The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

Breaking down Gates on Windows
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' argument that a modular version of Windows would "turn back the clock" on software development and damage the computer industry is fundamentally flawed, legal experts said. Gates, in testimony last week, said a remedy proposed by nine states and the District of Columbia in the ongoing antitrust case to compel Microsoft to offer PC makers a customizable version of Windows would lead to fragmentation of the operating system market, in turn destabilizing the personal computer industry.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-895419.html

FCC helps identify 911 cell phone calls
Federal regulators have set down rules to solve a problem for 911 call centers and people who use special cell phones to call them. Phones that are programmed to do just one thing -- call 9-1-1 -- don't have a telephone number, so they can't get a return call. That leaves police without the ability to call back if a panicked crime victim hangs up or the connection gets disrupted before the caller gives his or her location, for example. So on Monday, the Federal Communications Commission put in place new regulations and made other decisions that ended nearly two years of work on the subject.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-895654.html

Online banks: Prime targets for attacks
Late one recent Sunday night, an executive at a midsized financial services firm received the kind of call everyone in the industry dreads: a demand for $1 million, or else the brokerage's network would crash the next day with a surreptitiously installed program. The firm's security team spent a frenzied night searching for the pernicious code but failed to find it, and the system went down for an hour in the morning. The executive's phone rang once more: The caller threatened to crash the system again, but this time during peak trading hours. The brokerage, in this case, paid up.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-895079.html

WinAmp bug opens door to MP3 viruses
A glitch with the popular WinAmp software for playing digital music files could allow an attacker to embed malicious code into an MP3 file, potentially damaging the user's PC and infecting other MP3s. Nullsoft, which makes WinAmp, has confirmed the vulnerability, which does not affect the newest version of the software. Version 2.80 of WinAmp is available on NullSoft's Web site. The problem can also be fixed by disabling WinAmp's minibrowser.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-895174.html

What will become of '.us' domain names?
Thousands of names in the United States' ".us" Internet domain have been sold off with little consideration for the public good, several public interest groups charged on Monday. Names like firstamendment.us and churches.us have been sold with no guarantee that they will be used in a responsible manner, the public interest groups said in a letter to Congress. NeuStar Inc., which was chosen last fall to administer the United States' Internet domain, has sold some 200,000 names since opening it up to the public last week. The domain had previously been reserved for local governments, schools and libraries.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-895483.html

Giving schools a better forecast on tech
A company that owns a big network of weather stations around the world has lined up several states to take part in a new service that tracks the use of technology in U.S. public schools. AWS Convergence Technologies is a Gaithersburg, Md.-based company that provides weather data and analysis to outlets such as energy companies and television stations. The company is probably best known for its network of weather centers that are run out of schools.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-895572.html?tag=fd_top

Couples obsessed with mobile talk
Keeping in touch by mobile phone has reached obsessive proportions for some couples in the UK. One in three couples exchange over 10 calls and text messages each day, according to research from mobile phone firm Orange. Within minutes of saying goodbye to each other in the morning, over 80% contact their partner to update them on their journey to work. Ringing to tell your loved one you are running late at the end of the day is an obvious use of mobile technology with 81% using it to do so.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1959752.stm

How would Kermit look in a red hat?
Miss Piggy and Kermit apparently like Linux.
Red Hat, the leading seller of the operating system, said Tuesday that Jim Henson's Creature Shop is using its version of Linux to power its design studio and other digital projects. Specifically, Red Hat is powering the company's digital performance studio, which is developing the animatronic performance control system -- a technology that will make a digital character perform just like a puppet.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-895180.html?tag=cd_mh

Survey: Klez worm tops SirCam, Nimda
The latest fast-spreading versions of the Klez worm have so far infected more than 7 percent of PCs worldwide, surpassing totals chalked up by previous threats such as SirCam and Nimda, according to a new survey by an antivirus company. Panda Software scanned more than 2,000 PCs around the world and found that 7.2 percent had the H or I versions of the Klez worm, said Patrick Hinojosa, chief technical officer for the Glendale, Calif.-based company.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-894706.html?tag=cd_mh

RealNetworks, Sony look beyond the PC
RealNetworks on Tuesday said it inked a multiyear partnership with Sony, extending their long-held relationship to include digital audio and video distribution to home-networked devices. As part of its commitment, Tokyo, Japan-based Sony said it would buy a 1 percent minority stake in Seattle-based RealNetworks. The digital media pioneer has a market cap of $1.1 billion, making a 1 percent stake worth about $11 million. Additional financial terms and the length of the agreement were not disclosed.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-895817.html?tag=cd_mh

BlueLight beefs up e-mail services
Kmart's Web store, BlueLight.com, said Tuesday that it is adding extra storage space and an e-mail forwarding service to its low-cost Internet access service. Under a deal with Synacor, a provider of premium services for Internet access providers, BlueLight said customers have the option to use an e-mail forwarding account, or POP service. BlueLight added that subscribers to its Internet access service, which costs $8.95 per month for unlimited use, will also be automatically upgraded to 10MB of storage space per account.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-895494.html?tag=cd_mh

Publisher unites Old Man and the e-book
Ernest Hemingway is moving into the digital age, as Scribner prepares to release 23 of his works in an electronic book format. Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will make the works available at the publisher's e-book store and through Yahoo's e-book channel, among other locations. The company will charge $9.99 per download. "The Hemingway collection is the cornerstone of Scribner's list," Susan Moldow, Scribner executive vice president, said in a release.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-895205.html?tag=cd_mh

NRA: Smart Guns Are Plain Stupid
Maybe it'll know your fingerprints. Or you'll wear a magnetic ring with a pulse that can decode a trigger lock. Or, in some of the more fanciful conjectures, a sensor would be capable of recognizing the unique way you grip the handle. The aim is the most significant proposed innovation in firearm technology in decades, a gun that knows and performs only for its owner.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52178,00.html

Klez: Don't Believe 'From' Line
Some Internet users have recently received an e-mail message from a dead friend. Others have been subscribed to obscure mailing lists. Some have lost their Internet access after being accused of spamming, and still others have received e-mailed pornography from a priest. They're actually experiencing some of the stranger side effects of the Klez computer virus.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52174,00.html

How Kids Snap Their World
Aalya Berzougui, a 15-year-old at the School for Informal Education, knows her life in this settlement on the northern periphery of the Sahara Desert is humble compared with lives elsewhere in the world. But Berzougui –- who hopes to be a doctor -- was thrilled to be chosen last week for a world photo project in which 500 children in 43 countries around the world are now in the process of taking snapshots to capture their everyday lives. She has never traveled anywhere, she said, but expects that children elsewhere would like to see how she and her family live.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,52177,00.html

A New Outlet for Venter's Energy
J. Craig Venter, the maverick scientist who altered history when he chose to compile a human genetic map with private money, has settled on his next project: tackling the problem of global warming. Tapping a $100 million research endowment he is creating from his stock holdings, Venter plans to scour the world's deep ocean trenches for bacteria that might be able to convert carbon dioxide, the gas released when cars and power plants burn fuel, back into solid form without needing a lot of sunlight or other energy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002Apr29.html

SETI@Home Project Nears Milestone
The SETI@Home project, which uses the spare computing power of volunteers from around the world to analyze data in a search for intelligent alien life, will receive its 500 millionth result this week. Eric Korpela, a project scientist with SETI@Home, today told Newsbytes the project's participants have returned 497,976,462 results to date. SETI stands for search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and is regarded as a generic scientific term like biology or zoology.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176219.html

Alan Cox attacks the European DMCA
Alan Cox has issued a wake up call to the Linux community amid concerns that the pending European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) could stymie open source development. The directive, which was approved last year, extends European copyright legislation so that it is even more restrictive than America's controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), critics argue. National governments have until December 22 to incorporate the directive in national legislation.
http://www.theregus.com/content/4/24813.html

Fertility rates dip after women hit 27
In the latest warning for women hoping to delay childbirth, European researchers report today that fertility already starts to wane in women starting about age 27. Previous studies have suggested most healthy women could be reasonably sure of being capable of conceiving up to about age 30 or 35, when egg quality starts to dramatically decline. Men typically experience a much later and more gradual drop-off in fertility.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...0/MN182697.DTL

Millions ploughed into 'gene bank'
The genetic details of 500,000 people are to be collected and stored in a central UK pool, following the approval of £45m in funding. It is hoped the pioneering "biobank" scheme will provide valuable information to help fight illness and disease. The eventual aim is to be able to develop drugs specifically tailored to meet individuals' requirements. However, some senior figures are concerned about the "side-effects" of such a large project - and there are fears that the results may be misused.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/hea...00/1957063.stm

Satellites Spy Changes to Earth's Magnetic Field
Though the process can take nearly 5,000 years, the earth's magnetic field periodically reverses. According to a report published today in Nature, scientists may have detected the beginning of the field's next such reversal. Motion of the earth's liquid core, the so-called geodynamo, generates its magnetic field. Gauthier Hulot of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris and his colleagues used satellite data recorded 20 years apart to track changes in this field. In two regions of the boundary between the earth's core and the overlying mantle, the researchers detected a reversed magnetic field.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/news/041102/2.html

Net's Webby awards reflect changing times
Undaunted by the dot-com bust, the Webby Awards has announced its nominees for this year's best Web sites by emphasizing the medium's success as a town square and library. The list for the sixth annual Webbys, unveiled yesterday, provided another sign of the Internet's transformation from a potential diamond mine to its original billing as a source of global information.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...30/BU85864.DTL

Sewage turned into hydrogen fuel
Waste from sewage plants could be transformed into clean hydrogen fuel with high efficiency using new processing technology devised in Europe. The process involves extracting hydrogen from "wet" waste, i.e. that which contains large amounts of water, such as sewage or paper mill waste. Although this sort of waste is abundant, extracting hydrogen from has required a large amount of energy, making it inefficient. But researchers in the Process Technology Group at Warwick University, UK, as well as a number of European companies, claim they have dramatically improved the efficiency.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992230

Hackers Continue 'Early Warning' Attacks On U.S. Web Sites
A team of hackers, cutting a wide swath of Web-site defacements across the country in what they say is the interests of national security, added servers from Sandia National Laboratories, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to a list of conquests today. As of a Newsbytes deadline today, some of the Internet-connected servers that a team calling itself the Deceptive Duo claimed to have compromised were still sporting the pair's call for tougher security at "critical infrastructure" operated by government agencies, banks, airports and large corporations.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176256.html

Webcasters To Go Silent In Royalty-Plan Protest
May Day will be a quiet one online, with many Webcasters falling silent Wednesday protesting a federal proposal that would force them to pony up each time a listener accesses a streaming song over the Web. It is such an onerous proposal, according to many Webcasters, that they fear they will be forced out of business unless the librarian of Congress - the head of the U.S. Copyright Office - rejects the proposed royalty rates in favor of something more manageable.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176253.html

Lawmakers Court Controversy With Nationwide ID Plan
Two House lawmakers will introduce a bill on Wednesday that promises to stoke up the contentious debate about creating what critics say is a de facto national identification system. Virginia Republican Rep. Tom Davis, and his neighbor and Democratic counterpart Jim Moran, will offer a bill that would set national standards for state-issued driver's licenses. It also would require states to issue high-tech ID cards equipped with a computer chip and "biometric" technology, such as fingerprint data or other unique identifiers.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176252.html

Morpheus Shopping Program Said To Be Predatory
The Morpheus file-sharing application was accused today of stealing money from companies that participate in Internet revenue-sharing programs. According to Neil Durrant, editor of a newsletter about "affiliate" marketing programs, the current version of Morpheus is interfering with sites that earn commissions by sending traffic to merchants, an act he called "predatory."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176249.html

NY Times Readers Can't Digest Klez Worm
As if it needed any help, the world's most prevalent computer virus got a little boost from the New York Times last week. Officials at The New York Times Company confirmed today that e-mail infected with the Klez mass-mailing worm were sent Wednesday to some customers of its TimesDigest service. According to Times spokeswoman Christine Mohan, approximately 250 subscribers to the TimesDigest service received the e-mail, which carried an attached file infected with Klez.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176220.html

More news later on

[butterfly_kisses]

Walker Talker just wanted to take a minute to thank-you for continuing this valuable service for us.

I love the way you condense down all the articles of interest and put it in this easy to browse format.

Much Obliged,

now if only my regular newspaper could do this for me

i'd be set