The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

Time to read the news, or else...

Judge: MS claim to 'Windows' in doubt
Microsoft suffered a minor legal setback Friday when a federal judge questioned the software giant's claim on the word "Windows." In December, Microsoft sued operating-system maker Lindows.com, claiming the 6-month-old company was illegally taking advantage of its Windows trademark and potentially confusing customers.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-862516.html

States to judge: Microsoft must behave
Nine states opposed to a proposed settlement of the Microsoft antitrust case told a federal judge on Monday that sanctions against the company need to address more than just the violations found at trial. The non-settling states argue that the settlement reached with the U.S. Justice Department and nine other states is too weak to stop Microsoft from flexing its monopoly power in technologies that have arisen since the case began nearly four years ago.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-862295.html

MandrakeSoft, SuSe add new life to Linux
Two of the major distributors of the Linux operating system, Germany's SuSE and France's MandrakeSoft, are set to release new versions of their software, improving multimedia features as well as introducing more advanced versions of the underlying core technology. SuSE's software touts itself as the first to use the KDE 3.0 graphical user interface, which adds graphical enhancements similar to those found in Windows XP or Apple's Mac OS X.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-862168.html

MS 'Thera' calls on cell phone conference
Microsoft has tapped VoiceStream Wireless and Verizon Wireless to debut a Windows-powered PocketPC device in the United States, the company announced Monday at the 2002 Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association conference. The "Thera," which will cost about $800, tops a list of new products and services that will debut this week as thousands of cellular-industry executives, battered by miserable financial conditions from 2001, look for a turnaround this year.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-861907.html

Tech firms play Q to the CIA's Bond
Stratify CEO Nimish Mehta was at a cocktail-hour schmooze at PC Forum last year when a couple of guys sidled up and peppered him with questions about his company. The men said they were from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture arm, and might be interested in funding his software company. The proposal seemed so unlikely that he initially thought it was a joke. Several million dollars in funding later, Mehta has changed his mind about In-Q-Tel. The CIA is using Stratify products to organize and sort through unstructured data, having selected the Mountain View, Calif.-based company as one of the lucky few to receive In-Q-Tel cash.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-862093.html

Security expert warns of MP3 danger
New technology such as MP3s may soon be used as vectors for viruses, a security specialist visiting Australia has warned. “We've recently been looking at how things embedded into MP3 files might become a problem,” Vincent Gullotto, vice president of AVERT -- the developer of McAffee anti-virus systems -- told ZDNet Australia. “There will soon be MP3s that will play the video clip at the same time as the music, and if you can embed movie files to MP3s you can embed Java and other languages that may contain malicious programming.” The big trend recently has been viruses that use mass mailing as a vector, which really took off after the Melissa virus, according to Gullotto.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-861995.html

PlayStation 2 gets kicked out of CeBit
Less than a week after Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer told visitors to the massive CeBIT exhibition in Germany that he wanted to see a warmer, friendlier Microsoft, his company has become embroiled in a row with Sony over gaming consoles. Microsoft complained to the show organizers, Hannover Messe AG, that Sony was breaching show rules by letting people play on Sony PlayStation 2 game consoles. Technically, this was right and the Messe was forced to act on the complaint.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-861947.html

E-mail at work: Is the free lunch over?
Brace yourselves, corporate drones: one of the last bastions of work place relief -- sneaking in some online shopping or snickering over an email joke -- could be destined for universal banishment. Major corporations are increasingly classifying employee e-mail and Internet privileges as potential security hazards, distractions or worse, costly legal dangers in the making. As a result, companies are considering dramatically curtailing, or even abolishing completely the freedoms, on which employees have grown increasingly reliant over the past few years.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-862067.html

Yahoo tests paid-programming waters
Borrowing a page from RealNetworks' book, Web portal Yahoo is trying to get a read on how willing the market is to support a subscription-based streaming-media service. The company this weekend began surveying its visitors to gauge whether people would pay for select audio and video programming through the site. Programs under consideration include movies on demand, soap-opera news, sporting events, professional wrestling and a reality show about single women called "Real Girls," according to the survey.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-862468.html

Discord over digital music
With millions of people downloading free copies of everything from the latest chart hit to whole albums over the internet, the music industry is facing a formidable challenge. A whole generation is growing up with digital technology that has provided the means to get free access to music at any time. "Digital technology offers us both opportunities and threats," Fergal Gara of EMI Records told the BBC programme Go Digital. "Unless we get control of digital privacy, we will be in deep trouble. But I'm not convinced that legislation alone is the answer. What we really need to do is provide alternatives to consumers."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1874800.stm

Bank glitch hits depositors' paychecks
Bank of America, the No. 3 U.S. bank, said Sunday that it has corrected a computer processing problem that left a large number of West Coast customers without access to funds directly deposited to their accounts last Friday. The computer glitch, which affected an unspecified number of Bank of America customers in Nevada, California and Arizona, left customers unable to access paychecks that had been electronically, directly deposited on Friday, said Harvey Radin, a bank spokesman. Radin said the problem occurred on Friday evening. The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank was able to restore funds to its Arizona and Nevada customer accounts late Saturday afternoon, and to California accounts by early Sunday morning.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-862061.html?tag=cd_mh

eBay: Oscars bring out the Bootlegged
A few enterprising -- and potentially illegal -- eBay sellers are gearing up for the Oscars, auctioning off pirated versions of nominated films, some priced at less than a ticket and popcorn.
Many of the Academy Award hopefuls up for bid on eBay, which include "Monsters, Inc.," "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," are not bound for the video store for weeks. The activity comes at a particularly anxious time for media companies that are trying to identify and stamp out major sources of piracy for fear it will cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-861324.html?tag=cd_mh

Bus-tracking system links kids to parents
A Canadian company on Monday launched a wireless tracking system in Singapore that will link school buses to schools and parents, thereby boosting safety for schoolchildren. The system, called the School Bus Tracking and Monitoring System, was developed by Unity Integration. A Singapore primary school has been testing the system since January in a pilot project that will run until June.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-862269.html?tag=cd_mh

Free AOL use sparks new worries
Free Web access may be a bygone perk of the dot-com bubble, but it appears to be alive and well at the world's largest Internet service provider, America Online. AOL offers a battery of free promotion and retention programs, but it refuses to disclose how many of its subscribers pay nothing for the service. Now, Wall Street is zeroing in on some financial details that it believes offer a guide to this elusive number -- and it doesn't like what it sees. The concern over AOL's nonpaying customers comes at a critical time for the ISP. Analysts have been increasingly worried about slowing growth at AOL, with many noting that the ISP took longer than expected to reach its latest subscriber milestone.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-859849.html

Recordable-DVD buyers cry foul
Leo Lorenzetti is one of a number of customers unhappy with Hewlett-Packard and the DVD+RW Alliance, a group advocating the DVD-rewritable standard. Four months ago, Lorenzetti, a vice president of engineering for Boonton, N.J.-based Mobile-Vision, purchased HP's first-generation DVD+RW drive with the impression that the drive, called the dvd writer dvd100i, could be upgraded to support DVD+R -- a recording format that works with less-expensive discs. DVD+RW Alliance members initially said that compatibility could be established through an upgrade but later backed off those claims before their products began shipping.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-861466.html

More news later on