NetHappenings News Summary

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NetHappenings News Summary
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-- Congress proposes tax on all data
Congress says new tax on all Internet connections is an
"option"
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5555385.html
An influential congressional committee has dropped a political
bombshell by suggesting that a tax originally created to pay for the
Spanish American War could be extended to all Internet and data
connections this year.
The committee, which is deeply involved with writing U.S. tax laws,
unexpectedly said in a report on Thursday that the 3 percent
telecommunications tax could be revised to cover "all data
communications services to end users," including broadband, dial-up,
fiber, cable modems, cellular and DSL (digital subscriber line) links.


- Installing and using MythTV
http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythInstall
MythTV is a suite of programs that allow you to build
  the mythical home media convergence box on your
own using Open Source software and operating systems.
MythTV has a number of capabilities. The television
portion allows you to do the following:



-- Firms formulate guidelines for employee cellphone use
http://bostonworks.boston.com/globe/articles/012305_cell.html
Somewhere near Winslow, Maine, is a scenic view of China Lake where
Monsanto Co. salesman Robert Pierpont regularly makes client calls
from his cellphone - one of many locations at which he pauses along
his route.
"I know all the scenic, beautiful views," he said. He should. While
Pierpont traverses 3,500 miles a month across New England and eastern
New York selling animal health products to dairy farmers and
veterinarians, Monsanto says he cannot conduct business on his
cellphone unless his car is stopped.
St. Louis-based Monsanto is one of a small but growing number of
companies publishing guidelines for cellphone use inside the office
and the car, as some high-profile liability cases catch the eye of
corporate America.


-- Jailed for using a nonstandard browser
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/27/jailed_for_using_a_n.html
A Londonder made a tsnuami-relief donation using
lynx -- a text-based browser used by the blind,
Unix-users and others -- on Sun's Solaris operating
system. The site-operator decided that this "unusual"
event in the system log indicated a hack-attempt,
and the police broke down the donor's door and
arrested him. From a mailing list:


Machine learns games 'like a human'
A computer that learns to play a 'scissors, paper, stone' by observing and
mimicking human players could lead to machines that automatically learn how
to spot an intruder or perform vital maintenance work, say UK researchers.
CogVis, developed by scientists at the University of Leeds in Yorkshire, UK,
teaches itself how to play the children's game by searching for patterns in
video and audio of human players and then building its own "hypotheses"
about the game's rules.
In contrast to older artificial intelligence (AI) programs that mimic human
behaviour using hard-coded rules, CogVis takes a more human approach,
learning through observation and mimicry, the researchers say.
The older approach is fraught with problems, as computers struggle when
faced with situations that fall outside the remit of these rules and when
new rules are introduced.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6914


"Sophomore Student's i2hub Downloading Technology Sounds Sweet
to U. of Massachusetts Music Fans"
The UMass-Amherst student who created i2hub, an increasingly
popular peer-to-peer network that lets students transfer files
over Internet2's high-speed research network, insists that his
software is not specifically designed for song and movie piracy.
(The Daily Collegian)
<http://www.dailycollegian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/01/27/41f87b5bc8b80>

-- The End of an Era
http://www.analogrules.com/tapetip3.html
Quantegy is the last U.S. company to manufacture  reel-to-reel.

-- AOL has announced that it's going to drop Usenet.
<http://www.betanews.com/article/AOL_Pulls_Plug_on_Newsgroup_Service/1106664
611>
The AP wire story on the subject claimed that fewer than 1000 of its 23 million
subscribers even used the service.

-- Graduate Cryptographers Unlock Code of 'Thiefproof' Car Key
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/national/29key.html
BALTIMORE - Matthew Green starts his 2005 Ford Escape with a duplicate key
he had made at Lowe's. Nothing unusual about that, except that the
automobile industry has spent millions of dollars to keep him from being
able to do it.
Mr. Green, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, is part of a
team that plans to announce on Jan. 29 that it has cracked the security
behind "immobilizer" systems from Texas Instruments Inc. The systems reduce
car theft, because vehicles will not start unless the system recognizes a
tiny chip in the authorized key. They are used in millions of Fords, Toyotas
and Nissans.

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