Technology thread...

[yudansha]

O.K. how cool is this?! - it's like a user-friendly AutoCAD!

Design software comes with machine shop attached

(AP) - It's the Internet Revolution meets the Industrial Revolution: a new program that lets people design 3-D objects like car parts and door knobs in metal or plastic then order them online.

Programs for computer-aided design, or CAD, have been around for decades, but eMachineShop.com appears to be the first service that checks whether a design can be made and tells the customer how much it will cost.

If the customer wants the item the design goes to a "real world" machine shop for manufacturing.

The key to this enterprise is free design software provided by eMachineShop that aims to be simple enough for hobbyists and other non-engineers.

Prices won't be competitive with Wal-Mart, but Wal-Mart won't make 10 copper door knobs, then sandblast them for you. EmachineShop charges $143 US for that.

The company was created by Jim Lewis, a programmer and self-professed "tinkerer." One previous credit: "the world's hardest sliding block puzzle."

Lewis' software company, Micrologic, designed eMachineShop and contracts with machine shops all over the world to do the manufacturing.

Even though the Midland Park, N.J., company, which has 19 employees, doesn't advertise, it has handled more than 1,000 orders for things like door signs, motorcycle seats, robot frames, car engine covers, guitar plates and camera parts.

The most expensive item it's sold since it began beta testing last year is a $4,011 aluminum, 26-inch diameter part for a high-powered laboratory magnet.

The customers range from large companies that make prototypes to hobbyists including Dennis J. Vegh of Mesa, Ariz., who had the company make metal parts for an airplane he's building after a 1929 design.

"I had to have the pieces made because they do not exist anywhere," Vegh said.

He found the software quick and easy to use. The quality of the finishing has varied a bit between orders, but has been acceptable, he said.

"Being able to sit at your home computer, draw up some parts, submit them and 30 days later they are on your doorstep, all without human contact, is mind-blowing," Vegh says.

Lewis, the company founder, estimates that with conventional methods, it takes about 40 hours to design a part, get a quote, straighten out manufacturing problems with the machine shop and put the order in.

Taylan Altan, professor at the College of Engineering at Ohio State University, agrees, saying the process can easily drag out to two weeks.

"One of the biggest problems we have today in American design and manufacturing is that designers know very little about manufacturing," he says.

As a result, designers draw parts that are hard to make and require several rounds of modification before they can be put in production, a problem eMachineShop aims to avoid by building the knowledge of a machinist into the design software.

For instance, if you're designing a part made of sheet metal, it won't allow you to include a bend too close to an edge -the machinist needs enough surface to hold on to when bending.

Lewis is also working on Pad2Pad, an application that makes electronics. Manufacturers of printed circuit boards, like PCBExpress.com, are already online but Lewis aims to take the concept one step further by also attaching components like resistors, capacitors and chips to the boards.

Pad2Pad is taking orders, but is "a couple of years behind eMachineShop" in its development, Lewis says. One problem is stocking the components customers want.

Lewis also wants into branch into what is perhaps the least sexy segment of manufacturing: making cardboard boxes for packaging.

"My dream is essentially to become the Amazon in the manufacturing segment," Lewis says.

PETER SVENSSON; © The Canadian Press, 2004

 

[yudansha]

Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, Nobel Prize winner for developing CAT scan, dies at 84

LONDON (AP) - Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, who developed the first practical CAT-scan machine and shared a Nobel Prize in 1979 for inventing CAT-scan technology, has died at age 84, his family said.

Hounsfield died Aug. 12 at New Victoria Hospital in Kingston upon Thames. The cause of death was not announced.

His Nobel Prize was shared with Allan Cormack of Tufts University in the United States, who published the first theoretical papers on the system, but Hounsfield developed his machine without knowing of Cormack's work.

The Nobel Committee described Hounsfield, who worked at EMI's medical research division as "the central figure in computer-assisted tomography." The device uses X-rays to scan from different angles and a computer to assemble the images into a cross-section.

In 1968, Hounsfield made a patent application which was granted in 1972, the year he tested the first device.

Developing the machine "involved many frustrations, occasional awareness of achievement when particular technical hurdles were overcome, and some amusing incidents, not least the experiences of travelling across London by public transport carrying bullock's brains for use in evaluation of an experimental scanner rig in the laboratories," Hounsfield wrote in his autobiography for the Nobel committee.

Hounsfield never attended a university but had begun experimenting with electrical and mechanical devices as a boy growing up on a family farm in Nottinghamshire.

"The period between my 11th and 18th years remains the most vivid in my memory because this was the time of my first attempts at experimentation, which might never have been made had I lived in a city," he recalled.

"I constructed electrical recording machines; I made hazardous investigations of the principles of flight, launching myself from the tops of haystacks with a homemade glider; I almost blew myself up during exciting experiments using water-filled tar barrels and acetylene to see how high they could be water jet propelled."

He served as a radar-mechanic instructor in the Second World War before being assigned to technical schools. After the war, he earned a diploma from the Faraday House Electrical Engineering College.

Hounsfield never married. A funeral service will be held Monday at All Saints church in Sutton on Trent.

© The Canadian Press, 2004

 

[tora]

Alcohol inhaler machine...Russians would be happy!
How soon is Friday by the way?

 

[yudansha]

"How soon is Friday by the way?"

starting 5 days from now, it's every 7th day

 

[tora]

OK,screw it.I'm having a Friday tonight

 

[yudansha]

Full Spectrum Warrior offers real-world approach to urban warfare

(CP) - Originally made for the military, it's no surprise that Full Spectrum Warrior is an exercise in gaming realism.

Full Spectrum Warrior started as a light infantry training simulator for the U.S. army. (CP/HO)​

What may surprise the gamer are the challenges awaiting you as the commander of two four-man squads in the imaginary desert country of Zekistan.

Fighting in an urban environment, one strategically placed enemy can wreak havoc. Your job is to meet objectives, be it clearing out a section of town or rescuing a pinned-down squad. But unlike most other games, where losing troops is par for the course, Full Spectrum Warrior's major goal is to keep your men alive.

Cover is key. So is flanking the enemy. One squad protects another. Ammunition is finite. An enemy may be hiding behind a car or corner. Charge in willy-nilly and it's time for a body bag. As a result, the game is rated M for mature.

Full Spectrum Warrior, developed by Pandemic Studios for Xbox (a PC version ships in late September), came out of a "training aid" developed for the U.S. army. Pandemic then developed a demo to show publishers, with THQ eventually taking it on.

The army originally approached Los Angeles-based Pandemic in 2000 via the Institute for Creative Technology, a joint venture between the University of Southern California and the army that looks to the talents of entertainment and game technology and computer scientists to develop virtual training aids.

Coincidentally, William Stahl, Pandemic's director of FSW, had been working on a similar project. The institute heard about it and came to him, but the army wanted it shifted from the PC to a console.

"They wanted a platform that was relatively small, self-contained, cheap, portable, durable," said the 37-year-old Stahl, who eventually spent four years on the project.

"But when you're looking at a console, all they have to do is take this box, throw it in a rucksack," he added. "They can find a TV pretty much anywhere in the world, plug it in and play. Those things (consoles) are designed to withstand two-year-olds and four-year-olds, they'll withstand a soldier's punishment."

More than a year of research and development followed, spent telling the army what could and couldn't be done and "conversely us getting up to speed with what it means to be a soldier, what it is they're looking to teach these guys."

Stahl says the research taught him plenty about the military.

"From a game perspective, the biggest thing that struck me initially is the soldier doesn't want to take a life. He doesn't want to run around and kill people. He just wants to complete his objective."

That became clear early on in the game's development when soldiers, testing out missions, demonstrated their first instinct was to go around the enemy rather than confront it.

"If that enemy is not my objective, his thinking is why waste ammunition or potentially put a man's life at stake just to shoot a bad guy. Go around him, find a different way," Stahl explained.

"When we transition it over to a game, when a retail game player sees an enemy, that's an invitation to go hunt him down. He's going to go at him full-bore."

"If you think about it, it's insane," he added. "Why would you head towards a guy shooting at you? But that's the mentality. Soldiers come at it with real-world perspective. Players come at it from a play perspective."

So Pandemic had to design missions a different way for gamers. Stahl compares the process to making a flight simulator and then converting it to an arcade-like flying game.

Despite that, FSW demands an investment in time from the gamer. For example, you have to finish the game's tutorial missions before playing for real.

For gamers used to rushing into battle like a drunken sailor, it also demands a rethinking of tactics.

"There's a lot going on in the game and when you came away from it, I think people get a new perspective on what it means to be in the army," Stahl said. "They can belt out words like suppression fire and bounding and know what they're talking about."

Full Spectrum Warrior's mandate to protect your squad members already seems to be influencing other games. At the E3 trade show earlier this year, Ubisoft presented Brothers in Arms, a Second World War game developed by Gearbox Software where the goal is also to keep your soldiers alive.

Stahl, who met with Gearbox to discuss a PC version of FSW, calls such similarities "very flattering."

"The gaming audience is maturing," he said. "The hardware's getting better. People are looking for experiences other than just running around and shooting things. When you introduce things like having to manage a squad or taking care of soldiers, it adds to the immersive quality, makes it feel more realistic and it adds more depth to the game."

Full Spectrum Warrior is being used at a base in Germany and the Ranger training school at Fort Benning in Georgia. So far the feedback has been positive.

"The soldiers want to play it because it's fun, because it something that breaks up the monotony," says Stahl. "But it's also reinforcing what they're learning and doing in training."

Strangely, the U.S. army has its own game -America's Army, a PC game that is free to download.

"The army is a huge society," Stahl explained. "Certain branches doesn't know what other branches are doing."

The U.S. Marine Corps is also working on its own training game, called First to Fight. Pandemic, meanwhile, plans to continue working with the army to develop FSW.

At the army's request, the military version of Full Spectrum Warrior is in the retail version. You just have to know how to find it.

NEIL DAVIDSON; © The Canadian Press, 2004

 

[yudansha]

RealNetworks to offer discounted music service to college students

SEATTLE (AP) - RealNetworks Inc. will begin offering some university students its digital music subscription service at a steep discount in an effort to stem illegal downloads and attract long-term customers.

The Seattle-based company said Monday that it had struck deals with the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Minnesota system to offer its standard Rhapsody service to students for between $2 US and $3 US a month. The service, which normally costs $9.95 a month US, allows users to play more than 700,000 songs on demand. Subscribers also can burn songs onto a CD for 79 cents apiece.

Richard Wolpert, RealNetworks chief strategy officer, said the company worked with record labels to make the cheaper service feasible. He said it will still be profitable.

Wolpert said the company also hopes to attract more universities to the deal.

Roxio Inc., the company behind the Napster 2.0 online music service, also has struck deals with some universities to provide discounted services.

Separately, RealNetworks also said Monday that customers had downloaded more than one million songs during the first seven days of a special promotion in which the company slashed the price of its songs to 49 cents apiece. Wolpert said that's a "severalfold increase" over its normal weekly sales but would not elaborate.

Wolpert said the promotion, which began last week, is expected to last another week or two. It's part of RealNetworks' effort to promote technology that allows songs purchased through its online music service to be played on Apple Computer Inc.'s iPods.

Apple has previously said RealNetworks' actions are the technological equivalent of breaking and entering.

© The Canadian Press, 2004

 

[yudansha]

Appeal court rules U.S. judge had no authority over Nazi memorabilia case

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Yahoo Inc. will likely have a tough time getting U.S. courts to intervene in a dispute over the sale of Nazi memorabilia in France after a federal appeals court ruling Monday.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a U.S. district court judge did not have the authority to hear a case or make a decision that could affect two French human rights groups trying to ban the sale of Nazi-related items on Yahoo's popular auction site.

France's Union of Jewish Students and the International Anti-Racism and Anti-Semitism League sued Yahoo in 2000 and won a French court order requiring the company to block Internet surfers in France from auctions selling Nazi memorabilia. French law bars the display or sale of racist material.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo stripped Nazi memorabilia -including flags emblazoned with swastikas and excerpts from Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf -from its French subsidiary, yahoo.fr.

To the anger of French Jews, Holocaust survivors, their descendants and other activists, Yahoo kept such items on its vastly more popular site, yahoo.com, which is based in the United States but accessible to Web surfers anywhere in the world.

Yahoo filed a lawsuit in San Jose in 2002, asking the U.S. District Court to rule that the French order was invalid because it violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose concluded that he had jurisdiction over French defendants, but Monday's ruling reversed that. In a 2-1 decision, Ninth Circuit Judge Warren Ferguson emphasized that the French groups had not sued Yahoo in U.S. courts, so the case was "not ripe."

"The district court should have abstained from hearing the case," Ferguson wrote.

Although Monday's ruling doesn't require Yahoo to change the way it operates yahoo.com or any other site, it will likely make it tougher for Yahoo to argue its case in U.S. courts.

Ferguson said if Yahoo wants to continue selling items on a site that can be accessed around the world, the company must assume the risk that it could violate laws of other countries and be subject to more lawsuits.

"Yahoo cannot expect both to benefit from the fact that its content may be viewed around the world and to be shielded from the resulting costs," Ferguson wrote in the 35-page decision. Judge Melvin Brunetti, dissented, saying because French groups specifically "targeted" Yahoo in California, U.S. courts should have jurisdiction.

The opinion is a small but important victory for French human rights groups, said lawyer Richard Jones, who represented the two organizations.

"Yahoo would like the world to be covered by America's First Amendment because that would make it easier for Yahoo to do business around the world," said Jones. "But that puts Yahoo in the ironic position of trying to impose American values on the rest of the world."

Robert Vanderet, a lawyer who represented Yahoo, said the opinion "really doesn't mean much."

The ruling may make it tougher for Yahoo to get this case heard in U.S. courts -but the French groups must first sue Yahoo in the United States for breaking the French court order.

"This means that Yahoo would have to wait until they tried to enforce the French order in the United States to have it declared unconstitutional," Vanderet said. "It doesn't disturb the court's ruling -it just says that you have to wait until they come into this country to try to enforce it."

RACHEL KONRAD; © The Canadian Press, 2004

 

[yudansha]

Airlines' computer glitch latest problem for EDS

PLANO, Tex. (AP) - When a computer glitch delayed hundreds of American Airlines and US Airways flights around the country earlier this month, the blame fell squarely on Electronic Data Systems Corp.

An EDS-run computer system had gone haywire.

The timing couldn't have been worse for EDS. In the last few weeks, the big computer services company has seen its credit downgraded to junk status, has slashed its dividend and has paid a steep price to get out of a money-losing contract.

EDS' revenue is growing, but barely. The company managed a profit in the April-June period only by selling a big software division, and there is talk of more layoffs as EDS loses business to rivals such as IBM Corp.

Against that backdrop, EDS garnered more unwanted publicity on Aug. 1 when a single data entry by an airline employee into a flight operation database triggered a cascading failure that made empty planes appear fully loaded. The computer system had to be shut down and hundreds of flights were delayed for two to three hours.

EDS blamed the foul-up on "user error" -essentially an incorrectly typed command -but now acknowledges that the system never should have failed.

"That problem has been fixed and resolved, and we and the customer are moving forward," Steve Schuckenbrock, EDS executive vice-president of global sales, said in an interview. He said potential EDS customers will remember the company taking responsibility long after they've forgotten about the one-day snarl at airports.

Some analysts aren't so sure.

"It's the last thing this company needs," said Bob Djurdjevic, an analyst with Annex Research. "You can say it's just a software glitch and these things happen, but if there was ever an example of what should never break it's a mission-critical airline system like this."

A series of recent setbacks have raised doubts about the state of EDS, which is well into a turnaround effort that began in March 2003 when chairman and chief executive Richard Brown was ousted and replaced by Michael Jordan, the retired chairman of CBS.

Jordan has hired his own management team, largely through buying a consulting firm run by a longtime associate, and tried to fix big money-losing contracts signed on Brown's watch.

There are signs that after a difficult first 16 months, Jordan is making progress.

Within the past three weeks, EDS has announced changes in an $8.8 billion contract with the Navy that will allow it to bill for additional services. The federal housing agency upheld EDS' win of a $750 million contract that had been challenged by a losing bidder, Lockheed Martin Corp.

And new contract signings rose 25 per cent in April through June, compared to a year earlier.

EDS now offers many services, including consulting, call centers and back-office operations, but its main business remains running computer systems for other companies and government agencies. Company officials say they see a pickup in corporate demand for technology services. EDS says the company's pipeline -contracts it believes it can win -has doubled since last year and is the largest in almost two years.

Last month, EDS won a $1.1 billion, eight-year contract to take over the Bank of America Corp.'s communications systems and integrate them with Fleet Boston Financial Corp., which Bank of America recently bought.

Several analysts said, however, that the deal highlighted EDS' dependence on winning work from existing customers -EDS already had $4.5 billion in work for the bank -rather than from new clients.

EDS officials say the Bank of America contract showed that existing customers -who presumably know EDS the best -are giving the Texas company a vote of confidence. They argue that jobs with existing customers tend to be more profitable than new business.

Analysts say rivals are busy spreading the word that EDS is in shaky financial shape and can't be trusted to carry out complex, long-term technology contracts.

Even before Moody's Investors Service cut EDS' debt to junk status last month, saying the company was making only slow progress at fixing its business, the company's sales force hit the phones to reassure current customers and potential clients that a downgrade wouldn't mean much.

EDS has built up a stockpile of $3.6 billion in cash and liquid investments, and says that cash will equal debt by year-end, reducing the need to borrow. And Schuckenbrock said EDS has signed more than 400 contracts worth $880 million since the Moody's downgrade.

Those deals also underscore another strategy at EDS -moving away from the multibillion-dollar deals that once pumped up its revenue but actually drained profits. EDS got burned on several big deals, especially the contract won in 2000 to build and operate a communications network for the Navy and Marine Corps.

The job turned out to be more complex than EDS imagined, Congress imposed additional testing requirements after the contract was awarded and EDS has lost $1.7 billion by spending more on people and equipment than it gets paid from the Navy. EDS has stopped predicting when it will profit on the deal.

Schuckenbrock says EDS will eventually get credit for sticking with the job, and Rod Bourgeois, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said the Navy's willingness to let EDS bill for more services was "a positive to EDS at a time when they could use a credibility boost."

Bourgeois raised his rating on EDS stock this week. Still, he said, the company will be challenged to grow revenue.

In less than two years, EDS must also compete to keep its biggest customer, General Motors Corp., which once owned EDS and still accounts for nine per cent of EDS's revenue.

DAVID KOENIG; © The Canadian Press, 2004

 

[Serena]

Thanks, yudansa.

Wow! I haven't really followed any news about EDS. I remember the days when the name was well respected. Sorry to see what's happened to it in the last year or two. I hope for the sake of all their employees they're able to overcome these difficulties they're facing.

 

[yudansha]

It's unfortunate for those hard working employees...

You're welcome, Serena.

 

[yudansha]

Japan's NTT DoCoMo, Motorola strike deal to develop next-generation cellphone

TOKYO (AP) - NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top cellphone carrier, and Motorola Inc., the world's No. 2 cellphone maker, plan to develop a more sophisticated mobile phone that subscribers in Japan can also use while travelling to other parts of Asia as well as Europe.

The high-speed, broadband handsets will be available in early 2005, Tokyo-based NTT DoCoMo and Motorola said Wednesday. Motorola has its headquarters in Schaumburg, Ill.

The third-generation phone will run on two kinds of wireless network systems, the W-CDMA technology used in Japan and the GSM standard used in most of the rest of the world. The companies didn't say how much the handset would cost.

NTT DoCoMo executive vice-president, Keiichi Enoki, said the phone will target workers who travel abroad frequently.

Subscribers will be able to browse the Internet or make phone calls over high-speed wireless networks, the companies said. They can also link to laptops or personal handheld devices using Bluetooth technology and view a wide range of Microsoft software files.

Mobile phone makers and carriers are rushing to offer customers more flexible services amid fierce competition and declining prices. Finland-based Nokia still holds a commanding lead in the world handset market.

NTT DoCoMo has an estimated 4.58 million 3G phone subscribers and 10 to 20 per cent are corporate users.

© The Canadian Press, 2004

 

[yudansha]

U.S. cracks down on illegal copyright network, targets spammers

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday shut down a network allegedly used to illegally share copyrighted music, movies, software and games and, separately, has embarked a countrywide campaign against purveyors of e-mail "spam."

In the copyright case, search warrants were executed by the FBI in Texas, New York and Wisconsin. The case marks the first federal criminal copyright action taken against a peer-to-peer, or P2P, network in which users can access files directly from the hard drives of fellow users' computers.

The search warrants targeted the operators of the networks, rather than the users, and criminal charges are likely in the near future, according to the FBI.

An FBI affidavit filed in support of one search warrant said that agents used covert computers to infiltrate and obtain copyrighted material from a series of P2P hubs connected to the Underground Network, including copies of new movies made from legitimate advance screeners' copies. The network, according to the affidavit, has about 7,000 members.

Meanwhile, the Recording Industry Association of America said it has filed 744 new lawsuits against individuals claiming they illegally downloaded songs.

On the spam case, the Direct Marketing Association put up $500,000 US to help the FBI and Justice Department with the investigation. The organizations said in a statement that the spam arrests stem from a yearlong investigation intended to "engender greater trust and comfort in legitimate e-mail communications."

Details of Operation Slam Spam were expected to be announced Thursday, according to the marketing group and a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Justice Department officials declined to comment.

The investigation involves more than 100 arrests, search warrants and other enforcement actions, such as subpoenas.

Many of the cases involve "phishing," which are e-mails that appear to be from financial institutions and other legitimate businesses but are actually fraudulent. They are used to induce people to provide credit card numbers and other personal information.

Other cases in the crackdown involve pornography and use of spam, or unsolicited e-mails, to infect computers with viruses that can obtain personal data or be used be a hacker to further spread the virus.

Congress last year passed a law making fraudulent and deceptive e-mail practices a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Industry groups say spam e-mail accounts for almost three-quarters of the e-mail in the United States and costs consumers and businesses as much as $10 billion a year.

© The Canadian Press, 2004

 

[Littledragon]

Another Article..

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday shut down a network allegedly used to illegally share copyrighted music, movies, software and games and, separately, has embarked a countrywide campaign against purveyors of e-mail "spam."

In the copyright case, search warrants were executed by the FBI in Texas, New York and Wisconsin. The case marks the first federal criminal copyright action taken against a peer-to-peer, or P2P, network in which users can access files directly from the hard drives of fellow users' computers.

The search warrants targeted the operators of the networks, rather than the users, and criminal charges are likely in the near future, according to the FBI.

An FBI affidavit filed in support of one search warrant said that agents used covert computers to infiltrate and obtain copyrighted material from a series of P2P hubs connected to the Underground Network, including copies of new movies made from legitimate advance screeners' copies. The network, according to the affidavit, has about 7,000 members.

Meanwhile, the Recording Industry Association of America said it has filed 744 new lawsuits against individuals claiming they illegally downloaded songs.

On the spam case, the Direct Marketing Association put up $500,000 US to help the FBI and Justice Department with the investigation. The organizations said in a statement that the spam arrests stem from a yearlong investigation intended to "engender greater trust and comfort in legitimate e-mail communications."

Details of Operation Slam Spam were expected to be announced Thursday, according to the marketing group and a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Justice Department officials declined to comment.

The investigation involves more than 100 arrests, search warrants and other enforcement actions, such as subpoenas.

Many of the cases involve "phishing," which are e-mails that appear to be from financial institutions and other legitimate businesses but are actually fraudulent. They are used to induce people to provide credit card numbers and other personal information.

Other cases in the crackdown involve pornography and use of spam, or unsolicited e-mails, to infect computers with viruses that can obtain personal data or be used be a hacker to further spread the virus.

Congress last year passed a law making fraudulent and deceptive e-mail practices a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Industry groups say spam e-mail accounts for almost three-quarters of the e-mail in the United States and costs consumers and businesses as much as $10 billion a year.

© The Canadian Press, 2004

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal agents seized computers and software Wednesday as part of an investigation targeting an Internet network used to illegally share copyrighted music, movies, software and games, Attorney General John Ashcroft said.

The case marks the first federal criminal copyright action taken against a peer-to-peer, or P2P, network in which users can access files directly from the hard drives of fellow users' computers.

Agents executed search warrants at residences and one Internet service provider in Texas, New York and Wisconsin. The warrants targeted the operators of five of the network's "hubs," rather than the individual users, and criminal charges are likely in the near future, according to the FBI.

The hubs act as a central point for people granted membership to exchange copyrighted files, with some hubs containing data each day equivalent to 60,000 feature films.

"The message is simply this: P2P or peer-to-peer does not stand for 'permission to pilfer,"' Ashcroft told reporters.

An FBI affidavit filed in support of one search warrant said that agents used covert computers to infiltrate and obtain copyrighted material from some of the users connected to the "Underground Network," including copies of new movies made from legitimate advance screeners' copies. The network, according to the affidavit, has about 7,000 members.

Meanwhile, the Recording Industry Association of America said it has filed 744 new lawsuits against individuals claiming they illegally downloaded songs.

The Justice Department also has embarked on a nationwide campaign against purveyors of e-mail "spam," with the help of the Direct Marketing Association, which put up $500,000 to help.

The marketing organization said in a statement that the spam arrests stem from a yearlong investigation intended to "engender greater trust and comfort in legitimate e-mail communications."

Details of "Operation Slam Spam" were expected to be announced Thursday, according to the marketing group and a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Justice Department officials declined to comment.

The investigation involves more than 100 arrests, search warrants and other enforcement actions, such as subpoenas.

Many of the cases involve "phishing," which are e-mails that appear to be from financial institutions and other legitimate businesses but are actually fraudulent. They are used to induce people to provide credit card numbers and other personal information.

Other cases in the crackdown involve pornography and use of spam, or unsolicited e-mails, to infect computers with viruses that can obtain personal data or be used by a hacker to further spread the virus.

Congress last year passed a law making fraudulent and deceptive e-mail practices a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Industry groups say spam e-mail accounts for almost three-quarters of the e-mail in the United States and costs consumers and businesses as much as $10 billion a year.

 

[Littledragon]

NEW YORK (AP) -- T-Mobile USA Inc.'s first quarter financial results looked great this year, but it wasn't because customers were spending more time chatting on their cell phones.

The wireless company's revenues were up $1 per customer compared with the previous quarter. That was because T-Mobile, for the first time, counted as revenues two fees it tacks onto customer bills. Without those surcharges, the average revenue per customer would have dropped.

The surcharges certainly make T-Mobile more attractive to investors -- they added $58 million in revenue during the quarter.

The fees aren't taxes, though they may look that way on your bill. Wireless, long-distance and local phone service companies use fees like these chiefly to recoup normal business expenses, including property taxes and the cost of posting their rates on the Web.

And that's led to a challenge before the Federal Communications Commission by consumer advocates including officials from nine states and the District of Columbia.

The fees have raised consumers' ire. Ken Juler of Angwin, California, says he pays "under objection" the 99 cent monthly fee that AT&T Corp. adds to his bill.

"These were costs the company was supposed to pay themselves out of operations," Juler said. "They want to make the bottom line look better, so they stick the customer with it. It's dishonest."

Very little from the fees goes to the federal government, said Patrick Pearlman, deputy consumer advocate for West Virginia's Consumer Advocate Division. "Regulatory costs are not the reason for the fees, they're the cover for the fees," he said. "Any industry has a cost of complying with government regulation. You don't get nailed with a National Environmental Policy Act surcharge by General Motors when you buy a car."

'Explosion of line items'
One problem for consumers: Companies' advertised rates don't include extra fees.

"The explosion of line items has made it all but impossible for consumers to compare rates and shop around," FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps said in March. "You need a lawyer and an accountant -- preferably both -- to root out what you're being charged for and why."

Regulators and consumer advocates are petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to ban the line-item fees phone companies add to bills.

A petition before the FCC, filed by the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates and supported by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, maintains that surcharges should be built into companies' rates. The FCC is accepting individual comments on the petition through its electronic filing system, under docket number 04-208.

There is no statutory deadline for the FCC to rule on the petition, said David Bergmann, assistant consumers' counsel in Ohio.

"The FCC has a lot on its plate," Bergmann said. "We hope this would take a place on the plate."

The fees are big money. At 45 cents a month per user, Verizon Wireless has the lowest fees of any wireless carrier. But since it has the most customers, the fee brings in about $173 million a year.

Business costs
Where does the money go?

"We would describe it as a fee for the general cost of doing business," said Sprint spokesman Scott Stoffel.

Sprint PCS says it uses the fees for "a host of regulatory compliance costs imposed by the FCC," according to the National Association of Consumer Advocates petition. Yet those costs include "posting its rates on the Internet, responding to informal complaints and investigations and administrative costs associated with the federal Universal Service Fund."

Sprint Corp's landline bills say that its 99 cent-a-month "Carrier Cost Recovery Charge" includes "certain property taxes." AT&T Corp. bills say its 99 cent-a-month fees include "regulatory compliance and proceedings costs and property taxes."

T-Mobile USA's 86-cent-a-month "regulatory cost recovery fee" pays for local number portability (the cost when customers keep their numbers but switch providers), E911 and "other regulatory mandates and programs," the company says. Its other surcharge, currently 1.39 percent of a customer's bill, goes toward the company's contribution to the federal Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes phone service in places such as rural areas.

A company's Universal Service Fund contribution is calculated annually as a percentage of its revenue, currently 8.9 percent. (The FCC also mandates three other telecom surcharges. Together, the three fees equal less than one percent of a company's revenue.)

To make matters more confusing, some companies bill consumers directly for their Universal Service Fund contributions, then add other fees. The FCC allows the fees as long as they're "just and reasonable" and puts no cap on them.

People who fight the fees say they're no different than passing on the companies' cost of buying office supplies.

Frustrated customers have a simple request, voiced by Sherri Heckman of Reading, Pennsylvania, in comments filed with the FCC. "Wireless providers should include their federal regulatory fees in the monthly rates so consumers know what their monthly bill will be."

 

[Littledragon]

(AP) -- This isn't your typical, humdrum, slate-colored computer. Not only is the PC known as the hip-e almost all white, but its screen and keyboard are framed in fuzzy pink fur. Or a leopard skin design. Or a graffiti-themed pattern.

Sure, it's outlandish, but you won't see the hip-e in an office cubicle. The creators of the $1,699 hip-e claim it's the first PC specifically for teenagers.

Of course, teens are infamously fickle, and today's media-savvy kids are skilled at sniffing out and rejecting things that seem contrived. Today's teens also grew up with computers and have sophisticated demands for them.

But the company behind the hip-e, Digital Lifestyles Group Inc. of Austin, Texas, believes it's got exactly what teenage computer users want.

Why such confidence? Because the company asked.

Last year, Digital Lifestyles' CEO Kent Savage got his son Cameron, 16, and seven of the boy's friends together and polled them about how they interacted with computers and the Internet.

One brand name that resonated was Apple Computer Inc., which has struck gold with its iPod music players and iTunes download service. But the teens said their parents resisted buying Apple computers because they don't run Windows, the platform most people are familiar with.

So Savage decided to "Apple-ize the PC industry."

Cameron and his friends were asked to draw up designs for their ideal PC. Two weeks later, the company came back with 20 product concepts, and in a five-hour session, the teens honed in on one.

Later the prototype went to focus groups nationwide, and now the hip-e is ready for release in November. Orders are being taken now, including at displays in malls where pop star Ashlee Simpson is performing.

"Computers were originally made for adults, for work purposes," said one member of the original design group, Nevin Watkins, 16. "I kind of really want a computer for me."

Retooled to speak to teens
The hip-e is designed to serve as a hub for all of a teenager's digital interactions. (For an extra $100 it will also come with an MP3 player/keychain data-storage drive, or a cell phone that runs on Sprint's network and can be synched with data on the computer. Or both accouterments can be had for $200.)

The computer has a 120-gigabyte hard drive -- perfect for storing a huge digital music library -- plus Wi-Fi accessibility, a TV tuner and connections for video game consoles. Speakers attached to the bottom of the hip-e's display stand can be removed and turned into a portable "beatbox."

The computer has standard elements: a 1.5-gigahertz Pentium processor, Windows XP, antivirus software, spyware and pop-up blockers and parental controls. But it's been retooled to speak to teens in everyday terms.

For instance, users can click on "paper" to launch Microsoft Word, "create a presentation" to launch PowerPoint, or "burn CD" to open a CD-copying program.

The 17-inch desktop display -- which boots up to screaming black and white swirls and squiggles against a lime-green backdrop -- has a "hangout tuner," an on-screen dial that lets users jump to categories of desktop applications: music, movies, games, photos, news, communications, shopping and homework.

Savage said teenagers generally don't like performing separate searches for various programs, so "it made sense to organize it for them and serve it up to them."

"I think what Apple did with iTunes and the iPod is great. But that's just one application," he said. "We are doing that -- on steroids. It's all of these applications, all on one platform."

Teens gaining fiscal control
Bigger computing companies have had mixed success in reaching teenagers. Last year, Microsoft Corp. released free software called 3 Degrees that is designed to give groups of young people a centralized way of sharing pictures, songs and instant messages. Microsoft says it still considers 3 Degrees a pilot test and won't comment on how much use it gets.

Leading PC seller Dell Inc. has avoided age-group-specific marketing, opting instead to highlight ways anyone might use the company's machines, spokesman Venancio Figueroa said. For example, Dell advertises its portable music player in music magazines and touts portable computers in back-to-school circulars, but neither device is retooled differently for younger users.

That's why Savage figures the teen-focused hip-e has a nice niche.

He cites market research that says teens are considered the tech gurus in today's families and dictate electronics purchases.

Meanwhile, teenagers are increasingly using credit card-like debit accounts and becoming more sophisticated consumers, said Paul Soltoff, head of SendTec Inc., a marketing services firm. In fact, the hip-e includes a prepaid debit account that teens or their parents can put money into, to fund the cell phone, online shopping or music downloads.

"In certain respects, it's easier to sell to teenagers today. They're gaining more fiscal control over expenditures," Soltoff said. "They have needs and wants, too. And they recognize bargains."

Soltoff thinks the hip-e must get big-time "viral marketing" -- word-of-mouth recommendations among teens themselves.

Savage has that covered, too: Hip-e's marketing plan includes dispatching 1,000 teens as a "launch squad," whose members earn sales commissions.

Ultimately, however, the most important thing will be the hip-e's performance, said Rob Callender, senior trends manager at market tracker Teenage Research Unlimited.

That's because while teenagers love things that are designed for them, they also like to look ahead a few years, Callender said. So if the hip-e is geared for 16-year-olds, it might actually appeal to kids closer to 14.

"Teens aren't willing," he said, "to make compromises in electronics."

 

[Littledragon]

CABO FINISTERRE, Spain (Reuters) -- Back when everyone believed the world was flat, people thought these rocky shores on Spain's windswept "coast of death" were the end of the world. In today's world, you only need a mobile phone to get there ... and back.

Route finders, once the realm of $100,000 executive cars, have been part of advanced handsets since this summer.

This feature is available from Netherlands-based Route 66, one of several companies, including U.S.-based Teletype and Germany's Navigon, that brought navigation software to handheld computers over the last two years. But some have been looking for simpler and more ubiquitous devices to tap into a potential market of tens of millions of customers.

"You can't explain a Pocket PC to your mother," said Job van Dijk, founder of Route 66, one of the market leaders in CD-ROM-based maps. That device requires a desktop computer to install maps and a tech-savvy mindset.

In a brainstorming meeting last year, his company decided that mobile phones were the way to go. "It's the only device that everyone carries around, all the time," Van Dijk said.

It was a bet on the future because phones powerful enough to handle navigation software had yet to come on the market, and rivals like Dutch TomTom and France's ViaMichelin were already enjoying early success with route finders designed for handheld computers.

Rapidly falling prices
The excitement around handheld navigation is due to the relatively low price tag. With the navigation capability spreading from a luxury vehicle to a handheld computer, the price to get through a medieval maze that defines many a European town dropped overnight from some $4,000 to less than $1,000. Plus, the consumer got a pocket PC that doubled up as an organizer.

In 2003 some 700,000 global positioning systems modules were sold in Europe alone. About 65 percent of those were bundled with a handheld computer, indicating they were sold as a navigation package, according to market researchers.

"These volumes gave handheld computers an extra lease of life," Van Dijk said. "Sales were already declining, but they got a temporary lift from route finders."

Until recently, handheld computers from Hewlett-Packard Co. and PalmOne Inc. were the smallest devices with enough power to store maps of an entire country and calculate routes.

Mobile phones have now caught up. Handset makers like Nokia, Siemens and Sony Ericsson have introduced so-called smartphones that can load computer-like applications, while also offering an organizer, music player, camera and photo album, and emailing device.

Germany's T-Mobile has started offering a free Nokia 6600 phone loaded with Route 66 navigation software to customers who take a subscription. As a standalone package, the software and GPS module costs 399 euros ($493.60), plus the purchase of a 400 euro to 500 euro smartphone.

"It is not just a technological breakthrough, but also a price breakthrough," said analyst Ben Wood of market research group Gartner.

Customer research by T-Mobile has shown that navigation is the third most desired application on a mobile phone.

Privately held TomTom has announced it will launch its own smartphone navigation software after the summer.

Huge market
The potential market for smartphones is much bigger than those for handheld computers. Smartphones overtook sales of PDAs late last year, on the back of Nokia's popular 6600.

Market research from Gartner, Canalys and others indicate that in four to five years, global sales of smartphones will reach 170 million, compared with slightly more than 20 million this year. Their sales doubled in the first quarter, while shipments of handheld computer sales stayed flat, Canalys found.

To address the mass market, navigation software companies have tried to make route finding as easy as placing a call. Just slip in a memory card loaded with the necessary software, and it will automatically load the road maps of an entire country and hook up to the wirelessly connected GPS module that pinpoints the location to a few yards (meters).

Products made available for extensive testing by Route 66 helped one Dutch family travel between Amsterdam and northwest Spain, a distance of some 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles). The product - which speaks in a female voice when giving directions - quickly earned the nickname "Betsy."

The maps used by all navigation software companies come from the same sources, mainly Navteq and TeleAtlas.

The navigation software in the trial ran on a smartphone from Britain's Sendo and works on any handset operated by Nokia's Series 60 system. Later this year, the software will also work on other Symbian-based operating systems from Sony Ericsson.

"Navigation is going to be that killer application for smartphones everyone was waiting for," a Sendo spokeswoman said.

 

[Littledragon]

WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) -- Downloading free music will be a usual order of business for college students returning to classes in the coming weeks, but this school year will be different at 20 universities in one simple but groundbreaking way: It will be legal.

The music industry pledged to continue to sue students who download music without paying, but it also is pushing a new approach in the battle against widespread piracy: encouraging university administrations to subscribe to download services on behalf of students.

A report submitted to Congress on Tuesday by the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, which is co-chaired by the music industry's top lobbyist, Cary Sherman, and Penn State University president Graham Spanier, addresses the industry's efforts in the past year to curb illegal file-sharing, including education, enforcement and the university partnerships.

A hearing on the report before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property may be held next month.

In the case of Penn State, 15,000 students were given free access in November to download a half-million songs, the first university to start such a program. The university's information-technology fees fund the contract with Napster, a descendent of the company that once threatened the industry's profitability by allowing unsanctioned sharing of music collections.

Now, 20 schools -- including Wake Forest, Tulane, Purdue, and Ohio University -- have climbed on board to give students free or low-cost access to music through a deal with RealNetworks' music service Rhapsody.

Although students will not be able to keep the music at the end of the school year unless they pay for it, industry and university officials believe that readily providing the music while school is in session takes away the incentive to steal it.

"Ours is clean, it's fast, it's high quality, it's legal," Spanier said.

Meanwhile, the aggressive effort by music industry trade group the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to battle unauthorized downloading by suing students, faculty and university employees for copyright infringement continues. As of April, the music industry trade group had filed lawsuits against 135 students, faculty members or employees at 35 universities.

"You have to look at where we're coming from," RIAA president Sherman said.

"As little as a year ago, there was still a great deal of reluctance by universities to consider this a problem that they needed to address at all. Now you have universities taking a wide variety of steps to address the problem. ... It introduces students to the concept that music has value and that the people who create it deserve to get paid."

Beyond an interest in discouraging piracy, universities benefit by avoiding tying up "tremendous amounts" of external bandwidth and subjecting computer systems to outside viruses, Sherman said.

 

[yudansha]

I think it's because of you being away...

Repeat post:

WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) -- Downloading free music will be a usual order of business for college students returning to classes in the coming weeks, but this school year will be different at 20 universities in one simple but groundbreaking way: It will be legal.

The music industry pledged to continue to sue students who download music without paying, but it also is pushing a new approach in the battle against widespread piracy: encouraging university administrations to subscribe to download services on behalf of students.

A report submitted to Congress on Tuesday by the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, which is co-chaired by the music industry's top lobbyist, Cary Sherman, and Penn State University president Graham Spanier, addresses the industry's efforts in the past year to curb illegal file-sharing, including education, enforcement and the university partnerships.

A hearing on the report before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property may be held next month.

In the case of Penn State, 15,000 students were given free access in November to download a half-million songs, the first university to start such a program. The university's information-technology fees fund the contract with Napster, a descendent of the company that once threatened the industry's profitability by allowing unsanctioned sharing of music collections.

Now, 20 schools -- including Wake Forest, Tulane, Purdue, and Ohio University -- have climbed on board to give students free or low-cost access to music through a deal with RealNetworks' music service Rhapsody.

Although students will not be able to keep the music at the end of the school year unless they pay for it, industry and university officials believe that readily providing the music while school is in session takes away the incentive to steal it.

"Ours is clean, it's fast, it's high quality, it's legal," Spanier said.

Meanwhile, the aggressive effort by music industry trade group the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to battle unauthorized downloading by suing students, faculty and university employees for copyright infringement continues. As of April, the music industry trade group had filed lawsuits against 135 students, faculty members or employees at 35 universities.

"You have to look at where we're coming from," RIAA president Sherman said.

"As little as a year ago, there was still a great deal of reluctance by universities to consider this a problem that they needed to address at all. Now you have universities taking a wide variety of steps to address the problem. ... It introduces students to the concept that music has value and that the people who create it deserve to get paid."

Beyond an interest in discouraging piracy, universities benefit by avoiding tying up "tremendous amounts" of external bandwidth and subjecting computer systems to outside viruses, Sherman said.

 

[Littledragon]

SPACE.com) -- In a discovery that has left one expert stunned, European astronomers have found one of the smallest planets known outside our solar system, a world about 14 times the mass of our own around a star much like the sun.

It could be a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere, a sort of "super Earth," the researchers said today.

But this is no typical Earth. It completes its tight orbit in less than 10 days, compared to the 365 required for our year. Its daytime face would be scorched.

The planet's surface conditions aren't known, said Portuguese researcher Nuno Santos, who led the discovery. "However, we can expect it to be quite hot, given the proximity to the star."

Hot as in around 1,160 degrees Fahrenheit (900 Kelvin), Santos said.

Still, the discovery is a significant advance in technology: No planet so small has ever been detected around a normal star. And the finding reveals a solar system more similar to our own than anything found so far.

Terrestrial in nature
The star is like our sun and just 50 light-years away. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). Most of the known extrasolar planets are hundreds or thousands of light-years distant.

The star, mu Arae, is visible under dark skies from the Southern Hemisphere. It harbors two other planets. One is Jupiter-sized and takes 650 days to make its annual trip around the star. The other planet, whose existence was confirmed with the help of the new observations, is farther out.

The three-planet setup, with one being rocky, is unique.

"It's much closer to our solar system than anything we've found so far," said Alan Boss, a planet-formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington.

"This really is an exciting discovery," said Boss, who was not involved in the work. "I'm still somewhat stunned they have such good data."

The discovery was made with a European Southern Observatory telescope at La Silla, Chile, working at the verge of what's possible to detect.

Most of the more than 120 planets found beyond our solar system are gaseous worlds as big or larger than Jupiter, mostly in tight orbits that would not permit a rocky planet to survive.

A handful of planets smaller than Saturn have been found, but none anywhere near as small as the one announced today. And a trio of roughly Earth-sized planets was found in 2002 to orbit a dense stellar corpse known as a neutron star. They are oddballs, however, circling rapidly around a dark star that would not support life. Some planet hunters don't consider these three to be as important as planets around normal stars.

At 14 times the mass of Earth, the newfound planet -- circling a star similar in size and brightness to our sun -- is about as heavy as Uranus, a world of gas and ice and the smallest giant planet in our solar system. Theorists say 14 Earth-masses is roughly the upper limit for a planet to possibly remain rocky, however. And because this planet is so close to its host star, it likely had a much different formation history than Uranus.

In our solar system, the four innermost planets are all rocky.

Rock and air
The leading theory of planet formation has the gas giants forming from a rocky core, a process in which the core develops over time, then reaches a tipping point when gravity can rapidly collect a huge envelope of gas. This theory suggests the newfound planet never reached that critical mass, said Santos, of the Centro de Astronomia e Astrofisica da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.

"Otherwise the planet would have become much more massive," Santos said via e-mail.

"This object is therefore likely to be a planet with a rocky core surrounded by a small gaseous envelope and would therefore qualify as a super-Earth," the European team said in a statement.

In a telephone interview, Boss of the Carnegie Institution said the European's analysis of the data represents a "reasonable argument." He said the planet had to form inside the orbit of the larger planet in the system, which orbits the star about twice as far as Earth is from the sun. Boss also points out that Earth is about 18 times as massive as Mercury, so even in our solar system there is a range of possibilities for rocky planets.

Finally, Boss said, the star mu Arae has a higher metal content than the sun, and theory says a planet forming close to such a star can be expected to gather more mass. It's all about how much building material is available, he said.

There are no conventional pictures of the object, as it was detected by noting its gravitational effect on the star. The search project leading to the discovery is led by Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

While researchers do not know the full range of conditions under which life can survive, the newly discovered world, with its hot surface, is not the sort of place biologists would expect to find life as we know it.

Santos said life on the large world is not likely. But, he added, "one never knows."