The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

Microsoft spreads virus -- by accident
Microsoft accidentally sent the virulent Nimda worm to South Korean developers when it distributed Korean-language versions of Visual Studio .Net that carried the virus, the company acknowledged Friday. Microsoft's flagship developer tools picked up the digital pest when a third-party company translated the program into Korean, said Christopher Flores, lead product manager for Visual Studio .Net. Flores stressed that no other foreign-language versions of the program were found to carry the worm, and he said the worm had not actually executed on any developers' systems.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-935998.html

Sun sets pace for Web services security
Sun Microsystems, sensing it has fallen behind rivals Microsoft and IBM in Web services leadership, is launching a renewed strategy in an attempt to play catch up. Senior Sun executives have issued an edict to internal programmers to quickly create a software "framework" that addresses what they see as potential security weaknesses in existing Web services standards, a source familiar with the plan said. Sun has begun sharing details of the framework with potential partners and is working as quickly as possible to have an announcement ready by late summer or early fall, sources said.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-936042.html

Ask Jeeves gets a face-lift
Web search company Ask Jeeves this week launched a redesign of its flagship site intended to clarify its international brand amid increasing competition. The redesigned Jeeves site is modeled on the U.K. Ask Jeeves site, which Jeeves acquired last quarter after two years of co-developing the site. The most prominent change in the redesigned flagship site is the addition of three tabs that searchers can click through for results in the categories "Web results," "shopping results" and "news results."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-936099.html

EU investigates Web privacy problem
EU experts are informally collecting data to see if music player software or similar systems violate EU privacy laws, but have yet to open a formal investigation, officials said on Friday. Music recognition services have become increasingly popular as users download music from the Internet and play CDs on computers. Each time a user accesses an online song database he or she has to reveal some personal data -- such as a computer's Internet protocol (IP) address or e-mail -- for identification.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-935991.html

Skinny organic LED displays set to grow
Printer and display maker Seiko Epson Corp said on Friday it is planning a joint venture with British start-up Cambridge Display Technology to develop equipment for making next-generation ultra-thin displays. Unlisted Seiko Epson, the world's largest maker of cellphone screens, said the deal aimed to bolster a technology that could cut costs and allow bigger sizes for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, prized for their thinness and bright colors. The deal also helps set the stage for a looming battle between two competing technologies for making the screens.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-936001.html

Cult hero holds domain hostage
The administrator of South Africa's web addresses said on Thursday he had hidden the key to the country's ".ZA" domain network abroad to prevent any government interference in access to the Internet. South Africa's parliament has given initial approval to a law that will allow the government to take control of the country's Internet address administration. But critics, including ZA domain-name administrator Mike Lawrie, say the government has no right to stage the takeover and warn it could collapse the domestic Internet structure.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-935968.html

FoxNews.com disabled by attack
The home page for Fox News was hit by a denial-of-service attack Friday, leaving the site periodically inaccessible, the company has confirmed. As of 11:30 a.m. PST, News Corp.'s FoxNews.com was noticeably altered, with graphics and advertisements missing. Links to news stories still worked, but often the site's home page was inaccessible. A Fox News representative confirmed that the site was the victim of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack but did not say how long the site had been crippled or what the company is doing to address the problem. The representative said Fox News noticed the DoS problems midday Thursday.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-936084.html?tag=fd_top

Privacy worries fuel domain name concerns
Web users are worried that changes to a list of who owns which .co.uk web domain will put their personal privacy at risk. Later this year Nominet, which runs the .uk domain, is planning to expand the amount of personal information people can find out about owners of these domains. Some fear the changes will put them at risk of identity theft and endanger the people they run sites for. Nominet said it was still discussing the best way to makes changes to its database and that most other registries already supply far more information about domain holders than it was planning to do.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/2037948.stm

Bush: Be "aggressive" on broadband
Technology is a crucial component in America's war against terrorism, President George W. Bush said Thursday, in his first major address to technology industry leaders since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In a 30-minute speech, Bush praised the technology industry in broad strokes and offered encouraging remarks for companies in the business of high-speed Internet access. "The country must be aggressive with the expansion of broadband," he said, winning a loud round of applause from some 100 technology CEOs and luminaries gathered at the White House for the address.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-935874.html?tag=cd_mh

Record Biz Has Burning Question
Traditional music pirates, who burned and sold bootlegs long before the days of Napster, continue to cost the music industry billions of dollars every year. But the same technologies that pirates use to steal -- file sharing, CD-burning and computers -- are driving legitimate sales by consumers, according to research from market research company Ipsos-Reid. That conundrum has left the music industry in the position of wanting to lock down technology while worrying that might lock out the very customers it is trying to attract.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,53157,00.html

Key Senator Bends on Cloning
Sen. Sam Brownback, the leading opponent of human embryo cloning for medical research, said Wednesday he was scaling back his proposal "to jump-start debate in the Senate" because neither side has enough votes to pass or kill the measure. Brownback (R-Kansas) told Republicans colleagues in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday that he would advance a two-year moratorium rather than a permanent ban. The Senate could start debating the issue this week.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,53211,00.html

May I Have This Avatar?
Dancing with an avatar is a little like dancing with a cartoon after it's shimmied its way off the screen, into a living room and on top of the furniture. You know the feeling. A group of artists knows it, too, after recently experimenting with the concept in the Ava Project, a multimedia dance performance that pairs a human dancer with a virtual one. The performance explores the relationship between humanity and technology and the effect they have on each other.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,52986,00.html

Spain May Force ISPs to Keep Tabs
A proposal introduced in the Spanish Senate would force ISPs to keep records of their customers' Internet activity for a year, and make that information available to law enforcement for criminal investigations. Failure to do so would incur fines of up to $500,000. The measure, which is slated for vote next week, is an attempt to bring the country into compliance with a European Parliament directive advising the 15 European Union member countries to keep detailed records of communications –- including Internet, e-mail, phone, fax and pager data -– in an effort to thwart future terrorist attacks.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53195,00.html

Of Bees, Rats and Dwarf Goats
Animals have been used since the beginning of civilization -- after all, who do you think were pulling those first stone wheels? -- and these days they're being used in ways early humans couldn't possibly envision. Bees for detecting bombs. Remote-controlled rats for surveying disaster scenes. Goats for "manufacturing" spider silk protein in their milk. Animals are used for one simple reason: They're good at what they do.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52875,00.html

US downs missile in space
The United States has successfully destroyed a missile in space with a rocket fired from a Navy ship, hours after a treaty with Russia ending a ban on missile defence systems came into effect. The Petagon officials said the exercise showed an incoming missile could be intercepted by a rocket guided by a warship's radar. The test gave an important boost to President George W Bush's plans to build a protective shield against a foreign missile attack.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/wor...00/2044289.stm

New 'T-ray' Space Camera Also Sees Through Clothes, Walls
A new British science program aims to produce cameras for use in space that are so sensitive they will see through fog, smoke and even walls and clothing. The technology will detect an obscure yet ubiquitous form of radiation known as terahertz waves, also called T-rays. Similar cameras are also expected to have applications in airport security and medicine.One camera, already built by a company called QinetiQ and working in so-called millimetric waves, has demonstrated the ability to eerily peer through clothes and reveal a concealed weapon -- as well as much of a person's body. The image shows far more detail than an infrared camera, which detects heat.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnol...ra_020613.html

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