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Expert Finds Dandruff in Air Pollutants
Randolph E. Schmid

A researcher has discovered unexpectedly large amounts of dandruff and other flaking skin, fur, pollen and similar materials in air pollutants known as aerosols.

Aerosols, tiny particles in the air, are widely studied because they are an important factor in regulating climate, variously absorbing heat to warm the air and reflecting sunlight to cool it. They are also important in forming rain and snow.

But the amount of cellular material - bacteria, plant fragments, spores, fungi and so forth - had been thought to be only a small proportion compared with mineral dusts, clay and sea salt.

Now, Ruprecht Jaenicke of the Institute for Atmospheric Physics at Mainz University in Germany has studied air samples and discovered that biological materials can range up to 25 percent of aerosols in some areas, and as high as 40 percent in others.

His findings are reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The source of many aerosols has been unexplained and this could provide the answer, Jaenicke said.

Jaenicke reported that the percentage of biological materials in aerosol pollution topped 40 percent in Mainz in September and 30 percent in October. And a study at Lake Baikal, Russia, showed more than 30 percent in September.

He said he did similar studies of the air over ocean environments, on mountains and in ice cores. There was no strong annual cycle, he said, although pollen was more abundant in spring while decaying cellular matter was more common in fall and winter.

He estimated that the amount of biological particles in the air, worldwide, annually is 1,000 teragrams. A teragram is somewhat more than a million tons.

By comparison, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Environmental Program, estimated biological particles at 56 teragrams, compared with 3,300 teragrams of sea salt and 2,000 teragrams of mineral dust.

The new finding means researchers should take biological materials seriously in climate modeling, in cloud physics and in hygienic questions such as allergies, Jaenicke said.

"Don't regard that as a minor contribution," he said.

The implications for the global climate are unclear, said Murray V. Johnston, a chemistry professor at the University of Delaware.

"The number concentrations of (biological particles) reported here are much higher than previously thought and merit follow-up research," said Johnston, who did not participate in Jaenicke's research.

James J. Schwab, an atmospheric chemistry research professor at the State University of New York at Albany, isn't so sure Jaenicke's figures are correct.

"He may very well be right. His paper does not convince me that I should believe his estimate, however. He needs to present a more detailed and convincing argument first," said Schwab.

If Jaenicke's estimate is right, Schwab said, "It will have small but important effects on global climate change. It will have a bigger effect on air pollution and air quality for regions of the country and the globe that are out of compliance with air quality standards."

The research was funded by the German Science Foundation.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...stomwi re.htm


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Yahoo Raises Profile With Hollywood Push

Five years ago, a handful of companies with names like Pop, Pseudo and Icebox promised a future when original shows produced for the Internet would replace traditional TV viewing. The dot-com bust deflated those grand ambitions. But the vision of creating unique, interactive multimedia programming for a generation weaned on video games is very much alive at Yahoo Inc.

The giant Internet portal isn't talking about its plans for content. But analysts suggest a profound shift may be at work, with Yahoo using its enormous reach to force Hollywood studios, among other video creators, to produce programming with the Internet in mind.

Yahoo can offer up a worldwide audience of more than 300 million _ a number that some analysts say could reach 1 billion by the end of the decade.

"Those are numbers that are sufficient to make the likes of Rupert Murdoch salivate and turn green with envy," said David Garrity, an Internet and media analyst with Caris & Co., referring to the man whose News Corp. owns the Fox network and other media outlets.

Yahoo has already forged partnerships to webcast content from other media. It showed the entire debut episode of the Showtime series "Fat Actress," starring Kirstie Alley, at the same time the episode was broadcast on cable.

It also features exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from the Mark Burnett- produced NBC shows "The Apprentice" and "The Contender," and offers material from JibJab, the two guys who created the animated short cartoon that lampooned presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry.

America Online has similarly broadcast the first episode of the WB Television series "Jack & Bobby" and features exclusive musical performances in its "Sessions AOL" series.

Yahoo chairman and chief executive Terry Semel said recently that 75 percent of users access the portal using high-speed connections, making it possible to stream video of all sorts, including content by individual users.

"Our great attributes are interactive," said Semel, the former co-CEO of Warner Bros. "We have huge audiences who themselves are the programmer."

Among other moves, Yahoo recently signed a deal to buy Canadian photo- sharing startup Flickr Inc., which lets people upload digital photos, publish photos in their blogs and share digital photo albums. Another recently launched Yahoo site lets users search for writings, lyrics, photos and other content authored by people who want others to use their ideas as the basis for new creations _ the so-called "Creative Commons." Then there's the newly announced social networking service, Yahoo 360.

It all speaks to Yahoo executives' excitement about "micropublishing" _ letting the portal's users create content attractive to fellow users that will encourage people to hang around in Yahoo's virtual world.

It's a vision shared by others who see a future where people aren't just passive viewers of content but participate in creating the "TV shows" of tomorrow.

One company built on the concept is Brightcove, a startup that envisions a day when "Internet Television" offers thousands of channels of content, some produced by traditional TV companies and much produced by individuals as the cost of digital cameras and editing tools drops.

Yahoo fueled speculation that it might try to produce its own original content when it hired former ABC primetime program chief Lloyd Braun in November to run its media group and moved all its content units under one new roof into the former MGM headquarters in Santa Monica.

Yahoo executives insist they don't suffer from Hollywood envy or the desire to take the multimillion-dollar gambles regularly taken by studios.

"When I wanted to move our media companies all into one place, and hire ... creative executives, the intent was not for them to either make movies or start making big television productions," Semel told the investors conference.

"It would be ridiculous and it's not what Yahoo is going to do," he said.

Lauren Rich Fine, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, says Yahoo is attractive to investors for its diversified revenue stream from paid search, advertising and social networking ventures. It simply doesn't aspire to the business model of the traditional Hollywood studio, where only six out of 10 movies make back their investment.

Yahoo says it's in the earliest stages of developing its entertainment strategy and thus would not make an executive available to discuss it with The Associated Press.

But the company has made it clear that one of Braun's mandates is to find new ways for Yahoo's music, games, news, sports, kids and other divisions to draw more visitors.

Moving content off the computer onto cell phones, portable media players and other devices is likely a key goal, many in the industry believe.

"The video experience online and on wireless devices is getting much better," said Bernard Gershon, senior vice president, ABC News Digital Media Group. "People's willingness to pay to access some of that content is definitely improving, and content creators, like us, are actually looking at this medium as a way to produce new and different content."

But it remains too early to tell exactly what direction companies like Yahoo and rivals AOL, MSN and Real Networks will take.

Ultimately, whether Yahoo morphs into an online TV network or produces its own content its strategy all boils down to keeping visitors within Yahoo's virtual walls as much as possible.

Said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Janco Partners Inc.: "The more content and interesting things they put there, the longer they keep you there, the more opportunities they have to monetize you through advertising."
http://www.obviousnews.com/breakingn...ws-552437.html


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IPTV's Revolution May Be on Hold

The Internet technology could transform home entertainment. Problem is, what's the point of unlimited channels if studios won't provide content?
Burt Helm

When Disney's (DIS ) The Incredibles hit theaters last fall, it got a helping hand from SBC (SBC ). The telecommunications giant threw in its own marketing dollars, sponsoring Incredibles giveaways linked with phone service and using the speedy character, Dash, to promote its high-speed Internet service. Now, at the end of this year, SBC will unveil an incredible debut of its own: IPTV, a form of TV that uses Internet technologies. So, Disney would be happy to help out there, right?

Maybe not. And that's unfortunate because SBC has a lot riding on its IPTV project. Indeed, the entire telecom industry is hoping IPTV will be the next great frontier for its business. Thanks to new broadband technology, telecom outfits and cable companies can deliver TV, phone, and Internet access over the same high-speed pipes into customers' homes.

PLAYING HARD TO GET. The new capabilities could lead to entirely new ways of watching TV. Because IPTV uses huge centralized servers to deliver video into consumers' homes, it can support a nearly unlimited number of channels and allow customers to pick from an à la carte channel selection. It can even offer multiple camera angles for sporting events and make thousands of old movies, TV shows, and events available "on demand" at the push of the button.

IPTV differs from earlier forms of Internet-based TV in that, while the video signal is encoded just like data over the Web, it travels solely over SBC's own servers and network. Viewers will find the experience akin to watching digital cable, rather than streaming video on the Web.

But improvements like these can happen only if content providers -- media companies and movie studios like Disney -- play along. So far, it seems, they're not. Disney didn't return calls from BusinessWeek Online seeking comment, and it hasn't signed with any outside distributor to provide its movies for video-on-demand. Most studios have agreed to only limited video-on-demand distribution, fearing it could cut into revenues from rentals and DVD sales -- now generating bigger income streams than the box office itself.

ANXIOUS STUDIOS. So far, the telcos are moving ahead with their plans and say they'll make final agreements with studios later. SBC, Verizon (VZ ), and BellSouth (BLS ) are planning three of the biggest IPTV deployments in the world. When completed, SBC's service will extend to 18 million homes in 13 states and cost an estimated $4 billion. It also puts the telecom in direct competition with cable companies who are, in turn, venturing onto Baby Bell turf by offering phone service (see BW Online, 5/10/ 04, "Telecom Turmoil").

But SBC's challenges highlight the difficulties telecommunications and cable players face as they converge on potential dollars in the high-tech TV market. At this early date, no one can tell how many subscribers will sign up for IPTV, but roughly 100 million households now subscribe to some sort of digital TV, either satellite or cable. With the big studios and other content providers uneasy about jumping on board, it may be impossible for the new technology to truly come into its own.

SBC is learning that the hard way. Capabilities -- such as à la carte channel selection -- promoted by Chief Executive Ed Whitacre in the fall of 2004 have fallen by the wayside, at least for the initial launch of the new service, according to Lea Ann Champion, senior executive vice-president of IP operations and services at SBC. And it could be some time before video-on-demand reaches its full potential.

IDEAL IN THEORY. Not that SBC isn't working overtime to round up content for the fledgling TV service. On Mar. 22, it added five TV executives to its new programming department: Chris Lauricella and Richard Levine from DirecTV (DTV ), Richard Wellerstein from iN Demand Networks, and Amy Friedlander and Martin Sansing from Intertainer, one of the pioneers of video-on-demand technology. They join division head Dan York, a former programming exec from iN Demand Networks, and John Penney from HBO, who were both hired in the fall of 2004.

While SBC acknowledges it has completed no programming agreements, York says deals for basic-channel programming are "very far along," and he expects to pay rates comparable to what a small or midsize cable company pays providers for basic channel carriage -- a 15% premium on rates paid by huge cable companies like Comcast (CMCSA ), according to two industry analysts.

Working out deals for higher-tech services like video-on-demand is tougher. In theory, this model seems ideal for movie and TV studios: Each could dump its film and TV- show archives onto SBC's massive servers and gain revenue from programs they never before had a way to showcase.

FAMILIAR BATTLEGROUND. But it doesn't come so easily. Thirty-three years ago, HBO was founded on such a concept. Now it creates its own programming and maintains its own powerful presence in TV, apart from the studios.

"The studios feel that HBO became successful owing largely to their [movies]," says Joe Boyle, a former vice-president for communications at iN Demand who now runs his own New York City-based public relations firm. More recently, the studios have considered the success Apple Computer (AAPL ) has had with its iTunes service for digital music. They hesitate to help another company create a dominant consumer brand in digital video.

SBC's new hires know this story all too well. Three of the five, as well as York, have backgrounds in video-on-demand. And the histories aren't exactly pretty. Current video-on-demand agreements, like those worked on by iN Demand Networks, where York and Wellerstein come from, carry significant restrictions.

RUPTURED PARTNERSHIP. Nearly all studios refuse to release a movie for on-demand until 45 days after its DVD debut. And iN Demand, along with other video-on- demand distributors, has seen its share of video-on-demand revenues slip from a 50-50 split with the studios to a 60-40 split.

The situation was equally rough at Intertainer, Friedlander's and Sansing's former employer. IT had pioneered video-on-demand technology in the mid-1990s and had worked out a 50-50 revenue split with Sony (SNE ), Time Warner (TWX ), and Universal, which were also investors in the company.

But in 2002, the three companies decided they would rather control their own content. They severed all ties with Intertainer and partnered instead with Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer Studios (MGM ) and Paramount Pictures to create their own service, called Movielink. In September, 2002, Intertainer shut down and is currently in the early phases of a $1.6 billion antitrust suit against its three former shareholders.

SWEET WORDS, SMALL GAINS. With the exception of Friedlander, who negotiated Intertainer's initial agreement with Sony, this marks the first time that any of these executives, including York, have taken a lead role in negotiating with the providers. In their previous positions -- according to representatives at DirecTV, Intertainer, and iN Demand -- all operated primarily as liaisons with studios to maintain established agreements.

SBC has been doing its best to soften the toughest partners, like Disney, as demonstrated by its 2004 promotion of The Incredibles. York says SBC will have a similar cross-promotion with a Fox movie this summer.

Disney is apparently slowly warming up to the idea of video-on-demand. So far, it has made content from ABC and ESPN available through a partnership with privately held TVN Entertainment Networks, which manages video-on-demand for several cable companies.

"VIRTUAL VIDEO STORE." But aside from a partnership with the Web site CinemaNow to stream video over the Web, Disney has kept its movies to itself. And since 2003, it has used its own video-on-demand network, called Moviebeam. The service works only on special hardware that consumers must rent directly from Disney, in addition to paying a per-movie fee.

But SBC's plans for a "virtual video store" of on-demand content, as one executive called it, seem less certain. At January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, York told analysts that SBC wants to "reinvent television" with never-before-seen on-demand options -- but he now says SBC is still deciding whether to negotiate the deals on its own or go through an aggregator like iN Demand or TVN Entertainment Networks when it makes its debut at the end of the year. That's what Verizon did. On Feb. 21, it announced it will partner with TVN for a similar service.

While SBC has the technology and money to create one of the largest "virtual video stores" in history, it will take some tricky footwork with partners to accomplish that ambitious goal. Otherwise, many of those virtual shelves may end up sitting empty for some time to come.
http://businessweek.com/technology/c...3428_tc206.htm


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Sony Preparing Movie Downloads For Mobile Technology
Chris Richardson

Sony Pictures is preparing to offer a download service featuring the company's top 500 movies for mobile technology users. The company's goal is to have this upcoming service ready by next year.

The movies will be downloaded and stored on Flash memory, a preferred storage format for mobile technologies. The movies will be available through legal download services like Movielink.com.

Not only is Sony doing this to improve usability of the mobile industry, they also have eyes on disrupting the various P2P clients, which they feel will discourage movie piracy. Techtree.com reports,

According to Michael Arrieta, senior vice president of Sony Pictures the company was aiming to become the iTunes of movie downloads. He also said that they wanted design business models, pricing models and distribution models similar to the way Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO had done for music.

Sony's announcement comes at a time when movie studios are joining hands to fight illegal file-sharing on peer-to-peer networks. Motion Picture Association of America is also currently taking legal action against service providers like BitTorrent and eDonkey.

Whether or not Sony can duplicate iTunes' success remains to be seen. It is doubtful the movie downloads, whether in mobile format or not, will be the same price as an iTunes $.99 song purchase. Sony has not released any information concerning movie download prices.
http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusi...echnology.html


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Microsoft Launches Portable TV Service
AP

Television addicts rejoice: Now you can take more shows on the road. Microsoft Corp. has launched a $19.95-a-year service that lets people download certain TV shows to portable devices such as media players and advanced cell phones.

The Redmond-based software company has already let customers watch free short clips of some shows on Windows-based portable devices.

With the new service, MSN Video Downloads, customers will have access to more content - sports highlights and some shows from Fox Sports, news and business headlines from MSNBC.com and children's programming from Cookie Jar Entertainment.

Users simply log onto a Web site using a traditional laptop or desktop computer. They can download the shows and transfer them to portables.

The service marks Microsoft's latest effort to get people interested in Portable Media Centers and other devices that use its Windows Media Player technology for watching movies and listening to music.

The company's competition includes Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iPod music player.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...sto mwire.htm


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TiVo Beefs Up Patent Portfolio
Richard Shim

Digital video recorder company TiVo has increased its stake in television intellectual property by purchasing six patents from IBM.

The Alviso, Calif.-based company on Tuesday filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission disclosing its purchase of six U.S. patents from IBM on March 31. The patents relate to audience research and measurement, integration of television signals with Internet access, automatic rescheduling of recordings, content screening, enhanced program information search and electronic program guide interface enhancements. Expiration dates for the patents range from December 2015 to February 2020.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

The DVR pioneer has been amassing a patent portfolio to boost its licensing business and fend off new entrants to the DVR market. However, TiVo hasn't yet been able to turn its intellectual property into significant financial success.

Early last month, TiVo was granted five patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The company has 70 patents, with 106 still pending.

Many industry watchers say the value of TiVo's overall patent portfolio lies in the potential muscle it brings to its ongoing patent infringement lawsuit against satellite television company EchoStar Communications.

The case has been slow moving, but recently made public progress, with jury selection set to begin Oct. 4. TiVo brought the suit against EchoStar in January of last year, alleging that EchoStar and its affiliated companies are violating TiVo's time- warping patent.
http://news.com.com/TiVo+beefs+up+pa...3-5657506.html


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Hybrid-Car Tinkerers Scoff at No-Plug-In Rule
Danny Hakim

Ron Gremban and Felix Kramer have modified a Toyota Prius so it can be plugged into a wall outlet.

This does not make Toyota happy. The company has spent millions of dollars persuading people that hybrid electric cars like the Prius never need to be plugged in and work just like normal cars. So has Honda, which even ran a commercial that showed a guy wandering around his Civic hybrid fruitlessly searching for a plug.

But the idea of making hybrid cars that have the option of being plugged in is supported by a diverse group of interests, from neoconservatives who support greater fuel efficiency to utilities salivating at the chance to supplant oil with electricity. If you were able to plug a hybrid in overnight, you could potentially use a lot less gas by cruising for long stretches on battery power only. But unlike purely electric cars, which take hours to charge and need frequent recharging, you would not have to plug in if you did not want to.

"I've gotten anywhere from 65 to over 100 miles per gallon," said Mr. Gremban, an engineer at CalCars, a small nonprofit group based in Palo Alto, Calif. He gets 40 to 45 miles per gallon driving his normal Prius. And EnergyCS, a small company that has collaborated with CalCars, has modified another Prius with more sophisticated batteries; they claim their Prius gets up to 180 m.p.g. and can travel more than 30 miles on battery power.

"If you cover people's daily commute, maybe they'll go to the gas station once a month," said Mr. Kramer, the founder of CalCars. "That's the whole idea."

Conventional hybrid electric cars already save gas. But if one looks at growth projections for oil consumption, hybrids will slow the growth rate of oil imports only marginally, at best, with the amount depending on how many hybrids are sold. To actually stop the growth of oil imports and potentially even reduce consumption, automakers have focused on developing cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

But fuel cells would require a complete reinvention of the automobile, not to mention the nation's gas stations, and the technology to put them on the road is still a long way from fruition. Advocates of plug-in hybrids say the technology for these vehicles is available now to the point that people are building them in garages.

"All of the relevant technology is at hand," said Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy and an assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration. His group was among a coalition of right-leaning organizations that released an energy plan this year promoting plug-ins as one way to increase fuel efficiency in light of the instability of the Middle East.

"If you're thinking about this as an environmental issue first and foremost, you're missing the point," Mr. Gaffney said. Curbing dependence on foreign oil, he added, "is a national security emergency."

Toyota, however, says the plug-in is not ready for prime time.

"They say this is the next great thing, but it just isn't," said David Hermance, an executive engineer at Toyota. "The electric utilities really want to sell electricity and they want to sell it to the transportation sector because that expands their market. They have an agenda."

But the plug-in hybrid is not just coming out of the garages of enthusiasts in California. DaimlerChrysler has developed several dozen plug-in hybrid vans in cooperation with the Electric Power Research Institute, a group financed by more than 300 utilities, including the New York Power Authority and Southern California Edison. Testing of the vans will start this year, and one will be used by The New York Times on a newspaper delivery route in Manhattan. Several small companies are also developing or have developed plug-in hybrid prototypes.

"We think it's the only way to rekindle interest in electric transportation," said Robert Graham, who manages research into electric vehicles for the Research Institute. "There are no technology hurdles at all. It's simply a matter of getting the vehicle built out on the street and getting people to recognize its value."

For power companies, the notion of people plugging in cars overnight represents not only a new way to make money, but the vehicles would also draw power mostly during off hours which would improve efficiency, because power plants cannot simply shut down at night as demand diminishes.

As it stands, though, modifying a hybrid like the Prius to enable it to plug in would add perhaps $2,000 to $3,000 to the cost of a car that is already roughly $3,000 more expensive than conventional gas cars. Advocates say the costs would be much lower if such cars were mass-produced by a major automaker.

But Nick Cappa, a spokesman for DaimlerChrysler, was cautious, calling the technology one of many the company was exploring. Among its current drawbacks is that the added batteries take up space and make the company's Sprinter van several hundred pounds heavier.

"This is part of a small program investigating these technologies," Mr. Cappa said.

And Mr. Hermance of Toyota said that batteries today were not durable enough to handle the wide range of charging up and charging down that a plug-in hybrid would need, calling that the most damaging thing you can do to a battery.

Edward Furia, the chief executive of AFS Trinity Power, a privately held company in Bellevue, Wash., that develops mechanical batteries called flywheels, agreed with Mr. Hermance, but said that a secondary energy storage technology like a flywheel could solve the problem.

"If you've got a flywheel with your chemical battery, you can draw down the chemical battery, but when it's time to do a heavy lift, to accelerate or absorb energy, the flywheel is doing the acceleration or the absorption, not the chemical battery," said Mr. Furia, whose company is developing its own plug-in hybrid that it says will get several hundred miles per gallon.

While many environmentalists support the technology, some say in terms of emissions, electric cars would only be as good as the power plants that produce electricity.

"The concern on plug-in hybrids is that we not substitute addiction to one polluting fuel for addiction to a more polluting fuel," said Dan Becker, the head of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program. "Coal is more polluting than gasoline, and nearly 60 percent of U.S. electricity is generated by burning coal."

Roger Duncan, a deputy general manager of Austin Energy, a utility owned by the City of Austin, Tex., said that "it's hard to say what impact it will have on the nation as a whole," but that in regions that use cleaner-than-average power sources, like Austin or California, it would provide a clear emissions benefit. Mr. Duncan even imagines a day when drivers could be paid to return energy to the grid during times of excessive demand.

Plug-in hybrid prototypes have been around for several years, but the idea of modifying a Prius stemmed from the curiosity of some Prius owners in the United States, Mr. Kramer said. They were aroused by a mysterious unmarked button on their Prius and discovered that in Priuses sold in Europe and Japan, the button allows the car to drive for a mile in electric-only mode. Mr. Hermance said the feature was disabled in Priuses sold in the United States because of complications it would have created in emissions-testing rules.

Mr. Kramer said "a bunch of engineers reverse-engineered it in the United States and figured out how to hack it."

But they soon wanted to travel on batteries for more than a mile and began to collaborate through CalCars on adding batteries to the Prius that would allow for longer pure electric travel. With the help of dozens of volunteer engineers collaborating online, the group retrofitted a Prius in Mr. Gremban's garage to travel about 10 miles on nothing but battery power.

Mr. Duncan said the plug-in hybrid was "very realistic, because it's not that big a leap in technology."

"Look what Felix has done with Prius off the street," he added. "This isn't rocket science."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/business/02plug.html


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New, Cheap Battery Outshines Alkalines
David Pogue

Panasonic will introduce AA and AAA disposable batteries in June that the company calls the "most significant developments in primary battery technology in 40 years."

According to Panasonic, these Oxyride batteries last up to twice as long as premium alkaline batteries like Duracell Ultra ($5 for four), yet cost the same as regular alkalines ($4 for four).

Astounded yet? Then get this: Oxyride batteries are also supposed to deliver more power. The result, the company says, is that battery-operated toothbrushes spin faster, flashlights shine brighter, camera flashes are quicker to recharge and music players produce richer sound.

Play your cards right, in other words, and these batteries might just clean out your gutters, wash the car and do your taxes.

Those are pretty fantastic claims, but Panasonic is certainly right about one thing: The time is right for some technical improvement in batteries. Technology has marched on in just about every other corner of modern life, but people still tiptoe nervously through birthday parties and weddings with their digital cameras, anxiously rationing shots so they'll have juice left for the big moment.

No wonder, then, that in Japan, the Oxyride batteries have captured 10 percent of the battery market in the one year they've been available. In fact, Panasonic predicts that Oxyride will eventually wipe out alkalines just the way alkalines blew regular "heavy-duty" batteries off the map.

Skeptics are surely entitled to scoff, especially at that part about brighter flashlights, faster fans and better-sounding music. Aren't these gizmos somehow voltage-controlled so that they shine, spin or play at a certain rate, regardless of the battery?

Armed with a stopwatch, I spent several exceedingly boring days conducting battery-drain tests with identical pairs of flashlights, screwdrivers, cameras, handheld fans and swimming bathtub fishies. (Note to the neighbors: You can call off the nice men in the white jackets. It was all in the name of science.)

As it turns out, the power-boosting effect is no marketing concoction; it's real. In identical flashlights, Oxyrides produce an obviously wider, whiter circle of light than Duracell Ultras. You can immediately tell the difference in portable fans, too, because the Oxyride fan hums at a higher pitch, a musical step higher than the Duracell one. The Oxyrides even make power screwdrivers spin faster: 364rpm, compared with 316rpm for the Duracell Ultras.

Then there's that bit about Oxyrides making MP3 players and CD players produce richer, fuller sound. Panasonic cited a test in Japan in which 80 percent of the players in an orchestra said they preferred the sound from an Oxyride-powered music player. (Panasonic doesn't include sound-quality claims in its official marketing, but it does say it's investigating.)

This one's a tougher call. In blind tests, most people couldn't tell any difference between a CD player with Oxyrides and one with regular alkalines. A few identified the Oxyrides as maybe being a bit richer-sounding, but said that the difference was awfully subtle. All participants confessed, though, that they were not members of a Japanese orchestra.

Amazingly, then, Panasonic Oxyrides do deliver more power, for the same price as ordinary alkalines. To be precise, they deliver 1.7 volts, which is 13 percent more juice than the 1.5 volts of alkalines. (In both cases, the voltage diminishes as the batteries empty.) According to Panasonic, Oxyrides get their power not only from an improved chemical makeup, but also from a vacuum-assembly machine that packs more ingredients into the same space.

But what about the primary claim, that Oxyrides last longer than alkalines? Here, the answer is more complicated.

In rundown tests (put the batteries in, run nonstop till they're dead), Duracell Ultras, and even regular alkaline Duracells, actually beat the Oxyrides. In a krypton-bulb flashlight, the Oxyrides ran for two and a half hours; Duracell Ultras lasted 35 minutes longer. An Oxyride handheld fan died after an hour; Duracell Ultras had another 25 minutes in them. And in a really cute swimming fish bathtub toy, the Oxyride fish gave up the ghost after 8.5 hours; a pair of ordinary alkalines kept finding Nemo for an amazing 25 hours, nearly three times as long.

Now, battery companies generally hate it when well-meaning journalists conduct rundown tests, for a very good reason: nobody uses batteries that way. In the real world, people play, pause and put aside their electronics for days or weeks. Properly conducted battery tests, experts say, are repetitive, expensive and computer-controlled. A battery that's designed to last a long time under real-world conditions may not do well in rundown tests. ("We'd be delighted to help you design valid tests," a battery company representative once told me. "And we'll look forward to reading the results around Christmas.")

And sure enough, when the flashlight test was repeated in a more realistic regimen - one hour on, followed by 30 minutes off for good behavior - the Oxyrides lasted 4 hours 14 minutes. The Duracells still won, but this time by only 10 minutes, and the light produced during the flashlight's final 20 minutes was so feeble it probably shouldn't count. (The Oxyrides tend to die more suddenly than alkalines.)

Panasonic further protested that the Oxyrides were designed to shine in high-drain gadgets (cameras, LED flashlights, remote-control toys, portable televisions and photo flash units) and moderate-drain gizmos (Game Boys, CD and music players, electric razors), not in low-drain devices like flashlights, fans, radios, clocks, remote controls and bathtub fishies. (So out came the Game Boy and the LED flashlight, and in went the Oxyrides. Test results: pending. After three days, both of them are still running strong.)

All of this brings us to the World Series of battery competitions: the digital camera test. These days, most digital cameras come with rectangular, proprietary rechargeable battery packs. But if your camera takes disposables, you're already aware of their pathetic battery-consumption record.

The challenge: See how many shots a pair of AA's can take in a digital camera. The test: 50 consecutive shots, alternating flash and nonflash, followed by 10 minutes turned off so the batteries could rest. Then another 50 shots, and so on until "Change the batteries" appears on the camera's screen. (I set the camera to capture low-resolution images, so they'd all fit without having to change or erase the memory card.)

Because this isn't a constant-drain test, you'd expect the Oxyrides to win--and this time, they do. The final score: Regular alkalines, 354 shots; premium alkalines, 566; Panasonic Oxyrides, 844. That's not exactly twice the longevity of premium alkalines, as Panasonic promises (and as PC World magazine found in its own Oxyride battery tests). But it's 2.4 times the life of regular alkalines, for the same price.

Now, even Panasonic admits that Oxyrides aren't the most economical, environmentally friendly, powerful batteries you can buy. That honor goes to rechargeable nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, which cost under $15 including charger. You can recharge NiMH batteries hundreds of times, and each charge lasts longer than Oxyride or any sort of alkaline.

But NiMHs aren't widely available in stores, they lose their charge quickly on the shelf, and the recharging and swapping process requires planning and discipline. Alas, not everybody has the patience; the road to the abandoned-gadgets drawer is paved with good intentions.

(Another Oxyride rival is AA disposable lithium batteries, offered by Energizer in a four-pack for about $23. Five times the power of standard alkalines, at six times the price. You do the math.)

The bottom line: Oxyride batteries may not quite live up to Panasonic's enthusiastic claims in all kinds of gadgets in every situation. But penny for penny, they deliver more power and, in power-hungry gadgets like digital cameras, last a lot longer than alkalines. Don't look now, but the Energizer bunny may soon be squashed by the Panasonic elephant.
http://news.com.com/New%2C+cheap+bat...3-5658376.html


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Marketers Get Technology To Block User Attempts To Delete Cookies

"The user is not proficient enough in technology to know if the cookie is good or bad, or how it works," said Mookie Tanembaum, founder and chief executive of United Virtualities, which developed the technology.

Antone Gonsalves

United Virtualities is offering online marketers and publishers technology that attempts to undermine the growing trend among consumers to delete cookies planted in their computers.

The New York company on Thursday unveiled what it calls PIE, or persistent identification element, a technology that's uploaded to a browser and restores deleted cookies. In addition, PIE, which can't be easily removed, can also act as a cookie backup, since it contains the same information.

Cookies are small files often uploaded to people's computers as they visit websites run by retailers, entertainment companies, newspapers and other businesses. The text files contain information that's used to track visitors' behavior, or to offer visitors products or services based on information gathered during previous visits, a process called personalization. In addition, cookie-gathered information is often pivotal for advertising campaigns and e- mail marketing.

According to JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia Corp., 58 percent of Internet users have deleted the tiny files, essentially making many consumers anonymous during site visits. In addition, 39 percent of consumers are deleting cookies from their primary computer monthly.

United Virtualities's PIE helps combat this consumer behavior by leveraging a feature in Flash MX called local shared objects. Flash MX is a Macromedia Inc. application for developing multimedia Web content, user interfaces and Web applications. The technology runs on a Flash Player that the company says is deployed on 98 percent of Internet-capable computers.

When a consumer goes to a PIE-enabled website, the visitor's browser is tagged with a Flash object that contains a unique identification similar to the text found in a traditional cookie. In this way, PIE acts as a cookie backup, and can also restore the original cookie when the consumer revisits the site.

While consumers have learned to delete cookies, most are unaware of shared objects, and don't know how to disable them.

Mookie Tanembaum, founder and chief executive of United Virtualities, says the company is trying to help consumers by preventing them from deleting cookies that help website operators deliver better services.

"The user is not proficient enough in technology to know if the cookie is good or bad, or how it works," Tanembaum said.

While United Virtualities, as well as marketers and publishers, focus on the benefits of cookies, consumers often see them as an invasion of privacy and resent having them loaded into their computers without permission, experts say. In addition, unscrupulous marketers can abuse the tracking capabilities of cookies.

Fear is also a factor. Consumers are constantly reminded about the risks on the Internet posed by spyware, phishers and viruses, so deleting cookies makes them feel more secure, even though it's unlikely to make them safer.

Using technology like United Virtualities's to circumvent consumers could cause a backlash, JupiterResearch analyst David Schatsky said. The research firm found that many consumers understand cookies, and may be willing to allow some in their computers, if they are given the choice upfront.

"(PIE) sounds like it flies in the face of what consumers are telling us," Schatsky said. "They're seeking privacy and control, and if this is denied, then they won't be happy."

Tanembaum also warned against using PIE to thwart consumers.

"Any abuse of this technology is not welcomed by us," Tanembaum said. "We believe people should use this technology responsibly. If people don't want cookies in place, then (their browsers) shouldn't be tagged."

Consumers can make PIE inoperable by raising the security settings in their browsers to its highest level, Tanembaum said. But he acknowledges that such a high setting would also hamper consumers' ability to visit non-PIE websites.

For its part, Macromedia has posted on its website instructions for disabling shared objects uploaded to browsers.

In addition, the San Francisco-based company is discussing with Microsoft Corp., the Mozilla Foundation and other browser makers the possibility of letting consumers control the use of cookies and shared objects from one location in a browser, Jeff Whatcott, vice president of product management for Macromedia, said.

"Our goal is to always put the user in control over their own data and machine," Whatcott said. "That's the approach we've always taken."

Flash-built websites often use shared objects in gathering information from visitors. Besides data on how the sites are being used, retailers, for example, can track what visitors place in their shopping carts, or store a list of previously purchased products.
http://www.securitypipeline.com/show...leID=160401022


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Laws Must Keep Up With Technology

Our position is: Supreme Court should balance copyright protection with importance of allowing advancement in technology.

In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Sony Corp. couldn't be sued for copyright infringement just because consumers might use VCRs to illegally copy movies.

The ruling gave rise to recording TV shows, renting videotapes and, yes, no small amount of pirated material. But VCR technology not only created new industries, it also increased profits for moviemakers and television studios.

Two decades later, the Supreme Court faces a similar decision in connection with computer technologies that enable copying of DVDs and CDs.

At immediate issue are software makers such as Grokster Inc. that have created software enabling computer files to be stored and shared anywhere on the Internet. It's no secret that many of these files contain copyrighted material such as songs or movies. But laws against copyright infringement enable anyone harmed by such misuse to go after those responsible for the pirating without impeding creators of the technology.

File sharing has made thousands of classic books with no copyright protection freely available to the public. It allows 98 percent of musicians who don't have recording contracts to have their music sampled by the public. And file sharing is preventing totalitarian regimes around the world from controlling Internet content.

As 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Sydney R. Thomas wrote, "The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to old markets, and particularly to those copyright owners whose works are sold through well- established distribution mechanisms. Yet, history has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine or an MP3 player."
http://www.indystar.com/articles/8/234196-7008-021.html


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Tech Companies Back EU in Microsoft Fight
AP

Five leading technology companies are supporting European Union regulators in their legal battle with Microsoft Corp., a lawyer for the group said Wednesday.

International Business Machines Corp., Oracle Corp., Red Hat Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Nokia Corp. have applied to intervene against Microsoft in its court appeal of last year's EU antitrust ruling, lawyer Thomas Vinje said.

Vinje said the companies' stance countered Microsoft claims that the European Commission's case was without industry support.

"The Commission does not stand naked. It has solid support from the information technology industry," Vinje said in a telephone interview. "The bottom line is that we think the Commission's position is correct."

The intervention against Microsoft of all these major tech companies _ with the exception of RealNetworks, which has sued Microsoft separately _ is noteworthy because they have tended to be reluctant to take such a public stand.

Red Hat is a major distributor of the open source Linux operating system, which IBM also widely promotes. Oracle's Chief Executive Larry Ellison is a longtime nemesis of Microsoft, and Nokia faces a growing threat from the company in mobile software.

Microsoft didn't immediately return calls for comment Wednesday.

The company has appealed at an EU court against the March 2004 ruling in which the Commission fined the company euro497 million (US$640 million) and obliged it to share technology with competitors who make server software so their products can better communicate with Windows-powered computers.

The regulators also ordered Microsoft to produce a Windows version minus its multimedia player to provide a more level playing field for competitors such as RealNetworks Inc.

Vinje said the companies had no clear idea yet when the Luxembourg-based European Court of First Instance would reply to their application to join the case.

The EU's head office played down the impact of the companies' support.

"The commission has regular contacts with many companies, many market players in the sector, we are always pleased to have their point of view," said spokesman Jonathan Todd. "It's not really relevant or determining in terms of the outcome of a particular antitrust case."

Seattle-based RealNetworks Inc., maker of a rival to Microsoft's Media Player, is Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft's last big commercial opponent in the case. Microsoft reached settlements with four of the five major parties that had intervened against it in the EU case _ Novell Inc., the Computer and Communications Industry Association, Time Warner Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc.

Microsoft shares rose 20 cents to close at $24.67 in trading Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock has been trading at a 52-week range of $23.82 to $30.20.
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/arti.../d89a4mhg0.txt


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File-Sharing Is the Latest Battleground in the Clash of Technology and Copyright
Hal R. Varian

LAST week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster, a case that has important implications for the future of online innovation.

Grokster makes software that enables Internet users to share computer files on peer-to-peer networks. The technology has been used to distribute many kinds of content, including copyrighted digital music.

MGM and other entertainment companies want to hold Grokster liable for the copyright infringement that occurs when users download copyrighted music without paying for it. Grokster argues that there are many legitimate uses for its technology and that it is not responsible for those who use it to violate copyrights.

This is just the latest installment of a longstanding battle between technology companies and copyright holders. It is useful to look at the history of some of these past innovations in trying to understand what policies may be appropriate today.

In the early 1900's, the disruptive technology was player pianos. Manufacturers of player piano rolls purchased a single copy of the sheet music of a song, hired someone to record the music and then sold these mechanical reproductions to consumers. The songwriters held that this was copyright infringement, while the piano roll manufacturers pointed out that they had paid the appropriate copyright fees when they purchased the sheet music.

In 1908, the Supreme Court found in favor of the piano roll manufacturers, but practically invited Congress to consider new legislation on the issue. Congress responded with the Copyright Act of 1909, which created a new form of intellectual property, mechanical reproduction rights.

The new law required piano roll manufacturers to pay songwriters a fee for each song. Subsequently, mechanical reproduction fees have been extended to new technologies like phonographs, audio tapes, CD's and online streaming digital music.

In the 1908 case, songwriters did not try to ban player piano technology. They clearly recognized that the additional distribution of their songs was potentially advantageous. Their goal was simply to get a fair share of the proceeds from the piano roll sales.

Another directly relevant Supreme Court decision is Sony v. Universal City Studios, a 1984 case involving the use of video recorders in the home. The film studios argued that Sony should be liable for copyright infringement since its video recorders could be used to copy movies and television programs illegally.

The Supreme Court held that Sony was not liable since the VCR technology had "substantial noninfringing uses."

This phrase has since become the legal test of whether liability can be imposed. Under this doctrine, a company that sells a technology whose only use is to violate copyright could potentially be liable for infringement, but as long as there are substantial noninfringing uses there would be no liability.

The studios lost the Sony case, but it forced them to take the home video market seriously.

Their first instinct was to set a $50 to $60 price for videocassettes. But by choosing a high price, they stimulated the development of the video rental market, giving users inexpensive access to movies.

On the other hand, the availability of rentals stimulated the demand for VCR's. As VCR prices declined, more people bought them and the video rental industry flourished, creating a new, rapidly growing outlet for studio productions.

In the late 1980's Disney began to experiment with lower prices for videos, hoping to bypass the rental stores and sell directly to home users. Disney's 1987 video release of "Lady and the Tramp" was priced at $29.95 and sold over 3.2 million copies, making it the best-selling video as of that date. Its record was soon eclipsed by "E.T.," which sold 14 million copies at $19.95 apiece.

These examples convinced Hollywood that if it priced its product low enough it could successfully compete with the rental market. When DVD technology came along in 1996, Hollywood understood that pricing under $20 was critical. DVD technology has been hugely successful because the prices of the players and discs have continued to decline, making it highly affordable and widely used.

The critical lesson from the history of the VCR is this: If consumers have ways to share content, either via rental markets or via the Internet, you will have to set low prices to induce them to buy. But low prices may well stimulate enough volume to make up for the lost revenue.

Apple's iTunes, with its 99-cent price for songs, has driven this lesson home, but there are those who argue that prices should be even lower.

In 2004, RealNetworks experimented with charging 49 cents for digital songs and sold more than three million downloads in a three-week period. The chief executive of RealNetworks, Rob Glaser, says that "the pricing that will result in the biggest overall market for music will involve some kind of tiered pricing," with "new mainstream songs for 99 cents retail, and up-and-coming artists and back catalog artists at a lower price."

It is worth observing that this is similar to the pricing strategy used in the video industry in the 1980's: a high price for the videos that were likely to be viewed only once, making them natural candidates for the rental market, and a low price for videos that warranted repeat viewing, making them candidates for purchase.

So what should the policy be for new technologies like Grokster? I advocate the Pizza Principle: If you want everybody to get as big a slice as possible, you first have to figure out how to bake as big a pie as possible. Once you have a nice big pie, you can let people fight over how they slice it up.

With respect to technology, the Sony decision got it right: encourage technologies that create more total value. Then, let companies fight to find business models that deliver that value to consumers. They can be awfully creative when they are forced to be.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/business/07scene.html


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AOL Rolls Out Net Phone Business

America Online is jumping into the crowded market of Internet telephone service.

Called simply, A-O-L Internet Phone Service, the product is being offered initially in 40 metropolitan areas. The company says its new service offers the regular features of traditional telephony and combines them with advanced services that are accessed on a P-C over the Internet. A-O-L is offering its phone service after dozens of companies have already entered the market. The competition ranges from start-ups like Vonage Holdings to traditional telecom players like Verizon Communications. Most major cable operators are also developing or rolling out services.
http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=3179292


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Tunneling

MSN Adds VoIP, Video Calls to Messenger
Sean Michael Kerner

Microsoft launched the latest version of its MSN Messenger client, version 7.0, which boasts a long list of new features including full screen video calls, VoIP and shared search functionality.

Microsoft also updated its MSN Spaces blogging service, which it claims is one of the fastest growing blogging communities on the planet.

The new MSN Messenger 7.0 IM client's video features were first announced in early March. MSN Messenger 7.0 users will now be able to have full screen video conversations with other users as well as new enhanced synchronized audio that improves the audio quality of IM video conversations.

"We've seen video phones for years at CES [Consumer Electronics Show] and other events and I think video conversations are going to become mainstream," Phil Holden, director of MSN global business and product management, told internetnews.com.

MSN has also improved the method by which video IM connections are made, which promises to improve overall user experience.

"One of the problems we find today is that often times when people are making a connection, the connection fails, and that is often because of firewalls that are in the way," Holden said. "So what we're doing now is making a peer-to-peer connection and that goes through for the most part. But if, for example, there is a situation where it can't get through on P2P, we've actually built what we think of as a reflection service. The video connection will actually go to the [Internet] cloud and tunnel in behind the firewall to enable people to make a connection. We think that is going to dramatically improve the number of times people can get connected."

MSN Messenger 7.0 will also introduce the concept of shared search on the IM client. Using integrated MSN Search capability, users will be able to search and share results of search queries while having an IM conversation. According to Holden, MSN did a lot of research into how people use PC-to-PC calls and they specifically looked at upstart VoIP vendor Skype. As part of that analysis, officials looked at how users made use of the service and also how many users used the service to connect to the legacy PSTN telephone network.

"People tend to do a regular text conversation over IM, be it MSN Messenger, Yahoo! or AOL and then they flip over to Skype to do a PC to PC audio conversation," Holden said.

According to MSN's data on usage of the Skype-Out, PC to PSTN service quoted by Holden, the number of people that are actually using Skype-Out functionality is less than 10 percent. Skype was not immediately available to comment.

"From our initial research, the main driver for people is really PC to PC audio, but obviously we're definitely investigating PSTN termination," Holden said. "We don't have any short term plans at the moment but its definitely on the investigation path."

MSN Messenger 7.0 will also include a feature called "winks" which Holden described as "emoticons on steroids." When a user "winks" at another user an animated image with sound is played on top of the IM dialog box and then disappears into the background.

A new "photoswap" feature has also been built in, which allows users to swap photos and other media files with other users during a conversation. The latest twist on photo sharing, however, comes through integration with MSN Spaces integration, MSN's blogging initiative that launched in December as an active Beta.

MSN Spaces service has now bumped up its photo storage capability from 10 MB up to 30 MB. Over 4.5 million blog spaces have been created since the introduction of the service, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft claims that over 2.5 billion instant messages currently traverse the MSN Messenger network every day. The service also boasts over 155 million users each month.
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.co...le.php/3496086


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The Need for Feed(s)
John Gartner

Online news aggregators like Google News are a blessing and a curse for the newspaper industry.

On one hand, news aggregators can deliver big traffic when they link to a site. On the other, consumers are turning to Google and Yahoo for their news, rather than to the individual newspapers the aggregators link to.

But now several newspapers are about to take on news aggregators at their own game, offering their own branded newsreaders.

The Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post and British newspaper the Guardian will soon offer stand-alone newsreader software for reading stories on their own websites and those of their competitors.

At the end of this month, the Denver Post will offer News Hound, a Denver Post-branded newsreader based on NewsGator, a newsreader that displays stories syndicated through RSS.

Gil Asakawa, executive producer of DenverPost.com, said the newspaper is developing its own newsreader software to make stories syndicated through RSS more accessible to average readers.

Whereas newsreaders require users to build news libraries by locating an RSS feed from each website they want to follow, News Hound will bundle several news feeds organized into categories. "The consumer benefit is that not all newspaper readers are early adopters," Asakawa said. "We want to make RSS available to people that are not technically savvy."

Asakawa said News Hound will include targeted feeds from the newspaper and other sources, including other news organizations. Readers will be able to track interests such as a college or pro sports team, or a local company, Asakawa said.

Since readers already graze for news from many sources, providing a Denver Post-branded application gives the newspaper increased visibility, according to Asakawa. "It increases the utility of the newspaper," he said.

News Hound will enable the Denver Post to establish a "stickier relationship with readers," said Greg Reinacker, founder and chief technical officer of NewsGator, which is co-developing the newsreader.

Publishers will use newsreaders to increase revenue through targeted advertising, according to Xavier Ferguson, CEO of software company Consenda, which is working with the Los Angeles Times on its newsreader application.

Ferguson said the Times' application, which is in beta testing, can match advertisements to content in the news feed. "If someone is linking to a blog that discusses cell phones, the newsreader could deliver ads about the latest camera phone," he said. Ads will appear between the links and can include pictures, according to Ferguson.

Media companies will also use newsreaders to enable readers to more easily scan and search their classifieds, Ferguson said. Readers will be able to sign up for alerts about new listings, such as a car from a particular model year, he said.

Yahoo will soon add newsreader capability to its news page, according to Neal Budde, director of Yahoo News. He said that later this month Yahoo would unveil a beta that enables users to integrate any RSS feed into their news page. "We recognize that adding RSS feeds is a way to expand traffic to the site," Budde said. Yahoo has also begun to add RSS feeds specific to current events, such as the death of the Pope, which integrate content from several publishers.

But not all publishers are interested in delivering RSS feeds or having their headlines displayed on other websites. In March, Agence France-Presse filed suit against Google for displaying headlines and article summaries on the Google News site.

Ferguson said publishers fall into two camps. Those who view syndicating headlines as a revenue opportunity and are setting up RSS feeds, and those such as Agence France-Presse who are worried about controlling how and where their headlines appear.

While these publishers "have their heads in the sand" about online news, Ferguson said, they are missing out on providing a useful service to readers for the viewing of content.

Newspapers have been bleeding subscribers for the past decade as readers increasingly go online for their news fix. Between 1994 and 2003, the percentage of adults who read a newspaper during the week dropped by 12 percent, according to the Newspaper Association of America. The total circulation of daily newspapers also decreased every year during the same time period.

Publishers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle "are excited about RSS but are concerned if it will bring them more or less of an audience," according to Susan Mernit, principal of digital media consulting firm 5ive.

"RSS is a huge opportunity for all publishers. It is just a matter of finding the right audience," Mernit said. "Is the headline in a digest somewhere else enough to get people to come? That is a trade-off for companies" in deciding whether or not to provide an RSS feed, she said.
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,67152,00.html


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Tomorrow's Net Speeds Could Be Up To 1,600% Faster
David Lieberman,

If you think that today's high- speed Internet connections are fast, wait till you see what cable operators plan.

The industry's standard-settings unit, CableLabs, plans to endorse this month technology that will let operators boost speeds 400% to 1,600%, over their existing lines.

Motorola and Cisco are among the companies offering alternative methods to increase broadband speeds by linking together the bandwidth used for four or more conventional TV channels.

What would the faster speed bring?

"The sky's the limit," says CableLabs CEO Dick Green. "There are a lot of high-data-rate services lurking out there — including a lot that we haven't even thought of."

While cable operators now usually transmit broadband at 3 million bits per second (3MB), a download of "a billion bits per second is completely doable," Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told the industry's annual convention here this week. "The network could do this quite easily."

That could dramatically affect how people use the Internet when the new modems to handle the speeds arrive, which is expected to be in 2008.

"This will change our lives well beyond entertainment," says Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers. For example, when speeds allow quick sending of detailed images. such as X-rays, he says, "You'll do the majority of your health care straight from the home."

Others envision a host of other applications. For example, businesses could easily arrange video conferences with high-definition TV. Consumers could download an entire HD movie in about five minutes vs. today's 22 minutes.

And, "There will be a need for higher speeds as games become more graphics-intensive," says Adelphia Chief Technical Officer Marwan Fawaz.

Hospitals and schools also may be among the first to take advantage of the additional transmission capacity, which is expected to cost more than current high-speed Internet services.

Operators want to get moving to keep ahead of phone companies, led by Verizon, that are building communications systems with more fiber-optic lines — and therefore more transmission capacity — than cable.

"There'll be a speed arms race," says RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser.

But the new cable standard, known as DOCSIS 3.0, also will make it easier for operators to handle other chores.

"I could take a cell phone and program my digital video recorder," says Richard Doherty, who is with The Envisioneering Group. "Quality of service is a big part of it."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...eed-usat_x.htm


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Groups Predict More Songs Over Internet
Ted Bridis

The music and film industries will continue to offer digital copies of songs and movies online for a price even if they lose a landmark Supreme Court case focusing on consumers who steal copyrighted material over the Internet, those industries' chief lobbyists said Monday.

"Consumers want a legal, hassle-free, reasonable-cost way to get their products online," said Dan Glickman, head of the Motion Picture Association of America. "There's no question you'll see a lot more opportunity for people in their homes to enjoy music and movies and other creative material."

Glickman and Mitch Bainwol, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, met with editors from The Associated Press on the eve of arguments in the upcoming Supreme Court case, Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster.

Glickman also discussed Hollywood's increasing emphasis on family movies, noting that four of last year's top five films were rated either PG or PG-13; he said last year's fifth top film was "The Passion of the Christ," which was rated R for its graphic portrayal of the crucifixion.

"You don't want to offer a product that American families find they can't tolerate," Glickman said. "Family movies are big sellers. The free market works wonders; the marketplace is the big factor in what the studios decide to go after."

Regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court case, Bainwol predicted a rise among Internet music-subscription services, which permit consumers to listen to more than 1 million songs for a flat monthly fee.

"We are doing all the things we should be doing to move into this digital age," Bainwol said. "That is true no matter what the outcome of Grokster."

In the Supreme Court case, entertainment companies want the court to permit them to sue manufacturers of file-sharing software popular among computer users for trading music and movies over the Internet.

Lower U.S. courts have twice ruled that such file-sharing software can be used for "substantial" legal purposes, such as giving away free songs, free software or government documents. Citing a 1984 case involving videocassette recorders, they reasoned that the software's manufacturer was protected from copyright lawsuits based on acts by their customers.

Critics of the entertainment industries said the fast pace of technology will continue to force companies to confront piracy as programmers find methods to defeat the digital locks protecting songs and films from being copied illegally.

"No matter what happens in this case, they're going to be competing with free from now on," said Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group that sided with Grokster. "It's just the nature of the digital world."

Gigi Sohn, head of Public Knowledge, a Washington-based consumers group, said entertainment companies should aggressively offer electronic versions of movies and music over the Internet with digital locks that can prevent indiscriminate copying. But she said consumers will reject versions that too severely limit how they can watch movies or listen to songs.

"If it's too restrictive, it's just inviting people to break the law," she said.

The lower court rulings — effectively shielding the manufacturers of file- sharing software — have compelled entertainment companies to sue thousands of people caught illegally distributing songs and movies over the Internet.

"There's no question it's far more efficient and far more sensible to go after the people whose business is built on infringement," said Cary Sherman, the president of the recording industry association.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...nloading_music


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Lessig Preaches Openness To Flash Faithful
Paul Festa

Copyright reformer Lawrence Lessig gave Flash developers an earful Wednesday about how their platform of choice is perceived in the free software world.

"Flash is the enemy," said Lessig, a Stanford University professor and board member of the Free Software Foundation, as he described the opinions of leading free- and open-source-software advocates. These advocates "hate Flash. They think that by participating in the Flash community, you are feeding the devil."

Lessig, addressing attendees of the Flashforward2005 conference here Wednesday, sounded familiar themes in his talk, titled "The Costs of Copyright." He argued that the digital age has created new demands for the sharing of content that old-media copyright law cannot meet. As a result, he said, outdated copyright law is casting a pall over creative expression and education.

Despite the antipathy to Flash prevalent in open-source circles, Lessig called himself a Flash fan and implored designers and artists using the technology to free their work from conventional copyright protections.

Lessig chairs the Creative Commons organization, which offers a variety of intellectual property licenses less restrictive than the standard "all rights reserved." He cited a recent surge in Creative Commons licenses, as well as Yahoo's launch late last month of a search engine specifically for content released under such licenses.

Macromedia's Flash animation software--.swf--has long had an open file format. That means that other developers can create software tools that produce Flash content.

But the technology itself remains under Macromedia's proprietary control. And unlike HTML, which lets anyone inspect a Web page's underlying source code, Flash movies keep that information under wraps.

On that note, Lessig said Macromedia should study the explosive growth of HTML, which created a vast community of Web developers by allowing them to "steal" from one another and expand on each others' work, as compared with the less spectacular growth of Apple Computer's AppleScript scripting language, which hides its code.

"Flash has got to learn this lesson," Lessig said.

Lessig argued that proprietary platforms like Flash had a rightful place on the Internet, but that developers of such technologies ought to loosen restrictions on their creative property.

"It is absolutely critical that we begin to support the development of free content built on proprietary platforms," he said.

He applauded Adobe's Extensible Metadata Plaform (XMP), which allows developers to embed creative commons licenses in every format the company supports.
http://news.com.com/Lessig+preaches+...3-5657975.html


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U.K.-Funded Initiative To Push Open Source
Ingrid Marson

A government-funded initiative in the United Kingdom aims to accelerate the use of open-source software within the public sector by creating a code repository and a directory of open-source providers, among other efforts.

The initiative, known as the Open Source Academy, is funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's e-Innovations investment program. It is due to be formally announced later this month.

Mark Taylor, the executive director of the Open Source Consortium, one of the organizations involved in the initiative, said the U.K. public sector is lagging behind other European countries in terms of open-source adoption, but he says this project is likely to change that.

"This project is critical to allowing us to crack the public sector in the U.K.," Taylor said.

The academy will include various projects, including a platform based on open-source technologies that will allow local authorities to collaborate on software projects. This project, which will be run by Shepway District Council, will be similar to Sourceforge.net, a Web site that catalogs thousands of open-source applications. "It will be a Sourceforge for councils," Taylor said.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister had not responded to requests for comment at the time of writing.

Local authorities can already share code through Web sites such as the Local Authority Software Consortium, but Taylor says the collaborative effort is limited as it runs on proprietary Microsoft technology.

Councils will also be encouraged to share their experiences on deploying open-source software.

"One of the things we're doing is pushing out news on open-source deployments," Taylor said. "For example, did you know that Powys has been using open-source software for eight years, and is running Linux on 100 servers?"

Taylor said the project would disprove the theory that only poorer councils adopt open source. "This is not true," he said.

Other projects included in the initiative are a portal for government agencies to find information on open-source suppliers, and a professional accreditation scheme for open-source consultants.

Various organizations are involved in the Open Source Academy, including the Bristol, Cheshire, Birmingham and Shepway councils, the National Computing Centre, the University of Kent, the Institute of IT Training, OpenForum Europe, the Open Source Consortium and public sector IT user group Socitm.
http://news.com.com/U.K.-funded+init...3-5658354.html


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Open-Source Group To Corral Licenses
Stephen Shankland

The Open Source Initiative has begun an effort to pare down the number of open-source licenses in widespread use.

The OSI, a group that bestows official open-source status on licenses, will promote a small number of licenses as preferred options, according to a position paper it adopted on Wednesday. The group hasn't yet decided which of the more than 50 licenses it's so far approved will get the status.

OSI also adopted three new administrative provisions designed to screen out new licenses that don't add much usefulness. The provisions, proposed in March, require licenses to be clearly written, simple and understandable; reusable; and not duplicative of existing licenses.

License proliferation has been a widely discussed issue in the software industry in recent months. Hewlett-Packard's top Linux executive, Martin Fink, in particular has pressed for a radical reduction in the number of licenses, to avoid needless confusion and expense.

Open-source licenses determine whether software from one project may be shared with another. That in turn affects whether there are numerous islands of incompatible source code or fewer, larger collections. License proliferation also makes more work for company lawyers evaluating open-source software; a product such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes software employing several licenses.

Sam Greenblatt, a senior vice president at Computer Associates, agrees there's a license proliferation problem, though he disagrees with Fink's approach to reducing the number. In a speech at the conference, he said CA would be willing to scrap its own open-source license if the right replacement can be found.

Sun Microsystems' Community Development and Distribution License is a step in the right direction, he added. "Sun's CDDL is a great starting point in stopping proliferation," Greenblatt said.

And simply removing licenses can be difficult. Intel removed its own open-source license from OSI's list, but the license remains alive as long as the software it governs exists, Greenblatt said.

The license changes were adopted at the first meeting of a newly expanded OSI board, held here in conjunction with the Open Source Business Conference. Five existing board members were joined on Friday by five more, most from outside the United States: Joichi Ito, vice president of international operations at blog indexing Web site Technorati and a board member of Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers; Bruno Souza, a senior consultant at Summa Technologies and president of Brazil's largest Java user's group; Chris DiBona, an open-source program manager at Google; Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, the managing editor of the online journal First Monday and a program manager at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands; and Sanjiva Weerawarana, a former IBM programmer and founder of the Lanka Software Foundation to promote open-source software in Sri Lanka.

"OSI is institutionalizing itself," making a transition to avoid pitfalls that afflict many organizations that can't survive the loss of founders' charisma or skills, group founder Eric Raymond said.
http://news.com.com/Open-source+grou...3-5657788.html


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China

Halting Online Copyright Violations

Online copyright violations have been running rampant in the country in the recent years. Cui Ning finds out what measures the government is considering to battle Internet IPR piracy.

The draft of the Regulations for Protecting Copyrights on the Internet will be formulated late this year, with the goal of better protecting copyrights of online works, China Daily has learned from National Copyright Administration.

The draft will be submitted to the State Council for approval before it officially takes effect.

"To develop our information industry with independent intellectual property rights (IPR) and on the basis of meeting international standards is the general principles stipulated in the regulation," said administration official Xu Chao.

Internet-based services in the world are divided into two categories: ICP (Internet content provider) and ISP (Internet service provider).

The regulation will provide relevant articles on how to protect copyrights on Internet works and how to deal with violations, within the scope of the two categories, said Xu.

China revised its Copyright Law in 2001 and the issue of copyrights for Internet-related material is only briefly mentioned in the revision. It stated that violators should be responsible for the copying of online arts and literature works. The revised law also specifies in what situations violators should be held to civil or criminal liability.

In 2003, the Supreme People's Court implemented a judicial interpretation for trying cases on computer-based copyright disputes.

Late last year, China issued a new judicial interpretation to facilitate the government's efforts in fighting IPR crimes.

Relying on the revised Copyright Law and judicial interpretations alone is not enough for administrative supervision on Internet copyright protection. It is necessary to work out an independent regulation to help slash rampant online copyright violations in the country, said Xu.

To further improve copyrights protection, Xu said China is ready to join two conventions of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) -- the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performance and Phonograms Treaty.

Voices from judges and experts

Courts across the country are receiving an increasing number of cases related to disputes over the Internet-based copyrights, as computerized networks have deeply influenced various aspects of people's lives, according to Jiang Zhipei, chief-judge of the Intellectual Property Rights Tribunal of the Supreme People's Court.

Wang Liren, a senior judge with the Intermediate People's Court in Yichang of Central China's Hubei Province, suggested that a national online centre for protecting Internet-based copyrights and handling appeals be set up, so as to supplement the traditional way of handling lawsuits.

The centre can be authorized with the rights of supervision and enforcement. For those websites, which wink at copyright violators plagiarizing articles of others on websites, the online centre can fine them or require them to close down. If cases are serious, the centre can ask violators to make apologies on their websites and tell all websites to ban the violators from publishing articles during a certain time period.

Wang said the centre can build a database that reveals the blacklist of copyright violators.

He said Internet-based copyright violations are very serious in China.

Wang himself is a victim of copyright infringement. In recent years, Wang found that his articles, especially his research on stealing crimes, have been frequently copied by others.

"Copyright violators sometimes copy paragraphs by paragraphs, or sort out main subjects, without giving original sources," said Wang. "Sometimes they even copy a whole article and only change a new headline."

Last November 15, Wang found that his article about convictions and measurements of penalties on stealing crimes, was published, under the name of Huang Wei, on a website operated by the Supreme People's Procuratorate. Wang sent an email to the website, asking the duplicated article be deleted and also asking for the address or work unit of Huang Wei. But the website has neither deleted the faked article nor given Huang's address.

"Currently, any legal way of protecting the Internet-based works is limited, costly and complicated procedurally. I had to give up as I had no time to persist with the case," Wang sighed.

Copyright owners cannot control the Internet-based media. When finding their articles are plagiarized, most copyright owners usually demand deletion of their works and ask for apologies. They seldom ask for compensation and seldom resort to court with complicated procedures for a simple deletion of an article. If their demand fails,concerned copyright violation can exist for a very long period, said Wang.

Zheng Chengsi, a senior researcher with the Intellectual Property Rights Centre of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said copyright violations through the Internet have gone beyond copying written articles to computer software, music, film and television works.

"If these violations are not curbed in a timely way, our efforts in the past few years to fight against piracy in the market will be in vain," Zheng said. "If we let plagiarism on websites just run its course, domestic software, audio and video industries will be badly influenced."

Zheng said most websites operate by abiding by the Copyright Law. They ask for permission from thousands of copyright owners before publishing relevant works.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english...ent_430627.htm


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Green Light For 2nd Reading Of Software Patent Directive
Robert W. Smith

The European Parliament has dropped its objections to the way the "common position" of the EU Council on the planned Directive on the Patentability of "Computer-implemented Inventions" was adopted. The Legal Committee of the European Parliament had initially insisted on examining the protocols of the decisive meeting of the Council of Ministers at the beginning of March. A number of parliamentarians along with a number of software patent critics had entertained the suspicion that the Luxembourgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, a.k.a the Council of Ministers, had neglected the objections raised by representatives from a number of member states to the highly controversial position, thereby committing a breach of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament. According to a parliamentary spokesman the Legal Committee had now decided, however, no longer to take into account the "small irrelevant errors" committed.

"We are now embarking on the 2nd reading," Eva Lichtenberger, a prominent opponent in the Legal Committee to the decision reached by the Council, declared in a talk with heise online. So as to prepare for the vote in the plenary session of parliament Ms. Lichtenberger, who is an Austrian member of the EU Parliament, has demanded from the Council that the supplementary declarations by the eight "dissidents" in this body of representatives of national governments be made available unabridged and in complete translation to the peoples´ representatives.

The Federal Ministry of Economics and Labor has meanwhile once again defended its assenting to the Council of Ministers´ position, regardless of the fact that in so doing it was unambiguously at variance with a unanimous resolution reached by the Bundestag, Germany's lower chamber of parliament. The purely formal adoption of a text already decided upon was in light of the "multitude of languages in the EU a fairly common step, almost a necessity," a further standard written reply by the spokesman of the ministry, Thomas Zuleger, states in response to questions by enraged software patent opponents. The German software industry had moreover "developed well in a legal framework to date that includes computer program patents," Mr. Zuleger adds in an attempt to calm tempers.

In Brussels meanwhile the battle of the lobbies is again heating up in view of the approaching 2nd reading, which in all likelihood will take place before the summer recess. "The lobbyists are once again creeping through the undergrowth," Ms. Lichtenberger reports. In many instances only "meager arguments" such as the saga of the "small inventor" who needed to be protected, could be heard, she said. "This even though it is well know even from traditional areas of technology that success with patents is confined almost exclusively to large companies," the Green Party member averred.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/58240


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Call Of The Wild For BIOS
John G. Spooner

As computer makers move to embed security features deep within the viscera of PCs, a fight is erupting over the BIOS, a rarely noticed but crucial application that controls a machine before the operating system can take over.

If the operating system is the equivalent of a computer's brain, then the BIOS, or Basic Input Output System, might be compared to the medula oblongata, the place where the brain meets the spine. The most primitive reflexes are governed here, well below the level of conscious thought. Typically, the BIOS announces its presence on start-up by flashing lights and whirring drives as it prepares a machine to receive higher level instructions.

Despite its little-seen role, the BIOS is a vital part of a PC, and its construction and installation are closely guarded by a small number of PC makers, such as Dell, and speciality BIOS programming firms for hire.

Now, some critics are for the first time seeking to force the industry to abandon its hallmark secrecy. As the BIOS becomes more powerful, these critics argue, consumers must be allowed to freely develop their own alternatives to ensure they keep control of their devices--and that means the industry must open up.

"We need a free BIOS, because if we don't control the BIOS we don't control our computers," said Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, a Boston-based organization dedicated to promoting the use of, modification and redistribution of computer programs. "It puts me in an ethically compromised position to have a non-free program in my machine."

The free BIOS initiative comes at a time when the BIOS is undergoing the first major change in its history--a transition from machine code-based BIOS to a new framework dubbed the Extensible Firmware Interface, or EFI. At the same time, efforts to secure PCs through hardware-based defenses are leading critics like Stallman to warn of a pending loss of consumer control over their devices.

The FSF has spearheaded numerous campaigns lobbying for greater consumer control over software. The group now plans to mount a campaign to open up specifications required to write BIOSes. The free BIOS movement that Stallman advocates would let people install, modify and redistribute BIOS software--although not necessarily free of charge. Significantly, that would allow people to circumvent some pending security enhancements, including pending digital-rights management features aiming to prevent unauthorized use of confidential corporate documents and other copyright materials, if they chose to do so.

Given the closely held nature of the BIOS business, Stallman and the FSF are likely to face resistance from hardware and BIOS makers. Many already contend that creating free BIOS software just for the sake of it being free has limited value to computer users. Executives at BIOS makers and Intel argue instead that the tightly controlled BIOS model used today helps maintain PCs' security and stability, as well as foster competition by protecting companies' intellectual property.

"Neither you nor I, as a user of a computer, has any reason to change the BIOS...unless it's broken," said Jonathan Joseph, CEO of BIOS maker Insyde Software. "You're not going to type any faster in (Microsoft) Word because you have a new BIOS. The only thing you hide in BIOS is broken hardware."

Others cite guarding against hackers as a reason to keep BIOS closely held.

"The one thing we have to worry about first is security. What do you think would happen if there was a virus that started reflashing PCs" BIOS software, said Mike Goldgof, senior vice president of marketing at Phoenix Technologies. "If it ever happened on a large scale, I think a lot of PCs would start turning into bricks. What people take for granted...is the reliability of the (BIOS) firmware today."

Intel, for its part, has proposed a middle ground of sorts by open sourcing technology it calls Tiano. Tiano is its implementation of a framework for creating a BIOS replacement, with its own set of drivers to turn on elements of the PC such as the processor, based on EFI. Committing it to open source means others will be able to download it from a Web site called TianoCore.org and use it to make products under the Berkley Software Distribution, or BSD, license. The BSD will allow anyone who uses it to change it and create products out of it. But it does not require they provide the changes they made to others via open source, which provides the means to help companies protect intellectual property.

The effort by Intel creates a framework for a BIOS replacement, and thus could become the basis for free BIOSes. But it leaves the work of writing the code that initializes PC components to the downloader. One licensee likened it to having to build a race car. Intel, he said, provides race rules and the car's frame but leaves licensees to do their own engine, suspension, body work and other elements if they want to enter a race.

'Evil' companies?
Stallman argues instead that Intel is not doing enough and BIOS makers are not needed. Instead, he wants information.

"We're not wanting to do anything with the BIOSes from Phoenix or any of the others," he said. "We're not asking them to do anything, any more than we're asking Microsoft to do anything. These (companies) are evil. You can't expect them to do anything just because you ask them to. Our goal is to escape from them."

Thus, the free BIOS effort, as Stallman sees it happening, will essentially bypass traditional BIOS makers and instead focus on appealing to hardware manufacturers. The campaign will ask those companies, including PC makers and motherboard makers, to make available specifications on their products to allow free software writers to create BIOSes for them.

Stallman also dismisses rebuttals that free BIOS would compromise a PC's security, stability or reveal companies' proprietary chip, motherboard or other product information.

"Each one could be saying, 'If the others knew what we were doing, it would help them tremendously.' It might be true in a few cases, but it's impossible in all cases," Stallman said. "They can't all be sitting on secrets that are beyond the ken of their competitors. They can't all be the ones that know more than everybody else."

Moreover, detailed chip and motherboard information will not be required to create a free BIOS, he said. Instead, free BIOS makers would need access to closely held instructions, such as how a BIOS loads and how it initializes various devices inside a PC.

A free BIOS would also help circumvent, if necessary, digital-rights management, allowing people to run any software they choose on their PCs. In theory, the BIOS can be used to aid security technology, as it initializes hardware such as security chips.

Although BIOS makers and Intel say the BIOS' role is limited to helping get those elements of a system up and running along with the rest of it, a BIOS writer could write around them in order to shut them off, if needed, Stallman said.

"DRM is theft," he said. "The idea of the free software movement is you should be in control of your own computer. Treacherous competing (his term for so-called trusted computing) is a scheme to make sure you're not in control."

Ultimately, the free BIOS would emulate software such as the LinuxBIOS-- a free BIOS that's already in existence for Linux, but does not work with a large number of PCs--on a much broader scale.

"It's generally known that free software is very secure and very reliable," Stallman said. "If there's a bug in the BIOS, the only thing that will happen is some part of your machine won't work and that bug would be quite noticeable and it would be fixed, presuming that the information was available."

But that's the rub. Detailed specifications on cutting-edge PC hardware may be tough to come by. The information given to BIOS makers now is granted under nondisclosure and it's not clear whether companies such as Intel, PC makers like Dell, or motherboard makers would reveal even a little bit of information.

"You'd need to know the confidential information about the chips to write" a free BIOS, Insyde Software's Joseph said. Right now, "that info is only available on old hardware that nobody really cares about anymore."

That, however, won't stop Stallman from asking.
http://news.com.com/Call+of+the+wild...3-5654272.html


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Surveillance

Microsoft System Tracks Pedophiles
Sean Michael Kerner

In January 2003, a Toronto Police detective sent an e-mail to Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates asking for help in the fight against child exploitation.

Today that plea was answered with the official launch of the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS). Development of the CETS system began in 2003 and involved the Toronto Police Service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other global law enforcement bodies.

CETS is a Microsoft-developed, security-enhanced database that works with existing offender tracking systems in various global jurisdictions to allow investigators to tap into the data and make connections that help them more effectively track, locate and ultimately arrest offenders.

CETS is based on Microsoft Windows and Microsoft SQL, though according to Microsoft Canada President David Hemler the system won't force authorities to migrate to Windows and/or other Microsoft products.

"The system was designed to be able to integrate with the offender management systems around the world," Hemler explained in a morning press conference. "We didn't want them to have to migrate off those systems. A lot of design went into the interoperability and open standard of this."

Police services are able to tap into the CETS system via an Internet portal over a secure connection. The system has been in active beta testing since at least October 2004, and the Toronto Police Service together with the RCMP claim it has helped in the arrest of at least four alleged criminals.

CETS was rolled out in Canada but has not yet seen time in the U.S., though the goal is to roll the system out globally. Hemler and RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli stressed that collaboration with the DHS was a critical aspect of the development of CETS. "One of the key design point we had is that we had great collaboration from the department of Homeland Security early on in our process up here to give us input into how they could use and how they might use it and how it might be applicable in the U.S.," Hemler said. "We're actively working with law enforcement agencies within the U.S. to take what we've learned with CETS and make it available there."

To date, Microsoft has donated the software and services behind CETS to the Toronto Police Service and Canadian authorities. Microsoft has also pledged to continue to support it both locally and on a global basis making it available for free to authorities that want to use the service.

"We've given away all of our software and service in the development of CETS, roughly $2.5 million to date; we've additionally committed $2 million around this project office to ensure that deployment within Canada and on a global basis continues and we're committed to give this software away to any police or law enforcement organizations on a worldwide basis that want it," Hemler said.

Microsoft will not directly be making any money from the CETS initiative; rather it is seen as part of the software giant's commitment to being a good citizen.

"There is no additional revenue for Microsoft," Hemler said. "What's in it for Microsoft is a safer Internet upon which we all live and work, which is a huge aspect of what we believe is important in society.

"Frankly it amounts to doing the right thing."
http://internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3496066


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Blue Coat(R) Systems, Inc. , a leading provider of proxy appliances, today announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is conducting a formal, nonpublic investigation of the Company.
Press Release

The Company believes that the Commission is investigating whether certain present or former officers, directors, employees, affiliates or others made intentional or non-intentional selective disclosure of material nonpublic information, traded in the Company’s stock while in possession of such information, or communicated such information to others who thereafter traded in the Company’s stock. The Company is cooperating with the Commission. Although the Company cannot predict the outcome of this investigation, the costs of the investigation or an adverse result could have a material adverse effect on the Company’s results of operations and financial condition.

About Blue Coat Systems

Blue Coat enables organizations to keep "good" employees from doing "bad" things on the Internet. Blue Coat proxy appliances provide visibility and control of Web communications to protect against risks from spyware, Web viruses, inappropriate Web surfing, instant messaging (IM), video streaming and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing -- while actually improving Web performance. Trusted by many of the world’s largest organizations, Blue Coat has shipped more than 20,000 proxy appliances. Blue Coat is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and can be reached at 408-220-2200 or http://www.bluecoat.com/
http://www.mysan.de/article73656.html


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Local News

Speed Fees On Rental Cars Illegal, State High Court Says
Lynne Tuohy

James Turner was on vacation in Virginia when he learned his bank account had been drained and his debit card was no good. Sean Dickerson had his credit card rejected at a store because he had exceeded his credit limit.

What they had in common was renting the same minivan from the same New Haven-based rental agency, Acme Auto. And both became unwitting victims of what the state Supreme Court agreed Monday was an illegal penalty of $150 automatically charged against their credit and debit cards for driving that rental vehicle over 79 mph.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the findings of the state Department of Consumer Protection that the car agency, owned by American Car Rental Inc., could not justify the $150 penalty - sometimes levied multiple times against the same driver - as legitimate damages for the additional wear and tear high speeds cause on the car.

"The $150 collected by [American Rental] was more than 400 times the potential damage incurred," Justice David M. Borden wrote. "Using the [consumer department] hearing officer's calculation, a customer would have to travel more than 1,070 miles at high speeds, without decelerating below 80 miles per hour, to cause $150 of excess wear on the vehicle."

The global position systems installed in all of Acme's rental cars were programmed to fax the agency notice any time a car was driven at 80 mph or more for two minutes or longer. For each occurrence, the car agency charged the patron $150, usually levied immediately against whatever credit or debit card they had used to secure the rental.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who represents the consumer protection department, lauded the high court's ruling.

"You cannot secretly track drivers' speeds and gouge them under the guise of safety or vehicle expense," Blumenthal said. "No logic or law warrants a private company ambushing consumers with a $150 fee for exceeding a random speed limit."

Attorney Richard Marquette, who represents American Car Rental, did not return calls seeking comment Monday.

Court documents indicate Acme began using GPS to track speeding by drivers of its rental cars in October 2000. From October to December of 2000, those who rented cars in 32 of 400 contracts written were charged the speeding fee. In all, 76 Acme patrons paid in excess of $22,000 in fees that ranged from $150 to $750 per driver.

Several of those drivers who were assessed the penalty fee challenged not only its amount, but the lack of notice given by the rental agency that the global positioning systems would be used to monitor speed and what penalties would attach.

Several of the contracts in evidence do make reference to fee, but the reference is in the midst of a paragraph about accident reports. The sentence states, "Vehicles driven in excess of the posted speed limit will be charged $150 per occurrence."

The Supreme Court in a footnote to Monday's ruling stated it did not need to reach the issue of whether the notice to patrons was adequate, because it had deemed the fee to be an illegal penalty.

"The state can't condone speeding, but it condemns money-making schemes disguised as safety measures," Blumenthal said.
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc...,6212252.story
















Until next week,

- js.














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