The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

Microsoft asks judge to delay hearings
Microsoft on Tuesday asked the federal judge overseeing its antitrust case for a two-week postponement of hearings due to start next week on sanctions against the company. In a filing with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Microsoft said it needed the extra time to weigh a revised remedy proposal filed Monday by a group of nine states that have rejected a settlement of the case.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-852160.html

Clock's ticking on Klez worm time bomb
A new version of an old worm is set to trigger its destructive payload on March 6. Klez.E (w32.Klez.E@mm) is sometimes called the Twin Virus because the worm is used to spread an upgraded version of the ElKern virus (w32.elkern.b). The new version can now infect Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP, attempting to corrupt files on these systems without changing their sizes. Klez.E is currently one of the fastest spreading worms on the Internet and now ranks 7 on the ZDNet Virus Meter.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-852111.html

Microsoft finds, patches Java VM flaw
A flaw in Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine could allow hackers to hijack a browser and redirect traffic, capturing sensitive data such as the person's passwords, Microsoft has revealed. The company disclosed the flaw Monday on its Web site and posted a patch intended to rectify the problem. A Java Virtual Machine converts programs written in the Java language into machine code that computers can read. That lets programs run on many different computer systems -- such as those using Apple's Mac OS or Microsoft's Windows -- without having to be rewritten for each operating system.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-851753.html

Ballmer: States would break Windows
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the software giant would have to withdraw the Windows operating system from the market if a federal court approves sanctions being sought by nine of the states in the antitrust case, according to depositions released Monday. During a Feb 8. deposition, Steven Kuney, the litigating states' lawyer from Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., pressed Ballmer on the positive aspects of the Microsoft remedy proposal, which is identical to the settlement cut with the Justice Department and nine other states.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-851229.html

Teen 'Sharpei' author combats sexism
A hacker claiming to be a 17-year-old girl says she wrote a new worm targeting Microsoft's .NET Web services platform to prove women are capable of creating computer viruses and make a statement against sexism, a computer security company said Monday. Dubbed the "Sharpei" worm, it is believed to be the first virus written in C-sharp, the programming language which runs on .NET platforms, said UK-based Sophos, which received a copy of the virus from the programmer.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-851522.html

DivX revamps digital video technology
DivX Networks on Monday released the latest version of its digital video technology, DivX 5.0, marking the latest step in the company's quest to put its underground past behind it. The company says DivX 5.0 includes improvements to image quality, compatibility with the MPEG-4 format, and a command-line interface designed to let advanced users enter all encoding commands in a single string.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-851542.html

Morpheus: No pay, no play?
StreamCast Networks' delinquent licensing bills were to blame for the blackout of the hugely popular Morpheus file-swapping network last week, according to Dutch company Kazaa BV. The Morpheus file-trading network, which drew more than a million people a day to trade movies, songs or software at its peak, went dark last Tuesday. Although it relaunched with new technology late Friday, the service is struggling to regain its footing.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-851606.html

Intel: Let us make your optical chips
In a departure from its usual business practices, Intel will design and manufacture optical chips for other companies as it continues its march into the communications business. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker has effectively begun to lease its intellectual property and manufacturing muscle in the field of photonics, which is the integration of functions typically handled by optical fiber into silicon chips, said Rama Shukla, general manager of Intel Photonics.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-851531.html

China fights spam blocks
Delegates to China's parliament hit out at Western Internet administrators for blocking e-mails from China in a growing fight over the cross-Pacific flow of junk e-mail, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday. Academics among the 2,987 provincial deputies attending the annual meeting of the National People's Congress also called for laws punishing the distribution of junk e-mail, or "spam," it said.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-851599.html

Group seeks interchangeable hard drives
A group of Japanese electronics manufacturers will form a trade group this week to set standards for removable 2.5-inch hard drives. The formation of the Information Versatile Disk for Removable Usage (IVDR) consortium will be announced in Japan on Wednesday by Canon, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Phoenix Technologies, Pioneer, Sanyo, Sharp and Victor, according to a representative with Fujitsu.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-851511.html

Software maker offers privacy testing
Security software maker Zero-Knowledge Systems on Tuesday introduced a Web-based tool that lets online businesses evaluate their digital privacy policies. The Montreal-based company's P3P Analyzer, a free beta service, lets companies test whether their Web sites comply with a privacy standard known as Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) and its implementation in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6. The company plans to offer the tool free for 90 days; after that, it expects to charge a yet-to-be-determined fee for the service.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-852247.html

Lawyer says Internet outside U.S. law
The defense lawyer for a Moscow company accused of violating U.S. copyright law asked a judge on Monday to dismiss charges against the company, arguing that the borderless Internet is outside the jurisdiction of United States law. "It is a novel argument," said Joseph Burton, of the San Francisco firm of Duane Morris, who is representing ElcomSoft. The software company faces charges of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by selling and conspiring to sell a program that lets people using Adobe Systems' eBook Reader copy and print digital books, transfer them to other computers and have them read aloud by the computer.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-851418.html?tag=cd_mh

Text messaging tests China's freedom
China has opened up its annual parliamentary session to suggestions via text messaging in an unusual step to amplify the voice of the people -- or at least the voice of the country's 150 million mobile phone owners. Using the Short Messaging Service (SMS) now in vogue in China -- the world's largest mobile market -- cell phone users can send text to the 2,987 deputies of the National People's Congress (NPC), a representative at China's official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-851788.html?tag=cd_mh

Morpheus shutdown spotlights rival
The surprise shutdown of the popular Morpheus file-trading software last week has thrown a spotlight on a little-known Australian company whose service now carries bragging rights as the world's largest file-swapping network. Obscurity comes with the territory in the underground file-swapping world, where unknown upstarts with the unlikely power to shake the entertainment industry to its knees seemingly spawn and die overnight. But even in this shadowy world, the story of Australia's Sharman Networks stands out.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-852386.html?tag=cd_mh

Judge puts file swappers in hot seat
A federal judge on Monday ordered a trio of popular file-swapping services to stand trial on copyright infringement charges, ending a bid to bring a quick end to their legal troubles with the entertainment industry. Attorneys for defendants Kazaa, StreamCast Networks and Grokster had hoped to convince the judge that their products demonstrated sufficient legitimate uses to qualify for the "Betamax defense" -- a copyright safe harbor set by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1980s that cleared the way for home videotape recorders.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-851332.html?tag=cd_mh

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