The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

SuSE opens Linux desktop for Windows
Linux distributor SuSE is hoping to get desktop users to switch to its operating system with a new edition of its software specifically designed for office workers -- including software that allows it to run Microsoft Office and other Windows applications. In January SuSE will launch, through its resellers, SuSE Linux Office Desktop, a distribution aimed at small to medium-sized enterprises. The package includes SuSE Linux 8.1 and applications designed to ease Windows users' transition to Linux. It uses the YaST2 setup tool for installation, Acronis OS Selector partitioning software and CodeWeavers CrossOver Office 1.2 for running Windows applications. CrossOver Office also recently made an appearance in a new desktop-friendly Linux distribution from Xandros, and CodeWeavers initially worked with Lindows.com on its consumer-oriented desktop.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-963703.html

Microsoft wins class-action appeal
Microsoft won a courtroom victory on Monday when a federal appeals court threw out a private antitrust suit against the software maker. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., ruled 2-1 that Gravity had no legitimate claim against defendants Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Dell Computer. Gravity filed a class-action suit in February 1999 claiming that its own litigation support software was being undermined by Microsoft's alleged monopoly and refusal to release details about its programming hooks in Windows. In addition, Gravity argued that all three companies and NEC Packard Bell were guilty of "conspiratorial conduct" to lock up the market for operating system software, word processing software and spreadsheet software in violation of the Sherman Act.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-963740.html

Dell's USB Key replaces floppy
Dell Computer is offering its own alternative to the floppy disk. The company on Tuesday began offering a Dell-branded USB (universal serial bus) Key, a small, removable storage device. Dell will offer a 16MB version of the USB Key device in place of a floppy drive for customers who opt to pair it with one of two Inspiron notebook models. The device uses flash memory and works by plugging into a PC's USB port. When connected, it appears on a computer's desktop as a removable hard drive, allowing people to drag and drop files for storage or to move them to another computer. When not in use, it fits easily into a shirt pocket.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-963747.html

Sun braces for network disasters
Sun Microsystems has come up with a way to insulate computer networks from fires, floods and bomb attacks: Split up the machines and put them in different cities. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based server manufacturer on Tuesday will unveil its Enterprise Continuity program, a collection of services and technology designed to prevent network failure by physically separating computers that work together in a unified cluster. Properly installed, computers in the same cluster -- running, for example, a stock trading system or conducting drug research -- could be located 125 miles away from one another without increasing latency or lag time. Current fiber connections only allow computers in a cluster to be separated by six miles. Beyond that distance these computers can't function seamlessly to run the same application together.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-963615.html

Is your e-mail really yours?
Nancy Carter has a message for Internet service providers: Keep your hands off my e-mail. The Toronto, Ontario-based freelance TV producer has been battling U.S.-based Inter.net Group for the past 16 months over a billing dispute she says may have cost her a lucrative job opportunity. Now she wants $110,000 in damages over a policy that led Inter.net's Canadian subsidiary to keep her ISP account open for incoming e-mail even while denying her access to the account. Beyond the money, Carter said she wants to change the way ISPs handle suspended and canceled e-mail accounts. At stake, she asserts, is an industrywide practice that amounts to extortion, in which ISPs may hold private communications hostage until bills are settled up.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-963631.html

AIM to chat with ICQ
America Online said it would allow its next version of AOL Instant Messenger to communicate with ICQ, a surprise move that will topple the long-standing barrier between the company's two popular IM services. The decision is significant because AOL has long claimed that AIM and ICQ users had no interest in communicating with one another. AOL has also come under industry criticism and federal regulatory scrutiny for its resistance to opening its IM network to outsiders. "We're implementing the test in response to the growth of AOL in Europe, ICQ's leadership in Europe, and some consumer feedback from AOL members who wanted the ability to exchange instant messages with ICQ members," said Anne Bentley, an AOL spokeswoman.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-963699.html

Recycling fans: It's payback time for AOL
Imagine not just one, two or three America Online CDs in your mailbox, but 1 million. That's what two technology workers from El Cerrito, Calif., aim to deliver to AOL's doorstep in Dulles, Va., as part of a mission to persuade the Web giant to stop its direct-mail marketing campaign of nearly a decade. Jim McKenna and John Lieberman, who have collected almost 80,000 AOL discs so far, said they plan to make their point with a gesture, a smile and the words, "You've got mail." Stopping AOL from planting its pervasive program software in everything from mailboxes to Omaha Steaks packaging won't be easy.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-963606.html

Promise of P3P stalls as backers regroup
Six months after its recommendation as an Internet standard, a major privacy initiative is entering an awkward adolescence as software heavyweights adopt it and individual Web sites leave it to languish. In ordinary economic times, a protocol like the World Wide Web Consortium's Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) might have a hard time gaining acceptance in the marketplace, as mainstream consumers generally exhibit lax security practices when it comes to their own online privacy. But in an economic downturn, the privacy protocol also is subject to disinterest by Web developers with scarce resources.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963632...g=fd_lede2_hed

Trio teams up for bendable screens
Three companies have agreed to collectively develop a new display technology that could lead to thin, flexible monitors that can be wrapped around curved surfaces such as light poles. DuPont, Sarnoff and Lucent Technologies said Tuesday they will work together for three years as part of an initiative sponsored by the Advanced Technology Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). DuPont will provide technical input for combining organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, technology to flexible substrates, or bases, and for the manufacturing process. For its part, Sarnoff will work to improve video display systems and the use of color. Lucent will be subcontracted to develop the organic materials and the design of the electronic components used in the displays. The flexible displays that the joint effort will be developing will use polymer-based OLED.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-963751.html?tag=fd_top

EMI, Audible Magic ink anti-piracy deal
EMI Recorded Music on Tuesday agreed to use audio fingerprinting technology from Audible Magic to identify and track licensed and unlicensed online usage of its song catalog. Audible Magic's technology aims to get around the problem of matching digital copies of songs that do not use a universal naming convention or format. Audio fingerprinting creates snapshots of the audio characteristics of a song that can be compared against files found on peer-to-peer networks and elsewhere regardless of the file name or type. The companies said they expect to begin implementing an audio fingerprint system by the end of the year. The Audio Magic deal comes as music companies struggle to create effective tools to force consumers to pay for songs that are increasingly available for free online.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963756.html?tag=fd_top

Xbox, GameCube scrap for second place
Sony will continue to dominate the video game business over the next few years, with Microsoft and Nintendo battling for second place, according to a report released Tuesday by research company In-Stat/MDR. The report says 31.8 million game consoles were sold worldwide in 2001, generating $7.1 billion, with substantial increases expected over the next few years. Analyst Brian O'Rourke, the author of the report, said he couldn't share specific market share numbers, but the race is clearly for second place. Sony had shipped 40 million units of its PlayStation 2 as of last month, while Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube were each edging past about a tenth of that.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-963738.html?tag=fd_top

RealNetworks reveals code in single Helix
RealNetworks on Tuesday publicly disclosed the software blueprint to its streaming media technology in an effort to take on Microsoft. As expected, RealNetworks released the source code to its client software, which includes fully functioning media players for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. The open-source client, which RealNetworks calls the "Helix DNA Client," includes code for the company's RealOne media player and its audio and video codecs. "The industry has asked for a single industry-standard media player that supports all file formats and operating systems," RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser said in a statement. "The Helix DNA Client and the Helix community are the answer. We welcome and encourage all developers to freely register on the Web site, download the source code and actively participate to drive this mass medium of Internet broadcasting to the next level."
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963704.html?tag=fd_top

Code Red: Worm Assault on the Web
One week ago, at 2100 GMT, hackers tried to cripple nine of the Internet’s 13 root domain names system (DNS) servers, machines that form the backbone of the net by linking all domain names to numerical Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. For approximately one hour, these root servers endured a bombardment of requests — a 40 percent increase over their normal traffic -- from “zombie” machines under the hackers’ control. Seven of the machines were completely incapacitated by the deluge, known as a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). Had the attack lasted for more than an hour and affected more machines, the hackers may well have crashed the DNS servers — and the Internet with them. By several accounts, it was one of the most sophisticated cyber-attacks yet. What is certain is that this assault — now under investigation by the FBI and the White House — probably won’t be the last.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...81809EC588EF21

Securing the cloud
When the world's richest man decides it is time for his company to change direction, it is worth asking why. Only rarely does Bill Gates send an e-mail memo to the thousands of employees at Microsoft, the world's largest software company, of which he is chairman. He famously sent such a memo in December 1995, in which he announced that Microsoft had to become “hardcore” about the Internet. In January this year Mr Gates sent another round-robin. Its subject? The importance of computer security. Until recently, most people were either unaware of computer security or regarded it as unimportant. That used to be broadly true, except in a few specialised areas — such as banking, aerospace and military applications — that rely on computers and networks being hard to break into and not going wrong. But now consumers, companies and governments around the world are sitting up and taking notice. Why?
http://www.economist.com/surveys/dis...ory_id=1389589

Aust nuclear cleanup tech goes commercial
Australian-developed location technology, being used in the drive to clean up Maralinga from radioactive waste, is being marketed worldwide to companies needing to keep track of remote assets. Murray Bannister, OmniSTAR eastern region manager, said the demand for heightened security and remote asset management would fuel demand for the global positioning system-based technology. Bannister said the location technology played a key role in the Maralinga cleanup, with vehicles designed to detect buried nuclear waste using OmniSTAR positioning devices to very accurately identify their precise location. This information then goes back to base to be mapped, allowing later cleanup of the material.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ent...0269470,00.htm

No overtime for corporate Big Brother
U.S. companies have not increased Internet surveillance of employees in response to the government's anti-terrorism efforts, a new report asserts. The General Accounting Office, an auditing arm of Congress, said in a report released Monday that corporate-level monitoring of e-mail and Web use does not appear to have changed since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "None of the employers we interviewed had increased the amount or type of information they gathered on employees’ use of e-mail, the Internet or computer files," the report said. Under the USA Patriot Act, signed by President Bush a year ago, law enforcement received more power to conduct Internet surveillance and seek information from private companies.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963677.html?tag=cd_mh

Reuters accused of hacking
A Swedish company has filed criminal charges against Reuters, claiming that the news agency broke into its Web site to get access to an earnings report. But Reuters that the information was publicly available on the company's Web site, and said there was "no substance" to the charges. Intentia International, which makes collaboration software, said Monday that it has filed charges with Sweden's National Criminal Investigation Department's computer crime division regarding the incident, which took place earlier this month. Intentia was scheduled to report its third-quarter results on October 24. But before the company made its formal announcement, Reuters obtained a copy of the press release and put out a news alert.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963658.html?tag=cd_mh

Mexico summit urges anti-piracy action
The United States, China, Japan and other Pacific Rim nations have agreed to take more steps to curb Internet piracy and cooperate more closely on punishing cybercrime. At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which ended Sunday in Los Cabos, Mexico, President Bush and other politicians agreed on a set of anti-terrorism and trade-related measures that included "curtailing copyright infringement over the Internet" and enforcing intellectual property treaties. APEC's 21 member nations, which account for more than 60 percent of the world's Internet users, also vowed to "enact comprehensive cybersecurity laws" that follow the example of the Council of Europe's controversial cybercrime treaty.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963538.html?tag=cd_mh

Freenet keeps file-trading flame burning
A new version of the Freenet software, a program based around wholly anonymous Net publishing and distribution, is due out Monday after long silence from its mostly volunteer developer community. Freenet has long been a kind of peer-to-peer promised land, with its developers promising technical features far beyond the simple file-swapping of networks like Napster or Kazaa. Its ambitions have kept it squarely in the development stage for years, with few nontechnical devotees, while simpler rival networks have attracted millions of users. With Monday's new release, the developers hope to start attracting a wider audience.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963459.html?tag=cd_mh
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,56063,00.html

Report: Digital photos not bumping film Come on Dawnie, do an effort...
Despite rapid growth in sales of digital cameras, consumers are using film as much as ever, according to a report released Tuesday by research company IDC. The company's "2002 Image Bible" estimates that worldwide this year, 78 billion digital images will be captured and shared via cameras, scanners and mobile devices. About 25 billion of those images will be printed. That compares with more than 100 billion images captured on film being printed, a number that has remained stable for several years. IDC analyst Chris Chute said the upshot is that consumers are using digital cameras for immediate gratification and for e-mailing snapshots to grandma. But they turn to film for images they want to preserve on paper. A total of 77 percent of digital camera owners still use film, and more than half use film cameras more often than digital, according to the IDC report.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-963770.html?tag=cd_mh

DVD burning a hot ticket for laptops
Toshiba on Tuesday will join competitor Sony in shipping high-end notebooks with drives capable of burning DVDs. The move comes as PC makers look to revive sluggish sales and to repeat the CD-rewritable boom that fueled the last wave of computer upgrades. "This is certainly going to better position Toshiba's and Sony's notebooks at retail," IDC analyst Alan Promisel said. "It could give a small boost to notebook sales during the holiday season." The new model, the Satellite 5205-S703, will feature a DVD-R/RW drive and sell for $2,699. The laptop comes with a 2GHz Pentium 4-M processor, 15-inch UXGA display, a 60GB hard drive, a DVD recording drive, 512MB of SDRAM, a 64MB Nvidia GeForce4 460 Go graphics accelerator, three USB 2.0 ports and a FireWire port. The laptop runs on the Windows XP home edition operating system.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-963630.html?tag=cd_mh

Display companies partner on development
Cambridge Display Technology and Opsys are combining their display efforts to further push the development of next-generation displays. CDT announced Monday that it would acquire Oxford, England-based Opsys for its work in organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology. Financial terms weren't disclosed, but the deal includes an immediate cash payment and deferred payment in CDT shares to Opsys, according to CDT. The deal did not include Opsys' U.S. business. CDT will receive ownership of Opsys' dendrimer OLED technology. Both companies are privately held.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-963612.html?tag=cd_mh

Nintendo faces EU antitrust fine
European antitrust regulators next week will fine Japanese video game maker Nintendo and a number of its distributors for sales practices it employed in the mid-1990s, EU Commission sources said. Nintendo, maker of the popular handheld video game console Game Boy, plus the Donkey Kong and Pokemon video games, was accused in 2000 of collaborating with distributors to limit cross-border flow of its products in an effort to raise wholesale prices. The EU is expected to take up the matter next week, slapping the world's No. 2 video game maker with a fine. The Nintendo settlement is on the commission agenda for Wednesday, EU sources said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-963475.html?tag=cd_mh

Wireless WarDrive: Wee Bit of Fun
Finding a public restroom in Manhattan was the biggest challenge on Day 1 of the WorldWide WarDrive. Within a 40-block radius, the WarDrivers identified dozens of wide-open wireless networks. Among the spotted "private" business and home networks were those appearing to belong to a bank, a police station, several law firms and department stores, and a financial services firm. All of these networks appeared to be unprotected by even rudimentary security systems. Anyone with no ethics and just a bit of technical savvy could have logged in and accessed, at the very least, any of the information being transmitted across the network. The networks weren't hard to locate -- they broadcasted their presence loudly and clearly. But a bathroom for that wiggly WarDriver in the back seat? Impossible to find.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,56062,00.html

Pentagon: No More GI Guinea Pigs
American soldiers may -- or may not -- soon be marching off to war against Iraq, but if they do they'll be going into battle protected by some of the same controversial drugs administered to soldiers during the Gulf War. But this time, the Pentagon vows, adherence to proper medical practices will take the place of a haphazardly administered mass-vaccination program in which tens of thousands of shot records disappeared. The Pentagon has assured Congress and military personnel that only FDA-approved drugs will be used, FDA dosage and administration requirements will be met and proper records will be kept.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56055,00.html

Why Telemarketing Is Evil
Telemarketers may be relentless, exasperating, even unethical. But you have to give them this: They’re good. With the help of technology — everything from autodialing software to cheap overseas labor connected by fiber optics — they’ve turned phone solicitation into a $270 billion industry. The key to the telephonic onslaught is predictive dialing, a breakthrough of the mid-’90s. These systems churn through huge databases of phone numbers, weeding out busy signals and out-of-service numbers, and routing answered calls to agents. They are mercilessly efficient: Out of an 8-hour day, agents can work the phones a staggering 7.2 hours. One loan company calling deadbeat borrowers boosted “promises to pay” by 129 percent. The systems use a “pacing” algorithm to keep a steady flow of calls going, but there can still be a gap of three or more seconds between your “hello” and the telemarketer’s reply.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...tart.html?pg=9

Bringing Mountain of Art to World
Less than 7 percent of U.S. museum collections are on exhibit at any given time, leaving the bulk of the nation's artifacts to gather dust behind closed doors and glass cases, locked away from the public. An ambitious project will allow some of California's most valuable, and previously inaccessible, works to be viewed online by anyone, anywhere, at any time. The Museums and the Online Archive of California Project recently launched a website with integrated access to museum, library and archival collections across California. Users can search 150,000 images of artifacts, paintings, manuscripts, photographs and architectural blueprints from 11 public and private museums. But with more than 2,000 museums in the state, that's just scratching the surface.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,55829,00.html

Why People Weren't Meant to Fly
Shoving off above the chilly waters of the San Francisco Bay in an unmotorized homemade contraption might not seem like the sanest way to attempt a solo flight. But for 35 teams competing at the Red Bull Flugtag, sanity wasn't the central concern. For a shot at real flying lessons or a cash prize, competitors attempted to engineer a human-powered flying machine, no more than 30 feet wide, to launch from a pier above the bay.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56005,00.html

End of the Line for a 'Free Bird'
It's safe to say that, of all the people who helped build the first atomic bomb, Tom Dowd was the only one to make records with stars like Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin and the Allman Brothers Band. But despite his background in physics and his reputation as an electronics whiz, Dowd wasn't known for his technical gimmickry during his more than 50 years as a producer and recording engineer. Instead, it was his ability to coax great, organic performances out of bands that earned him credits on more than 600 platinum records, including classics like a version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" and Derek and the Dominoes' "Layla."
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56056,00.html

Lethal Russian Gas Is an Opiate
The mysterious gas Russian forces pumped into a theater to end a hostage crisis was an opiate, a chemical related to morphine, Pentagon officials said Monday. The Bush administration, meanwhile, refused to criticize Russian special forces for using the gas, which killed 116 of the hostages as well as the hostage takers. "The president abhors the loss of life, but he understands that it is the terrorists" who are responsible for the tragedy, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday as the president traveled to New Mexico. Military officials said the U.S. embassy in Moscow had determined that the gas used by the Russians was some sort of opium derivative. Such substances not only kill pain and dull the senses but also can cause coma and death by shutting down breathing and circulation.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56052,00.html

Islamic hackers step up attacks
Islamic hacking groups opposed to US plans for action against Iraq are escalating their attacks on websites run by western governments and large companies, according to security experts. London-based computer security firm mi2g said October was the worst month for digital attacks since its records began in 1995. It estimated that 16,559 attacks were carried out on computer systems and websites this month. But the computer security firm said the economic damage caused by the attacks is decreasing, reflecting a decline in the quality of targets chosen for digital attack.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2372209.stm

Kournikova virus author loses appeal
Jan de Wit, aka OnTheFly, infamous author of the Anna Kournikova worm, has lost his appeal against his sentence for creating and distributing the prolific worm. An appeals court in Leeuwarden yesterday upheld a 150 hours of community service order imposed by a Dutch district court last September. The 22-year old appealed the verdict, fearing that his "conviction could hamper his career", Dutch IT news service Webwerld reports. He now works in a computer shop. Theo Jansen, de Wit's lawyer, expressed disappointment at the court's decision.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/27821.html

You're never alone with a clone
If you think that bit-copying hard disks is only for cloning drives or PCs, then PowerQuest (www.powerquest.com) wants you to think again. It reckons there is a lot going for it in the backup market as well, where a snapshot disk image can be used to quickly restore a complete server or just selected files. The company's CTO and storage products veep Don Kleinschnitz describes its V2i (virtual volume imaging) Protector software as "an innovative use of mature technology," capable of imaging 2GB per minute into a compressed file which can be saved to another drive on the same server or to a NAS box out on the network. The 'mature technology' he refers to is PowerQuest's DriveImage, which is widely used for tasks such as creating and copying standard software installations for corporate PCs.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/63/27831.html

Powerful collider is goal of physicists worldwide
As Stanford Linear Accelerator Center enters its fifth decade, it is helping to shape a revolutionary new way of doing particle physics. The laboratory, which stretches for more than two miles through the foothills above Menlo Park, is known for its discovery of some of the fundamental building blocks of matter -- discoveries that led to three Nobel prizes. Now it's helping to launch a project whose size, scope and international flavor are unlike anything before.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/4393180.htm

First look at the guts of GM's fuel cell Autonomy car
When General Motors rolled out its "skateboard" vision for a fuel cell car at the 2002 Detroit auto show in January, there was buzz, and there was a big question. The skateboard concept, called Auto-nomy, was the product of GM's Design and Technology Fusion Group, and it radically reordered automobile physiology: Fuel cells, hydrogen, motor, and brakes were all crammed into a 15-foot-long, 6-inch-thick chassis onto which modular car bodies could be snapped. Drive-by-wire controls would plug into the skateboard's computer brain through a docking port. With all of the important mechanicals belowdecks, the car could be configured for maximum space and utility. An owner could trade in a sedan for a pickup by simply having the new body snapped onto his skateboard.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/auto/ar...385005,00.html

More news later on

[goldie]

Found some very, very interesting reading in dem dare papers - off to do some more indepth reading

Have a - job well done Mr. Paperman!

[Smoketoomuch]

now this:

AOL and ICQ
"The decision is significant because AOL has long claimed that AIM and ICQ users had no interest in communicating with one another."

what???

I see DMX for instance having both an ICQ number and an AOL handler - so AOL claimed he does not want to communicate ... with himself? Yeah, that makes sense ... a LOT, yes?