The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

Please, don't shoot the newsman, ladies... yet

Supreme Court cracks down on Web porn
In a minor setback for civil liberties groups challenging a law that cracks down on Internet smut, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the Child Online Protection Act may not be overly broad. On Monday, justices voted 8-1 to send the case back for reconsideration by the lower court that struck down the law. However, the high court did not lift an injunction preventing enforcement of the law, meaning the government's hands are still tied when it comes to blocking content deemed harmful to minors.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-912422.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52478,00.html

Microsoft: States have proved nothing
Microsoft closed out testimony in its landmark antitrust case on Friday, declaring that the states seeking strict sanctions against the company had failed to prove their case. Microsoft's final witness left the stand, ending 32 days of testimony -- including an appearance by company chairman Bill Gates -- on how best to prevent future antitrust violations. Microsoft's fate rests in the hands of U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly who is also weighing a proposed settlement the company reached with the U.S. Justice Department in November.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-911885.html

RealNames: Microsoft move shut us down
Internet keyword company RealNames said Monday that it has decided to close shop because Microsoft wouldn't renew its contract with the company. RealNames shut down operations Monday and laid off 83 employees. The company said it would be liquidating its assets and "making every effort to maximize their value for the benefit of (RealNames') creditors and shareholders." Documents published on the Web site of former RealNames CEO Keith Teare say the company owed Microsoft $25 million, due Friday, and that it was in no position to pay.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-911944.html

Dell eyes future in projectors
Dell Computer is shining a new light on projectors. The PC maker announced Monday that it has begun selling a new portable projector that can be paired with its notebook PCs. The 3.5-pound 3100MP LCD projector is designed to let salespeople make presentations and then hit the road again. Or it could also be used in company conference rooms, then stored in an out-of-the-way location. A small number of companies or even consumers may use the machine to play movies or view multimedia presentations
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-912623.html

AMD beefs up flash memory
Advanced Micro Devices is sampling a new flash memory chip that promises to double storage capacity and give Intel a run for its money in the market for cellular phones and other consumer electronics devices. AMD said Monday that it has begun shipping MirrorBit, its newest flash memory technology, to its device maker partners in small quantities. The memory stores 2 bits of data per cell -- flash memory's smallest unit of data storage -- instead of the typical 1 bit.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-912119.html

New battle plans alter IM wars
Calls for opening instant messaging services are fading as the three biggest providers wage a protracted war for market share.
Two years ago, Internet heavyweights routinely criticized America Online for refusing to allow competitors to communicate with its AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) system. AOL, then trying to win regulatory approval in its acquisition of Time Warner, was labeled a bully and criticized for perpetuating a closed network, to the detriment of consumers. Today, the nature of the debate has shifted and the voices have been tempered -- largely due to the successes of AOL's biggest challengers.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-911844.html

MSN Web sites, Passport hit by outage
Microsoft on Sunday afternoon restored its MSN Web sites and services that had been inaccessible most of the morning and left many users unable to access game, Web-based e-mail, chat, search and other features. The outage also brought down for a while MSNBC.com and Newsweek.com, which has a hosting arrangement with the Microsoft-NBC news site. Sunday's lack of access was the latest in a series of recent glitches affecting MSN Web sites or Passport online authentication services.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-911965.html

Big Xbox price cut expected soon
Microsoft has told major U.S. retailers it plans to announce a price cut for its Xbox video game console within days, sources familiar with those discussions said on Friday. A Microsoft representative declined to comment, saying the company talks to its partner companies on a regular basis and that "conversations we have with them are confidential." A price cut for the Xbox has been widely expected in recent weeks by industry analysts who have said the cut could jump-start sales ahead of the traditionally slow summer months.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-911898.html

Sun says Yahoo for portal software
Sun Microsystems, which makes software for building corporate portal Web sites, will soon make Yahoo's content available to Sun business customers. The company on Monday will announce plans to build Yahoo technology into its portal-server software, which allows businesses to create portals for their employees, customers and business partners. Such portals give people one view to corporate e-mail and other company information, such as human resources and sales data. Individual employees can personalize their portal pages for their specific needs.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-911744.html?tag=fd_top

Wanna buy a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet for $10?
The history of writing is for sale on the Internet, and it's cheap. The opening bid for a cuneiform cone that allegedly hails from 2000 B.C.E. starts at $1. A square tablet recording a sale that took place more than 4,000 years ago of a sheep, or maybe some grain -- it's a little hard to read -- well, that receipt will set you back less than $10. Every day on auction sites like eBay, the artifacts of the ancient Sumerian world -- some of the earliest examples of human writing -- are being sold off like so many mass-produced Tinkerbell tchotchkes. And these tidbits of the past are shockingly inexpensive: for less than a 1960s Donald Duck pinwheel from the Mickey Mouse Club, history plunderers can purchase their very own treasure.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/0...ian/index.html

A New Weapon To Fight Spam
Tuning out the occasional sales plug is part of life. But there are limits to the number of cheap come-ons for pornography, herbal marital aids, free travel and cheap home equity loans that one person can endure in a single day. The civilized e-mail user has only a few options available to combat spam. Most choose to ignore it and hit the "delete" key. But that's not nearly as satisfying as fighting back by reporting the sender to their Internet service provider. Services on the Web, like Spamcop.net and Abuse.net, can be helpful if time-consuming weapons. Others resort to the quixotic struggle of creating filters within their e-mail programs, like Qualcomm's Eudora and Microsoft's Outlook with varying levels of success. Now McAfee is weighing in with a new weapon of its own, a software program aptly called Spamkiller.
http://www.forbes.com/home/2002/05/13/0513tentech.html

Pope gives benediction to Internet
Pope John Paul II is putting his faith in the Internet.
In his weekly address at St. Peter's Square on Sunday, the 81-year-old Pontiff said: "I've decided, therefore, to propose a big new theme for this year: 'The Internet -- a new forum for proclaiming the Gospel.'" The leader of the world's Roman Catholics didn't say how much he practices what he preaches -- for instance, whether he surfs the World Wide Web. He doesn't have his own e-mail address.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-912013.html?tag=cd_mh

Nintendo reveals online plans
Nintendo on Monday announced plans to bring Internet play to its GameCube, making the company the last console maker to step into the as-yet unproven online market. Nintendo announced that it will begin selling a network adapter for broadband Internet connections and a modem for dial-up connections -- both priced at $35 -- starting this fall. The first games to take advantage of online GameCube play will be two new versions of Sega's Phantasy Star Online, the first major console game to offer online play, through Sega's now-defunct Dreamcast console. GameCube versions of "Phantasy Star Online I" and "Phantasy Star Online II" are set to be available this fall. The service will work with most ISP connections.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-912630.html?tag=cd_mh

Blockbuster widens video game array
Blockbuster, the No. 1 video rental chain, will revamp more than 4,300 of its outlets in the next month to include an area dedicated to sales of video games and game equipment, the company said Monday. The move comes at a time when the retail chains that specialize in video game hardware and software have posted record revenue and impressive growth rates, building on the game industry's sales of more than $9 billion last year. Dallas-based Blockbuster, which is controlled by media giant Viacom, is betting that it can take a bigger share of that booming market by allowing consumers a chance to buy game consoles and rent or buy the games they play, all in a single location.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-911785.html?tag=cd_mh

PCs: For Whom the Decibels Toll
The humming sound emanating from the machines wasn't that irritating at first. But it eventually got on Bird's nerves enough to try to fix it. By replacing a heat sink -- the device that conducts heat away from a microprocessor -- and installing new internal fans in the home-built PCs, he got the noise down to a tolerable level. Figuring there were others who shared his noise sensitivity, Bird decided to turn the lessons he learned from tinkering into a business. He opened an online store selling parts to reduce processing noise.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52438,00.html

Sonicblue Balks at Court Order
Sonicblue Inc. moved on Monday to overturn a court order for it to spy on users of its digital recording devices and share detailed viewing data with major studios and television networks, saying the order would violate privacy rights. Santa Clara-based Sonicblue called the May 2 order from Central District Court Magistrate Charles Eick "breathtaking and unprecedented" and said the directive to track what television viewers watch "violates consumers' privacy rights, including those guaranteed by the First and Fourth Amendments."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52498,00.html

Docs: 'Nonoxynol-9 Doesn't Work'
A contraceptive many hoped would protect against sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, offers no such benefits, according to a review of studies on the issue presented Monday. The first-ever meta-analysis of studies on the protective benefits of nonoxynol-9 against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases found that the spermicide offered no significant protection against any such infections, said David Wilkinson, a professor of rural health at the University of South Australia in Adelaide who conducted the analysis.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,52481,00.html

Hope for New AIDS Weapon
AIDS researchers looking for ways to prevent more HIV infections have their sights set on a range of gels and creams that many believe will eventually offer uninfected people the best possible defense against the virus, short of a vaccine. These microbicides could also take the form of a film or tablet similar to those used as contraceptives. But while some microbicides might be formulated to protect against pregnancy, their primary purpose would be to attack HIV, offering potentially life-saving protection to any sexually active person who uses them.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,52430,00.html

Honoring Wired's Patron Saint
Nearly ten years ago, Wired anointed media theorist Marshall McLuhan the magazine's "patron saint." Now, this intellectual icon -– who coined terms like "the global village" and "the medium is the message" -– gets a hagiography, a new documentary called McLuhan's Wake. The movie, which had its American première on Friday at the Museum of Television and Radio's Television Documentary Festival, attempts both to capture the essence of a few of McLuhan's best known ideas and to summarize McLuhan's fluorescently colorful life.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,52441,00.html

Cult Film Company Goes Digital
Lloyd Kaufman runs the most successful movie studio that you can't quite place. The names of his films sound vaguely familiar -- The Toxic Avenger, for example -- but you don't know why. Odds are, you've seen snatches of his movies while channel surfing in those desolate hours just before the sun comes up. You wonder what in the hell you've stumbled upon. This year, Kaufman's Hollywood on the Hudson film company is making a tech transition from low-budget film productions to, well, low-budget digital productions.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52297,00.html

Navy Tries New Air Sickness Test
The U.S. Navy is going to offer its pilots a new training tool to familiarize them with the symptoms of altitude sickness. It's officially called reduced oxygen breathing device, or ROBD, but those involved refer to it as hypoxia-in-a-box -- hypoxia being the medical term for high-flying woes. It is being lauded as a cheaper and safer alternative to the current training method, which has crew members playing games of patty-cake in a pressure chamber.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,52250,00.html

Nasa hunts net for shuttle parts
The American space agency, Nasa, has begun trawling the internet for spare parts for its shuttles, according to United Space Alliance, the company that runs the shuttle fleet. The shuttles, first launched in 1981, often rely on computer components that are so out of date, they are no longer made. The space ships even use a type of computer disk drive that was outmoded by the end of the 1970s. Nasa is hunting internet sale and auction sites like Yahoo and e-Bay for shuttle parts that are so antiquated, they would be unrecognisable to the average computer user today.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1985138.stm

A New Direction for Intellectual Property
Perceiving an overly zealous culture of copyright protection, a group of law and technology scholars are setting up Creative Commons, a nonprofit company that will develop ways for artists, writers and others to easily designate their work as freely shareable. Creative Commons, which is to be officially announced this week at a technology conference in Santa Clara, Calif., has nearly a million dollars in start-up money. The firm's founders argue that the expansion of legal protection for intellectual property, like a 1998 law extending the term of copyright by 20 years, could inhibit creativity and innovation. But the main focus of Creative Commons will be on clearly identifying the material that is meant to be shared. The idea is that making it easier to place material in the public domain will in itself encourage more people to do so.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/13/te...gy/13FREE.html

Does new Europe law mean slammer for DRM crackers?
Forthcoming EU legislation could criminalise Europeans who circumvent copyright protection. Fears that the pending European Union Copyright Directive could lead to a European re-run of the Dmitri Sklyarov prosecution were much in evidence during the recent Campaign for Digital Rights mini-conference at London's City University. But Matthew Rippon, of Ipswich law firm Prettys Solicitors, says such fears are misplaced and that the EUCD will lead to only civil - not criminal - court actions in Europe.
http://www.theregus.com/content/6/24927.html

Pentagon alienating elite science advisers
For more than 40 years, an elite group of academic scientists has provided the federal government with largely classified advice on the most vital issues of national security. Every summer they have met behind closed doors for almost two months near San Diego, emerging with judgments that have helped shape the nation's policies -- from ending nuclear testing to preparing for the danger of bioterrorism. But when the Pentagon tried to redirect the group, known simply as "Jason,'' toward information technology and force it to accept Silicon Valley executives in its ranks, the scientists balked. And now this highly secret group of advisers and the independent science-based analysis it provides may be in jeopardy.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/3252347.htm

Copy protected discs may cause Mac booting problem
Certain music CDs fitted with digital barriers to stop copying can also cause some Apple computers to crash and refuse to spit out the incompatible disc. The CDs are designed not to play in personal computers as a deterrent to digital copying. Each CD comes with a small warning label: "Will NOT play in PC/Mac". The CDs can cause Mac computers to freeze and then reboot to a grey screen, according to an Apple technical support report. The computer may then refuse to restart until the CD has been manually ejected, which may not be possible without opening up some parts of the machine. However, the problem does not cause any permanent damage to the computer.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992271

Attack of the Zombie Rembrandts
So it is that in U.S. federal district court in White Plains, we now have a documented case of an attack by an exhumed, “undead” Rembrandt. This case finds the plaintiff, British Telecommunications, coming after Internet service provider Prodigy (with warnings to 16 other Internet firms as well), trying to enforce a partially decomposed, old hyperlink patent. You read it right. British Telecom is claiming a valid U.S. monopoly on the ubiquitous system that links the pages of the Internet into that great worldwide Web. Every little hop you take online, the good chaps at BT want a piece of it.
http://www.techreview.com/articles/shulman0502.asp

DNA nanoballs boost gene therapy
Scrunching up DNA into ultra-tiny balls could be the key to making gene therapy safer and more efficient. The technique is now being tested on people with cystic fibrosis. So far, modified viruses have proved to be the most efficient way of delivering DNA to cells to make up for genetic faults. But viruses cannot be given to the same person time after time because the immune system starts attacking them. Viruses can also cause severe reactions. As a result, researchers increasingly favour other means of delivering genes, such as encasing DNA in fatty globules called liposomes that can pass through the membranes round cells.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992257

RIAA Taps Rosen As Chairman; Sherman President
The trade group that backs the five major record companies promoted several key figures today, handing President and CEO Hilary Rosen the title of chairman, and rolling the job of president over to organization's chief legal counsel, Cary Sherman. Both Rosen and Sherman have been instrumental in the RIAA's fight against digital music piracy, with Rosen serving as the trade group's primary public mouthpiece. Sherman, meanwhile has helped lead the RIAA's copyright wars against Napster, MP3.com, Aimster and Scour Exchange.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176550.html

Online Ad Biz Looking Up
The number of unique advertisements on the Web has jumped 33 percent since the beginning of the year, hitting an all-time high of nearly 70,000 in April, according to data released today. After bottoming out in January, the number of Internet ads began a steady climb to 69,838 last month, said a report by Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance. The count peaked in March 2001 at 68,458 before starting a downward trend.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176542.html

Kansas Teen Sentenced After Hackings
A Kansas teenager has pleaded guilty to hacking the official Web site of Stockton, Calif. and telling city officials he would secure it if they gave him a laptop computer. Matthew Kroeker, 18, was sentenced to serve two years probation and pay at least $18,000 restitution, his attorney Kevin Moriarty told Newsbytes. Kroeker pleaded guilty to four felony counts of computer crime in Johnson County District Court last week. Kroeker has learned a "valuable lesson" in the three years since the episodes began, Moriarty said. He was charged in March with 11 felony counts for allegedly defacing more than 50 sites during 2000 under the name "Artech."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176526.html

More news later on... if I'm still alive