The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

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Microsoft grills Red Hat exec in court
An attorney for Microsoft Corp. argued in court on Monday that Red Hat Inc. had failed to popularize the Linux computer operating system because of its own shortcomings, not because of any interference from Microsoft. Cross-examining Red Hat Chief Technology Officer Michael Tiemann, Microsoft attorney Stephanie Wheeler said Red Hat had spent little money on research and development, and dedicated few of its employees to winning over software developers to write programs for Linux.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-868068.html

Sonicblue peddles DVR on Amazon.com
Sonicblue's new ReplayTV4000 line of digital video recorders will be available only through Amazon.com for the next two months, the companies said Monday. Amazon, which will be the exclusive national retailer for the new system until May, is taking orders for the device now. The ReplayTV 4000 line allows consumers to automatically record TV shows, pause and instantly replay live television, and skip over commercials without fast-forwarding.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-867996.html

Piracy-prevention bill sparks hot debate
Several government and industry leaders this weekend criticized proposed legislation that calls on hardware makers to help protect Hollywood's interests, saying lawmakers should not decide the tech industry's "winners and losers." Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Les Vadasz, president of Intel Capital; Mitch Kapor, chairman of the Open Source Applications Foundation; and Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, engaged in a lively, sometimes heated, debate on recently proposed government controls on digital media devices. They met Sunday in an opening panel discussion at PC Forum, an annual technology conference hosted by author and technology pundit Esther Dyson.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-867950.html

eBay: We're off the antitrust hook
U.S. antitrust authorities have closed an investigation without taking any action into eBay's conduct toward online auction sites that list eBay's content, the company said Monday. The probe by the Justice Department's antitrust division examined eBay's licensing program and a now-settled lawsuit eBay had filed against Massachusetts' Bidder's Edge, an auction aggregator that agreed to stop posting eBay content on its site. Aggregators are search-driven sites that help users keep up-to-date on several auction destinations simultaneously.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-867940.html

Library Net filtering battle heads to court
A group of free-speech advocates is gearing up for a trial that could determine the constitutionality of a law requiring schools and libraries to filter Web content or forgo federal funding. A three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania will hear arguments Monday regarding the controversial censorship law, known as the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). Signed into law in 2000 by then-President Bill Clinton, CIPA requires schools and libraries to block visual depictions of pornography, obscenity or other material deemed offensive to children to qualify for funds set aside by the government to help pay for computers and Internet access.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-867557.html

Philips, Nike lace up electronics deal
Nike is handing off its products baton to a new consumer-electronics partner. The sports-apparel company announced Monday that it has signed an exclusive deal with Netherlands-based Philips Electronics, calling on Philips to develop and bring technology products to market. Philips replaces Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sonicblue as Nike's consumer-electronics supplier. Nike and Sonicblue released an MP3 player last year. "We are no longer working with Sonicblue...We had a very good response to the co-branded products, and we're continuing our efforts with Philips," Nike spokeswoman Leslye L. Mundy said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-868073.html

New technology to transmit video without wires through home
Someday soon, you will be able to take the video stream that your set-top cable box brings into your living room and beam it to the television set in the back bedroom without hooking up any cables. You will be able to transfer the video footage from your last vacation from the camcorder to the TV without fumbling with wires. You will be able to send a multimedia presentation from a laptop to an overhead projector without plugging in any cords.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/business/2909112.htm

Child soldiers to swap guns for PCs
Child soldiers in Sierra Leone are to be offered the chance to hand in their guns for computers. A Sierra Leonean entrepreneur, Francis Steven George, is planning to set up a vocational training centre to teach computer and programming skills to the former rebels. He hopes that the project will be the first step towards developing West Africa as a regional hub for the computer industry.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1886248.stm

Google takes on supercomputing
Google has begun an experiment that could turn its modest toolbar software into a supercomputer to tackle scientific problems such as untangling genetic codes. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet search company invited 500 people to try out a new version of its toolbar that lets Windows users donate their computers' otherwise unused processing power to the Folding@home project at Stanford University. The project seeks to figure out how genetic information is converted into proteins, complex molecules whose three-dimensional structure is key to everything from fighting off a cold to transporting oxygen around the body.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-867091.html?tag=cd_mh

Show time for new video compression
A secretive 4-year-old project aimed at improving digital video is ready for its close-up. Privately held Pulsent on Monday will take the wraps off a new compression technique that the company claims can shrink digital video to about a fourth of the size of standard methods currently used in the cable and Internet industries. The start-up joins a long list of rivals including Microsoft, RealNetworks, DivX Networks and others that hope to deliver broadcast quality programming over the Internet--the holy grail for nascent video-on-demand (VOD) services.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-867490.html

Movie studios tout first DVD bust in U.S.
A rogue DVD-burning lab was shut down by law enforcement in New York on Friday, the first time that's happened in the United States, according to the movie studios' trade association. The Motion Picture Association of America said it helped the New York police department shut down an unlicensed DVD-copying operation based out of a Bronx apartment. These types of raids and closures have become increasingly common in the past several years when it comes to videocassettes and illegally distributed CDs. But this was the first such raid on a DVD-production operation in the United States, the MPAA said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-867314.html?tag=cd_mh

Is hardware key to piracy crackdown?
Software alone can't stop digital piracy, researchers said this week, emphasizing that only a totally secured infrastructure has a chance to eliminate the problem. The recommendations come as opposition builds against a proposed bill that would force hardware makers to add anti-copying features to MP3 players and other devices. Although legislators and device makers both see a need for a hardware solution to securing digital content, the groups are at odds over the government's efforts to regulate such technology.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-867270.html?tag=cd_mh

Game creators tackle ethical issues
The video game industry really cares about you. That's reassuringly evident after attending a few lectures and panel discussions at the Game Developers Conference, where game creators this week discussed everything from metaphysics to racism, all with the goal of producing games that are more fun and maybe even display a little social responsibility. Take the panel on the addictive quality of games: In a discussion reminiscent of the scene in "The Godfather" in which the five families debate the ethics of peddling street drugs, game makers wondered whether it's possible to make a game that's too compelling.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-867451.html?tag=cd_mh

Kamen: We Need More Geeks Now
The Pied Piper of technology gave a party for young geeks this weekend, but not enough kids could come out to play. Teams from 38 high schools engaged in a heated battle of 'bots and brains in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition regional playoffs at Columbia University. The kids were happy, the crowds were stoked, but Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter and founder of FIRST, wasn't satisfied.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,51288,00.html

Cuba Bans PC Sales to Public
The Cuban government has quietly banned the sale of computers and computer accessories to the public, except in cases where the items are "indispensable" and the purchase is authorized by the Ministry of Internal Commerce. News of the ban was first reported by CubaNet, an anti-Castro site based in Miami. According to the organization's correspondent in Havana, the merchandise -- which had been sold freely in the capital since mid-2001-- was yanked off store shelves in January.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51270,00.html

Dead Napster Gets Deader
A federal appeals court said Monday that Napster may not resume its free online file-swapping service. The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a federal judge's July ruling that ordered the Redwood City company to keep its free service offline until it can fully comply with an injunction to remove all copyright music. The decision, though, has little practical effect.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51301,00.html

Cloning Makes Strange Bedfellows
The idea of using cloned embryos for medical research pretty much split along ideological lines: The left was for it and the right opposed it. Until recently, that is. Now, an increasing number of liberal voices are piping up to oppose therapeutic cloning, proving, if nothing else, that this is no black-and-white issue. The hope of finding a simple solution can pretty much be forgotten, too.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,51247,00.html

Volume Control Knob Turns Heads
Who but a jewelry designer could create a computer product that seems useless but is fast becoming a hit based on its good looks? Takahiko Suzuki, a jewelry designer from the industrial city of Nagano, Japan, designed the PowerMate, a volume control for computers. The PowerMate is being sold by Nashville, Tennessee-based Griffin Technology and costs about $40, which sounds like a lot for a simple volume control. But people are snapping it up: In the last three months, 10,000 PowerMates have been sold, Suzuki said. Until a few weeks ago, Griffin couldn't make enough to keep up with demand, the company said.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,51258,00.html

Heavy.com: Behind the Sucks
Ask any music fan who surfs the Net about Behind the Music That Sucks and you'll likely see a glimmer in their eye. The animated series, which parodies VH1's popular Behind the Music, features five-minute gems that skewer everyone from Britney Spears to Kid Rock with reckless aplomb. Because of Sucks' great popularity, it did what few Internet shows have done: It made the leap to television. The program has been broadcast in Japan, Israel, England and the United States. For many companies, that would have been the penultimate success before the inevitable sell-off.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,51175,00.html

Up, Up and Away: NASA verifies anti-gravity claims
Laws are made to be broken. Or so the National Aeronautics and Space Administration seems to think. After an almost two-year wait, the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., is poised to take delivery of a machine that proponents hope will counteract the laws of gravity. At the heart of the device is a purported effect so radical it could change the way we interact with one of nature's most fundamental forces. We're talking revolution, not evolution. A revolution in spaceships would be just one spinoff. Back here on Earth, the internal combustion engine could become an endangered species, replaced by gravity-powered cars, planes and elevators.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...mment-opinions

Rethinking the black holes
In any rogues' gallery of astronomical evildoers, black holes would have to be the No. 1 nightmare. But are the nightmares real? A few doubters are beginning to emerge. If they're right, then black holes may be just the latest grand illusion of cosmology. They may be destined to go the way of other scientific Dodo birds like the "celestial spheres" of medieval cosmology and the vaporous, cosmos- pervading "aether" of Victorian astrophysics.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...25/MN46969.DTL

Critics attack net journal initiative
Critics of a project to set up alternative open-access scientific journals on the internet say the idea is ill-conceived and will undermine quality. Financier George Soros announced in February that he was giving a $3m grant to the Budapest Open Access Initiative to set up open-archiving systems. But, says Sally Morris, of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, open-access initiatives will undermine existing journals without replacing them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1885931.stm

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