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Issue no. 20, 2004 Published: Jun 04, 2004
Is the dust on your computer toxic?
Microsoft ordered to pay Lindows' court fees
Microsoft gains double-clicking patent
European project promotes TV via mobile phones
Access patterns organise data
7-million digit prime number discovered
Intel creates open source for BIOS
Nokia unveils mid-air messaging
Search engine for cell phones developed
'Smart bullet' reports back wirelessly
Who got the message? There is a way to know

Is the dust on your computer toxic?
A new research into chemical residue found that the dust collecting on computers and other electronics devices could pose a long-term threat to people's health. In a report published by Clean Production Action and the Computer TakeBack Campaign, researchers contend that potentially dangerous elements of brominated fire retardants are turning up in dust samples swiped from computers. The research indicates that the most commonly found example of these substances, widely used fire prevention compounds known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, have been found to cause reproductive and neurological problems in lab animals. The study was based on 16 samples of dust collected from computer monitors in public locations across eight states in the US. The groups believe that the US lags behind Europe in making efforts to reduce human exposure to the toxic substances, as the EU has already called for all PBDEs used in consumer electronics to be phased out by 2006.
ZDNet / CNET News Jun 04, 2004	back to top

Microsoft ordered to pay Lindows' court fees
An Amsterdam court has ruled against Microsoft in its attempt to obtain an injunction against Lindows, a maker of Linux software. Microsoft has alleged that Lindows' name infringes on its Windows trademark. Lindows is also the name of the company's operating system software, though the company is now selling the product under the name Linspire in some markets, including Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (Benelux), which are all under the Amsterdam court's jurisdiction. Even so, Microsoft had sought an injunction to keep the company from selling its products. The software giant had objected to the appearance of the word 'Lindows' on the company's website, technical manuals and other places. Microsoft had also asked the court to levy fines of more than $100,000 per day against Lindows. But Thursday, a judge in the Amsterdam District Court denied Microsoft's request for an injunction and ordered the company to pay €944 in legal fees related to the litigation. As a result of the court's denial of the injunction, Lindows is permitted to resume sales in the Benelux.
CNET News Jun 02, 2004	back to top

Microsoft gains double-clicking patent
Microsoft has successfully patented using short, long or double clicks to launch different applications on 'limited resource computing devices' - presumably PDAs and mobile phones. Now any US company using a variety of clicks to launch different software functions from the same button will have to change their product, pay licensing fees to Microsoft or give Microsoft access to its intellectual property in return. Several activists who oppose software patents say that Microsoft's patent is not a 'sensible use' of the patenting system because the idea of the long, short and double clicks is neither novel or non-obvious. The claim comes as the European Parliament and Commission are struggling to agree on legislation that would harmonise software patents across Europe. Activists have opposed a directive currently being debated that explicitly allows some software patents. They fear that it will make cases like the Microsoft one more common in Europe.
New Scientist Jun 04, 2004	back to top

European project promotes TV via mobile phones
A European project funded by the EU's Fifth Framework Program will soon usher in access to TV program and the internet on dual-mode mobile phones. With project partners in the UK, Germany, France and Italy, the Convergence of IP-based Services for Mobile Users and Networks in DVB-T project has developed and demonstrated a converged digital broadcast and GPRS system that provides both local and remote interaction to portable digital televisions and a high bandwidth multicast IP downlink. The effort could help telecommunications operators improve their delivery of content to wireless mobile users. For broadcasters, it not only increases user interaction with content but also increases their potential viewing public to include commuters and travellers at train stations, airports and stadiums as well as passengers in cars, trains and busses.
eeTimes May 26, 2004	back to top

Access patterns organise data
Old Dominion University researchers have devised a way to organise large bodies of information that is based on the way the human brain organises information. The method could eventually allow information repositories such as the internet to self-organise based on the way users access information, and in the process cut search time, make searching more intuitive, and preserve information about the relationships among data. The researchers tested their system on 15 users who collectively took 1,000 steps around 150 data objects, or buckets. The buckets provided information about a music band and the means to manage the information, including methods of interacting with users and maintaining links to other buckets. The buckets initially contained random links. As users traversed the system links were changed according to Hebb's Law of Learning, a rough model of how neurons in the human brain work. Each bucket kept track of the two most recently visited buckets and added new links to those buckets based on users' travels. At the end of the experiment each bucket contained a set of links that were more relevant to the music band than the initial random links.
Technology Review / TRN Jun 01, 2004	back to top

7-million digit prime number discovered
The largest prime number yet found has been discovered by a mathematics enthusiast using his desktop computer. The monstrous number has over seven million digits. Josh Findley, from the US, contributed his 2.4Ghz Pentium PC's spare processing power to a distributed computing project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). Findley's computer spent 14 days analysing the number before reporting the find. Two independent GIMPS members then verified the find, using five days on a 16-CPU cluster in France and 11 days on a server in Canada. Prime numbers are positive integers that can only be divided perfectly by themselves and one. But they are not simply a mathematical curiosity as they form a crucial component of the cryptographic schemes used to secure online financial transactions. Mersenne primes are an especially rare type that take the form 2P-1, where p is also a prime number. The new number can be represented as 224,036,583-1. It is the 41st Mersenne prime to have been found.
New Scientist Jun 01, 2004	back to top

Intel creates open source for BIOS
Chip maker Intel is releasing open-source code designed to make the boot-up process for PCs and servers more predictable and faster. The code comes from Intel's Tiano project, which was designed to kill off the aged and clunky BIOS system. Intel said it will release a driver development kit and firmware foundation code under the open-source Common Public License. Intel hopes that by releasing the new code it will encourage more people to use it. In the short term it means that hardware makers will be able to more efficiently write their drivers as well as anticipate any changes in the input-output system. Tiano-based machines boot up in about one-third the time required by servers equipped with traditional BIOSes.
The Inquirer Jun 02, 2004	back to top

Nokia unveils mid-air messaging
Nokia is making a mobile that lets you write short text messages in mid-air. The messages are written using a row of LEDs fitted on the rear cover of Nokia's forthcoming 3220 phone. A motion sensor in the phone makes the lights blink in a sequence that spells out letters when the handset is waved in the air. A trick of human vision turns the sequence of letters into a message that hangs in the air. The 12 lights on the rear of the clip-on cover can be used to spell out words or display symbols. Messages will have to be even more terse than the hugely popular text messages because the air texting system can only handle a maximum of 15 characters. Nokia said the message can be seen from about six metres away in daylight but much further when light levels are low.
BBC News Jun 02, 2004	back to top

Search engine for cell phones developed
MotionBridge, a French start-up company that receives funding from Siemens Mobile Acceleration (SMAC), has developed a search engine function that is claimed to be exceptionally fast and efficient, and to work with all mobile web standards, whether WAP, i-mode or UMTS. The new system allows users to reach a desired site in 50 per cent to 70 per cent less time than using a conventional search function. A user who enters the names 'Lufthansa', for example, will be sent directly to the company's website. The system has an automatic correction function to deal with typos. Numbers can be entered too. Instead of the word 'sport', for example, the user can type in the corresponding number. The new search engine offers network operators other ways of optimising their range of offerings. The software's comprehensive statistical program can track the 20 most frequently used search terms, and providers can place these terms in a prominent position, increasing the number of hits.
Industry Standard Jun 02, 2004	back to top

'Smart bullet' reports back wirelessly
A 'smart bullet' that can be fired at a target and then wirelessly transmit back useful information has been developed by US researchers. The projectile, created at the University of Florida is 1.7 centimetres in diameter can be fired at from an ordinary paint-ball gun. The front is coated in an adhesive polymer that sticks it to the target. Inside, the elongated projectile holds a sensor, a tiny wireless transmitter and a battery. This enables it to report back its findings to a laptop or handheld computer up to 70 metres away. It can also reusable, because compressed gas within the gun provides the propulsion. The prototype developed by the researchers was fitted with an accelerometer. To test it, the students fired it at a target which was then shaken to activate the accelerometer and produce data for transmission. But the US firm Lockheed Martin, which provided funding for the project, is interested in developing a version containing a miniature sensor capable of detecting traces of the explosive TNT.
New Scientist May 28, 2004	back to top

Who got the message? There is a way to know
A new service promises to pull back the curtain on anyone hiding behind the common white lie 'I never got your e-mail'. Users of the service, DidTheyReadIt, can clandestinely track when and where their e-mail is read. The service, which has already drawn complaints from privacy advocates, offers a new and quiet way to harvest behavioural information about friends, colleagues and potential consumers. Subscribers to the DidTheyReadIt service receive an e-mail message notifying them of the time, rough location and duration of the recipient's viewing of each message the subscriber sent. The service ranges in price from $25 for three months to $50 a year. A free account allows users to send five tracked messages a month. DidTheyReadIt depends on what are known as web bugs - tiny, transparent graphic files that can be embedded in an e-mail message. When the recipient opens that message, the web bug is downloaded and the DidTheyReadIt server records the circumstances of that exchange.
New York Times Jun 03, 2004	back to top