The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

It's so nice to be home

Copper a perfect fit for speedy chips
The semiconductor industry is in the midst of a massive technological change, converting to mass-producing chips with copper, rather than aluminum, wires. The weird part: Almost no one seems to be having major problems.Copper, which conducts electricity better than aluminum, gives designers an avenue to break through looming physical barriers that could prevent further boosts in chip performance. The first copper Pentium 4's will come out in the fourth quarter of this year at 2.2GHz, for instance, and hit 3.5GHz next year. Working with copper poses several challenges, however. "Sputtering," a process for applying metal to silicon, doesn't work with copper, for example. Neither do traditional techniques for etching circuits. And errant, minute traces of copper rubbed on a wafer can destroy a batch of chips.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

Nvidia sheds new light on graphics
Nvidia on Monday unveiled Titanium, a new family of graphics chips. The graphics chipmaker says the GeForce Titanium family will offer twice the performance for a given price than its previous chips. The chips also match high-end Radeon graphics chip recently introduced by Nvidia rival ATI Technologies. The new Titanium family includes three members: the GeForce3 Ti 500 and GeForce3 Ti 200 for high-end PCs, and the lower priced GeForce2 Ti. Nvidia said the GeForce3 Ti chips were derived from the same graphics-chip technology to be used in the forthcoming Microsoft Xbox game console.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

U.S. taking the slow road to 3G
Japan on Monday kicks off nifty third-generation mobile services (3G) like videos on wireless telephones, but the United States is on a slower path, one likely to take even longer with a possible war and recession looming. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have dashed hopes of negotiating on additional spectrum any time soon with the military and other arms of government, analysts said. "I think the war has changed the whole spectrum management process, timing and decision-making in the U.S. so that 3G is effectively off the table for the investable future in the United States," said Rudy Baca, an analyst for the independent research firm Precursor Group.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Microsoft set to woo Mac fans
Microsofties and Mac lovers -- together at last? In a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign making its debut Monday, the Microsoft unit that makes software for the Macintosh operating system is aiming to get itself seen and heard. Not by the general public, mind you, but by hard-core Apple Computer loyalists, who have long had a love/hate relationship with Microsoft. That's no easy task, especially these days. Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, some of the plans that Microsoft's Macintosh group was counting on to promote its new Office software for the Apple Computer operating system were derailed. A media blitz scheduled for Sept. 13 that would have introduced a key piece of the new Office software, dubbed Office v.X, was delayed a week.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Excite@Home files for bankruptcy
Excite@Home, the leading provider of broadband Internet access, said Friday that it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and sell its high-speed network to AT&T for $307 million in cash. On Monday, shares of Excite@Home were halted by the Nasdaq pending additional information from the company. With the filing, Excite@Home becomes the latest Net highflier to seek bankruptcy court protection while it reorganizes its business. Just last week, Exodus Communications, a provider of Web-hosting services to thousands of companies, also filed for bankruptcy.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=tp_pr

A satellite view from the Web
Looking for a good view of the capital of Uzbekistan? The Web has become a gateway to an immense collection of satellite images of Earth, a place where you can zoom in your favorite Central Asian city or your own backyard in a couple of clicks of the mouse. Images of Antarctic icebergs, the desert in California's Death Valley and virtually anything else on Earth can be found at an array of Web sites, from government space agencies like NASA and private companies such as Space.com. Easy access to images previously available only to the government is made possible, in part, by the Ikonos satellite, launched by a Colorado-based company two years ago.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

FTC shutters thousands of Web sites
A U.S. court shut down thousands of Web sites after it determined that they diverted Web surfers and held them captive while bombarding them with ads for pornography and gambling, the U.S. government said on Monday. According to the Federal Trade Commission, John Zuccarini, of Andalusia, Pa., outside Philadelphia, operated more than 5,500 Web sites that diverted Web surfers from their intended destinations and exposed them to pop-up ads. Zuccarini did not immediately respond to calls for comment. Zuccarini registered many misspellings of popular sites, such as Cartoonnetwork.com, the FTC said, in a bid to draw traffic from sloppy typists.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

U.S. Supreme Court to rule on Net porn
The U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term Monday, with a docket that includes important issues such as Internet pornography, the execution of the mentally retarded and the use of public money to pay religious-school tuition. After their summer recess, the justices return to the bench for their 2001-2002 term, which for the time being has been overshadowed by the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that left more than 6,000 people dead or missing. The court has increased security since the hijacked-plane attacks. But it will be business as usual on Monday as the justices begin issuing orders in nearly 2,000 cases that piled up over the past three months and as they hear oral arguments.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Cybersquatting among the ruins
On Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, while the twin towers of the World Trade Center crumbled and hijacked jetliners hurtled into the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania, Americans were stricken by shock, anger, grief and grim fascination. Glued to televisions, radios and Internet news sites, many of us were uncertain of what was happening or how we should react. But scores of people around the world reacted decisively to the terrorist attacks, in a peculiar and eerily detached way: They registered Internet domain names commemorating the disaster. Within moments after the first hijacked plane careered into the World Trade Center's south tower at 8:45 a.m., even as New York firefighters rushed up the stairwells, quick-thinking Net-savvy citizens pointed their browsers to the Web sites of Internet domain name registrars.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2001/1...ain/index.html

Weapons: From Smart to Brilliant
Only weeks before the horror of Sept. 11, an obscure Defense Dept. agency and a bevy of contractors struck a potential blow against terrorists. For the first time, they demonstrated that remotely guided weapons could target and hit moving vehicles. Even though the technology was aimed at more conventional foes, it could be just the ticket for taking out terrorists fleeing across the desert. The trick: using airborne radars and computer wizardry to steer a missile or guided bomb directly into an elusive target. This is just one example of the leap in weapons technology since the Gulf War 10 years ago. Despite the compelling images of "smart" bombs smashing into their targets, Operation Desert Storm laid bare serious shortcomings.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/...10927_0141.htm

Nimda resurgence falls flat
A resurgence of the Nimda worm failed to materialize Friday, leaving unfulfilled warnings that several security companies made this week. The e-mail component of the worm, which sends infected messages to each entry in an infected computer's Outlook address book, reactivates 10 days after the original infection. That part of the program had antivirus researchers and security experts worried that the Nimda worm was again set to spread quickly. But Friday morning, 10 days after the first infections started to take hold, few signs heralded a return of the worm.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=ch_mh

High-speed Net users fret about service
When Excite@Home filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, visions of excruciatingly slow dial-up service popped into Tim Joiner's mind. Joiner has been using Comcast's Excite@Home high-speed Internet access service since it was introduced to the Little Rock, Ark., area less than six months ago. Like Joiner, many Excite@Home users across the country are concerned. Some are aware that the company is backed by several large corporations, such as AT&T, Comcast and Cox Communications, and are hoping for uninterrupted service, while others are worried about losing their high-speed service. With less competition in the high-speed Internet access market, people also worry about increasing fees.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Sprint offers GPS-enabled cell phones
Sprint PCS on Monday will begin selling mobile telephones equipped to more precisely pinpoint a caller's location when 911 is dialed for help, although service will not be available until November and then only in one market. Sprint, the nation's fourth-largest mobile telephone carrier, said it plans to launch the service in Rhode Island next month and expand to other areas in coordination public safety agencies. Oct. 1 is the deadline for U.S. wireless companies to begin offering improved location capability on their networks, but most companies have asked federal regulators to delay implementation because of troubles they said they have had obtaining the necessary technology and handsets in time.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Compromise for CD copying is in the works
Anti-piracy features making their way onto CDs promise to dramatically alter the online music landscape, potentially handing Microsoft a potent weapon against the leading MP3 format and other rivals in the high-stakes battle over digital-audio standards. The record industry is experimenting with a new strategy for protecting CDs from being copied in CD burners or on computers. Unlike previous anti-copying measures, this plan will place two versions of an album on a single disc: one in standard CD form, modified so that it can't be transferred to a computer hard drive, and another in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio digital format, rigged so that files can be copied to a PC, but with some restrictions on how they can be used.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201...html?tag=cd_pr

Microsoft, CinemaNow show VOD service
Microsoft and online film service CinemaNow on Monday unveiled technology aimed at simplifying the creation of Web-based video-on-demand networks. Marina Del Rey, Calif.-based CinemaNow said the application, dubbed PatchBay, can be licensed to distributors who want the necessary ingredients to manage a Web-based video-on-demand service, including content distribution, digital rights protection, targeted advertising, as well as pay-per-view and subscription services.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

U.S. scouting Afghanistan, official says
President Bush said Friday that the United States is "in hot pursuit" of terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks. A top Bush administration official said U.S. special forces have conducted scouting missions in Afghanistan, where suspected terrorists are hiding. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the work of U.S. and British forces is a prelude to potential military action. The official denied reports that the forces, deployed in the last few days, are actively seeking prime suspect Osama bin Laden. In another development, a Bush Cabinet member said Reagan National Airport outside Washington will definitely reopen when a security plan is worked out despite its proximity to critical government buildings.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=ch_mh

More interesting news later on