The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

Microsoft gives in-car speech a tune-up
Microsoft is keeping its eye on the road with its Windows CE operating system. The software giant released its latest speech software for use with Windows CE for Automotive 3.5, Microsoft's operating system for in-car use. The speech software will be the basis for an interface, which partners will develop, to access the operating system. The precise use for the operating system has yet to be defined, but the general idea is that it will access features such as driving directions and a phone book to make wireless cell phone calls from the car.
Can't wait for the blue windshield of death lol
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-888641.html

Father of Xbox quits Microsoft
Seamus Blackley, the co-creator of Microsoft's Xbox and one of the company's most prominent spokesmen for the game machine, has resigned from Microsoft, a company spokesman confirmed Monday. "He's left Microsoft to pursue other opportunities, and we wish him the best in the future," said Microsoft Xbox spokesman James Bernard. Bernard said the resignation would have no effect on Microsoft's plans for the console. "We're really confident moving forward," he said.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-888312.html

Privacy tools find a new home
While technologies to protect personal online privacy have stalled in the world's richest nations, they're still in grave demand from human rights workers in other countries, experts said at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference that ended here on Friday. Five years ago there was a burgeoning consumer personal privacy market in North America, with a growing list of software and services that allowed people to maintain their anonymity on the Internet, said Ian Goldberg, chief scientist at Zero-Knowledge Systems, a Montreal-based Internet privacy provider.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-887942.html

Ellison, Ashcroft win 'Big Brother' awards
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and database billionaire Larry Ellison were named this year's most notorious American violators of personal privacy by leading advocacy groups on Thursday. The annual "Big Brother Awards" are presented to government, corporations and private individuals who allegedly have done the most to threaten personal privacy. Privacy International, a London-based activist organization made up of privacy experts and human rights organizations from several dozen countries, presented the awards at the annual "Computers, Freedom & Privacy" conference here this week. They were joined by well-known U.S. privacy activists.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-886873.html

More foreign banks switching to Linux
A New Zealand bank has become the latest institution to adopt the open-source Linux operating system. According to reports, the bank is to move all its branches to the Linux platform. New Zealand's TSB Bank will join a growing number of companies that are moving to Linux. The bank was not immediately available for comment, but if European examples are anything to go by, then software licensing and hardware upgrade costs are likely to feature among the reasons.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-887961.html

Online storage: Risky move for your files
Nearly seven years after Netscape Communications went public and the masses began discovering the Internet, policies intended to make the Web safe for businesses are looking increasingly dated. Millions of people head online as part of their daily routines and entrust bits of their lives to cyberspace. Yet some are beginning to wonder whether rules aimed at fostering e-commerce have created a double standard for consumer protection, with regulators turning a blind eye to online practices that no one would stand for in the real world.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-887885.html

U.S. mulls online ID systems
The U.S government is considering using online ID systems from Microsoft, Entrust, RSA, and VeriSign among others to track the identity of visitors to a dozen new federal Web sites launching later this year, a federal official said Friday. Mark Forman, who oversees the federal government's $45 billion IT budget, said he is talking to the companies about how their online identification technologies might give agencies a standard way to let the general public access private information on the Web.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-887986.html

Gates: States' remedy an industry setback
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told a crowded courtroom Monday that a proposed antitrust remedy would fragment the Windows operating system, creating a chaos of incompatibilities and turning back the clock on the software industry. Testifying in person for the first time during the nearly 4-year-old antitrust case against the software giant, Gates argued that the remedy's provision on code removal would split Windows into many different versions.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-888408.html

Digging for computer dirt
Remember the KayPro computer? The Osborne? The DEC MicroVax? The Vydec dedicated word processor with the 8-inch disk? Lee Tydlaska does. In fact, he not only remembers obsolete technologies, he collects them. What's more, he actually uses them to make money. Tydlaska calls his collection a "museum," and that makes this 51-year-old former San Diego sheriff a curator of sorts. As sometimes happens with curators, over the years Tydlaska has begun to strangely resemble his prized collection. As he'll be the first to admit, he's old, he's peculiar, he's a bit outdated, and there are lots of younger, sharper models on the market. But he likes what he does.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/0...ics/index.html

U.S. foils big software piracy ring
U.S. authorities have cracked the largest international software piracy ring in history, arresting 27 people in connection with a scheme that cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue, officials said. FBI agents and local police arrested 27 people in California, Washington and Oregon last week after a federal grand jury returned sealed indictments against alleged members of the ring. A Microsoft representative called the alleged pirating ring "the largest criminal conspiracy in the history of the software industry involving the distribution of counterfeit and infringing software."
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-888106.html?tag=cd_mh

Japan claims fastest computer title
A Japanese laboratory has built the world's fastest computer, one with the computing power of the 20 fastest U.S. computers combined, The New York Times reported on Saturday. The computer is nearly five times faster than the previous leader, a machine built by IBM, according to Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who maintains an authoritative list of the world's fastest computers, the newpaper said. The Japanese government spent $350 million to $400 million to develop the supercomputer over the past five years, said Akira Sekino, president and chief executive of HNSX Supercomputers, a unit of NEC of Littleton, Colo.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-887717.html?tag=cd_mh

Tax technology pays off for states
Delinquent taxpayers beware: If your local tax collector doesn't get you, a new computer system will. U.S. states are using computers and information technology to increase revenue and fee collection, showing the traditional taxman how to do a better job. After hiring a firm that uses advanced computer software to make revenue collecting more efficient, four U.S. states already have dug up an extra $912 million overlooked by human staffers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-888276.html?tag=cd_mh

FTC cracking down on Net privacy issues
Federal regulators Monday fined the Web site operator for the Etch-A-Sketch toy and sent warning letters to more than 50 other Internet operators regarding children's privacy online. The Ohio Art Company, which makes the children's doodling toy, has agreed to pay $35,000 to settle charges it violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule, the Federal Trade Commission said. The site was collecting information from children before obtaining parental or guardian consent, the FTC said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-888340.html?tag=cd_mh

Peru Discovers Machu Penguin
With a bill on the table that would mandate the use of free software in government computers, Peru has become the latest Latin American country to seek alternatives to what some call another form of Yankee imperialism: proprietary software. Mexico, Argentina and Brazil have all pursued similar measures in a government-led movement that is sweeping the region and carries both pragmatic and philosophical overtones.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51902,00.html

NYC Mayor Wants to Dump Recycling
The nation's recycling movement has been steadily expanding for three decades, so much so that it has become almost standard practice for people to separate their paper, plastic and glass. But in the nation's biggest city, and the one that produces the most garbage, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to temporarily do away with most recycling in an effort to close a nearly $5 billion budget gap.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52008,00.html

A Bad Year for Privacy
Long before planes slammed into the World Trade Center and anthraxed mail snarled Capitol Hill, privacy mavens had worried that a terrorist attack would spur Congress to approve invasive new laws. Then came Sept. 11's deadly attacks, followed by President Bush signing the USA PATRIOT Act the following month. These are trying times for technology activists, lawyers and other random savants who gather each year for the ritual of the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, which pits them against their ideological foes in government and the entertainment industry.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51987,00.html

Where the Brain Makes Decisions
They are life's perennial questions: Pepsi or Coke, Mac or PC, cremation or burial? Scientists in the United Kingdom believe they may be close to unraveling some of the brain processes that ultimately dictate the choices we make as consumers. Using a revolutionary method of imaging the brain, researchers from the Open University (OU) and the London Business School say they have identified the brain region that becomes active as the shopper reaches to the supermarket shelf to make their final choice.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,51839,00.html

Spinning Black Holes May Act Like Giant Batteries
Researchers have found a possible source for enigmatic high-energy particles called cosmic rays in a study that shows rapidly spinning black holes may act as giant batteries, shooting particles into the cosmos at nearly the speed of light. The study involved four aged galaxies that used to be among the brightest beacons in the universe but are now somewhat worn out. These former quasars, as they would have been called, might help solve a longstanding mystery about cosmic rays.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ys_020422.html

Experiment confirms Sun theories
Neutrinos - some of nature's most elusive sub-atomic particles - do change their properties as they travel through space. New evidence confirms last year's indication that one type of neutrino emerging from the Sun's core does switch to another type en route to the Earth. This explains the so-called solar neutrino mystery, which has had scientists puzzled for 30 years - why so few of the particles expected to emerge from the nuclear furnace in our star can actually be detected.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1943837.stm

‘AstroMom’ in a friendly rivalry with pop singer
A 40-year-old “AstroMom” is competing with a 22-year-old boy-band singer to take the first commercially sponsored trip to the international space station. But Lori Garver, former NASA official and would-be space traveler, doesn’t see ’NSync’s Lance Bass as her enemy — in fact, she speaks of him as a teammate in a common cosmic quest. Within a week or two, the Russians are expected to signal whether one of them will go into space this fall.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/727613.asp?0si=-

China At-Home Net Head Count No. 2 In World
New data showing that China now has the world's second-largest Internet population does not come close to illustrating the Net's staggering potential in a country where only one out of three homes has a phone line. Some 56.6 million people have home Internet access in China, second only to the U.S. Net population of 166 million, Nielsen//NetRatings said today. But China's home penetration rate of slightly more than 5 percent leaves plenty of room for growth, said Hugh Bloch, managing director of the Internet audience measurement service's North Asia operation.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176049.html

Lawmakers Say Royalty Rates Will Kill Small Webcasters
A clutch of lawmakers today urged the U.S. Copyright Office to reconsider a music-royalties proposal that they say would force small Internet broadcasters out of business. We believe that a balanced approach for royalties based on traditional compensation formulas can be created to ensure that artists and recording companies receive compensation commensurate of their services, while not penalizing the webcasting industry," a bipartisan group of 20 U.S. House members wrote today.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176056.html

More news later on

[walktalker]

What ? No bump yet ??? Here's one