The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

Customers shun MS licensing plan
The majority of Microsoft's customers won't be signing up for a controversial licensing plan set to go into effect on Thursday, according to analysts' estimates. Signing onto the plan, which would commit business customers to a two- or three-year annually paid contract guaranteeing the right to upgrade, will be the only way to continue buying Microsoft software at deep discounts. The holdouts have until the end of their business day on Wednesday to sign up for the plan or risk paying full price the next time they buy software from Microsoft. They won't get a reprieve, either. Microsoft has twice extended the deadline for the new program, but a representative said Monday that there would be no more extensions.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-947168.html

ACLU pushes for open access
The Internet's status as an open forum for ideas will come under attack if cable companies aren't forced to open up their broadband networks to rivals, civil liberties and consumer advocacy groups said Monday. "We're at a pivotal moment here," American Civil Liberties Union Associate Director Barry Steinhardt said at a town hall meeting. "I think it's inevitable that as the choice (of Internet providers) decreases, it will limit the choices of content that people can access." Consumer groups have been battling with cable companies over open access for years, but the battle has become more urgent in recent months.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-947274.html

Security warning draws DMCA threat
Hewlett Packard has found a new club to use to pound researchers who unearth flaws in the company's software: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Invoking both the controversial 1998 DMCA and computer crime laws, HP has threatened to sue a team of researchers who publicized a vulnerability in the company's Tru64 Unix operating system. In a letter sent on Monday, an HP vice president warned SnoSoft, a loosely organized research collective, that it "could be fined up to $500,000 and imprisoned for up to five years" for its role in publishing information on a bug that lets an intruder take over a Tru64 Unix system. HP's dramatic warning appears to be the first time the DMCA has been invoked to stifle research related to computer security.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-947325.html?tag=fd_top

Media giants: What's new is old
Thomas Middelhoff's departure as CEO of Germany's Bertelsmann this week has all but cemented the victory of the old guard in big media following years of costly ventures by bold Internet experimenters. The move immediately calls into question the future of Bertelsmann's online operations, including its efforts to resuscitate file-swapping upstart Napster. It also casts doubt on wide-ranging and expensive Bertelsmann e-commerce plays such as the joint venture with U.S. book retailer Barnes & Noble, Web retailer CDNow and the European online retail operation BOL.com. More broadly, Middelhoff's exit completes a rout of flashy media executives who briefly sang the praises of the Internet at three of the world's largest media companies, only to lose their jobs
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-947260.html?tag=fd_top

Turning against the fraudsters
The concern that users have about online security is one of the biggest barriers to the continuing growth of web commerce. Numerous surveys have highlighted security as the top worry for many net users. But a British-based company claims to have found a way to let people use identifying numbers online with little fear that their details will be stolen. The inventors of the system claimed it could be a boon to anyone using a cybercafe to check online bank accounts or to anyone worried about security. The system has been created by Yorkshireman Winston Keech, who was prompted to find a better way to protect online transactions after his credit card was stolen.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2159298.stm

How the Postman Almost Owned E-Mail
Imagine that the U.S. Postal Service was in charge of e-mail. Sound absurd? It does to most people — until they realize that it almost happened. In 1977, when I first came to Washington, DC, I joined the communications policy program of the Aspen Institute, where I was assigned to research how the impending telecommunications revolution would affect postal service. Instead of muddling through backwater, I uncovered a goldmine of plans and policy dilemmas. The Postal Service had considered electronic mail ever since the invention of the telegraph. The 1845 telegraph line between DC and Baltimore was operated by the Post Office Department, which urged that the government run the telegraph system. A provision in the telegraph legislation of 1866 authorized the government to purchase existing telegraph plants after 1871.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/7045.asp

Want to share Wi-Fi? Just ask
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is spreading the word about Internet service providers likely to go easy on people who share their wireless access. The organization has begun keeping a list of such ISPs, which it deems unlikely to shut down the accounts of customers sharing access to their Wi-Fi networks free of charge. The move is in response to Time Warner Cable's recent crackdown on such customers. The broadband provider sent letters threatening to cut service to customers who let others freely tap into their Wi-Fi Internet access, said Fred Von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit organization focusing on the civil liberties issues surrounding digital technology.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-947239.html

Dot-com deathwatch puts memos online
With corporate scandals abounding, the Web site known for chronicling the dot-com underbelly has taken to publishing internal memos of bad business practices -- for a profit. F***edCompany.com, the veritable Jerry Springer of the Internet, on Monday launched InternalMemos.com, "the Internet's largest collection of corporate memos and internal communication." Unlimited access to the database of about 800 documents costs $45 a month; the site also makes available for free about 350 papers. Phil Kaplan, aka "Pud," said he's collected the memos over the two years he's run F***edCompany.com and finally thought "why not" about publishing the collection in light of recent corporate accounting scandals, including WorldCom’s near $4 billion mishandling of its accounts.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-947251.html?tag=cd_mh

Pioneer preps notebook recordable DVD drive
Pioneer Electronics is aiming to give the recordable DVD and PC markets a boost with a drive for notebooks. The electronics maker expects to launch a recordable DVD drive for notebook PCs in the fourth quarter, according to Andy Parsons, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Pioneer. The drive will read and re-write DVD discs at 2X speed, record CDs at 16X speed and rewrite CDs at 10X speed. Pioneer has been actively promoting recordable DVD as a feature that could help revitalize the slumping PC market. Yet standards are still a hot-button issue in the industry. Computer makers and consumers alike continue to be put off by the battle between the DVD Forum and the DVD+RW Alliance, two groups that are struggling over the creation of a recordable DVD standard.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-947250.html?tag=cd_mh

A Novel Way to Write Hit Songs
Madison Smartt Bell was just another guy around 40 who couldn't quite give up that old dream of playing guitar and singing rock songs. But Bell had some unusual options available to him. He also happens to be an accomplished novelist. As he was working on his latest novel, Anything Goes (Pantheon), he came up with the idea of writing actual songs, with the help of a songwriter friend, to include in the book. The idea of writing real songs worked out well enough that Bell and writing partner Wyn Cooper tried to talk the publishers into including a CD along with the hardcover version of the novel. Instead, they settled for making the songs available at Bell's website.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53668,00.html

Toying With Musical Instruments
If traditional concert performances leave you sighing for more, you can look forward to an opera where musicians squeeze squishy embroidered balls, play soundless violins and bang on glowing bugs with antennae. These hyper-instruments were developed by Tod Machover of MIT's Media Lab in an attempt to break free of conventional musical instrument design. Building on technologies developed for Machover's groundbreaking Brain Opera, these music toys enable children to engage in sophisticated listening, performing and composing activities normally accessible only after years of study. The instruments have a very short learning curve, allowing children and adults alike to achieve a basic level of understanding in just three to five two-hour sessions. Included among the instruments are beatbugs, music shapers, hyper-violins and a software called hyperscore.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53963,00.html

Anti-Abortion? An ISP Wants You
Neal Horsley, the militant anti-abortionist who gained notoriety by publishing the names and addresses of abortion clinic workers on the Internet, has launched his own ISP and Web-hosting business. The Georgia activist set up We Choose Life Net to kill two birds with one stone: to create a virtual community of like-minded abortion protesters, and to provide himself with a steady income. He plans to donate 25 percent of the company's profits to anti-abortion activities. Horsley said he has signed up 100 dial-up customers and 15 hosting clients since the company was launched last week. His new business also enables him to host his own domains, which have been yanked 70 times by hosting companies skittish about his controversial content.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54204,00.html

Anemone of the Smart People
In a rock pool filled with greenish water, a sea creature unfurls its tentacles as daylight dawns. "If you stick your hand in, it startles," says MIT Media Lab researcher Josh Strickon. And so it does, hissing and pulling its silicone-clad body away when a hand is waved nearby. In their explorations of artificial life, Strickon and other Media Lab researchers have created what they call "Public Anemone," a sea creature that responds to stimuli like touch, motion and light. Near the tentacle creature are clumps of fiber optic wires that pull in if you touch them, just like an ordinary sea anemone. Is this good artificial intelligence or good programming? "Is there a difference?" responds Scott Senften, chair of Siggraph's Emerging Technologies Exhibition.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54194,00.html

Princeton Apologizes for Web Breach
Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman apologized yesterday for snooping by at least one Princeton admissions officer into online files of high school seniors who had applied to Ivy League rival Yale University. "Basic principles of privacy and confidentiality are at stake here," Tilghman wrote in an e-mail to Princeton students and faculty. "Violations of these principles therefore must not, and will not, be tolerated." A preliminary Yale investigation has concluded that computers at Princeton were used in April to access the admissions accounts of 11 high school seniors who applied to Yale. Yale has asked the FBI to determine whether any federal laws were broken and Princeton has hired a former federal prosecutor to investigate the incident.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002Jul29.html

Scramjet Engine Makes First Test Flight over Australian Outback
The world's first flight test of a scramjet engine, conducted over the Australian outback, appears to have gone well, University of Queensland officials report. "So far it has all gone to plan. The launch was a success, and we received data for the duration of the flight," said Allan Paull, team leader of the program dubbed HyShot. A Terrier Orion Mk70 rocket boosted the scramjet engine toward the upper atmosphere at 10:05 p.m. EDT Monday (0205 GMT Tuesday), flying its mission over the Woomera Prohibited Range.The aim of the experiment was to achieve the world's first flight test of air-breathing supersonic ramjet engines, also known as scramjets. Such engines, which speed along at about Mach 8 -- or eight times the speed of sound -- could revolutionize commercial air travel by reducing flight times.
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/hyshot_020730.html

Quantum net for atom angling
Scientists should be able to fish out an exact number of atoms from puddles of many thousands using a quantum net, new calculations suggest1. The size of the catch, say Roberto Diener and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin, will depend on how fast they yank the net out of the atom pool. This will influence how easily atoms in it can wriggle back into the pool. The puddles in question are Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) - clouds of atoms that behave as though they were a single super-atom. BECs form only at very low temperatures, in a gas of atoms held by electrical or magnetic forces in an atom trap. The net is a quantum dot - a piece of material so small that its properties, which are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, depend on its size. A typical quantum dot might be a particle of a semiconductor or metal just a few millionths of a millimetre across.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020729/020729-1.html

Anti-gravity research on the rise
Researchers around the world are opening their minds to the possibility that the phenomenon of anti-gravity is not just science fiction. Most respected physicists still scoff at the idea that experimental equipment can reduce gravity, but several groups have been working on it independently and are coming to the same conclusion: it might just be true. On Monday, reports re-emerged that Boeing, the American aircraft manufacturer, is interested in exploring the possibility of building an anti-gravity device. The news, first revealed in New Scientist magazine in January 2002, centres around Russian scientist, Evgeny Podkletnov. In 1992 he claimed to be the first person to witness the reduction of gravity above a spinning superconducting disc.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992611

2019 asteroid given all clear
New observations made by amateur astronomers in Austria have ruled out the chance of a two-kilometre asteroid hitting the Earth on 1 February 2019. Initial data on asteroid 2002 NT7 had suggested a slim chance of an impact, but this was based on only 15 days of observations since the asteroid's discovery on 9 July. Astronomers' confidence that further observations would dismiss the possibility has been vindicated. Computer models of the impact risk had reported a chance of one in 250,000 of a 2019 impact and a full moon on Thursday made new observations difficult. None were reported between 25 and 27 July. However, early on the morning of 28 July, two experienced asteroid watchers, Erich Meyer and Erwin Obermair, made three observations of the asteroid's position in the sky from their observatory in Davidschlag, about 30 kilometres north of Linz.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992606

More news later on... And my ICQ won't accept my old contact list

[StereoDeluxe]

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