The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

Real hardcore napsterites require tuesday editions

Allchin: States would weaken MS security
The antitrust remedy proposed by a number of states would weaken the security of Microsoft's operating systems and could further the illegal spread of music, movies and other digital content, according to the company's top Windows executive. Jim Allchin, Microsoft's senior vice president for Windows, warned in testimony Tuesday that too much disclosure of technical information in the wrong areas would benefit hackers and create more opportunity for virus attacks.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-901088.html

Dispute won't clock QuickTime 6
Apple Computer said Monday that it would release QuickTime 6 late this summer, even though it has yet to resolve a licensing dispute over a new file format it plans to adopt. Apple, which is building QuickTime 6 around the MPEG-4 file format, is one of several tech companies that balked at a licensing agreement that would require many of those that broadcast using the format to pay a royalty. In February, Apple delayed QuickTime 6 because of the dispute. Apple said there has been progress from MPEG LA, which licenses the format, but said that a final deal has not been worked out.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-901282.html

Wearable ID device to hit the market
Microvision and Robotic Vision Systems have teamed up to market a wearable biometric identification device to the U.S. government and commercial businesses, the companies said Tuesday. Biometrics technology, which uses retinal scans, fingerprinting and other biological markers for personal identification, has been of huge interest since Sept. 11, when terrorist attacks fixed the government's attention on national and airline security. But even before then, the technology was gaining attention as companies started to implement it for more everyday uses such as driver's licenses with embedded microchips.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-901413.html

EU approves tax on U.S. e-commerce
The European Union approved on Tuesday rules that will require U.S. and other non-EU firms to levy value-added tax (VAT) on products such as computer games and software they sell on the Internet to private customers in the 15-nation bloc. The new rules, which come into force in July 2003, may irk the United States and add to its ongoing trade row with the EU over U.S. steel imports. The European Commission said the new regulations were designed to address what the bloc saw as a competitive disadvantage against the United States.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-900733.html

Old MS Office bug still leaking your data?
A security hole affecting old copies of some Microsoft Office applications may have left a legacy of data leaks with the potential to reveal sensitive information and weaken security on government and commercial Web sites around the world. The Google search engine reports that there are over half a million Microsoft Word .doc files available for download from various Web sites. Of these, a small but significant percentage have been created using versions of the software known to create "leaky" documents.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-901162.html

Net video's obstacle to a steady stream
Streaming media companies aim to make Web video as seamless as television, but recent advances in technology may fall short of solving deeper problems with data delivery over the Internet. In the past few months, Microsoft, RealNetworks and Apple Computer have announced improvements to their streaming media systems that herald the end of cutouts and congestion in Net delivery of audio and video, or what's known as buffering.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-900617.html?tag=fd_lede

Cable will rule broadband, report says
Cable modems will rule the broadband age--at least for the next five years, according to a research report The Yankee Group released Tuesday. Companies offering cable and DSL (digital subscriber line) service have been competing to convert dial-up users to high-speed services for some time. Satellite companies have also jockeyed for customers, but cable is clearly in the lead, said Imran Khan, author of the report.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-901501.html?tag=fd_top

A business case for open source
Open-source software is old news. The movement exploded onto the business scene several years ago, with breathless hype about Linux and the impending doom of Microsoft. Open-source upstarts and established software makers spent most of 2000 hurling press releases and venomous op-ed pieces at one another. If you were paying attention then, you might think you've heard it all by now. You'd be wrong. Quietly, over the past two years, open-source software has made an enormous difference in the way businesses operate. It's already deep in the Internet.
http://news.com.com/2010-1078-901341.html?tag=fd_nc_1

The pop-up ad campaign from hell
Looking for state-of-the-art Internet skulduggery? Try this: Thousands of unsuspecting visitors to a family entertainment site are discovering a cornucopia of unwanted, potentially malicious software on their computers -- the result of a pop-up ad campaign, a booby-trapped Web site, a compromised Web browser, and strange doings at a shadowy Los Angeles company. The story starts at Flowgo, a site that prides itself as the leading family entertainment portal. According to officials at eUniverse, the California firm that operates Flowgo, a pop-up ad that ran at the heavily trafficked humor site for a couple of weeks until late April caused the trouble.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/0...are/index.html

Fast-food notion: Surfing at McDonald's
Diners at McDonald's in Japan will soon be able to browse the Web with a burger in hand, after an agreement was reached with Internet investor Softbank to install a high-speed Web service in thousands of its fast-food restaurants. Softbank said Tuesday that it had agreed with McDonald's Japan to offer the broadband service to McDonald's customers throughout Japan for a minimum monthly fee of $12.43 (1,580 yen). The deal brings together the former darling of Japan's Internet bubble, headed by maverick Korean-Japanese entrepreneur Masayoshi Son, and the world's largest restaurant chain.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-900742.html?tag=cd_mh

"Spider-Man" spins into top online sales
The new "Spider-Man" movie cast its Web over movie theaters over the weekend, wrapping up record-breaking online ticket sales. Fans flocked online to purchase tickets to see the film adaptation of the plight of the Marvel Comics superhero. The film's instant popularity translated into dollars, earning $114 million since its May 3 release. In the weeks leading up to the film's debut, Fandango.com said online ticket sales on its site grossed up to $3 million.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-900584.html?tag=cd_mh

Lawmakers seek to purify Web records
People who provide false data when registering a domain name on the Web could be thrown into jail for up to five years, if a recently introduced bill becomes law. Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C., introduced the legislation Thursday, targeting Internet address registration procedures that make it easier for Web site publishers to stay anonymous.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-900342.html?tag=cd_mh

No Longer Lonely at the Top
The High Summit, which will link experts huddled at high-altitude sites on five continents for a live Internet videoconference on May 6-11, is being billed as a "global mega event of the year," and "the first transcontinental multimedia conference dedicated to all mountain regions worldwide." But to understand what that's all about, it's best to start with Lucky Chhetri and Miriam Torres. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,51306,00.html

Survey: Opt-Out Is a Cop-Out
Comments gathered by the U.S. Treasury indicate that Americans have plenty of complaints about a recently enacted law that requires customers to opt-out if they want to keep financial institutions from sharing their data. Top items on the grievance list: opt-out notices hidden in thick junk mailings, confusing legal language and the potential for invasive sales tactics. A coalition of 37 state attorneys general went so far as to assert that "current law does not adequately protect consumers' privacy."
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,52328,00.html

MS Admits Music Power-Play
A Microsoft official acknowledged Tuesday that the company uses a new feature in its Internet Explorer Web browser to play digital music files even if the user has already chosen a different music player. The newest version of Internet Explorer has the ability to play music files within the browser, though it uses Microsoft's Windows Media Player technology to do so. Rival media companies such as RealNetworks have complained that Microsoft frequently overrides user preferences.
http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/...,52355,00.html

A Challenge to Dissect Some Code
Systems administrators have to stop thinking like glorified janitors. Cleaning malicious code from a system as quickly as possible should never be an administrator's primary goal, security experts agree. Administrators should instead focus on carefully dissecting malicious program code and preserving the evidence of attacks. Peering deeply into the guts of the malevolent mystery code that sometimes shows up on networks is an approach strongly advocated by the Honeynet Project, a group of top security experts who try to find some semblance of order in the chaos of cybercrime.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52342,00.html

Scientists Compile Map of Mouse's Genome
Passing yet another milestone in the rapidly advancing science of genetics, biologists said yesterday that they had compiled a map of the hereditary instructions of the laboratory mouse, the single most important test organism in medical research. The map is still in draft form, but researchers said the success of a new data-gathering strategy had permitted them to create a far more detailed version than expected this year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2002May6.html

Music industry finally online
Early last December, three of the world’s biggest music companies launched a counterattack against the rampant digital piracy that has gnawed at their sales in recent years. It was called MusicNet, a joint venture that would provide consumers with a legal alternative to Napster Inc. and other freewheeling Internet song-swapping services. Within a couple of weeks, the results were clear. As MusicNet Chief Executive Alan McGlade told the venture’s board: “The current version of the service is not viable.” It isn’t hard to see why. MusicNet’s main owners created a service that lacked just about everything that makes online music downloads appealing.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/748564.asp?0si=-

A Human Touch for Machines
If the face is a window into the soul, then Javier Movellan has peered deeply into the human condition. His research team has studied more than 100,000 faces, analyzing each one for the smallest shifts in facial muscles -- a lexicon of emotional expression. A computer scans the faces 30 times a second and then squirrels away the information in a bulging databank.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...322may07.story

Passive smoking dents children's IQ
Secondhand smoke shaves points off kids' IQ, a study of over 4000 American children suggests. Even those exposed to small amounts of cigarette smoke have slightly lower cognitive abilities. "These levels may not be meaningful for an individual child, but they have huge implications for our society because millions of children are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke," says Kimberly Yolton of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Ohio.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992251

Ohio's New Internet Child Porn Law Challenged
The expansion of Ohio's child-pornography statute to include the Internet was met with a legal challenge even as the governor signed a bill extending current law to the Net. Media Coalition Inc., representing publishers, bookstores, video retailers and a sexuality Web site for the disabled, on Monday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court at Dayton, Ohio, challenging the constitutionality of the law.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176438.html

Federal Courts To Permit Web Access To Criminal Records
In an unprecedented move, the federal judiciary's policymaking body said today it would allow limited public access to criminal court records on the Internet. Eleven federal courts are allowing Internet access to criminal case files as part of a pilot program adopted by the Judicial Conference of the United States, a panel of 27 federal judges responsible for crafting policy in the federal court system.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176436.html

Juno Settles With NY Over Online Supercomputer Project
In an action aimed at sending a message to Internet service providers across the country, New York's attorney general today announced a settlement with Juno Online Services over "disturbing" changes to the ISP's service agreement with customers. The settlement stems from an effort by Juno last year to establish a "virtual supercomputer" using subscribers' computers. According to attorney general Eliot Spitzer, Juno failed to provide customers with sufficient notice of the project, which entailed downloading special software onto their computers and requiring them to leave the systems turned on at all times.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176433.html

Moms Online More Than Teens - Survey
Skip the usual Mother's Day gift of flowers and a card this year, and get Mom a high-speed Internet connection. Or maybe a new motherboard. Moms are wired now, even more than teenagers, according to survey results made public today. And 70 percent of mothers in the U.S. believe they are more Web-savvy than their kids or spouses, according to the survey commissioned by America Online..
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176430.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
Real hardcore napsterites require tuesday editions

- tg

ps. Here's a to you Newsman!

[walktalker]

Originally posted by TankGirl



- tg

ps. Here's a to you Newsman!

[goldie]

[quote]Originally posted by walktalker
[b]Real hardcore napsterites require tuesday editions

The pop-up ad campaign from hell
Looking for state-of-the-art Internet skulduggery? Try this: Thousands of unsuspecting visitors to a family entertainment site are discovering a cornucopia of unwanted, potentially malicious software on their computers -- the result of a pop-up ad campaign, a booby-trapped Web site, a compromised Web browser, and strange doings at a shadowy Los Angeles company. The story starts at Flowgo, a site that prides itself as the leading family entertainment portal. According to officials at eUniverse, the California firm that operates Flowgo, a pop-up ad that ran at the heavily trafficked humor site for a couple of weeks until late April caused the trouble.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/0...are/index.html

Just posted my opinion about this over at p2p - blech....pfft. Wadda a buncha jerks!!

Survey: Opt-Out Is a Cop-Out
Comments gathered by the U.S. Treasury indicate that Americans have plenty of complaints about a recently enacted law that requires customers to opt-out if they want to keep financial institutions from sharing their data. Top items on the grievance list: opt-out notices hidden in thick junk mailings, confusing legal language and the potential for invasive sales tactics. A coalition of 37 state attorneys general went so far as to assert that "current law does not adequately protect consumers' privacy."
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,52328,00.html

I'll testify to this personally!! This stinkin' law allowed a 3rd party company complete access to my credit card (legal), which they promptly abused to the tune of $79.99 (illegal).

Bad stuff and I'm not letting either company forget it anytime soon!!