| |
April 4, 2003
|
 |
RIAA Sues College Students For File-Sharing
RIAA Sues College File Traders
A music industry group on Thursday said it has filed lawsuits against the operators of private computer networks on three college campuses where it claims the networks are being used to illegally trade copies of digital music files.
The Recording Industry Association of America said its member companies filed suit against two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and against one student each at Princeton University and Michigan Technological University.
Music industry sues students over alleged file-swapping networks
The recording industry is expanding its fight against illegal Internet content swapping by suing four college students for allegedly offering more than 1 million copies of popular music.
In lawsuits filed Thursday in federal courts in New York, New Jersey and Michigan, the Recording Industry of America asked that the sites be shut down and that it be paid maximum damages of $150,000 per song.
|
|
|
Bill Gates Assasinated: Hoax Panics Korean Economy
There's nothing like the internet for making people look foolish.
The latest outbreak of red faces is in Seoul, where Korean journalists and investors have been caught out by one of the oldest online hoaxes around.
On a slack Friday afternoon's trading, the Korean stock market dropped by 1.5% - a value loss of more than $3bn - after local TV reported that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates had been assassinated.
Mr Gates, who personifies many of the hopes of the global technology industry, was reportedly shot by a lone gunman at a charity event in Los Angeles - "facts" eagerly retailed by three Korean channels, MBC, YTN and SBS.
In fact, the story was a hoax, lifted from a - admittedly, highly accurate - spoof of the CNN website.
|
|
|
AMD's Athlon XP Overclocking 50%?
Everyone wants something for nothing, it seems. That's particularly true of the PC hardware enthusiast who's always looking to eek that extra bit of performance from their PC(s). You can look at a number of different hardware forums and see a general pattern emerge. Users often chime in with just how well their PC is faring, with particular kudos paid to those who have pushed their components far past stated specifications.
Generally speaking, there are two accepted methods for pushing your components, usually processors and graphics cards, to far beyond factory specifications. You can, firstly, choose to use enhanced cooling. Reducing the operating temperature of these multi-million-transistor-bearing devices allows you to reduce electrical interference caused by excited, hot electrons. Faster switching time and a smooth electron flow, in turn, allows one to raise the frequencies well above stock speeds. That's all well and fine, but this approach often requires loud or esoteric cooling.
The second approach requires a little background reading and forum perusing. Thinking of AMD processors in particular, and with due appreciation that AMD have switched their CPU manufacturing down to 0.13u (Thoroughbred) process, we'd hazard that the lower speed processors, based on this reduced micron technology, should go far past their rated speeds.
|
|
|
Holographic Storage Closer Than It May Appear
System administrators who perform nightly backups to optical or tape libraries may soon need to check their mirrors: a newer medium, holographic storage, is closer than it appears, component vendors say.
Holography stores data by using multiple light beams to create chemical reactions. The result is data that's smaller and more permanent than laser-induced ridges and valleys, and as fast or faster than magnetic electron flopping. For users, that means consolidation is possible due to higher capacities, and the chance of corruption during data restores decreases.
InPhase Technologies Inc. will announce progress on this front at the National Association of Broadcasters 2003 conference, next week in Las Vegas.
|
|
|
Internet radio sides agree on royalty rates
The recording industry and Internet music broadcasters hope a new agreement will prevent a repeat of their recent battle over online music royalties, allowing them to focus instead on providing better music services for consumers.
The two sides agreed Thursday on how much big webcasters like Yahoo!, America Online, Microsoft and RealNetworks must pay to broadcast songs over the Internet during 2003 and 2004.
The new deal, if approved by the U.S. Copyright Office, will allow the two industries to avoid a lengthy arbitration process to set the royalty rates.
"We are delighted to have reached an agreement that will bring compensation to musicians without a costly arbitration," said Thomas Lee, president of the American Federation of Musicians. "We hope webcasting will bring more music to more fans."
|
|
|
Network Associates makes security buy
Network Associates announced Friday that it will buy Entercept Security Technologies, its second intrusion-detection acquisition in the past four days.
The security company will pay $120 million cash for Entercept, bolstering its recently announced acquisition of IntruVert Networks. The two companies protect customers from electronic intruders--Entercept by detecting attacks on servers, and IntruVert by detecting odd behavior on the network.
"It is a very logical extension of what we offer to enterprise customers," said Art Matin, president of Network Associates' McAfee Security division. "What Entercept has that goes beyond traditional antivirus solutions is signature-based detection for known attacks and anomaly detection for new attacks."
Although the two deals will move Network Associates into a new market, more importantly, it will diversify the company beyond its one-trick pony status with content filtering and bring it closer to competing head-to-head with Symantec's broader security product portfolio, said Matt Barzowskas, an analyst with First Albany.
|
|
|
Judge Critical of MS Injunction
A federal appeals court judge on Thursday expressed serious doubts about a lower-court order requiring Microsoft to incorporate Sun Microsystems' Java programming language in the Windows operating system.
Judge Paul Niemeyer, one of the three judges hearing Microsoft's appeal, sharply questioned whether the must-carry preliminary injunction was needed to prevent imminent harm to Sun and the Java program while a trial was conducted.
Niemeyer, who dominated questioning during an hour of presentations from both sides, also criticized the legal basis of the injunction issued late last year by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz in Baltimore.
The injunction, put on hold by the appeals court for now, was based on findings that Microsoft was illegally maintaining a monopoly with the Windows operating system for personal computers.
|
|
|
Overture signs deal with Gator
Overture Services has signed a three-year deal with Gator to display its sponsored search listings on pages that pop under those of rival and partner Web sites.
As previously reported, the pay-for-performance search company has been testing a partnership with Gator's online advertising and information network (GAIN) for several months. In the last week, the company committed to a lengthy deal to distribute sponsored listings from its advertising network onto Gator's new paid search product, Search Scout.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Like previous products from Gator, Search Scout allows advertisers to reach members of the Gator network when they are visiting competitors' sites--a feature that has already drawn lawsuits in the context of banner and pop-up advertising. Gator's Search Scout, launched in December, triggers a pop-under window when a Gator customer searches on a site such as Google or Yahoo. The window lists search results tied to keywords purchased through competing search services.
|
|
|
Database Heavyweights Weigh In on XML Standard
Relational database heavyweights are pushing the XQuery standard for querying XML documents, with IBM and Microsoft Corp. expected to present a test suite for the standard to the W3C on Friday, and Oracle Corp. recently having posted a prototype of the standard on its site.
The test suite IBM and Microsoft will present is considered an important milestone in finalizing a standard for querying XML data. If adopted by the W3C, the test suite will be used to check whether an XQuery implementation performs as standards dictate, thus ensuring that a given technology is portable across multiple applications that conform to the standard.
Customers need that assurance as they increasingly begin to develop XML applications, said Nelson Mattos, IBM's director of information integration, in San Jose, Calif. "Customers want to have the protection on their investment," he said. "We hear this constantly from customers that think XML technology is very strategic, but as they're developing XML applications, they want to make sure they're portable across multiple databases and platforms."
|
|
|
Sony Plasma TV Grabs Video Streams from the Net
Sony is developing a plasma screen television set that's intended to tune in streaming video from home networks and the Internet as easily as regular TV programs, according to sources familiar with the plans.
The project, code-named Altair, is one of the company's latest efforts to make digital content more accessible on its consumer-electronics devices, and it reinforces Sony's vision of the television as the centerpiece of its strategy for networked digital media. The new Sony TV will include a built-in Internet connection and tuners for receiving broadcasts from cable, satellite and over-the-air transmissions, according to sources.
|
|
|
The high price of piracy
Cutting software piracy can boost economies and create jobs.
Countries in Western Europe could create a million jobs and boost the value of their technology sectors by £250 billion if they cut piracy rates by ten points by 2006, claims a study.
The research, carried out for the BSA anti-piracy group, revealed that piracy is stunting the growth of software firms worldwide.
The BSA (Business Software Alliance) estimates that almost 40% of all software being used around the world is pirated.
The research looked at the effects of piracy in countries that together account for 98% of the world's technology economy.
|
|
|
Court Denies Infineon Rehearing in Rambus Case
A U.S. appeals court on Friday denied a request by Infineon Technologies AG IFXGn.DE for a full court rehearing of a fraud case against Rambus Inc. RMBS.O over a patent dispute, pushing Rambus shares up more than 10 percent.
Rambus shares closed up nearly 10 percent, or $1.38 at $15.75 on Nasdaq, bucking a wider trend among semiconductor stocks that were mostly lower following a warning by Europe's STMicroelectronics STM.PA that its first-quarter earnings would be below expectations.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index closed down about 2.5 percent at 311.4.
At issue in the Infineon case are potentially billions of dollars of royalties Rambus is seeking from makers of memory chips used in consumer electronics.
|
|
|
Jon Johansen To Be Retried On Piracy Charges
AOL Time Warner has submitted a petition asking to be excused from the instant messaging interoperability requirements imposed by the Federal Communications Commission.
The petition, made public by the FCC on Friday, asks the regulatory agency to remove a restriction forbidding America Online from offering video streaming through its popular instant messaging services. The FCC currently requires AOL to open its IM network to competitors if it launches "advanced" high-speed IM services as a condition to approving AOL's January 2001 merger with Time Warner.
If the FCC approves AOL's request, it would lift a key restriction on the media giant's IM products. The restrictions were imposed after technology giants such as Microsoft and AT&T aggressively argued that a combined AOL Time Warner would unfairly dominate IM services. However, AOL claims the past two years have proven that the battle for IM market share remains competitive.
|
|
|
Satphone company says phones are secure
Following reports that US commanders have banned the use of satellite phones supplied by Thuraya Satellite Communications, the company has put out a robust denial that its phones present a security risk.
These remarks are triggered by allegations that journalists using their products are giving away the location of coalition troops in Iraq. Thuraya's chairman, Mohammad Omran, told The INQ "that users' position data cannot be compromised."
Even better, Dave Ryan, who is president of Boeing Satellite Systems - the US company which supplies the system to Thuraya - explained that the GPS information transmitted via a Thuraya phone is secured and protected by the system.
"Only Thuraya has access to the information, and it would be extremely difficult for an outsider to decode the GPS information reported," Ryan said.
|
|
|
Russia raises International Space Station's orbit
Russia's space mission control center on Friday raised the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS).
The operation, which made the station's orbit between 4 and 5 kilometers longer, involved the use of the engines of the Russian supply spacecraft Progress M-47, a spokesman for the center's ballistic department told Interfax.
He said the new orbit will offer optimum conditions for docking between the ISS and the Russian Soyuz TMA ship that is to take the next expedition to the station late this or early next month.
"A few other operations to raise the orbit of the ISS are planned for the next few months," the spokesman said.
|
|
|
U.K. government signs Linux deal
The organization responsible for the U.K. government's procurement policy has opted for Linux to underpin its new online purchasing system.
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) hopes the system will allow public sector agencies to buy products more quickly, easily and cost-effectively.
The Linux-based system is being operated by OGCbuying.solutions only for customers in the department of work and pensions. The technology is used for the purchase of printed forms, stationery and associated items but in the long term is likely to encompass a much wider range of goods and services.
|
|
|
Spam suits seek poetic justice
Antispam company Habeas is suing bulk e-mailers, accusing them of using its poetry without permission in an unusual use of trademark law to clamp down on spammers.
Habeas, headed by lawyer and antispam activist Anne P. Mitchell, puts a new twist on spam prevention by inserting some trademarked haiku lines into the header of an e-mail. The haiku is supposed to indicate to spam filters that the accompanying message is not spam in an effort to make sure that legitimate messages get through to recipients. Habeas' haikus are recognized by the antispam filters and technology of companies including Spam Assassin, AOL and Juno.
When it launched last August, Habeas promised to closely track how its haikus were used and threatened to sue those who ran afoul of its trademarks and copyrights.
This week, Habeas followed through on those threats, filing two suits in federal court in San Jose, Calif., accusing some Internet marketers of trademark violation and breach of contract.
|
|
|
|
