The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

[walktalker]

Time to read the news, or else...

Judge: MS claim to 'Windows' in doubt
Microsoft suffered a minor legal setback Friday when a federal judge questioned the software giant's claim on the word "Windows." In December, Microsoft sued operating-system maker Lindows.com, claiming the 6-month-old company was illegally taking advantage of its Windows trademark and potentially confusing customers.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-862516.html

States to judge: Microsoft must behave
Nine states opposed to a proposed settlement of the Microsoft antitrust case told a federal judge on Monday that sanctions against the company need to address more than just the violations found at trial. The non-settling states argue that the settlement reached with the U.S. Justice Department and nine other states is too weak to stop Microsoft from flexing its monopoly power in technologies that have arisen since the case began nearly four years ago.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-862295.html

MandrakeSoft, SuSe add new life to Linux
Two of the major distributors of the Linux operating system, Germany's SuSE and France's MandrakeSoft, are set to release new versions of their software, improving multimedia features as well as introducing more advanced versions of the underlying core technology. SuSE's software touts itself as the first to use the KDE 3.0 graphical user interface, which adds graphical enhancements similar to those found in Windows XP or Apple's Mac OS X.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-862168.html

MS 'Thera' calls on cell phone conference
Microsoft has tapped VoiceStream Wireless and Verizon Wireless to debut a Windows-powered PocketPC device in the United States, the company announced Monday at the 2002 Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association conference. The "Thera," which will cost about $800, tops a list of new products and services that will debut this week as thousands of cellular-industry executives, battered by miserable financial conditions from 2001, look for a turnaround this year.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-861907.html

Tech firms play Q to the CIA's Bond
Stratify CEO Nimish Mehta was at a cocktail-hour schmooze at PC Forum last year when a couple of guys sidled up and peppered him with questions about his company. The men said they were from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture arm, and might be interested in funding his software company. The proposal seemed so unlikely that he initially thought it was a joke. Several million dollars in funding later, Mehta has changed his mind about In-Q-Tel. The CIA is using Stratify products to organize and sort through unstructured data, having selected the Mountain View, Calif.-based company as one of the lucky few to receive In-Q-Tel cash.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-862093.html

Security expert warns of MP3 danger
New technology such as MP3s may soon be used as vectors for viruses, a security specialist visiting Australia has warned. “We've recently been looking at how things embedded into MP3 files might become a problem,” Vincent Gullotto, vice president of AVERT -- the developer of McAffee anti-virus systems -- told ZDNet Australia. “There will soon be MP3s that will play the video clip at the same time as the music, and if you can embed movie files to MP3s you can embed Java and other languages that may contain malicious programming.” The big trend recently has been viruses that use mass mailing as a vector, which really took off after the Melissa virus, according to Gullotto.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-861995.html

PlayStation 2 gets kicked out of CeBit
Less than a week after Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer told visitors to the massive CeBIT exhibition in Germany that he wanted to see a warmer, friendlier Microsoft, his company has become embroiled in a row with Sony over gaming consoles. Microsoft complained to the show organizers, Hannover Messe AG, that Sony was breaching show rules by letting people play on Sony PlayStation 2 game consoles. Technically, this was right and the Messe was forced to act on the complaint.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-861947.html

E-mail at work: Is the free lunch over?
Brace yourselves, corporate drones: one of the last bastions of work place relief -- sneaking in some online shopping or snickering over an email joke -- could be destined for universal banishment. Major corporations are increasingly classifying employee e-mail and Internet privileges as potential security hazards, distractions or worse, costly legal dangers in the making. As a result, companies are considering dramatically curtailing, or even abolishing completely the freedoms, on which employees have grown increasingly reliant over the past few years.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-862067.html

Yahoo tests paid-programming waters
Borrowing a page from RealNetworks' book, Web portal Yahoo is trying to get a read on how willing the market is to support a subscription-based streaming-media service. The company this weekend began surveying its visitors to gauge whether people would pay for select audio and video programming through the site. Programs under consideration include movies on demand, soap-opera news, sporting events, professional wrestling and a reality show about single women called "Real Girls," according to the survey.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-862468.html

Discord over digital music
With millions of people downloading free copies of everything from the latest chart hit to whole albums over the internet, the music industry is facing a formidable challenge. A whole generation is growing up with digital technology that has provided the means to get free access to music at any time. "Digital technology offers us both opportunities and threats," Fergal Gara of EMI Records told the BBC programme Go Digital. "Unless we get control of digital privacy, we will be in deep trouble. But I'm not convinced that legislation alone is the answer. What we really need to do is provide alternatives to consumers."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1874800.stm

Bank glitch hits depositors' paychecks
Bank of America, the No. 3 U.S. bank, said Sunday that it has corrected a computer processing problem that left a large number of West Coast customers without access to funds directly deposited to their accounts last Friday. The computer glitch, which affected an unspecified number of Bank of America customers in Nevada, California and Arizona, left customers unable to access paychecks that had been electronically, directly deposited on Friday, said Harvey Radin, a bank spokesman. Radin said the problem occurred on Friday evening. The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank was able to restore funds to its Arizona and Nevada customer accounts late Saturday afternoon, and to California accounts by early Sunday morning.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-862061.html?tag=cd_mh

eBay: Oscars bring out the Bootlegged
A few enterprising -- and potentially illegal -- eBay sellers are gearing up for the Oscars, auctioning off pirated versions of nominated films, some priced at less than a ticket and popcorn.
Many of the Academy Award hopefuls up for bid on eBay, which include "Monsters, Inc.," "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," are not bound for the video store for weeks. The activity comes at a particularly anxious time for media companies that are trying to identify and stamp out major sources of piracy for fear it will cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-861324.html?tag=cd_mh

Bus-tracking system links kids to parents
A Canadian company on Monday launched a wireless tracking system in Singapore that will link school buses to schools and parents, thereby boosting safety for schoolchildren. The system, called the School Bus Tracking and Monitoring System, was developed by Unity Integration. A Singapore primary school has been testing the system since January in a pilot project that will run until June.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-862269.html?tag=cd_mh

Free AOL use sparks new worries
Free Web access may be a bygone perk of the dot-com bubble, but it appears to be alive and well at the world's largest Internet service provider, America Online. AOL offers a battery of free promotion and retention programs, but it refuses to disclose how many of its subscribers pay nothing for the service. Now, Wall Street is zeroing in on some financial details that it believes offer a guide to this elusive number -- and it doesn't like what it sees. The concern over AOL's nonpaying customers comes at a critical time for the ISP. Analysts have been increasingly worried about slowing growth at AOL, with many noting that the ISP took longer than expected to reach its latest subscriber milestone.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-859849.html

Recordable-DVD buyers cry foul
Leo Lorenzetti is one of a number of customers unhappy with Hewlett-Packard and the DVD+RW Alliance, a group advocating the DVD-rewritable standard. Four months ago, Lorenzetti, a vice president of engineering for Boonton, N.J.-based Mobile-Vision, purchased HP's first-generation DVD+RW drive with the impression that the drive, called the dvd writer dvd100i, could be upgraded to support DVD+R -- a recording format that works with less-expensive discs. DVD+RW Alliance members initially said that compatibility could be established through an upgrade but later backed off those claims before their products began shipping.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-861466.html

More news later on

[walktalker]

ICANN Surveys Its Crossroads
The battle for future control of the Internet could shift to Europe in the weeks ahead, as advocates of democratic representation for the Internet's governing body press their case. Meeting last week in Ghana, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers appeared to reject future elections for board members, such as the online voting that culminated in the October 2000 election of five at-large members of the ICANN board.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51109,00.html

Europe Gives Go-Ahead to Galileo
A surprise decision over the weekend by European Union leaders to fund an alternative to the United States Global Positioning System satellite network could shape up as a critical event for Europe's future as a technological power. As recently as January, backers of the $3.2-billion system, called Galileo, counted its chances of moving forward in the face of U.S. opposition at virtually nil. They said a December letter from U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to all 15 EU defense ministers, arguing against Galileo, had effectively stymied the project.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51130,00.html

Fiber Optics, as Never Been Seen
The idea of carrying phone conversations with light may date back to 1880, but its implementation took an entire century. It was only in the 1980s that fiber optic channels were first integrated into commercial phone networks. In the intervening years, much has stayed the same -- scientists and engineers still want to cram more and more zeroes and ones into those familiar hair-thin wires of glass. But major advancements appear to be on the way.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,50779,00.html

Polymers Want a Fabric
Fancy this: clothing that generates solar power, fabrics that beep if you risk athletic injury and bed sheets that monitor your heartbeat and physiological health. Welcome to the world of "intelligent polymers," a chemical research frontier that could revolutionize textiles. At its simplest, intelligent polymers are plastic strands that can carry electricity, altering their conductivity in response to stretching, heating or sunlight. By weaving these into clothing, and measuring changes in the current passing through them, any number of new applications are possible.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,50904,00.html

US Military Scours Windows Systems For Hacker Back Doors
The United States Army and Navy are conducting a high-priority security review of their Microsoft Windows systems for the presence of an unauthorized remote-control program, sources familiar with the investigation have confirmed. An unclassified memo, sent Mar. 6 by the Navy's Computer Incident Response Team (NAVCIRT), warned Navy computer administrators to scan their Windows systems for evidence of a popular commercial software program called RemotelyAnywhere.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175245.html

Gravity-mapping satellite duo activated
Two satellites that promise to deliver the most accurate global map of the Earth's gravitational field have been activated after their launch on Sunday. The duo - nicknamed Tom and Jerry - blasted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia at 0921 GMT. The first signal from the satellites was received at a ground tracking station in Weilheim, Germany at 1049GMT. Engineers are currently performing the first checks of the satellites' instruments.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992055

BT anti-spam drive backfires on users
Measures to combat spam passing through BT mail servers are also trapping and deleting legitimate emails from BT's ADSL customers. A move by BT to cut out spam passing through its servers has ended up deleting valid emails sent out by some of BT's ADSL customers. BT introduced the measures, which entailed filtering out and deleting emails that looked like spam, on Tuesday. But the company failed to tell its customers about the new policy and as a result some had their outgoing emails filtered and deleted too.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2106727,00.html

Eliminating the Tools of Terror
So far, society prefers to absorb the cost of bank robberies rather than move to a cash-free economy. Yet Sutton’s practical observation offers an important clue to addressing a challenge that our society does judge intolerable: terrorism. The most effective way to address terrorism is neither better offense nor better defense. Rather, it is to take away the ball. Creatively eliminate the tools of terrorism, and you go a long way toward eliminating the terrorist.
http://www.techreview.com/articles/insight0402.asp

Intuitive people worse at detecting lies
People who think of themselves as being intuitive make worse lie detectors than those who do not trust in a "gut instinct", according to new research. "People generally aren't very good at detecting lies - accuracy is between 45 and 65 per cent," says Paul Seager of the University of Central Lancashire, Preston. "So my interest is: are there ways of making people better lie detectors?"
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992054

FBI Charges 89 People In Online Child-Porn Crackdown
The FBI today announced that it had filed charges against 89 people in 20 states in the first phase of a nationwide crackdown on Internet child pornography trafficking. The FBI said that since launching "Operation Candyman," agents had conducted more than 266 searches and arrested 27 suspects involved in producing child pornography. Little league coaches, a school-bus driver, a teachers aide, a guidance counselor and a foster care parent were among those charged in the sweep, the FBI said.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175275.html

CIA Web Site Tracks Visitors With Cookies
A Web site operated by the Central Intelligence Agency is marking visitors with a unique identification tag or "cookie" that violates federal privacy guidelines and the agency's own privacy policy, according to Public Information Research, a non-profit group. The CIA's Electronic Reading Room site, which provides online access to previously released CIA documents, places a "persistent" cookie on visitors' computers when they visit the site. Designed to remain on the visitor's computer until December 2010, the cookie contains the user's Internet protocol address as well as a unique identification number, Newsbytes has confirmed.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175272.html

Court Orders Telemarketers To Pay $39 Mil Judgment
A federal court has ordered a telemarketing group to repay $39 million to customers who were fraudulently billed for magazine subscriptions they never ordered. The $39 million judgment - believed to be the largest ever awarded under current telemarketing sales laws - was entered against a group of Oklahoma City, Okla., telemarketers operating as Diversified Marketing Service Corp., National Marketing Service Inc., NPC Corporation of the Midwest, and Magazine Club Billing Service Inc.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175270.html

Groups Plan Lawsuit Against FCC Cable Modem Ruling
Several consumers groups and Internet service providers might sue to prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from instituting a ruling made last week that would exempt cable ISPs from being required to open their networks to competitors. Media Access Project Deputy Director Cheryl Leanza said that it, the Center for Digital Democracy, the Consumer Federation of America and some unidentified ISPs, are considering the lawsuit along with other options to protest the FCC's decision, which they say limits consumer choice.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175267.html

Playerless TV-Style Ads On Web Catching On
Advertisers love television because they understand it. So it is no surprise that more 30-second TV spots are showing up on the Internet. Despite a frosty advertising market, the CEO of Atlanta-based EyeWonder Friday told Newsbytes his company has added 50 new customers since December - thanks to technology that allows playerless video streaming. John Vincent said advertisers want their online advertising strategy to mimic TV, but until a few months ago, it was not possible because of technological limitations.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175255.html

Company Behind Morpheus Plans New Play On Peer-to-Peer
The chief executive of StreamCast Networks admits it may have been a little tardy to unveil only last week the organization chart for a company whose Morpheus software may be second only to Napster's in file-sharing infamy. But Steve Griffin said the new document in the corporate marketing material doesn't mean his Tennessee-based company doesn't have well-laid plans to be a much bigger player in the peer-to-peer arena.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175254.html

Philippines - School Assails Slow Resolution Of Hacking Case
Executives of a prominent business school alleged to be a hacking victim blame the Philippine judicial system for the sluggish progress of the case against several former employees accused of stealing digital copies of the school's programs. The Thames International Business School, which was the first local entity to invoke Republic Act 8792, or the E-commerce Law, last year sued two of its former employees for illegally hacking into the school's computers and retrieving proprietary materials with the intent to profit.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175265.html

More news later on

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by walktalker
Time to read the news, or else...

Ok ok....

by WT's excellent news service:
Discord over digital music
With millions of people downloading free copies of everything from the latest chart hit to whole albums over the internet, the music industry is facing a formidable challenge. A whole generation is growing up with digital technology that has provided the means to get free access to music at any time. "Digital technology offers us both opportunities and threats," Fergal Gara of EMI Records told the BBC programme Go Digital. "Unless we get control of digital privacy, we will be in deep trouble. But I'm not convinced that legislation alone is the answer. What we really need to do is provide alternatives to consumers."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1874800.stm

"Unless we get control of digital privacy, we will be in deep trouble." Now there's an interesting and paradoxical concept... if EMI controls your privacy it isn't much of a privacy anymore, is it? Especially as thousands of similar corporations can claim the right to control your digital privacy on similar grounds. How about giving the entertainment industry the right to check your snailmail, just in case you are sending some mp3s to your friends?

Thanks WT!

- tg

[mozart]

Originally posted by TankGirl

"Unless we get control of digital privacy, we will be in deep trouble." Now there's an interesting and paradoxical concept... if EMI controls your privacy it isn't much of a privacy anymore, is it?

Its at times like that you wonder if someone's escaped from Bush's script-writing team

Especially as thousands of similar corporations can claim the right to control your digital privacy on similar grounds. How about giving the entertainment industry the right to check your snailmail, just in case you are sending some mp3s to your friends?

Better add stop-and-searches, just in case you deliver in person (which is, after all, far more likely).

Interesting times, though. A lot of stuff got sneaked through using the terrorism premise - it'll be much simpler to spread now its past that first checkpoint.