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Issue no. 34, 2003 Published: Sep 19, 2003
Developer moves to neutralise VeriSign's web 'helper'
Patent could force web change
Internet body wins three-year extension from US
SSH security glitch exposes networks
UK, Australia crack down on spammers
Paying spammers not to spam
EU to help job hunters online
Privacy technology blocks camera phone photos
Glow shows individual DNA
Bat echoes used as virtual reality guide
Electron teams make bigger qubits
Your life in a matchbox
Making a video screen out of thin air
Camera sunglasses take candid snaps

Developer moves to neutralise VeriSign's web 'helper'
The Internet Software Consortium, the nonprofit organisation that develops BIND software for internet domain name directories, has released an 'urgent patch' for internet service providers and others who want to block customers from a new Site Finder service from VeriSign. VeriSign, which keeps the master lists of names ending in '.com' and '.net', launched Site Finder on Monday to steer users to likely alternatives when they type addresses for which no website exists. Though VeriSign gets unspecified revenues from search engine partners whose technology powers Site Finder, company officials described the service as primarily a navigation tool to help lost internet users. Critics, however, say the service eliminates user choice, gives a private company too much control over online commerce and could violate longstanding internet standards. The BIND patch restores control by identifying and then ignoring data from Site Finder. Meanwhile, US-based Internet search company Popular Enterprises LLC on Thursday filed a $100 million antitrust lawsuit against VeriSign over the Site Finder service.
Yahoo / AP / ZDNet Sep 16, 2003	back to top

Patent could force web change
Web developers are anxiously waiting for a Microsoft announcement about changes to its Internet Explorer browser after a US court found that it infringes another company's software patent. Last month the Chicago District Court awarded $521 million in damages to Eolas, the small company which holds the patent, ordering Microsoft to remove all infringing technology from its programs. Even though Microsoft has said it will appeal the decision, the company has admitted that it may take precautionary steps by making changes to the browser. The patent concerned describes a way of 'automatically invoking an external application' and 'providing interaction and display of embedded objects' inside a 'hypermedia document'. There is a general consensus within the web community that it would include clicking on a link to load a Flash movie or a video player, controlling an external application through a web interface and downloading and running programs inside a webpage. This means web development tools and browsers would have to be modified and many websites would have to be rewritten.
BBC News Sep 15, 2003	back to top

Internet body wins three-year extension from US
The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will continue to oversee the internet's domain-name system for another three years, the US Department of Commerce said Wednesday. ICANN was set up in 1998 to take control of the domain-name system from the US government, but that has yet to happen as the controversial body has been unable to formalise its authority over several groups that control key parts of the online infrastructure. The Commerce Department has temporarily renewed ICANN's authority several times, although critics say it is poorly managed and does not properly take the concerns of the internet's 500 million users into account. Commerce said ICANN had taken important steps to reorganise over the past year, and that the new agreement contained several milestones to ensure that the organisation continues to improve.
Reuters Sep 17, 2003	back to top

SSH security glitch exposes networks
A critical security flaw in SSH has been revealed that threatens servers worldwide. SSH is a widely used encrypted remote management shell for Unix, Linux and BSD platforms. Experts say attackers have been exploiting the vulnerability to gain access to systems illegally for months. What started as quiet mumblings and rumours turned into screaming warnings this week as the security community slowly learned of the threat. All versions of OpenSSH running on all distributions of Linux and BSD are affected, excluding those that have patched to version 3.7.1. Several security mailing lists are reporting that exploit code is being traded in the wild. It is still unknown if an exploit could either crash or enable remote code execution. Administrators are urged to upgrade vulnerable systems to OpenSSH 3.7.1, which is available for download from ftp.openbsd.org. Vendor-specific fixes are imminent.
ZDNet / SearchEnterpriseLinux.com Sep 17, 2003	back to top

UK, Australia crack down on spammers
Britain has become the second country in Europe to criminalise spam. Under the new UK law, spammers face a 5,000 pound fine if convicted in a magistrates court. The fine from a jury trial would be unlimited. Spammers would not face prison, according to the new law, which was introduced on Thursday. Spam is defined under the UK law as any messages sent to consumers without having first established a consensual customer relationship. The UK law follows an EU directive passed last year. Earlier this month, Italian lawmakers imposed tough new regulations to fine spammers up to 90,000 euros and impose a maximum prison term of three years. New antispam legislation has also been introduced into Australia's House of Representatives that allows for penalties of up to USD 733,000 per day for sending spam. The spam bill would apply to spam that originates in Australia and contains a flexible sanctions regime that includes warnings, infringement notices and court-awarded penalties.
Yahoo / Reuters / ZDNet Australia Sep 18, 2003	back to top

Paying spammers not to spam
Founders of a new antispam service say they have developed a system to convince spammers to remove specific e-mail addresses from their mailing lists - by paying them. The service, offered by US-based Global Removal, charges subscribers a $5 lifetime fee to have their e-mail addresses put on a permanent do-not-spam list. Addresses on the list are then compared with, and removed from, mailing lists maintained by Global Removal's partnering businesses - more than 50 known spammers and an equal number of legitimate e-mail marketers. Although businesses that sign up to partner with Global Removal agree to remove addresses from their lists for free, they are enrolled in an affiliate program that earns them $1 for every new subscriber that they bring to the service. To keep internet users from being bombarded with messages about Global Removal, the businesses are only allowed to send out one message about the service to their cleansed mailing lists.
Wired News Sep 15, 2003	back to top

EU to help job hunters online
Looking for a job in Europe? It may just be a click away on a new EU website set up to boost labour mobility across the bloc's sluggish economy. The European Commission, will on Friday launch the website advertising thousands of vacant jobs in sectors ranging from agriculture to science and at all levels from senior management to the unskilled. On Thursday there were already more than 11,000 vacancies across Europe posted on the European Job Mobility Portal, also called EURES at http://europa.eu.int/eures/index.jsp . The EURES website also offers job-hunters the opportunity to post their curriculum vitae online and find information about living and working in the bloc's member states. The Commission says a lack of cross-border labour mobility is hampering EU efforts to reach its goal of becoming the world's most competitive economy by 2010.
Yahoo / Reuters Sep 18, 2003	back to top

Privacy technology blocks camera phone photos
Companies worried about staff or visitors using camera phones to secretly take pictures in places like swimming pools and changing rooms will soon be able to automatically disable the imaging system inside certain handsets when they enter a designated wireless 'privacy zone'. Iceberg Systems is beta-testing Safe Haven, a combination of hardware transmitters and a small piece of control software that is loaded into a camera phone handset. When the handset is taken into a room or building containing the Safe Haven hardware, the phone is instructed to deactivate the imaging systems. The systems are reactivated as soon as the handset is out of range. Although the technology is only designed for disabling the imaging system, it could be adapted for a wide number of uses, such as blocking loud or annoying ringtones in a bar or even disabling text messaging in a school. Iceberg Systems said it is in talks with some well-known handset manufacturers that are interested in testing the technology.
Silicon.com / ZDNet UK Sep 12, 2003	back to top

Glow shows individual DNA
Researchers from the University of Heidelberg in Germany and Florida State University have made a type of artificial DNA of that glows when it combines with a specific sequence of natural DNA. In principle, the method could be used to develop DNA chips that directly sense individual DNA molecules, according to the researchers. DNA is made from four types of bases-adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine-connected to a sugar-phosphate backbone. Double-stranded DNA forms when complementary bases in the two rows match and connect. A single strand of DNA can form a hairpin shape when matching segments along a single strand of DNA connect. The researchers' used DNA strand that contains a fluorescent dye. It loses its glow when the molecule folds into a hairpin shape to bring the dye into contact with guanosine. When the DNA combines with another strand, for example, from a bacteria, the hairpin opens and exposes the fluorescent dye. The researchers are working to develop DNA chips that can quickly detect small amounts of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Technology Review / TRN Sep 15, 2003	back to top

Bat echoes used as virtual reality guide
A bat echolocation system, adapted for human ears, has been used allow people to locate objects in a virtual reality environment. Researchers at the University of Leeds, UK, hope that a similar system in the cockpit of fighter planes could allow pilots to track some controls using their hearing, freeing up their eyes for other tasks. The researchers created a virtual system that sends out bat echolocation sounds and returns echoes that are slowed into the human range of hearing. Volunteers were asked to hunt down a virtual insect, using only the echolocation sounds. People were better at finding their target using bat sounds than they were when trying to find a source of sound. That is because bat calls are particularly good for making auditory maps of space. The calls are short, so the echo comes back sharply. They also have a broadband structure - containing information in both high and low frequencies - which allows the animals to better localise sound. Finally, bats also dynamically change their calls when approaching their target, using shorter calls when they get closer to an object.
Yahoo / New Scientist Sep 15, 2003	back to top

Electron teams make bigger qubits
One of the biggest challenges in building quantum computers is making quantum bits, or qubits, that are small enough to have the requisite quantum behaviour, yet large enough to be reliably controlled by electronic circuits. Researchers from the University of Basel in Switzerland and the University of Pittsburgh have come up with a candidate qubit made from groups of electrons. An electron's two directions, spin up and spin down, can represent the 1s and 0s of digital information. The electron group can be controlled as one unit; as long as it contains an odd number of electrons a group behaves like a single electron. Electron spins can be built into computer chips, are relatively well insulated from environmental disturbances, and existing techniques allow electron-spin qubits to be controlled by magnetic and electric fields. Controlling magnetic and electric fields at the scale of individual electrons is extremely challenging, however. The new method eases the burden by widening the focus to a set of electrons rather than just one.
Technology Review / TRN Sep 18, 2003	back to top

Your life in a matchbox
Within 10 years we could be carrying personal computing devices that store our every word and deed, according to chip giant Intel. Speaking at the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, senior Intel researcher Roy Want unveiled a prototype device which the company calls a Personal Server. He explained that the matchbox-sized PC could be used to store a wide variety of personal information that could be accessed by many different devices. The Personal Server would consist of a high capacity storage unit with a powerful processor and wireless communications. It could be controlled with a unit built into a watch, and would interface with whichever PC or mobile device the user happened to be working on. Prices, timetables and news could be downloaded from billboards and other public access points and then printed out on wireless printers. Security would be a major concern with such a device, and Want proposed a new system of access control based not on passwords but on what the user can do uniquely.
VNUnet UK Sep 16, 2003	back to top

Making a video screen out of thin air
Two companies, IO2 Technology in California, and FogScreen in Seinäjoki Technology Center, Finland, have working prototypes for systems that broadcast two-dimensional images into thin air. Both FogScreen and IO2 Technology say they have patents pending on the technology. IO2 Technology's Heliodisplay projects images onto a cloud of water vapour diffused into the air rather than on a screen. Observers can control the virtual characters as they would on a computer screen, but instead of using a mouse, they use their hands. No special glove is needed, said the company, which was inundated with requests for more information following news reports about the prototype on Wednesday. FogScreen also sees possible entertainment and business applications for its walk-through FogScreen. The FogScreen made a splash at the Siggraph Emerging Technologies conference in August, where it was used to display a walk-through virtual image of the Mona Lisa. A museum in Tampere, Finland, is now exhibiting the same image.
Wired News Sep 16, 2003	back to top

Camera sunglasses take candid snaps
Soon your sunglasses could help you capture all the important moments of your life. A prototype pair of sunglasses with a camera built in to them has been created by Hewlett Packard researchers. The sunglasses developed at the HP labs in the UK sport a camera that constantly takes images of what a wearer sees. The camera also has an off-switch to preserve privacy. To tackle image overload, the HP system captures information about images, called metadata, too. This extra data keeps track of how and where a picture was taken and can spot if a subject was walking or turning. The system also inspects images to see if people are smiling or looking directly at the camera lens to help judge whether the picture is good in terms of composition, framing and timing. The images can be processed in a handheld computer attached to the sunglasses or on a conventional home computer.
BBC News Sep 18, 2003	back to top