NetHappenings In The News Summary

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NetHappenings In The News Summary


The next time your friends nag you about wasting countless brain-rotting
hours in front of a computer defending your kingdom or battling terrorists
in the latest interactive simulation, wave this in the defense of your
digital entertainment: Video games help doctors perform better surgery.
Interactive simulations have long been used for educational purposes from
teaching kids to read, to training pilots to fly airplanes. Now the health
industry is ready to join in as more than 100 doctors, educators, therapists
and game makers gathered in Madison, Wis. in December 2004 for the
first-ever Video Game/Entertainment Industry Technology and Medicine
Conference.A number of medical experts are using computer games to improve
doctors' skill at performing laparoscopic surgery, a procedure that requires
the use of a joystick to move miniature tools within the body.
<http://www.californiaaggie.com/article/?id=7296>


Progress & Freedom Foundation Press Release
DIGITAL AGE COMMUNICATIONS ACT
Policymakers from the last five presidential administrations are joining
forces with The Progress & Freedom Foundation to draft model
communications policy legislation. Their collective goal is to ensure
deregulated competition in services and platforms now, while crafting
language that can anticipate future technologies and services.
The project, called The Digital Age Communications Act (DACA),
was launched at a press conference
today and comes as Congress is considering an overhaul of communications
law. PFF has a pro-business philosophy, and among its supporters are the
Bells, NCTA, CTIA, USTA, Sprint, Nextel, Level 3, Western
Wireless,  Comcast, Disney, EchoStar, Motorola, News Corp., Sony Music,
Time Warner, Viacom, Vivendi Universal and high technology companies.
<http://www.pff.org/news/news/2005/020105daca.html>


Teaching Computers to Read
The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, granted a
contract worth at least $400,000 last fall to two Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute professors who are trying to build a machine that can learn by
reading.
The academics hope to create a machine that can read sections of textbooks
and answer questions based on the material. Down the road, professor Selmer
Bringsjord believes such artificial intelligence, or A.I., machines might be
able to read military plans or manuals and adjust on the fly in the heat of
battle.
<http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0201Machines-That-Read-ON.html>

Phishing morphs into pharming
A new form of Internet fraud, called pharming, is potentially more dangerous
than phishing because it does not require users to respond to spam. The new
form of attacks can also be executed over a broader front, possibly
misdirecting all e-mail and web traffic away from its victims. Gerhard
Eschelbeck, chief technology officer at security firm Qualys, says the
recent ISP hijacking of Panix typifies the type of threat that may develop,
and pharming is considered by some experts the next-generation version of
phishing. Pharming is actually a new exploitation of existing browser
vulnerabilities and loopholes, and could be addressed by improved browser
security.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/31/pharming


Undead worms infest Windows PCs (again)
Anti-virus firm Sophos has released its virus data for January 2005, and
named Zafi-D the most prevalent malware for that month. Zafi-D accounted for
44% of all reports in January, its second month at the top. The second most
prevalent was NetSky-P, which accounted for 19.4% of all reports. Depite
extensive media coverage of new worms and viruses throughout January, no new
worms or viruses broke into the top ten threats. Sophos also estimated that
4.3% of January's e-mails contained malware, down from 5.6% in December.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/01/virus_chart


Lawyers form group to aid open source code writers
<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/sv/20050201/tc_sv/lawyersfo
rmgrouptoaidopensourcecodewriters>


RealPlayer and IE exploited
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21042
N EXPLOIT that takes advantage of holes in Real Player and IE has
been released on the web.
According to an advisory issued by the security outfit Secunia,
RealMedia (.rm) files can open local files in the browser built into
RealPlayer.
This means a malicious website can load a local HTML document in a
local context by using a re-written RealMedia file.

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