigilante action, you'll need to prove real damages of more than $250 and get the permission of the U.S. attorney general to file suit against them.

Legalized corporate hacking, well fuck me.....even if it doesn't pass, this bill shit is a grim harbinger of future attacks against the p2p community. I think I'll write my congressman.....

oooops....my congressman is Howard Coble....
so glad i sent him that e-mail about internet radio