The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

Multi-vendors -- messy or marvelous?
Building infrastructures based on best of breed concepts does not work, according to Microsoft's group manager in Europe for .Net technical evangelism, Neil Hutson. Speaking in a debate with IBM's senior consultant architect Keith Edwards at the NetEvents industry gathering in Montreux, Switzerland over the weekend, Hutson said companies who build using best of breed products -- which means picking the best software, the best operating system and the best hardware for a particular job -- invariably end up with a mess.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-850636.html

IBM, Microsoft clash over .Net and Java
The rift between IBM and Microsoft over Web services widened further over the weekend when Web services evangelists from each company clashed over the relative merits of .Net and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) for building applications that can talk to each other over the Internet. IBM's senior consultant architect Keith Edwards and Microsoft group manager for .Net technical evangelism, Neil Hutson, were speaking at the NetEvents industry gathering in Montreux, Switzerland.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-850455.html

Study: Biz still battling with viruses
Viruses continue to swarm U.S. corporations, with roughly 1.2 million incidents occurring in a 20-month period, according to a new study. ICSA Labs, a division of security-services company TruSecure, surveyed 200 organizations between January 2000 and August 2001 as part of a regular survey sponsored by Gantz-Wiley Research, Network Associates, Panda Software and Symantec Corporation. The attacks work out to about 113 encounters per 1,000 machines per month. It's a figure that's been growing around 20 encounters per 1,000 machines per month since ICSA began taking the survey in 1996.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-850608.html

Flash MX tools gear up Web design
For most Web surfers, Flash is the blinking, animated frosting on Web sites. Now Macromedia wants to make it the whole cake. The software maker is pitching Flash MX, the new version of the software to be announced Monday, as a one-stop resource for designing entire Web pages and associated applications. The update signifies a greatly expanded role from Flash's initial function as animation software.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-850095.html

Wanted: Evidence of MS security push
Five weeks after Bill Gates rang an alarm over security lapses in his company's software, people are still waiting for real evidence that Microsoft has substantially refocused its priorities. Microsoft has released some tools to help developers and customers add more security to their systems and has made much ado about retraining its developers during a security crash course that lasted all of February. But customers are still waiting to see if the company has made a fundamental shift in philosophy, said Alan Paller, director of research for the Systems Administration Networking and Security (SANS) Institute.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-850236.html

States enlist Palm, Gateway against MS
Nine states still pursuing an antitrust case against Microsoft will call executives from Palm and Gateway to testify in court hearings to help make their case for severe sanctions against the company, according to a court filing this week. The states, who have refused to sign on to a settlement between Microsoft and the U.S. Justice Department, listed executives from the two companies among more than a dozen witnesses they plan to call during hearings set to begin on March 11 on what sanctions should be imposed on Microsoft, according to pre-trial statements filed with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-850073.html

Morpheus: Open source saves the day
Days after millions of people found themselves locked out of StreamCast Networks' Morpheus file-swapping network, the company has released a new software tool it hopes will resuscitate its service. The new software, called Morpheus Preview Edition, is based on open-source Gnutella technology, software that has been a mainstay of the file-swapping world since 2000. Until Tuesday's surprise shutdown, the Morpheus service was based on technology licensed from Dutch company Kazaa BV.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-850071.html

Microsoft: Xbox is not scratching discs
Microsoft, whose Xbox game machine debuted in Japan 10 days ago, said Monday that several Xbox users had reported that the console was scratching game discs, but there was no need to recall the hardware or software. The software giant said the DVD discs spinning in the console most likely were improperly placed on loading trays or by the sliding tray itself and caused the small scratches.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-850149.html

Net efficiencies roil a lumbering industry
A turf war has broken out between a tiny start-up and giants of the multibillion-dollar electronic data interchange industry, highlighting what some see as a last-ditch effort by a handful of outdated but powerful businesses hoping to resist the Internet's pull. The conflict -- involving accusations of market bullying and threats of lawsuits and complaints to federal regulators -- offers a glimpse into the midlife crisis of EDI, which for decades has allowed companies to exchange purchase orders and other documents through proprietary, interconnected systems known as VANs (value-added networks).
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-850045.html

Media exec calls for piracy crackdown
A top media executive Monday said 1 million movie files were downloaded illegally on the Internet each day and called for a renewed crackdown on online file services that promote digital piracy. "Our content must be protected from unencrypted, illegal file sharing," Peter Chernin, chief operating officer of News Corp., told an assembly of media executives at the FT New Media and Broadcasting Conference in London. "We're in the process of raising a generation to think that stealing is OK," he added.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-850584.html

San Francisco top wireless hot spot
They might be shrouded in fog and clouds for much of the year, but a new survey ranks San Francisco and Seattle the hottest metropolitan regions in America. That's because those areas have more wireless Internet access points, or "hot spots," than other regions in the United States, according to HereUare Communications. The San Jose, Calif.-based company helps entrepreneurs build and maintain wireless Internet access, also known as Wi-Fi. According to the second annual Hot Spots Report, Internet users in the San Francisco Bay Area can tap wireless connections at 257 public access points, including restaurants, hotels, cafes and airports.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-850535.html

RealNetworks, Intel strike software deal
RealNetworks, readying the "gold," or final, version of its latest software for playing audio and video over the Web, said Monday that it signed a deal with Intel to include its products with motherboards. RealOne, the successor to the popular RealPlayer and RealJukebox, will be released in its final version this week and will be bundled with motherboards that Intel sells for use in so-called white box, or generic, PCs, the companies said. Financial details of the arrangement were not disclosed.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-850435.html

Games designer pushes boundaries
The name Hideo Kojima could soon be as well known as those of leading Hollywood directors like Ridley Scott or James Cameron. This Japanese game designer is the brains behind one of the most influential games of the past few years, Metal Gear Solid, and its eagerly anticipated sequel. With Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (MGS2), Mr Kojima has elevated the art of game design to the level of films.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1853410.stm

Paper That Acts Digital
Things go digital. That's just the way it is. Computers, phones, organizers, the tools in your doctor's office, music, cameras, movies, even dog tags and picture frames -- they've all been transformed by digital technology. Yet there's one artifact that has stubbornly resisted the trend -- paper. Despite countless attempts to digitize it or replicate its qualities electronically, paper refuses to get with the program. For the past few years, companies have been trying -- not entirely successfully -- to replicate paper's visual properties using electrostatically charged beads or capsules -- pressed between transparent sheets of plastic -- that turn black or white when zapped with an electric current.
http://www.business2.com/articles/we...,38392,FF.html

Scripting flaw ripe for Web worm
With a survey estimating that a million Web sites are vulnerable to a set of newly discovered scripting flaws, security experts are predicting that a worm that uses the software bugs to spread could be on the way. As previously reported by CNET News.com, the flaws occur in Web server modules using the Personal Homepage scripting language, more commonly known as PHP. The language is widely used among sites built on open-source software and allows such sites to create Web pages on the fly.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-850752.html?tag=cd_mh

BMWs hit the road with Microsoft
Cars in BMW's new line, the BMW 7 Series, are equipped with a special kind of Windows: the Microsoft kind. Microsoft's Windows CE software will allow BMW drivers to navigate, make calls and control many of the cars' other features. The BMW 7 Series was launched in Germany last fall and has just been released in the United States. The new line of BMWs use a navigating system from Siemens, called the Siemens VDO Automotive AG, which includes Microsoft's operating system. Microsoft also recently announced the launch of Windows CE for Automotive v3.5, the newest version of its software for cars based on Windows CE.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-850353.html?tag=cd_mh

Study says online fraud saps sales
Merchants lose a higher percentage of sales to fraud online than offline, according to a new report from GartnerG2. Merchants surveyed by GartnerG2, a service from research firm Gartner, reported that they lost 1.14 percent of all online sales to fraud in 2001, or about $700 million. During that same time period, Visa International and MasterCard reported that about .06 percent of physical world sales were lost to fraud, said Avivah Litan, research director at GartnerG2.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-850258.html?tag=cd_mh

Kodak to unveil digital cinema system
Eastman Kodak on Monday said it would unveil a digital movie projection system here at the ShoWest movie theater convention this week, marking the photo giant's formal entry in the emerging market for digital cinema. Rochester, N.Y.-based Kodak, a leading maker of film and photographic equipment, has been testing digital movie projection equipment for a couple of years, but has only demonstrated prototypes to small groups.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-850183.html?tag=cd_mh

Survey on Web: The thrill is gone
The Internet has lost its novelty for many U.S. users but is turning into an increasingly important tool for everyday living, according to a study released Sunday. As Internet users gain more online experience, they report a slight dip in the length of the average online session, from 90 minutes to 83 minutes over the course of one year, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found. But experienced users said they were more likely to use that time for activities such as working from home, checking bank-account balances and making travel reservations, rather than simply browsing.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-850108.html?tag=cd_mh

Slashdot joins the ad-free melee
News for Nerds" Web site Slashdot.org has joined the dark side, lining up with leagues of other Net publishers to start selling larger, more imposing advertisements and placing a premium on commercial-free pages. Slashdot, whose discussion boards are a favorite among techies, will start displaying bigger ads on its Web pages Monday, after announcing it would do so in late October. To placate visitors opposed to ads altogether, the site will also sell a subscription to promotion-free pages.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-849372.html?tag=cd_mh

Come on girls... you've got to kiss the newsman

[walktalker]

Adobe Hackers: We're Immune
The Russian company that created software to circumvent Adobe's e-book format argued on Monday that its conduct -- which caused the arrest and detainment of programmer Dmitri Sklyarov in a high-profile case last summer -- was not illegal. Elcomsoft, the Moscow-based software firm, claimed that because it offered the encryption-breaking software on the Internet, the company was not subject to U.S. copyright law.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50797,00.html

Recording Honcho Presses Ahead
The U.S. music industry will continue to experiment with controversial copy-protected CDs, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. "CD copy protection technology is a measured response to a very serious problem facing the music industry today," RIAA chief Hilary Rosen said in a letter (PDF) last Thursday, referring to online piracy through informal MP3 swapping or more organized file-trading applications.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,50810,00.html

House Cool to Copy Protection
The U.S. House of Representatives doesn't seem willing to intercede in an increasingly bitter dispute over embedding copy protection controls in all consumer electronic devices. Key legislators in the House have indicated they're skeptical of the government mandating anti-piracy technology, an approach that Democrats of the Senate Commerce Committee endorsed during a hearing last Thursday. Fretting that online piracy of digital content will imperil sales, Hollywood studios have asked Congress to bypass their negotiations with Silicon Valley firms by requiring that all PCs and consumer electronics sport technology to prohibit illicit copying. Senate Commerce Chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) has championed this approach.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50784,00.html

Colombia's Cyber (Un)Civil War
After Colombia's largest guerilla group hijacked a commercial plane and kidnapped a senator last week, the government called off peace talks and sent troops to take back a Switzerland-sized chunk of territory it ceded to the rebels in 1998. But even as their foot soldiers clash in Colombia's thick jungles, the leaders of the government and the rebel forces are waging a second, equally crucial battle in cyberspace to conquer public opinion.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50748,00.html

China Impounds Pirated CDs
Chinese customs officers have seized the country's biggest haul of pirated CDs after a chase at sea, the Legal Daily newspaper reported on Monday. Four million CDs were impounded from a fishing boat on Saturday by customs officers from the southern city of Shenzhen, but the smugglers escaped in a high-speed boat in the direction of nearby Hong Kong. Piracy of intellectual property is rampant in China despite promises by the government to root it out, a commitment made on joining the World Trade Organization last year.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,50805,00.html

Scholars Who Dig-itize Gutenberg
When people think about the printing revolution, one name comes to mind: Johannes Gutenberg. But what if Gutenberg didn't actually invent the revolutionary technique of mass-producing words as we know it today? Scholars will soon get a chance to examine in exquisite detail what is considered the first book printed with moveable type. A project is currently underway at the Library of Congress to digitize its copy of the Gutenberg Bible. The library has partnered with Octavo to photograph, scan and digitize every binding, endsheet and page of the three-volume Bible.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,50589,00.html

Teaching E.T. About Altruism
The SETI Institute wants the cosmos to know we can play nice. Should we humans receive a signal indicating that another civilization exists elsewhere in the galaxy, the message chief for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence says encoding the concept of altruism in our reply might make for a good first impression. Earth has deliberately sent signals into deep space before. In 1974 the Arecibo Observatory transmitted -- to the M13 star cluster 25,000 light years away -- a binary code schematic of our solar system, chemical compounds supporting life as we know it, the structure of DNA and the pixelated human form. Very dry.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,50768,00.html

Kazaa: A Copyright Conundrum
A California multimedia company with ties to an Australian venture capitalist firm involved with the Kazaa file-trading network could be headed for legal troubles. The complex relationships between companies involved in file-trading networks in four countries are unraveling, and entertainment companies that want to protect their intellectual property are taking notice. This could lead to legal action in the United States against companies helping develop the networks.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,50788,00.html

Huge ice field found on Mars
The Mars Odyssey orbiter has found a vast field of water ice stretching from the Martian south pole to 60 degrees south. "There's a lot of ice on Mars," Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona told a NASA press conference. The evidence comes from three separate components of the spacecraft's Gamma Ray Spectrometer. Seeking water is one of Mars Odyssey's top priorities. An earlier mission, Mars Global Surveyor, revealed sharply etched features that suggested erosion by flowing water, but could not tell if any water was still present or if it had all vanished early in Martian history.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991994

Bid to outlaw DNA trophy hunters
Stealing DNA material must be made a crime to prevent celebrities facing demands from blackmailers who learn their secrets from snatched samples, a government body will recommend. Advances in technology now mean that DNA traces can be taken from a chewed pen top or a coffee cup from which someone has drunk. These can be tested without the victim knowing to reveal potentially embarrassing information about their parentage, medical history or, potentially, such traits as alcoholism or aggression.
http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/st...660991,00.html

NRA Takes Dell's Side In Dispute With Gunsmith
Stepping into the middle of a fiery debate, the National Rifle Association has declared that Dell Computer Corp. is not an enemy of gun owners. In a message posted Friday at its Web site and faxed to some members, the nation's biggest gun lobbying organization weighed in on a dispute between a Pennsylvania gunsmith named Jack Weigand and the Texas-based computer maker.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174938.html

StreamCast Suggests Competitors Torpedoed Morpheus
What looked last week like a software glitch that disconnected more than 1 million online file traders is now described by the distributors of the Morpheus software as a deliberate attack on their system and their users. And StreamCast - formerly MusicCity - of Franklin, Tenn., implied Friday that what it called an "unprovoked attack" appeared to have originated from within the FastTrack peer-to-peer platform it had shared with competitors Kazaa and Grokster.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174926.html

Microsoft Outlines Next Move in Antitrust Case
Microsoft Corp. plans to argue in court hearings next week that if antitrust sanctions sought by state prosecutors are granted, the company would be forced to pull its latest Windows computer operating systems off the market and be unable to develop new systems. In court filings late Friday, the company said the recently released consumer operating system, Windows XP, and the business-oriented Windows 2000 system could not be redesigned to satisfy state demands that they be made available in separate versions, with and without key programs, such as the Internet Explorer Web browser.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174924.html

U.S. Court Stakes Out New Turf In Barcelona.com Ruling
Lawyers who squared off in a trademark dispute between the operators of a tourism portal and Barcelona, Spain, disagree on whether a U.S. District Court judge made the right call this month when he awarded the Internet address Barcelona.com to the city. But they agree that the judge broke new ground in U.S. anti-cybersquatting law. Claude Hilton, the chief judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, ruled in the city's favor with a decision based on trademark law in Spain.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174913.html

Lawmakers Urge Russians To Beef Up Piracy Enforcement
group of U.S. lawmakers earlier this month urged Russian authorities to take software piracy and intellectual property theft more seriously. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told Newsbytes that the lawmakers wanted to convey the message that piracy prevention is "not just important to the United States, but also to industry in their country". "They have a small but budding Internet business (but) they're not going to be able to grow those businesses if they let their own citizens rip off whatever they develop," Goodlatte said.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174908.html

Ashcroft Asks Telcos To Help Track Terrorists
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft shopped the Bush administration's anti-terrorism agenda to the nation's regional telecom providers today, urging them to press ahead with reforms that would make it easier for the government to intercept terrorist communications. He also asked for the industry's support for a bill that would allow companies to share sensitive data with the government without fearing that federal law would require the government to release it.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174905.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Here's a for the newsman!

Originally posted by walktalker
Media exec calls for piracy crackdown
A top media executive Monday said 1 million movie files were downloaded illegally on the Internet each day and called for a renewed crackdown on online file services that promote digital piracy. "Our content must be protected from unencrypted, illegal file sharing," Peter Chernin, chief operating officer of News Corp., told an assembly of media executives at the FT New Media and Broadcasting Conference in London. "We're in the process of raising a generation to think that stealing is OK," he added.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-850584.html

Indeed you are.... and what a great example the record industry has given to the new generation by its own actions!

- tg

[Smoketoomuch]

"We're in the process of raising a generation to think that stealing is OK," he added.

what is stealing and whats wrong with it?

[mozart]

Originally posted by walktalker
San Francisco top wireless hot spot
They might be shrouded in fog and clouds for much of the year, but a new survey ranks San Francisco and Seattle the hottest metropolitan regions in America. That's because those areas have more wireless Internet access points, or "hot spots," than other regions in the United States, according to HereUare Communications. The San Jose, Calif.-based company helps entrepreneurs build and maintain wireless Internet access, also known as Wi-Fi. According to the second annual Hot Spots Report, Internet users in the San Francisco Bay Area can tap wireless connections at 257 public access points, including restaurants, hotels, cafes and airports.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-850535.html

Is it April 1st already?

I always enjoy a good laugh, though