eBay to explore music downloads

eBay is to offer a trial digital music download service, allowing third-parties to piggy-back their own music offerings through its web site and payment system.

The pilot programme will last six months, and begin when eBay has chosen a number of music-provider partners. It's presumably hoping they will come and offer their services. Any company that does must be able to show it can offer suitable copyright protection, is authorised to sell the content it proposes to offer and can meet whatever service-level standard eBay sets.

source: The Register

Wireless worm appears

A newly detected worm spreads among mobile phones using the Bluetooth wireless technology, according to security firm F-Secure.

Called Cabir, the worm targets phones that use the Symbian Ltd. Series 60 operating system, according to F-Secure officials. When a user unwittingly installs the worm on a phone, the malicious code activates and starts looking for other Bluetooth devices to infect. It sends itself as a file called caribe.sis, which the user must accept and install to activate the worm.


Source: 'FCW.com'

Microsoft Adds DRM To Windows Player Beta

Microsoft late Wednesday posted a public preview edition of its Windows Media Player 10, which includes its digital rights management (DRM) technology once dubbed Janus.

Janus, the successor to Windows Media Digital Rights Management, is designed specifically to work on over 60 devices--including non-Microsoft hardware--and supports both per-tune or per-movie downloads, as well as all-you-can-eat subscription music services. Among its features: a timed elimination of downloads, which prevents subscribers from listening or watching content if their license expires.

Source: 'techweb.com.

California Adopts New Wireless Regulations

California on Thursday became the first state in the nation to adopt consumer protections for cell phone customers, after a four-year tussle with the industry.

Supporters say the reforms will make wireless carriers more accountable by forcing them to do a better job explaining rates to customers and to provide better service. In one of the biggest changes, dissatisfied consumers will have the right to cancel their wireless service within 30 days of signing a contract.

Source: The Porterville Recorder

Robotics firm gets $1M defense department contract

Applied Perception Inc. said it has been awarded a $1 million Small Business Innovation Research contract from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The contract, awarded under SBIR's so-called Phase II Plus program, builds on a previous SBIR award given to Applied Perception to develop autonomous, mobile outdoor robots that could evacuate wounded soldiers, complete sentry or reconnaissance duties and other related military tasks.

Source: Pittsburgh Business Times

Submarine veterans to honor wives with memorial

Retired teacher Mary Cheek hates knowing she will miss the Monday dedication of a memorial to the wives of submarine veterans.

Cheeks will be with her son, Jeff, in Alaska next week when the U.S. Submarine Veterans conducts the ceremony to honor the work and family support provided by the wives of veterans who served on submarines since WWII. Her daughter, Susan McLaurin of Gautier, will be present for the event.

Source: The Sun Herald

'Youngest planet' flouts theory of formation

An infant planet just a million years old is puzzling astrophysicists - it is simply too young to exist, according to the standard model of planet formation.

Evidence for this precocious planet comes in the form of infrared radiation from the Taurus Molecular Cloud, about 400 light years away, detected by NASA's Spitzer space telescope.

Source: New Scientist

New Yahoo Messenger Released

Yahoo on Monday released its newest version of Yahoo Messenger, which adds more ties into the company's portal services such as Internet radio, Web search and online address book.

Yahoo Inc. last month released a beta version of what it is calling the "All-New Yahoo Messenger," which technically is Version 6.0. More than 1.5 million users have downloaded the preview version, Yahoo said.

messenger.yahoo.com

AI and Bioinformatics

This article is an editorial introduction to the research discipline of bioinformatics and to the articles in this special issue. In particular, we address the issue of how techniques from AI can be applied to many of the open and complex problems of modern-day molecular biology.

Janice Glasgow, Igor Jurisica, and Burkhard Rost

Source: AAAI

EuroPython Update

EuroPython 2004, being held June 7-9 in Göteborg, Sweden is now less than three weeks away!

More info here

Cisco says software stolen, but no damage occurred

Cisco Systems Inc acknowledged some of its source code was stolen and then posted to the Internet, but added that no damage has resulted from the theft.

"Cisco believes that the improper publication of this information does not create increased risk to customers' Cisco equipment," the company said in a letter to customers and partners posted on Wednesday on its Website.

Source: Indian Express.

Candidates’ ads directed at youth

Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry tried to step up his appeal to young voters by taking out ads in 20 college newspapers across the country in late April as a part of his youth voter outreach campaign.

Likewise, the Kerry campaign also has Web sites devoted to students, complete with weblogs and campus organizations such as Students for Kerry.

Young celebrity sponsors like Blink-182's Tom DeLonge and the rock band, Guster, round out Kerry's youth campaign.

Source: Daily Bruin

Web Tools Can Aid In Online Shopping

Whether you are shopping for a Mother's Day gift or high end electronics, you want to make sure you get the best price.

But as KIRO 7 Eyewitness News Consumer Investigator Wayne Havrelly tells us, the best price doesn't always mean the best deal.

When we shop online, it's easy to stick with the sites we're most familiar with.

Source: KIROTV

Mail-Filtering Techniques

Internet email used to be a great tool, but it's currently crippled with annoyances -- unsolicited commercial email (also known as spam), viruses, and denial-of-service mail floods. Filtering email has become common. Today, it's hardly possible to use email and make your address public without some sort of spam and virus filtering tools.

Source: ONLamp.com

wxWindows name change

In September 2003, Microsoft approached Julian Smart to open discussions about the wxWindows name, in relation to the 'Windows' UK trademark owned by Microsoft. The result of these discussions can be summarised as follows.

After a polite request from Microsoft, and a lot of thought on our part, we have decided to change the project's name to wxWidgets.

Apologies to all wxWindows users, and developers of wxWindows-related projects, for the short-term discomfort caused by the name change.

Source: http://www.wxwidgets.org/name.htm

Linux PDA framework project preps next major release, invites testers

The Open Palmtop Integrated Environment (Opie) project has released a developer preview release in hopes of attracting testers for a pending stable release. The Opie 1.1.3 release previews a "vastly improved" version of the free graphical application environment for Linux handhelds and webpads, project leaders say.

The pending 1.2.0 release will be the first stable Opie version since the August, 2003 release of Opie 1.0. It will feature a new PIM (personal information manager) database backend based on SQLite.

Source: LinuxDevices.com

Are You a Potential Terrorist?

Before helping to launch the criminal information project known as Matrix, a database contractor gave U.S. and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists — sparking some investigations and arrests.

The "high terrorism factor" scoring system also became a key selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the Matrix project.

Source: Wired

Cell Phone Directory Coming Soon

According to this story on Yahoo News via the L.A. Times, an upcoming cell phone directory which supposedly includes 75% of all cell users is in the works. Some people are already receiving cell phone spam and telemarketing calls.

Worse yet, unless you opt-out at the beginning of your contract, some carriers such as T-Mobile can gladly hand over your info (though the article says that T-Mobile is changing the contract now). Some good news though, Verizon Wireless has said that it will not share its customer lists. Still, maybe it's time to submit your cell number to the Do Not Call List if you haven't done so already.

Source: Slashdot

Microsoft Ships Office 2004 for Mac

Office 2004 for Mac OS X has arrived. This week, copies of the productivity suite began hitting store shelves. Microsoft has promised users new tools to manage information, as well as the ability to create "stunning" documents.

To deliver on its promises, Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit has included charting improvements for Excel, new 'smart' buttons in Word and Excel, more than 100 new design templates, new animation and transitions in PowerPoint, and a save as picture function.

Source: Beta News