The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

MS licensing: Pay now or pay more later
Market researcher Gartner on Tuesday again warned corporate technology managers that they could pay more for their next Microsoft software upgrades if they fail to sign up for a controversial licensing plan before a July 31 deadline. Microsoft introduced its Licensing 6 plan one year ago this month. The plan includes a controversial new program known as Software Assurance. Under the program, rather than simply being able to upgrade their software when they want to -- and when their budgets allow -- companies would need to commit to buying operating-system and application upgrades ahead of time through an annual fee.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-919128.html

Poll exposes cracks in AOL's armor
A survey by investment and research firm ChangeWave Investment Research of its clients who are current and former subscribers of America Online showed that 40 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with the service. The survey conducted by ChangeWave, whose clients include hedge fund managers, polled a member community comprised of professionals in 20 sectors that were mostly early adopters of new technologies such as high-speed services. Most of AOL's 34 million plus Internet subscribers are often characterized "as mainstream" and slower to adopt new technologies.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-919124.html

Sony: Game wars are over -- we win
With most of the actual news, such as console price cuts and online strategies, having leaked out weeks ago, Sony kicked off the game industry's biggest trade show by trash-talking the competition. Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, used the company's press conference in advance of the Electronic Entertainment Expo to tout the huge sales lead of Sony's PlayStation 2 over Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-919372.html

Senate lays down the law on security
The Senate Commerce Committee has approved a bill that would create a set of "best practices" for computer security for federal departments and agencies, among other things. The standards provision, added to the proposed Cyber Security Research and Development Act late last week by Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., is a sticking point for industry groups, which say it could pose a threat to national security by encouraging the use of old technology.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-919506.html

Six arrested over 'Nigerian e-mail' fraud
Six people were arrested in South Africa over the weekend on suspicion of being involved in the infamous "Nigerian" e-mail and letter fraud. Four of those detained were Nigerian, one was Cameroonian and the sixth was South African. Police in South Africa believe that the six are part of an international fraud and drug-dealing cartel, sending out thousands of e-mail and letters in an attempt to defraud. Police seized a large amount of drugs, as well as computer equipment and false identification papers. According to published reports from South Africa, officers from the UK's Scotland Yard were also involved in the operation.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-918960.html

Google asks users to try new technologies
It's a well-known mark of Google's success that its name has become a verb. On Tuesday the company is launching the future tense of that verb in the form of two sites for experimental search and browsing technologies. The first experiment page, Google Labs, lets Google users try out technologies fresh from Google's research and development team. At launch, these experiments include a glossary, a voice-search application, keyboard shortcuts for navigating through search results, and a tool for creating sets of Web sites or other items derived from a smaller set of like items.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-919404.html

Digital video starts small, thinks big
Digital video providers and entertainment companies are courting cash-strapped independent filmmakers as testing grounds for new technology and services. Microsoft this week announced that the movie festival Slamdunk, held this week in Cannes, France, has picked its upcoming video streaming platform to screen entries. The independent festival's producers will roll films using Microsoft's video encoding and decoding technology, called Corona, which has not yet been released publicly.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-919609.html?tag=fd_top

Google ushers Web surfers into its labs
It's a well-known mark of Google's success that its name has become a verb. On Tuesday the company is launching the future tense of that verb in the form of two sites for experimental search and browsing technologies. The first experiment page, Google Labs, lets Google users try out technologies fresh from Google's research and development team. At launch, these experiments include a glossary, a voice-search application, keyboard shortcuts for navigating through search results, and a tool for creating sets of Web sites or other items derived from a smaller set of like items.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-919173.html?tag=fd_top

Webcasters win reprieve from fees
Federal regulators on Tuesday rejected a proposed set of royalty rates for online music broadcasts, offering a glimmer of hope to Web radio stations that contend the fees would torpedo their young industry. A federal arbitration panel had recommended that Web radio stations pay about a seventh of a cent for each song they stream to an online listener. The proposal had prompted a storm of protest from smaller companies, culminating in an online "day of silence" and a lobbying trip to Washington by companies that said the rates would put them out of business.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-919468.html?tag=fd_top

Ticket market meets its digital future
The sidewalk ticket scalper is getting some competition online, with eBay, Ticketmaster, Tickets.com and several start-ups all hoping to get a piece of the action. eBay has been signing deals in recent months with start-up ticketing companies to bring concert and sporting event tickets to the auction site. In January, Ticketmaster began working with a professional hockey team to pilot a ticket-trading site, following earlier efforts by Tickets.com and start-up LiquidSeats. The ticketing giants plan to unveil these sites to larger audiences within the next year.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-918746.html?tag=fd_top

Clone free
Maybe in 2053, when my clone is having coffee with your clone, the arguments in Francis Fukuyama's cautionary polemic "Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution" will seem as quaint as the early opposition to railroads does today. But now, with so-called designer babies still as illusory as a reliable cure for male-pattern baldness, Fukuyama's warning cry about biotechnology is resonant enough to give even the biggest scientific boosters pause. Fukuyama, a professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University, argues that in the near future it won't be a corrupt state, à la Big Brother, that will use genetic engineering to undermine individual rights. The state won't have to.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/0...ama/index.html

Turning pictures into passwords
As we become ever more reliant on computers, remembering your passwords or coming up with one obscure enough to be secure can be a huge headache. If your password is as simple as the word, password, then logging on via a picture might be the answer. Microsoft is one of several firms working on image-based password systems. One such system being developed at Microsoft's research lab in the US uses a single image on which the a person makes a series of clicks. A painting with plenty of detail is the most suitable. Researchers are also working on a system which uses a library of faces. A person has to choose half a dozen in a particular order as their password.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1986713.stm

Storage networking fans move ahead
Advocates of special-purpose networks dedicated to transferring data to storage systems are moving ahead. High-end networking equipment maker Inrange has announced that IBM will sell its products, while networking chipmaker Vixel debuts a new chip and sets off in a new direction. IBM will sell Inrange's top-end FC9000 switch, which has 256 ports for connecting servers and storage systems to each other with the high-speed Fibre Channel storage networking technology, Inrange said Tuesday.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-919210.html?tag=cd_mh

House draws lines for kids online
Hoping to create a safe playground for children on the Web, the House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill that would gather sites designed for youth under a new Internet domain. The Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act, which passed 406-1, would set up a special domain where sites deemed child-friendly could reside. The measure calls for Washington, D.C.-based NeuStar to oversee .kids.us, a second-level domain within .us. Sites that use the .kids.us domain would be required to post material aimed at children.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-919416.html?tag=cd_mh

Does sex offender data belong online?
The Supreme Court has agreed to consider a state law that requires the posting of information about sex offenders on the Internet. The high court said Monday that it will hear arguments over Connecticut's "Megan's Law," a measure named after Megan Kanka, a New Jersey girl who was killed by a sex offender. Under the law, the addresses, names and photos of registered sex offenders must be posted in a state database available online. People search the database by entering information such as a ZIP code or the name of a town. All states have some version of the system.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-919150.html?tag=cd_mh

Agency signs on digital star Lara Croft
It could only happen in Hollywood: One of Tinseltown's biggest talent agencies on Monday signed up one of the video game and film industry's major stars, and here's the rub -- she's not real. Creative Artists Agency said they will represent digitally animated, digitally created Lara Croft of "Tomb Raider" fame for new products and promotional tie-ins. In Hollywood, Croft has big box office cachet.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-918641.html?tag=cd_mh

Kodak aims to make prints charming
Eastman Kodak on Tuesday launched a new entry-level digital camera and photo-management software aimed at easing consumers' primary, and often most perplexing, goal of turning their prized snapshots into high-quality prints. But analysts said the Rochester, N.Y.-based company still faces rugged competition in the digital market, which while in its relative infancy, brims with tough players, such as Sony, Olympus Optical and Nikon. Kodak EasyShare CX4230's features include a way to tag key pictures with a reminder to send the shot to over 30 e-mail addresses.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-918939.html?tag=cd_mh

A Good Sequence, Easy to Dance To
Scientists may soon be downloading our DNA from Kazaa and Audiogalaxy, if a California biotech firm has its way. Companies doing genomic research, like Redwood City's Maxygen, have a problem. To make money, the companies feel they need to control the rights to the DNA sequences they uncover. But patenting these sequences is ethically and legally tricky. So, Maxygen's scientists and lawyers are proposing a downright odd solution to this pickle: Encode the DNA sequences as MP3s or other music files and then copyright these genetic "tunes." There's been software on the market for years that can make this switch.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,52666,00.html

The New Supertanker Plague
Ships have been corroding since the late 18th century, when wooden hulls were first covered with copper to protect against worms. Mariners have recognized the threat to steel tankers in particular since the 1950s, and classification societies have established a regime of inspections and maintenance to keep corrosion at bay. But the system has failed. Ships that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build are falling apart on the open sea, endangering the lives of crew members and spilling millions of gallons of oil each year. Super-rust was initially explained as an unprecedented phenomenon, a highly evolved form of corrosion neither foreseeable nor preventable. The truth is less mysterious: Hyper-accelerated corrosion is the inevitable result when unforgiving chemistry meets the harsh economics and tangled industry politics of transporting fossil fuels.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/superrust.html

Bombs Yes, But No Crash in Israel
Bloody turbulence is not driving away technology investors in technology-mad Israel. According to a recent analysis by the Israel Venture Capital Research Center, since the Palestinian intifada began in September 2000, Israel has actually fared better than both Europe and the United States in attracting funding to its technology startups. Total dollars to technology startups fell 64 percent in the United States from 2000 to 2001, while in Europe they dropped 46 percent. Israel saw only a 36 percent drop.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52595,00.html

Hole Finder Wins 'Bug Bounty'
A popular Internet privacy service that lets Web surfers visit sites anonymously has fixed several serious flaws, and now the service's founder is offering a reward to the finder of the bugs. Bennett Haselton, an Internet filtering activist who runs the Peacefire website, found the problems with Anonymizer.com, a 5-year-old service that shields users from tracking by websites and their Internet providers.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52681,00.html

Consciousness Based on Wireless?
Human consciousness is actually wireless communication between the cells of your brain, according to a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey in Great Britain. Pulling together research from neuroscience, psychology, physics and biology, Johnjoe McFadden has proposed a radical answer to questions that have vexed philosophers and scientists since Plato's time and, more recently, those on a quest for artificial intelligence: What is consciousness? How does the brain create intelligent thoughts? Do we have free will?
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52674,00.html

China Secretly Readies Astronauts
Training in secret, a dozen fighter pilots are getting ready to make history as China's first astronauts. Two attended Russia's cosmonaut school, but little else is known about them. China's communist government, pursuing a unique, costly propaganda prize and worried about embarrassing setbacks, hasn't announced their names or a launch date.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52678,00.html

Thinking Big About Nanotechnology
Nanobots, molecular-scale robots that can clear clogged arteries or inspect and repair microfractures on aircraft and pipelines, are likely to remain science fiction for the foreseeable future. But materials that can shed dirt and stains are already here, and they represent what may be the first real revolution in technology since people first began chipping away at rocks.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52552,00.html

The Scientist Who Wrote Rings Around The Earth
A brilliant scientist who can write beautifully is an unusual creature, almost an evolutionary impossibility. It's like a flying horse, or a talking shark. Nature usually is sparing when it hands out talent and specializations. Stephen Jay Gould -- who died of lung cancer yesterday at the age of 60 -- was a prize example of a very rare breed. Gould was a professor at Harvard, a longtime columnist for Natural History magazine, the author of numerous bestsellers, and a dependably feisty public intellectual.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002May20.html

Nanotube transistor "outperforms" silicon
Researchers at IBM have fabricated a carbon nanotube transistor that mimics the design of modern silicon transistors but performs much better. Transistors are the "switches" in electronic circuits, controlling the current that represents digital information. Making transistors smaller means more can be packed into circuits, resulting in more powerful computer chips. But silicon transistors are expected to reach their physical limit of miniaturisation in the next couple of decades. Researchers hope nanotube devices may help keep circuits shrinking towards the atomic scale.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992303

'Spider-Man' Creeps Around Web, But Obi-Wan's MIA
Though "Spider-Man" apparently is spinning an illicit web around the Internet, the young Obi-Wan Kenobi is nowhere to be seen. At least not by traders using the Kazaa peer-to-peer system to pirate the latest Hollywood flicks. Redshift Research has been monitoring new, popularly released films that are available for trade on Kazaa – currently the leading Napster heir. According to the company, founded by former Webnoize analyst Matt Bailey, the first working copy of the wallcrawler's mega-hit found its way onto Kazaa on May 12, nine days after it was released to theaters.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176709.html

August 26 Trial Date Set For E-book Cracking Case
Russian software company Elcomsoft Ltd. will go to trial Aug. 26 on criminal charges under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a federal judge ruled Monday after a date-setting hearing. The case, the first criminal prosecution under a law that prohibits circumvention of copyright-protection technology, was practically guaranteed a trial earlier this month when U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte rejected Elcomsoft's argument that free-speech rights clearly protect software it sells that is capable of bypassing the security measures in Adobe's eBook technology.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176704.html

Brilliant Digital Flips Switch On Altnet For Kazaa Users
Brilliant Digital Entertainment raised eyebrows last month with news that it was poised to deploy a new peer- to-peer network from a beachhead within the popular Kazaa file- sharing software. But the launch of Altnet this week isn't exactly the annexation of personal computers some Kazaa users may have feared. Instead, the first service from the Brilliant Digital subsidiary is being served up from Altnet's and its sponsors' own computers, rather than through unused disk space and bandwidth belonging to Kazaa subscribers.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176689.html

More news later on

[floydian slip]

Originally posted by walktalker

'Spider-Man' Creeps Around Web, But Obi-Wan's MIA
Though "Spider-Man" apparently is spinning an illicit web around the Internet, the young Obi-Wan Kenobi is nowhere to be seen. At least not by traders using the Kazaa peer-to-peer system to pirate the latest Hollywood flicks. Redshift Research has been monitoring new, popularly released films that are available for trade on Kazaa – currently the leading Napster heir. According to the company, founded by former Webnoize analyst Matt Bailey, the first working copy of the wallcrawler's mega-hit found its way onto Kazaa on May 12, nine days after it was released to theaters.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176709.html

also from the article:

"We haven't been able to find any (copies), and we've downloaded probably six copies of files that claim to be 'Star Wars,'" Bailey said. He said that among those downloads, researchers found either blank files or copies of two completely unrelated movies, "Monsters Inc." and "Showtime."

I found it on KaZaa, its labeled " TMD Star Wars II Attack of the Clones part 1 of 2" and "2 of 2" The audio is a bit garbled for the first few minutes in each part and the darker scenes are harder to see, but overall, I was pleased.

To view it I needed to d/l MPEG4 V3 codecs which I found here http://www.undercut.org/msmpeg4/ you may need to install Japaneese fonts to view the page.

BTW Thanks to Malk and naz and pb8 for trying to help me the other day but mIRC is frustrating and evil. I always end up feeling like an stupid idiot after a session there.

BTW Glad you are still alive Walktalker.

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
Consciousness Based on Wireless?
Human consciousness is actually wireless communication between the cells of your brain, according to a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey in Great Britain. Pulling together research from neuroscience, psychology, physics and biology, Johnjoe McFadden has proposed a radical answer to questions that have vexed philosophers and scientists since Plato's time and, more recently, those on a quest for artificial intelligence: What is consciousness? How does the brain create intelligent thoughts? Do we have free will?
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52674,00.html

A most interesting topic even if the story scratched just the surface of it. Field phenomena might go a long way to explain the holistic nature of consciousness despite the huge complexity of the signaling going on between the billions of neurons. On the other hand the new approach makes modelling of the brain even more tricky: besides the signaling circuitry you would also have to take into account the geometrical shapes and mutual locations of the neuron groups and neural pathways.

And yes, it is great that your parents did not choose to kill you, WT!

- tg