The Newspaper Shop -- Memorial day edition

[walktalker]

MS privacy policies under EU probe
The European Commission is checking whether Microsoft's system of collecting personal data from Internet users breaks privacy laws, compounding the software giant's antitrust probe headaches in Europe. The European Union's executive arm announced its investigation into Microsoft's free .Net Passport service in a written response to a question from Erik Meijer, a Dutch member of the European Parliament.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-923035.html

Sun's StarOffice no longer free
Sun Microsystems is to drop its free downloads of StarOffice 5.2 on Wednesday night, as it ramps up promotional efforts around the fee-based StarOffice 6.0, the company said. In the meantime, Sun and Ximian announced a distribution deal bundling StarOffice 6.0 with fee-based Ximian products. Sun's maneuvres with StarOffice are being closely watched as open-source software businesses continue to search for ways to boost revenues. Paid, proprietary software is controversial in the open-source world, which is based on the theory that profits can be made on "free" products, but some open-source companies say it is the only way to continue to fund themselves.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-923039.html

Intel cuts Pentium prices
Intel slashed the price of Pentium 4 processors for desktops and notebooks over the weekend by up to 53 percent, an annual spring ritual designed to stimulate demand for its premier PC chip. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker cut the price of the desktop version of the chip from 12 percent to 43 percent, according to a price list issued by the company. The 2.4GHz version of the chip dropped from $562 to $400, a 29 percent drop, while the 2.26GHz and 2.2GHz versions of the chip fell from $423 to $241, a 43 percent drop. Other Pentium 4s were cut from 12 percent to 32 percent. Notebook chips dropped even more.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-923046.html?tag=fd_top

Amazon tests mail-order catalog listings
Amazon.com is testing a feature that would allow mail-order catalog companies to display their products on the e-tailer's site. The service, which Amazon began testing last week, allows catalog companies to post electronic versions of their print catalogs on Amazon, said Carrie Peters, a company spokeswoman. Customers can peruse the catalogs at Amazon but must call the phone numbers to each catalog company that Amazon posts to order goods.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-922955.html?tag=fd_top

Napster rebirth or requiem?
German media giant Bertelsmann has given Napster a chance for an encore by agreeing to acquire its assets. But two Wharton researchers say it may not matter much because the Napster brand name has been damaged, and the company may be yesterday's news. However, marketing professor Peter Fader and lecturer and doctoral candidate Sheen Levine, both of whom have conducted studies on Napster, agree on one thing: It is time for the music industry to change its litigious tune and stop viewing Napster and similar music-sharing services as threats.
http://news.com.com/2009-1023-923012.html?tag=fd_nc_1

The cult of connectivity
Not long ago, businessmen and women who took vacations could actually "get away from it all." Office equipment was too big to bring along, and people normally did not give out their hotel's telephone number to everyone on their Rolodex. Not so today. Your office can fit in a laptop and every contact has your cell phone number. Indeed, there are approximately 136 million subscribers in the United States alone, according to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. About 41 percent of U.S. households have a pager and 12 percent have a PDA, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.
http://news.com.com/2009-1017-922881.html?tag=cd_mh

Media firms lobby piracy controls to EU
Every CD or DVD manufactured in the European Union would have to carry code designed to help track down pirated discs if proposals by media trade groups are adopted. The proposal was delivered to the European Union during a two-day piracy seminar in Madrid. If adopted, it would enable the sources of pirated discs made in the EU to be tracked down, say the industry groups, which include the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA). Along with the unique code, called a Source Identification Code, the groups want more power to retrieve information that would help them identify the original manufacturer or distributor of the infringing goods.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-922706.html?tag=cd_mh

Supersonic Speed, Bit Binary Bit
Sandwiched between today's cattle-car jumbo jets and tomorrow's suborbital transport, Japan believes there's a niche for a revamped and updated supersonic jet -- say around 2012. Japan's National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) now has a scale-model mockup of the plane, an 11-meter-long, two-ton beast sitting in the Australian desert, set to be test-flown in early July. Designed exclusively by supercomputer, the NAL has jumped directly from binary equations to flight tests of the new plane -- skipping wind tunnel tests entirely.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52620,00.html

Local Access: IT Takes a Village
Wearing a traditional feathered headdress and using a Power Point presentation, a leader of the Ashaninka Indian tribe from central Peru described how his village created a presence on the Internet. Mino, also known by his Spanish name Eusebio Castro, described the situation faced by the indigenous people living in the Perene River Valley at the mouth of the Amazon jungle. More than 50 Indian villages exist in isolated patches throughout the valley, removed from one another and from the coastal cities where political and economic power are centralized.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,52690,00.html

Hello

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
Hello

Hello!

- tg