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Issue no. 40, 2004 Published: Dec 03, 2004
DVD format war heats up
Screen saver attacks spammers
Two thirds of all PCs infected with spyware
Chip power, times 10
Quantum errors can be corrected
Cyber detective links up crimes
Solar cell doubles as battery
Log on to be a satellite spy
Web 'may fuel suicide pact rise'
Flowering phone is environmental wake-up call

DVD format war heats up
Three Hollywood studios have announced their support for the high definition DVD (HD DVD) standard, raising the likelihood of a tough standards war with Sony's rival Blu-ray technology. Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Brothers have all thrown their weight behind HD DVD, which was developed by Toshiba and NEC. Dell, Philips, Sony and Twentieth Century Fox have all sighed up for Blu-ray, and future Playstations will support the format. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray are designed to provide the increased storage needed for high definition TV viewing. HD DVD holds about a third less data than Blu-ray, but the hardware is expected to be significantly cheaper. The first Blu-ray players are due out next year. HD DVD players are not expected before 2006.
VNUnet UK Nov 30, 2004	back to top

Screen saver attacks spammers
At the risk of breaching internet civility, Lycos Europe is offering computer-users a weapon against spam-spewing servers: a screen-saver program that automatically hits the offenders with data to slow them down. Around 65,000 people already signed up for the offensive, called 'Make Love not Spam' before Tuesday's official launch on a website fat http://www.makelovenotspam.com, the company said. The program activates whenever a computer equipped with it goes into standby mode, and sends HTTP get-requests to servers known to generate unsolicited e-mails. When done en masse, this eats up precious bandwidth, causing the servers to overload and slow down. Lycos chooses its targets by reviewing spam monitors and manually checking blacklisted sites to see if they really do carry products promoted by spam. Lycos says it takes care not to crash spam servers altogether, respecting at least some of their bandwidth.
CNN / AP Dec 03, 2004	back to top

Two thirds of all PCs infected with spyware
The global spyware plague has reached epidemic proportions, with the cost to global PC users set to rocket by 2,400 per cent over the next four years. According to newly published research from IDC, the need to identify and eradicate these parasitic programs will drive anti-spyware software revenues from $12m in 2003 to $305m in 2008. IDC estimates that 67 per cent of all computers contain some form of spyware. Although not always malicious in nature, IDC noted that spyware still causes significant damage to legitimate software, network performance and employee productivity. An indirect cost of spyware is that it crosses the boundary between security and system management by deluging help desks with complaints about pop-ups, application failures and poor PC performance. At worst, spyware's ability to track keystrokes, scan hard drives and change system and registry settings is a tremendous personal and enterprise security threat leading to identity theft, data corruption and even theft of company trade secrets, IDC warned.
VNUnet UK Dec 01, 2004	back to top

Chip power, times 10
IBM, Sony and Toshiba have unveiled some key details on the powerful new 'Cell' processor the three are jointly producing to run next-generation computers, game consoles and TVs. Cloaked in secrecy and the object of much speculation since the three conglomerates announced the project in 2001, Cell will be 10 times more powerful than conventional chips and able to shepherd large chunks of data over broadband networks. In a joint release, the three firms gave a glimpse of their respective plans for Cell-powered products, but were mum on technical details, which will be revealed February 6-10 at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. IBM said it would start pilot production of the microprocessor in the first half of 2005. It also announced plans to first use the chip in a workstation it is developing with Sony. Sony said it would launch home servers and high definition TVs powered by Cell in 2006, and reiterated plans to use the microchip to power the next-generation PlayStation game console. Toshiba said it planned to launch a HD TV using Cell in 2006.
CNN / Reuters Nov 29, 2004	back to top

Quantum errors can be corrected
Physicists in the US have demonstrated a method for correcting errors in quantum bits based on trapped ions. The result could bring large-scale quantum computers a step closer to reality. A quantum computer exploits the ability of quantum particles to be in 'superpositions' of two or more states at the same time to store and process information. However, quantum bits or 'qubits' are very fragile and any noise could change the state of a qubit easily, with adverse consequences for calculations. A practical quantum computer therefore needs to correct these errors. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began by creating a qubit that is a superposition of two hyperfine levels in the ground state of a trapped beryllium ion. They then entangled this 'primary' ion with two 'ancilla' ions, which are not used in the actual computation. Any errors that occur in one of the ions have an affect on the other two ions. The researchers then applied an artificial error of known size to their system, before disentangling the three ions and measuring the quantum state of the two ancilla qubits. This enabled them to return the primary qubit to its initial state.
Physicsweb Dec 01, 2004	back to top

Cyber detective links up crimes
Many more crimes might be solved if detectives were able to compare the records for cases with all the files on past crimes. Now an artificial intelligence system, developed by computer scientists at DePaul University in Chicago, uses pattern-recognition software to link related crimes that may have taken place in widely separated areas whose police forces may rarely be in close contact. Called the Classification System for Serial Criminal Patterns (CSSCP), the system sifts through all the case records available to it, assigning numerical values to different aspects of each crime, such as the kind of offence, the perpetrator's sex, height and age, and the type of weapon or getaway vehicle used. From these figures it builds a crime description profile. A neural network program then uses this to seek out crimes with similar profiles. If it finds a possible link between two crimes, CSSCP compares when and where they took place to find out whether the same criminals would have had enough time to travel from one crime scene to the other.
New Scientist Dec 01, 2004	back to top

Solar cell doubles as battery
A practical solar energy system usually includes solar cells that convert light to electricity and batteries that store the energy for later use. Scientists from Toin University of Yokohama in Japan have designed a single, compact device that can both convert solar energy to electricity and store the electricity. The photocapacitor is also efficient at capturing energy from weak light sources like sunlight on cloudy or rainy days and indoor lighting. The light-driven, self-charging capacitor could eventually be used to power portable electronic devices like phones, cameras, and PDAs, according to the researchers. The device could be used in practical applications in two years. The researchers are working on boosting the cell's capacity and making a flexible, lightweight plastic version of the device.
Technology Research News Dec 01, 2004	back to top

Log on to be a satellite spy
A Canadian inventor has created internet-based technology that could soon see regular computer users acting as armchair spies. Vincent Tao, an engineer at Toronto's York University, has invented a mapping and surveillance tool called Same (See Anywhere, Map Anywhere), which produces images so sharp that geographic co-ordinates typed into a website can reveal the make of a car parked on the street. The tool works by taking satellite images of the Earth and combining them with real-time remote sensors that monitor traffic and weather. The information is reformatted on a searchable website that can capture ground-level images of the Earth with little or no time delay. The resolution is 60cm - fine enough to determine the make of a car, though not the details of a human face. Tao said the potential applications were broad, including defence, emergency response and environmental monitoring. He added that the technology could become widely available as early as next year.
CNN / Reuters Nov 30, 2004	back to top

Web 'may fuel suicide pact rise'
The internet may be fuelling a rise in suicide pacts. Leading psychiatrist Sundararajan Rajagopal said a disturbing new trend in suicide pacts involving strangers who met on the web was emerging. Rajagopal, of London's St Thomas' Hospital, said traditional suicide pacts account for less than 1 per cent of all suicides, and almost always involve people well known to each other. About half have psychiatric disorders and a third have physical illnesses. However, there is a risk that the internet is helping to break this mould by fuelling a phenomenon dubbed cybersuicide. An increasing number of websites graphically describe suicide methods, including details of doses of medication that would be fatal in overdose. Rajagopal said such websites can perhaps trigger suicidal behaviour in vulnerable people - particularly adolescents - by giving deeply depressed people an opportunity, which they might not otherwise have, of getting in touch with others who feel the same way.
BBC News / British Medical Journal Dec 02, 2004	back to top

Flowering phone is environmental wake-up call
British scientists seeking to protect the environment have designed a biodegradable mobile phone cover that breaks down in soil when discarded and sprouts a flower from a seed embedded inside the case. Researchers at the University of Warwick, UK, said the novel device, made from a specially designed polymer, is a boon for the environmentally sensitive. Millions of mobile phones are thrown away every year as the industry churns out new models. Designers have reassured the wary user that the seed, implanted in a tiny transparent window, only germinates when the phone cover is discarded. 'We put sunflower seeds into the prototype covers, but we are working with horticultural researchers to identify which other flowers would perform best. Maybe we could put poppies or roses next time,' said Kerry Kirwan from the University of Warwick.
Yahoo! / Reuters Dec 01, 2004	back to top