The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

She buys, she buys
Oh she reads, she reads...

Intel loses Itanium patent ruling
A federal court ruled Thursday that Intel's Itanium processor violates patents owned by Intergraph and ordered Intel to pay $150 million in damages. The ruling is the culmination of the trial phase of a bitter, multi-issue dispute, dating back to 1997. Huntsville, Ala.-based Intergraph, once a close ally of Intel's in the workstation market, alleged that Itanium, an Intel chip for servers, infringed on designs embodied in two Intergraph patents and in its Clipper processor, a microchip formerly used in Intergraph's workstations. Years ago, a court threw out antitrust complaints filed by Intergraph, and this past April, Intel agreed to pay $300 million to settle claims that its Pentium lines of chips infringed on Intergraph patents.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-961695.html

Outlook Express flaw speeds hacking
Microsoft warned Outlook Express users late Thursday that a software flaw could allow an online vandal to control their computers. A critical vulnerability in the e-mail reader could allow an attacker to send a specially formatted message that would crash the software and potentially take control of the recipient's computer. The flaw occurs in how the software handles messages that include components using secure MIME (multipurpose Internet mail extensions), a standard that allows e-mail messages to contain encrypted data and digital signatures.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-961769.html

DVD quality over the Internet?
An international standards team is close to approving a new compression format for digital video, promising improvements as well as a few uncertainties for emerging multimedia technology. Known as H.264, among other designations, the new format is turning heads over claims that it can deliver DVD-quality broadcasts over the Internet using considerably fewer network resources than rivals. Created in a unique partnership between U.S. and European standards groups known as the Joint Video Team, the format, or codec, should be ratified as part of the MPEG-4 (Moving Picture Experts Group) multimedia standard by year's end, according to Robert Koenen, chairman of the MPEG Requirements Group.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-961707.html

Windows into Linux world
The founder of a popular Web site devoted to Linux used in gadgets such as handheld computers will announce next week plans to cover Linux rival Windows as well. On Tuesday, Rick Lehrbaum, executive editor of LinuxDevices.com, will announce the creation of WindowsForDevices.com, devoted to news of computing devices outside Microsoft's traditional domain in PCs and servers. Microsoft is the anchor sponsor for the new section, Lehrbaum said, allowing him to hire an editor to run the site. Sponsorship for the Linux site comes chiefly from embedded Linux companies Red Hat, TimeSys and Lineo.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-961770.html?tag=fd_top_2

Anti-hacking copyright law to get review
Federal copyright regulators are opening the door for new exceptions to a controversial copyright law that has landed one publisher in court and a Russian programmer in jail. The United States Copyright Office is launching a rare round of public comment on rules that bar people from breaking through digital copy-protection technology on works such as music, movies, software or electronic books. Regulators aren't looking to change the law, but they are looking for public suggestions on what kinds of activity should be legalized in spite of the rules. This is only the second time in the controversial law's five-year history that the public has been able to pitch in with suggestions for exceptions.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961783.html?tag=fd_top_3

IBM flushes restroom patent
IBM has quietly eliminated a patent it received on a method for determining who gets to use the bathroom next. The computing giant received a patent for a "system and method for providing reservations for restroom use" in December. But the company later decided to renounce all of its patent claims after a petition was made against it, according to documents released this week by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. IBM spokesman Chris Andrews acknowledged that the company withdrew the patent. "We dedicated that patent to the public so that we could continue focusing on our high-quality patent portfolio," Andrews said. He declined to give further explanation about why IBM decided to renounce it -- or why it filed for the patent in the first place.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-961803.html?tag=fd_top_4

Political parties: In Web we trust
Political parties are using the Web more aggressively to reach voters and gather personal information such as e-mail during this election season, an indication of the Internet's growing importance on the campaign scene. A new study by political consultants PoliticsOnline and RightClick Strategies praised the major political parties for their continuing embracement of the Web as a vehicle for getting their message out. The report examined how official sites of the Republican and Democratic parties are communicating, fund raising and organizing this campaign season. Researchers found that the Democratic National Committee did a better job of collecting e-mail addresses of voters, but the Republican National Committee excelled in selectively targeting and sending more information to people whose e-mails it had.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961768.html?tag=fd_top_9

New grid networks put idle computing power to work
Twelve months ago, like most of his peers across North America, Huw Morgan, chief technology officer for Bell Globemedia Interactive, received an order from the bean counters: buy less gear, spend less money. But this was easier said than done. Bell Globemedia is the AOL Time Warner of Canada -- 10 million Canadians access the Internet through its service, which gains thousands of new users each month. That kind of growth was creating a heavy burden on the company's Internet infrastructure. Mr. Morgan was asked to cut back on equipment when it was needed most. As he was pondering that problem, he received a call from an executive at Think Dynamics, a Toronto-based company.
http://www.herring.com/insider/2002/...ng-101102.html

Software spots football injuries
Football players prone to injury could soon be sidelined as new biomedical software promises to predict who is most likely to be unfit to play. The software, developed by Computer Associates, predicts how likely players are to pick up injuries based on data collected over a period of time. "When players do physicals, the examiners are faced with long lists of metrics such as pulse and recovery rate but translating them into information about present and future fitness is difficult," Computer Associate's Vice President told Computing magazine.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2320379.stm

Media compagnies Tuning Out the Customer
Something has gone terribly wrong in the relationship between media companies and their customers. The use and enjoyment of music and video appears to be rising, as a multitude of new methods of digitally receiving and using it emerge. But rather than welcome the opportunity to develop new markets, media companies view the new digital tools with alarm. The companies are convinced that legitimate sales of their products are suffering as people download, copy, and share media, especially music. They're determined to stop it. The media companies are now undertaking an assault on the customer. They shut down Napster, the most popular new technology application in many years. They have sued and shut down sites that listed lyrics to popular songs. They have begun selling CDs with so-called "copy protection" that should instead be called "listen prevention," because they often are unplayable on PCs and other popular listening devices. They have flooded peer-to-peer music sharing services with fake data to make using them more difficult and unpleasant. Now they are starting to sue individual consumers.
http://www.fortune.com/articles/209792.html

Windows Media 9 heads to home theaters
Microsoft widened adoption for its Windows Media technology this week in a deal with Korea Telecom to deliver on-demand video to 4.4 million broadband Net subscribers in South Korea. KT (formerly Korea Telecom), the No. 1 telecommunications and broadband provider in South Korea, licensed Microsoft's multimedia software, Windows Media 9 Series, to offer movies and TV shows through HomeMedia, a new pay-per-view, on-demand service launched Wednesday. Using Microsoft's video and audio streaming technology, KT's broadband subscribers will be able to download and view videos on a PC, as well as wirelessly project them to a television set. Also, by the end of the year, KT will use Microsoft's multimedia servers to power the service, Microsoft said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961771.html?tag=cd_mh

China bans minors from Net cafes
The Chinese government on Friday issued rules barring minors from going into Internet cafes, which are hugely popular for video games and Web services, and which state media have said poison the minds of urban youth. The regulations, reported by the official Xinhua news agency on Friday, came four months after a fire at a Beijing cybercafe that killed 25 people -- mostly students -- who were locked inside. The new rules also prevent the construction of cybercafes within about 650 feet of elementary and middle schools, said Xinhua's Web site.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961734.html?tag=cd_mh

Nigeria Vote: Peace Through Tech?
Nigerian officials are investing $30 million in technology that they hope will allow the country to have a peaceful presidential election next April. The upcoming election will be the first to be conducted by a civilian government in Nigeria's 42 years of statehood, and officials are particularly anxious to ensure that all goes well. But United Nations observers report there is a "growing sense of dread among Nigerians as the polls draw nearer." Nigerian officials realized they needed to modernize their system after a trial run of the voter registration process in late September. The trial run resulted in riots when people were told that local officials had run out of registration forms.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55702,00.html

Was Satellite Radio a Big Waste?
The Federal Communications Commission gave commercial radio stations the go-ahead to broadcast digital signals -- a move that could prematurely snuff satellite radio's short-burning flame. Satellite radio was hyped as the answer to tired commercial stations that play the same, limited music. It promised crystal clear, commercial-free music and talk shows tailored to individual tastes and delivered with digital signals. From reggae to sports talk, listeners could tune in to their favorite stations from coast to coast. Both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio launched aggressive campaigns starting in the late '90s, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to capture listeners. That didn't happen. The monthly fee and steep installation costs for digital radios kept many folks from signing up.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,55706,00.html

Kiwi Symphony's Errant Scat Music
They had been expecting Wagner; instead, they got "Wee on My Face." When subscribers to the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra used Internet-based media players to listen to CDs sent to promote the orchestra's musical offerings next season, the playlist was not exactly classical music. "I have received a give-away CD from the (orchestra) a few days ago called Season 2003," one subscriber wrote to complain. "However, the names of the pieces were (so) hard to handle that I cannot type (them) on this e-mail." The titles of the eight tracks on the CD, the album's name and the name of the artist displayed on media players all revolved around urination and defecation. "Maybe I Fart on Your Face" was not what the classical fans had been expecting.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,55701,00.html

Asia Bests U.S. in Broadband Race
The broadband revolution is finally taking hold. But as asymmetric DSL emerges as the leading high-speed connection technology in North America, a newer -- much faster -- flavor of DSL is sweeping Asia. Very high data rate DSL, known as VDSL, was originally developed to carry digital television signals in addition to standard Internet traffic, so it can pump data over a standard copper telephone wire at speeds up to 25 megabits per second. ADSL signals max out at 8 Mbps -- although most ADSL services average about 1.5 Mbps. However, ADSL has a range advantage because the data signals can travel up to 5 kilometers from the telephone switching station over standard copper phone wires. VDSL traffic is limited to 1 kilometer.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,55593,00.html

What Saddam still needs for nukes
"Saddam Hussein had us completely fooled, once. Prior to Desert Storm in 1991, we had monitored and embargoed his importation of high tech centrifuge and laser equipment that could be used to make highly-enriched uranium (HEU). material that—once you have it—makes building an atomic bomb easy. After Saddam’s defeat, inspectors found that he had spent an estimated $8 billion building calutrons, ancient devices (from the 1940s) that Ernest O. Lawrence had used to make HEU for the Hiroshima bomb. (See “Springtime, Taxes and the Attack on Iraq,” technologyreview.com, Feb. 7, 2002). Nobody had anticipated that Saddam would use such a low-tech approach. "
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...ller101102.asp

Radio waves could construct buildings in space
Huge buildings could be conjured up in space using nothing more than focused radio waves to push individual components into place. Radio-controlled construction would get around one of the obstacles to colonising space - the need to ferry heavy construction equipment into orbit and support the people who will operate it. Narayanan Komerath, an aeronautical engineer from the Georgia Institute of Technology, got the idea from a technique called "acoustic shaping", in which sound waves are used to build solid objects in weightless environments. Speakers in a closed chamber transmit sound waves that can push, say, plastic beads around. The beads come to rest in acoustic dead spots called "nodes", which they cannot easily escape from because the air pressure at all surrounding points is higher.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992901

Software predicts user behaviour to stop attacks
New computer-monitoring software designed to second-guess the intentions of individual system users could be close to perfect at preventing security breaches, say researchers. Existing systems usually monitor the data flowing through whole networks and are typically between 60 and 80 per cent reliable, the researchers say. Tests simulating inside attacks indicate that the new software would be up to 94 per cent reliable once implemented. The software generates a profile for each individual on a network by analysing the specific commands they enter at their terminal. It then monitors their activity and sounds the alarm on detecting suspicious behaviour. The finished product will do this in real time.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992913

Space station gets new backbone
Expansion of the International Space Station resumed on Thursday with the installation of a 14-metre-long truss during a seven-hour spacewalk performed at the orbiting outpost. Installation of the S1 truss marks the end of a lengthy break from building work at the ISS. In June 2002 shuttle operations were halted after cracks were discovered in every one of NASA's ageing fleet. The cracks, which could have resulted in a catastrophic fuel leak during take-off have now been welded. But the schedule slipped again in August after cracks were found in the giant transporters used to move each shuttle to the launch pad.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992916

More news later on

[JackSpratts]

thanks for the news wt!

gee. another windows flaw. one that will crash your pc and allow a hacker to take control. outlook express again.

i love the reassurance from microsoft -

"Outlook Express ships with every Windows system, or rather as part of IE, so it's on every system. But unless it is configured to receive mail, you are not at risk," said Scott Culp, manager for Microsoft security response.

"unless it is configured to receive mail, you are not at risk". wow.

i feel so much better now.

like poisoned water. not a problem if you don't drink it.

- js.

[ssj4_android]

"Anyone who has already downloaded and installed the Internet Explorer 6 service pack or the Windows XP service pack announced on Sept. 9 already have the patch, Culp said."
Well, that good...for me at least, since I installed the service pack.