Issue no. 44, 2002
Published: Nov 29, 2002 |
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 Anger as Microsoft hires EU official |
| Napster sells patents and brand name |
| Molecule stores picture |
| Researcher offers simple computer virus defence |
| File-swappers will win, says research |
| Listening to the internet reveals best connections |
| Risk of internet collapse rising |
| Bacteria might 'brew' future PC |
| This film will now self-destruct ... |
| Hi-tech workplace no better than factories |
| Visual net spins literary web |
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| Anger as Microsoft hires EU official |
Microsoft has sparked anger among its competitors by hiring an official
from the European Commission, in the middle of a European monopoly
investigation into the company. Detlef Eckert is taking three years out
from his job working on information technology policy to help Microsoft
develop better computer security.
Microsoft said that Eckert will be working in a business unit which aims
to improve the security and reliability of the company's software. They
said he will not be involved in any lobbying activity.
But the appointment has concerned the Computer and Communications
Industry Association in Washington which represents some of Microsoft's
competitors. It has been lobbying the European Commission to impose an
antitrust ruling on the company. The Commission said Eckert signed a
memo and agreed that he will fully comply with conflict of interest
rules not to reveal confidential Commission information to Microsoft. |
| BBC News
Nov 28, 2002 |
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| Napster sells patents and brand name |
The patents and brand name of the failed music-swapping service Napster
have been sold to CD-burning software firm Roxio. Roxio paid $5m in cash
plus $300,000 worth of Roxio shares. As part of the deal, Roxio will be
insulated from any future litigation against Napster of the past.
Following the sale, Napster, which ceased operations in September, has
been stripped to the bone. Its remaining assets, which consist of
hardware such as servers, routers, and computers, will be auctioned off
on 11 December. The proceeds will be handed over to creditors as part of
Napster's bankruptcy proceedings.
Roxio's challenge will be to develop Napster into a new and, perhaps,
different company. Earlier this month, Roxio chief executive Chris Gorog
said Napster's intellectual property would expand the firm's 'role in
the digital media landscape and enhance our offerings to consumers'. |
| BBC News
Nov 28, 2002 |
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| Molecule stores picture |
Researchers from the University of Oklahoma have found a way use the
spins of 19 hydrogen atoms contained in a liquid crystal molecule to
briefly store and read 1,024 bits representing a 32-by-32-pixel black
and white pattern, a method they have termed 'molecular photography'.
The researchers used nuclear magnetic resonance, or radio waves, to
change the spin states of the hydrogen atoms contained in a sample of
trillions of molecules of liquid crystal. The bits representing the
image were coded into a single electromagnetic pulse that contained
1,024 distinct frequencies near the 400 megahertz frequency of FM radio.
When the researchers stopped the pulse, the spins that absorbed energy
released it, and the spectrometer picked up the released energy, giving
the researchers a picture of the frequencies contained in, and thus the
information coded in, the pulse. The technique may eventually make it
easier to store and process information within molecules. |
| Technology Research News
Nov 27, 2002 |
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| Researcher offers simple computer virus defence |
A Hewlett-Packard researcher says he has come up with a simple way to
stem the destructive flow of mass-mailing computer viruses. Dr Matthew
Williamson says the best way minimise the impact of future outbreaks is
to limit the number of emails an infected computer can send.
Mass-mailing viruses disrupt networks by causing infected machines to
send out hundreds of copies via emails. Last year's Code Red worm
infected more than 300,000 machines within hours using this
self-propagating technique.
Williamson found that the simply restricting on the number of emails
computers can send within ten minutes stems the flow and raises the
alarm faster. He tested the theory by deliberately infecting a number of
computers with the voracious Nimda virus and found that the virus could
be detected and stopped within a quarter of a second of the virus trying
to start transmitting itself. |
| Yahoo / Ananova / BBC News
Nov 27, 2002 |
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| File-swappers will win, says research |
Attempts by the record industry to stop file-swapping are a waste of
time, according to a study conducted by researchers at Microsoft. The
four researchers have issued a paper stating that the steady spread of
file-swapping systems, and improvements in their organisation, will
eventually make them impossible to shut down.
The spread of CD and DVD burners will hamper any attempts to control
what members of the public do with the music they buy. The researchers
said the growth of broadband and cheap data storage has resulted in a
rise in the numbers of people willing to swap, which will soon outstrip
attempts to shut down file-swapping sites. Instant messaging systems
will contribute to this loss of control, they said.
The study also said that attempts to make it impossible to copy CDs have
been full of technical flaws, resulting in all of them being defeated. |
| VNUnet UK
Nov 25, 2002 |
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| Listening to the internet reveals best connections |
The reliability and strength of internet connections can be assessed by
listening to the sounds they make, according to scientists at the Center
for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University.
To check the quality of a connection, engineers 'ping' a data packet to
a remote computer, which bounces it back. This reveals the latency of
the connection, or how long it takes for a round trip, and the variation
of this over time is known as the jitter. But pinging cannot reveal the
detailed subsecond behaviour of the jitter, and this is the timescale
that is important in interactive applications, such as telesurgery.
The scientists managed to convert the variations in jitter into a
musical form by modelling internet connections as guitar strings -
twanging them to reveal subtle characteristics missed by pinging. This
gives a qualitative way of monitoring a connection. Sudden loss of sound
can reveal a break in the network connection or missing packets of data. |
| New Scientist
Nov 27, 2002 |
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| Risk of internet collapse rising |
Simulated attacks on key internet hubs have shown how vulnerable the
worldwide network is to disruption by disaster or terrorist action. If
the major nodes of the internet were to be destroyed, the network itself
could begin to unravel, scientists warn.
The virtual attacks, carried out by a scientists from Ohio State
University, showed that the net would keep going in major cities, but
outlying areas and smaller towns would gradually be cut off.
In its early days the net was as decentralised as possible with multiple
links between many of the nodes forming it. If one node disappeared,
traffic could easily flow to other links and route traffic to all parts.
However, the increasing commercialisation of the net has seen the
emergence of large hubs that act as key distribution points. As a
result, the net has become much more vulnerable to attack. |
| BBC News
Nov 26, 2002 |
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| Bacteria might 'brew' future PC |
Bacteria found in boiling springs of sulphuric acid could help
scientists to 'brew' a computer in much the same way as beer is made.
NASA scientists believe that the bacteria might help to develop
nanotechnology that could produce a computer which assembles itself.
The chemistry keeping the microbes alive may be the key to creating
perfect arrays of tiny particles, which is one of the primary goals of
the emerging discipline of nanotechnology. If the researchers can get
such a device to put itself together, as a living system does, then
building an ultra-small computer chip would be as simple and as cheap as
brewing beer.
The particles would be extremely small, at just 1.4 to 10 nanometres in
diameter. At this scale components behave according to the laws of
quantum mechanics, making it possible for electrons to jump from one
particle to another without the need for connecting wires. |
| VNUnet UK / Nature
Nov 27, 2002 |
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| This film will now self-destruct ... |
On a dismal, rainy day after watching Mel Gibson battle the English in
'Braveheart', wouldn't it be nice to simply throw away the DVD instead
of slogging the rental back to the film rental service?
Two US companies, Flexplay and SpectraDisc produce DVDs to which a
chemical time-bomb is added that begins ticking once the package is open
and the discs are exposed to air. The technology can also work on music
CDs and software CD-ROMs, but films are the target, since consumers
generally buy music and software to keep.
While self-destructing DVDs would give content providers more control
over distribution, it still would not prevent illegal copying as it
takes only half an hour to rip a DVD. Besides, self-destructing DVDs
would create considerable waste. A study conducted for Flexplay found
that if disposable DVDs made up 10 per cent of all US video rentals, an
additional 350 million DVDs would be discarded, creating 5,600 metric
tons of solid waste annually. |
| Silicon valley / AP
Nov 27, 2002 |
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| Hi-tech workplace no better than factories |
Staff in technology jobs work in the white collar equivalent of a 19th
century factory, suffering from isolation, job insecurity and long
hours, research has found.
Sean O'Riain, Professor of Sociology at the University of California,
looked at the characteristics of hi-tech workplaces, which are seen as a
potential model for the future of work. He found that the
individualistic, macho culture of tech jobs was putting women off
applying for jobs, despite an often critical shortage of skills.
Workers such as software programmers face the lonely insecurity of the
individual entrepreneur in a marketplace and culture that stresses that
they are ultimately alone, the study found. The hi-tech worker has
become a product to be bought and sold, despite having much-sought after
skills. They are under constant pressure to update skills. And social
relationships among the technical communities are defined by common
technical interests rather than a common employer. |
| BBC News
Nov 27, 2002 |
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| Visual net spins literary web |
A new website reproduces the text of more than 2,000 books as works of
art. Textarc.org converts the text into an interactive map that allows
viewers to quickly see relationships between words and characters at a
glance, even without having read the book. The founder of the site, W
Bradford Paley, said he originally built it to be a text analysis tool.
The program reprints a book's text line by line, in a wide oval around
the screen. Although almost unreadable the text shows the viewer the
typographic structure of the book. A second, concentric ellipse then
appears inside the first with the text in a more readable font.
Inside the spirals more words appear. The brighter the word the more
frequently it occurs and the more important it is to the story. Rolling
your mouse over a word creates lines that link it to every occurrence in
the elliptical text. The patterns at the centre of the concentric ovals
reveal significant themes, characters and their positions in the books. |
| BBC News
Nov 28, 2002 |
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