The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

Spam filter: A boon or a bomb?
A meeting reminder from the boss, a lascivious letter from a lover, or the daily tally from a fantasy football league: Which e-mail would you read first? Programmers at a small software company say they have the answer and that it can help millions of workers cope with the growing spam menace. The software categorizes e-mail on a scale from one to 100, then sorts messages according to the recipient's behavior and preferences. Important notes with high scores float to the top of the in-box, while unwanted spam, newsletters and other banalities sink to the bottom. San Francisco-based Banter plans to launch the software -- now only available as part of a $75,000 suite of programs -- later this year as a standalone product.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-946986.html

Linux takes the game to Microsoft
A group of programmers seeking to put Linux on Microsoft's Xbox video gaming console has created the software that will eventually replace the machine's built-in system software. The new software, called a Basic Input Output System (BIOS), is the latest step towards turning the $199 console into a Linux workstation. The Xbox Linux Project, drawing on the skills of programmers in the UK, Germany and the United States, released a pre-alpha version of the new BIOS on Sunday. When complete, the BIOS will give programmers control over the Xbox's components and peripherals and allow the rest of the Linux operating system to boot. The replacement BIOS is intended to act as a template for future development, initializing the hardware's peripherals and performs a process designed to give full and stable control of the machine.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-946906.html

'Drivezilla' 200GB conquers storage space
Western Digital's 200GB "Drivezilla" is about to stomp its way into desktop PCs. The company began shipping the hard drive--part of its new family of Caviar drives ranging from 120GB to 200GB--in small numbers over the past week. The new machine, which spins at 7,200 revolutions per minute, will soon begin appearing at retail stores and online, and will be available in some new desktop PCs later this quarter. The drive, which the company nicknamed Drivezilla, will give high-end consumer PCs a whopping 80GB more storage than most now have. The majority of top-of-the-line PCs come with 120GB drives, though most manufacturers offer desktop PCs that can fit two 120GB hard drives in order to offer more data storage capacity.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-946929.html

Sun to push StarOffice for Apple's OS X
Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems are cooperating on a version of Sun's StarOffice productivity software for Mac OS X, the companies said. Sun has been looking for hardware allies in its long-running quest to popularize StarOffice, which competes against Microsoft Office. To date, no major PC makers have pledged to heavily promote StarOffice. Apple also gains a friend to help counter its increasingly contentious relationship with Microsoft, which has been struggling with sales of its Office v. X suite for Macintosh. Microsoft expected to sell 750,000 copies of the software; since its release last November, only 300,000 copies of Mac Office have sold.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-946788.html

Educators take Redmond field trip
Microsoft will hold a research conference next week detailing technology development in its labs as well as ongoing projects sponsored by Microsoft at universities. The Faculty Summit, which will take place at the company's Redmond, Wash., headquarters, will focus on the state of computer research, current engineering trends and Microsoft's .Net initiative. Speech recognition and natural language processing, two areas of intense research at Microsoft, will also likely be discussed. More than 300 academic researchers are expected to attend. Chairman Bill Gates will deliver a keynote speech on Monday. Rick Rashid, head of Microsoft Research and a former professor at Carnegie Mellon, will also speak.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-946880.html

RIAA Web site disabled by attack
The Recording Industry Association of America's Web site was unreachable over the weekend due to a denial-of-service attack.
The apparently deliberate overload rendered the RIAA.org site unavailable for portions of four days and came after the group endorsed legislation to allow copyright holders to disrupt peer-to-peer networks. The malicious flood started on Friday and did not involve any intrusion into the RIAA's internal network, a representative for the trade association said on Monday afternoon. Nobody has claimed credit for the denial-of-service attack, which ended at 2 a.m. PDT on Monday. "Don't they have something better to do during the summer than hack our site?" asked the RIAA representative, who asked not to be identified.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-947072.html?tag=fd_top

Court orders ICANN to open books
A California judge has ordered the Internet's governing body to open its books for inspection. A state judge in Los Angeles on Monday lifted the veil of secrecy that has surrounded many of the group's internal deliberations for the last four years, dealing an embarrassing setback to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). During the 90-minute hearing, Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs said that ICANN board members could not be denied their right under California law to review financial records, travel logs, legal contracts and other internal documents. ICANN has a contract with the U.S. government to oversee key Internet functions, most notably approving new top-level domain names such as .info and .biz.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-947085.html?tag=fd_top

Adobe, Macromedia settle patent suits
Rival software makers Macromedia and Adobe Systems announced Monday that they had settled all claims in a series of patent suits between the companies. Adobe last May won the first of a series of suits. A jury in the U.S. District Court of Delaware agreeing with Adobe's contention that the user interface of Macromedia's Flash Web animation tool infringed on Adobe's patent for "tabbed palettes," a feature that allows users of design software to rearrange the work space on the PC screen. Adobe was awarded $2.8 million in damages in the case and was further seeking a judicial injunction preventing Macromedia from selling the infringing software.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-947012.html?tag=fd_top

United to scrap paper air tickets
United Airlines said on Monday that it will start charging passengers a $20 fee to use paper tickets for certain trips and that it plans to have all-electronic ticketing by the end of 2003. Starting Thursday, United will charge $20 for customer-requested paper tickets issued by United retailers in the United States, U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico for travel that could be handled electronically, United said. U.S. airlines have been shifting to electronic tickets from paper tickets, which are more costly to administer. Airlines also are working to coordinate computer reservations systems so that more complicated multiple airline trips, often used by business travelers, can be completed using electronic tickets.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-947028.html?tag=fd_top

HP expands digital photo push
Hewlett-Packard on Monday announced a new line of printers and digital cameras intended to make it easier for consumers to make professional-quality photo prints. The computing giant said that HP's new Photosmart 7550, 7350 and 7150 printers, when used with its high-end paper, would produce prints that won't noticeably fade for 73 years -- twice as long as prints from retail photofinishers. The company also introduced three new cameras, the Photosmart 720, 620 and 320, each of which include the new Instant Share system for one-click transmission of saved images to printers, e-mail programs and other applications.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-946998.html?tag=fd_top

Independent label waives Web radio fees
Artemis Records, home to such artists as country-rock singer Steve Earle and heavy metal group Kittie, said on Monday it would waive fees charged to Internet radio stations that play music from the independent label's catalog for one year. Artemis' decision, which Webcasters say is the first of its kind from a record label, comes against the backdrop of a struggle over royalty rates with the record industry that Internet radio stations say threatens their livelihood. "We're a small company with a lot of music that doesn't get played on commercial radio," Artemis Chief Executive Danny Goldberg said. "I appreciate the Webcaster. In terms of the future, the diversity they offer is valuable to a label like ours. I wanted to make a gesture of support."
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-947055.html?tag=fd_top

When the toys talk back via IM
Soon you won't have to ask your AOL instant messaging partner "What's Up Doc?" via text. You can let Bugs Bunny say it for you -- Brooklyn accent and all. This fall, Los Angeles-based United Internet Technologies (UIT), is planning to introduce a series of plush toys that will translate instant messages into spoken words. The company, which Monday unveiled a deal to use AT&T's Natural Voices speech technology in its products, already has signed up some heavy hitters as partners, including America Online, which plans to offer the toys via its Web site. Targeted at preteens -- who are among the biggest users of instant messaging -- the wireless animals are designed to add a personal touch to instant messaging sessions, allowing people to say it, not type it.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-947010.html?tag=fd_top

A Model Program
Predicting the future, shrinking to atomic dimensions, traveling back to the birth of the universe: these seemingly impossible feats are all in a day’s work for a particular breed of scientist called computer modelers. When traditional research is too expensive, dangerous or time-consuming to physically conduct, a computer model can stand in, examining everything from a particular policy’s effect on the environment to the many possible protein structures resulting from a single DNA sequence. The process of model creation can be excruciatingly slow, however, taking many years.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...880000&catID=4

Gamers get into 'The Zone'
What have a Buddhist Monk, a sports person exhibiting peak performance, and a computer gamer got in common? Despite the fact that it sounds like the lead-up to a bad joke, the answer is actually alpha brainwave activity. It's common knowledge, in scientific and sporting circles, that sports people performing at the very peak of their abilities can experience an increased level of this type of activity. This phenomenon is usually only associated with a state of complete rest, such as during meditation. But the world's top athletes strive to achieve the state associated with such brain wave activity, known as the Flow State, and sometimes referred to as entering "The Zone".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2154092.stm

iVillage banishes pop-up ads
iVillage is getting rid of pop-up ads, the publishing company said Monday, after a survey found that more than 95 percent of its readers considered them to be the "most frustrating feature of the Web." Some pop-up ads will continue to appear on the site, but will be primarily related to research and in-house subscription offerings. Their appearance will be "minimal," accounting for less than 1 percent of all ads on the site, iVillage said. Instead, the company will focus on alternative ad formats, including variably sized standard ad units and pop-under ads, as well as ad placements in newsletters and member mailings.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-946937.html?tag=cd_mh

China crackdown shutters more Net cafes
China has forced 3,100 Internet cafes to close and temporarily banned 11,000 more in a nationwide safety crackdown after 25 people died in a cybercafe fire in Beijing, according to local news reports. Police discovered and redressed safety risks at another 19,000 of the 39,000 cafes they inspected through the end of June, the Beijing Daily reported. Some Beijing Internet cafes have already reopened -- minus violent video games and smoking -- just a little more than a month after a fire in mid-June at an unlicensed cyber bar killed 25 people. After the inferno, Beijing ordered all Internet cafes closed until they could be inspected.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-946795.html?tag=cd_mh

Fluffy Bunny No Longer Energized
For a six-month period starting in mid-2001, Fluffy Bunny penetrated the networks of several top Internet firms, including Exodus, VA Software and Akamai. In effort to expose what it saw as frauds and poseurs, the cracking group also vandalized websites operated by leading computer security outfits, including the SANS Institute. Fluffy Bunny's unique brand of security mischief -- along with its pink toy-rabbit mascot -- created Fluffy admirers even among computer system administrators and security professionals. But Fluffy Bunny dropped the ball on its most outrageous plan -- an operation that members referred to as "The day the Internet stood still."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,54040,00.html

Read All About It
A company called ProQuest has digitized every back issue of the Times, from cover to cover. Every news article, editorial, photograph, cartoon and advertisement is included, and using a fully searchable file, readers can see articles as they originally appeared in print. From the attack on Fort Sumter to Nixon's resignation, readers can trace watershed historical events from 1851 to 1999. The Times is the first paper to be fully digitized in ProQuest's Historical Newspapers project, which will electronically convert complete back runs of leading newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54030,00.html

A to B, Easy as 1-2-3
Everybody knows the stubborn driver who refuses to stop and ask for directions. Now, thanks to voice recognition technology, he doesn't have to be proud, or lost. IBM said Monday that it will provide a voice recognition system for selected 2003 Honda Accords. The voice-enabled Hondas should be available at dealerships beginning Sept. 9. The feature will help drivers find the nearest pizza place, ATM or gas station, as well as give directions on how to get from point A to point B. "Navigation tends to be in the top two or three applications that drivers would like to have," said Raj Desai, director of telematics for IBM. "Often, getting directions on a timely basis is very convenient, especially if you're lost."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,54147,00.html

The Man Who Will Fall to Earth
By all accounts, breaking the sound barrier is a pleasant experience, especially if one happens to be sipping champagne as the Concorde zips across the Atlantic. But what's it like to go faster than the speed of sound with nothing but a parachute strapped to your back? In September, Michel Fournier, a 58-year-old retired French army officer, will attempt to find out. Here at the very edge of space, at an altitude four times the height of Mount Everest, he will leap from his craft to begin a six-minute descent that will see him reaching supersonic speeds between 1,200 and 1,600 kilometers per hour (between 745 and 1,000 mph).
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53928,00.html

Microsoft man seeks US Net Radio reprieve
A bill to protect grassroots Internet radio has been offered before Congress. The Internet Radio Fairness Act would exempt webcasters with less than $6 million in annual revenues from the additional RIAA royalty and from future royalty requirements. The webcasters already pay performance fees to ASCAP, the BMI and the European equivalent, but the RIAA has sought to impose an additional burden backdated to 1998, - not imposed on US radio stations and onerous reporting requirements - and a sympathetic Library of Congress ruling in June obliged many smaller Netcasters close down.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26419.html

Boeing tries to defy gravity
Researchers at the world's largest aircraft maker, Boeing, are using the work of a controversial Russian scientist to try to create a device that will defy gravity. The company is examining an experiment by Yevgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have developed a device which can shield objects from the Earth's pull. Dr Podkletnov is viewed with suspicion by many conventional scientists. They have not been able to reproduce his results. The project is being run by the top-secret Phantom Works in Seattle, the part of the company which handles Boeing's most sensitive programmes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2157975.stm

Experiment another step to explaining the tip toward matter after the Big Bang
Half the universe is missing, and for decades physicists have struggled to figure out where it went. Now, thanks to their latest experiments at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), they're both more and less puzzled about the great mystery of "matter-antimatter asymmetry," as it's called. The mystery is this: More than 10 billion years ago, the cosmos was born in an explosion, the Big Bang. According to physical theory, the earliest solid "stuff" came in two types: 1. matter (like the atoms in your body) and 2. antimatter (atoms that are exactly the same as matter atoms, only with opposite electrical charges). However, astronomers say the universe appears to now consist almost entirely of matter. So what happened to all the antimatter?
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...9/MN136555.DTL

Criminal investigation into Korean human cloning
South Korea is launching a criminal investigation into a claim that a Korean woman is pregnant with a cloned embryo, it was announced on Friday. The claim was made by the Korean office of a human cloning company called Clonaid. The company was set up by a US-based religious cult, the Raelian Movement, which believes that humans were created by extraterrestrials using cloning. "The woman has a cloned embryo which was implanted into her about two months ago," said Kwak Gi-Hwa, a spokesman for Clonaid. "The operation was carried out outside South Korea and therefore the government has no right to meddle with it. She would leave the country if the authorities continue harassing us."
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992599

Paranormal beliefs linked to brain chemistry
Whether or not you believe in the paranormal may depend entirely on your brain chemistry. People with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find significance in coincidences, and pick out meaning and patterns where there are none. Peter Brugger, a neurologist from the University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, has suggested before that people who believe in the paranormal often seem to be more willing to see patterns or relationships between events where sceptics perceive nothing. To find out what could be triggering these thoughts, Brugger persuaded 20 self-confessed believers and 20 sceptics to take part in an experiment.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992589

More news later on

[Ramona_A_Stone]

RIAA Web site disabled by attack

LMAO

Nobody has claimed credit for the denial-of-service attack

I DID IT! I DID IT!

"Don't they have something better to do during the summer than hack our site?"

Didn't YOU have anything better to do over the last two years than legally hacking OUR sites?



ENCORE!!! ENCORE!!!

[TankGirl]

Ramona - you naughty naughty boy, don't you have better things to do than to DoS RIAA's site!

Originally posted by walktalker
Independent label waives Web radio fees
Artemis Records, home to such artists as country-rock singer Steve Earle and heavy metal group Kittie, said on Monday it would waive fees charged to Internet radio stations that play music from the independent label's catalog for one year. Artemis' decision, which Webcasters say is the first of its kind from a record label, comes against the backdrop of a struggle over royalty rates with the record industry that Internet radio stations say threatens their livelihood. "We're a small company with a lot of music that doesn't get played on commercial radio," Artemis Chief Executive Danny Goldberg said. "I appreciate the Webcaster. In terms of the future, the diversity they offer is valuable to a label like ours. I wanted to make a gesture of support."
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-947055.html?tag=fd_top

A great example - let's hope many more indie labels will follow it (and give similar green light to p2p as well).

Boeing tries to defy gravity
Researchers at the world's largest aircraft maker, Boeing, are using the work of a controversial Russian scientist to try to create a device that will defy gravity. The company is examining an experiment by Yevgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have developed a device which can shield objects from the Earth's pull. Dr Podkletnov is viewed with suspicion by many conventional scientists. They have not been able to reproduce his results. The project is being run by the top-secret Phantom Works in Seattle, the part of the company which handles Boeing's most sensitive programmes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2157975.stm

Hmmm..... interesting....

Thanks, WT, a great digest again!

- tg