The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Pssssst... psssssst... over here... want some news, pal ?

DeCSS banned again
In another setback for free speech advocates, hacker magazine 2600 has lost its bid for an appeal of a ruling banning it from posting code that can be used to crack DVD copy protections. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals refused 2600's request to reconsider a ruling that prohibits the publication from posting or linking to code known as DeCSS. The ruling, issued last week, is another blow to the efforts of some free speech proponents, journalists and researchers, who have argued that new copyright laws designed for the digital age are thwarting the free flow of information.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-916717.html

Sneaky Klez worm won't go away
It may only be a matter of time before you're accused of spreading the Klez virus. A month after it started spreading, the Klez.h worm isn't slowing down, said antivirus experts on Friday. Moreover, the worm's technique of forging the address of the sender on each infected e-mail message is creating a flood of warnings from gateway antivirus software informing the wrong people that they are infected. "A lot of traffic is being multiplied by the response mechanisms and refusal mechanisms," said Fred Cohen, security practitioner in residence at the University of New Haven.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-916995.html

Saved! Napster's back in business
German media conglomerate Bertelsmann has agreed to acquire Napster in a deal that will keep the controversial file-sharing service alive for the near future. Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers and Shawn Fanning, Napster's creator, will remain with the company. On Tuesday Hilbers announced his resignation after Napster's board of directors rejected a deal for the company to be acquired by the German company. Fanning at that time also decided to leave the company, sources said.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-916803.html

Spammers could face fines
A bill aimed at limiting unwanted junk e-mail was approved and sent to the floor by the Senate Commerce Committee on Friday with unanimous support from Democrats and Republicans. It would strengthen the Federal Trade Commission's enforcement authority by allowing it to impose fines of up to $10 each on e-mails that violate existing laws against spam, with a cap of $500,000. Sen. Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican and co-sponsor of the legislation, said the bill would help both e-commerce and consumers burdened by unsolicited junk or pornographic e-mails.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-916931.html

ISP: File swappers pay extra
U.K. Internet service provider PlusNet announced on Friday that is launching a lower-priced broadband product. Customers will only be charged £20.99 (US$31) (including VAT) per month for PlusNet's ADSL Home Surf product -- £2 (US$3) per month less than PlusNet's existing consumer broadband package, and £9 (US$13) cheaper than many competing broadband services. The downside with ADSL Home Surf is that subscribers will not be able to use peer-to-peer file-swapping services. This rules out popular but bandwidth-hungry applications such as Kazaa and Morpheus, which allow users to share MP3 files.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-916640.html

Embedded Linux crying out for standards
Linux is set to become the de facto standard in so-called "embedded" devices such as robotics, information appliances and automobile information systems. However, fragmentation could prove a stumbling block, said Inder Singh, chairman of the Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC). Linux is the only choice for product designers who want a powerful, open system and to still have some control over the choices they make, Singh said, but the lack of a rigid standard could drive companies to Windows CE if the situation isn't addressed.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-916331.html

Hoax tells people to nix Windows file
An e-mail hoax posing as a virus advisory is surfing across the Internet on a wave of PC user naivete. The fake advisory warns users of the file "jdbgmgr.exe," purportedly a virus that damages a victim's computer system two weeks after first infecting the PC. The hoax has been forwarded by users who believe they have been infected and need to tell other victims to clean out the virus. In reality, the component is the Java Debugger Manager and is part of the Java software installed on all Windows systems.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-916145.html

Court cracks down on anti-abortion site
An appeals court has reversed its decision in a high-profile online publishing case, finding that anti-abortion protesters can be held liable for inflammatory comments they posted on Web sites. In its 6-5 decision, the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that comments posted on Web sites and anti-abortion "wanted" posters are not constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment, but rather constitute a "true threat." The appeals court, however, sent the $108 million damages award back to a lower court for reconsideration.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-917077.html?tag=fd_top

Ford warns of identity fraud
Ford Motor's credit arm has warned 13,000 people that their credit reports, full of information that could be used for identity theft or fraud, were illegally downloaded. Ford sent letters this week to the 13,000 people, all but 400 of whom were not Ford Credit customers, warning them that Social Security numbers, bank and credit card account information, and other data may have been copied. Ford Credit said that a person or group posing as its Grand Rapids, Mich., office accessed the reports between April 2001 and February of this year in databases run by Experian, an arm of British retail and financial conglomerate GUS.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-916940.html?tag=cd_mh

FCC sets rules for new spectrum
Federal regulators have set ground rules for the commercial use of 27MHz of wireless spectrum that was once exclusively for use by the government. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's announcement late Thursday was one of the last steps in the process before the bandwidth becomes available to companies that want to use it. The FCC is expected to begin soliciting applications to license the spectrum in the next few weeks. The bandwidth has attracted the interest of wireless start-ups like Itron, a Washington-based maker of wireless products used by petroleum companies to guard oil pipelines.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-916993.html?tag=cd_mh

Net piracy ringleader gets four years
A federal judge in Virginia has ordered DrinkOrDie leader John Sankus to serve nearly four years in prison, handing down what prosecutors say is the longest sentence ever for participation in organized software piracy. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema sentenced Sankus, 28, to 46 months in prison for his participation in the DrinkOrDie group, a loose band of about 60 people who cracked and distributed pirated software and movies via secret Web sites and invite-only IRC (Internet relay chat) channels.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-916824.html?tag=cd_mh

GeoCities to take the weekend off
Yahoo's Web publishing community GeoCities will undergo a planned outage over the weekend, an uncharacteristic move given the Internet's round-the-clock nature. The downtime will affect GeoCities' free members and its GeoCities Plus members who pay $4.95 a month. More advanced GeoCities services that cost more money, such as Pro, Webmaster and Advantage, will not be affected. The planned downtime stems from the company's decision to move GeoCities' servers to Sprint's Web hosting services. GeoCities, like other parts of Yahoo, previously used Cable & Wireless' Exodus to host its operations.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-916690.html?tag=cd_mh

E-mail: When E stands for embarrassing
This comes only a month after a January 1999 e-mail surfaced in court in which Gates described a plan to use the Windows operating system to promote Microsoft's audio and video delivery software over that of rival RealNetworks. Gates isn't alone in the court of public embarrassment over e-mail better forgotten. Just this week, Oracle and its business partner Logicon were accused by a California legislator of defrauding the state of California, based on an incriminating e-mail exchange.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-916257.html?tag=cd_mh

Automakers stall in drive for killer app
Automakers, wireless providers and electronics manufacturers are desperate to find the "killer app" of dashboard computing, but most brainstorm sessions have been washouts. The United States has roughly 120 million wireless phones, and studies suggest that seven in 10 wireless calls begin in the vehicle. Yet only about 2.3 million Americans subscribe to services such as automatic police and hospital notification in case of airbag deployment. That frustrates automotive engineers, who worry that the global auto industry is conceding the connectivity market to wireless carriers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-916541.html

Jordan Punishes Net Critic
Reporters Without Borders protested Friday the imprisonment of a former Jordanian legislator and television reporter who published a letter on a U.S. website accusing government officials of corruption. Toujan Faisal, 53, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for "slandering" state institutions on Arab Times, which is published out of Houston, Texas. In an open letter posted on the site, Faisal, who was Jordan's first female parliament member, accused Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb and other cabinet members of personally profiting from a decree doubling car insurance rates because the officials own shares in the insurance companies.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52631,00.html

Why Does School Own Clone Patent?
A patent watchdog group has discovered that the University of Missouri holds a U.S. patent on human reproductive cloning and, potentially, clones. The International Center for Technology Assessment's Patent Watch project turned up patent number 6211429, which was granted on April 3, 2001, and seems to give the University of Missouri intellectual property rights not only to cloning technology, but potentially any product -- potentially a human being -- created by cloning.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52610,00.html

The DMCA Is the Toast of D.C.
Champagne was flowing freely in room B-340 of the Rayburn House office building on Thursday afternoon as scores of politicos gathered to toast a controversial copyright law. In between raised glasses of bubbly, some of Washington's most influential lobbyists and politicians sung the praises of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and said it had successfully limited piracy and promoted creativity. The official justification for the celebration, hosted by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), was to cheer a global copyright treaty that takes effect on Monday. But an equally important, unofficial reason was to demonstrate broad support among key legislators and industry groups for the DMCA, which has come under ever-increasing attack in the courts and from technologists.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52602,00.html

Thin! Tan! Hotter Than Hell!
It was chemical serendipity of billion-dollar proportions: a tanning drug with all the right side effects. A hundred years ago, being tan was bad, because it meant you worked outside, which meant you weren't rich. By the 1970s, tan lines had become associated with exercise, tropical vacations, and bumming around in skimpy clothing while others worked. Tan was cultural, tan was affluent, tan was healthy. UV-induced tan was also, unfortunately, the cause of a sharp rise in skin cancer rates and premature wrinkles. Hence a mid-'80s research push at the University of Arizona to attack the problem from inside. Being tan is healthy; ironically, people who work outdoors and see the sun every day are at low risk for skin cancer. But getting tan is where the danger lies.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/melanotan.html

Star Wars Fans Strike Back
Sometimes you just need a Millennium Falcon in your backyard. That's the quandary Dennis Ward found himself facing while preparing to shoot Stuck on Star Wars, his independent film that follows the life of Zach, a 20-something whose life is based on the popular George Lucas film series. Fans of the series -- the real fans -- face dilemmas like these with a certain pluck. Rather than shy away, they embrace their problem. Essentially, this raw devotion means they become part of the movie, part of the lifestyle.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,52561,00.html

China Can See The Post Again
China has stopped blocking access to the websites of at least three Western news organizations that the Chinese have long been barred from seeing. The websites of The Washington Post, Reuters and the Associated Press were accessible Friday from Internet cafes in Beijing and Shanghai. Other foreign media sites including CNN and Taiwanese newspapers were still blocked, as were organizations deemed subversive such as the banned Falun Gong spiritual group.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52618,00.html

Can a Child Love a Robot?
In a demonstration for the press on the Washington campus Wednesday, a group of 3- to 5-year-olds played with a Sony Aibo robot dog, and a soft plush black-lab puppy while answering questions about how they saw the two. Ann Foreman, a senior in the Information School asked the children if they thought the toys were alive, whether they would get hurt if she dropped them on the floor, and what they would do if "Aibo" or "Shanti" got broken. The kids agreed that neither the metallic nor the stuffed dog could feel pain because they were toys
http://www.wired.com/news/gizmos/0,1452,52551,00.html

Making Copy Right for All
Less than five years ago, Disney's copyright on Mickey Mouse was set to expire. But rather than let Mickey go free and enter the public domain, Disney campaigned with other Hollywood studios and major record labels to press Congress to pass the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), a law that extended copyright protection for another 20 years. But recent copyright extension laws such as the CTEA are too restrictive, leaving fewer creative works in the public domain, critics say. That's why a group of legal scholars and Web publishers are launching a nonprofit intellectual property conservancy to help artists, writers, musicians and scientists share their intellectual works with the public on generous terms.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52556,00.html

A Marriage Made in Heaven
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who dreamt of dancing in midair. Her friends wanted to ride on flying carpets. They grew up. And booked passage on a parabolic zero-gravity flight.... French dancer and choreographer Kitsou Dubois is part of a unique science-art collaboration, which in seeking to understand the intricacies of human biodynamics in outer space is creating a new art form: Zero-G Dancing.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,52548,00.html

Senator Prevents Action on Online Privacy Bill
Senator Trent Lott, the minority leader, forced the Senate Commerce Committee to adjourn this morning as it was on the verge of adopting an online privacy bill. The measure would require Internet service providers, online service providers and commercial Web sites to get customers' permission before they could disclose important personal information. That would include financial, medical, ethnic, religious and political information along with Social Security data and sexual orientation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/politics/17PRIV.html

Group Tackles Software Quality
Major software companies, government agencies and academics yesterday launched a consortium that aims to find ways to make software more dependable and secure. Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh announced the creation of Sustainable Computing Consortium, a group whose founding members include Microsoft Corp., Raytheon Co. and NASA. The group intends, among other tasks, to figure out specifications for software quality so that sellers and buyers of computer programs will have a uniform way to measure quality.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002May16.html

Laws of physics 'may change'
The Universe may be a stranger place than we imagined because of new evidence that appears to show the very laws of physics have changed since the cosmos was young. Analysis of the light coming from distant quasars suggests that a fundamental physical constant may have been increasing slightly over the past six billion years. The so-called fine structure constant - which measures the strength with which subatomic particles interact with one another and with light - may have been smaller at earlier times in the history of the Universe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1991223.stm

Study ranks supercomputers of the world
A supercomputer in Japan that ties together 5,120 processors has widened its lead as the world's most powerful computer under a revised series of tests from market researcher IDC. The Framingham, Mass., research group on Thursday detailed its IDC Balanced Rating for rating computers and computing clusters in four separate categories. While the published list has the top 50 computers in each of four categories -- which are based around the size of the organization the computer is designed to serve --the analyst firm tested almost 900 machines.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-916324.html

Washington Post Co. to Shutter Newsbytes
The Washington Post Co. will shut down its Newsbytes online IT news service on May 31, a source close to the company told InternetNews.com Thursday. While the company would neither confirm nor deny the shutdown, Washtech/Newsbytes Publisher Valerie Voci told InternetNews.com: "We currently publish two technology Web sites for the Washington Post Co. and we are consolidating our online tech coverage." "I think the Washington Post is making a mistake," the source said.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...136291,00.html

Mobile keypad reinvented
If you are frustrated by the time it takes to tap out text messages on your mobile phone, help could soon be at hand. A US company has redesigned the traditional 12-number keypad to give every letter and number its own key. Typing a text message with the novel keypad is twice as fast as other methods claims Digit Wireless, creator of the new layout. The design fits 26 letters of the alphabet, the * and #, 10 numbers, three punctuation keys, a space bar, shift and delete key into an area no larger than one-third of a business card.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1990855.stm

Fledgling Computer History Museum hopes to connect technology with its creators, users
The subtle smell escapes the uninitiated. But when the air produced by the combination of electrolytics, capacitors, old circuits and other devices wafts through experienced nostrils, it triggers a sort of Pavlovian response that instantly transports people back to a different time in their lives. This bit of nostalgia is repeated every time technological people take their first step into the Computer History Museum at Mountain View, which opened in 1999. The "bouquet" uproots memories of their first computers, or the ones they built from scratch, or some complicated process that only they knew how to perform in order for once state-of-the-art machines to respond.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...7/PN173761.DTL

Gamma ray bursts tied to supernovae
The link between mysterious gamma ray bursts and huge supernova explosions has finally been nailed. Astronomers have wondered for decades what causes gamma ray bursts (GRBs). They are most violent explosions in the Universe, unleashing high-energy gamma rays and originating billions of light years from Earth. Likely culprits were thought to be supernovae, giant stars that explode after running out of fuel, and black holes. Although astronomers have seen light characteristic of supernovae coming from the same position as GRBs in the sky, they have never been able to confirm this was not a coincidence.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992293

10 Technology Disasters
What do a 17th-century Swedish warship, an opulent Chicago theater and a Kansas City hotel "skyway" have in common? All met catastrophic ends — and they have important lessons to teach today's innovators. Let’s face it: something draws us to a disaster, as long as it doesn’t strike too close. And in all endeavors, but especially in technology, failures — even ghastly, gruesome, cataclysmic ones — can sometimes make better teachers than spectacular successes. The 10 examples offered below, drawn from a span of 373 years, show that though technologies change, many of the factors that make them go spectacularly wrong are surprisingly consistent: impatient clients who won’t hear “no”; shady or lazy designers who cut corners; excess confidence in glamorous new technologies; and, of course, good old-fashioned hubris.
http://www.techreview.com/articles/s...no0602.asp?p=1

More news later on

[relic]

I really enjoyed the DeCSS story walkie...it is hard to believe that this is actually the US when stories like those are brought out. I guess it is yet another example of how money buys 'justice' and basically anything else you want it to.

[HAL9000]

Thanks walktalker

I enjoyed reading "10 Technology Disasters"