The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Our next witness -- Bill Gates
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is scheduled to make his first appearance on the witness stand next week as part of the continuing antitrust trial, the company said Friday. Gates is scheduled to appear following the conclusion of testimony from David Cole, senior vice president of the MSN and Personal Services Group. Cole, the first Microsoft executive to appear on the company's behalf during this portion of the antitrust case, took the stand late Thursday. His testimony is expected to conclude Monday.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-887259.html

New tool camouflages hacker programs
A new tool for manipulating packets of data that travel over the Internet could allow attackers to camouflage malicious programs just enough to bypass many intrusion-detection systems and firewalls. The tool, called Fragroute, performs several techniques to fool the signature-based recognition systems used by many intrusion-detection systems and firewalls. Many of these duping techniques were outlined in a research paper published four years ago. Arbor Networks security researcher Dug Song posted the tool to his Web site this week. Arbor is a network protection company.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-887133.html

Turning red over Klez virus
The latest variant of the Klez worm sometimes chooses to hitch a ride on sensitive documents, resulting in victims' confidential information spreading with the malicious program, Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky Labs said Friday. Known as Klez.g, Klez.h and Klez.k, depending on the security advisory, the newest incarnation has spread worldwide, sending itself in e-mail messages with infected documents attached. Most antivirus vendors, including Symantec, McAfee and Sophos, have offered Klez.H patches since Wednesday.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-887354.html

Privacy: Watching out for Big Brother
In a post-Sept. 11 world, the technical opportunities for surveillance seem endless: national identification cards, face-recognition systems and video cameras on street corners. But who will ensure that those technologies are not abused in the name of protecting citizens from terrorism? Technologists, free-speech experts and general hangers-on are grappling with that question and others at the Computers Freedom & Privacy conference here this week.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-886259.html

DSL, satellite users get broadband break
EchoStar Communications and SBC Communications are packaging satellite services with digital subscriber line (DSL) Internet access in an effort to better compete with cable companies for customers of high-speed Internet access. Under the terms of the deal, both companies will offer video and DSL services, and customers using both will get up to a $10 credit on their monthly bill. EchoStar will market the DSL services to the approximate 7 million users of its Dish Network TV subscribers, and SBC will market satellite services to its 1.5 million DSL customers.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-887261.html

Shaking up the art of chip design
A California start-up has designs on chipmakers that want to produce cheaper and faster processors for lucrative consumer-electronics devices. Bucking tradition, start-up Barcelona Design is introducing software that automates aspects of analog-circuit design -- a process long considered an art form by some engineers. The Prado Synthesis Platform, unveiled earlier this month, is a set of tools that Barcelona says can slash the time it takes an engineer to design an analog circuit from several months to a few hours.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-886899.html

The Invisible Lightness of Beams
Look! Up in the sky, it's a ... well, actually, you can't see it. But it's there. A company called Terabeam recently landed in Los Angeles and announced plans to "send invisible light beams through the air downtown." Hoping to meet some UFO wackos, we trekked to a Wilshire Boulevard skyscraper and passed through a security checkpoint. Ascending to the 20th floor, we were greeted by humanoid creatures who -- to our great disappointment -- insisted they were from a Seattle suburb, not another galaxy. Even so, Terabeam is an odd enterprise.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...s%2Dtechnology

Gov't mulls Microsoft, others for ID system
The U.S government is considering using online ID systems from Microsoft, Entrust, RSA, and VeriSign among others to track the identity of visitors to a dozen new federal Web sites launching later this year, a federal official said Friday. Mark Forman, who oversees the federal government's $45 billion IT budget, said he is talking to the companies about how their online identification technologies might give agencies a standard way to let the general public access private information on the Web.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-887566.html?tag=cd_mh

Vivendi, Thomson join to fight piracy
Media powerhouse Vivendi Universal and consumer electronics giant Thomson Multimedia said Friday they will work together to develop anti-piracy technology. Under the deal, the two French companies said they will focus on copy protection of products that include DVDs, broadcast, satellite television, broadband and video-on-demand services. Thomson and Vivendi said they will also cooperate in standards bodies and encourage other technology companies to adopt and implement interoperable standards-based content protecting digital works.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-887568.html?tag=cd_mh

"1984" awards target Ellison, Ashcroft
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and database billionaire Larry Ellison were named this year's most notorious American violators of personal privacy by leading advocacy groups on Thursday. The annual "Big Brother Awards" are presented to government, corporations and private individuals who allegedly have done the most to threaten personal privacy. Privacy International, a London-based activist organization made up of privacy experts and human rights organizations from dozens of countries, presented the awards at the annual Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference here this week. Several well-known U.S. privacy activists also attended the ceremony.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-886878.html?tag=cd_mh

Why Do New iMacs Surf So Slowly?
They're here, they're slow, get used to it. At least for now. One of Apple's top goals for its new flat-panel iMacs is to get home consumers to switch from Windows PCs. But some who rushed to order the attractive new computer sight unseen say they have been disappointed: For Web browsing -- still the biggest time use of home computers after e-mail -- the new iMacs are notably slower than a PC. Yep, even an older, cheaper one.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,51926,00.html

PCs to Kick Rebooting Habit
Whether you love Linux, are mad for your Mac or worship Windows, we can all agree that our PCs still take way too long to get started. The wait for speedy startups may soon be over. New nonvolatile memory technology enables PCs to forgo boot-up by returning users to where they left off. Researchers say the technology is for real and they have criticized memory makers for being slow to move to the new technology.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,51936,00.html

Extremadura Measures: Linux
The poorest region of Spain has adopted Linux as the official operating system of public schools and offices, in hopes of improving the area's vast technological and economic lag. The move by the Autonomous Community of Extremadura, a rural zone that borders Portugal, will mark the first time a European public school system has switched to open source, said Luis Millán Vázquez de Miguel, the community's minister of education, science and technology.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51994,00.html

Mr. and Ms. Geek Go to Washington
Senator, meet the geeks. A group of high-profile software developers and technologists have announced plans to form their own political action committee, in response to what they see as the ill effects of corporate lobbyists on their ability to develop new technologies. Called GeekPAC, the fledgling organization already counts several high-profile hackers and writers among its numbers, including open-source evangelist Eric Raymond and technology business writer David "Doc" Searls.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51927,00.html

Quarks or Quirky Neutron Stars?
It's long been thought that a supernova, the most explosive event in the universe short of the big bang itself, typically leaves behind one of two remnants: a neutron star or a black hole. Now, a third possibility has emerged, thanks to recent observations by the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Telescope -- a quark star.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,51943,00.html

3-D, and Ditch the Glasses
The skeleton of a foot floats around a screen in a lab at New York University. Each individual bone stands out with great clarity -- and with good reason. The monitor is an autostereoscopic display that presents three-dimensional pictures, without the need for special glasses. In addition to NYU's Center for Advanced Technology (CAT), several other companies are developing, or in some cases already marketing, 3-D displays based on a variety of technologies. They should be widely available to professionals within two years, and to consumers within five years.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51308,00.html

Group: Free Vietnam's Web Critics
A free speech advocacy group is calling for the release of three Vietnamese dissidents who were recently arrested after they criticized the communist regime on the Internet. "These are just more examples of how the Vietnamese authorities are censuring freedom of expression," said Vincent Brossell, who heads the Asia-Pacific desk of Reporters Without Borders.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51960,00.html

Forensic science meets computer animation
What the jury saw is known as forensic animation - the computerized illustration of events recounted by courtroom testimony (in this case, the coroner's report and the state trooper's on-scene analysis). It's the newest in a chain of technologies - from lie-detector tests to handwriting analysis and DNA sampling - that is transforming the world of litigation. And while it's nothing more than pixels on a monitor, this legal tool is proving remarkably effective.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.05/forensics.html

Nanobiotech Makes the Diagnosis
Gazing at an electrical meter, Yi Cui, a graduate student in the Harvard University lab of chemist Charles Lieber, waits for evidence of a remarkable feat in simple, ultrasensitive diagnostics. His target is prostate cancer. His new tool is a microchip bearing 10 silicon wires, each just 10 nanometers (billionths of a meter) wide. These nanowires have been slathered with biological molecules with an affinity for PSA, a protein all too familiar to men of a certain age as the telltale sign of prostate cancer. If the experiment works according to plan, when the PSA molecules bind to the nanowires, there will be a detectable electrical signal.
http://www.techreview.com/articles/stikeman0502.asp

FBI Busts Counterfeit Software Ring In California
The FBI on Thursday arrested 27 people charged with operating a loosely knit software-counterfeiting ring in the San Francisco Bay area, authorities announced today. The arrests follow a two-year investigation in which undercover agents bought more than $5 million-worth of counterfeit software from the 27 suspects, the San Francisco U.S. Attorney's Office announced today.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176031.html

'Legitimate' Music Losing Ground Online In Europe
Use of peer-to-peer file-swapping applications is increasing in Europe while interest in the few online music services endorsed by record companies appears to be dwindling, according to a new report. Analysts at the European offices of Jupiter Media Metrix - known as Jupiter MMXI there - say that some 10.7 million Web surfers in Western Europe visited the Web sites of such peer-to-peer companies as Kazaa, MusicCity (Morpheus) and Audiogalaxy in January. By the end of March, that number had risen to 11.3 million.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176016.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Thank you, WT!

Originally posted by walktalker
Turning red over Klez virus
The latest variant of the Klez worm sometimes chooses to hitch a ride on sensitive documents, resulting in victims' confidential information spreading with the malicious program, Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky Labs said Friday. Known as Klez.g, Klez.h and Klez.k, depending on the security advisory, the newest incarnation has spread worldwide, sending itself in e-mail messages with infected documents attached. Most antivirus vendors, including Symantec, McAfee and Sophos, have offered Klez.H patches since Wednesday.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-887354.html

This bug seems to be highly active at the moment and the viral e-mails reported recently by some forum members are probably Klez variants. The worm also utilizes an older Microsoft vulnerability in its spreading so if you use Outlook or Outlook Express check this Microsoft bulletin for further info and a security patch (no need to run the batch if you have IE6 or IE5.01+Service Pack 2 installed). Never open EXEs or other dubious e-mail attachments unless you are sure they are safe, even if you seem to know the sender. Worms like this use people's adress lists to pick targets (and also to forge sender names) so a malicious e-mail may seem like a message from a friend. If you are not expecting an attachment don't open it.

- tg