[JackSpratts]

Maryland House Votes To Oust Diebold Machines

It would replace $90M worth of e-voting machines with systems offering a paper trail

The state of Maryland stands poised to put its entire $90 million investment in Diebold Election Systems Inc. touch-screen e- voting systems on ice because they can’t produce paper receipts.

The state House of Delegates this week voted 137-0 to approve a bill prohibiting election officials from using AccuVote-TSx touch- screen systems in 2006 primary and general elections.

The legislation calls for the state to lease paper-based optical scan systems for this year's votes. State Delegate Anne Healey estimated the leasing cost at $12.5 to $16 million for the two elections.

Healey is the vice chairwoman of the Maryland House Ways and Means Committee, which recommended the passage of the bill.

The bill was sent on to the State Senate for a vote after the House action, she said.

Healey said the effort was inspired in part by concerns raised by officials in California and Florida that the Diebold systems have inherent security problems caused by technological and procedural flaws.

“We’ve been hearing from the public for the last several years that it doesn’t have confidence in a system without a paper trail,” Healey said. “We need to provide that level of confidence going forward.”

If the bill becomes law, the state’s Diebold systems will be placed in “abeyance” and the vendor will be required to equip them to provide the requisite paper trail, she said.

Healey said the law would require the vendor to provide a paper trail before the 2008 elections or risk losing its contract to supply machines in the state.

The bill also requires that any leased optical-scan system be equipped to accommodate the needs of handicapped voters, to ensure compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act statutes.

Healey said she expects the Senate to vote on the bill sometime in the next few weeks, before the legislative session ends.

A Diebold spokesman said the company will “certainly work with the state of Maryland, as we always have, to support their elections as they see fit.”

The spokesman noted that Maryland has been using Diebold machines for several years without problems. The state first contracted with the company to provide the systems in January 2002.

Maryland is following in the footsteps of several other states in expressing concern over the lack of a paper trail in the Diebold machines.

Earlier this month, Florida adopted a new set of security procedures for users of e- voting systems from all suppliers of e-voting machines.

The implementation of these new procedures in Florida was largely a response to reports issued last month by California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson that tests of the Diebold systems found them vulnerable to external access via hacking or bugs.

Nonetheless, McPherson has granted conditional certification for the Diebold machines in California’s elections — with the proviso that supervisors adhere to new security guidelines when using the gear.

The guidelines require that administrators reset the cryptographic keys on every AccuVote-TSx machine from the factory-installed default before every election. Additionally, each memory card must be programmed securely under the supervision of the registrar of voters.

Over an unspecified long term, Diebold must fix the security vulnerabilities to retain the California certification.

In a statement, Diebold said it “wholeheartedly agrees” with the proposed security procedures and said it plans to improve the security of the optical-scan firmware in its machines and create digital signatures to detect tampering.
http://www.computerworld.com/printth...109436,00.html





An Army of Davids: After Action Report
Robert Rose

Previously, I reported this piece of NJ legislation (NJ a1327) that would require any online forum to register legal name and address of every person posting public comments. The NJCSD membership responded in force with phone calls and emails, along with many other people across the state and nation. Together, acting in concert as a Reynoldsian Army of Davids, we have made our collective voices heard. Assemblyman Biondi, who authored the bill, is saying he will reconsider and withdraw the bill. In fact, he admits his mistake but stops short of being contrite. Here is Biondi's letter to NJCSD member Ambush:


Thank you for your e-mail. I understand your concerns with my recently proposed legislation. Based on the number of negative responses I have received about this legislation I have asked the NJ Office of Legislative Services to prepare an opinion regarding this bill's enforceability and constitutionality.

I did not draft this bill with intent to limit freedom of speech. The intent behind this legislation was to bring some civility back to public forums, in particular the forums on www.nj.com. As I receive more feedback from, literally, around the country, it is becoming apparent that the bill may be too broad in scope and in reality not enforceable.

As an aside, this bill was only introduced in January. There have been no committee hearings regarding this bill and there are none scheduled to my knowledge. I am getting inundated with responses which I will review and use to better educate myself on the implications of this bill. If, after reviewing all of the correspondence and the opinion of OLS, it turns out that the bill is, in fact, unworkable, I will certainly reconsider and withdraw it. In other words, this is not something that will happen overnight.

It is unfortunate, from my perspective, that while my intention here was civility and respectfulness, it turns out that it may have gone too far.

Thank you again for your e-mail.

Sincerely,

Pete Biondi
Assemblyman


You bet the scope of the bill was "too broad." If a politician can't handle criticism, warranted or not, he is the wrong person for the job.

Just goes to show that the Internet, unlike the antique media, is a tool tailor-made for libertarians and as we organize and use this tool, we have the power to make our collective voices heard and to generate change. Let the libertarian revolution begin.
http://njcsd.org/index.php?option=co...d=298&Itemid=9





Thousands Of Federal Cases Kept Secret
Michael J. Sniffen and John Solomon

Despite the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of public trials, nearly all records are being kept secret for more than 5,000 defendants who completed their journey through the federal courts over the last three years. Instances of such secrecy more than doubled from 2003 to 2005.

An Associated Press investigation found, and court observers agree, that most of these defendants are cooperating government witnesses, but the secrecy surrounding their records prevents the public from knowing details of their plea bargains with the government.

Most of these defendants are involved in drug gangs, though lately a very small number come from terrorism cases. Some of these cooperating witnesses are among the most unsavory characters in America's courts - multiple murderers and drug dealers - but the public cannot learn whether their testimony against confederates won them drastically reduced prison sentences or even freedom.

In the nation's capital, which has had a serious problem with drug gangs murdering government witnesses, the secrecy has reached another level - the use of secret dockets. For hundreds of such defendants over the past few years in this city, should someone acquire the actual case number for them and enter it in the U.S. District Court's computerized record system, the computer will falsely reply, "no such case" - rather than acknowledging that it is a sealed case.

At the request of the AP, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts conducted its first tally of secrecy in federal criminal cases. The nationwide data it provided the AP showed 5,116 defendants whose cases were completed in 2003, 2004 and 2005, but the bulk of their records remain secret.

"The constitutional presumption is for openness in the courts, but we have to ask whether we are really honoring that," said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and now law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "What are the reasons for so many cases remaining under seal?"

"What makes the American criminal justice system different from so many others in the world is our willingness to cast some sunshine on the process, but if you can't see it, you can't really criticize it," Levenson said.

The courts' administrative office and the Justice Department declined to comment on the numbers.

The data show a sharp increase in secret case files over time as the Bush administration's well- documented reliance on secrecy in the executive branch has crept into the federal courts through the war on drugs, anti-terrorism efforts and other criminal matters.

"This follows the pattern of this administration," said John Wesley Hall, an Arkansas defense attorney and second vice president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "I am astonished and shocked that this many criminal proceedings in federal court escape public scrutiny or become buried."

The percentage of defendants who have reached verdicts and been sentenced but still have most of their records sealed has more than doubled in the last three years, the court office's tally shows.

Of nearly 85,000 defendants whose cases were closed in 2003, the records of 952 or 1.1 percent remain mostly sealed. Of more than 82,000 defendants with cases closed in 2004, records for 1,774 or 2.2 percent remain mostly secret. And of more than 87,000 defendants closed out in 2005, court records for 2,390 or 2.7 percent remain mostly closed to the public.

The court office also found a sharp increase in defendants whose case records were partly sealed for a limited time. Among newly charged defendants, the numbers in this category grew from 9,999 or 10.9 percent of all defendants charged in 2003 to 11,508 or 12.6 percent of those charged in 2005.

But the AP investigation found, and court observers agree, that the overwhelming number of these cases sealed for a limited time involve a use of secrecy that draws no criticism: the sealing of an indictment only until the defendant is arrested.

AP's investigation found a large concentration of both kinds of secrecy at the U.S. District Court here: limited sealing of records and extensive sealing that continues even after the courts are done with a defendant.

"When the sentences are sealed, that's a con on the community," said Lexi Christ, a Washington defense lawyer for a man acquitted in a crack cocaine case.

In that case, all the defendants' names became public when the indictment was unsealed. But all other records for six defendants who pleaded guilty remained sealed more than two years after the public trial in which two of the drug dealers were convicted.

One of the cooperating witnesses admitted to seven murders and testified in open court against co-defendants who had committed fewer, Christ said. But like the others who pleaded guilty and cooperated, that witness' plea deal and sentence were sealed.

"Cooperating witnesses are pleading guilty to six or seven murders, and the jury doesn't know they'll be sitting on the Metro (subway) next to them a year later. It's a really, really ugly system," Christ said.

Prosecutors argue that plea agreements must be sealed to protect witnesses and their families from violent retaliation. But Christ said that makes no sense after the trial when the defendants know who testified.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press found the U.S. District Court here has 469 criminal cases, from 2001-2005, that are listed by this court's electronic docket as "no such case." An AP survey over a shorter period found similar numbers here and got oral acknowledgment from the clerk's office that the missing electronic docket numbers corresponded to sealed cases. However, these figures include an unknown number of sealed indictments that will be made public if arrests are made.

"That's horrifying," said Loyola's Levenson. "When I was a prosecutor from 1981 to 1989, I never heard of secret dockets."

No matter how few turn out to be almost totally sealed after the defendant's case was completed, "it's still significant," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee and a pioneer in campaigning against court secrecy.

"The Supreme Court has said that criminal proceedings are public," Dalglish added. "In this country, we don't prosecute and lock up convicts and have no public track record of how we got there. That violates the defendants' rights not to mention the public's right to know what it's court system is doing."

Although Justice Department does not keep comprehensive nationwide statistics on secrecy in federal prosecutions, it does track how often prosecutors ask permission from headquarters to hold a secret court proceeding, like an arraignment, hearing, trial or sentencing.

The department estimates it got 100 such requests from October 2000 though October 2004, Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said. Another 100 arrived during the 12 months that ended October 2005, he said.

Sierra said the large recent increase occurred because the department sent a memo to all federal prosecutors in 2004 reminding them they need Washington's approval before requesting or agreeing to secret courtroom proceedings. Filing of secret papers in cases doesn't require such permission.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT





Book Review - The Science of Secrecy, by Simon Singh
March 8th, 2006 by Sparky

‘The Science of Secrecy: The History of Codes and Codebreaking’
Simon Singh
ISBN: 1841154350

Ever since the first codes and ciphers were developed, there has been a battle between those who want to keep their information secret, and those who want to read that information. It has been a purely intellectual war, but one that is often driven by motives from above that are far more violent. This book chronicles that battle, from it’s inception, to the modern day, and outlines the techniques used to obfuscate information, and the fascinating history of the application of those techniques.

Cryptography has been a tool largely used by governments to avoid their communications being read by the enemy or other unfriendly states, but historically it has also been utilised by individuals to protect their more questionable or taboo activities from discovery.

This battle is presented in the book as a rather bipolar trend; cryptographers trying to protect data and crypt-analysts trying to discover the meaning of that data. I found this to be slightly misleading. The representation of the history of the field as a constant struggle between two distinct parties does make for a more entertaining read, and adds an element of conflict by conjuring images of an ancient and continual intellectual game, but in reality these two groups are often one and the same.

Whilst I admit that the race to develop stronger codes and ciphers was in many ways separate from the race to break them, they were also inextricably linked, and undertaken by the same people. One has to allow a certain amount of poetic license in popular science books, especially in this case, as it has lightened what could have been a dry topic.

The way in which the book is structured allows a complete novice access. Starting from the first discoveries in cryptography and working forward chronologically, whilst explaining the method behind the discoveries, educates the reader in basic technique without effort. One reads a fascinating historical account, and later realises that they now have a good understanding of the mathematical concepts behind these approaches they’ve been reading of.

The book places these techniques into context, giving historical examples of their use. Often they are revealed to have played large and important parts in famous events, ranging from wars and political plots, to events which are not even strictly related to cryptography.

For example is is shown how crypt-analytic approaches were utilised in the decipherment of ancient languages such as hieroglyphics. These languages are dead, in that there are no living individuals who have the ability to read them, and no information was available to help in their decipherment. By studying the frequency of letters or symbols in the text, as when attempting to break a cipher, it was possible to slowly read meaning into the text, and map the alphabet.

Many of these scripts were decrypted by amateur crypt-analysts, rather than academics. One point the author makes is that there are still many that remain a mystery, such as the Etruscan and Indus scripts. One has to wonder whether a book like this, combined with the current national fixation with puzzles such as Soduko, would create a resurgence in interest, and lead to some of these being broken.

One interesting point that the book makes is that the vast majority of work performed by cryptographers is done in secret, largely for security agencies all over the world, and that this has been true for some time. Therefore it is not uncommon for crypt-analysts to receive no recognition for their work, or to have a discovery attributed to them long after their death. These organizations must classify the work in the interest of national security, so in a way this book stands as an anonymous tribute to their cunning and multidisciplinary talent.

Examples from the book of such discoveries include Charles Babbage breaking the Vigenere cipher in 1854, which only came to light in the 1970s. The author suggests that the work was kept secret to aid the Royal Navy, as it occurred just after the Crimean War started. The credit for the discovery instead fell to a retired Prussian army officer who independently discovered it in 1863.

This is shown to be one of the enduring themes of the story of cryptography, leading right through to the 1970s where credit for developing the RSA cryptographic technique went to Diffie, Hellman and Merkle in 1975, despite being developed in 1969 at GCHQ, a fact that was only publicly admitted in 1997.

A section of the book that will be of particular appeal to computer scientists is where cryptography is shown to have given birth to computing. Born from the desire for a method to perform simple operations on numbers very quickly. Computers now dominate the field of cryptography and crypt-analysis, and their ability to perform a task millions of times with no errors has transformed the science. It is also noted how much we rely on cryptography daily, in areas such as e-commerce, where our details are encrypted without us even being aware of the fact.

The final chapter is an examination into the politics of cryptography, and a balanced look into the ethical implications of governmental snooping on communication, versus the possible benefits of reducing serious crime and terrorism. This is clearly a very pertinent point in todays political climate, and a balanced look at this issue is a very valuable thing. With the heightened risk of terrorist attack, or at least the public perception of such, the government are intercepting more and more communications for analysis, and encryption by criminals is becoming more and more popular.

The book covers the topic well; from governmental use, to anecdotes about lovers exchanging secret messages. Throughout this the reader is constantly being eased into the mathematical technique behind, in a manner that does not require a background in mathematics. There is an appendix to the book, in the form of 5 cipher challenges for the reader to attempt to crack. The knowledge gleaned from the book should be preparation enough to do so, and will fascinate the curious nature of the books audience.
http://non-tech-city.com/category/book-reviews/





Police blotter: Ex-Employee Faces Suit Over File Deletion
Declan McCullagh

"Police blotter" is a weekly report on the intersection of technology and the law.

What: International Airport Centers sues former employee, claiming use of a secure file deletion utility violated federal hacking laws.

When: Decided March 8 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Outcome: Federal hacking law applies, the court said in a 3-0 opinion written by Judge Richard Posner.

What happened, according to the court: Jacob Citrin was once employed by International Airport Centers and given a laptop to use in his company's real estate related business. The work consisted of identifying "potential acquisition targets."

At some point, Citrin quit IAC and decided to continue in the same business for himself, a choice that IAC claims violated his employment contract.

Normally that would have been a routine business dispute. But the twist came when Citrin dutifully returned his work laptop--and IAC tried to undelete files on it to prove he did something wrong.

IAC couldn't. It turned out that (again according to IAC) Citrin had used a "secure delete" program to make sure that the files were not just deleted, but overwritten and unrecoverable.

In most operating systems, of course, when a file is deleted only the reference to it in the directory structure disappears. The data remains on the hard drive.

But a wealth of programs like PGP, open-source programs such as Wipe, and a built-in feature in Apple Computer's OS X called Secure Empty Trash will make sure the information has truly vanished.

Inevitably, perhaps, IAC sued. The relevance for Police Blotter readers is that the company claimed that Citrin's alleged secure deletion violated a federal computer crime law called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

That law says whoever "knowingly causes damage without authorization" to a networked computer can be held civilly and criminally liable.

The 7th Circuit made two remarkable leaps. First, the judges said that deleting files from a laptop counts as "damage." Second, they ruled that Citrin's implicit "authorization" evaporated when he (again, allegedly) chose to go into business for himself and violate his employment contract.

The implications of this decision are broad. It effectively says that employees better not use OS X's Secure Empty Trash feature, or any similar utility, because they could face civil and criminal charges after they leave their job. (During oral argument last October, one judge wondered aloud: "Destroying a person's data--that's as bad as you can do to a computer.")

Citrin pointed out that his employment contract permitted him to "destroy" data in the laptop when he left the company. But the 7th Circuit didn't buy it, and reinstated the suit against him brought by IAC.

Excerpts from Posner's opinion (click here for PDF), with parentheses in the original: The provision of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act on which IAC relies provides that whoever "knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer (a defined term that includes the laptop that Citrin used)," violates the Act. Citrin argues that merely erasing a file from a computer is not a "transmission." Pressing a delete or erase key in fact transmits a command, but it might be stretching the statute too far (especially since it provides criminal as well as civil sanctions for its violation) to consider any typing on a computer keyboard to be a form of "transmission" just because it transmits a command to the computer...

Citrin's breach of his duty of loyalty terminated his agency relationship (more precisely, terminated any rights he might have claimed as IAC's agent--he could not by unilaterally terminating any duties he owed his principal gain an advantage!) and with it his authority to access the laptop, because the only basis of his authority had been that relationship...

Citrin points out that his employment contract authorized him to "return or destroy" data in the laptop when he ceased being employed by IAC (emphasis added). But it is unlikely, to say the least, that the provision was intended to authorize him to destroy data that he knew the company had no duplicates of and would have wanted to have--if only to nail Citrin for misconduct. The purpose of the provision may have been to avoid overloading the company with returned data of no further value, which the employee should simply have deleted.

More likely the purpose was simply to remind Citrin that he was not to disseminate confidential data after he left the company's employ--the provision authorizing him to return or destroy data in the laptop was limited to "Confidential" information. There may be a dispute over whether the incriminating files that Citrin destroyed contained "confidential" data, but that issue cannot be resolved on this appeal. The judgment is reversed with directions to reinstate the suit, including the supplemental claims that the judge dismissed because he was dismissing IAC's federal claim.
http://news.com.com/Police+blotter+E...3-6048449.html





Surgeon General: Obesity Epidemic will Dwarf Terrorism Threat
AP

America's obesity epidemic will dwarf the threat of terrorism if the nation does not reduce the number of people who are severely overweight, the surgeon general said Wednesday.

"Obesity is the terror within,'' Richard Carmona said during a lecture at the University of South Carolina. "Unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9-11 or any other terrorist attempt.''

Obesity rates have tripled over the past 40 years for children and teens, raising their risk of diabetes and other diseases. For the first time, Carmona said, children are being diagnosed with high blood pressure.

"Where will our soldiers and sailors and airmen come from?'' he said. "Where will our policemen and firemen come from if the youngsters today are on a trajectory that says they will be obese, laden with cardiovascular disease, increased cancers and a host of other diseases when they reach adulthood?''

Lowering the nation's obesity rate depends on changing behaviors, but too many Americans are health illiterate, meaning they cannot understand medical terms and directions from doctors, Carmona said.

The surgeon general offered few specific solutions but said public policy reforms would not be helpful in curbing obesity, explaining that common-sense health decisions cannot be legislated.
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiol...2_obesity.html





No disappearing acts for him

Jailed Killer's Magic Books Ban

A maximum security prisoner has been banned from reading magic books - in case he picks up escapology tips.

Prison authorities told convicted murderer Shaun Tuley he was not allowed to buy the conjuring guides on grounds of "operational security problems".

He told of the ban in a letter from his cell in HMP Frankland, County Durham, to prison newspaper Inside Time.

A spokesman for the Prison Service said: "The titles requested were not thought appropriate."

Tuley, who murdered a 20-year-old prostitute in September 2000, said he had been "refused permission on grounds of 'operational security problems' to purchase a selection of books on the subject of magic, sought in order to be able to pursue my hobby whilst serving a life sentence".

Attitude

He asked other prisoners with a "like-minded passion for magic" to correspond with him.

Magic Circle spokesman David Beckley said: "I can't understand the Prison Service's attitude - unless this man has asked for books on escapology.

"Magicians do have skills which enable them to deceive but this is only in an environment which is controlled by the magician himself.

"The Prison Service should change their minds.

"Having something objective which he can focus his mind on could actually help him become a model prisoner. It's a great hobby."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4775532.stm





A Break-In To End All Break-Ins

In 1971, stolen FBI files exposed the government's domestic spying program.
Allan M. Jalon

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago today, a group of anonymous activists broke into the small, two-man office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Media, Pa., and stole more than 1,000 FBI documents that revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress dissent.

The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, as the group called itself, forced its way in at night with a crowbar while much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight. When agents arrived for work the next morning, they found the file cabinets virtually emptied.

Within a few weeks, the documents began to show up — mailed anonymously in manila envelopes with no return address — in the newsrooms of major American newspapers. When the Washington Post received copies, Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell asked Executive Editor Ben Bradlee not to publish them because disclosure, he said, could "endanger the lives" of people involved in investigations on behalf of the United States.

Nevertheless, the Post broke the first story on March 24, 1971, after receiving an envelope with 14 FBI documents detailing how the bureau had enlisted a local police chief, letter carriers and a switchboard operator at Swarthmore College to spy on campus and black activist groups in the Philadelphia area.

More documents went to other reporters — Tom Wicker received copies at his New York Times office; so did reporters at the Los Angeles Times — and to politicians including Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota and Rep. Parren J. Mitchell of Maryland.

To this day, no individual has claimed responsibility for the break-in. The FBI, after building up a six-year, 33,000-page file on the case, couldn't solve it. But it remains one of the most lastingly consequential (although underemphasized) watersheds of political awareness in recent American history, one that poses tough questions even today for our national leaders who argue that fighting foreign enemies requires the government to spy on its citizens. The break-in is far less well known than Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers three months later, but in my opinion it deserves equal stature.

Found among the Media documents was a new word, "COINTELPRO," short for the FBI's "secret counterintelligence program," created to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the U.S. Under these programs, beginning in 1956, the bureau worked to "enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles," as one COINTELPRO memo put it, "to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."

The Media documents — along with further revelations about COINTELPRO in the months and years that followed — made it clear that the bureau had gone beyond mere intelligence-gathering to discredit, destabilize and demoralize groups — many of them peaceful, legal civil rights organizations and antiwar groups — that the FBI and Director J. Edgar Hoover found offensive or threatening.

For instance, agents sought to persuade Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself just before he received the Nobel Prize. They sent him a composite tape made from bugs planted illegally in his hotel rooms when he was entertaining women other than his wife — and threatened to make it public. "King, there is one thing left for you to do. You know what it is," FBI operatives wrote in their anonymous letter.

Under COINTELPRO, the bureau also targeted actress Jean Seberg for having made a donation to the Black Panther Party. The fragile actress ultimately committed suicide after a gossip nugget based on a FBI wiretap was leaked to the L.A. Times and published. The item, suggesting that the father of the baby she was carrying was a Black Panther rather than her French writer-husband, turned out to be wrong.

The sheer reach of a completely politicized FBI was one of the most frightening revelations of the Media documents. Underground newspapers were targeted. Students (and their professors) were targeted. Celebrities were targeted. The Communist Party of the U.S.A., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-Violent Organizing Committee, the Black Panther Party, the Women's Strike for Peace — all were targeted. "Neutralize them in the same manner they are trying to destroy and neutralize the U.S.," one memo said.

Eventually, the COINTELPRO memos — some from Media and some unearthed later — prompted hearings led by Rep. Don Edwards of California and by Sen. Frank Church of Idaho on intelligence agency abuses. In the mid-1970s, the wayward agency began finally to be reined in.

It is tragic when people lose faith in their government to the extent that they feel they must break laws to expose corruption.

But a war that had been started and sustained by lies had gone on for years. And a government had betrayed its citizens, manipulating their fear to strengthen its grip on power.

Today, again, many people worry that their government may be on the road to subverting its own ideals. I hope that the commemoration of those unknown activists being held today in Media, Pa., will serve as a reminder that fighting for democracy abroad must remain more than merely an excuse to weaken civil liberties at home.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...ome-commentary





Popular Web Site Falls Victim to a Content Filter
Tom Zeller Jr.

THERE are lots of ways to describe Boing Boing, the Web's obliquely subtitled "Directory of Wonderful Things," which draws millions of eyeballs to its relentless, stylistically minimalist scroll of high-weirdness each month.

It is a site where, on Saturday morning, there were links to video games that "subvert post-industrial capitalism," federal legislation aimed at digital radio technology, a guitar made out of a toilet seat and a new species of brown shark.

But nudity?

"Access denied by SmartFilter content category," was the message a Halliburton engineer in Houston said he received last Wednesday when he tried to visit BoingBoing.net from his office computer. "The requested URL belongs to the following categories: Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies, Nudity."

Yep.

"When it happened I was pretty put off," said the employee, who did not want to be named because the topic involved company filtering policies, "as I enjoyed the little distractions it provided me during the workday."

It was a sentiment that, over the last two weeks, united oppressed employees — and citizens — all over the globe.

The culprit, SmartFilter, is a product of Secure Computing of San Jose, Calif. It is marketed in a few different flavors to corporations, schools, libraries and governments as a sort of nannyware — a way for system administrators to monitor and filter access to Web sites among users of their networks.

This is accomplished with a central database of millions of Web sites organized into 73 categories — things like "General News" or "Dating/Social" or "Hate Speech."

At some point late last month, it seems, a site reviewer at Secure Computing spotted something fleshy at Boing Boing and tacked the Nudity category onto the blog's classification. The company's database was updated and, from that point on, any SmartFilter client that had its network set up to block sites with a Nudity designation would now automatically block Boing Boing.

The impact quickly rippled across the globe, which had the ancillary effect of outing corporate and government SmartFilter clients, as their employees and citizens, now deprived of their daily fix of tech-ephemera, blasted their overlords in anonymous e-mail messages to Boing Boing's editors, who then posted them to the blog.

Halliburton is a customer. So, apparently, are Fidelity Investments and American Express. And in the space of a few days at the end of last month, reports came in that citizens in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had also been blocked.

Cory Doctorow, a Boing Boing co-editor, contacted Secure Computing to inquire about the classification. In an e-mail message to Mr. Doctorow, a representative of the company pointed out that a post from early January about two books on the photographic history of adult magazines contained "pornographic" images. The representative also noted a separate image of "a woman nursing a cat."

But a look back reveals that the January entry made reference to two new books from the graphic design imprint Taschen. Yes, the books are about adult magazines, but they are history books. And as for the thumbnail-size image that appeared alongside the original post, well, if you have to squint, is it really smut?

But that did not appear to be Secure Computing's concern. According to the company's definition, the Nudity classification applies to sites containing "nonpornographic images of the bare human body. Classic sculpture and paintings, artistic nude photographs, some naturism pictures and detailed medical illustrations" are included.

"We classify Internet content into over 73 different categories so that customers can chose, by category, what types of Web content they want available to their organization," the company's chief executive, John E. McNulty, said in an e-mailed statement, adding that Secure Computing "has no control over, or visibility into, how an organization implements their filtering policy."

But even if one accepts that argument, the larger problem of context — a problem that has dogged would-be Internet rating and filtering schemes for years — remains.

"There is far too much content on the Internet for any one company to review manually," said Bennett Haselton, the proprietor of the anticensorship site peacefire.org, "so they have to cut corners. And they're going to fall further behind as the Web gets bigger."

Indeed, as the Boing Boing team noted last week, of the 692 posts made in January, only 2 contained any nudity.

And while there is no question that the tens of thousands of posts made at Boing Boing over the years have been weird, kitschy, cyberpunky, often techno-political and sometimes techno-sexual, they are very rarely nude.

"Committing resources necessary to properly identify the nature of tens of thousands of Boing Boing posts — and a handful of images with that total — would bankrupt Secure Computing," Mr. Doctorow said. "So in order to fulfill their promise to their customers, for Secure Computing, half a percent is the same as 100 percent."

The absurdity of that calculus, along with the fact that sites featuring classical art like Michelangelo's "David" have also earned SmartFilter's Nudity designation, has inspired some bloggers to begin posting images of the statue — or just as frequently, a zoomed-in crop of David's germane anatomy — in protest.

And Boing Boing has also begun soliciting other "dumb" page classifications made by the SmartFilter reviewers.

In an e-mail message to Xeni Jardin, another of Boing Boing's chiefs, Tomo Foote-Lennox, a director of filtering data for Secure Computing, asked why the bloggers were starting a war. "We discussed several ways that you could organize your site so that I could protect the kids and you could distribute all the information you wanted," Mr. Foote-Lennox wrote.

Those "ways" included putting questionable images in a separate directory that SmartFilter could easily flag and block, or otherwise altering the URL's for certain kinds of Boing Boing content.

According to Ms. Jardin, the team considered it, but in the end it was a thought to be a devil's bargain. "Why help censors become better censors?" she said.

Instead, Ms. Jardin and her co-editors are compiling a catalog of tips and tricks that oppressed users everywhere, from corporate cubicles to China, can use to get around Internet censors and access information freely.

The growing list, published at boingboing.net/censorroute.html, includes one nifty workaround, first published in December at OReillynet.com, that simply pushes a forbidden URL through Google's translation tool.

The trick generated some positive chatter at OReillynet after it was first posted, but not from one user, atef25, who was still struggling to gain access to a site he was being blocked from — "the 2006 pornguide."

"Pls help me to open it," he wrote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/te...rssnyt&emc=rss





Chinese Bloggers Grapple With the Profit Motive
David Barboza

Last October, a colleague persuaded Xu Jinglei, a Chinese actress and filmmaker, to start writing her own Web log.

Now, five months later, Ms. Xu, 31, is the country's most popular blogger, and her runaway success has given rise to an online debate here about the economic value of blogs and who should profit from them.

Ms. Xu's blog has already received more than 11 million visitors. She now says companies have contacted her about placing advertisements on her blog.

But Sina.com, the big Chinese Web portal that puts the blog online, says it has no plan to commercialize its celebrity blog spaces.

The discussion is one of the latest signs that blogs could eventually become a highly profitable way of musing rather than simply a lonely stage for online blathering. There are already an estimated 30 million blogs worldwide, about 2 million in China alone. But almost none of them garner significant advertising revenue, and Internet executives are still unsure if blogging will become a powerful force in online commerce.

The debate here in China was touched off a few weeks ago when Ms. Xu — who is a well-known actress, screenwriter and independent film director — hinted in a television interview that she might be able to cash in on her blog's soaring popularity by selling advertising on the space.

In a telephone interview this weekend, however, Ms. Xu clarified her view, saying she was open to commercial opportunities but was not sure whether placing ads next to her blog was appropriate.

"I'd like my blog to be a comparatively quiet space," she said. "If there's some very good advertising idea, I'll consider it, but there's not right now."

Many people on the Web have sided with her right to profit from her blog, but executives at Sina.com, which is based in Beijing, say they have no plans for blog ads. Sina.com, which is listed on Nasdaq, had revenue of $194 million in 2005, including $85 million from advertising; it is the sixth-most-viewed Web site in the world.

"There's no commercial use of blogs on Sina today, and whether there's going to be in the future is not clear," said Meng Xiangpeng, a company spokesman.

Sina introduced many of its celebrity blogs late last year, and they are extremely popular. Movie stars, singers and even corporate executives are now blogging and seeing their blogs as a way to reach new audiences and even, perhaps, brand themselves.

Li Yuchun, the winner of China's "American Idol"-like contest "Supergirl," has a blog; so do Wang Shi and Pan Shiyi, two real estate tycoons.

Hung Huang, an irreverent magazine publisher and media darling, started her own blog on Sina.com last Valentine's Day. Within days, she wrote somewhat critically about her ex-husband, the director Chen Kaige, and his recent martial arts fantasy film, "The Promise," which has been parodied on the Web in China.

Suddenly, Ms. Hung's blog shot up to the top spot in Sina's daily poll of the most popular blogs.

No one, however, is as popular as the elegant and intellectual Ms. Xu (pronounced Shew), who became well known here as a television and movie actress soon after she graduated from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy in 1996. Later, she began directing and producing independent films, like her 2004 remake of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig's novel, "A Letter From an Unknown Woman," which earned her the best director award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain.

On her blog, Ms. Xu writes about her daily life, posts photos of meals, lists her favorite flower (the tulip), colors (black and white), and movies, and muses about philosophy, filmmaking and the economics of blogging.

"I may have some business sense, but very limited," she conceded in a recent blog entry.

"The only thing I'm concerned is to be a good writer. How to develop an economic model for the blog? I will leave such a confusing question to my colleagues and the I.T. elite."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/te...y/06blog.html?





How to

Build Your Own PVR, Then Trash It
Ryan Singel

First, the good news. Plummeting storage costs and the availability of special hardware have finally made it cheap and easy to shrug off the shackles of TiVo and build your own personal video recorder out of an old PC.

The bad news is digital-rights management technologies will probably make your homebrew PVR obsolete faster than you can say "Super Bowl Sunday."

It was a Super Bowl sale that inspired this reporter to undertake assembly of his own home media center, which proved both delightfully easy and cheap, ringing in at less than $200 -- about the same as 18 months of subscription dues to TiVo.

I started with a program called GBPVR, a free (but not open-source) solution developed by a New Zealander named Graeme Blackley. It's configurable and has an active developer community building plug-ins and skins.

GBPVR plays nicely with a unique $100 extender device called the MediaMVP that sits in the living room and bridges your computer to your TV and stereo. It's about the size of a CD wallet, and is powered by PowerPC chip and a trimmed down version of Linux.

The MediaMVP comes with a very basic interface, but GBPVR tricks it into running different software through an ethernet cable. You can then use MediaMVP's included remote control device to navigate the interface.

My two other purchases were a TV-tuner card (in my case a Hauppauge Win-TV 150 PCI card on sale for $50, though many others will also work) and a 200-GB hard drive found for another $50.

The initial set up was simple. The hardest parts involved stringing CAT5 cable out one apartment window and into another, and figuring out how to install the hardware

Now my 6-year-old Pentium III box whirs away in the office, while my living room TV tells me the weather forecast, plays back internet radio streams, pauses live television, shuffles through thousands of mp3s -- complete with displays of the album art -- and records hours upon hours of The Simpsons, and it never uses more than 5 percent of my CPU's power.

Plenty of other options exist for the self-help mediaphile. The Linux-based, open-source MythTV is, by most accounts, now almost painless to install once you have a Linux box set up. SageTV offers inexpensive commercial software that runs on Windows or Linux and works well with MediaMVP. BeyondTV has a fine solution as well.

The only real obstacle is getting a network connection between your computer and the living room. The $150 wireless version of the MediaMVP will be out soon. Hard-core geeks have also avoided the whole cable-running process by building quiet PVRs that can sit in an entertainment center, even fitting the hardware into the shell of an old DVD player.

For those suspicious of free software, a host of commercial options are at your disposal.

You can buy a brand new PC, running Windows Media Center Edition, and pair it with an Xbox 360 in the living room. You can plug in a series of Apple's clever AirPort Express wall plug-ins to play digital music files. You can use the long-awaited TiVoToGo service to burn television to DVD or watch it on a PSP. And the Squeezebox and Sonos elegantly stream digital music throughout your house.

After overcoming my initial reluctance, I chose the do-it-yourself approach. It's not just the pleasure of avoiding the $12 a month to get television listings -- some expensive TiVo alternatives get free listing data. It's the joy of playing my music files everywhere, and knowing that I can save a television show to a DVD without jumping through TiVo's hoops or worrying about copy protection. I can also transcode videos and play them on the PSP or Video iPod without buying locked-up versions from iTules for $2.

In short, it's TV your way. More experienced tinkerers describe the same feeling.

"To be honest, it really isn't about saving the subscription fee," says PVR guru Erik Pettersen. "That's nice since I'm annoyed by subscriptions. But if you are going to take a PC and put all this time and effort into it, it's not going to be cheaper than a TiVo."

Pettersen, a manager of technical solutions for the Connecticut United Way runs BYOPVR.com (short for build your own personal video recorder) in his spare time. He founded his site a couple of years ago after drooling over a TiVo without having the early-adopter cash to buy one.

Being in control is the real driver, he says.

"If you are using TiVoToGo, you can only use their sanctioned DVD burning software partners … and it just gets in the way," Pettersen says. "I'm not running a pirate option -- it's just fair use. If I want to archive Lost off my PVR in order to make room for a Monster Garage marathon, I want to do that without jumping through a billion hoops or feeling like a criminal."

Dave Gruska built a PVR to give to his wife as a unique Christmas present and is now sharpening his .NET skills by building a "Sports Score" plug-in for GBPVR.

Aaron Brassard built his homebrew unit after finding out that the birth of his child made him miss his favorite TV shows, and diaper costs put TiVo out of his reach. Now he has 10 hours of Thomas & Friends to entertain his son.

But the entertainment industry hates Brassard's little boy. Probably all children, really. Puppies, too.

How else to explain the dark cloud on the homebrew PVR horizon: the so-called digital rights management schemes that aim to control how consumers use audio and video content.

DRM includes technology like Apple's FairPlay (which prevents devices other than Apple's own from playing an iTunes song) and encrypted high-definition channels like ESPN's that can't be recorded in high resolution, unless it's by a device that has been approved by a cable TV consortium.

The movie and music industries say DRM is necessary to curb piracy of digital copies of movies and music. But DRM tends to be finicky, and perfectly legal uses of content, such as making a backup copy of a DVD, ripping a CD to MP3s, or extracting video snippets to create a parody or commentary, all become collateral damage.

For the home brewer, this means their solution won't work if they upgrade to high-definition cable, because the cable box won't send a readable signal to any tuner card that isn't part of a locked-down environment, such as TiVo or Windows Media Center.

You could always unplug your cable box and record free HDTV off the public airwaves, but perhaps not for long. The industry is trying to get Congress to make it illegal to build TV tuners that record broadcast HDTV without including DRM on the recording.

That means the only option for a future-proof PVR is to use something like TiVo, Windows Media Center or a cable company-provided recorder, which may or may not think your mp3 player or your second television is secure enough to access your own media.

Even Mike Machado, the CEO of SageTV, admits his company's software, which currently records television into the unlocked MPEG2 format, will have to make concessions to get access to encrypted cable HDTV.

"We are trying to give consumer all the freedom they can get, but when it comes to accessing content that the studios and content industry are very cautious about, we'll have to incorporate some rights management," Machado says. "Hopefully those industries will work on easy- to-use, affordable services that give you good value. It's hard to tell; it's their choice, it's their content."

Do-it-yourselfers are already feeling the pinch. Website administrator Joe Cancilla built his MythTV machine years ago. But now, his shared apartment in San Francisco sports a Comcast PVR so he can record high-definition cable shows from HBO. Now he uses his old MythTV box as a music server.

"I really get upset that you can’t do what you want with what you record," Cancilla says.

Cancilla isn't trying to share HBO's programming on eDonkey -- he just wants to watch it on a portable video player while working out on his gym's elliptical trainer. He's now resigned to trying to get MythTV to record a degraded analog signal through a FireWire port that cable companies are supposed to, but often don't, make available on their digital boxes.

It's a cruel time to be a digital couch potato. Just as homebrew PVRs slide into everybody's reach, their future usefulness is shrouded in uncertainty.

But there's always a chance that if enough people build their own media masters and refuse to play the DRM game, mounting political and market pressure will prevent cable companies, online music retailers and movie studios from treating everyone like criminals.

And maybe then, Joe Cancilla won't have to struggle to watch Six Feet Under with his two feet on the trainer.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70328-0.html





Tennessee Pondering Violent-Game Ban

Democratic Senator Tommy Kilby's SB3981 seeks to outlaw the sale of violent games within the state
Brendan Sinclair

Add Tennessee to the list of states considering gaming legislation. Last week, Democratic Senator Tommy Kilby filed SB3981, which would make it illegal to sell or rent an "extremely violent video game" in the state of Tennessee.

The bill defines the phrase "extremely violent video game" as "a video game in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being," with a number of clauses specifying that a game would have to be patently offensive to prevailing community standards, among other things, to be considered extremely violent.

The law also takes into account whether or not the virtual victim is an authority figure, whether the victim is conscious of the abuse taking place, and whether the player of the game intends to inflict severe mental or physical pain or suffering on the virtual victim.

Other factors that would nudge a game into the "extremely violent" category "include infliction of gratuitous violence upon the victim beyond that necessary to commit the killing, needless mutilation of the victim's body, and helplessness of the victim."

If passed, the bill would take effect July 1.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2006/03..._&subj=6145720





Digital Methods Help Replicate Artworks
J. D. Biersdorfer

As Hippocrates noted, art is long and life is short. But the life of some ancient art is growing shorter, hampered by environmental factors like climate, light, pollution — or by dynamite.

To keep cultural artifacts from fading from view and collective memory, a blend of art reproduction and digital technology is being used to produce precise replicas of original works. But the process is more than just snapping a digital photo of a painting and shooting the resulting file out of a desktop printer.

The Kyoto Digital Archive project in Japan has recently reproduced large-scale art from three temples by this process. The results — and the methods — are on view until Monday afternoon in an exhibit called "Releasing the Spirit of Kyoto" at the Artexpo fair at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

The replicas are of "Tigers," a four-panel work from the Nanzenji Temple painted by Tanyu Kano in the 17th century; "Five Great Guardian Gods of Secret Buddhism," a 13th-century work from the Daigoji Temple, by an unknown artist; and "Landscape of Katata," a watercolor originally mounted as a sliding screen for a part of the Daitokuji Temple and attributed to Mitsunobu Tosa in the 16th century.

Kyoto, a 1,200-year old city tucked into Japan's western mountains, is home to more than 3,500 Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. The Kyoto International Culture Foundation, working now with Hewlett-Packard, started the digital archive project to create accurate replicas of the city's religious art over several years.

The subtle aspects of Japanese paintings, which often include fine line work on delicate materials, could be lost or muted during reproduction. So the process involves creating high-resolution images of the originals with a scanner or camera that can capture images with more than 100 megapixels (compared with, say, the 5 or 6 megapixels of most consumer-oriented digital cameras).

Using a combination of software and the human eye, the colors in the digital image are matched to the original work. The image is then printed out on a large-format Hewlett-Packard Designjet 5500 UV inkjet printer with fade-resistant inks. The printer is able to produce the image on washi, a traditional Japanese paper made from the inner bark of trees.

To finish the reproduction with a human touch, an artist applies gold leaf to certain areas of the work. The process can be seen on a documentary at the Artexpo exhibit.

This project is not the only one trying to preserve fading Kyoto treasures through replication. Nijo Castle, which includes Ninomaru Palace, has had numerous 17th- century works restored and replicated over more than two decades. Hitachi, another technology company, used its Digital Image System to help restore some paintings, but before digital technology came into its own in the late 20th century, the castle's artworks were copied by hand.

"For the Nijo Castle project, painted reproductions have been produced," said Gregory Levine, an associate professor of Japanese art at the University of California, Berkeley, who noted that the process was quite different and arguably more culturally rich compared to the high-tech approach used today.

"By having contemporary painters who are trained in traditional painting style and technique reproduce 17th-century paintings," he said, "there seems to be more of an ongoing cultural life story embodied in such a replication."

Preservation and replication efforts are intended to keep ancient artworks vibrant and alive for new generations. Another factor to consider for art preservation, however, is the global impact of the pollution hastening the deterioration in the first place. (Kyoto was the host of the 1997 conference on greenhouse gas emissions that resulted in the eponymous protocol on climate change.)

There is also scholarly concern that in a future world filled with replicas, while original art is safely tucked away, images could be seen out of context and authentic works may be inaccessible to historians. "Many of these objects were created for enshrinement and display within specific architectural and ritual spaces," Professor Levine said of Kyoto's temple art. "If we remove them from their home structures, we can no longer study them in situ, on site, and that's going to transform our understanding of them."

When the art has disappeared, however, technology can be all that's left. Such is the case of the giant 1,600-year-old Buddha statues in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan that were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001. The artist Hiro Yamagata (born near Kyoto in 1948) hopes to use laser holograms to create more than 160 faceless statues across the Bamiyan cliffs, all powered by solar energy and windmills. If the project is approved, completion is scheduled for 2009, and the artist has said that many of the windmills could also provide power to nearby villages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/arts/04shri.html?





Their skins are so white

Sandi, Singer In The Basement, Plays The World
John Elliott

MEET the singer who is in the middle of a “world tour” without leaving the confines of her suburban basement.

After the runaway success of the Arctic Monkeys, who built up their international following on the internet from their base in Sheffield, Sandi Thom, a 24-year-old Scot, is using the web to entertain nightly audiences put at more than 60,000.

Seating at the venue underneath her home in a Victorian terraced house in Tooting, south London, consists of six stools bought from Ikea for about £3 each.

Thom uses a webcam to record a nightly performance before broadcasting it on the net later in the evening. In the past eight days she has entertained more than 250,000 fans worldwide. By contrast, her live audiences usually total about 200 when she plays in clubs around Britain.

The blossoming success of Thom’s web tour illustrates how a new generation of unknown singers and bands are connecting with fans directly through the internet before achieving conventional chart success.

Earlier this year, the Arctic Monkeys’ first album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, became the fastest-selling debut album of all time. Thom’s first album is released next month although her only single to date — I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker — failed to hit the top 40.

According to Thom, who has been likened to the singers KT Tunstall and Janis Joplin, the basement tour began because of the prohibitive cost of hiring minibuses and hotel rooms for conventional tours.

“A web tour is basically what you do when you have a lack of money and no car,” she said. “With the webcam, it’s a great opportunity to play in front of the whole world — and cost- effective.”

Audiences have grown strongly since just 70 people logged on to her website to watch her first (free) concert on February 24. Last Thursday night, the figure was 62,138, according to Streaming Tank, the web broadcast company that makes the show available on computers around the world. This is only about 3,000 less than the capacity of the Milton Keynes National Bowl.

Chris Dabbs of Streaming Tank said 42% of the audience was in Britain and 23% in America, with viewers as far afield as Pakistan.

Such figures pale beside those achieved by Madonna — 9m fans tried to log on to see her perform live at Brixton Academy in December 2000. Sir Paul McCartney won 3m viewers for his show at Liverpool’s Cavern Club in 1999.

Thom, originally from Banff, studied at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, where she took advice from McCartney, its patron, to “keep it simple”.

Gareth Grundy, deputy editor of Q magazine, said: “Sandi isn’t on our radar screen yet, but this sounds impressive. Since the Arctic Monkeys, every record company is now trawling the internet trying to find the next band. Being on the internet is now a key first step for bands — people visit their pages time and again to check for something new.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...070179,00.html





You always load your Pentax when I’m in the nude?

Survey Shows Employees Rate Productivity High, Security and Clothing Low When Working From Home

SonicWALL Survey Shows Greater Freedom Among Out- of-Office Worker Community Keeps Dishes and Workload Up-to-Date, Bad Temper at Bay
Press Release

SonicWALL Inc., a leading provider of integrated network security and productivity solutions, today announced the results of a survey of 941 remote and mobile workers worldwide. The survey, conducted by Insight Express and SonicWALL at the end of 2005, indicates that the growing trend towards home working is likely to breed a more productive and liberated international workforce.

76% of employees surveyed believe that working remotely is an aid to productivity and 61% are also convinced that their managers agree with them. Security came low on the list of priorities, however, with 88% of the individuals surveyed admitting to storing passwords in easily-discovered locations, and only 12% employing encrypted files to store and manage their login data. 56% said they rely on their memories to keep track of their network passwords, while others used the same passwords for all devices, stored the information on cell phones, or stuck notes with the login information onto their computer (4%).

Yin and Yang of clothes, chores and cleanliness

All respondents were relaxed about their personal habits when working remotely. While about 39% of respondents of both sexes said they wear sweats while working from home, 12% of males and 7% of females wear nothing at all. In matters of cleanliness, the difference between the sexes was more pointed: 44% of women surveyed said they showered on work-at-home days, as opposed to men, who were slightly more likely to shave (33%) than wash (30%). 18% of men regularly break off to do household tasks such as laundry, dishwashing or dusting whereas many more women -- over 38% -- found their attention claimed by chores.

Respondents also said they took the opportunity to eat and drink outside standard times (about 35%); listen to music (45%) or watch TV (28%); and 21% of all respondents admitted to sneaking in an afternoon nap. A small percentage of those surveyed (9%) admitted to feelings of guilt about being away from the office. Taking a longer lunch than at the workplace was also relatively rare (12%).

This easy-going approach keeps tempers on an even keel, according to the survey. More than 80% of surveyed workers have never lost their temper with support staff trying to help then fix a problem. Only 40% of polled respondents said they experienced problems when accessing their corporate networks remotely, although fewer than 50% accessed any applications other than Web mail when working outside the office.

More than half of the survey's respondents accessed the corporate network from home on a daily basis, with 86% logging in remotely several times a week. Respondents said that the chief attraction of working remotely was the ability to maintain a flexible schedule. Only 22% of workers used cell phones or PDAs to work from home, but respondents said they expected this type of usage to grow in the coming year.

"We are experiencing a sharp rise in demand for simple, secure remote access to networks of all sizes," said Steve Franzese, vice president of marketing at SonicWALL. "The growing popularity of remote and mobile working means that the perimeter of the network has become indistinct, and is therefore more difficult to protect. With our new SSL VPN appliance range, SonicWALL offers organizations of all sizes a very simple, powerful way of keeping remote workers connected and protected."

In 2005, SonicWALL launched the industry's first range of SSL- VPN solutions for remote network access supporting unlimited numbers of concurrent tunnels at no additional cost. The powerful family of appliances makes remote clientless access simple and affordable. These solutions will interoperate seamlessly behind third party firewalls and deliver enhanced Unified Threat Management protection to remote users who access a SonicWALL-protected network. In November, 2005 SonicWALL acquired the technology assets of startup enKoo in order to enrich the feature set of its SSL-VPN offering. In January, 2006 the company introduced the SSL-VPN 200 appliance for networks of under 50 users.

650 responses to the survey came from the United States, with the remainder from Australia, Canada, Asia Pacific, Japan and Europe. The majority of respondents were in the 25 to 45 age range.
http://sonicwall.mediaroom.com/index...eases&item=708





Local news

The '80s
(they're back ... )
Heather Barr

All right I will admit it. I wish I would have kept my Guns N' Roses cowboy hat.

It was white with a sash around the brim that bore the name of the hard rock band and its popular logo, which depicted, of course, guns and roses. The hat went well with my Guns N' Roses shirt and dark Pepe brand jeans, which you better believe were always rolled at the bottom.

The hat was carefully positioned on my head so as not to ruin my ratted (that is, teased up) hair and curled bangs that I spent about 30 minutes on.

Bangs were big and full in my middle school years in the late 1980s. I remember a girl in my music class had bangs that were like a waterfall – tiered and heavily hair-sprayed. The teacher actually measured them to see how high they were.

Not long ago I was in a video store and the speakers blared a Guns N' Roses song. I'm not sure it's because of the high notes Axl Rose could hit or the way he swayed his hips, but I still love that band.

Another day, at the mall, I recognized another blast from the past. A teen with skinny little legs wore a miniskirt and leggings that ended at her calves.

That was me, some 17 years ago. For my eighth-grade prom, I wore a black ruffled skirt, white leggings, a large red belt, and a black-and- white polka dotted tank top with a red tank underneath. All that was covered by a short-sleeved, cardigan- looking thing. My earrings were huge with black and white polka dots.

Now I'm finding what was once "old-school" has become "bodacious" (an '80s term meaning great) once again. The '80s are back in full swing from the clothes to the sayings to the music.

"I see a lot of shirts that say, 'I was born in the '80s,' or, 'I love the '80s,'Ÿ" said Julie Seiter, a Brookfield High School senior. She said last year, fellow students wore off-the-shoulder shirts like Jennifer Beals in the 1980s movie "Flashdance."

Seiter said she has seen people wear miniskirts and legging tights. Not her, though. "It's too out there," she said.

"It was so colorful, so much fun," Seiter said of the '80s styles. For the last couple years, Brookfield High has held an 1980s dance where students dress in the style of the "me-decade." This year, one of the props was a giant Rubik's Cube.

Take a walk through the Danbury Fair mall and you'll find '80s looks everywhere. In the Abercrombie & Fitch store, the polo shirts are displayed with collars popped up.

At Delia's, leggings paired with miniskirts are a top item. Then there are vintage-looking shirts with the band name Blondie or the space alien "E.T." A few months ago Delia's had a T-shirt that read "R is for Rad."

The Hot Topic store even has bustiers just like the kind worn by an ultimate '80s icon. "Madonna is my idol," said Laura Langlois, a Danbury High senior. "I love it," she said of the '80s style. "It seems a lot more carefree."

On a recent day at Danbury High School, junior Stephen Conlon gestured to his car. "I have 'Sweet Cherry Pie' in my car," said the shaggy-haired 16-year-old. "Cherry Pie" was a hit by the '80s band, Warrant.

Conlon likes other '80s heavy metal rockers like Whitesnake.

"I like a lot of the music," said Ari Spector, 15, a New Milford High sophomore who digs the Sex Pistols, The Clash and Blondie, to name three punk and new wave bands that were popular at the dawn of the 1980s.

Seventeen-year-old Pat Kearney likes "kickin' it back" with music from Iron Maiden, Guns N' Roses and AC/DC. A musician who plays the drums in the local band Cold Fire, Kearney said the '80s music "takes so much talent to play."

He also likes that '80s rock was fun. Today's rock is often less melodic, with lyrics that speak of anger and disillusionment. "I kind of think we need to turn back the clock," said Kearney.

He even thinks it's time to look like the '80s rockers. "I have an urge to grow out my hair," said the Brookfield High senior.

"I love the '80s music," said Mike Diker, 16, a Danbury High sophomore who likes the band Def Leppard.

Schoolmate Brian Johnston likes '80s hip-hop music. He also has a tie-dyed Pink Floyd T-shirt, a band that dawned in the 1960s but had one of its biggest hit albums, "The Wall," in 1982.

Like the prep-school girl characters from the '80s sitcom, "The Facts of Life," people are wearing their collars up. Teens call it "popping" the collar. "It's just chill," Johnston said of the laid-back '80s look. "It was a great time."

"Popping the collar that is huge," said New Milford High freshman Amy Donahue. "It's like life at New Milford High School. If you don't have your collar popped, you are not cool."

The 14-year-old said if a person is wearing a collar and doesn't pop it up, there is not doubt that in a course of the school day someone will say "pop the collar."

"At first I thought it was just preps, but then I saw skaters (people who skateboard) and ghetto (those who dress like rappers) people" wear their collar up, said Nicci Lariccia, 17, a Danbury High junior.

"People are big on that," said Lindsay Brown, an Immaculate High School senior of students "popping" their collars. She also sees people layering polo shirts, an '80s style.

"I guess it's cool to go back in the past," said Brown. "I like it."

Amy Donahue heads for the thrift store for her eclectic '80s styles. One day last week, she wore a polka-dotted shirt, a miniskirt with patches, stretchy shorts and pink satin pumps.

Other return-to-the-'80s trends she's noticed include chunky jewelry, beaded necklaces and "insanely huge earrings that are bright and colorful."

Donahue wears one popular '80s hairstyle – a side ponytail. But she draws the line at the teased "big hair" styles. "That hair was just disgusting," she said.

Why are the '80s back in? Donahue thinks it might have been the 2004 movie "13 Going On 30," whose star, Jennifer Garner, sports 1980s styles.

"We take the fads of other decades and combine them" to make them our own, said Marissa Pisarick, 17, a Brookfield High student.

New Milford freshman Stephanie Tyler, 14, likes to snag her mom's threads from the 1980s. On Wednesday, she wore huge gold and pearl circle earrings and a fuchsia blazer complete with shoulder pads. Her mom was in her late teens and 20s during the 1980s.

Stephanie's mom, Cindy Tyler said "it is really kind of fun" to see her daughter and her friends wear the '80s looks. Cindy Tyler mentioned the fuchsia blazer, which she wore for semi-formal occasions, like to her bank job or to church.

Now Stephanie wears the bright purple-pink blazer to look casual and cool.

"What we thought could be used one way for the business world is now mixed and matched with casual and traditional pieces," said Cindy Tyler. "I like seeing things recycled with a kind of new personality attached."

Thanks to DVDs, teens also are exploring 1980s movies. Brookfield High's Pat Kearny mentions a semi-classic, "The Terminator."

Others are more fond of the rebellious teen movies. Amy Donahue said kids will quote lines from "The Breakfast Club," which is about high school students serving detention.

Ryan Partelow of New Milford High likes to watch actor Matthew Broderick, before his Broadway days, when he starred in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," a comedy about a Chicago teen playing hooky.

As for those sayings: Rad means awesome. Gnarly means pretty much the opposite. And then there are some phrases that just aren't back in vogue yet.

Amy Donahue said people will laugh if you say "gag me with a spoon."
http://news.newstimeslive.com/story....&channel=Local





Make Circuit With Me
(Tim Worman - Phil Bloomberg)

A sweet romance is not for me
I need electricity
If you wanna make me flip
Hit me with a micro chip

I'll be a diode, cathode, electrode
Overload, generator, oscillator
Make a circuit with me

Just plug in and go-go-go
I'll be a human dynamo
Signals in my power cord
Impuls on my circuit board

I'm an AC/DC man
You can read my circuit diagram
I feed on electric jolts
I need fifty-thousand volts

A sweet romance is not for me
I really need electricity
If you wanna make me flip
Come on and hit me with a micro chip

I'm an AC/DC man
You can read my circuit diagram
I feed on electric jolts
I need fifty-thousand volts

The Polecats, from Polecats Are Go - 1981















Until next week,

- js.


















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