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[walktalker]

Zats a Napzterize

The Code of Life as a Paint Set
DNA may be the code to life -- but who knew it made such a good paint set, too? On Friday, a team of chemists is unveiling a nanotechnology that allows individual DNA molecules to be painted onto a surface like watercolors onto a sheet of paper. This discovery, in turn, offers an attractive means of assembling nanoscale structures and miniaturizing present generation gene chips by factors of 100,000 or more.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,53051,00.html

Do Dots Connect to Police State?
In a televised address to the nation Thursday evening, President Bush proposed the creation of a cabinet-level domestic security office to act as a clearinghouse for intelligence collected by many existing federal agencies. Like several other law enforcement changes proposed by the Bush administration during the past two weeks, this move was sharply criticized by civil libertarians, one of whom cautioned that Bush was leading the country toward a "police state."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53037,00.html

China Paper Bites on Onion Gag
Beijing's most popular newspaper has unwittingly republished a bogus story about U.S. Congress threats to skip town for Memphis or Charlotte unless Washington builds them a new Capitol building with a retractable dome. The source? America's celebrated spoof tabloid, the Onion. The Beijing Evening News, which claims a circulation of 1.25 million, translated portions of the Onion's tall tale word-for-word in the international news page of its June 3 edition.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53048,00.html

NASA Takes a Flyer on Hydrinos
If one of NASA's newest rocket concepts works, it wouldn't just get humans farther out into the universe, it would redefine the place. The space agency is funding a study of an engine based on a novel conception of the structure of hydrogen, the central idea behind a maverick New Jersey researcher's Grand Unified Theory. This theory has been derided as a "crackpot idea" and "voodoo science" by respected experts in physics. Anthony J. Marchese, a mechanical engineering professor specializing in propulsion at Rowan University, is getting modest funding ($75,000) from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts to build and test a BlackLight Rocket.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51792,00.html

Craig Gets Listed in Replay Suit
Craig Newmark is probably one of the last people in need of greater name recognition. As founder of the San Francisco-based community website Craigslist, Newmark already has his name pop up in more browser windows per day than most people could conceivably type. However, as lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed on behalf of users of digital recording devices, Newmark is finding his name listed in a new venue. Shortly after the suit was filed in a Los Angeles federal court Thursday, it picked up a nickname: Craig vs. Hollywood.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,53032,00.html

Sony Trademark Takes a Walk, Man
So, you need a Band-Aid (sterile bandage strip) and some aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid), because while you were in the park roller-blading (in-line skating) and rocking out to your Walkman (portable stereo device), a Frisbee (plastic flying disk toy) clocked you on the noggin (head). International trademark laws are a big headache, too. This week, Austria's Supreme Court ruled that Sony can no longer claim exclusive trademark rights for the name "Walkman," the hand-held portable tape player it introduced in 1979. The court reasoned that it had passed into common usage once it had been defined in a German dictionary as any portable stereo player.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53040,00.html

War Threat Troubles India Tech
With India and Pakistan poised on the verge of war, the leaders of India's booming high-tech sector worry that a current spate of canceled business trips will extend into a slowdown in foreign investment or sales. U.S. companies with Indian operations, such as Hewlett-Packard, Sun and Intel, have banned nonessential travel to India, or raised security alerts or both. HP has told its 2,600 employees, mainly Indian nationals, that they can leave the country if they feel at risk.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53045,00.html

New E-Waste Solution a Mine Idea
Mark Small has a radical solution for dealing with the glut of old computers, cell phones, DVDs and other electronic waste: mining. Rather than allowing electronic junk to simply amass in landfills, Small wants to deposit huge volumes of e-waste into abandoned open pit mines. Using the same techniques that miners use to process copper ore, valuable materials such as copper, iron, glass, gold and plastic could be extracted from electronic scrap.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52988,00.html

MTV Site Scoops Itself
The front page of mtv.com asked, "Who Will Win a Movie Award Tonight?" The answer, it turns out, was only a click away. MTV's website posted the winners of its 2002 movie awards five days before the teenybopper channel aired the ceremonies on Thursday at 9 p.m. EDT. The event -- hosted by Jack Black, the star of Shallow Hal and frontman for joke-rocker Tenacious D, and Sarah Michelle Gellar (TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) -- was taped June 1 at Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium. CNN and the Associated Press announced the winners shortly thereafter.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53050,00.html

Gnat or Parasite? Angst Over Adware
Known as adware or spyware, programs like the ones that slowed Ms. Pazdan's computer are popping up on the Internet ever more frequently. Mike Healan, 26, curator of an anti-adware site, www.spywareinfo.com, said that the programs are designed to lure users to e-commerce sites and in rare cases pornographic sites, and are churning up debate as more companies use them. Proponents say that unlike viruses and worms, adware is mostly innocuous and provides a service to users. But Eric Howes, an English instructor and anti-adware campaigner at the University of Illinois who ultimately helped Ms. Pazdan remove the software from her computer, said that most people do not even know that they have the software installed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/06/te...ts/06ADWA.html

MS turns up heat on warezed WinXP copies
The beta of Service Pack 1 for Windows XP has now shipped to testers and, as previously advertised, it declines to install if you're using a leaked WinXP licence key. But - again as previously advertised - it doesn't deactivate your installation, just stops you applying the service pack. But a sharp-eyed reader of Neowin.net has spotted what appears to be an escalation of the role of product activation. The privacy statement now says "To provide you with the appropriate list of updates, Windows Update must collect a certain amount of configuration information from your computer. This information includes: Operating-system version number and Product Identification number... The Product Identification number is collected to confirm that you are running a validly licensed copy of Windows. A validly licensed copy of Windows ensures that you will receive on-going updates from Windows Update."
http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25176.html

DOD Looks Closer at Promising Technologies
Nearly eight months after it released a request to industry for help developing technologies to combat terrorism, the Defense Department will now take the next step. Members of the multiagency Technology Support Working Group have been sifting through more than 12,500 responses and have identified 600 proposals they considered promising. The group asked the companies that submitted them to create white papers on their proposals and expand on details, including costs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2002Jun6.html

The movie's over for Film88.com
Hollywood dodged a second bullet in a burgeoning battle over online film distribution Thursday, quickly shutting down an Iran-based Web site that had sold access to copyrighted films over the Internet for $1 apiece. Tehran-based Film88.com registered its Web site in April, and the company had briefly operated a video-on-demand site renting a long list of Hollywood hits such as "Star Wars" for viewing on PCs. Though Film88.com was being operated from a country with unfriendly U.S. relations, its content ran from servers based in the Netherlands. The MPA, the international arm of the Motion Picture Association of America, worked with its Internet service provider in the Netherlands to turn the site off. ISPs in the Netherlands recognize international intellectual-property laws.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-933598.html

Surplus skin used for bioweapons research
Patients undergoing reductive surgery at a healthcare trust in the west of England are being asked to donate surplus skin tissue for biochemical weapons research at the Government's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down. Salisbury Health Care NHS Trust in Wiltshire insists that donated tissue will only be used for "positive research", such as developing barrier creams against toxins and not for producing chemical weapons. "We will be issuing consent forms to patients undergoing procedures such as abdominal or breast reductive surgery, which produce surplus skin. The forms are quite explicit and mention the Porton Down establishment by name," a spokesperson from the trust told New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992376

First Strike or Asteroid Impact?
Military strategists and space scientists that wonder and worry about a run-in between Earth and a comet or asteroid have additional worries in these trying times. With world tensions being the way they are, even a small incoming space rock, detonating over any number of political hot-spots, could trigger a country's nuclear response convinced it was attacked by an enemy. Getting to know better the celestial neighborhood, chock full of passer-by asteroids and comets is more than a good idea. Not only can these objects become troublesome visitors, they are also resource-rich and scientifically bountiful worlds. Slowly, an action plan is taking shape.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...id_020606.html

Laser peashooter fires tiny particles
A highly efficient method for using lasers to transport particles along hollow optical fibres has been developed in the UK. The technique could eventually lead to minute biomedical devices that could diagnose disease and engineer individual cells. A team at Bath University used a laser to transport five micrometre polystyrene beads along a type of optical fibre called a photonic crystal fibre (PCF). Lasers have already been used to transport particles along ordinary glass capillary tubes but this process is hampered by light leakage.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992375

Hackers find way into Norway's past
A Norwegian educational center for cultural preservation lost the password to a historical database cataloging 11,000 original books and manuscripts, but was able to recover it with help from the Web. E-mail messages from more than 100 good Samaritans flooded the Ivar Aasen Center for Language and Culture starting Thursday afternoon after the organization called for aid in hacking into one of its own databases to which the password was lost, said a message posted to the center's Web site on Friday. Among the messages was the correct password to the locked database, which the center had posted online.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-934127.html

Price cuts clear the way for new PCs
PC makers, facing higher inventories in retail, are likely to begin spring cleaning soon to sweep out older PCs. April was one of the worst PC sales months in recent years, with sales down 22.5 percent for U.S. retailers, leaving the largest retail PC seller, Hewlett-Packard, with 10 weeks of inventory for Compaq PCs and seven weeks for HP PCs, according to NPD Techworld. Normally, three weeks is considered ideal. Sony's inventory was also slightly higher in April at five weeks, up from 4.5 weeks a year ago.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-934086.html

Nintendo chief sets sights on software
In a meeting with analysts on Thursday, newly appointed Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed the company's new direction. Nintendo plans to expand its share of the video game market by focusing on making better games rather than on building increasingly powerful consoles, its new president said Thursday. "We can't be optimistic about the game market," he said, referring to consoles at a meeting with analysts at a Tokyo hotel. "No matter what great product you come up with, people get bored. I feel like a chef cooking for a king who's full." Iwata also revealed Nintendo's intent to sell 50 million GameCube consoles by March 2005. Nintendo has already shipped 4 million GameCubes since the system's launch in September of 2002.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-933922.html

File swappers expose themselves
Users of the popular file-swapping program Kazaa frequently expose personal data to other network users by mislabeling the files that can be shared, according to research released by HP Labs. The research, which was published Wednesday on Hewlett-Packard's Web site, found that a significant percentage of Kazaa users have accidentally or unknowingly designated private files to be shared with everyone who has access to the popular Kazaa network.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-933836.html

More news later on. I'm busy planning my date

[TankGirl]

Zhankz to my favorite newzman!

- tg

[ab-NORM-al]

this girl has got him buggy!...he's spelling shit with Z's

thanks fer the newZ