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Issue no. 3, 2003 Published: Jan 17, 2003
Microsoft to reveal source code
Music and tech industries strike copy-protection deal
Mandrake Linux files for bankruptcy
KaZaA next in line for media companies' legal wrath
Device demos terabit storage
Remote monitoring aids data access
Reformatted hard drives still contain information - study
Technology that will shape the future: Revealed
Pop-ups: Unpopular, but effective
Phones lose millions of text messages

Microsoft to reveal source code
Microsoft is to share the secrets of its closely-guarded source code for the Windows operating system with governments and international organisations around the world in an effort to beat off rivals and strengthen its position in government markets. Under an initiative called 'the government security program', the firm will allow governments and their agencies to examine the source code so they can improve the security of their software. NATO and Russia have already signed up and Microsoft said discussions were taking place with more than 60 other governments and agencies. Microsoft said it was confident governments would respect its intellectual property and said it was not worried about piracy or other infringements.
BBC News Jan 15, 2003	back to top

Music and tech industries strike copy-protection deal
The US music and technology industries have announced a deal to drop their support for new laws that would require copy-protection to be built into consumer electronics. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a powerful lobbying body representing the five biggest record labels, agreed to drop support for legislation that would require computers and other electronic devices to have built-in copy-protection technology. In return, the Business Software Alliance and the Computer Systems Policy Project, which represent hardware and software technology firms, vowed to drop support for legislation that would extend user's rights to make back-up copies of digital music and video files. The recording industry has pushed for legislation to enforce the use of software and hardware locks to stop buyers copying music. But technology companies say the technology is costly and restricts innovation.
New Scientist Jan 15, 2003	back to top

Mandrake Linux files for bankruptcy
MandrakeSoft, the financially strapped creator of the Mandrake version of Linux, said Wednesday it filed for the French equivalent of bankruptcy protection from creditors. The Paris-based company said its financial liabilities prompted it to file for 'declaration de cessation des paiements'. The move allows the company to take court-overseen actions such as renegotiating its debt while continuing its operations. Mandrake's revenue has been increasing and its expenses decreasing, but the company remains unprofitable thus far. The company's stock is publicly traded on an unregulated European market. While the company is based in Paris, the largest fraction of its revenue comes from North American buyers. It competes with better-established Linux sellers such as Red Hat and SuSE. Version 9.1 of Mandrake Linux software is expected in April, the company said.
New York Times / CNET News Jan 15, 2003	back to top

KaZaA next in line for media companies' legal wrath
A US federal judge has ruled that record companies and movie studios can proceed with a lawsuit against the parent company of KaZaA, which has become the most popular file-swapping service in the post-Napster age. Sharman Networks is headquartered in Australia and incorporated in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. The company had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it was not bound by US laws since it did not have substantial contacts with California, where the lawsuit originated. But the judge said the lawsuit could proceed, since KaZaA software had been downloaded and used by millions, including California residents - in direct breach of copyright protection. Moreover, many music and video copyrights are owned by California-based companies, the judge argued.
silicon.com Jan 13, 2003	back to top

Device demos terabit storage
Cramming lots of information into very small spaces means making and measuring infinitesimal containers for each bit of data. Researchers from Tohoku University, the Japanese National Institute for Materials Science, and Pioneer Corporation in Japan have found a way to store huge amounts of data by making many tiny, inverted dots in a thin film of metal and determining how to sense the state of each dot. The dots are 10 nanometres in diameter and store one bit of information each. The prototype packs 1.5 trillion dots per square inch, and could store 1.5 terabits in one square inch, the equivalent of 47 DVDs. The researchers were able to read 25 KB of data per second, which is slow. They think it is possible to increase the read speed to 3.75 MB per second. Current disk drives have read speeds of 20 to 50 MB per second. The researchers are ultimately aiming to increase the storage capacity of the material to 4 thousand trillion bits, or 4 petabits, per square inch - the equivalent of 125,000 DVDs worth of information.
Technology Research News Jan 15, 2003	back to top

Remote monitoring aids data access
One of the ongoing challenges facing scientists is how to remotely access and visualise vast amounts of data. Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories in the US have found a way to work with large amounts of data over networks in near real-time. Remote access schemes tend to focus on moving data. The Sandia method instead uses the internet to transfer the video signal that normally carries image information from a computer to its monitor. The video signal is digitised, compressed and then formatted into standard network protocol packets of data, which are transmitted across a network. At the remote location the data are rebuilt into a video stream, and translated for a locally-attached monitor. Because each frame looks a lot like the frame before, it saves a lot of time to only transmit image changes. The system identifies and transmits only differences between successive video frames across the network.
Technology Research News Jan 15, 2003	back to top

Reformatted hard drives still contain information - study
So, you think you cleaned all your personal files from that old computer you got rid of? Two MIT students suggest you think again. Over two years, the students bought 158 used hard drives at secondhand computer stores and on eBay. Of the 129 drives that functioned, 69 still had recoverable files on them and 49 contained 'significant personal information' such as medical correspondence, love letters, pornography and 5,000 credit card numbers. The students found that even reformatting a drive may not be sufficient. Fifty-one of the 129 working drives in the MIT study had been reformatted, and 19 of them still contained recoverable data. The only sure way to erase a hard drive is to 'squeeze' it: writing over the old information with new data - all zeros, for instance - at least once, a job for which inexpensive software is available.
Nando Times / AP Jan 15, 2003	back to top

Technology that will shape the future: Revealed
Nine new technologies have been identified by IDC researchers, that have backing from universities and major national laboratories and which offer the potential to change lives. The researchers identified smart dust, lily pads, ratbots, nanotubes, nanomachines, quantum computing, plastic transistors, the Semantic Web and grid computing as technologies to watch, although they noted some of these were more likely to materialise in our lifetime than others. Ratbots are being used to test the possibility of transmitting information between a living thing and a computer via implants and the technology could be used for prosthetics and memory aids. Smart dust refers to tiny sensors, used for logistics, monitoring and preventative maintenance and are already in limited use. Ultrastrong, light-emitting nanotubes will also likely be put to use in the foreseeable future, gaining use for computer circuits and flat panel displays.
Silicon.com Jan 16, 2003	back to top

Pop-ups: Unpopular, but effective
Pop-up ads seem to be the internet equivalent of the tabloids: everyone claims to hate them, but somebody keeps reading. According to a study conducted by GartnerG2, 78 per cent of respondents claimed they found pop-up ads 'very annoying'. In contrast, only 49 per cent of participants applied the same rating to banner ads. Yet pop-ups had click-through rates almost twice as high as those of banner ads, meaning they are probably going to stick around for a while. Indeed, Nielsen/NetRatings' online-advertising rating, AdRelevance, found that pop-up impressions jumped from 1.2 billion to 4.9 billion between January 2002 and September 2002. And companies are looking for ways to make pop-ups perform better. One new type of ad clicks through to the advertiser's site even if users simply move their mouse over the advert. But there may be some relief on the way. Several companies have decided that no matter what the possible gains, the possibility of annoying customers makes pop-ups a risk.
Silicon.com Jan 15, 2003	back to top

Phones lose millions of text messages
Millions of short text messages sent between mobile phones in the US are lost every month, and the chance of two parties connecting depends on which networks they use. Internet performance measurement company Keynote Systems says in its study that 7.5 per cent of all short text messages sent between wireless telephone companies are lost. In Europe 10 to 15 per cent of wireless operators' revenue comes from SMS, but adoption of the service has been slower in the US, where users were not able to send messages to networks other than their own until last year. AT&T Wireless Services had the highest success rate in terms of messages sent to users on other networks as well as messages sent within its network at 95.5 per cent and 97.8 per cent, respectively. T-Mobile USA was one of the worst performers. Only 86 per cent of messages sent to a user on another network and 87 per cent of messages sent within its network were successfully received.
CNN / Reuters Jan 15, 2003	back to top