The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

HP's new road to recovery for PCs
Consumers using Hewlett-Packard PCs now have new options for disaster recovery, hard-disk upgrades and online security. HP has eased a policy that could have limited how consumers recovered their PCs in the event of hardware failure or during hard-drive upgrades. Starting with its Windows XP-based Pavilions, launched in September, HP ended its long-standing practice of providing recovery CDs with PCs, a resource that most other computer makers still offer. These CDs typically can be used to reinstall the operating system and other software such as hardware drivers.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-827850.html

Warning: All shook up over game controllers
Scientists have warned that children who excessively use vibrating video game controllers could develop a painful injury. The condition -- called hand-arm vibration syndrome and previously known as vibration white finger -- is an industrial injury commonly associated with the prolonged use of vibratory tools such as pneumatic drills.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-827669.html

Japan's robotic future comes to Britain
Depressed, lonely, in need of a pep-up? Stroke Paro. Tired of doing the housework? Meet AIBO. Japan's economy may be slowing down but its innovators are not, the country's director general of industry and technology, Atira Itoh, said on Thursday at the opening of a new exhibition at London's Science Museum. "Japan: Gateway to the Future" gives a preview of the home, the car and the pets of the future.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-827848.html

MS drafts DOJ veteran as security czar
Microsoft appointed a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney to its top security position, the company announced Thursday. Scott Charney, currently the principal for digital risk management and forensics at PricewaterhouseCoopers, will become chief security strategist on April 1, overseeing the software giant's internal and product security policies. Charney will replace Howard Schmidt, who has left his role as chief security officer at Microsoft to become vice chairman of the federal Critical Infrastructure Protection Board.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-827468.html

Sun ships Java tools for Web services
Sun Microsystems has launched new software tools to bolster its Web services strategy. Sun executives said Friday that the company has released a starter kit, which features a tutorial and development tools. The kit will allow software developers to use the Java language to begin building and running Web services, which allow software to be delivered over the Internet to PCs, cell phones and other handheld devices.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-828114.html

Super Bowl ads return to offline giants
Football fans settling into their sofas on Super Bowl Sunday won't see Pets.com's googley-eyed sock puppet or other dot-com highlights that dominated the commercial breaks two years ago. Only four online companies -- Monster.com, HotJobs.com, Yahoo and E*Trade -- will be lining up for this year's Super Bowl, a large drop from the 17 online companies that spent millions on commercial spots in 2000.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-828135.html

AOL home page glitches irk users
Some Web sites hosted on America Online have been hit by outages, leaving their Webmasters unable to update, view or transfer files on their home pages. The outages, which have struck the AOL Hometown personal Web page area over the past few weeks, resulted from a server upgrade, according to AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham. He stressed that only a "small number" of AOL members may have experienced brief delays in accessing their home pages since the upgrade. He also said the problems were not widespread.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-827901.html

Anti-theft chip to stop mobile thieves
An electronic chip could play a part in reducing mobile phone theft by rendering the handsets useless to thieves. Designed by US chipmaker Xilinx, the programmable chip allows mobile phone operators to remotely disable handsets with a password given to them by the owner of the stolen phone. Xilinx's CoolRunner chips have been on the market for around two years but recently the firm discovered it could use its programmable features to aid in the fight against phone theft.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1796202.stm

The Big Rip-Off: Labels move to block CD audio ripping
Judging by the way the major record labels have been acting lately, you'd think the compact disc was the biggest mistake they ever made. Never mind that the CD format has been outselling audiocassettes since 1991 -- the recording industry seems like it wants those silver discs off the shelves, and it's been working hard to do something about it. The major labels' latest tactic is a stealthy one. Over the past few months, they've been quietly releasing albums in a new format, one subtly different from the CDs we're accustomed to.
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/expound/

Labels dodge scrutiny in Napster case
A day before the major record labels asked for a one-month halt in their lawsuit against file-swapping start-up Napster, a federal judge told them she would turn close scrutiny on their online practices. According to transcripts of a Jan. 16 meeting, released Wednesday, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel was about to open a process examining whether the big record labels had "misused" their copyrights in their dealings with online rivals. One day later, the labels asked for a 30-day halt to the case to pursue settlement talks more vigorously.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-827552.html?tag=cd_mh

Suit targets pay-for-play sites
A diet pill maker is hoping to crack down on some pay-for-play search engines that it says violate its trademark. Mark Nutritionals, creator of Body Solutions diet products, has filed four suits against AltaVista, Kanoodle, FindWhat.com and Overture Services, claiming the pay-for-play search engines are engaging in an illegal bait-and-switch model for their own financial gain. When a Web surfer enters a particular search term, such search engines arrange results based on how much a company pays to have its name on the list.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-827445.html?tag=cd_mh

U.S. digital camera sales shoot up
The U.S. market for all but the lowest-end digital cameras grew by 30 percent last year, mainly because of a strong holiday push, according to an IDC report released Thursday. The market for cameras with an LCD viewing screen grew to 6.5 million units in 2001 from 5.4 million in the previous year, market researcher IDC said. Meanwhile, simple VGA models -- sub-$100 cameras that lack a viewing screen -- declined by nearly a million units to 1.5 million.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-827470.html?tag=cd_mh

KaZaA.com 'evaluates' Dutch court ban
KaZaA.com continues to operate its Napster-style software downloads despite a ruling against its former owners in a Dutch court. An Amsterdam district court yesterday ruled KaZaA, the Dutch software and products firm that founded KaZaA.com, provided software that encouraged copyright infringement. It ordered KaZaA to stop the worldwide distribution of its popular P2P software.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/23920.html

Trust me, I'm a spam message!
Fear of fraud has a big effect on response levels to commercial mail, known to most of us as spam. So what the world needs is a "trusted sender" program to assure customers that they won't get ripped off when they respond to email offers. Step forward TRUSTe, best known for its Web site privacy scheme, which has launched an "email certification and seal program". Microsoft and Doubleclick will beta test the program, a digitally signed stamp which certifies the email is genuine.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/23/23915.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Thank you, WT! Here's a cup of coffee for the ever-vigilant newsman:


- tg

[Squid]

you rule WT!