The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

EU to tax e-commerce with the U.S.
EU finance ministers will on Tuesday rubber stamp new rules for taxing products bought on the Internet such as games and software, EU officials said on Monday, a move likely to earn the ire of the United States. Under the EU bill, the United States and other non-EU firms will be asked for the first time to levy value-added tax (VAT) on e-commerce with private customers in the 15-nation bloc. At the same time, EU companies will be exempted from VAT for services they provide to non-EU residents.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-899917.html

Heads won't fall with video game bill
A bill introduced in Congress last week would make it a federal crime to sell or rent violent video games to minors. The Protect Children from Video Game Sex and Violence Act of 2002, introduced by Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., would apply to games that feature decapitation, amputation, killing of humans with lethal weapons or through hand-to-hand combat, rape, car-jackings, aggravated assault and other violent felonies. Twenty-one other representatives co-sponsored the bill, which was referred to the House Judiciary Committee. That list would place a slew of popular titles out of the reach of teenagers, some of the biggest consumers of the games.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-899612.html

Code Red remains a major threat
Security researchers presented data on Friday indicating that Code Red version 2, a 9-month-old worm, continues to spread slowly across the Internet, compromising computers and leaving them easily accessible to malicious attackers. At present, more than 18,000 systems appear to be infected and, with a simple command, could be co-opted into an attack that could take down any Web site, said Dug Song, a hacker and security architect for network protection firm Arbor Networks. Song was speaking at the CanSecWest security conference here.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-899489.html

AIM security hole still threatens users
AOL Time Warner failed to properly fix a security hole in its AOL Instant Messenger application, leaving its users vulnerable to a new way to exploit the same flaw, a security researcher said this weekend. The glitch's latest incarnation could have been just as dangerous as the previous version, publicized in January, opening the way for malicious AIM users to execute any program on a vulnerable user's computer, said Matt Conover, a hacker with a security research group known as "w00w00."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-899485.html

Chernobyl virus rides Klez's coattails
The Klez worm just keeps on giving. The persistent pest, which made a strong comeback last month in the form of the Klez.h variant, is now helping revive the Chernobyl virus, according to a new report from antivirus company Symantec. The report says that a virus known as W95.CIH.1049, a slight variation of the W95.CIH bug dubbed the Chernobyl virus when it began spreading four years ago, has been detected in recent infections of the Klez worm. The main difference with the new virus is that it's set to activate on Aug. 2 of every year, as opposed to the April 26 attack date of the original Chernobyl.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-900050.html?tag=fd_top

Microsoft tunes in to TV programming
Microsoft may have muted its interactive television ambitions, but with a new program guide it is trying to stay tuned to what viewers want to see on the small screen. Rival Liberate Technologies, meanwhile, has scored a product placement for its software from a TV programming leader. With more and more cable channels popping up every day, the listings guide could easily be the most popular channel in some households. So at a cable industry show in New Orleans, companies are taking the wraps off new products designed to make it easier for viewers to find the shows they want.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-899536.html?tag=fd_top

Search for Web services leads to Google
Google may have accomplished something that few in the technology industry can even boast of understanding: building a Web service that software developers can actually use. Focused on generating revenue from its technology as it prepares for an expected initial public offering, the search destination may have become a grassroots trailblazer. When Google recently opened its technology so that third-party developers of much-hyped Web services can tie in to the company's catalog of 2 billion documents, it signaled its intentions to amass significant interest in its search tools among software programmers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-899462.html?tag=cd_mh

MS, Rival Fight Over 'Real' Truth
Two Microsoft executives on Monday brushed aside allegations from rival RealNetworks that Microsoft uses its Windows operating system to gain an unfair advantage in music player programs. In earlier testimony in the antitrust hearings involving Microsoft, RealNetworks vice president David Richards said Microsoft's latest Windows XP operating system favors Microsoft's media player over RealNetworks products, sometimes over customer objections.
http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/...,52336,00.html

Now Anyone Can Discover a Comet
Warning: This website can trigger an obsessive search for comets. In offices, dens and dorm rooms around the world, a geeky band of hunters are desperately scouring the site for comets. A German student likened his interest to addiction. A father of three in Britain, who has found 132 comets, is reluctant to admit just how much time he spends on his quest. The unknown comets are turning up in the background of photos of the sun taken from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, a satellite in orbit around the sun.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52233,00.html

Ethical Concerns at the DNA Bank
Would you trust someone with your DNA? For half a million Britons such an ethical dilemma has come more sharply into focus with the announcement of £45 million in funding for the world’s largest medical research gene bank. Biobank U.K. has been trumpeted as the biggest-ever study of the role of nature and nurture in health and disease. Its backers, which include the government-funded Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, hope the project will help to unlock the complex interactions between genes, environment and lifestyle in disorders such as heart disease, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,52176,00.html

Shanghai Cracks Down on Net Cafes
Shanghai police have shut down almost 200 Internet bars that operated without licenses requiring them to block websites deemed subversive or pornographic, a city official said Monday. Police in China's largest city confiscated 965 computers in a sweep that began April 26, said the official in the Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Administration Bureau, which ordered the crackdown. The 197 bars closed in the sweep were located in residential neighborhoods overlooked in previous crackdowns, said the official, who refused to give his name.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52330,00.html

Hot Underwater Springs to Life
For the next two weeks, in a far flung corner of the globe, American and Japanese scientists will be hunting down hot springs spewing from volcanoes hundreds of meters under the sea. "It's very much frontier exploration-type stuff," says project leader Cornel de Ronde, a marine geologist at New Zealand's Institute of Nuclear and Geological Sciences (GNS). The scientists, who include experts from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will be looking at about a dozen newly mapped submarine volcanoes between New Zealand and the Kermadec Islands.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52260,00.html

Palestinian websites knocked offline
Israel's military action in the Palestinian territories has disrupted the region's computer networks. Many Palestinian websites run from the region have been knocked offline for weeks, including most government sites. Since the Israeli withdrawal from certain areas, Palestinians technicians have been working to restore the telecoms network.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1966335.stm

Epilepsy gene identified
Scientists have discovered the gene they believe plays a key role in triggering epilepsy in young people. Dr Guy Rouleau and colleagues at McGill University Health Centre Research Institute in Montreal, found that mutations in the gene GABRA could cause juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME). This is one of the 'classical' epilepsy syndromes and typically begins in early adolescence.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/hea...00/1962724.stm

Journey to the Farthest Planet
In 1992 astronomers at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii discovered the first Kuiper Belt object (KBO), which was found to be about 10 times as small as and almost 10,000 times as faint as Pluto [see "The Kuiper Belt," by Jane X. Luu and David C. Jewitt; Scientific American, May 1996]. Since then, observers have found more than 600 KBOs, with diameters ranging from 50 to almost 1,200 kilometers. (Pluto's diameter is about 2,400 kilometers.) And that's just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Extrapolating from the small fraction of the sky that has been surveyed so far, investigators estimate that the Kuiper Belt contains approximately 100,000 objects larger than 100 kilometers across.
http://www.sciam.com/2002/0502issue/0502stern.html

Insect swarming inspires jazz software
Jazz musicians who enjoy freeform improvisation may soon be using computer software to accompany themselves. A team at University College London has written a program that mimics insect swarming to "fly around" the sequence of notes the musician is playing and improvise a related tune of its own. The Swarm Music program is the creation of computer scientists Tim Blackwell and Peter Bentley, who study how natural processes can be modelled in software. The pair believe that improvised music is self-organising in the way swarms of insects and flocks of birds are.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992242

'Spidey' Already Being Swapped By Online Pirates
While Columbia Picture's new "Spider-Man" movie was breaking box-office records over the weekend, Internet movie pirates were busily downloading free copies of the film on file-trading networks. By Saturday, pirated versions of the comic book inspired movie were showing up in "screener" format on the EDonkey, Kazaa, and Morpheus Internet file-swapping systems. "Screeners," also known as "Telesyncs," are digital versions of movies that have been filmed off a screen in a movie theater.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176387.html

ISP Can Finally Disconnect Spammer, Court Rules
After more than a year of battling with bulk e-mailer MonsterHut, a Rochester-based Internet service provider (ISP) has been given permission by a New York State appeals court to disconnect the company it says is a notorious spammer. The decision Friday reversed lower court rulings last year that kept MonsterHut.com online even though PaeTec Communications of Fairport, N.Y., near Rochester, said MonsterHut had contravened its anti-spam policy.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176381.html

SonicBlue Protests Court Order To Monitor ReplayTV Users
SonicBlue, makers of the network-connected ReplayTV 4000 digital video recorder, is scrambling to reverse a court order that it monitor how customers use its technology to record their favorite television programs and skip past commercials. Ken Potashner, chairman and chief executive officer, told Newsbytes that SonicBlue is seeking a review of the order from Central District Court Magistrate Charles Eick in Los Angeles, who gave the company 60 days to begin logging customer activity in order to gather evidence for lawsuits launched by Hollywood movie studios and television networks.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176367.html

More news later on