The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

You've found the king baby

Video companies chase fast Net access
The video-on-demand and Net access industries are engaged in a tug-of-war over broadband connections, sparking debates about when an Internet connection should be considered "high speed." Video-on-demand (VOD) companies need speedy Internet connections to keep their high-end services alive. But broadband providers increasingly are dropping speeds and prices to attract more subscribers. "Video-on-demand providers are afraid the free gravy train for cable modem users is going to end," said Dylan Brooks, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-894548.html

Cybersquatters claim victory in domain battle
In a victory for cybersquatters and others who snatch up domain names containing personal monikers, a dispute-resolution board has refused to turn over Web addresses containing the words "Kathleen Kennedy Townsend." Townsend, Maryland's lieutenant governor and a potential candidate for governor this year, discovered that a Baltimore man had registered several Web addresses with her name, including kennedytownsend.org and kathleenkennedytownsend.com.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-894403.html

Dmitry employer on copyright crusade
Russian programmer Alexander Katalov landed in Moscow a week ago just in time to celebrate his wife's birthday. The flight came at the end of what the ElcomSoft CEO hopes will be his last trip to the United States for a while. Katalov has spent many months away from his family since last July, when his company found itself on the wrong side of the law as a defendant in the first major test case of the criminal provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( DMCA). The Russian company faces charges that it offered technology that can be used to crack protections on Adobe Systems' e-books.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-894287.html

Experts doubt 'drive-by' hack charge
Allegations by French media group Vivendi Universal that an embarrassing flop in a shareholder vote last week was down to hacker sabotage make little sense, security experts said on Monday. Vivendi, whose controversial chief executive Jean-Marie Messier has come under fire from investors in recent weeks, issued a statement on Sunday alleging hackers may have tampered with a vote last week that would have granted a new stock option plan for company executives.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-894400.html

SuSE looks to stabilize Linux
SuSE, the German Linux distributor, is increasingly trying to insulate its corporate customers from what many see as a core trait of open-source software: its changeability. With a corporate reorganization at the end of last year, the company decided to step up its efforts to tailor its software to large businesses running high-end machines like mainframes. The result is stricter control of its corporate software, called SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, whose technical support terms require that customers don't make too many changes of their own. While the move doesn't affect the way SuSE's software itself is licensed, it is a philosophical shift away from one of the advantages that made Linux popular: the ability of users to freely tweak the software to suit their own purposes.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-893967.html

MS top security cop stuck in traffic
Meet Microsoft's new tough cop: a security czar who says he will draw heavily on his government background to shore up the holes in Microsoft's software that make it a popular target for hackers -- one of the company's top missions for the year. "I'm going to spend a lot of time commuting between the two Washingtons," Scott Charney told Reuters in an interview. Charney assumed his new role as chief security strategist at Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft on April 1.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-893803.html

Microsoft denies Windows incompatibility
A Microsoft executive on Monday denied charges that the company tries to gain advantage by making its Windows operating system incompatible with rivals' software. Microsoft Vice President Robert Short, the fourth Microsoft executive to testify in the landmark antitrust trial, said the software giant makes "significant efforts" to make its operating system work well with its competitors' software. "I emphatically disagree with the suggestion that Microsoft deliberately introduces incompatibilities to prevent our competitors' software from working with our products," Short said in written testimony.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-894412.html?tag=fd_top

Liquid Audio to let subscribers burn music
Liquid Audio and an EMI division plan to launch a service on Monday that lets subscribers burn tunes to a CD or transfer them to portable devices. Redwood City, Calif.-based Liquid Audio said its service, dubbed BurnItFirst.com, will carry a collection of songs from EMI CMG, a Christian music company that is a unit of EMI Music. Among the artists will be Steven Curtis Chapman, Newsboys, Avalon and Jump 5. Liquid Audio said subscribers will be able to burn a song to a CD up to three times and export it to five different portable devices.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-893707.html?tag=fd_top

Employees seen as computer saboteurs
Digital cameras, MP3 players and handheld computers could be the tools that disgruntled UK employees use to sabotage computer systems or steal vital data, warn security experts. The removable memory cards inside the devices could be used to bring in software that looks for vulnerabilities on a company's internal network. The innocent-looking devices could also be used to smuggle out confidential or sensitive information.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1946368.stm

Lara Croft getup going once...
For sale -- one Lara Croft outfit, hardly used, perfect for fancy dress parties. The original outfit created for the star of video games and the movies has gone under the virtual hammer in a charity Internet auction. The 10-day bidding, launched by game makers Eidos on auction site eBay Friday, reached $1,857 by Monday morning. The outfit, worn by Nell McAndrew who modeled as Lara Croft from 1998 to 1999, is described as "one of the rarest and most desirable items in video- game history."
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-893856.html?tag=cd_mh

Fox slinks away from Movies.com venture
Fox Entertainment said Friday it is pulling out of Movies.com, its movies-on-demand venture with Walt Disney, in another setback to plans by Hollywood studios to sell films directly to consumers over the Internet. Los Angeles-based Fox, a unit of News Corp., said it made its decision "after considering the potential regulatory process and logistical issues and carefully examining technological and marketplace developments."
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-893683.html?tag=cd_mh

Borg of the Dance
In a nondescript concrete soundstage nestled between classrooms at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, three dancers are leaping, embracing, lifting and lunging their way through a routine against the backdrop of an unadorned wall. But for audience members tuning in on Internet2, the sight is quite different. The onscreen stage is set with digital props -- moving visions of city streets, flea market stands and World Trade Center rubble. Live images of the dancers are interspersed with the film.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,51957,00.html

XP Updates Start to P.O. Users
One of the purported user-friendly features of Microsoft's new operating system is turning out to be user-annoying. As many as three times a week, on average, XP users see a little window pop-up at the bottom of their computer screens announcing the availability of another new update for their system. This plethora of patches has left many users wondering whether their hard drives are big enough to handle "Trustworthy Computing."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52108,00.html

Quake Response in Two Shakes
In 1989, a 7.1 earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay Area, causing the Bay Bridge to sever, the Nimitz freeway to collapse, and the ground beneath the Marina District to liquefy -- all in just 15 seconds. Scientists predict that there is a 70 percent chance that an earthquake of at least 6.7 magnitude will rock the Bay Area before 2030. With those odds, in a state lined with hotbeds of seismic activity, preparedness is critical.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52116,00.html

Kamen Gives the Kids a Shot
Some high school students got their first taste of geek culture this weekend and discovered that science and technology is anything but boring. Led by a man who is rarely spotted without his souped-up scooter that he now refers to as his "magic sneakers," kids from 650 schools competed in the 10th annual FIRST Robotics National Competition, held at Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,52166,00.html

SDMI: Quintessential Vaporware
Four years ago the record industry and some technology companies banded together to match wits in a combined effort to stamp out Internet music piracy. Their goal: to usher in an age of secure digital songs wrapped in unbreakable code. The Secure Digital Music Initiative was supposed to be just the medicine to marginalize the Napster phenomenon. Soon, there would be SDMI protected CDs and SDMI digital music downloads playing only on SDMI-compliant devices. Failure would mean "the Internet will simply become a world where nothing happens, where nothing has value," SDMI's director, Leonardo Chiariglione, said at the time.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52163,00.html

Heart Docs to Make Mouse Calls
A new monitor that will keep track of implantable cardiac devices means heart patients might be able to visit their doctors in a virtual way. The device, CareLink, can transfer information about the patient's implanted cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) on a phone line so that a doctor can access the information anywhere an Internet connection is handy. Thousands of patients may benefit from using the monitor because existing ICDs don't require adjusting.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,51882,00.html

Most Commercial Broadcasters Will Miss Deadline for Digital Television
Another milestone in the nation's tortured transition to digital television is about to be missed. Almost three-quarters of the commercial broadcasters that were supposed to be offering a digital signal by Wednesday will fail to make the deadline. The delay is a further indication that the federally mandated transition to digital broadcasting will take longer than the planners had expected in the mid-1990's. But the missed deadline comes as no surprise. Hundreds of stations have been filing requests for extensions recently, citing a variety of financial and technical reasons.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/29/te...ss/29TUBE.html

WiFi: Computer Users Plugged In, Without The Plug
Donna Gallagher's sitting in the sunroom with her laptop computer, clicking away on the Ebay auction site. She drifts into the bedroom, still clicking and bidding. Whoops -- now it's the bathroom -- but that Prada bag isn't going to get away from her. That's the scene as Gallagher, administrative assistant to a roofing contractor, paints it. Her wireless connection to the Internet has made her something of an online auction addict, sometimes spending three or more hours at night in her Wilmington, N.C., home bidding on fashion and beauty items she'd otherwise have to drive a hundred miles to buy.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176191.html

"Exact uncertainty" brought to quantum world
Exact uncertainty sounds like a contradiction in terms, but that is what governs the quantum world, according to a theoretical physicist who has created an improved version of the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Heisenberg worked out that there is a degree of inherent fuzziness to the world. You cannot measure both the position and the momentum of any particle with perfect accuracy. The better the accuracy of your momentum measurement, the more uncertain your position measurement must be, and vice versa.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992209

I'm the human genome, says 'Darth Venter' of genetics
Craig Venter, the controversial geneticist who led private industry's decoding of the human genome, has revealed a startling secret. The genome - unravelled two years ago - is his. To the surprise of scientists, Venter has admitted that much of the DNA used by his company, Celera Genomics, as part of this decoding effort came from his cells. The news has annoyed his colleagues, who claim that Venter subverted the careful, anonymous selection process they had established for their DNA donors.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Ar...403109,00.html

Ads.com Launches, AdCritic Vows Competition
After two years in development, Ads.com today launched a Web site where consumers not only can replay current television commercials, they also can get information about companies and their products. Ads.com said it has obtained an agreement with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) that will allow it to legally show commercials on the Web.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176216.html

Porn-Password Net Ordered To Police Copyrights
A federal court judge has ordered the operator of a members-only network for access to adult Web sites to crack down on copyright infringement on Web sites run by many of its nearly 300,000 affiliates. A massive policing effort ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Lourdes Baird in Los Angeles last week means that Cybernet Ventures must eventually examine the content of thousands of sites linked to its popular Adult Check system in a hunt for the names and photographs of celebrities and models represented by the tony nude magazine "Perfect 10."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176209.html

Online Newspapers Top Local News Source On Web
This just in: Web surfers looking for local news on the Internet are most likely to visit online newspapers, beating out Yahoo, local television sites and America Online. And there's more: seasoned Internet users have a greater likelihood of going to newspaper Web sites than Net newbies. Now for the news advertisers and newspaper executives have been waiting for: consumers who read online newspapers make more money than Web users in general and are better educated.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176208.html

E-Mail Opens New Door For Familiar Scam Tactic
He is a suburban Washington entrepreneur, middle-aged, prosperous -- and too humiliated to discuss how a businessman as smart as he could fall for such an obvious scam. But later this year, the local entrepreneur, who spoke on condition of anonymity, may be in a Canadian courtroom to recount a disquieting tale of being duped out of $750,000 via an unsolicited fax. The get-rich-quick con, dubbed the "Nigerian Letter Scam" by authorities, was operated out of Toronto and Nigeria from 1994 to 2000 and swindled more than 300 people, including about 20 in the Washington area, out of approximately $20 million, according to law enforcement officials.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176181.html

More news later on

[goldie]

XP Updates Start to P.O. Users

One of the purported user-friendly features of Microsoft's new operating system is turning out to be user-annoying. As many as three times a week, on average, XP users see a little window pop-up at the bottom of their computer screens announcing the availability of another new update for their system. This plethora of patches has left many users wondering whether their hard drives are big enough to handle "Trustworthy Computing."
http://www.wired.com/news/technolog...2,52108,00.html

NU XP peeps - is this true?!

This was also veeeeery interesting............

Some XP users were amused to see that Microsoft had included "compatibility patches" for several file-sharing applications in the April 2002 XP update.

"Windows XP has all these severe anti-piracy features built-in, yet the company is putting out patches to make sure that Kazaa and Grokster works well with XP," said Nicky Caldone, an attorney. "Call it what you will, file-sharing apps are all about pirating."

A Microsoft company spokesman said Microsoft doesn't consider what an application's purpose is when deciding whether to issue a compatibility update.

"It's still pretty funny that Microsoft, who has been quite vocal about the cost and consequences of piracy, would include patches for file-sharing applications in XP's updates," Caldone said.

[ssj4_android]

Actually, I have to defend microsoft a little bit. The play all in the music folder works with winamp :P. That's not very much of an example though.