The Newspaper Shop -- what was supposed to be the Wednesday edition

[walktalker]

Everyone wanted to take over our comp

Spam: Still out of control
Chris Lewis walks a tightrope every day as leader of a spam-eradication team at a major telecommunications company. He is the guardian of roughly 45,000 employees' e-mail in-boxes, protecting against unsolicited commercial messages that are nearly doubling in number every five months -- and costing an estimated $1 per piece in lost productivity. But perhaps just as important is Lewis' ability to field the bad mail without discarding the good, such as potential business leads.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-865442.html

Houston, we have a merger
As expected, Compaq Computer shareholders have approved a deal for the company to be acquired by Hewlett-Packard, Compaq said Wednesday. An ebullient Compaq CEO Michael Capellas said in a conference call after the meeting that shareholders appeared to have voted 9-to-1 in favor of the deal, adding that soon the heavy lifting of putting the two companies together would begin.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-865028.html

IT workers left out of economic rebound
Mike Landolfi spends his morning watching the stock ticker and CNBC, and he knows the economy is poised for a rebound. But macroeconomic optimism hasn't trickled down to his level. The former information technology manager of FleetBoston Financial has been unemployed since December 2000. Despite sending out resumes and meeting with recruiters and career counselors, Landolfi hasn't been able to finesse three decades of IT experience into a full-time, senior-level position within 35 miles of his home in Chelmsford, Mass.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-865446.html

IT workers -- lend a hand to Uncle Sam?
Amid concerns that the government faces a critical shortage of information-technology skills, the House of Representatives is expected to vote next month on a bill that would create an IT worker-exchange program between the federal government and businesses. The Digital Tech Corps Act would aim to place hundreds of private-sector employees with top-notch IT skills at federal agencies on temporary assignments of up to two years. Government agencies would in turn lend members of their IT staffs for assignments in the business world.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-865280.html

RealNetworks: MS tried to obstruct us
Internet video and audio pioneer RealNetworks accused Microsoft in court on Wednesday of seeking to restrict RealNetworks' products because they posed a threat to the software giant's Windows operating system monopoly. RealNetworks Vice President David Richards, in written testimony to U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, said that as recently as August 2001, a senior Microsoft executive had confirmed that RealNetworks was seen as a threat.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-864842.html

Broadband bill fails to woo Senate
A controversial bill that seeks to deregulate high-speed Internet services faced slim chances for survival after its sponsors failed Wednesday to win over a skeptical Senate panel. Reps. Billy Tauzin and John Dingell, sponsors of the measure that won approval in the House of Representatives last month, told the Senate Commerce and Science Committee that it was the best way to ensure that more American households would sign up for high-speed, or broadband, Internet access.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-865160.html

Too much trust in open source?
In the past three months, the open-source community has been given a wake-up call. While Microsoft has concentrated on reviewing its flagship Windows source code as part of a new focus on security, Internet watchdogs have released the details of three widespread flaws in open-source applications usually shipped with the Linux operating system. The flaws could compromise the security of computers on which the applications are installed, prompting some developers to urge the open-source community to take another look at popular code. But most fear the majority of members won't bother.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-864256.html

Global Crossing under panel inquiry
Global Crossing is expected to face tough questions on Thursday from U.S. House lawmakers as they delve into the demise of the once-mighty telecommunications company and its accounting practices. The U.S. House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold a hearing featuring Global Crossing Chief Executive Officer John Legere and Qwest Communications International President Afshin Mohebbi, among other telecommunications executives.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-865450.html

Pioneer drops price on new DVD drive
Pioneer Electronics is spinning out a faster and lower cost version of its popular DVD-recordable drive. The electronics device maker announced Tuesday that it plans to replace its DVR-A03 with the next-generation DVR-A04 DVD-R (DVD-recordable) drive, which will cost $500 -- about $150 less than the AO3 -- and be slighter faster. Similar to the A03, the A04 will be able to read and write to DVD-R, DVD-RW (DVD-rewritable), CD-R and CD-RW discs. But the A04 drive will be smaller, will be able to read DVD-R and CD-R faster, and will record to discs more reliably, according to the company. Pioneer's A03 drive can be found in Apple, Sony and Compaq PCs.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-864926.html

Microsoft: Java hole poses Windows risk
Microsoft has released a warning about a second vulnerability in software that allows Windows users to run programs written in Java, a Microsoft program manager said Tuesday. Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, creator of the Java programming language, released a joint bulletin about the first vulnerability affecting the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) code on March 4. They released a subsequent bulletin on Monday, according to Christopher Budd, security program manager at the Microsoft Security Response Center.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-864629.html?tag=cd_mh

Eliminating the Tools of Terror
How can we stop bank robbers in their tracks? A politician might suggest doubling the number of guards to calm the public and intimidate would-be thieves. A policeman might recommend installing more video cameras, combination locks and metal gates. A judge might advocate increasing legal penalties for armed robbery. These approaches, though well meaning, would remain tedious, expensive and arbitrary; no matter how great our resolve, we simply can’t anticipate every threat to every bank in the country. Fortunately, there is another solution...
http://www.techreview.com/articles/insight0402.asp

eBay backs off privacy-policy change
eBay is backing off of a controversial revision to its privacy policy. The revision had said that eBay might make statements regarding privacy rules on its site that conflict with its official privacy policy. In those cases, members had to agree that only the official privacy policy was the true statement of eBay's rules. eBay is now updating that revision to encourage members to read the company's official policy if they have questions about eBay's rules on privacy.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-863294.html?tag=cd_mh

Missile defense research portal created
The Missile Defense Agency, a unit of the Pentagon, said Monday that it is building an intranet to streamline and accelerate missile defense development, research and testing. The customized portal, created with Plumtree Software applications, gives hundreds of government and military researchers access to vast amounts of classified data on missile shield testing collected over more than the last decade.
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-862944.html?tag=cd_mh

Lucent pushes fiber-optic capacity
Bell Labs, the research arm of Lucent Technologies, said Tuesday it has developed a product that will allow telecommunications companies to pack four times more data onto a single light wave in fiber-optic cables than currently. The product, known as a dense wave division multiplexer, will make it cheaper to build high-speed, long-distance fiber-optic networks. Fiber-optic cables use light waves to transmit data. The technology allows telecommunications service providers to push bigger chunks of data over a single strand of fiber in their fiber-optic networks.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-863934.html?tag=cd_mh

Publisher to build giant library online
Plans to create one of the biggest reference libraries on the Internet were unveiled in Britain on Wednesday. Reference-work publisher Oxford University Press hopes to publish 1.5 million entries on 20 subjects on a subscription Web site by 2010. "For us to have a future as an information provider, we have to be doing it on the Internet," said David Swarbrick, the project director.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-864869.html?tag=cd_mh

Twelve arrested in Net porn raid
Twelve suspects were arrested in dawn raids Wednesday in a worldwide swoop on an "elite" child pornography ring. Thousands of pictures and videos of children being sexually abused were found on computers seized during the raids, said Mick Deats, detective superintendent at the National Hi-Tech Criminal Unit in London. "We are very concerned about the children in these images and are making a big effort to try and identify who they are," he said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-864657.html?tag=cd_mh

Net gets first dibs on "Spider" trailer
Spider-Man is coming, and the first place you'll find him, naturally enough, is on the Web. The preview for Sony Pictures' new "Spider-Man" movie will be released exclusively online before showing up in the theaters, the company said. "This Internet exclusive is also our way of saying 'thank you' to the online community that has so enthusiastically followed and supported the development and production of 'Spider-Man' over the past several years," Columbia TriStar marketing executive Geoffrey Ammer said in a statement Wednesday. Columbia TriStar is affiliated with Sony Pictures.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-864422.html?tag=cd_mh

Real lets the games begin abroad
RealNetworks on Wednesday said it will bring its video game software to several foreign markets, and touted the relatively new service as a profitable business for the Internet audio and video pioneer. Launched in the United States last May, RealArcade is a piece of free software that helps gamers organize video games on a personal computer and also acts as a technology for downloading free and fee-based games distributed by RealNetworks.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-864310.html?tag=cd_mh

Morpheus gives Web surfers a detour
StreamCast Networks, distributor of the popular Morpheus software, is quietly counting the number of times its file swappers visit high-profile shopping sites. The company on Tuesday said it has begun installing a Web browser add-on that sends some Morpheus users on an invisible Web detour aimed at capturing data about file swappers' surfing habits.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-864086.html?tag=cd_mh

Small discs to feature big artists
Start-up DataPlay said Tuesday that it has signed a deal with independent label Zomba Recording to offer new albums by artists such as Britney Spears and 'NSync on miniature discs. Boulder, Colo.-based DataPlay calls its technology "the world's smallest DVD-R." It makes discs that are about the size of a quarter and can hold five to 11 hours of music, or three to five albums. Unlike Sony's MiniDiscs for music, DataPlay's discs can also store film, e-books, photos and videos.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-864058.html?tag=cd_mh

Net users less willing to pay for content
Even though consumers are growing more comfortable with buying stuff on the Web, people are hesitant about paying for online content, according to a study released Tuesday. The percentage of online adults willing to pay for content on the Internet decreased to 42 percent from 45 percent in August 2000, according to a study conducted by market researcher Jupiter Media Metrix. That means people still expect to find news, music, games and video clips for free on the Web despite industry trends to the contrary.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-863857.html?tag=cd_mh

Charter delays Microsoft TV software use
Cable company Charter Communications is delaying plans to launch Microsoft's interactive-TV software. Charter said it won't release Microsoft-powered TV services early this year as it had hoped and may not use Microsoft software at all this fall when it launches a TV set-top box styled as a home-media center, according to a spokesman. "We haven't made a decision on what middleware we're going to use in the new BMC8000 box," said Andy Morgan, director of communications at Charter.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-864341.html?tag=cd_mh

Sony, Honda animated on robots' role
It's a question anyone might ask about a potential live-in partner. Should your household robot be cool? Or practical? For consumer electronics giant Sony, which on Tuesday unveiled the sleek and diminutive SDR-4X that can sing in vibrato and dance with fluid or funky motions, robots ought to be entertaining. But for automaker Honda Motor, which showed off the latest version of its Asimo robot at a Tuesday luncheon with foreign reporters, such machines should one day perform useful tasks for their human masters.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-863158.html?tag=cd_mh

More news later on :SWR: