The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

What will happen to my beloved papers ?

Intel redesigning the Pentium 4
Intel is working on a major overhaul of the Pentium 4 chip, which sources say will debut in the first half of 2005. Code-named Nehalem, the chip will embody a new architecture that will substantially differ from the current Pentium 4, according to sources. Concepts in the current chip line will be found in Nehalem, but it will contain new, and largely unknown, features such as improved power management that will mark it as a distinct evolutionary step, similar to the changeover from the Pentium II to the Pentium III. In the meantime, Intel is also working on updates to the Pentium 4. In the second half of 2003, the company will release "Prescott," a Pentium 4 variant that will feature a new security system and "strained silicon," a chipmaking method that speeds up transistors.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-961210.html

Bugbear to set new virus record
The Bugbear computer virus may be spreading more slowly this week than last, but it's still on track to be the most prolific e-mail virus to date, antivirus experts said on Monday. Last week, e-mail service provider MessageLabs intercepted 320,000 missives containing the Bugbear attachment, more than the Klez.h virus managed in its first week in April. Klez.h has created the most-ever Internet traffic so far. Bugbear "seems to be picking up quite a bit in the United States," said Angela Hauge, technical director for MessageLabs. "I would say that it's rampant." On Monday, Bugbear-infected PCs sent out nearly 38,000 e-mails, according to the company's Web site.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-961130.html

Spam giving e-mail a bad name
Consumers are increasingly applying the stigma of spam to marketing messages of all stripes, causing headaches for legitimate advertisers on the Web and beyond. For some people, pop-up ads, poorly edited "opt-in" marketing lists and search engine manipulation might just as well be lumped together with the junk e-mail scourge. Add to that aggressive marketing pitches over fax machines, cell phones and personal digital assistants, and the list of offenses that deserve the spam handle is seemingly endless. "Spam has become a generic term for any intrusion that people don’t like," said Ray Everett-Church, a privacy and government relations consultant with ePrivacy Group and an anti-spam advocate.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-961134.html

Amazon under fire again over privacy
Two privacy groups are urging state and federal regulators to force Amazon.com to live up to its privacy promises. Junkbusters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) argue that the e-tail giant isn't doing enough to protect the privacy of its customers and must allow customers to view and delete their personal records. In a letter to be sent Tuesday to consumer protection regulators in 14 states, the District of Columbia and the Federal Trade Commission, the two groups praise state regulators for discussing privacy issues with Amazon and with getting the company last month to commit to clarifying its privacy policy. But that revision, completed last week, did not resolve the primary "inadequacies" of the policy, the privacy groups say.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-961136.html

Standardized Linux gains support
Four new versions of Linux have been certified to comply with guidelines set down by the Linux Standard Base, a group trying to make it easier for software to run on different companies' versions of the Unix clone. Red Hat 8, SuSE 8.1, SCO Group OpenLinux 3.1.1 and MandrakeSoft 9 ProSuite all comply with the LSB's guidelines, according to the Free Standards Group, which oversees the LSB certification process. The standards effort is an important part of ensuring Linux doesn't "fork" into multiple incompatible versions, as happened with Unix. The first LSB certifications arrived in August. But while the certification helps keep dramatic differences from emerging, analysts and company representatives say it's not enough to guarantee that software designed with Red Hat Linux in mind will also work on SuSE, or vice-versa.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-961296.html?tag=fd_top_4

University backs down on link ban
The University of California at San Diego has abandoned plans to discipline a student group for linking to an alleged terrorist Web site. On Tuesday, the American Association of University Professors and nine other groups wrote a letter asking UCSD to abandon its threats of disciplinary action against the Che Cafe Collective, a move that the school had claimed was necessary because of the USA Patriot Act. The cafe had linked to a site supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist group. In an interview later Tuesday, Joseph Watson, UCSD vice chancellor for student affairs, said that the school had made a mistake and would not pursue its earlier warnings of disciplinary action for linking. "We agree with the signers of this letter that links are a First Amendment right," Watson said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961297.html?tag=fd_top_5

Tech firms target workplace downloads
Technology companies Macrovision and Websense are teaming up to root out illegal MP3s, movies, games and other copyrighted material on employees' work computers. The partnership is part of a new push by Web filtering company Websense to give employers tight control over exactly what happens on their employees' computers. Its scope ranges from disabling peer-to-peer applications like Kazaa to identifying pornography, music or movies on individual hard drives. "We're making the basic assumption that a high percentage of downloading is done at work, because that's where the bandwidth is," said Brian Dunn, Macrovision's senior vice president of business development.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961262.html?tag=fd_top_8

Fake bank website cons victims
West African criminals have used a fake version of a British bank's online service to milk victims of cash, say police. The fake site was used to squeeze more money out of people they had already hooked. The site has been shut down. But UK National Criminal Intelligence Service, (NCIS), said at least two Canadians had lost more than $100,000 after being taken in by the fake website. The scam behind the fake web domain was the familiar one that offers people a share of the huge sums of money they need moved out of various African nations. NCIS said the use of the web was helping the conmen hook victims that would otherwise spot the scam.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2308887.stm

Perspective: Coming to terms with copyright
Anyone interested in the future direction of technology should pay attention to a case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear when the new session begins this week. Technically, the oral arguments on Wednesday are about the fate of a federal law called the Copyright Term Extension Act, which extends the duration of all U.S. copyrights for 20 years. A group of artists and moviemakers sued to overturn the law, saying they had hoped to make use of materials that were in the public domain -- but found they no longer could because of the longer duration of each copyright. Championing their suit is a who's-who of law professors, led by Stanford University's Larry Lessig. This case is not directly about technology. It's not even about topics that, compared with the sickly stock market or a war with Iraq, many people would find all that compelling. Few of us are legal academics, and almost nobody is directly affected by whether or not a book, song, or movie created in 1923 can be copied legally or not.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-960918.html

Cutting-edge tech grabs federal grants
From content protection for big-screen movies to nanofiber applications, 40 new advanced-technology projects garnered on Tuesday $92 million in funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The federal agency's annual grants go to projects in civil engineering, advanced medicine, electronic engineering and computer science, and are designed to aid companies in developing technologies that can later be brought to market. Nanotechnology received a great deal of attention from NIST, with projects involving nanodevices and nanostructures grabbing more than $12 million in government funding. A project proposed by General Electric along with the State University of New York (SUNY) Binghamton and Superior MicroPowders looks to use nanotechnology to create materials that can conduct heat from microprocessors to their heat sinks 10 times better than the substances now in use. The project garnered $3.5 million from the agency.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-961302.html?tag=fd_top_2

Court cracks down on URL copycat
An anti-abortion activist will face contempt of court charges Wednesday for registering domain names similar to those owned by the Washington Post Co. U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery has ordered activist Bill Purdy to show up in court in Minnesota on Wednesday and face possible criminal sanctions, which could carry a jail sentence, for continuing to register scores of domain names after the newspaper won a preliminary injunction against him in July. In a four-page order dated last week, Montgomery ordered Purdy to turn over WPNI.org, which is similar to the WPNI.com domain name that many Washington Post-Newsweek employees have as part of their e-mail addresses. Purdy claims to have intercepted e-mail messages intended for Washington Post staffers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961276.html?tag=cd_mh

RealNetworks gets a taste for Apple
RealNetworks took another gradual step in launching its streaming media subscription service on the Macintosh. The multimedia software company on Tuesday unveiled the latest beta, or test version, of RealOne SuperPass for Apple Computer's Mac OS X. SuperPass' availability comes 10 months after RealNetworks originally launched the multimedia subscription service, which features audio from Major League Baseball and video streams from CNN, ABCNews and CBS, to name a few. The 10-month delay is surprising because one of Macintosh's main selling points is its multimedia features. Until now, Mac users could subscribe to RealNetworks' GoldPass, the precursor to SuperPass with less content, or download the latest version of RealNetworks' playback software. RealNetworks said the delay was longer than it anticipated, but explained that it had to build new code to fit the Mac OS X.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961227.html?tag=cd_mh

House backs new rules for snooping
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a measure that would require the government to consider how new laws would affect the privacy rights of its citizens. As part of a last-minute flurry of activity before it adjourns for the year, the House voted Monday to require government agencies to determine how new regulations would affect citizens' privacy. Efforts to establish greater privacy protections on the Internet and in the private sector have fallen prey to partisan deadlock, but Georgia Republican Rep. Bob Barr's bill, which would limit how government agencies could use citizens' personal data, has attracted little controversy.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961213.html?tag=cd_mh

EU breaks down borders for Web music
The European Commission has approved plans to break open the market for Web broadcasting rights, allowing broadcasters a "one-stop shop" license valid across 18 countries. This replaces the current system, where broadcasters need to secure separate licenses from each of the copyright administration and collecting societies in each European nation, the Commission said in a statement on Tuesday. "The creation of a legitimate marketplace for so-called simulcasting will benefit both consumers and rights-holders," said EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti. Simulcasting is a practice where radio and television broadcasters send out their programs via the Internet in tandem with traditional terrestrial or cable transmission.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961197.html?tag=cd_mh

Singapore gives techs stamp of approval
Instead of historical landmarks and national icons, the Singapore public will soon see technology brands on a limited-edition stamp collection starting November. Among the 15 companies included in the series are technology companies Microsoft, Siemens, Sony and Creative Technology. According to the Singapore Post, the stamps commemorate the introduction of the small piece of gummed paper in the island state 150 years ago. Singapore Post CEO William Tan said the companies were selected based on their brand attributes and successes, as well as their effect on Singapore.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961183.html?tag=cd_mh

Tech firm loses Bon Jovi battle
Bon Jovi's latest album, "Bounce," is already showing some resiliency. A New York district court judge late Friday denied a motion to restrict Universal Music Group from distributing and promoting the record, due in stores Tuesday. It will be one of the first major albums released with identification numbers that give in-store buyers bonuses via the Web. The record label, a unit of Vivendi Universal, won the first round in a lawsuit filed in September by New York-based DownloadCard. The small marketing technology firm alleges that Universal made use of its Web tie-in program without permission to market the release of Bon Jovi's eighth album. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District Court of New York, sought a preliminary injunction and punitive damages.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961074.html?tag=cd_mh

High-speed games ride TV waves
A company formed by television broadcasters to capitalize on leftover digital television bandwidth has latched on to games to introduce its service. Media company iBlast announced Tuesday that it has launched Game Silo, offering high-speed downloads of demos, patches and other computer game content, as the first phase of its broadcast data service. Major owners of broadcast television stations, including Gannett and Cox Broadcasting, formed iBlast several years ago to make extra money in the shift to digital television. High-definition television (HDTV) signals, which broadcasters will be required to transmit within the next few years, only use a portion of the bandwidth the Federal Communications Commission has allocated for digital television. Broadcasters are free to use the remainder for other purposes, including extra channels or data services.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-961274.html?tag=cd_mh

Xbox version of Linux finished
A hacker group specializing in software for Microsoft's Xbox announced late Monday the release of the first full version of Linux for the game console. The Xbox Linux Project selected version 9 of French company Mandrake's release of the open-source operating system. The new Xbox version takes all the features of the PC version of Mandrake Linux 9 -- including the Gnome user interface, OpenOffice office software and the Mozilla Web browser -- and adapts them to run on the Xbox. The software is available for download now. With Xbox Linux Mandrake, the Xbox gaming console is just as powerful as any comparable PC with Mandrake Linux 9," project organizers said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-961243.html?tag=cd_mh

Spam Blocker Has Opposite Effect
Users of SpamNet, a popular peer-to-peer unsolicited e-mail filtering service, had grown accustomed to virtually junk-free inboxes. So when spam suddenly started pouring in last week, SpamNet users weren't very happy. Some even began to suspect that SpamNet was nothing more than a scam intended to gather e-mail addresses that could then be sold to spammers. But SpamNet hasn't brokered a deal with the e-mail devil. And the service, which is still in beta-testing, doesn't appear to be permanently broken. According to CEO Karl Jacob, the problems began when Cloudmark -- the company that developed SpamNet -- made some changes to its backend systems. The intended upgrades brought down the show.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,55613,00.html

No Cyborg Nation Without FDA's OK
In May, three members of a Florida family were implanted with ID chips, sparking an international debate over the implications of the technology. The manufacturer insisted that the VeriChip would revolutionize the fields of security and health care by providing a tamper-proof form of identification. Privacy pundits, meanwhile, fretted over forcible chipping and biblical literalists warned that a microchip could be interpreted as the "Mark of the Beast." VeriChip maker Applied Digital Solutions (ADS) crowed about an anticipated demand that would create "millions" of cyborgs within the next few years. It even trademarked the terms "get chipped" and "The Chipsons" -- the nickname for the Florida family, whose real name is Jacobs. But five months have passed, and the VeriChip still isn't available in the United States.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,55626,00.html

Free Speech Same as Free Content?
In a case that could shake U.S. copyright law to its foundation, attorneys on Wednesday will try to persuade the Supreme Court that public access to copyrighted works is a First Amendment right. Plaintiffs have challenged the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (CTEA), which extended current and future copyrights by 20 years. The law passed as a result of heavy influence from Hollywood studios such as the Walt Disney Company, whose earliest copyrights on film depictions of characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were about to expire under the old limit of 75 years.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55612,00.html

Radio Wants a Digital Revolution
Generations of radio listeners have contended with static and flat-sounding music. But now a new technology holds the promise of CD-quality sound for FM broadcasts and an end to AM's hiss, crackle and pop. The Federal Communications Commission is to decide Thursday whether to allow radio stations to broadcast digital signals and how they should do it. Digital radio's rollout could begin in a few months in some major cities, and consumers would start seeing digital receivers in car stereos and high-end audio systems next year.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55655,00.html

Carnegie Mellon Fights Back
The Defense Department is giving Carnegie Mellon University $35.5 million to develop tools and tactics for fighting cyberterrorism. The inventions to be researched and engineered at the top computer science school would serve equally well in battling hackers and Internet crooks. "These problems have always existed. Terrorism only increased the visibility of these problems," said Pradeep Khosla, who heads the university's electrical and computer engineering department and directs the new Center for Computer and Communications Security. The 5-year grant, combined with other federal, state and private funding, gives the center an $8 million budget this year.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55649,00.html

Report: Wi-Fi Networks Too Risky
Starbucks customers who like surfing the Net wirelessly as they sip lattes might be surprised to hear that the federal government considers the practice dangerous. In a recently released report, the government asked federal agencies to exercise extra caution when using a wireless local area network (LAN) for Internet access. The government suggested that agencies implement a system that constantly checks for unauthorized wireless Internet users and that they install more encryption than necessary on a wired-line network. Last month, the office of the Secretary of Defense released a memorandum prohibiting the use of many wireless technologies in the Pentagon and much of the Army, Navy and Air Force until the military develops a wireless security strategy.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,55556,00.html

The Art of War, Translated
If U.S. troops soon storm into Iraq, they'll be counting on computerized language translators to help with everything from interrogating prisoners to locating chemical weapons caches. Besides converting orders like "put your hands up" into spoken Arabic or Kurdish, military officials hope to enable quick translations of time-sensitive intelligence from some of the world's most difficult tongues -- normally a painstaking task. "Should we, God forbid, go into Iraq, we'll have to ask 'Are there any chemicals here? Are there any facilities used to develop chemical or biological weapons?'" said Lt. Col. Kathy De Bolt, deputy director of the U.S. Army battle lab at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, which develops intelligence technology. Besides Arabic, De Bolt's unit is developing machine translation capability in Kurdish and Farsi, two languages also spoken in the region.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,55625,00.html

Proofreading the human genome
A biotech startup in Mountain View has produced what could be the first comprehensive map of the genetic differences that help explain why humans vary in health, appearance and even behavior. The human genome is a string of 3 billion chemical letters that spell out every inherited trait. Although the letters of all our genomes are virtually identical, here and there nature gets a letter wrong. Scientists call these genetic misspellings SNPs, or single nucleotide polymorphisms, and using them to diagnose ailments and design better drugs has become one of biotech's Holy Grails. Perlegen Sciences was founded two years ago to use new DNA scanning tools to read each and every letter in 50 different genomes, and then to compare each of these genomes, letter by letter, with the reference copy produced by the Human Genome Project.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...7/BU186760.DTL

Cash plea for Russian meteor chasers
Scientists investigating what is believed to be a "significant" fresh meteor crater in a remote part of Siberia are begging for funds to mount an expedition. A British meteorite expert has called on the international scientific community to help Russian scientists get to the impact site, which may be of major scientific importance. Benny Peiser, John Moores University, Liverpool
Hunters in the region say they have seen a large crater surrounded by burned forest. According to Vladimir Polyakov, of the Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Physics in Moscow, "Specialists have no doubt that it is a meteorite that fell into the taiga on Thursday."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2309117.stm

Shadow Moons: The Unknown Sub-Worlds that Might Harbor Life
Mounting discoveries of planets around other stars are fueling anticipation among most astronomers that our solar system is a reasonable model for the kinds of objects that probably exist around many stars. If they are right, then the galaxy could be loaded with billions of planets -- and a far greater number of moons. Some of these satellite worlds could have the ingredients for life and the ability to support it, said experts interviewed by SPACE.com. These presumed extrasolar moons are hidden in the scientific shadows of their planetary companions. None have been found, so none can be studied. Few top researchers theorize about them. Scientific literature on the topic is thin.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom..._021008-1.html

Critical breast cancer gene identified
A newly identified gene is missing or inactivated in 60 per cent of human breast cancers and about 50 per cent of lung cancers, US researchers have discovered. This apparently critical gene is the most important of only a few genes clearly associated with sporadic, rather than hereditary, breast cancer, says Masaaki Hamaguchi of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, who led the work. Sporadic disease accounts for more than 90 per cent of breast and other cancers."This is a completely new type of tumour-suppressor gene. We don't have a real clue what this gene is doing yet in the normal cell - we have just opened a door to a new field," says Hamaguchi.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992893

Neutrino and X-ray physicists win Nobel Prize
Pioneering research involving the detection of cosmic neutrinos and X-ray radiation has won three scientists the Nobel Prize in Physics. Raymond Davis of the University of Pennsylvania, US, and Masatoshi Koshiba of the University of Tokyo, Japan, have been jointly awarded half the US$1 million prize for fundamental groundwork in the detection of cosmic neutrinos. iccardo Giacconi of Associated Universities in Washington, US, has received the other half for constructing space-based cosmic X-ray detectors. The three scientists "used these very smallest components of the universe to increase our understanding of the very largest: the Sun, stars, galaxies and supernovae," the Nobel jury said.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992895

P2P Key To Beating Terrorism
A US security think tank has called for the government to counter terrorism by spending more on information sharing technology and creating a decentralised IT network. According to the Mercury News, The Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age has said that information processing systems in the US government are ineffective and work like an obsolete mainframe rather than a smart network. The 34-member task force, which was co-chaired by former Netscape president and chief executive James Barksdale, released the 173-page Protecting America's Freedom in the Information Age report before presenting it to White House Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge this week.
http://nl2.vnunet.com/News/1135737

More news as soon as I can get back to work

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
What will happen to my beloved papers ?

They will exist forever in their relative locations in the 4-dimensional web of timespace.

Thanks for the news sweetie!

- tg

[multi]

Intel is also working on updates to the Pentium 4. In the second half of 2003, the company will release "Prescott," a Pentium 4 variant that will feature a new security system and "strained silicon," a chipmaking method that speeds up transistors.

i hope security system don"t mean a way to keep track off users via their cpu chip ID