Presswatch: 28 January 1999

The Vatican, which is praying to exorcise any bugs in its celebrations of the year 2000, has unveiled a high-tech plan to help pilgrims usher in Christianity's third millennium. Up to 10 million travellers to the Eternal City over the festive period will be offered smart 'pilgrims cards' to pay restaurant and hotel bills and to book visits to holy sites. The cards will include information on pilgrims' identities, hotel reservations and medical information.
Reuters, 21 January

Flaw in the algorithm method
An encryption scheme designed with the help of a 16-year-old Irish school student could have hidden flaws, cryptography specialists say. The new algorithm is claimed to be significantly faster than the industry standard. Experts say no one can be sure that it is secure until it has been made public and thoroughly analysed. It is claimed the algorithm, dubbed Cayley-Purser, shortens the time it takes to encrypt and decrypt messages.
New Scientist, 23 January

Crack code-breakers
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a worldwide team of web users have cracked the 56-bit Data Encryption Standard (DES) in under 23 hours. The previous attempt, made by the EFF alone, took 56 hours. The code was broken using the EFF's specially designed code-cracking computer, Deep Crack, plus 100,000 PCs, collectively known as Distributed.net. RSA Data Security offered $10,000 (#6,000) to anyone who cracked the code in under 24 hours, to underline its claims that 56-bit cryptography, the maximum strength the US government permits for export, is not secure.
The Register, 20 January

Breaking out in BeanHives
Ikarus, an Austrian anti-virus company, has issued a warning about the latest Java virus. The new virus is called BeanHive, and is significantly more stealthy than the previous version of the Java virus known as 'Strange Brew'. According to Ikarus, the latest virus targets end users, while the first virus was 'mainly a topic for developers'. The BeanHive virus uses the target's web browser to gain access to his or her data. The virus prompts the user to accept a certificate, through which it accesses the target PC.
Internetnews.com, January 15

Is there anybody there? You can help to look
Paramount Pictures is backing, along with the Planetary Society, a project called SETI@home. This invites the public to join the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Starting in April, interested parties will be able to download a screensaver for their PCs (from www.planetary.org or www.startrek.com). It contains data collected by the radio antenna at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. During idle periods, the screensaver will comb through the data, looking for signals that might be artificial.
Scientific American, January

The best of times, the worst of timing
Microsoft has reported its earnings for the second quarter of the financial year, indicating the company's quarterly net income was $1.98 billion (#1.2bn) on revenues of $4.94 billion. The first figure was a 74% increase over a year ago, the second a 38% increase. The company indicated the vast majority of the quarter's revenue came from platform products. When is good news bad news? Well, this could be one of those times. Microsoft is battling it out with the Justice Department, and we believe these latest quarterly figures will make their way into the courtroom in no time. And it will be the Justice Department bringing them in. While we are sure that Microsoft investors will be very happy with today's news, we suspect for the first time they will not be celebrating alone. Rather, we suspect that Justice Department lawyers and many Microsoft competitors will be cheering as well.
Zona Research bulletin, 19 January

Windows 2000 - a most appropriate name
The cliche 'What's in a name?' is resonating at Microsoft, where the new moniker Windows 2000 really means the year 2000. Several sources confirmed that Microsoft is aiming to release the chronically late operating system in February 2000. The company may look to fill the gap with an interim release - possibly called Windows NT 4.5 or even NT 5.0 (Windows 2000's previous name), which would include all of its ostensibly stable features. Sources say corporate customers are pushing Microsoft to the point-release route. If there is an interim release later this year, the ship date for Windows 2000 - which one source said Microsoft now has pegged for 25 February 2000 - will be pushed back even further. 'It's horribly late, no matter how you look at it,' said Michael Gartenberg, analyst at the GartnerGroup. Several factors have come into play for the delays, and the complexities of Microsoft's Active Directory services and Intellimirror technologies are at the top of the list.
InfoWorld Electric, 15 January

Protect and survive - information is year 2000 key
Just as people go through distinct psychological stages when they have a terminal illness, so people pass through different stages when trying to come to terms with year 2000: denial, anger, fear, depression and panic, and finally the stage of acceptance and co-operation. It seems essential that as many people as possible become informed about year 2000 as rapidly as possible. If the information about the potential severity of disruptions continues to be withheld, and people do not find out until mid-1999, with little time left to prepare they will be angry, frightened, less trustful and less likely to work together. Survivalism becomes useless if you're the only house on your block with food and water, and others are in need. If you hide in the hills with your fear, your food and a gun, your quality of life would leave little reason for living.
Y2k Citizen's Action Guide, The Utne Reader, Spring 1999

A holo triumph - big hopes for data storage
Holograms no larger than a CD could soon be used to store huge quantities of rewritable data, thanks to the development of a new kind of polymer. Within five years, a German team hopes to store a terabyte of data, equal to 200 CD-Roms, on a CD-sized hologram. When polarised light passes through Bayer's new photo-addressable polymer, its chain-like molecules become aligned and stay like that even after the beam has been turned off. This alignment or its absence can be read by an unpolarised light beam.
New Scientist, 23 January

Industry's 'abysmal' showing on bug fixing
A web site that tracks PC software bugs has slammed the industry for an 'abysmal' performance in 1998 in tracking and fixing bugs. BugNet, a clearing house for bug data and fixes, claims the industry is 'in the the midst of a quality/support crisis'.
PC Week, 19 January

Some stories have been edited for length.