Wednesday, May 26, 2004

---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  NEC Readies Power Handheld (PC World). PC World - Notebook alternative uses Bsquare design combining PDA, phone. 11:25:32 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Amazon to Build, Run Bombay Company Web Sites (Reuters). Reuters - The Bombay Company Inc., which sells furniture and home decor primarily through mall-based stores, on Wednesday said it had chosen Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN.O) to build and manage its Internet sales sites. 2.  China's Pirates Spoil the Game for Console Makers (Reuters). Reuters - Electronics salesman Min Shushan can talk for hours about the merits of Sony's PlayStation 2 (PS2) versus Microsoft's Xbox, having taken apart hundreds of consoles over the years to rig them for pirated games. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  Welcome To Planet Pixar 10:25:13 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Chinese company makes soy sauce from human hair. A resourceful Chinese company got in trouble for brewing soy sauce out of human hair. X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 3.43287E-023; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1147 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} China Central Television (CCTV), the state television station, first raised public worries over the quality of domestic soy sauce by uncovering a substandard workshop in central China's Hubei Province, where piles of waste human hair were found. The hairs were treated in special containers to distill amino acid, the most common substance contained in soybean sauce. Human hair is rich in protein content, just like soybean, wheat and bran, the conventional and legally accepted raw ingredients for the production of soy sauce. Link ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.  Microsoft Technology Will Widen Searches (AP). AP - Microsoft Corp. will soon release technology that takes search functions far beyond the Internet, allowing users to pour through e-mails, personal computers and even big databases to find the information they want, a top executive said Wednesday. 3.  Legg Mason's Miller Eyes Bidding in Google Auction (Reuters). Reuters - Legg Mason mutual fund guru Bill Miller, known for huge holdings of technology companies like Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN.O), said on Wednesday he has his sights on the much-anticipated sale of No. 1 search engine Google. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  MS SQL Server 2005 Adds Security Features 9:24:53 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Geeky doormat. X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 3.25421E-244; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1121 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} Thinkgeek is selling these wicked-geeky doormats. Please direct pedantic remarks about the superiority of "There's not place like ~/" to /dev/peevish. Link (Thanks, eyelessloki!) 2.  Extra pretty rocket paintings by Peter Thorpe. Artist Peter Thorpe (a well-known book cover illustrator) has a bunch of acrylic paintings of rockets for sale. I don't know how much they cost, but he says prices are available upon request. Link (via The Cartoonist) 3.  One-wheeled asphalt skiier. The Swiss-made EasyGlider will ship in October 2004 for US$1,000. Looks like fun, but where do you use it without getting busted in a world that hates all kinds of novel transportation? Link (Via Sensible Erection) 4.  Postmodern furniture for pets. Nifty scratching posts and other stuff for your pet available here. Link 5.  Russ Kick on Afghan food drop fiasco. Our current guestblogger Russ Kick wrote a great piece for Loompanics about the US food drop to Afghanistan. You know those little packets in vitamin bottles and clothes that are supposed to keep them fresh? Well, many of the little meal packs dropped on Afghanistan contained>Link (Via Reality Carnival) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 6.  California county ditches Diebold e-voting machines 7.  Briefly: California county ditches Diebold e-voting ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.  PeopleSoft Spurns Oracle Takeover Bid (AP). AP - Business software maker PeopleSoft Inc. rejected its relentless suitor Oracle Corp. for a fourth time Wednesday and announced a settlement of shareholder suits that objected to an unusual sales program created as a takeover defense. 9.  Microsoft Technology Will Widen Searches (AP). AP - Microsoft Corp. will soon release technology that takes search functions far beyond the Internet, allowing users to pour through e-mails, personal computers and even big databases to find the information they want, a top executive said Wednesday. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10.  Extensible Programming for the 21st Century ---------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWorld: Top News ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11.  BEA rethinks the browser for mobile workers. BEA Systems showed off a prototype technology Wednesday that aims to extend the familiar Web browser and make it a more useful tool for people working on a laptop or handheld computer with> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWorld: Security ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 12.  IBM updates SAN File System software. IBM Corp. next month will release a new version of its TotalStorage SAN (storage area network) File System Software designed to work with a wider variety of new server and storage environments. 13.  SQL Server getting security boosts. Microsoft at its Tech Ed conference in San Diego on Tuesday will tout plans to add data encryption to its SQL Server database and seek federal government security certification for the platform as well. 14.  TechEd: Microsoft to kill 'Kodiak' code name. SAN DIEGO -- Microsoft will dump its "Kodiak"  code-name that had been tagged to the next generation release of Exchange Server, instead shifting strategy to release individual improvements as they are ready, according to company executives here at TechEd 2004. 15.  Vendors team on WS-Federation standard. Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp. and five companies that make identity management software are teaming to support the Web Services (WS) architecture and WS-Federation standard for sharing user identities across corporate extranets and the Internet, they announced Tuesday. 16.  Microsoft touts common engineering plan. SAN DIEGO -- Microsoft on Tuesday announced the Windows Server System Common Engineering Roadmap, a long term plan for simplifying IT complexity by building common services across Windows Server System products.   The first delivery in that plan, the Common Engineering Criteria for 2005, was unveiled here at the company's annual TechEd conference. 8:24:34 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Word Processing Equipment and airlines. British Air announces before each flight that "word processing equipment" must be switched off. It's hilarious, I keep picturing someone up there in Posh Bastard Class who's booked an extra couple seats for his Xerox Word Processor and a long-suffering "word-processing-specialist" to operate it. Also, why the hell does Air Canada forbid the use of in-flight "modems and printers" (and how do they reconcile the ban on modems with the fact that they provide hideously expensive in-flight phone service, with modem jacks?) 2.  SHREK@HOME: blue-sky proposal for the future of film production. There's an article on Download Aborted proposing that the producers of Shrek should use distributed rendering screensavers to save money on the renders of Shrek 3. It's an interesting idea, but I suspect that it's suffering from a failure of imagination. On the one hand, cycles are cheap and getting cheaper -- yes, CGI is processor-hungry and that hunger is ballooning, but CPUs are ballooning faster still. I expect that in the medium-term, the rendering expense will be paltry as compared to custom code development, artists and especially marketing. If you're starting with a couple hundred mil in budget, dropping one, two or even five percent on a bunch of white-box PCs is just not that big a deal. Now, indie filmmakers, students, and garage auteurs, OTOH, really can't afford the cycles to render a cinematic quality CGI film. These are the kinds of people a SHREK@HOME screensaver could really serve, and if you made it social, it could do double-duty. Ultimately, the largest expense in an Internet marketplace where anything is available always anywhere is marketing: the more choice, the more expensive influencing choice becomes. So a social SHREK@HOME could engage its audience not just for their cycles, but for their evangelism. We see glimmers of that in some machinima projects, like Red v Blue or in Flash-shorts like Homestar Runner, a clubbish sense of ownership by its fans that turn them into relentless marketers of the net-art. The more engaged fans are with work, the purer the evangelism (hence the blogging bore and every other otaku who can run on about her hobby forever). It's hard to be really engaged in the creative process of "shooting" CGI -- I don't know enough about 3D animation or visual art to second-guess those who do. But there are ways that even the unskilled can contribute. Imagine a distributed renderer that included along the bottom thumbnails of alternate test-renders of the current sequence: different lighting, camera, even new inverse-kinematics and chaining. These different sequences could be created by the filmmaker and/or by more knowledgeable fans. While I render out the authoritative version, I can click on any of these little animated thumbnails and devote an equal number of cycles to rendering it, producing, in effect, an "audience cut" of the movie that can be matched with the foley and ADR in post to allow for different views on the same flick. On top of that, layer the useful bits MMOs: guilds, pledges, fan-sites, etc. Create affinity communities around different edits and renders. The more excitement you build for your movie, the more cycles end up being devoted to its production: the more cycles, the more variable renders and the more excitement. The software is pretty do-able, it's the kind of thing Nelson and Mark were doing at Popular Power and Adam "distributed.net" Beberg was talking about with COSM years ago. The legal apparatus might be harder, but a CC-license could take care of that. The result would be ten million times more exciting than the mundane process of donating some of your cycles to Shrek 3 -- it would be the basis for an entirely new way of financing and executing film production. X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 1.68322E-284; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1120 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} Link (via /.) 3.  BBC to use Creative Commons licenses. Digital Lifestyles is reporting that Larry Lessig has been named to a BBC advisory board and that the BBC's Creative Archive project (which aims to put the BBC's archives online for non-commercial re-use) will use Creative Commons licenses: Professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project was clearly excited: "The announcement by the BBC of its intent to develop a Creative Archive has been the single most important event in getting people to understand the potential for digital creativity, and to see how such potential actually supports artists and artistic creativity." He went to enthuse "If the vision proves a reality, Britain will become a centre for digital creativity, and will drive the many markets – in broadband deployment and technology – that digital creativity will support." Link (Thanks, Simon!) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Penny Arcade! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  The Double-You Bee. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.  Database sales bouncing back 6.  High-end servers to stave off low-end attack 7.  Cingular dials in 3G ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.  Mac Users, Developers Reconciled to Security Threats (Ziff Davis). Ziff Davis - Despite continued warnings of vulnerabilities from security vendors, Mac OS X users and developers sounded a sanguine note in the face of potential exploits. 9.  Mac OS X 10.3.4 released; Panther Server updated (MacCentral). MacCentral - Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday released an update to its Mac OS X Panther operating system, bringing the current version to 10.3.4. Apple also updated Panther Server, bringing it up to version 10.3.4, adding improved Server Admin application among other changes. 10.  Apple MAC OS X Is Still Vulnerable, Security Firm Says (Reuters). Reuters - Apple Computer Inc.'s (AAPL.O) Mac OS X operating system remains vulnerable to attacks by hackers, even after the Mac computer maker issued a software update to fix the problem, security firm Secunia said in an updated warning issued Tuesday. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11.  Napster Canada Launched ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SecurityFocus News ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 12.  Columnists: Pass the Chocolate. For the 70% of the population that will trade their computer password for a bar of chocolate, this one's for you. 7:24:13 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Apple grooms Panther OS X 2.  Briefly: Apple updates Panther OS X 3.  Study: Database sales bouncing back ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  Microsoft Previews Windows Server Update (PC World). PC World - OS will include remote network access features, new security tools. 5.  PeopleSoft Rejects Latest Oracle Bid (Reuters). Reuters - Business software maker PeopleSoft Inc. (PSFT.O) on Wednesday said it settled a shareholder suit related to a licensing fee refund plan implemented as part of its defense against a hostile takeover attempt by Oracle Corp.(ORCL.O). 6.  NEC Readies Power Handheld (PC World). PC World - Notebook alternative uses Bsquare design combining PDA, phone. 7.  Report: 'Tweens' Less Likely to Pirate (washingtonpost.com). washingtonpost.com - Young children are far less likely than teenagers to illegally download music, movies and software from the Internet, according to the results of an online poll that were released today. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.  Geeks and Poker? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWorld: Top News ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 9.  Report: IBM tightens hold on databases. IBM tightened its grip on the RDBMS (relational database management system) market just a little more in 2003, largely on the strength of versions of DB2 that run on its iSeries midrange servers and zSeries mainframes, according to a report released by Gartner's Dataquest division on Wednesday. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LinuxSecurity.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10.  Mac OS fix fails to plug security hole ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SecurityFocus Vulns ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11.  BugTraq: Re: IRIX libcpr vulnerability. Sender: Jan Schaumann [jschauma at netmeister dot org] 12.  BugTraq: [CLA-2004:843] Conectiva Security Announcement - kde. Sender: Conectiva Updates [secure at conectiva dot com dot br] 6:23:53 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  BellSouth squelches shutoff concerns 2.  Verizon to offer 'naked' DSL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  PeopleSoft Spurns Oracle Takeover Bid (AP). AP - Business software maker PeopleSoft Inc. rejected its relentless suitor Oracle Corp. for a fourth time Wednesday and announced a settlement of a shareholder suit that objected to an unusual sales program created as a takeover defense. 4.  Napster Launches Canadian Online Music Service (Reuters). Reuters - Online music provider Napster, which transformed itself from pioneering song-swap site to a pay-for-use service, said on Wednesday it had launched a Canadian version of its operation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.  BBC Creative Archive Based On Creative Commons ---------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWorld: Top News ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 6.  PeopleSoft board votes to reject lower Oracle offer. PeopleSoft's board of directors on Wednesday rejected Oracle's latest unsolicited offer to buy the enterprise resource management software company. PeopleSoft, in Pleasanton, California, also announced that it has settled a number of class action suits filed against it in connection with Oracle's bid. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Register ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7.  Server vendors work hard for their money in Q1. Units fly, cash putters By Ashlee Vance . 5:23:32 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Microsoft: Linux isn't cheaper ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.  Verizon Offers Stand-Alone DSL to Keep Customers (Reuters). Reuters - Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ.N) has quietly offered high-speed Internet service to customers in some parts of the country who were turning off their phone service, the company said on Wednesday. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, 2nd Edition ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Register ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  ClearCube puts bells and whistles on blade PC. British back end By Ashlee Vance . 5.  Regulator fines Net sex firm. To dial for By Tim Richardson . 4:23:11 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ars Technica ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Antispam authentication moves ahead. Microsoft agrees to combine Caller ID for E-mail with another antispam technology called SPF. Along with Yahoo's DomainKeys, the combined forces of the two may be able to tighten the flow of spam. By Eric Bangeman. 2.  Pirate Act wants US taxpayers to pay for prosecution of civil suits to protect business. Why pursue costly civil litigation when you can have the government do it for you? That's the gist of part of the so-called Pirate Act, a new set of legislation aimed at criminalizing various online acts of piracy. By Ken "Caesar" Fisher. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  "Girl Photoblogs Chernobyl on Motorcycle" thing a fraud?. Was this story just another web hoax? Yes, says subscriber Mary Mycio on the "e-POSHTA" Ukrainian mailing list, re-posted on Neil Gaiman's website. I am sorry to report that much of Elena's story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv. She did, however, bring a motorcycle helmet. They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency and the administration of the Chornobyl zone (and not her father). They were given the same standard excursion that most Chernobyl tourists receive. When the Web site appeared, Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone. When it turned out that the motorcycle story was an invention, they were even less pleased about this fantasy Web site. Because of those problems, Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading. X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 1.07178E-203; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1116 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} If so -- ah, well. C'est la web. The photos are still amazing. Link (Thanks, chupacabra) 4.  Cop, sheriff work a little too closely, produce online porn video. The SF Examiner reports that a San Francisco cop is under investigation for making a porn video with a colleague from the sherrif's department. Outraged officials say an internal probe (ahem) is forthcoming. In the video, which was posted on a pay-per-view Web site, Tenderloin beat cop Darryl Watts played out a fantasy where he pretended to be a john and a sheriff's department employee acted the part of a prostitute referred to as "Myra." [Ed note: Actually, the PPV site we found spells the character's name as "Mira."] The video did not tap into any law enforcement themes common in the pornography industry. No badges, batons, uniforms or pistols were produced during the film, police said. (...)Police sources said that Watts, who has been on the force for three years, is a "good, productive street cop." Last year, he was hailed for capturing a man who was chasing another man with a butcher knife near Union Square. Link to SF Examiner story (Thanks, Marc). An honorary link-fu degree will be awarded to the first BoingBoing reader who produces a link to a legitimate copy of the illicitly-produced video (or the location of the PPV site where it was first distributed) Update: "masked_superstar" and David both win. Link to free *.wmv clip on the originating PPV porn site, not worksafe, sexually explicit. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.  Briefly: Calif. Senate passes e-mail privacy bill 6.  Oracle to finish Linux makeover this year 7.  PC market to enjoy healthy growth, report says 8.  BEA transforms mobile apps with Alchemy 9.  BellSouth squelches shutoff rumors ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10.  Microsoft Stretches Product Support to 10 Years (NewsFactor). NewsFactor - Starting June 1st, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) will offer an expanded product-support lifecycle policy, providing customers with a minimum of 10 years of mainstream and extended support for business and developer products, said Andrew Lees, vice president of server and tools marketing, in his presentation at the ongoing TechEd 2004 conference. 11.  Microsoft Moves Toward Supercomputing (NewsFactor). NewsFactor - Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is in the early stages of developing a supercomputer system as it conducts its first annual two-day workshop for intensive computing in Bellevue, Washington. The world's biggest software company has been working with the Cornell Theory Center since both announced a collaborative arrangement in August last year. 12.  Global Telecom Deals Fly (NewsFactor). NewsFactor - Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) says its T-Mobile USA unit will acquire GSM networks in California and Nevada owned by Cingular Wireless for US$2.5 billion. 13.  Cisco Router Shakes IP Telephony World (NewsFactor). NewsFactor - The release of another new router does not mean much in the highly competitive Internet-backbone world. But when that router comes from a company with established inroads into the industry that may fuel the growth of the router market -- telecommunications -- things look a bit different. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 14.  Camera Vans To Photograph 50 Million Buildings ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SecurityFocus Vulns ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 15.  BugTraq: [ GLSA 200405-22 ] Apache 1.3: Multiple vulnerabilities. Sender: Kurt Lieber [klieber at gentoo dot org] 3:22:52 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Napoleon Dynamite. On June 11, Fox Searchlight releases this film, which looks very nerdworthy. I think this dude is my future husband. Jason Calacanis saw the pic at Sundance and blogged this review. X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 1.63851E-152; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1115 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} Link to "Napoleon Dynamite" home page and QuickTime trailer 2.  Sexy Androids, Electric Sheep. Our friends at Fleshbot purr: The question here isn't really "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" so much as "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep-Like Beings With Long, Dextrous Tongues That Make Them Moan In Ecstacy?" It's the short story Philip K. Dick never got around to writing. Link (of course it's not worksafe, silly.) 3.  Cop, sheriff work a little too closely, produce online porn video. A San Francisco cop is under investigation for making a porn video with a colleague from the sherrif's department. Outraged officials say an internal probe (ahem) is forthcoming. In the video, which was posted on a pay-per-view Web site, Tenderloin beat cop Darryl Watts played out a fantasy where he pretended to be a john and a sheriff's department employee acted the part of a prostitute referred to as "Myra." The video did not tap into any law enforcement themes common in the pornography industry. No badges, batons, uniforms or pistols were produced during the film, police said. (...)Police sources said that Watts, who has been on the force for three years, is a "good, productive street cop." Last year, he was hailed for capturing a man who was chasing another man with a butcher knife near Union Square. Link. An honorary link-fu degree will be awarded to the first BoingBoing reader who produces a link to a legitimate copy of the illicitly-produced video (or the location of the PPV site where it was first distributed) "masked_superstar" wins. (Thanks, Marc) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  Airespace joins WiMax Forum 5.  Briefly: Airespace joins WiMax Forum 6.  Borland to distribute tool kits for eBay, PayPal ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7.  Cheap-Tech Guru (Forbes.com). Forbes.com - Fail to heed the cheap revolution and it will kill you. Try selling a server for $30,000 at a time when Dell sells a pair for $5,000 and you're toast. Ask Sun Microsystems about it. Sun has suffered declining revenue for 12 consecutive quarters. 8.  Kill Bill (Forbes.com). Forbes.com - How is it that for eight months a team of up to a dozen IBM consultants has been toiling in the data centers and computer rooms of the Munich city government--free of charge? Having goaded Munich into embracing open-source software, IBM is helping it plan a migration of 14,000 computers off Microsoft Windows and onto the operating system known as Linux. Never mind that IBM doesn't sell Linux, which is distributed free. And never mind that Munich officials say they're not committed to buying IBM hardware or consulting services, despite all IBM's free help. 9.  Minn. City to Become Internet 'Hot Spot' (AP). AP - This upscale suburb will soon become one of the few, but growing, U.S. cities almost entirely within a "hot spot" of high-speed wireless access to the Internet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10.  Rendering Shrek@Home? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RSSQuotes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11.  ZBRA    82.68    +0.84 (real-time). ZEBRA TECH Last Price: 82.68 Change: +0.84   +1.03% Last Trade: 05/26/2004 2:06PM ET ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SecurityFocus Vulns ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 12.  BugTraq: SUSE Security Announcement: kdelibs (SuSE-SA:2004:014). Sender: [krahmer at suse dot de (Sebastian Krahmer)] 13.  BugTraq: [Full-Disclosure] iDEFENSE Security Advisory 05.26.04: 3Com OfficeConnect Remote 812 ADSL Router Telnet Protocol Denial of Service Vulnerability. Sender: [idlabs-advisories at idefense dot com] 14.  BugTraq: [ GLSA 200405-21 ] Midnight Commander: Multiple vulnerabilities. Sender: Kurt Lieber [klieber at gentoo dot org] 15.  BugTraq: IRIX libcpr vulnerability. Sender: SGI Security Coordinator [agent99 at sgi dot com] 2:22:33 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ars Technica ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Intel to focus on chipsets in marketing to consumers. Clockspeeds are passe now, Intel has decided. Instead of focusing on megahertz, Intel will begin playing up the features of its chipsets, including the soon-to-be-released Grantsdale. By Eric Bangeman. 2.  Microsoft promises 10 years of support for business products. TechEd is on this week, so there's there's a little more Microsoft news out there than usual. One of the most interesting developments is Microsoft's new commitment to providing 10 years of support for all business applications. By Ken "Caesar" Fisher. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  Cool pre-WW2 Japanese Postcards. John Rambow -- editor of the kick-ass blog from travel guide publisher Fodor's -- says: "Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has a big exhibit of some very beautiful Japanese postcards, many of which can be seen on the museum's Web site. If you want to see them in person, hurry -- the show closes 6 June. And who couldn't love this monkey-trainer New Year's card [thumbnail at left --XJ]? Link 4.  Cop, sherrif work a little too closely, produce online porn video. A San Francisco cop is under investigation for making a porn video with a colleague from the sherrif's department. Officials say an internal probe (ahem) is forthcoming. In the video, which was posted on a pay-per-view Web site, Tenderloin beat cop Darryl Watts played out a fantasy where he pretended to be a john and a sheriff's department employee acted the part of a prostitute referred to as "Myra." The video did not tap into any law enforcement themes common in the pornography industry. No badges, batons, uniforms or pistols were produced during the film, police said. (...)Police sources said that Watts, who has been on the force for three years, is a "good, productive street cop." Last year, he was hailed for capturing a man who was chasing another man with a butcher knife near Union Square. Link (Thanks, Marc) 5.  More on digicams and Iraq: Wartime Wireless Worries Pentagon. Following up on this week's erroneous reports of a "Rumsfeld phonecam ban" in Iraq, I filed this story for Wired News today: X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 2.90258E-282; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1114 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may not have signed a ban on new consumer digital-imaging technologies, he did express clear concern about the unforeseen impact of such technologies during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on May 7. "People are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon," Rumsfeld said. According to [DoD spokesperson Lt. Col. Ken] McClellan, some Defense Department lawyers may be reviewing how the spread of consumer digital-imaging technology among military contractors and enlisted personnel affects the military's obligation to abide by a Geneva Convention article against holding prisoners up to public ridicule. "Lawyers may have looked at that and said, 'It's probably a good idea to get these things out of the prisons.' There's no Pentagon-induced rule in the theater at this time ... but there may or may not be some discussion taking place as to how the [Pentagon's April 14 directive on commercial wireless technology] might be supplemented in Iraq to prevent things we saw at Abu Ghraib." Link to Wired News story; Link to previous BoingBoing post ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 6.  Dell targets small companies with EMC box 7.  Porn spammers ignore new rule ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.  PeopleSoft Spurns Oracle Takeover Bid (AP). AP - Business software maker PeopleSoft Inc. rejected its relentless suitor Oracle Corp. for a fourth time Wednesday and announced a settlement of a shareholder suit that objected to an unusual sales program created as a takeover defense. 9.  Open Season (Forbes.com). Forbes.com - Matthew Szulik makes a very attractive target. The 6-foot-5 chief executive of Red Hat stands in the pit of a small auditorium at Stanford University's Gates (as in Bill) Computer Science Building. He has just wrapped up his presentation to 75 computer scientists on the future of software, and the grilling begins. 10.  Microsoft Masters the Art of the Cutback (washingtonpost.com). washingtonpost.com - It seems there's a minor revolt underway in Redmond after Microsoft Corp. announced last week that it will scale back employee benefit programs to cut costs. Among the perks scheduled for reduction are the prescription drug benefits and the employee discount stock purchase program. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11.  'Pirate Act' Would Shift Copyright Civil Suits To DoJ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LinuxSecurity.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 12.  Secure programmer: Minimizing privileges ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SecurityFocus News ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 13.  Elsewhere: Microsoft security spend greater than the Star Wars missile system. Microsoft has spent more on securing its software than was spent on the Star Wars missile project, the company's head of security has told conference guests. An unfortuna... 14.  Elsewhere: CIOs Gear Up for Changing Security Climate. "Security and business continuity have been pushed to the top of my list post-9/11," says Lockheed Martin CIO Joseph R. Cleveland. "We've always been focused on informati... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SecurityFocus Vulns ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 15.  BugTraq: [security bulletin] SSRT4749 HP-UX Java Runtime Environment (JRE) remote DoS. Sender: Boren, Rich (SSRT) [rich dot boren at hp dot com] 1:22:13 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Cookie Monster Tribute Heavy Metal Band. BoingBoing reader Greg confesses, "I found this site at 2:30 in the morning, so it might be less funny in the light of day. It is a speed metal sesame street cover band. The singer actually sounds like cookie monster too." Snip from website: Cookie Mongoloid is Sesame Speed Metal! See the Cookie Mongoloid in all his blue, furry, googly-eyed glory backed by the baddest of gender mixed metal bands as they decimate and regurgitate your childhood favorites in an abrasive metal wrath. See their harem of gothic gyrators, the Cookies, demonstrate such elemental concepts as up and down in a blaze of lights, smoke and pyrotechnic cookie shrapnel. Link 2.  Tech question about results of Google image search for "Abu Ghraib". Boingboing reader Greg asks, I find it interesting to note that Google image search doesn't have any of the pics of the Abu Ghraib abuse that are floating everywhere else on the net. A search for "Abu Ghraib" does bring up photos, but none of the ones that we all saw on CNN and in the Wall Street Journal. I had searched there not long after the story broke and found none of them, but I figured it was just too new. Now, after weeks of spidering time, they still aren't there. Anyone have an idea why? Link 3.  Reading, Writing, and Robots: kids build bots at CeBIT. StreetTech has some great snapshots of the robot-building competition between local high-schoolers in NYC, called NYC FIRST, which exhibited at NY CeBIT. (Thanks, Nate!) Link 4.  Cool pre-WW2 Japanese Postcards. John Rambow -- editor of the kick-ass blog from travel guide publisher Fodor's -- says: "Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has a big exhibit of some very beautiful Japanese postcards, many of which can be seen on the museum's Web site. If you want to see them in person, hurry -- the show closes 6 June. And couldn't love this monkey-trainer New Year's card [thumbnail at left --XJ]? Link 5.  Army reboots GI's tired fatigues. Story by my Wired News colleague Noah Schachtman about the Army's seven-year, $250 million uniform high-tech-ification and redesign project -- dubbed Future Force Warrior, or FFW. One of the most obvious changes is that the new uniforms are unisex. The zipper has been extended, and the uniform's butt flap has been expanded, so GI Janes aren't literally caught with their pants down if they have to pee. FFW's body armor is probably the biggest improvement, however. It sits on a series of foam pads around the rib cage, so there's a 2.5-inch gap between the harness and the body. It keeps the GI cool. And it's almost imperceptibly light -- unlike today's bulletproof vests, many of which are about as comfortable as that lead apron the dentist makes you wear during X-rays. But the scarab-like shell can take five to seven direct hits from a machine gun, and it doubles as a holster for ammunition and grenades. Link 6.  "Girl Photoblogs Chernobyl on Motorcycle" thing a fraud?. Was this story just another web fraud? Yes, says subscriber Mary Mycio on the "e-POSHTA" Ukranian mailing list, re-posted on Neil Gaiman's website. I am sorry to report that much of Elena's story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv. She did, however, bring a motorcycle helmet. They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency and the administration of the Chornobyl zone (and not her father). They were given the same standard excursion that most Chernobyl tourists receive. When the Web site appeared, Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone. When it turned out that the motorcycle story was an invention, they were even less pleased about this fantasy Web site. Because of those problems, Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading. X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 1.93031E-221; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1113 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} If so -- ah, well. C'est la web. The photos are still amazing. Link (Thanks, chupacabra) 7.  Future-couture sunshades from Bless. The everfab Hint Magazine points to some sharp, sexy sunshades with which to protect your peepers in style this summer. Not sunglasses, they're shields. At $325 a pop, style ain't cheap. Available online from Bless. Link to manufacturer website ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.  Dell aims at small firms with EMC box 9.  Study: Broadband a hit in Belgium, Denmark ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10.  Battery Development Off The Beaten Path ---------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWorld: Top News ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11.  Dell, EMC roll out low-cost SAN device. EMC Corp. introduced a new Clariion storage device Wednesday in partnership with Dell Inc. and other vendors that will allow small and medium-size businesses to get the benefits of networked storage for under $10,000. 12.  Reveo developing 3D terabit memory. Developing economies do not have to invest billions of dollars in state-of-the-art fabs to get into the semiconductor industry, according to Sadeg Faris, chairman and chief executive officer of Reveo Inc., which is working on a 3D IC (integrated circuit) that the company says will offer a thousand times density improvement over current IC technology using a conventional fab. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SecurityFocus News ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 13.  Elsewhere: Will code-check tools make for worm-proof software?. When Microsoft needed help in taming the large number of flaws that had crept into its Windows operating system, it looked to technology known as "static source-code chec... 14.  News: Singapore to make spammers pay - literally. Singapore yesterday floated plans to fine spammers a small amount for each item of junk mail they send. Officials in the tightly controlled city state reckon fine of between ten cents and one Singapore Dollar ($0.06 to $0.58) for each spam email would deter marketing transgressions. ISPs would be able to sue bulk mailers if they flouted the country's forthcoming anti-spam laws. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Register ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 15.  FBI apology for Madrid bomb fingerprint fiasco. 'Substandard' digital prints led to Oregon lawyer By John Leyden . 16.  EMC and Dell get cheap together. SANity check By Ashlee Vance . 17.  Phone digicams see the light. Helimorph piezoelectric actuator aids focus By Lucy Sherriff . 12:21:52 PM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  In defense of MP3 blogs. Check out this rant from an MP3 blog reader -- a blogger who posts tracks that he's digging to get his readers interested -- on the threatened medium: X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 3.55464E-060; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1112 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} We're all familiar with blogs (ummm, you're reading one now), but now, we have unashamed folks who are not afraid to provide you with a daily song that has been gracing their ears. Good stuff, big bands, and totally the definition of fair use. The average blog user has 12 readers... so... if I give one song to 12 people a day, that seems entirely fair, when compared to say, WOXY radio that had to shut down because it couldn't afford the licensing and bandwidth of its 50,000 listeners. So, I love it! It's the best of fair use, with the peer spice. Now all we need, is about 3 kabillion more so that these brave souls aren't overloaded, or targetted otherwise. Best of all is the long list of MP3 blogs, which are a sampler's paradise. Link (Thanks, Th0m!) 2.  Nanotrees. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden grew "nanotrees" out of semiconducting materials, Science News reports. Lars Saumelson and his colleagues spray gold nanoparticles onto nanowire "trunks," just a few microns in length. (In comparison, a human hair is around 100 microns thick.) Exposing the seeded trunk to a mixture of specific gasses causes branches to grow. The trunk and the branches can even be composed of different materials so that the parts have specific functions: "For instance, in one experiment, the Lund team made trunks out of gallium phosphide and parts of the branches out of gallium arsenide phosphide. The researchers expect combinations of materials such as these to produce a light-emitting diode: The trunk would carry current to the branches, where the gallium arsenide phosphide would convert it into light. Alternatively, the branches could serve as light-harvesting structures, as in a solar cell, which would then shuttle excited electrons into the trunk." Link ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  SPF To Be Integrated With MS 'Caller ID' System ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Register ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  TV: coming to a mobile near you. Dutch test telly on-the-go By Jan Libbenga . 5.  IBM's PowerPC 975 - verified or vapour?. Analysis Well, it's working on something... By Tony Smith . 6.  Mauritius moves to protect local telco. Rivals ordered to match tariffs By John Oates . 11:21:31 AM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Game Guilds are "distributed cognition". Constance Steinkuehler, a Learning Sciences researcher from UWisc, gave a talk at the Comwork ("Managing Multiplayer Culture") seminar in Copenhagen last week called " "MMOG Guild Leaders as a Com/Dev Resource." Her slides are up as a gargantuan PDF, but they're well-worth the download, as they are a positively mind-blowing look at the failings of the Cognitive Science model, and the way in which MMO guilds can be thought of as distributed cognition. Yum. X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 1.23528E-118; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1111 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} 50MB PDF Link (via Terra Nova) 2.  Fafblog on gay marriage. On Fafblog, a very funny fake interview with James Dobson, leader of the anti-gay-marriage nutbars "Focus on the Family": FAFBLOG: So! How's the Family? JAMES DOBSON: The Family is in deadly danger, Fafnir. FB: Danger? Oh no! I like families! JD: Yes, danger from the homosexual agenda which has been trying for decades to destroy it. FB: I never knew homosexuals had an agenda! I just thought they were ordinary people who were easily stereotyped as lovers of musical theater. JD: So they and the gay-controlled Hollywood elite would have you believe. But the Forces of Gay are now closer than ever to destroying the divine institution of the civil marriage certificate, and with it, the family itself. Link ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  PeopleSoft rejects lowered Oracle bid ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  PeopleSoft Settles Refund Offer Lawsuit (Reuters). Reuters - Business software maker PeopleSoft Inc. (PSFT.O) on Wednesday said it settled a shareholder suit related to a refund plan that is part of the company's defense against a hostile takeover bid from rival Oracle Corp. (ORCL.O). 5.  Shopping.com Sets Terms for Planned IPO (Reuters). Reuters - Shopping.com Ltd., an online comparison shopping service, said on Wednesday it planned to sell 5 million common shares in its initial public offering, for between $14 and $16 per share. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 6.  Area 51 Hackers Map Buried Surveillance Network 7.  Cisco Reveals Its $500 Million Router ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LinuxSecurity.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.  The biggest spammer on the Net? Comcast? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RSSQuotes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 9.  ZBRA    82.59    +0.75 (real-time). ZEBRA TECH Last Price: 82.59 Change: +0.75   +0.92% Last Trade: 05/26/2004 10:07AM ET ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Register ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10.  UMC techies boost SOI chip speed by 30%. Use unwanted quantum tunnelling effects By Tony Smith . 11.  Scientist seeks alien cloud-dwelling bug. Life on Venus? By Lucy Sherriff . 12.  Oxfam enters music download biz. Charity site favours world's poor as well as label execs By Tony Smith . 13.  Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook E8010. Review Intel's 'Dothan' hits the UK By Trusted Reviews . 14.  Singapore to make spammers pay - literally. Cunning plan By John Leyden . 15.  My job went to India.... Cash'n'Carrion ...and all I got was this lousy mug By Cash'n'Carrion . 16.  E-minister urged to intervene in Yorkshire broadband spat. Bitter dispute goes public By Tim Richardson . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- About Internet/Network Security ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 17.  Book Review: Network Security Assessment. Chris McNab has written a great addition to the hacker technique and defense genre of books. Whereas books like Hacking Exposed, which defines this category of books and constantly sets the bar for other authors, provide a vast compendium of... 10:21:12 AM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Donald Duck remixed with everything. X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 1.75727E-158; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1110 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} Die Duckumenta is an exhibit of remixes of the iconographic phiz of Donald Duck with great works of visual art down through the ages. Wonderful. Link (Thanks, Johannes!) 2.  US troops kidnapping family members of Ba'athists and locking them in Abu Ghraib. This is a heart-rending account of an Iraqi woman whose father was a low-ranking Ba'athist. US troops came to bring him in for questioning, but he was out of the country, getting prostate surgery, so they kidnapped her husband, took him to Abu Ghraib, and declared him to have "intelligence value." The prison guards -- whom the Red Cross have documented as torturing others with "intelligence value" -- tell her that she can have her husband back if she produces her father. I read this and I ask myself: how can the US ever convince the Iraqi people of their goodwill sufficiently to abide under a US-declared "democratic ruler?" How will the US ever get out of Iraq and what kind of hollowed-out, failed state will it leave in its wake? Link (via Electrolite) 3.  My Canada includes AccordionGuy. Joey "AccordionGuy" DeVilla, a Filipino-born Canadian, has written a spirited editorial in response to a jackass racist blogger who asserts that the Canadians who died in the Boer War (!) and elsewhere certainly didn't intend for Toronto to be annexed by the "Third World," and says that the non-whites of Canada are less Canadian, with "no knowledge or affection for the old Canada, in either their hearts or minds." Joey's response: "Fuck you, eh." And the banner, above. Link ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  Clear Channel Buys Patent For Instant Live CDs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWorld: Top News ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.  Cisco rolls out history at router launch. Cisco Systems Inc. on Tuesday gave the trappings of history to the unveiling of its biggest router yet, while carriers testing the product gave glimpses into the future of network applications and how they plan to keep up. 6.  Update: CA reports Q4, makes settlement offer to gov't. Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) released its delayed fourth-quarter financial report Tuesday, meeting the earnings and revenue forecasts it provided earlier this month. ADVERTISEMENT mySAP Customer Relationship Management Learn how businesses just like yours achieved success in customer relationship management. Click here for free ROI report 7.  BEA chief talks SOAs, open source. BEA Systems Inc. is holding its yearly eWorld user conference in San Francisco this week and its message to customers is echoing loud and clear from virtually every banner and every marketing brochure: "Deploy SOA. Now." 8.  Gartner: Rapid Linux growth boosts server market. The number of servers sold worldwide increased by 27.1 percent in the first quarter of 2004 to 1.57 million units, with a clear move by users towards low-end servers and the Linux operating system, research company Gartner Inc. said Tuesday. 9.  BEA bullish on Taurus transaction software. BEA Systems with the planned Taurus version of its Tuxedo transaction processing platform is eyeing enhanced Web services support, improved integration with the WebLogic Server application server and boosted security. 10.  Project Beehive has BEA pondering Eclipse, NetBeans. SAN FRANCISCO -- BEA Systems' decision to offer its WebLogic Workshop run-time framework under an open source format, through its Project Beehive effort, may prompt the company to reconsider its current stance of not participating in either the NetBeans or Eclipse open source tools programs, said BEA's Cornelius Willis, vice president of developer marketing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RSSQuotes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11.  Note to users 5/26/04. While analyzing our usage logs, it appears some users are requesting quotes from our service as frequently as every 10 seconds! Although we say that you can request them as often as you like, we ask that you poll the feed at the most every 15 mintues. Also, if your aggregator supports it, please set the polling to "go dark" during non-trading times - i.e. before 8am ET, after 4pm ET, and all day Saturday and Sunday. Please send us email at info@rssquotes.com if you have any questions. Thank you! RSSQuotes team 9:20:52 AM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Deutsche Telekom to pay $2.5B for networks (USATODAY.com). USATODAY.com - Deutsche Telekom, Europe's top phone company, said Tuesday that it would pay about $2.5 billion to buy mobile networks from Cingular Wireless to bulk up its T-Mobile USA unit. 2.  Microsoft, Fairfax Firm Settle Suit (washingtonpost.com). washingtonpost.com - Fairfax video-game maker Mythic Entertainment Inc. announced yesterday that it had reached a settlement with Microsoft Corp. that ends a federal lawsuit claiming the software giant had infringed on the local company's trademarks. 3.  Despite 80 mln Internet users, China remains behind Taiwan in online games (AFP). AFP - Although China has the second largest number of Internet users in the world, it lags behind even Taiwan when it comes to online games, an industry analyst said. 4.  Police Go Back to Class to Catch Internet Crooks (Reuters). Reuters - Police are heading back to the classroom as a new breed of criminals turns to the Internet to prey on unsuspecting victims. Across Europe and beyond, cyber investigators are being trained in computer forensics -- a crime-fighting technique that is part science, part sleuthing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.  PDA Buyer's Guide Reviews The Sharp Zaurus SL-6000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BBC News | Technology | UK Edition ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 6.  Monthly spend on mobiles rises. People are spending more on their monthly mobile bill than on gas or electricity. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Register ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7.  Nokia ships N-Gage QD. Better luck second time round By Tony Smith . 8.  Kingston Comms cops £111m loss. Network write down blamed By Tim Richardson . 9.  Akamai software glitch provokes Web brownouts. Wibbly Wobbly Web By John Leyden . 10.  AOL UK slaps punter with £2k bill. ISP coughs to billing error By Tim Richardson . 11.  UMC techies boost SOI chip speed by 30%. Unwanted quantum tunnelling effects used to solve bigger problem By Tony Smith . 8:20:32 AM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  'Pirate Act' raises civil rights concerns 2.  Will code-check tools make for worm-proof software? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Register ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  Web-only retailers move into the black. Costs down, profits up By electricnews.net . 4.  Hardcore Web porn banned down under. It was five years ago today... 26 May 1999 By Team Register . 5.  Boffins baffled by suburban quasars. Early universe more like Bournemouth than Bronx By Lucy Sherriff . 6.  Wi-Fi group intros standards support stamp. From 'try mode' to tri-mode By Tony Smith . 7.  Voda, T-Mobile have a spring-clean. Buyouts in Japan and US By John Oates . 7:20:11 AM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Creative Commons ships 2.0 licenses. The new Creative Commons licenses are out -- wahoo! The new licenses clarify and refine the initial terms of the 1.0 licenses, and CC has posted good, clear commentary explaining the changes. X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 4.3155E-155; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1107 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} Unlike the 1.0 licenses, the 2.0 licenses include language that makes clear that licensors' disclaim warranties of title, merchantibility, fitness, etc. As readers of this blog know by now, the decision to drop warranties as a standard feature of the licenses was a source of much organizational soul-searching and analytical thinking for us. Ultimately we were swayed by a two key factors: (1) Our peers, most notably, Karl Lenz, Dan Bricklin, and MIT. (2) The realization that licensors could sell warranties to risk-averse, high-exposure licensees interested in the due diligence paper trial, thereby creating nice CC business model. (See the Prelinger Archive for a great example of this free/fee, as-is/warranty approach.) You can find extensive discussion of this issue in previous posts on this blog. (See Section 5.) Link (Thanks, A. S. Bradbury!) 2.  Digital Photography Hacks: geek out with your digital cam. I am no photographer, but ever since I bought my first Casio Exilim camera (I'm on my third now, and I can't recommend them enough -- small, light, easy and durable, I carry mine everywhere and always) I've found myself shooting nearly every day. Not being a photog, I'm pretty pig-ignorant on subjects like focus, depth-of-field, ISO, and so forth. I just scored O'Reilly's new Digital Photography Hacks, written by the inestimable Derrick Story, s geeek's geek and a photographer's photographer, whose work I've admired for years. Derrick's new book follows the form of all the O'Reilly Hacks books: 100 easy-to-digest tips and tricks for digital cams, aimed squarely at people like me, geeks who get computers but cameras not so much. These hacks are just what I needed to start to get my head around more advanced phototaking. Passages like "The flow of traffic provides a great opportunity to add motion to your compositions. Automobiles are light-painting machines, and it's easy to put them to work for you" (emphasis mine) really did me in: automobiles are light-painting machines! Wow! Suddenly, the whole world looked different. There are many many great hacks in this book, but my favorite is #47: Judge Image Sharpness From File Size. If you've taken a bunch of photos of the same subject and want to determine which one is sharpest, compare the file-size. Images that have more information will compress poorly, which means that the biggest files in your shoot are likely the sharpest. Keen. Link ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  Deutsche Telekom buys out JV (TheDeal.com). TheDeal.com - The German incumbent will pay Cingular Wireless $2.3 billion for full control of three regional U.S. networks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RSSQuotes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  ZBRA    81.84    +0.99 (20 min. delayed). ZEBRA TECH Last Price: 81.84 Change: +0.99   +1.23% Last Trade: 5/25/2004 4:00pm 5.  STT    48.63    +0.96 (20 min. delayed). ST STREET CP Last Price: 48.63 Change: +0.96   +2.01% Last Trade: 5/25/2004 4:02pm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Register ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 6.  French deploy optical url reader. Europe in Brief From page to Net By Jan Libbenga . 7.  Accenture boss appointed UK e-envoy. New e-gov supremo By John Oates . 8.  Softbank mulls Japan Telecom acquisition. Broadband expansion plan By John Oates . 9.  RM posts record profit. Top of the class By John Oates . 10.  Games too complex, Nintendo chief warns. Especially for the three-year-olds it's targeting... By Tony Smith . 11.  Motorola brings push-to-talk to Wi-Fi. System enables PTT roaming, too By Tony Smith . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wired News ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 12.  Green Cars Strive to End Oil Era. Students and carmakers gather to show off their alternative-fuel vehicles, and with gas prices on the rise again, more drivers are paying attention. John Gartner reports from Trenton, New Jersey. 13.  Get Ready for the Wired 40. They are masters of innovation, technology and strategic vision -- the top 40 companies driving the global economy. By Kevin Kelleher from Wired magazine. 14.  Kerry a Fan of Venture Capital. Teresa Heinz Kerry, heiress and wife of John Kerry, has much of her wealth locked up in bonds and blue-chip stocks. But the couple's campaign financial filing also shows a keen interest in the risky world of tech venture capital investing. By Joanna Glasner. 15.  Net Dissident Ends Hunger Strike. Activist Nguyen Vu Binh agrees to end his three-week hunger strike after a Vietnamese court agrees to hear his appeal. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for publishing essays on the Net and e-mailing Congress. By Julia Scheeres. 16.  Wartime Wireless Worries Pentagon. The Pentagon, concerned that more scandalous pictures may sneak out of Iraq, is putting pressure on commanders to make soldiers and contractors use only wireless devices that conform to the military's security standards. By Xeni Jardin. 6:19:52 AM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Nokia's New N-Gage May Sell Cheaper Than Announced (Reuters). Reuters - The world's largest mobile phone maker Nokia started shipping its revamped N-Gage gaming phone on Wednesday, and said due to operator subsidies it could sell cheaper than previously flagged. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.  When 8 Megapixels Just Isn't Enough ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SecurityFocus Vulns ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  Vulns: XPCD XPCD-SVGA Buffer Overflow Vulnerability. XPCD is a PhotoCD viewer package for Linux systems. The xpcd-svga utility included with XPCD allows is a console viewer based on svgalib. Because it relies on svgalib, ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Register ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  BOFH: One double espresso from meltdown. Episode 16 Total Component Fatigue By Simon Travaglia . 5:19:32 AM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dilbert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Dilbert for 26 May 2004. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.  Cisco Promises More Innovation, Soon (TechWeb). TechWeb - MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Cisco Systems, already networking's 800-pound gorilla, wants to get bigger and better, according to chief executive John Chambers. 3.  CA Offers To Settle With Government; 4Q Sales And Profits Grow (TechWeb). TechWeb - The software vendor said in its quarterly financial report that it has offered the government $10 million to settle a probe into its accounting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BBC News | Technology | UK Edition ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.  Doubts cloud e-government sites. The value of official websites in the UK and US is questioned in two studies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LinuxSecurity.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.  SQL Server getting security boosts 6.  Secure coding attracts interest, investment 7.  EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon 4:19:12 AM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Boing Boing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  Clothed nudes photoshopping. X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 4.02392E-022; #1: 1 X-NAS-Classification: 0 X-NAS-MessageID: 1104 X-NAS-Validation: {E681C936-E9F0-4DDC-9901-74301AF33E67} Today on Worth1000's photoshopping contest: put clothes on famous nudes. It's positively aschroftian. Link 2.  Japanese Broadcast Flag -- welcome to the crappy future of TV. The Japanese Broadcast Flag has gone into effect. Like its American cousin, this is a technology mandate that restricts how you can use the shows that show up on your own television, on the grounds that you might be some kinda eyepatch-wearing-pirate. 'Course, the broadcast flag doesn't really stop you from capturing analog signals and putting their programming online; no, this is a measure that is 100% ineffective at stopping "piracy" and 100% effective at stopping new tech like VCRs from being invented without the permission of the movie studios. Because programs that have been copied once cannot be duplicated or edited digitally, editing the programs via a personal computer has become impossible. In addition, the broadcasters' move has made it necessary for viewers to insert a special user identification card, known as a B-CAS card, into their digital TV sets to watch programs. These duplication controls are being applied to digital TV programs aired by both digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasters. In the week after the measure was implemented, NHK and the grouping of private broadcasters received more than 15,000 inquiries and complaints about the scheme. Link (Thanks, Alex!) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NewsIsFree: Security ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  Eastern mobsters target Australians online 3:18:52 AM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CNET News.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  UMC to boost 90-nanometer chip production 2.  Briefly: UMC to boost 90-nanometer chip production ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  Firms Sue Google for Ad Links to Competitors (washingtonpost.com). washingtonpost.com - Google Inc. took in nearly $1 billion last year by selling ads to firms eager to market their wares online to computer users. But a number of major businesses in the United States and Europe are crying foul, going after Google in court and alleging that the search-engine juggernaut is profiting illegally by trading on their names. 4.  EMC Unveils Storage Gear for Mid-Sized Businesses (Reuters). Reuters - EMC Corp. (EMC.N) on Tuesday rolled out a new line of data storage equipment with prepackaged software designed to ease installation for small to mid-sized businesses. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.  The DDR Workout - It's Official ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Help Net Security ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 6.  Weighing profits against peril 7.  The rising cost of protecting your identity 8.  Linux and Windows security compared 9.  GUI administration with KSysguard 10.  Microsoft tightens database security ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NewsIsFree: Security ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11.  Lawmaker tones down anti-Gmail bill 12.  Weighing profits against peril 13.  Linux and Windows security compared 14.  The rising cost of protecting your identity 15.  GUI administration with KSysguard 16.  Microsoft tightens database security 17.  Another day in the life - Padobot, ports 5000, 135, 445 18.  HOWTO Protection From Key Loggers 19.  Alle Jahre wieder: Sicherheitsrisiko ec-Karte 20.  mIRC LockOptions Registry Key Local Password Bypass 21.  WFTP Out of Sequence RNTO DoS 22.  VocalTec Telephony Gateways H.323 DoS 23.  Mollensoft Lightweight FTP Server CWD Overflow 24.  DB2 INVOKE Command Overflow 25.  DB2 LOAD Command Overflow 26.  Netgear RP114 URL Filtering Bypass 27.  bftpd SITE CHOWN Overflow 2:18:33 AM    comment [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! News - Technology ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.  India's Technopolis Bangalore Weathers Political Storm (Reuters). Reuters - As rural India cheered the Congress party's national election win, companies in this high-tech city braced for a backlash against a region seen as long pampered by the previous, business-friendly government. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Slashdot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.  Where's Your 'D-Spot?' ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NewsIsFree: Security ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.  VocalTec Telephony Gateway Can Be Crashed By Specially Crafted Packets 4.  e107 Input Validation Hole in 'usersettings.php' Permits Cross-Site Scripting Attacks 5.  cPanel Apache mod_phpsuexec Options Let Local Users Gain Elevated Privileges 6.  Security in an ERP World 7.  The rising cost of protecting your identity 8.  Protecting Road Warriors: Managing Security for Mobile Users (Part Two) 9.  Weighing Profits against Peril 10.  Database predicts Kerry VP announcement 11.  Area 51 hackers dig up trouble 12.  Security vendors ruining sysadmins' lives 13.  Microsoft announces new security software 14.  Practice safe resets: secure your password solution 15.  SQL Server getting security boosts 16.  U.S Air Force Space Command Hacked 17.  Hackers getting harder to keep out: survey 18.  Open Source isn't Religion—Just Good Business 19.  Study questions Google's long-term dominance 20.  Microsoft admit they were hacked 21.  Sortie de l'anti-spywares Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.3 12:17:53 AM    comment []

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