The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

MS, states fight to the finish
In a move that brings the 4-year-old antitrust case against Microsoft closer to resolution, the software giant and state trustbusters delivered Monday their last major legal filings in a hearing designed to determine remedies in the case. Both sides filed proposed "findings of fact" and "conclusions of law" with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who is charged with crafting a remedy to Microsoft's antitrust violations. Kollar-Kotelly will draft her own version of the same documents for her ruling, which is expected as soon as late summer.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-934716.html

Handspring lets fingers do the walking
Handspring believes the future of handheld devices will be typed, not written. Chief Operating Officer Ed Colligan, speaking at a CIBC World Markets investor conference here, told attendees that his company was surprised that consumers preferred entering information via keyboard, rather than using writing technology popularized by Palm's Graffiti technology. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company's Treo 90 comes with a keyboard and color screen. Colligan says this product is the first of potentially many to include keyboard technology.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-934659.html

Morpheus 1.9 to be unleashed
StreamCast Networks is tuning up the current version of its Morpheus software amid delays in launching the next generation of its file-swapping service. The company said it will release on Monday an update to its Morpheus Preview Edition software that offers instant messaging from PalTalk that connects with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), among other features. Dubbed Morpheus 1.9, the software will be based on the Gnutella architecture, according to the company. Despite the planned release of Morpheus 1.9, only the Preview Edition appeared to be available through the Morpheus site late Monday.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-934615.html

Pirates broadside software industry again
Global software piracy increased for the second straight year in 2001 due to lax laws and the growing availability of bootlegged software on the Internet, watchdog group Business Software Alliance said on Monday. The alliance said in its annual study, now in its eighth year, that it lost nearly $11 billion in sales to software piracy in 2001. A more telling statistic, it said, was that 40 percent of all new software installed by businesses last year was obtained on the black market, up from 37 percent in 2000.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-934466.html

Outdated Windows code poses a threat
Microsoft will more quickly retire old code in its Windows operating system and other software as a result of the company's four-month-old "trustworthy computing" initiative, the company's lead bug basher said in an interview. The revelation follows last week's warning that a serious vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer occurred in the software supporting a decade-old protocol that has rarely been used since the World Wide Web became popular.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-934426.html

New tool promises to keep IM, P2P safe
A San Diego company on Monday announced a product designed to secure instant-messaging and file-sharing applications by blocking viruses, preventing data leaks, and stopping installations of back doors. Privately held Akonix Systems developed Akonix L7 specifically to address the security concerns that are arising from the widespread use of programs such as AOL Time Warner's AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and the Kazaa peer-to-peer service. Those programs give outsiders a way into a computer inside an otherwise secure network.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-934558.html

Apple's 'Real People' ads target PC users
In its largest marketing effort since the "Think Different" campaign, Apple Computer is planning a series of TV and print ads featuring people who tell why they switched from a PC to a Mac. The "Real People" ads will start appearing this week. The TV versions are directed by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, director of "The Thin Blue Line." In an interview, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the overall campaign are intended to show consumers they won't get stranded on a technology island if they switch to Apple.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-934424.html

Amazon sound clips go offline
Many Amazon.com customers who wanted to preview a CD before buying it had to go elsewhere on Monday. A glitch on the company's site prevented customers from linking to and downloading many sound clips for several hours on Monday. Company spokeswoman Carrie Peters blamed the problem on a site "hiccup," but she declined to give more details. Peters didn't know when the feature would be available again or how many clips were affected. "We know that this is really popular for our customers, so we are working aggressively on it," she said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-934785.html?tag=fd_top

Programmers enroll in political training
It's not every computer science class that opens with a poem. But on a recent June day at Stanford University, khaki-clad senior Jeff Keltner stood before his classmates, cleared his throat, and recited verse about a Hollywood-led crackdown on technology that can transfer digital books to different devices. Keltner, a computer science major, is enrolled in Computer Science 401, a policy research seminar taught by Barbara Simons and Edward Felten, a programmer who last year backed away from a speech about his work amid legal threats from Hollywood.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-934543.html?tag=fd_top

Yahoo cleans up home page with beta
Yahoo confirmed Monday that it is working to redesign its home page, simplifying the layout and giving more exposure to advertisers. As previously reported, the Web portal, which has maintained the basic framework of its home page since 1995, will introduce the new site by the beginning of July. Yahoo on Monday launched a preview version of the site; the company expects this version to undergo few changes before the final redesign goes live. In addition to the home page, Yahoo plans to revise the look of its Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Shopping services.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-934700.html?tag=fd_top

Swedish programmer cracks password
A Swedish game programmer won the race to discover the password to a Norwegian history museum's database, the museum's director said Monday. The password had been lost when the database's steward died without revealing it. Ottar Grepstad, director of the Ivar Aasen Center for Language and Culture, said in an interview that Joachim Eriksson, a programmer for Swedish game company Snowcode, sent the correct password just five hours after the museum's call for help. The center had posted the database file on its Web site, asking for help in opening it.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-934653.html?tag=fd_top

Not the real Slim Shady
"About half" of the songs Tony P. downloaded were misleadingly labeled, and he added that "it was hard to find legit tracks [because] the fake tracks were labeled in the same way as the real ones ... with additions to the titles like '(Dirty Version)' or '(Real, Full song).'" The use of this meta-tactic in particular made it impossible to distinguish real songs from "spoofed" ones. Stacey Herron, an analyst who covers entertainment and media for Jupiter Media Metrix, notes that the creator of some or all of the files could be a suburban mom who hates the controversial Eminem, an Internet prankster "or Eminem himself." But there are also at least two good reasons for Interscope to be involved.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/0...mp3/index.html

Nanotechnology's First Fruits
When most people think about nanotechnology, they usually conjure images of microscopically tiny contraptions such as the invisibly small submarine that was injected into a character's bloodstream in the classic 1966 sci-fi movie "Fantastic Voyage." Nanovehicles and the revolution they would create in science, medicine, military affairs, and manufacturing are still on the distant horizon. But the budding nanotech industry is making important progress in several other seemingly prosaic but nonetheless useful areas, such as perfecting new cosmetics, smaller batteries, better lightbulbs and more effective pharmaceuticals. The first of these products are expected to hit the market over the next few years.
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/beat/

Web usage grows across globe
Internet usage is increasing worldwide, with more people logging on for greater lengths of time, according to a report released Monday by Nielsen/NetRatings. The number of people with Internet access at home grew 16 percent from April 2001 to April 2002, reaching 422.4 million home users in the 21 countries surveyed by the research firm. The number of people actively using the Web from home climbed 18 percent to 241.4 million in the same period, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The audience measurement firm added that between April 2001 and April 2002, the time spent online per month rose nearly 13 percent and the number of sessions per month increased nearly 9 percent.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-934655.html?tag=cd_mh

Start-up wants you to just ask
A new Internet search software company launching on Monday is offering a natural-language question-and-answer technology that it says improves on existing products and can help companies automate more of their customer service needs. InQuira says its software enables customers to type plainly worded questions into corporate Web sites, and get back the information they need--be it a list of cars selling under a given price or a more technical question about whether two different software products are compatible. The San Bruno, Calif., company already has a handful of customers that have adopted the service, including Bank of America, Sun Microsystems and BEA Systems.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-934445.html?tag=cd_mh

Can broadband save online media?
For Internet media's true believers, nothing is harder to swallow than the demise of the advertising-based business model. Despite brutal evidence to the contrary -- Web sites are now lucky to earn $3.50 per thousand page views -- the faithful still cling to the hope that some new technology or trend will prove the ad-based model workable after all. The latest evidence of misplaced optimism is the widespread conviction that broadband will attract enough viewers to Web sites and generate enough page views to make the CPM, or cost per thousand impressions, model profitable. Alas, it just won't happen.
http://news.com.com/2009-1023-934441.html?tag=cd_mh

How Bad Can a 'Dirty Bomb' Be?
Science and military experts disagreed on Monday on the impact of a radiological weapon, like the kind accused al-Qaida operative Abdullah al Mujahir was allegedly plotting to explode. Some see only a "minuscule" rise in cancer rates, while others predict that huge sections of New York or Washington would become uninhabitable if such a bomb were ever to go off. All the experts stress that a "dirty bomb" is not the same as a nuclear weapon, which generates intense heat and radiation from splitting atoms, according to a statement from Rob Fanney and Jim Tinsley of defense watchdog Jane's Information Group. A dirty bomb packs radioactive material inside or around conventional explosives, which are then detonated to spread the radioactive material.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,53110,00.html

A.I. Expert Lands in Real Trouble
Richard Wallace, the artificial intelligence expert who has twice won the prestigious Loebner Prize in AI for his work on the ALICE chat robot, was served with a temporary restraining order, after the regents of the University of California alleged that he was "unstable" and had threatened Kenneth Goldberg, a UC Berkeley professor, with physical harm. The restraining order, issued last Thursday, marks the latest development in the saga of Wallace's fight against what he sees as rampant "corruption" in academia. Wallace theorizes that several university professors, Goldberg included, are part of a criminal conspiracy to cover-up for New York University, which dismissed Wallace from its faculty in the early 1990s.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53072,00.html

Sex Offenders Wear Scarlet E-Mail
Four years ago, Juan Garcia did something stupid: He groped a 14-year-old girl, the daughter of a friend. Garcia (not his real name) says he has gotten used to people driving by his house howling obscenities. He has also grown accustomed to neighborhood kids stealing his sign and planting it on other people's lawns as a joke. What really bugs him, he says, is his permanent inclusion in the Texas' online sex offender registry, where anyone in the world can download his name, mug shot, what he was convicted of, and home address.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53075,00.html

Going After Tech, Not Tech Users
Cari Burstein likes television. It's the commercials she hates. So when Sonicblue began selling its ReplayTV 2020 digital video recorder (DVR) in 1999, she bought one. The set-top box, a souped-up VCR that allows people to instantly skip forward 30 seconds, was the ideal solution for her. It's all fine and dandy too, except for one little problem. Not that Burstein's going to jail, or facing a hefty $150,000 copyright infringement fine. Movie studios and record labels can't afford to sue their customers.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,53064,00.html

Browsing Around for New Targets
Jeffrey Zeldman and the Web Standards Project are back with a wake-up call for Web developers everywhere: The problem today isn't Microsoft or Netscape –- it's you. The Web Standards Project, or WaSP, was founded in 1998 by a group of high-profile Web developers -- including Zeldman -- who were tired of building different versions of every page to support a plethora of incompatible browsers from Microsoft, Netscape and others. Now, Zeldman says the time has come to address the other, possibly tougher roadblock to universal Web accessibility: those who build sites, not browsers.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53026,00.html

Will Tasmanian Tiger Clone Work?
A scientifically cocky bid to clone an extinct Australian marsupial back to life is one step closer to fruition. But that doesn't mean it's anywhere near possible, observers say. Last week, Australian Museum geneticists announced they'd replicated bits of Tasmanian tiger DNA taken from a 136-year-old thylacine specimen preserved in ethanol since 1866. The thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, was hunted to extinction in the 1800s. The last known living specimen died in 1936.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,52959,00.html

Hunting the Doubly-Charmed Baryon
The first charm quarks were discovered separately in furiously competing experiments at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1974, which led to a Nobel Prize. Now it's a matter of filling in the experimental gaps, elaborating on aspects of the theoretical quark model. Because charm baryons haven't existed since the Big Bang ballooned into our universe, the six-year-old SELEX experiment has to make them in atom smashers. A machine shoots a high-energy hyperon beam a mile through a vacuum tube into a beryllium target the size of a wire. These collisions create unstable particles that, 30 feet later, go into five successive tiny diamond targets, emerging as still more unstable particles, including charm baryons.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,53035,00.html

Police to spy on all emails
Millions of personal emails, other internet information and telephone records are to be made accessible to the police and intelligence services in a move that has been denounced by critics as one of the most wide-ranging extensions of state power over private information. Plans being drawn up by Europol, the police and intelligence arm of the European Union, propose that telephone and internet firms retain millions of pieces of data - including details of visits to internet chat rooms, and of calls made on mobile phones and text messages.
http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/s...730091,00.html

Cancer gene search strikes early success
Two thirds of malignant melanomas have mutations in a single gene, raising hopes of effective new treatments for one of the most deadly cancers. The discovery is a first and early success for a systematic genome-wide search for genes involved in cancer. "The most exciting thing about this discovery is that it could be a direct lead to new treatments for malignant melanoma," says Mike Stratton, a co-director of the Cancer Genome Project at the UK's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. The project was set up in 2000 to exploit the draft sequence of the human genome, which is due for completion in April 2003.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992379

Japanese lab launches paper plane with laser beam
It's the ultimate in classroom one-upmanship: a laser-powered paper plane. The device, devised by researchers in Japan, has just made its maiden flight. Fleets of them might one day buzz around the atmosphere, monitoring climate or volcanic eruptions, the team hopes. Takashi Yabe of the Tokyo Institute of Technology and colleagues launch their paper plane with a blast of light from a commercial laser. The plane takes off into a gracefully curving flight at a speed of around 1.4 metres per second.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020603/020603-8.html

Well... More news and one more date later on (hopefully )

[TankGirl]

What an excellent news digest again, WT!

And now if you would deliver a nice cup of cappucino with this newspaper, things would be just perfect!

- tg