The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

[walktalker]

Lindows asks MS to dismiss suit
Lindows, a start-up developing software that would let many Windows programs run on Linux computers, filed a motion to dismiss a trademark-infringement suit Microsoft filed in December. Lindows, based in San Diego, Calif., argued that it has no presence in the state of Washington, where Microsoft filed the suit, the Linux company said in a statement Tuesday. Lindows said a hearing is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 1 on the company's motion and on Microsoft's motion for a preliminary injunction that would halt use of the Lindows name.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

TechNet to Uncle Sam: Back broadband
A major Silicon Valley lobbying group is asking Washington lawmakers to pave the way for broadband adoption in 100 million American homes and small businesses by 2010. TechNet, which represents about 250 high-tech heavy hitters, released a report Tuesday asking the Bush administration to jump-start the adoption of affordable high-speed Internet access through a series of initiatives that include offering tax incentives and removing regulatory hurdles.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Win XP updates stopped by glitch
Engineers are working to fix a glitch in a Microsoft Web server that has prevented Windows XP users from downloading software updates, including a patch for a security hole, a company spokeswoman said Monday. The problem, discovered last Thursday, was created when engineers attempted to update software on a server, she said, adding that it is expected to be corrected before Tuesday. The spokeswoman said she could not confirm the number of people affected by the problem, but said about 8 million people download Windows XP software updates each week.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Look out, Palm, here comes the "brick."
The rectangular-shaped Communicator, Nokia's all-in-one personal data organizer and mobile phone from Finland, has surpassed Palm as the most popular handheld computer in Europe. And it's set to hit U.S. store shelves by early summer. Although some are leery of its hefty price -- about $799 -- its growing fan base of business users laud the Communicator as the first device to successfully meld the mobile phone with the handheld computer.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Your .name here -- Net's new domain
The Internet equivalent of the personalized license plate became available Tuesday with the launch of the new .name top-level domain. Global Name Registry is launching the .name domain, reserved for individuals. A similar extension, .me.uk, made its debut in the United Kingdom on Monday. The Internet has no shortage of Web sites named for individuals -- in ways ranging from the straightforward to the whimsical -- and that tout their interests, achievements and other personal proclivities. Until now, though, a designation especially for them had been lacking.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

AOL warns of ICQ attack risk
People chatting with outdated ICQ software are at risk for a potentially damaging buffer overflow exploit, AOL Time Warner cautioned in an alert posted Monday. The buffer overflow vulnerability affects versions of America Online's popular ICQ instant messaging software prior to version 2001b, which was released October. Only versions for Microsoft's Windows operating system are vulnerable. AOL posted a page urging people who haven't already downloaded the latest version of ICQ software to do so.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Back to beginnings for FreeBSD
FreeBSD is going home. Bob Bruce, founder of Walnut Creek CDROM -- the company that in 1993 first published FreeBSD -- will once again be in charge of the core FreeBSD business. That's because the current owner, Wind River Systems, announced Monday that it is selling off its assets related to FreeBSD, an open-source version of Unix. Bruce has also become CEO of FreeBSD Mall, the new name of Walnut Creek CDROM and one of the FreeBSD assets that Wind River has owned.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Online tickets: A great idea or a rip-off?
If you purchase an airline ticket from an online travel company, don't be surprised if you end up paying more than the advertised fare. It will only be an extra $5 to $10 -- the amount of a relatively new service fee some travel sites are tacking onto the bill -- but consumer advocates say that separating the fee from the cost of the airfare shouldn't be allowed. Now federal regulators are considering whether to require online travel agencies to include them as part of the quoted airfare. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...101655,00.html

Europe takes a front seat in Net rulemaking
Hyde isn't the only American executive trying to come up to speed on trade regulations between the United States and the EU. The Internet has dramatically boosted the number of potential buyers for American goods and services, but increasingly U.S. companies must design products and make business decisions based on strict regulatory hurdles in Europe. In fact, European regulations governing hot-button technology issues such as privacy, antitrust and taxation are beginning to play as much of a role as American regulations for businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=tp_pr

How does a computer virus scan work?
Geoff Kuenning, a professor of computer science at Harvey Mudd College, provides this explanation. Malicious software comes in several flavors, distinguished primarily by their method of propagation. The two most pervasive forms are viruses and worms. A virus attaches itself to an existing program such that, when that program is executed, bad things happen. Like a biological virus, it cannot live without a host. In contrast, a worm is an independent program that reproduces itself without requiring a host program. Depending on the form, a worm may be able to propagate without any action on the victim's part. Most malicious software today consists of worms rather than viruses.
http://www.sciam.com/askexpert/computers/computers16/

Net's servers under scrutiny
A row is brewing over the reliability and security of the servers that direct much of the net's traffic. Some of the organisations that oversee the net's domains are calling on the internet's ruling body to give guarantees about the safe running of these crucial servers. They are threatening to withhold cash demanded by the ruling body, saying the fees it is levying amount to a tax for which they get little in return.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1761362.stm

Taxing times for laid-off techies
Figuring out a 1040 can be difficult in the best of circumstances, but some former dot-com workers may have a little more trouble than normal this year. With tax season fast approaching, companies will soon be sending W-2 forms to employees, stating what they made and how much they paid in taxes last year. But with hundreds of companies having closed shop in the last year, many former high-tech employees may not get a W-2 form this year and instead may find themselves having to rely on their own records to prepare their taxes.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=ch_mh

Terra Lycos pitches ads to FoxSports.com
Terra Lycos unveiled a multimillion-dollar marketing, sales and content alliance Tuesday with News Corp.'s FoxSports.com, aimed at increasing the exposure of both brands. The deal will let Fox Sports market its on-air programming, as well as its Web site, to Lycos users; the Internet media company will gain on-air marketing exposure on the various Fox Sports TV networks. Sources close to the deal said it was valued around $300 million.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

MSN adds members as AOL growth slows
Microsoft on Tuesday said it had added some 750,000 net subscribers to its MSN Internet access service in its last quarter, bringing the total to 7.7 million customers. In addition, MSN also attracted about 250,000 subscribers to other pay services on its network of Web sites, mostly users of extra storage in Hotmail e-mail accounts, MSN Vice President Yusuf Mehdi told Reuters. Other pay services included automatic bill payment and online gaming at MSN's Zone video game site, Mehdi said.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

Wanted: A factory for Xbox in Asia
Microsoft said Tuesday that it was looking for a production base in Asia to manufacture its Xbox game console for the Japanese market. Hirohisa Ohura, managing director of Microsoft Japan, said the consoles would initially be shipped to Japan from Mexico, but that the company may need a production base in the region if demand picks up.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200...html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on

[walktalker]

New Film: Enemy at the Bill Gates
Perhaps the most chilling marketing gimmick this week at the Sundance Film Festival is a logo showing a broken set of spectacles. The enigmatic spectacles have been popping up on T-shirts, press kits and posters throughout this bustling ski town. During the weekend the context was revealed: They are Bill Gates' glasses, broken soon after his supposed assassination. The film Nothing So Strange, which premiered at Slamdance on Sunday, imagines Gates' murder and its aftermath.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,49678,00.html

A Flat, Flat, Flat Screen World
With Apple's sleek new iMac leading the way, flat screen displays are poised to muscle bulky TV-style computer monitors off desks and into dumpsters. Despite a sluggish global economy, worldwide sales of stand-alone flat screen displays, also known as liquid crystal displays or LCDs, will rise 64 percent in 2002, while sales of traditional cathode-ray tube, or CRT, monitors will drop 6 percent, according to Eric Haruki, an analyst for the consulting firm IDC.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,49602,00.html

Kevin Bacon: You've Got Mail
Can anyone in the world reach anyone else through a chain of just six friends? In 1967, sociologist Stanley Milgram created what is known as the "small world phenomenon," the idea that every person in the United States is connected by a chain of six people at most. Milgram's "six degrees of separation" theory has trickled down through popular culture, inspiring renditions such as the Kevin Bacon game. But Milgram's theory has gone largely unproven for more than 30 years and hasn't yet been repeated with any success. Now, two separate research projects are using electronic communication to test the small world phenomenon.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,49343,00.html

Some IE Users Still Vulnerable
Information on how to exploit a recently discovered hole in Internet Explorer, combined with technical difficulties at Microsoft, may have left some users without protection against critical holes, company officials admit. Microsoft is urging Windows users to visit the company's security site to "apply patches now," said Christopher Budd, Microsoft's security program manager. Server problems have been preventing some users from automatically downloading the patches from Microsoft's website, another Microsoft official added.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,49741,00.html

Galileo Shutterbug Shutters Lens
Since 1989, the camera on NASA's Galileo spacecraft has captured a comet slamming into Jupiter, volcanoes erupting on one of its moons and the first known moon orbiting an asteroid. On Thursday, the camera will snap its last pictures. Galileo will make its final flyby of one of Jupiter's major moons when it sweeps within 62 miles of Io. The mission budget does not cover any further pictures.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,49767,00.html

Cool Ideas for Overheated Chips
How do you cool a 200-watt light bulb the size of a postage stamp? This is the essential problem that computer chip makers the world over now wrestle with as Moore's law runs headlong into the laws of thermodynamics. Many chips today already burn through more than a hundred watts of power -- cooled by heat sinks and exhaust fans, but only just barely. This week, hundreds of scientists and engineers gather in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to consider a host of such innovations -- including thin-film refrigerators, piezoelectric fans, thermoacoustic engines, and plain and simple liquid cooling.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,49720,00.html

Tiny Bots to Scour Big Blue Ocean
In today's world, where a 3-pound laptop ranks as a pretty remarkable feat of miniaturization, the concept of creating tiny robots to scour the ocean for dangerous microorganisms may seem like the stuff of science fiction. Over the next several years, however, a group of researchers at the University of Southern California are hoping to bring that seemingly farfetched vision closer to reality.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,49722,00.html

ACLU Skewers DMV Proposal As ‘De Facto’ National ID
A tentative plan by all 50 state motor vehicle agencies to upgrade and standardize driver’s licenses presents a major privacy threat and amounts to a national ID program in everything but name, civil liberties advocates charged Monday. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took aim at a proposal announced Monday by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) calling on Congress to authorize state and federal authorities to share information on identity cards applicants. The DMV body also requested funding to equip state IDs with technology that ties the cards to their owners’ unique physical characteristics or preferences.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173656.html

Is your computer inviting voyeurs?
When you leave for vacation, you certainly don’t want the world to know when and where you are going. But that’s one of the unintended consequences of file-sharing programs with names like Gnotella and BearShare. The programs are essentially software front-ends to a file-sharing system known as Gnutella — it’s not quite heir to the Napster throne, but a place where plenty of free, illegal music swapping still goes on. But music isn’t the only thing being shared. Videos, audio files, even text documents and spreadsheets can be swapped — and often are, by accident.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/686184.asp

The 'sport' of bioengineering
Yes, it is a picture of the Olympic rings, but the rings themselves are constructed out of living nerve cells. This biological version of the icon of sporting excellence measures 3.4 millimetres - about one-eighth of an inch - across. The "living rings", as they have been dubbed, were produced by a graduate student at the University of Utah, Mike Manwaring. The state capital of Utah, Salt Lake City, is hosting the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1761268.stm

In Search of E.T.'s Breath
If "E.T." is out there, whether in the form of intelligent beings or much simpler organisms, we may soon be hot on its trail. For the first time in history, the dream of searching for signs of life in other solar systems belongs not only on the philosopher's wish list, but on the list of doable and planned human endeavors. Mmentum is gaining rapidly. Only 6 years ago, the first planet around another Sun-like star was discovered by scientists using Doppler Detection -- a method that reveals Saturn-sized (or larger) planets close to their parent suns. Today, we know of more than 80 candidates for such worlds, and more are being found all the time.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...tmospheres.htm

Bar-Coding Life
Bar codes have revolutionized how everyone from warehouse managers to pharmacists keeps track of items. Mountain View, CA-based SurroMed is using them to help biologists track genes, proteins and other molecules. SurroMed’s microscopic bar codes could eventually be used to identify and quantify thousands of different molecules in a sample of a fluid like blood, making biological and medical tests far more informative. SurroMed’s “nanobarcodes” work much like conventional bar codes, except they are microscopic rods, striped with bands of gold, silver and other metals.
http://www.techreview.com/articles/innovation20102.asp

Verizon Wants FCC To Keep Audit Results Closed
Verizon Corp. today asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reconsider its stance that Verizon must make public the full results of an audit that judges its efforts to open its historical monopoly region to local telecom competition. The FCC ruled that the results of the "Section 272" audit must be released in full after Verizon originally released a redacted version to the public.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173667.html

EPIC Sues For Govt. Data Collection Info
Privacy and civil liberties advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said that it asked a federal court Monday to order the release of records that detail the sale of personal information to law enforcement agencies. EPIC said in its complaint that the Justice and Treasury Departments both failed to respond to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests that the group filed with the agencies.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173666.html

Education Challenges Hinder Future Tech Workforce
The nation's public schools have more computers and are wired to the Internet as never before, yet many teachers lack the basic training needed to integrate the technology into their lesson plans, a report issued today found. The study, from the AeA (formerly the American Electronics Association) and the Nasdaq Stock Market, found there were just 7 students per computer with Web access in 2001, up from nearly 20 students per PC three years earlier. Nearly all public schools - 94 percent - were wired to the Internet as of 2001.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173663.html

Windows Media Player 'Super Cookies' Could Help Track Users
A user identification technology built into Microsoft's Windows Media Player could enable Web sites to track users, a privacy watchdog warned today. According to Richard M. Smith, the unique identification number assigned by default to every Windows Media Player user can be captured from the user's system registry using a simple script in a Web page.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173662.html

Lawmaker Wants Magic Lantern Information From FBI
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, in a letter last week told the FBI that he is concerned about the bureau's refusal to provide information about the existence of a computer and e-mail surveillance plan dubbed "Magic Lantern." In the letter, provided to the Politech mailing list by Paul's legislative director Norman Singleton, the Congressman asked FBI Director Robert Mueller to hand over information on the keystroke monitoring program, "or provide me with written justification for the FBI's refusal to share information on this crucial issue."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173637.html

Palm Beach Airport To Scan Fingerprints, Faces
Palm Beach International Airport is going high-tech, both by digitizing background checks it performs on its employees, and by adopting a controversial face-recognition technology aimed at rooting out terrorism suspects. Airport officials plan to demonstrate for reporters Tuesday a new system for digitizing employee fingerprints. The system is meant to furnish clearance to workers who have unescorted access to secured airport areas such as the airport tarmac, or the ramps leading to planes.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173636.html

2600 Magazine Seeks Another Opinion In N.Y. DeCSS Case
Lawyers for the New York-based "hacker quarterly" 2600 magazine have asked that the full 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reconsider a decision by three of its judges to uphold a ban on publishing software code that can unlock encrypted video on DVDs. Kathleen Sullivan, the Stanford University Law School dean who argued on 2600's behalf in front of the appeals-court panel last spring, said today that prohibitions that keep the magazine from publishing DVD-decryption software known as DeCSS on its Web site jeopardize free speech principles with "newly minted distinctions between pen-and-ink and point-and-click."
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173635.html

Congress Takes Up Cybersecurity
Lawmakers are moving to beef up the nation’s information security with legislation that would provide more than $870 million over five years for a wide range of research and education grants. The Cybersecurity Research and Development Act, introduced Dec. 4 by Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., and five co-sponsors, would allocate more than $560 million to the National Science Foundation. With the funds, the foundation would administer grants for educational programs and basic research on computer security techniques and technologies, including authentication, encryption, intrusion detection, reliability, privacy and confidentiality.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173655.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Thank you so much for the first copy of your excellent newspaper, mr. WT!

- tg

[gazdet]

Thanks for the news WT dude, but we're kinda missing some days here

u must be busy?

[walktalker]

Just enough I do my best to fulfill my news duties

And on wednesday the forum went down, so

[TankGirl]

Hiya WT!

I hope your studies are going well and that you can find something sensible to do on all that spare time!

- tg

ps. give a cookie from me to Netcoco!

[gazdet]

Originally posted by walktalker
Just enough I do my best to fulfill my news duties

And on wednesday the forum went down, so

You do a top job Walktalker...and ok, since the forum had a lil glitch we'll let ya off the hook .........this time

Have fun dude

p.s that bird gets lead imo

[relic]

Enjoyed the Lindows news since one of my friends is a Linux feign