The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

I'm on vacations.... YIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPIE !!!

Red Hat: Linux desktop should take on MS
Red Hat is warming to the use of the Linux operating system on desktop computers, a difficult market where customers are picky and Microsoft is the leader. Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat, the leading seller of Linux, gets the vast majority of its revenue from the use of its product in servers -- more powerful networked computers typically run by technically proficient administrators. But cost and security issues with Microsoft's software, combined with the arrival of the Mozilla Web browser, have triggered Red Hat's interest in a desktop Linux, Chief Executive Matthew Szulik said in an interview with ZDNet.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-938700.html

Netscape inspires open-source browser
Microsoft's iron grip on the Web browser market has slipped ever so slightly since the release of new products from rivals Mozilla and Netscape Communications, Web researcher OneStat.com reported Monday. For the month ended June 21, 95.3 percent of all Web surfers used various versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to access Web sites included in the survey. That's down 1.3 percent from the previous month, Amsterdam-based OneStat said. Netscape 7.0 was used by 0.3 percent of the sample. Released by AOL Time Warner division Netscape last month, it helped push the browser's overall showing to 3.4 percent, a gain of 0.6 percent.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-938865.html

Russia gets ready to gag online dissent
Russia's parliament may give final approval this week to sweeping restrictions on using the Internet to oppose the government. At the request of President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Duma voted 272 to 126 last week in favor of the offline and online restrictions as an immediate response to what Putin called a spate of pro-Nazi and anti-religious extremist activities. Russia's actions come as U.S. law enforcement is seeking expanded powers to monitor Web activity.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-938862.html

PCs -- pay now, recycle later?
The debate over electronics recycling will grow a little more heated Monday with meetings of a legislative committee in California and a government-industry group in Minnesota. The upshot for companies is that, sooner or later, consumers are likely to bear some of the financial burden of cleaning up after their electronics habits. What everyone's trying to figure out now is how and when. The prospect of those charges has the electronics industry up in arms, worried that extra dollars on the price tag of PCs, televisions and other gadgets will spell fewer sales and therefore less revenue. But even as computer makers and others lobby against what they see as unfair impositions, many have been working at recycling schemes of their own.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-938748.html

Roaming war escalates over free software
The battle to create a common way for people to roam from one Wi-Fi network to the next heated up again on Monday. Wireless software maker iPass said Monday it will make available the specifics of its roaming software for free to anyone who wants it. The company had been making its software available for free before Monday, but only on a case-by-case basis. About eight equipment makers, including Cisco Systems, and eight wireless Internet service providers have been using its software.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-938832.html

Your PC is under attack
At first, the signs are subtle: Your computer is slower than usual, something is different about your browser, occasionally you're redirected to an unfamiliar Web site for no apparent reason. When you finally figure out the problem, you discover that someone has been tracking every keystroke on your keyboard for days while using your PC's resources to maintain a network that researches extraterrestrial life. Adding insult to injury, you find that your 8-year-old son agreed to the whole mess to get some software given away online. Variations of this scenario have proliferated across the Internet thanks to an emerging breed of opportunistic programs that push the limits on accepted business practices.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-938652.html

Yamaha to etch graphics, logos on CD-Rs
Electronics giant Yamaha says it has come up with a solution for what to do with all the empty space that is often left on recordable CDs after you have burned your music, photos or data onto them: laser-etch a logo. Yamaha's CRW-F1 drive, which went on sale in Japan earlier this month, is the first CD-RW drive that is able to burn images directly onto a CD-R disc. All CD, CD-R and CD-RW drives user laser beams to read and (where appropriate) write data as a series of tiny dots on the surface of a special material sandwiched between two transparent plastic discs. Usually these dots are only noticeable by the interference patterns they produce, which create rainbow effects when held up to the light.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-938739.html

Video consoles' popularity lifts sales
The video game industry is on track for a record year with global sales projected to increase by 12 percent to $31 billion, according to a new report. The popularity of new video game consoles, including Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube is contributing to the torrid growth, British researcher Informa Media Group said Monday. Steep competition has forced the three console makers to engage in an aggressive price war in the United States, Asia and Europe, stoking demand.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-938707.html

Your PC's ennemy within
The Wild West days of cyberspace are over -- and, like it or not, it's time for government to change its laissez-faire attitude toward the Internet and create laws that clearly prevent unscrupulous businesses from preying on unsuspecting consumers and seizing control of computers. Technologies that "piggyback" on free software available on the Net, often unbeknownst to those who download it, are being used with rising frequency by marketers seeking to pinpoint potential customers. But many of those same programs can be used to spy on an individual's every move and even take over a PC's hard drive -- in theory, if not in practice.
http://news.com.com/2009-1023-937457.html?tag=fd_lede

Seagate boosts hard drive space
Hard drive maker Seagate Technology claimed a new record for cramming data onto a disk, announcing a new line of 3.5-inch drives that can fit 60 gigabytes on a single platter. Seagate's 120GB, dual-disc Barracuda ATA V drives will be the first to support Serial ATA, a new type of connection for transferring data to and from a hard drive. Seagate will also make standard Barracuda ATA V drives. Current drives top out at 40GB per platter, which are stacked up like flapjacks to make a complete hard drive, and density has been doubling roughly every year. But there are signs the density curve may slow a bit to keep pace with storage demand, said Jim Porter, president of research firm Disk/Trend.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-938885.html?tag=fd_top

Banned Xbox ad spurs lawsuit
Already banned in Britain, a controversial ad for the Xbox could land Microsoft in a French court. French filmmaker Audrey Schebat filed suit in a Paris court claiming that a TV commercial for Microsoft's video game console was copied from her short film "Life," according to Toronto's Globe and Mail. The commercial, created by London ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, depicts a baby shooting from its mother's womb and rapidly aging as it soars through the air. Britain's Independent Television Commission called the ad "shocking" and banned it from being shown on U.K. television, although it is still being run in movie theaters there. The commercial won one of the top awards last weekend at the prestigious International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-938757.html?tag=fd_top

In Fights Over .Com Names, Trademark Owners Usually Win
Researchers analyzing an arbitration system set up to resolve disputes over Internet addresses have found that decisions made through the system have substantially broadened the rights of trademark holders in cyberspace. Although the researchers concluded that the system had been effective in combating these so-called abusive domain-name registrations, they also found that the system had "tipped the scales too far" in favor of trademark interests.Milton Mueller, an associate professor at Syracuse University who conducted the study, said that in about 80 percent of the disputes examined, the party that filed the complaint, generally a trademark holder, prevailed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/24/te...gy/24MARK.html

Spam vs. spam
For those of us who get hundreds of spam e-mails a day, SpamAssassin is heaven-sent. SpamAssassin labels the e-mail it thinks is spam, and individual users can then shunt the garbage off into its own quarantined mailbox. Once or twice a day, I check to see that no "false positives" have been misdirected. Life, post-SpamAssassin, is definitely better. Salon isn't alone in appreciating SpamAssassin. Although currently targeted at Unix users, SpamAssassin has boomed in popularity over the past four months. Craig Hughes, a significant code contributor to the project and the founder of Deersoft, a start-up that will offer a commercial version of SpamAssassin that Windows users can harness to their Outlook programs, says that in March, SpamAssassin registered a total of 2,000 downloads. In April and May, the number jumped to 30,000.
http://salon.com/tech/col/leon/2002/...sin/index.html

New Pentium 4-M breaks 2GHz barrier
Intel broke through the 2GHz barrier for notebook PCs on Monday with the launch of a new Pentium 4-M chip. The 2GHz chip, which is accompanied by a 1.9GHz Pentium 4-M and a handful of mobile Celerons, meets Intel's internal target for shipping a 2GHz mobile chip by midyear. Although the PC market overall has lurched into the doldrums again, notebooks have fared better than desktops in a variety of markets for some time.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-938554.html?tag=cd_mh

Sprint ads on track with "Men In Black"
Sprint PCS, the No. 4 U.S. wireless telephone company, will launch a new marketing campaign on Monday ahead of its anticipated launch of an advanced network that will let customers surf the Web, swap pictures and download music, the company said. The campaign will feature a tie-in with the much-hyped "Men in Black II" alien comedy movie. The company declined to say how much it was spending on the campaign. Chip Novick, vice president of marketing, said Sprint cell phones will be sprinkled throughout the movie and will showcase futuristic non-voice features such as digital imaging, voice commands and wireless Internet access.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-938641.html?tag=cd_mh

People choose Net over malls, TV
Internet users say high-speed connections have prompted them to spend more time online and less time in traffic, at the mall or on the couch watching television, according to a new study. Compared with people who connect through regular dial-up services, broadband users are also more likely to perform a wider range of activities online, such as building Web pages, creating online diaries, posting photos, and downloading music or videos, the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project found in its study, released Sunday. Broadband users told Pew that they spend an average of 95 minutes online on any given day, compared to 83 minutes for dial-up users.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-938727.html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
I'm on vacations.... YIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPIE !!!

Enjoyable vacation days, Mr. Newsman!
And thanks again for your great service!

- tg