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Issue no. 15, 2002 Published: Apr 12, 2002
European Parliament passes e-trash law
Apache developers sign off version 2.0.35
IBM, Microsoft propose e-business security standards
Microsoft reaffirms commitment to Apple
The ultimate junk mail filter
Building chips with an inkjet printer
Researcher claims DoS attack breakthrough
Future computers beat the clock
Electronic 'tongue' to taste pollution
Virtual reporter trawls for news
E-auctions take a hammering
Computer games lure older players
TV makes men 'hunkier' and women 'chunkier'

European Parliament passes e-trash law
The European Parliament approved a law on Wednesday making electrical equipment makers pay for dealing with their products when they have been thrown away, in Europe's biggest-ever drive to promote recycling. Under the law, manufacturers will have to pay the cost of collecting and recycling old electronic goods which people want to throw away. By 2006, national governments would have to ensure that six kilos of electronic scrap per person is collected each year and that up to 65 per cent is recycled. The draft law will still require the approval of EU governments and will probably be subject to final negotiations between EU states and parliament to hammer out details on deadlines, recycling quotas and the exact rules on financing recycling schemes.
Wired News / Reuters / Europarl Apr 09, 2002	back to top

Apache developers sign off version 2.0.35
Three years in the making, the internet's most popular web server software reached the next stage of its evolution following the release of Apache 2 last week. The Apache development team signed off the 2.0.35 release of the open source web server software last Friday, recommending it for use on production sites. Version 2 claims higher performance over the previous 1.3 series, along with integrated SSL, improved HTTP proxy support and I/O layering and filtering. Multiple operational models are available on the web server, including threaded and hybrid processes, and specific request processing for Windows, NetWare, BeOS, and OS/2. Apache is currently used on 53 per cent of all web servers, making it the most popular platform. But Microsoft's IIS has steadily gained ground over the past few years and is in second place with a 34 per cent slice of the market. Netscape's iPlanet has been knocked down to just two per cent.
VNUNet UK Apr 08, 2002	back to top

IBM, Microsoft propose e-business security standards
Microsoft and IBM on Thursday said they will champion a new set of rules they hope will become standard ways to secure business transactions on the web. The two companies said their proposed WS-Security specification draws on existing technologies for protecting online transactions and helps them work together. Supported in the initiative by VeriSign, which earlier this year announced its Digital Trust Services framework for web services, Microsoft and IBM said they plan to flesh out the new specifications along with 'key customers, industry partners and standards organisations.' The companies have published white papers describing the proposed protocols in more detail. The documents are available on the trio's websites, including here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/ws-security.
Newsbytes Apr 11, 2002	back to top

Microsoft reaffirms commitment to Apple
In a meeting on Wednesday, Kevin Browne, General Manager for Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) reaffirmed the company's commitment to develop products for Apple's Mac OS X operating system. The meeting was as a result of speculation that Microsoft may not support the Mac with products like Internet Explorer and Office once the technology agreement with Apple expires. Signed on August 5, 1997, the agreement gave Apple five years that they could count on Microsoft products for the platform. The agreement expires this summer. Browne made it very clear that the MacBU is a business and decisions are made to ensure the business is successful and profitable. All of Microsoft's future products will be OS X only. However, security updates and maintenance releases will be issued for their OS 9 products, if and when they are needed. Microsoft will also keep OS 9 versions of their products on store shelves 'until demand dries up'.
Yahoo Apr 10, 2002	back to top

The ultimate junk mail filter
A Napster-like network might be able to stem the tide of spam mail messages flooding the internet. Nowadays many people use the filtering systems in their e-mail software to catch spam messages. However, these filters often catch many legitimate e-mail messages. Now developers Vipul Ved Prakash and Napster creator Jordan Ritter are creating the Folsom anti-spam tool that tries to stymie junk mail by using a network of collaborating computers. The system works by sharing among Folsom computers 20-character signatures that uniquely identify the junk messages received by any member of the network. The rules that generate the identifying signatures take into account the whole message rather than just keywords or the net addresses of known spammers. The signatures are automatically shared between all Folsom members and when a known spam message is received elsewhere it is spotted stopped. Tests with e-mail streams containing up to 60 per cent of junk mail reduced the unsolicited messages to almost zero.
BBC News / New Scientist Apr 10, 2002	back to top

Building chips with an inkjet printer
Inkjet printers could be the chip factories of the future, squirting out circuits made from layers of organic semiconducting ink. Experiments at the University of Arizona, Tucson, have demonstrated moving images made out of organic LEDs and power generating arrays of plastic solar cells. The technology relies on two separate fields: The first is the production of hyper-accurate inkjet printers, which now routinely deposit minuscule droplets of liquid only picoliters in volume at accuracies of more than a thousandth of an inch. The second is the production of organic liquids that form semiconducting polymers. By using standard inkjet printers and using different chemicals in place of the normal colour inks, it is possible to mix up a wide variety of components and print out complete circuits much as you would a full-colour picture, using standard printer drivers. However, the system is still in the research stage and years away from being commercialised.
ZDNet Apr 11, 2002	back to top

Researcher claims DoS attack breakthrough
A computer scientist at the University of Massachusetts claims to have worked out a new technique for combating Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. DoS attacks make computer systems inaccessible by flooding them with useless traffic so that legitimate users can no longer gain access. One of the main difficulties in dealing with DoS attacks is that information can be sent anonymously over the internet. Messages are sent in packets, which are despatched from source to destination along a series of routers. These routers do not store any information about past traffic and there is no record of the course of a packet. But Micah Adler said he has developed an automated method for tracing a stream of packets back to its source. It uses a single bit in the header of each packet and requires each router along the path of attack to perform a simple random routine on each packet. This determines whether the value of that bit should be a 1 or a 0 when the packet is received.
VNUnet UK / CNN / IDG Apr 09, 2002	back to top

Future computers beat the clock
Scientists at England's Newcastle University are developing new ways to make processing systems asynchronous - that is, not limited by traditional internal timing mechanisms. Instead of the clock, which has been integral to processors since the 1960s, asynchronous systems operate on a protocol of data transmission and acknowledgement that is not regulated by time. The protocol can be set up locally within a computer or globally between computers. Asynchronous systems will not only be faster and more accurate, but much more secure, the researchers say. These systems will cause trouble for hackers because the irregular pattern of data transmission will allow information to be encrypted more effectively than present methods. Asynchronous technology also could keep devices cooler and eventually make them smaller. Since computer clocks generate heat and high frequencies, removing the clock would let portable devices run on less power, making further miniaturisation possible.
Yahoo Apr 10, 2002	back to top

Electronic 'tongue' to taste pollution
A miniature electronic 'tongue' which could taste pollution in rivers is being developed by researchers at Cardiff University, UK. The team has managed to miniaturise conventional detection technology to produce a device that could potentially be mass produced at low cost. The electronic tongue uses a technique for separating mixtures known as chromotography, which needs detectors with a large surface area. Conventional chromotographic detectors pass liquids or gases through columns packed with tiny glass beads. Chemical detectors on the beads sense the presence of other substances in the fluid. The Cardiff team used hydrofluoric acid to etch millions of tiny pores and channels into a silicon chip. This created a huge surface area in a tiny space. Etching a spot a millimetre square can thus create several square metres of internal surface area. The scientists say that their system could for instance be put in a river or factory process stream to monitor the mixtures flowing through it.
BBC News Apr 06, 2002	back to top

Virtual reporter trawls for news
Scientists at Columbia University have created a virtual reporter which they say can trawl the web for news stories, then edit and rewrite them. But the scientists do not expect the Newsblaster software to replace human reporters in the near future. The program trawls news websites gathering articles and sorting them. It examines words and phrases to measure similarities between articles and condenses them into a five-sentence summary. The sentences can either be taken verbatim from the original article or rewritten. The makers say the system does not yet have the quality of a human editor and makes mistakes. It also cannot exercise the editorial judgement needed to sort complex material and to achieve balance or summarise different sides of a story. But 88 per cent of those who have used the system found it better than going to different sites for news.
VNUnet UK Apr 10, 2002	back to top

E-auctions take a hammering
Nearly half of all internet fraud cases involve online auctions, according to a US report. The Internet Fraud Complaint Center said it logged 49,711 complaints ranging from fraud to computer intrusions, hacking and child pornography. The centre, which is a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, said that auction crime has been identified as the primary source of disputes and web fraud. Nearly a quarter of the auction complaints were about non-delivered merchandise and non-payments. eBay, the largest online auction site, now warns customers about users who have been suspended for fraud. It also shares information about alleged fraud with law enforcement agencies, which is believed to be the main reason for the high level of fraud reported to the agencies. The next biggest scam is the so-called 'Nigerian letter' where victims are promised large sums of money in return for bank details. This fraud was responsible for more than 15 per cent of complaints.
VNUnet UK Apr 11, 2002	back to top

Computer games lure older players
Computer gaming is no longer the preserve of teenagers or youngsters. A survey by the European Leisure Software Publishers Association has found that the average age of the keenest players is gradually edging upwards. The results of the survey revealed that the largest game-playing group is actually aged between 25 and 34. It also found that women are starting to be a significant proportion of Europe's gamers and that many more titles aimed at them are being produced. The annual market survey by Elspa has revealed that the relatively high cost of consoles, PCs and games means that it is only those with salaries and money to spare that can keep up with the latest titles. Allied research carried out by the games magazine PC Zone found that these ageing players are typically in the top social groups, have an annual income of about E32,000 and 30 per cent of them have children.
BBC News Apr 09, 2002	back to top

TV makes men 'hunkier' and women 'chunkier'
Television makes men look hunkier and women chunkier, according to two psychologists at the University of Liverpool. They asked students to analyse 2D and 3D photographs of models that had been taken at the same time. The vast majority said the models looked 5 per cent fatter when snapped in 2D. Quirks in the way we perceive images seem to favour men. The necks of both men and women appear thicker in 2D images, lead researcher Dr Bernard Harper said. The effect in women was to make them look fatter. But in men, it gave the illusion of a stronger jaw line, judged more attractive. It is common wisdom that TV cameras make people look fatter than they really are. Some say that most people look about 4 kilograms heavier on TV. Harper says one solution is to use a broadband internet system to deliver 3D pictures that give more accurate visual cues.
BBC News / New Scientist Apr 10, 2002	back to top