The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: September 3, 2006

Official News - page 12

WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton

Things are gradually starting to pick up again, but the level of news activity is not yet back to normal. I did, however, manage to dredge up a few interesting items. I have to confess, though, that the most brilliant item of the week wasn't a tech thing at all - it was a press release from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement reporting that they have arrested 15 aliens at Roswell - and that the aliens were discovered painting military aircraft! You can read the press report here.

I guess all the UFO-istas are going to have a field day with this one!

In the meantime, I wish all my US readers a happy Labor Day holiday tomorrow - have a nice picnic :)


Shorts:

More copyright lunacy in the music business. This time the music publishers are trying to close guitar fan web sites on the grounds that they allegedly infringe songwriters' copyrights! The sites in question are ones which share notations (called tab) to help musicians play song at home. Tab notation is a way of showing players where to put their fingers to play tunes, and has a long and distinguished pedigree as a method of helping people learn to play the instrument.

Most of the tabs on the sites are worked out by fans listening to the songs. There are published books of tabs around, but they are only for a tiny proportion of the extant songs, and the publishers have shown little or no interest in increasing the variety available, so the sites are definitely not causing a loss of income.

The traditional music business's hostility to those that create its content and those who ultimately pay its grossly inflated wages never ceases to amaze me.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/29/guitar_sites_under_fire/

On the other hand there is one bright spot - look out for the name Spiralfrog. Yes, I know it's a stupid name, but their idea is excellent. It seems that research has revealed that customers are perfectly willing to put up with adverts if, in return, they get free music. Pretty obvious and common sense I would have though, but this is, after all, the music business.

So Spiralfrog have done a deal with Vivendi to make Vivendi's entire back catalogue available at no charge, to users who are prepared to tolerate the adverts! Full details are not currently available, but I assume that there will be some sort of copy protection involved, however, that isn't such a problem if it's not going to cost to get another copy.

Spiralfrog are due to launch the service in December, just in time for Xmas. If it's not just hype, and I strongly suspect it isn't, then the music industry is going to be in for a very 'interesting' time. Anyone want to buy a used iPod? One careful owner - tunes only 99c more than the alternative service...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/29/spiralfrog_launch/

And talking of iPods, Microsoft revealed a few details of its so-called 'iPod killer' this week. Apparently it's called Zune, which sounds like something out of a bad spy movie - 'Vell Meesstere Bond, zee Zune device eees eeen pozeetion and zoon your pathetic leetle izland vill be no more.' Cue cackle of evil sounding laughter.

Anyway, the device is, it seems, being manufactured by Toshiba. (I rate Toshiba hardware, their laptops may not look as sexy as, say, Sony, but they keep on running long after other brands have given up the ghost.) The interesting thing is that the Zune will have built in Wi-Fi, leading to speculation that it could be used for wireless podcasting. No information is available about how much music and videos will cost, but I'm going to be watching this one with interest - more details of the spec are at the URL.

http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?t=6798555-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0

It's nice to see that at least one government take its citizens' privacy seriously. Following a two year investigation, 19 staff at the Australian Federal Government's Social Security and Welfare Agency have been sacked for accessing the personal information of family, friends and ex-lovers. More than 100 more have resigned rather than face disciplinary proceedings, and five cases have been referred to the federal police. I wonder what disasters it will take for other governments to start taking the internal security of their databases this seriously?

[Source Risks Digest]

Meanwhile in Ekaterinburg, Russia, a man was innocently depositing 2,000 roubles ($US74) in an ATM. The ATM proceeded to credit his account with 2 billion rubles. Pretty good! Being a good citizen the man went into bank and explained the situation to a bored clerk. The clerk, it turned out, wasn't interested and informed the man that he, the clerk, wasn't interested, and he had better things to do!

I would have given up at this stage, but our man was made of sterner stuff. Going back to the machine he proceeded to withdraw cash, occasionally feeding some of it back into the machine until he had accumulated 20 billion rubles (US$74 million). The money he had withdrawn was packed into shoe boxes and trundled into the bank, where the sight of so much cash finally shocked the staff into doing something.

All the bank's ATMs have now been turned off. There is no word on when they will be back up. Hmmm... I wonder what happened to the guy who wrote the ATM program!

[Source Risks Digest]

Are you addicted to Blackberries? I am, of course, referring to the ubiquitous wireless e-mail device, not the tasty summer fruit :) The latest news from the US is that you may be able to sue your employer for turning you on to what many users jokingly call the CrackBerry.

Gayle Porter, an associate professor of management at Rutgers University School has written a paper, currently being peer reviewed, which indicates that workers whose personal lives suffer due to work-induced tech addiction could sue their employers.

I can just see it now. "Well, your honour, I work as a tester for a games company, and as a result I'm now completely to addicted computer games... However, the stress it causes me could be alleviated by an award of US$20 million plus a free copy of each new game published by the company for the next 20 years!" No. Somehow I don't think this one is going to fly. Nice try though :)

http://news.com.com/Do+BlackBerrys+help+or+harm/2100-1041_3-6109624.html?tag=txt

McAfee are trying to outdo their rivals Symantec. Regular readers will remember that I reported a few weeks ago that Symantec were labeling church software as spyware. McAfee have gone one better - their anti-virus software is labelling competing products as spyware! The McAfee installation program insists that the competing programs be deleted, and won't complete its own install until they are removed. All this arrogance from a so called anti-virus vendor whose software failed to spot Sony's rootkit installation (and incidentally, none of the big boys have yet explained why they didn't report the Sony rootkit).

My advice - abort the installation, and demand your money back.

[Source - Spyware Weekly Newsletter 29th August 2006]


Geek Toys:

Got an iPod? How would you like to give it its own set of wheels? I have just the thing for you - a new Japanese music robot called Miuro. Just plug in your iPod and the boombox on wheels will roll and twist its way from room to room playing the music on your iPod. You can have it in any color you like - as long as it's black, white, red or yellow...

http://www.physorg.com/news76256934.html


Scanner: Other stories

Linux patch becomes terminal pain
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/26/linux_update_shocker/

US court protects confidentiality whistle blower
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?r=314&ctl=13B117E:215D3E184FC552DCA69CE4FB919D76F6EFF29049075316B4

Patent rulings could destroy open source software
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/29/oss_under_pressure/

Re-inventing nature for cheaper solar power
http://www.physorg.com/news76344249.html

Sony ships 'world's fastest' DVD±R burner
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2006/08/30/sony_ships_fastest_dvd_recorder/

TDK announces blue laser disk technology to support 200GB
http://www.physorg.com/news76342796.html


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barbara and Fi for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
27 August 2006

Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.


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