[JackSpratts]

Vodafone Gets Restraining Order On T-Mobile's iPhone Sales
Stefan Mechnig

The German unit of Vodafone Group PLC has obtained a restraining order against Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile unit prohibiting the German telecommunications giant from selling Apple Inc.'s iPhone in Germany.

The restraining order was issued by a regional court in Hamburg Monday, a Vodafone Deutschland spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires.

Vodafone is questioning Deutsche Telekom's iPhone sales practices, the spokesman said. Deutsche Telekom is marketing the iPhone exclusively in Germany.

Specifically, Vodafone is questioning the iPhone's exclusive use in T-Mobile's network and the use of the device being limited to certain fees within T- Mobile's subscription offerings.

Vodafone isn't generally opposed to T-Mobile's exclusivity contract with Apple, but wants to have these new sales practices examined, the spokesman said. The restraining order doesn't aim at a total sales stop, he added.

A spokesman for T-Mobile Monday confirmed the restraining order has been issued, adding that the company is examining the issue. So far, it is too early to comment on possible consequences for the company, he said.

A spokesman for the Hamburg-based court wasn't immediately available to comment.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/...2_FORTUNE5.htm





T-Mobile Changes IPhone Sale Terms After Court Ruling
Kenneth Wong

Deutsche Telekom AG, whose exclusive rights for Apple Inc.'s iPhone in Germany are contested by Vodafone Group Plc, said it will change some terms and let rival networks operate the handset.

Deutsche Telekom will offer the device for 999 euros ($1,477) without requiring a two-year exclusive contract with its T-Mobile unit, T-Mobile spokesman Alexander von Schmettow said by phone today. The original 399-euro offer with a binding contract remains valid, he said.

T-Mobile backed down after Newbury, England-based Vodafone, the world's largest wireless company, won a court injunction that bans T-Mobile from selling the iPhone with contracts or the so-called ``SIM-lock'' that prevents the phone from working on another network. In France, laws stop France Telecom SA's Orange unit from selling the device with similar restrictions.

``How many people are going to spend 999 euros on a phone?'' said Carolina Milanesi, a research director at Gartner Inc., a research firm in Stamford, Connecticut. ``People are not used to spending that kind of money. In every single country now, people are going to look at the possibility of getting around the exclusivity issue.''

Unlocking Phones

German customers who bought the combination phone and iPod digital music player after Nov. 19, when the Hamburg court ruling took effect, can have their phones ``unlocked'' to work with another network operator, T-Mobile said in an e-mailed statement.

``Once the SIM-Lock is removed, the phone can be used with another network, although many of the functions will only be available to T-Mobile customers with a complete tariff package,'' the company said.

These features include Web-surfing on T-Mobile's network of 8,000 WiFi access points, and ``visual voicemail'' that allows users to call up messages without listening to previous ones. Monthly contracts range from 49 euros to 89 euros. The cheapest package includes 100 minutes of calling time and 40 text messages.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined to comment on T-Mobile's new offer. Vodafone spokesman Jens Kuerten called the additional 600 euros for an iPhone without a contract a ``penalty'' for German customers. ``We have to look into the details of their offer now and the possibility of customers unlocking the iPhone,'' Kuerten said by phone.

T-Mobile started selling the device on Nov. 9. The Bonn- based company has more than 34 million customers in Germany, Europe's largest wireless market.

France Telecom, Telefonica

T-Mobile sold more than 10,000 iPhone contracts on the first day, in what Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Officer Rene Obermann last week called a ``promising start.''

In the U.K., Telefonica SA's O2 division won exclusive right to operate the iPhone. It started selling the device on Nov. 9 for 269 pounds ($553) with a mandatory 18-month contract. Orange will sell the handset in France starting Nov. 29. It hasn't said how much it will charge.

AT&T Inc. is the exclusive distributor of Cupertino, California-based Apple's iPhone in the U.S. Software locks the device to AT&T's service. To quash unauthorized use, Apple released an iPhone software update in September that rendered some unlocked devices inoperable.

Deutsche Telekom shares fell 14 cents, or 0.9 percent, to 15.10 euros on the Frankfurt exchange. Vodafone dropped 9.1 pence, or 4.7 percent, to 183.4 pence in London. Apple fell $2.47, or 1.5 percent, to $166.33 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading at 11:48 a.m. in New York.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...yr4&refer=home





Technology: Hacking the iPhone for Espionage

No, it's not enough that you can hack your iPhone to operate on the T-Mobile network, or launch third-party applications, or play games. No, someone had to go and demonstrate how you can -- quite easily, with some know-how -- turn an iPhone, or any smartphone, into a full-blown spy gadget. Go warm up your missile-laden Aston Martin, and then watch security expert Rik Farrow show you how it's done:

I have an iPhone. I've also owned BlackBerrys, Treos, and even an awesome little Palm-based thing called the Samsung i500 that never quite caught on. But never once did it occur to me that someone could use it to record the mundane details of my daily existence. And now that it does occur to me, courtesy of Rik Farrow, I have one thing to say. This is pretty awesome.

I know, I know -- the upstanding thing to do is abjure piracy and hacking. But to acknowledge that the device in my pocket is capable of spying on me is also a tacit acknowledgment that the device in my pocket is very, very close to being a full-blown personal computer. Watch as Rik penetrates the iPhone; when he first logs in, the Terminal shows him system information for the device. Just when you notice the screen describing the iPhone's kernel, Rik reminds us that the commands he's using are the same for any Unix, Linux, or Mac OS X-based computer. This thing, like the entire generation of smartphones it accompanies, are increasingly based on viable, robust platforms, rather than piddling, proprietary software.

Would it be better if they were ironclad? Sure, but nothing is. Just as the utility of the Internet overshadows the nuisance of viruses, the upward march of the smartphone is a worthy cause, despite its occasional vulnerabilities. The solution, of course, to the immutable personal computing device: awareness. If you know not to click on that suspicious e-mail attachment from a Zimbabwean Prince, the chances of your computer (and now, your iPhone) coming down with a flu are greatly reduced. I, for one, will put my idiocy to the test, eager to see what convenience -- and perhaps, scandal -- the next generation of phones can bring me.
http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives...espionage.html





EXCLUSIVE: Apple Secretly Tracking iPhone IMEI and Usage (with Proof)
Dan

As I sit here applying a new layer of Reynolds tin foil to my international hat of conspiracy, its been proven that Apple tracks iPhone usage and tracks IEMI numbers of all their iPhones worldwide. Hidden in the code of the “Stocks” and “Weather” widgets is a string that sends the IMEI of your phone to a specialized URL that Apple collects.

When the widgets perform a query an IMEI is handed off to Apple’s servers:

dgw?imei=%@&apptype=finance

This let[s] Apple knows which app you are using when connecting with your iPhone. Obviously, they know the IP address you were using, the stocks companies you are interested [in], and so they can track down their customers all around the world. This also proves that there are probably other apps that do the same. Weather.app is also acting the same way. (Offset 13AE0)

Any attempts to modify the URL to exclude the IMEI information will not allow you to retrieve any information in the “Stocks” and “Weather” apps. It is still unknown if any other applications leak information to Apple HQ.

And did you know you actually consented to this gross invasion of privacy?

When you interact with Apple, we may collect personal information relevant to the situation, such as your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, and contact preferences; your credit card information and information about the Apple products you own, such as their serial numbers and date of purchase; and information relating to a support or service issue.

Obviously “Weather” is kinda benign, but Apple knowing your Stock habits, isn’t that a little personal? What’s next, they read your email too? Now who thinks I’m crazy?
http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/11/12686/





iPhone Doesn't Send IMEI Information to Apple

OK, you can take your tinfoil hats off now. German site Heise Online has tested Hackint0sh user XianLi's claims about the iPhone sending its IMEI to Apple while accessing the web. According to Heise and other sources, this is not true:

While the code says "IMEI," which stands for International Mobile Equipment Identity, it seems that the actual IMEI is not transmitted. Using a sniffer, Heise says they were able to get the information that the applications are actually sending. The strings aren't the same as the test iPhone's IMEI and, in fact, each application sends its own unique code.

According to further testing by Rene at blog docpool, these IDs are identical in all iPhones he has tried. The most plausible explanation: the codes could be just application identifiers. Rumor smashed. Mystery solved. Time to get a bourbon at Big Joe's.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/iphone-do...ple-324640.php





Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request

Secret warrants granted without probable cause
Ellen Nakashima

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

Such requests run counter to the Justice Department's internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas. The requests and orders are sealed at the government's request, so it is difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied.

The issue is taking on greater relevance as wireless carriers are racing to offer sleek services that allow cellphone users to know with the touch of a button where their friends or families are. The companies are hoping to recoup investments they have made to meet a federal mandate to provide enhanced 911 (E911) location tracking. Sprint Nextel, for instance, boasts that its "loopt" service even sends an alert when a friend is near, "putting an end to missed connections in the mall, at the movies or around town."

With Verizon's Chaperone service, parents can set up a "geofence" around, say, a few city blocks and receive an automatic text message if their child, holding the cellphone, travels outside that area.

"Most people don't realize it, but they're carrying a tracking device in their pocket," said Kevin Bankston of the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Cellphones can reveal very precise information about your location, and yet legal protections are very much up in the air."

In a stinging opinion this month, a federal judge in Texas denied a request by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent for data that would identify a drug trafficker's phone location by using the carrier's E911 tracking capability. E911 tracking systems read signals sent to satellites from a phone's Global Positioning System (GPS) chip or triangulated radio signals sent from phones to cell towers. Magistrate Judge Brian L. Owsley, of the Corpus Christi division of the Southern District of Texas, said the agent's affidavit failed to focus on "specifics necessary to establish probable cause, such as relevant dates, names and places."

Owsley decided to publish his opinion, which explained that the agent failed to provide "sufficient specific information to support the assertion" that the phone was being used in "criminal" activity. Instead, Owsley wrote, the agent simply alleged that the subject trafficked in narcotics and used the phone to do so. The agent stated that the DEA had " 'identified' or 'determined' certain matters," Owsley wrote, but "these identifications, determinations or revelations are not facts, but simply conclusions by the agency."

Instead of seeking warrants based on probable cause, some federal prosecutors are applying for orders based on a standard lower than probable cause derived from two statutes: the Stored Communications Act and the Pen Register Statute, according to judges and industry lawyers. The orders are typically issued by magistrate judges in U.S. district courts, who often handle applications for search warrants.

In one case last month in a southwestern state, an FBI agent obtained precise location data with a court order based on the lower standard, citing "specific and articulable facts" showing reasonable grounds to believe the data are "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation," said Al Gidari, a partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle, who reviews data requests for carriers.

Another magistrate judge, who has denied about a dozen such requests in the past six months, said some agents attach affidavits to their applications that merely assert that the evidence offered is "consistent with the probable cause standard" of Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The judge spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"Law enforcement routinely now requests carriers to continuously 'ping' wireless devices of suspects to locate them when a call is not being made . . . so law enforcement can triangulate the precise location of a device and [seek] the location of all associates communicating with a target," wrote Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA -- the Wireless Association, in a July comment to the Federal Communications Commission. He said the "lack of a consistent legal standard for tracking a user's location has made it difficult for carriers to comply" with law enforcement agencies' demands.

Gidari, who also represents CTIA, said he has never seen such a request that was based on probable cause.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said field attorneys should follow the department's policy. "We strongly recommend that prosecutors in the field obtain a warrant based on probable cause" to get location data "in a private area not accessible to the public," he said. "When we become aware of situations where this has not occurred, we contact the field office and discuss the matter."

The phone data can home in on a target to within about 30 feet, experts said.

Federal agents used exact real-time data in October 2006 to track a serial killer in Florida who was linked to at least six murders in four states, including that of a University of Virginia graduate student, whose body was found along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The killer died in a police shooting in Florida as he was attempting to flee.

"Law enforcement has absolutely no interest in tracking the locations of law-abiding citizens. None whatsoever," Boyd said. "What we're doing is going through the courts to lawfully obtain data that will help us locate criminal targets, sometimes in cases where lives are literally hanging in the balance, such as a child abduction or serial murderer on the loose."

In many cases, orders are being issued for cell-tower site data, which are less precise than the data derived from E911 signals. While the E911 technology could possibly tell officers what building a suspect was in, cell-tower site data give an area that could range from about three to 300 square miles.

Since 2005, federal magistrate judges in at least 17 cases have denied federal requests for the less-precise cellphone tracking data absent a demonstration of probable cause that a crime is being committed. Some went out of their way to issue published opinions in these otherwise sealed cases.

"Permitting surreptitious conversion of a cellphone into a tracking device without probable cause raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns especially when the phone is in a house or other place where privacy is reasonably expected," said Judge Stephen William Smith of the Southern District of Texas, whose 2005 opinion on the matter was among the first published.

But judges in a majority of districts have ruled otherwise on this issue, Boyd said. Shortly after Smith issued his decision, a magistrate judge in the same district approved a federal request for cell-tower data without requiring probable cause. And in December 2005, Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein of the Southern District of New York, approving a request for cell-site data, wrote that because the government did not install the "tracking device" and the user chose to carry the phone and permit transmission of its information to a carrier, no warrant was needed.

These judges are issuing orders based on the lower standard, requiring a showing of "specific and articulable facts" showing reasonable grounds to believe the data will be "relevant and material" to a criminal investigation.

Boyd said the government believes this standard is sufficient for cell-site data. "This type of location information, which even in the best case only narrows a suspect's location to an area of several city blocks, is routinely generated, used and retained by wireless carriers in the normal course of business," he said.

The trend's secrecy is troubling, privacy advocates said. No government body tracks the number of cellphone location orders sought or obtained. Congressional oversight in this area is lacking, they said. And precise location data will be easier to get if the Federal Communication Commission adopts a Justice Department proposal to make the most detailed GPS data available automatically.

Often, Gidari said, federal agents tell a carrier they need real-time tracking data in an emergency but fail to follow up with the required court approval. Justice Department officials said to the best of their knowledge, agents are obtaining court approval unless the carriersprovide the data voluntarily.

To guard against abuse, Congress should require comprehensive reporting to the court and to Congress about how and how often the emergency authority is used, said John Morris, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews





Protecting IM From Big Brother
holden

Ian Goldberg, leading security researcher, professor at the University of Waterloo, and co-creator of the Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) protocol recently gave a talk on protecting your IM conversations. He discusses OTR and its importance in today's world of warrant-less wire tapping. OTR users benefit from being able to have truly private conversations over IM by using encryption to obtain authentication, deniability, and perfect forward secrecy, while working within their existing IM infrastructure. With the recent NSA wiretapping activities and increasing Big Brother presence, security and OTR are increasingly important. An avi of the talk is available by http as well as by bittorrent and a bunch of other formats.
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/11/23/1324201.shtml





Lose an Unencrypted Laptop and 'Face Criminal Action'

Britain's data protection commissioner finally calls for some teeth
Tash Shifrin

The data protection watchdog has called for criminal action against those who lose individuals’ personal data on unencrypted laptop computers.

Information commissioner Richard Thomas and his deputy, David Smith, revealed to members of the House of Lords they had called on the Ministry of Justice to make it a criminal offence “for those who knowingly and recklessly flout data protection principles” where there are serious consequences.

Smith told the Lords constitution committee that an example might be a doctor leaving a laptop containing personal details of patients in a car. It was “hard to say [this was] anything other than criminal negligence”, he said.

At present, the Information Commissioner’s Office is largely toothless in the face of serious data security breaches. In March, the watchdog issued a warning – largely a slap on the wrist – to 11 banks that dumped customer data in outside rubbish bins.

But the ICO officials told the Lords committee that stronger measures were needed and that “a blatant breach” of data protection laws should attract a criminal penalty.

Committee members pressed the ICO team, with one peer suggesting that GPs sometimes had to carry patients’ data with them and the suggestion that there should be a criminal penalty for loss of a laptop holding such information was “out of proportion”.

Thomas replied that criminal sanctions should be used where a laptop had “a lot of personal information that hasn’t been taken care of and hasn’t been encrypted”. Doctors and others carrying sensitive information on portable devices “should know the basics of encryption”, he told the committee.

The ICO was not seeking to criminalise doctors for a single incident, but where there was “gross negligence”, Thomas said.

HM Revenue and Customs is among the organisations that have recently suffered high profile data security breaches as a result of laptops being lost or stolen. The HMRC laptop containing taxpayer data was encrypted – but other organisations have often failed to encrypt their machines.

Smith also told the Lords that the watchdog body was seeking powers to inspect organisations to check whether they were applying data protection laws. The ICO was “almost unique” in not having powers to check that regulations were being put into practice, he said.

The ICO has previously put the case for inspection powers to the Commons home affairs committee.
http://www.computerworlduk.com/manag...fm?newsid=6241





Darling Admits 25m Records Lost
BBC

Alistair Darling has blamed mistakes by junior officials at HM Revenue and Customs after details of 25 million child benefit recipients were lost.

The Chancellor said information, including bank details of 7m families, had been sent on discs to the National Audit office by unrecorded delivery.

The discs had never arrived at their destination, Mr Darling told MPs.

He apologised for what he said was "an extremely serious failure" but insisted people were not at risk from ID fraud.

The records include parents' and children's names, addresses, dates of birth, child benefit and national insurance numbers and in some cases, bank or building society details.

He said the missing data was not enough to access accounts on its own but anyone who thought they had been the victim of fraud would be reimbursed by the banks.

He said a police investigation had been launched into what he described as a "deeply regrettable incident," which is the latest and most serious in a string of mistakes with data at Revenue and Customs.

'Not recorded'

The chairman of Revenue and Customs, Paul Gray, resigned earlier after the incident emerged.

Briefing MPs on the incident, Mr Darling said the information had been transferred at a junior level in breach of HMRC's procedures.

"Contrary to all HMRC standing proceedures two password protected discs containing a full copy of HMRC's entire data in relation to the payment of child benefit was sent to the National Audit Office by HMRC's internal postal system operated by the courier TNT.

"The package was not recorded or registered."

"Mr Speaker, it appears that the data has failed to reach the addressee at the NAO.

"Mr Speaker I also have to tell the house that on finding that the package had not arrived at the NAO a further copy of this data was sent - this time by registered post which did arrive at the NAO However, again HMRC should never have let this happen."

'Get a grip'

The data was sent on October 18 and senior management at HMRC were told it was missing on November 8 and the Chancellor on November 10, said Mr Darling.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said the government needed to "get a grip" and deliver a basic level of competence.

He said it was the "final blow for the ambitions of this government to create a national ID database" as "they simply can not be trusted with people's personal information".

Lib Dem acting leader Vince Cable said it was now the Treasury and not the Home Office that was "not fit for purpose".

He asked why the information had been sent on discs through the internal mail when it should have been sent electronically.

'Searching questions'

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said: "This is an extremely serious and disturbing security breach. This is not the first time that we have been made aware of breaches at the HM Revenue and Customs - we are already investigating two other breaches.

"Incidents like these illustrate that any system is only as good as its weakest link. The alarm bells must now ring in every organisation about the risks of not protecting people's personal information properly.

"As I highlighted earlier this year, it is imperative that organisations earn public trust and confidence by addressing security and other data protection safeguards with the utmost vigour."

Mr Thomas welcomed the Chancellor's announcement of an independent review of the incident by Kieran Poynter of PricewaterhouseCoopers and said he would decide on further action once he has received the report.

"Searching questions need to be answered about systems, procedures and human error inside both HMRC and NAO," said Mr Thomas.

The prime minister's official spokeswoman said Gordon Brown has "full confidence" in Mr Darling. She added that Mr Darling has not offered to resign.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7103566.stm





Hackers Use Banner Ads on Major Sites to Hijack Your PC
Betsy Schiffman

The worst-case scenario used to be that online ads are pesky, memory-draining distractions. But a new batch of banner ads is much more sinister: They hijack personal computers and bully users until they agree to buy antivirus software.

And the ads do their dirty work even if you don't click on them.

The malware-spiked ads have been spotted on various legitimate websites, ranging from the British magazine The Economist to baseball's MLB.com to the Canada.com news portal. Hackers are using deceptive practices and tricky Flash programming to get their ads onto legitimate sites by way of DoubleClick's DART program. Web publishers use the DoubleClick-hosted platform to manage advertising inventory.

If you've seen any of the ads, you may have experienced something like this: You're on a legitimate site. Your browser window closes down. A new browser window comes up, redirecting you to an antivirus site, while a dialog box comes up telling you that your computer is infected and that your hard drive is being scanned. The malware tries to download software to your computer and scans your hard drive again. (Here's a video demonstration of the rogue ads.)

The malware looks like a ordinary Flash file, with its redirect function encrypted, so that when publishers upload it, the malware is not detectable. Once deployed on a site, the Flash file launches the malicious redirects, which appear to be triggered at preset times or at selected Web domains.

John Mark Schofield, a Los Angeles IT director, encountered the ads on Canada.com. He thinks that because he was on a Mac OS computer, the damage wasn't so severe. "My feeling is that it would have caused me a lot more grief if I had been on a Windows computer: It may have installed the malware. Instead, it took over my browser, which I just fixed by exiting Firefox," Schofield says.

DoubleClick acknowledges the malware is out there, and says it has implemented a new security-monitoring system that has thus far captured and disabled a hundred ads.

"This is an industry-wide challenge. Unfortunately, there are bad actors who misrepresent themselves and purchase advertising as an avenue to distribute malware. This has the potential to affect all businesses and consumers in the online environment," says Sean Harvey, senior product manager at DoubleClick DART.

Publishers may be somewhat culpable, too. The distributor of the malware-infected ads is believed to be AdTraff, an online-marketing company with reported ties to the Russian Business Network, a secretive internet service provider that, security firms say, hosts some of the internet's most egregious scams. AdTraff is believed to have posed as a legitimate advertiser, using its partners as references. The ads were almost always paid for with credit cards or wire transfers, according to Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Software, a provider of security software.

"The AdTraff guys probably register at a bunch of sites -- maybe more than 300. They say they're advertisers. They get the sales guys at the end of the quarter when they're anxious to take the deal. (AdTraff) wires the cash, and they buy the inventory on the site," Eckelberry says.

AdTraff could not be reached for comment. The company lists a phone number in Germany which leads to a generic voicemail box.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/n...11/doubleclick





Riding Shotgun With Google Street View’s Revolutionary Camera

The 11-lens, softball-size, video game-style gadget that had privacy advocates shifting in their seats turns out to be changing how users interact with video and the commercial realms. Now it’s got everyone from the military to the NBA ready to remap the world, and we get hands-on in a PM exclusive.
Wayne Ma

For the past seven months, Kevin Nanzer has been on the road almost nonstop, living in and out of motel rooms and corporate apartments. He’s crisscrossed the country, living for weeks at a time in cities like Austin, Texas, Oklahoma City, Okla., Raleigh, N.C., and Albany, N.Y.

Nanzer, 23, is a geoimmersive data producer for Immersive Media, a Canadian company that specializes in the fast-growing world of “spherical video”—aka mapping the world for Google and beyond. For 5 hours each day (the most he can film because of the sun’s angle to the Earth), Nanzer and a co-worker drive anywhere from 80 to 200 miles through a major city, capturing video and location data of every single street, bridge and highway.

“By the end, you’ll get to know the city better than the one you grew up in,” he says. “You can call me if you’re lost in Oklahoma City, and I can tell you how to get somewhere. I know all the streets.”

On this particular day, I’m sitting shotgun with Nanzer for a sneak peak at the 360-degree, roof-mounted data collection for topography 2.0. He typically wouldn’t shoot footage on a rainy Manhattan day like this, because raindrops obscure the camera’s 11 image-sensing lenses. And while the several blocks we covered looked as crystal clear as they do on the Google site (click here to play around with our test-drive footage), I’m not sure I could have taken it much longer anyway: Immersive uses a Volkswagen Beetle because of its small footprint and low ride, but that makes for one hell of a cramped trip. With all the equipment in the backseat, this tricked-out Bug fits just two people up front, where a laptop already takes up most of the dash on the passenger side, leaving me barely enough room to turn on and hold my camcorder steady.

By far the company’s most recognizable client, Google uses screen shots of Immersive’s video footage for Google Maps Street View, a Web application that adds a level of interaction beyond the landmarks and driving directions that accompany most online maps. Users can zoom in on New York City, for example, to view panoramic shots of everything from Times Square and ground zero to their favorite restaurants and bars. The savviest users can even make out people and faces in some of these photos—an aspect that has generated heated debate among privacy advocates.

This interactivity, however, will only increase over time. One day, users might be able to go beyond snapshots to cars whizzing by along the Golden Gate Bridge or runners training for a marathon in Central Park. Strapped up with a virtual reality-style headset a few days earlier, I moved my head around a Humvee to see a moving battlefield simulation—evidence of Immersive’s full-motion video capabilities that, with some effort, can even stream live footage.

Advances at Immersive and other mapping startups are quickly changing the basic relationship between filmmakers and photographers and their audiences. Rather than present a specific perspective to viewers, Immersive’s equipment puts them in an environment where they can freely explore. Petroleum engineers can watch aerial footage of pipelines from the comfort of offices rather than pile into expensive helicopters. In scenarios such as this, viewers gain back control of what they can and cannot watch.

“There’s more to life than where the camera operator tells you where to see,” says Tom McGovern, director of federal programs for Immersive Media. “And the more people use [the technology], the more they’ll expect it.”

At the heart of Immersive’s services for Google and a number of other contractors is the Dodeca 2360, a softball-size camera that records from nearly a dozen different angles at 30 frames per second. Later, photos can be extracted and stitched together to form pictures with a resolution of 2400 by 1200 pixel—a frame “bigger than any high-definition image,” says its inventor and chief technology officer, David McCutchen.

But at $45,000 for the camera, twice that with mounts and a base unit that processes images in real time, plus anywhere from $125 to $700 per mile of video footage, the rig doesn’t come cheap. That’s probably why just six two-man teams make up Immersive’s geodata services, using an off-the-shelf Logitech video-game controller to operate the camera, which is mounted above each VW—not that they haven’t hoisted it on backpacks for shots of the Grand Canyon and the Everglades.

So far Immersive’s cameras have logged more than 50,000 miles across the United States, providing Google with images for 13 of the 15 cities that offer Street View (the Web giant did San Francisco and Los Angeles in-house). “Our goal with Street View is to provide users with a rich, immersive browsing experience,” insists Megan Quinn, a Google spokesperson. Going forward, the Google Maps team hopes to make the new feature available in as many cities as possible. “Our users have told us that this ability to view a location as if they were actually there helps them better understand and find information about places they live and visit,” Quinn continues.

But the Dodeca 2360 has been used elsewhere. One unit went underwater to survey coral reefs in Fiji for the Planetary Coral Reef Foundation. For George Bush’s 2001 inauguration, the U.S. Capitol Police took it for security alongside the presidential motorcade. Adidas recently used one to follow David Beckham’s soccer debut in Los Angeles, and the U.S. Army used the camera on a new tactical truck.

While Immersive is ahead of the field with its tech and early commercial success, it’s far from the only company collecting video and positioning data. Similar mapping outfits like Tele Atlas use custom vans to collect petabytes (that’s a million gigabytes) of geospatial information about cities for navigational purposes, but only one or two companies also record video of locations. “People are seeing the value of it,” says Edward Jurkevics, a geospatial businesses analyst for Chesapeake Analytics. “And the space is heating up.”

Microsoft and Google, with their respective mapping applications, might eventually want to reconstruct whole 3D worlds where users can walk into highly detailed rooms or even retail shops. A company could go into these worlds and update its virtual street signs or storefronts, Jurkevics says. “The ‘wow’ is going to be when you can actually go on the Internet, pick which building you’re going to and do a virtual drive-by,” he promises. “It’s going to be revolutionary in the way we do business.”

From Hollywood marketing to military training, the potential for spherical video and geodata maps is only increasing. Immersive, after inking deals with Adidas and the NBA to offer promotional Web videos, is now banking on the appeal of 360-degree exploration in more commercial fields. “We’re trying to drive consumer behavior through experiential marketing,” Immersive’s McGovern says. “There might be a significant event happening, like a concert or a sports event, and instead of just a snippet or picture of it, we can extend the experience by capturing it in an immersive camera and sharing that with people after the event.”
http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...y/4232286.html





Maxtor Comes with Fire and Waterproof Hard Disk

What do you get when you mix water with a hard disk? What about a hard disk and fire? Well? Right, a lot of problems! Seagate and a company named Sentry also found this out and came up with a solution. Sentry is specialized in residential and small office security-storage containers and Seagate is known for their hard disks (also sold by the Maxtor brand name).

When you happen to get a virus or fatal crash Maxtor's has SafetyDrill software available, a new bare metal system restore feature, allows for a nearly instantaneous restoration of an entire computer system including applications and setting as well as restoration of the operating system, to ensure access to important files even in a time of crisis.

The hard drive is protected by a Sentry Waterproof enclosure that protects data from fire and water. It is ETL verified for fire protection for 30 minutes up to 1550 degrees F and ETL verified waterproof -- meaning it is fully submersible for up to 24 hours.

You want it, you need it? The drives are available in 160GB with a MSPR $319.99 and in 80GB, MSRP $259.99.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/Maxtor-...hard-disk.html





Western Digital Launches Power-Efficient Disk Drives

Suppliers of data center products are endorsing the company's new power-efficient line of "green" drives
Chris Mellor

Western Digital Corp. has announced new hard drives that use up to 40% less power than competing drives.

The serial ATA drives are part of a new GreenPower-branded line (RE2-GP), with 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities. They use on average 4 to 5 watts less than similar-size drives from Hitachi GST, Fujitsu, Seagate and other major suppliers.

Western Digital said four branded technologies boost the power efficiency of the new drives:

• IntelliPower balances spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms to avoid always spinning at top speed. And less current is used during start-up, which allows more drives to spin up simultaneously, resulting in faster system readiness.
• IntelliSeek optimizes seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.
• IntelliPark automatically unloads the recording heads during idle mode to reduce aerodynamic drag and disables read/write channel electronics.
• Active Power Management monitors a drive's workload and automatically puts the drive in idle mode whenever possible to reduce unnecessary power consumption. Drive recovery time from idle mode is less than one second.

Western Digital said that large data centers could save up to $100,000 annually if they replaced 10,000 standard drives with GreenPower drives. At a PC level, users might save $10 a year per drive.

Tom McDorman, general manager of Western Digital's enterprise business unit, said the new enterprise line of hard drives allows users to "expand their storage needs, reduce their total cost of ownership and improve the environment all at the same time."

Data center suppliers already selling more power-efficient products were quick to endorse Western Digital's new line.

Tony Gaughan, Rackable Systems Inc.'s chief products officer, said Western Digital's new RE2-GP hard drives "are an excellent choice for customers deploying Rackable Systems' newest generation of Eco-Logical storage systems, enabling even greater efficiency and performance."

David Driggers, Verari Systems Inc.'s chief technology officer, said, "By utilizing [Western Digital's latest] GreenPower technology, Verari is able to provide enterprise customers with a solution that delivers one of the most energy-efficient systems available today."

The new drives are available from Western Digital's online store, with suggested retail prices of $149.99, $249.99 and $349.99 for the 500GB, 750GB and 1TB drives, respectively.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...&intsrc=kc_top





Videotape Producers Fined for Price Fixing
Leo Cendrowicz

European television stations and TV producers could see their expenses slashed after Sony and two other Japanese producers of videotape were hits with fines totaling nearly AC;75 million ($109.8 million) for price fixing.

The European Commission said the Sony, Fujifilm and Hitachi Maxell -- who jointly account for more than 85% of the videotape market -- managed to raise or otherwise control prices through a series of regular meetings and other illicit contacts between 1999 and 2002.

"This decision sends two warnings to companies engaging in cartel activities," EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said. "First, the commission can prosecute cartels effectively, even without prompts from immunity applicants, and second, obstructing a commission antitrust investigation leads to severe penalties."

The cartel covered the two most popular professional videotape formats at the time, Betacam SP and Digital Betacam. The commission said that, at the height of the cartel's activities, 2001, the EU videotape market had sales of about AC;115 million, but this would have been grossly inflated by the price fixing.

The commission fined Sony AC;47.2 million ($69.2 million), Fujifilm AC;13.2 million ($19.3 million) and Hitachi Maxell AC;14.4 million ($21.1 million).

It raised the fine against Sony, the world's second-largest maker of consumer electronics, by 30% because of deliberate obstruction -- one staffer refused to answer questions during a 2002 raid and another shredded documents. It was the largest percentage increase for impeding a cartel probe. "Obstructing the commission's antitrust investigation leads to severe penalties," Kroes said.

By contrast, Fuji's and Maxell's fines were cut by 40% and 20% respectively because they co-operated with investigators.

The case is the first under new guidelines that allow the commission to raise fines based on the size of the market and the length of the violation. The EU has levied a record AC;2.6 billion ($3.9 billion) in penalties in cartel cases so far this year, compared with AC;1.9 billion ($2.7 billion) in 2006.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...3e5eeb3698409e





New Bribery Allegation Roils Samsung
Choe Sang-Hun

Samsung, which has vigorously denied bribery charges in a snowballing corruption scandal, sustained another blow to its image on Monday when a former legal adviser to President Roh Moo-hyun said the company had once offered him a cash bribe.

The former aide, Lee Yong-chul, who also served as a presidential monitor against corruption, said that the money — 5 million won ($5,445) — was delivered to him in January 2004 as a holiday gift from a Samsung Electronics executive, but that he immediately returned it.

Before sending it back, Mr. Lee said, he took pictures of the cash package, which were released to the news media on Monday.

“I was outraged by Samsung’s brazenness, by its attempt to bribe a presidential aide in charge of fighting corruption,” Mr. Lee said in a written statement released at a news conference by a civic organization. He did not attend the event.

James Chung, a spokesman for Samsung Electronics, said, “We are trying to find out the facts around these allegations.”

Samsung Electronics is the mainstay of the 59-subsidiary Samsung conglomerate and a world leader in computer chips, flat-panel television screens and cellphones.

Mr. Lee’s accusation appeared to support recent assertions by a former chief lawyer at Samsung, Kim Yong-chul, that the conglomerate had run a vast network that bribed officials, prosecutors, tax collectors, journalists and scholars on behalf of Samsung’s chairman, Lee Kun-hee.

Prosecutors are investigating Mr. Kim’s accusations, and political parties have introduced legislation that would establish an independent counsel.

Opposition political parties say an independent prosecutor is needed because Mr. Kim identified the president’s new chief prosecutor, Lim Chai-jin, as one of many prosecutors to have received bribes from Samsung. Mr. Lim denied the assertion.

President Roh’s office dismissed the call for an independent counsel as an election-year political maneuver. The South Korean presidential election is scheduled on Dec. 19.

As the scandal expanded, the chairman, Lee Kun-hee, was absent Monday from a ceremony commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death of his father, Lee Byung-chul, Samsung’s founder. Company officials cited a “serious cold and illness from fatigue.”

Lee Yong-chul, the former presidential aide, now a partner at a law firm in Seoul, issued his statement and pictures through the National Movement to Unveil Illegal Activities by Samsung and Its Chairman, an organization that was started by civic groups after Mr. Kim’s allegations were made public.

Calls to Mr. Lee’s office were not returned on Monday.

“This is proof that Samsung’s bribery has reached not only prosecutors but the very core of political power, the Blue House,” the group said at the news conference, referring to the South Korean presidential office. President Roh’s office called that assertion “pure speculation.”

Mr. Lee said the bribe he received in 2004 was delivered after an executive at Samsung Electronics asked him whether his company could send him a holiday gift. Mr. Lee said he accepted, thinking that it would be a simple gift.

He said that when he returned the money with a protest, the Samsung executive apologized. The executive said he had simply allowed his company to send the gift in his name and had not known it contained cash, Mr. Lee related.

The executive could not be reached for comment. Samsung said the man left the company in June 2004 and now lived in the United States.

Lee Yong-chul said he decided to go public after reading about the lawyer Kim Yong-chul’s whistle-blowing. He said he believed Mr. Kim’s assertion that Samsung had run a systematic bribery effort.

Samsung has denied Mr. Kim’s allegations as “groundless.” A couple of Samsung executives Mr. Kim accused of delivering bribes have sued him.

In his statement, Lee Yong-chul said the cash was delivered to him while prosecutors were investigating assertions that Samsung and other conglomerates had provided large amounts of illegal campaign funds to presidential candidates during the 2002 election, which Mr. Roh won.

Several campaign officials for Mr. Roh and his opponent, Lee Hoi-chang, as well as Samsung executives, were convicted of playing major roles in raising slush funds in that campaign.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/bu...20samsung.html





Turning Nonworking Gizmos Into Money
Brad Stone

For a long time, there was only one destination for your old electronics: the dump.

In the last few years, environmentally conscious recyclers like Green Citizen have sprung up in a few major cities. They ask you to pay a few dollars, depending on the item, and then promise to take care of your old gear in a responsible manner. If you wanted to forgo that expense and even recoup some of your original investment, your best choice was selling the device on a site like eBay.

Now 25-year-old Brett Mosley of Denver has an even more appealing model. About a year ago, Mr. Mosley started BuyMyBrokeniPod.com and began purchasing, refurbishing and reselling used or broken iPods. Mr. Mosley, who is apparently comfortable around a soldering iron, started the company by posting an iPods-wanted ad on Craigslist. He has since launched a Web site, hired two employees and fixed over a thousand iPods. He recently renamed his company BuyMyTronics.com as he expanded into iPhones and video game consoles.

Mr. Mosley pays anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars, depending on the item and its health, and then either fixes and resells it online or scraps it for parts. He says his company is profitable but that the venture is not solely about that kind of green. “There’s definitely a market here, but I am keeping leads and toxic wastes out of the ground. They work hand in hand,” he said. “I figure I’ve probably kept thousands of pounds of waste out of landfills.”

The iPod is often thought of as the perfect consumer device, but after fixing thousands of iPods, Mr. Mosley has rare insight into its flaws. He says the hard drive, the most expensive component, breaks most often, which is why Apple is moving toward solid state storage like flash memory. Batteries and the screen are the next most likely components to go.

Mr. Mosley has also purchased and fixed over a dozen iPhones, and says the screens are especially susceptible to cracking. “I’ve also gotten ones that have been dropped, and it’s like an atomic bomb exploded inside them,” he said.

He has not heard from Apple about his fledgling business, but notes that the company appears to be generally hostile to this kind of repair aftermarket, since they are making their devices increasingly difficult to open. “I don’t think they want people opening them up and repairing them,” he said. “That would be awesome if they would be a little cooler about that, but obviously they are a company and their motivation is profit, unfortunately.”

With the name change to BuyMyTronics under his belt, Mr. Mosley said he would be expanding further into cell phones and laptops in a few months.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/1...mos/index.html





As U.S. Cools, World Demand Helps H.P. Outpace Rivals
Matt Richtel

Buoyed by its heavy international presence, Hewlett-Packard appears to have sidestepped the softening demand from corporations inside the United States for new technology.

In recent weeks, companies including Cisco, I.B.M. and Network Appliances have warned that American corporations are tightening their purse strings when it comes to technology spending. On Monday, Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest technology company, not only reported strong fourth-quarter net profit and sales, but also predicted further growth in the months ahead.

In conference calls with reporters and industry analysts, Mark V. Hurd, the chief executive, declined to answer directly whether H.P. is seeing softening in demand among corporate customers in the United States. Over all, he said, “we’re seeing fairly steady demand.”

He also said: “I don’t want to be confused with an economist in any way, shape or form.”

Hewlett-Packard, he also noted, does not depend on the financial industry for a significant portion of its sales.

Wall Street analysts said that the results, which beat their projections, reflected the diversity of H.P.’s business geographically and in terms of its reliance on selling to consumers, not just corporations.

“This is very different from what we heard from I.B.M. and Cisco, in particular,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research. “H.P. continues to execute in this very tough environment. The key reason is that they’re very global.”

Mr. Hurd, known for giving conservative forecasts to analysts, predicted revenue for 2008 would rise about 7 percent to about $111.5 billion. The new forecast exceeded industry analysts’ predictions.

For H.P.’s fourth quarter, ended Oct. 31, the company reported revenue of $28.3 billion, and net income of $2.8 billion, or 86 cents a share, a figure that does not include one-time charges.

In the fourth quarter a year ago, H.P. reported net income of $1.9 billion, or 68 cents a share, and revenue of $24.55 billion. For its full fiscal 2007, H.P. reported revenue of $104.3 billion and net income of $8 billion, or $2.93 a share, excluding one-time charges.

A. M. Sacconaghi, an industry analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, called the fourth-quarter and fiscal 2007 earnings “very solid,” adding: “They beat handily and raised guidance, which investors always cheer.”

The company’s shares, which fell with the overall market Monday during regular trading, rose 86 cents in after-hours trading to close at $50.30. The company also announced a plan to buy back $8 billion of its shares.

Unlike many technology companies — which do roughly 60 percent of their business domestically — H.P. does around 65 percent overseas, industry analysts said. Dell, its chief competitor, does only about 35 percent of its business internationally, Mr. Wu said.

Despite its recent success, the question for a company as large as H.P. is where can it find opportunities that will satisfy investors’ interest in seeing continued growth at a rapid pace. Mr. Hurd has frequently warned analysts that the law of large numbers makes it increasingly difficult for the company to add $7 billion to $8 billion in new revenue each year.

Mr. Hurd said in a conference call with Wall Street analysts that he would continue to seek businesses with growth potential, but that he would also keep pursuing a program of cost cuts and efficiency improvements and would then reallocate resources to the growth sectors.

At the two largest individual business divisions, sales rose 30 percent, to $10.1 billion, in the personal systems group, which sells PCs to consumers and corporations, but they were up only 4 percent, to $7.6 billion, in the imaging and printing group.

“PC’s continued their torrid success,” Mr. Sacconaghi said. “The only mild disappointment was in the imaging and printing group.”

The performance in computers could underscore continued trouble for Dell, H.P.’s chief competitor, which reports its financial results next week. Sales of H.P. notebook computers rose 49 percent in the fourth quarter, Mr. Hurd said.

While Mr. Hurd declined to discuss the relative performance of corporations in the United States, H.P. did see more modest growth in North America in the fourth quarter than it did in its overseas markets.

Excluding currency effects, growth in North America was 10 percent, to $11.9 billion, compared with the period a year ago. Sales grew 19 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, to $11.6 billion, and in the Asia-Pacific market they were up 20 percent, to $4.8 billion.

H.P. estimated that for its first quarter of 2008, sales would be $27.4 billion to $27.5 billion, and net income would reach 80 cents a share, not including one-time charges.

Wall Street analysts were hoping H.P. would shed more light on overall economic conditions and on the spending patterns of American companies.

“The investment community is anxious about what’s happening in large corporate I.T. spending,” Mr. Sacconaghi said. “Even if it’s limited now to U.S. financial services companies, it could spread.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/te...20hewlett.html





A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions

How a computer for the poor got stomped by tech giants
Steve Stecklow and James Bandler

In 2005, Nicholas Negroponte unveiled an idea for bridging the technology divide between rich nations and the developing world. It was captivating in its utter simplicity: design a $100 laptop and, within four years, get it into the hands of up to 150 million of the world's poorest schoolchildren.

World leaders and corporate benefactors jumped in to support the nonprofit project, called One Laptop Per Child. Mr. Negroponte, a professor on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hopscotched the world collecting pledges from developing nations to buy the laptops in bulk.

But nearly three years later, only about 2,000 students in pilot programs have received computers from the One Laptop project. An order from Uruguay for 100,000 machines appears to be the only solid deal to date with a country, although Mr. Negroponte says he's on the verge of sealing an order from Peru for 250,000. The first mass-production run, which began this month in China, is for 300,000 laptops, tens of thousands of which are slated to go to U.S. consumers. Mr. Negroponte's goal of 150 million users by the end of 2008 looks unattainable.

Mr. Negroponte's ambitious plan has been derailed, in part, by the power of his idea. For-profit companies threatened by the projected $100 price tag set off at a sprint to develop their own dirt-cheap machines, plunging Mr. Negroponte into unexpected competition against well-known brands such as Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.

A version of Mr. Negroponte's vision is starting to come true. Impoverished countries are indeed snapping up cheap laptops for their schoolchildren -- just not anywhere near as many of his as he expected. They now have several cut-price models to choose from, raising the possibility that One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC, will end up as a niche player.

"I'm not good at selling laptops," Mr. Negroponte has told colleagues. "I'm good at selling ideas."

"From my point of view, if the world were to have 30 million" laptops made by competitors "in the hands of children at the end of next year, that to me would be a great success," he said in a recent interview. "My goal is not selling laptops. OLPC is not in the laptop business. It's in the education business."

From its inception, One Laptop Per Child posed a threat to the personal-computing dominance of software giant Microsoft and chip maker Intel. Mr. Negroponte's team, drawn from MIT, designed a machine that didn't use Windows or Intel chips. It uses the Linux operating system and other nonproprietary, open-source software, which users are allowed to tinker with.

Last year, Intel, which normally doesn't sell computers, introduced a small laptop for developing countries called the Classmate, which currently goes for between $230 and $300. It has marketed the computer aggressively, although it stands to make little money on the initiative. But it hopes to prevent rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., or AMD, whose chips are in Mr. Negroponte's competing computer, from becoming a standard in the developing world.

By most accounts, Mr. Negroponte and his 20-member team have created a rugged, innovative laptop with good software for learning. The small green-and-white device is designed to operate on very little power -- a small solar panel can keep it going -- and to resist rain and dust. Its unique, high-resolution screen stays bright even in direct sunlight. The laptop has a built-in video camera and connects wirelessly to the Internet and to other laptops of its kind.

But the project has hit snags. The $100 price target is proving difficult to hit, although Mr. Negroponte's team has succeeded in creating a device that's cheaper than other laptops. It now sells for $188, plus shipping. Potential buyers in the developing world have expressed concern about the availability of training for schoolteachers, and after-sales support. Mr. Negroponte's plan is for the machines to be simple enough that students can train themselves -- and solve any glitches that arise.

Some potential buyers are having second thoughts about One Laptop Per Child. Officials in Libya, who had planned to buy up to 1.2 million of the laptops, became concerned that the machines lacked Windows, and that service, teacher training and future upgrades might become a problem.

"The Intel machine is a lot better than the OLPC," says Mohamed Bani, who chairs Libya's technical advisory committee but doesn't have the final say on buying laptops. "I don't want my country to be a junkyard for these machines." Libya has decided buy at least 150,000 Intel Classmates. The future of the One Laptop program there is now uncertain.

Mr. Negroponte, who is 63 years old, is a computer-science expert and veteran technology investor. He co-founded and formerly directed the MIT Media Laboratory and helped to found Wired Magazine. He serves on the board of Motorola Inc. Recently, he was selected by News Corp. to serve on a committee to protect the editorial integrity of Dow Jones & Co., the owner of The Wall Street Journal, following News Corp.'s agreement to purchase the company. His brother is U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.

Nicholas Negroponte unveiled his $100-laptop plan in January 2005 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, suggesting it would transform education for the world's disadvantaged schoolchildren and help eliminate poverty. Later that year, he predicted the project would sell 100 million to 150 million laptops in 2008 to developing countries.

Google Inc., AMD and News Corp. were among the companies that each kicked in $2 million of funding. In November 2005, then United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly endorsed the concept, demonstrating an early prototype powered by a hand crank, a feature that subsequently was scrapped.

At a presentation seven months ago, Mr. Negroponte expressed confidence that he had commitments from countries to purchase 2.5 million laptops in 2007. But the Taiwan-based manufacturer, Quanta Computer Inc., is producing only 300,000 units this year, he said in a recent interview. At a conference this month, he said that his new goal for 2008 is to produce one million laptops a month, but he added that he can't say when that target will be reached.

Because the initial production volume is smaller than expected, the project hasn't benefited from anticipated economies of scale. Design upgrades -- more memory and a faster microprocessor, the brains of the machine -- also added to the price, apparently costing the project sales.

Nigeria, for example, so far has failed to honor a pledge by its former president to purchase one million laptops. That's partly because they no longer cost $100 apiece, says Tomi Davies, a Nigerian-born technology entrepreneur who helped Mr. Negroponte set up talks with Nigerian officials.

The higher price also has made the laptop vulnerable to competition from sellers of more traditional, Windows-based machines. For many education ministries, "it's a no-brainer you go with Microsoft," says Mr. Davies.

The One Laptop initiative is facing competition from Taiwanese, Indian and Israeli sellers of inexpensive Windows laptops, who see the developing world's more than one billion potential young customers as a big opportunity.

Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., so far has proven the biggest competitive threat. The introduction of the low-cost Classmate sparked accusations by Mr. Negroponte that Intel was trying to undermine his nonprofit initiative. Intel made a multimillion-dollar contribution to the One Laptop project and joined its board in July.

Nevertheless, Intel has continued to compete with the nonprofit, and it appears to be winning. It recently inked deals to sell hundreds of thousands of Classmates in Nigeria, Libya and Pakistan -- countries that Mr. Negroponte had been counting on. Intel has launched a series of pilot projects in those countries, and has said it will test the Classmate in at least 22 other nations, donating thousands of machines.

In recent months, Mr. Negroponte has abandoned his initial strategy of trying to persuade a half-dozen developing countries -- Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Thailand -- to buy one million laptops each. The project has begun accepting much smaller orders, and is attempting to persuade wealthier countries, including Italy and Spain, to finance laptops for poorer ones.

As sales problems mounted, the project recently reversed course on its plan not to sell the device to American consumers. On Nov. 12, it began selling pairs of laptops to U.S. and Canadian buyers for $399. Under the program -- called "Give One. Get One." -- one goes to a student in a poor country like Haiti, the other to the buyer. The program was supposed to last just two weeks, but on Thursday One Laptop said it was extending the offer through Dec. 31 because "people want more time to participate." Mr. Negroponte says there were about 45,000 two-laptop orders in the first nine days, with nearly half coming on the first day.

Suppliers are grumbling about missed forecasts and lowered expectations. "We wish they would ship more, absolutely," says Scott Soong of Chi Mei Group, the Taiwanese manufacturer of the laptop's screen, who also serves on One Laptop's board. Laptop-maker Quanta, which was told early this year to expect initial orders of five million to eight million, also is disappointed, according to a person familiar with the matter.

"We're all frustrated with each other," says Mr. Negroponte of the friction with Quanta and suppliers. "Everybody's got a short fuse."

He seems most frustrated with Intel, whose overseas sales force has trumpeted the Classmate over his laptop in Nigeria and Mongolia, using marketing materials that claim the Intel machine is superior. "These are not isolated examples," he said in a recent interview. "They are daily events."

At a meeting this month in Cambridge, Mass., with representatives of Macedonia's government, Mr. Negroponte balked at authorizing a pilot project there after learning that officials also were considering testing the Classmate. He told them he didn't want to participate in a "bake-off."

Mr. Negroponte says he communicated this month with Intel's chief executive, Paul Otellini, and demanded that Intel stop selling the Classmate. Intel, which says there is room in the market for many machines, has refused, according to a spokeswoman.

Mr. Negroponte says he got the idea for the initiative after working on educational projects in Cambodia and other developing countries, where he saw that computers could spur children to learn and explore outside the classroom.

In November 2005, he demonstrated a working prototype with Mr. Annan at a U.N. technology conference in Tunisia. "It was the main highlight of the whole summit," says Raul Zambrano, a senior technology adviser at the U.N. Development Program, which provides assistance to developing countries and shared a booth with Mr. Negroponte. "People were coming up with cash, saying, 'I want to buy it now!' " Mr. Zambrano recalls.

Mr. Negroponte draws no salary from the nonprofit, which only has about 20 paid employees. For most of the past three years, he has promoted his idea around the world, meeting with numerous heads of state. In mid-2006, a One Laptop official said the project had "commitments" from Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina and Thailand to purchase one million laptops each. The organization later retracted the claim. In October 2006, the New York Times reported that Libya had agreed to buy up to 1.2 million of the laptops by June 2008.

Publicly, Intel and Microsoft officials didn't hide their disdain for Mr. Negroponte's machine. In December 2005, Intel Chairman Craig R. Barrett called an early version a "$100 gadget" that wasn't likely to succeed. At a conference in March 2006, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said: "Geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type."

This year, Mr. Gates announced in China that Microsoft would offer developing countries a $3 software package that includes Windows, a student version of Microsoft Office and educational programs. Mr. Negroponte said the move was a direct response to his project. James Utzschneider, general manager of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential Group, a unit whose targets include young people in developing countries, denies this.

Libya and Egypt plan to buy the $3 software, Mr. Utzschneider says. Mr. Negroponte had hoped to sell his Linux-based laptops to both countries. Mr. Utzschneider says an organization in Russia has signed an agreement to buy at least 200,000 copies, with an option to buy up to 800,000 more. The Russians, he says, initially will load the software onto a low-cost laptop made by Asustek Computer Inc. of Taiwan, another One Laptop competitor.

By this spring, many of Mr. Negroponte's informal agreements with world leaders to buy millions of laptops appeared to be unraveling.

The prime minister of Thailand, who backed the project, was removed in a military coup. Nigeria was having second thoughts, in part because of the rising cost of the machine, according to Tomi Davies, who is helping One Laptop in Nigeria. Last month, Intel's Mr. Barrett visited Nigeria and announced that the company would donate 3,000 Classmates to schools there and would train 150,000 teachers to use computers in the classroom.

"We can't compete," complains Ayo Kusamotu, One Laptop's attorney in Nigeria. "The minute we started getting some traction, they [Intel] intensified their effort." Nigeria recently agreed to purchase 17,000 Intel Classmates.

In May, Mr. Negroponte appeared on CBS's "60 Minutes" and blasted Intel, suggesting it was trying to drive his nonprofit out of business. Intel's Mr. Barrett called that idea "crazy." Two months later, Intel announced it was joining One Laptop's board. The agreement included a "nondisparagement" clause, under which Intel and One Laptop promised not to criticize each other, according to Mr. Negroponte.

John Davies, who oversees Classmate sales at Intel, says that after the broadcast, Intel decided to "purge" any marketing material that directly compares the competing laptops. But last month, an Intel representative gave a PowerPoint presentation to a Mongolian official that offered a "head-to-head comparison" between the Classmate and the One Laptop machine. Intel claimed the Classmate prevailed in nine of 13 categories, including processor speed and support for different operating systems, a copy of the presentation indicates.

Intel's Mr. Davies says the presentation violated company policy. "Sometimes you get escapees," he says, adding that he will be doing some "retraining" of the sales staff.

Mr. Negroponte says he complained to Intel's chief executive two weeks ago, then "made peace." Intel and the One Laptop project, he says, have agreed to work together to design by early January a new "Intel-based" One Laptop device. An Intel spokeswoman confirmed Mr. Negroponte's account, but said any comment would be "premature." AMD, whose chips are used in One Laptop's current machines, declined to comment.

There are no signs that Mr. Negroponte's project is in danger of fading away. Robert Fadel, its director of finance and operations, says the nonprofit has enough funding to last years. Its dozen corporate benefactors this year contributed $16.5 million, and it will be using $1 from each computer sold to cover administrative costs. Last year, it took in $7.6 million in revenue, mainly from donors, and its budget this year is about $9.5 million. As of September, it had $8.7 million in cash on hand, an internal document indicates.

But it continues to face skepticism from its target audience. At a training conference it hosted this month in Cambridge for a large group of educators and tech specialists from developing countries, participants peppered Mr. Negroponte and other project officials with questions about teacher training and software bugs. "It will always have bugs in it and it will never be perfect," Mr. Negroponte told them, adding that he has a "royal battle" with his Windows-based computer nearly every morning.

Later, at a private meeting with a group from Rwanda, he announced that 20,000 laptops, courtesy of the "Give One. Get One." program, would soon be distributed. Carine Umutesi, who works for Rwanda's Information Technology Authority, questioned who would fix them if they break.

Mr. Negroponte said some initial tech support would be provided by Brightstar Corp., a Miami-based wireless equipment distributor. Just who would provide support a few years from now, he said, was "a frightening question." The students, he said, will need "to do as much maintenance as possible."

--Jason Dean in Beijing contributed to this article
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1195...we_banner_left





Publisher Gets Web Readers to Fill the Pages of Its Magazines
Evelyn Nussenbaum

A funny thing happened while Halsey Minor was trying to kill print journalism. He ended up publishing magazines — big, heavy magazines, with beautiful pictures on quality paper — the kind he and others had declared obsolete.

The founder of the technology news site CNet.com readily admits to an about-face. “I spent my time at CNet talking about how print was going to be challenged by the Internet and specifically how we were going to make magazines go away,” he said. “But two years ago I realized I was still reading over 100 magazines a month. I like holding them and turning the pages. And the images are better than on the Internet.”

Amid the YouTube-fueled craze for user-generated content, he wondered why readers, instead of writers and editors whom he would have to pay, could not do most of the heavy lifting. He also pondered how he might get rid of, or at least reduce, the large ad sales staff. He just was not sure how to pull it off.

Then in 2006 he met Paul Cloutier and Derek Powazek, Web-publishing veterans who had started a user-generated on-demand photo magazine called JPG. It took e-mail submissions and used a self-publishing service to sell downloads or print copies with the founders’ favorites

They wanted to expand. Mr. Minor, who has backed a number of successful ventures since CNet — including Salesforce.com, which went public, and Grand Central, which was sold to Google — had money to invest. A few weeks later, in June, 8020 Publishing was born. It was named after the proverbial ratio of passive Web users (sometimes called lurkers) to those who actually write and contribute. Mr. Minor wants to build the company into an empire of Web-generated print magazines.

“Dan Rather was a pivotal moment for me,” he said, referring to the way bloggers discovered inconsistencies in the anchorman’s 2004 “60 Minutes” story about President Bush’s military service. “You can be an ‘expert,’ but the collective way is so much richer and deeper that it’s almost impossible to compete with.”

He is hardly the only one with the idea of using user-generated content to make money. Many Web sites, like YouTube or Yelp, thrive on content that users donate. The Al Gore venture CurrentTV is a cable channel devoted to videos submitted by the general public. Google recently filed a patent for user-generated content publications.

But 8020 is different because Mr. Minor thinks he can also make money from old-fashioned print.

Online readers vote on their favorite submissions appearing at JPGmag.com. Then a tiny staff of 10 designs a layout for the winners and about 50,000 high-quality slick-looking magazines are printed six times a year. They are sold through $25 annual subscriptions and on newsstands for $6 each.

The online version is free. Readers can also download and print a PDF file of the entire magazine free, because the publishers assume that physically holding a high-quality magazine is more satisfying than viewing it online and therefore will not cannibalize newsstand sales.

Even with that freebie, Mr. Minor says that 70 percent of his magazines on newsstands are purchased, a surprisingly high “sell-through” rate; most magazine publishers would be thrilled with 50 percent.

The start-up was not without turmoil. Mr. Powazek (along with his wife, Heather Powazek Champ, also at the magazine since its founding) left 8020 in May, saying that a power-hungry Mr. Cloutier had pushed him out. On his blog, Powazek.com, he accused Mr. Cloutier and Mr. Minor of minimizing his contributions to the new and old versions of JPG. He was particularly upset that the earliest issues had been taken off the site.

Mr. Powazek said he did not realize his influence would be diminished so severely when he agreed that Mr. Cloutier should run 8020. He also laid claim to the idea for 8020, pointing out that he and his wife put together the first e-mail-driven version of JPG without Mr. Cloutier.

While he no longer has a role at 8020, Mr. Powazek still owns a small percentage of JPG. Mr. Cloutier does not dispute that the partnership ended badly or that the first issues were taken off the Web site. But he said it was necessary to distinguish between the incarnations of the magazine, since the new one was so different. And he said Mr. Powazek obstructed the introduction of the new company and magazine and alienated the staff members by refusing to let newcomers contribute to what he saw as his baby.
Nevertheless, Mr. Minor and company are so happy with the business model that they have produced a second user-generated magazine called Everywhere, devoted to travel. It went on sale last week.

“You’re going to see more of this,” said Samir Husni, who is chairman of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi and writes the well-known magazine business blog Mrmagazine.com. “I don’t think it’s just about getting cheap content into a magazine. Seeing their own work in print makes people feel like part of a community.”

Community is a mantra Mr. Minor and Mr. Cloutier, now chief executive of 8020, repeat often. The JPG and Everywhere sites have lots of what the staff calls “easy jumping-in points” — features meant to get users involved without intimidating them.

“Ask someone to write a magazine story and they freeze up,” said Mr. Cloutier, who has designed magazine Web sites and helped start CurrentTV. “But say ‘send us a postcard’ and it becomes easy.”

Users can submit photos, writing and travel recommendations to Everywhere and comment on everything. If a comment is popular enough, it might end up in print under someone else’s photo.

8020 tries to make the magazine more readable by limiting advertising. Web ads are subtle — no pop-ups. The dozen or so advertisers in the print issues are limited to the first few pages, the back, and sponsorships of special sections. Adobe Systems, Sony, Epson, Audi and Virgin America have bought ads. 8020 can afford to limit advertising because, Mr. Minor said, it does not need it to make a profit from them. It says it makes money on each subscription and newsstand sale — the opposite of the traditional magazine business.

And while JPG’s circulation is only 18,000 subscriptions, the company said it needed to sell just 30,000 to break even on each issue. The small print runs and low overhead leave money for quality paper, an increasing rarity among magazines. It is also reflected in the content. Data, like hotel phone numbers and addresses, is likely to be on the Web but not in a print version of Everywhere. Longer stories and photo essays might be featured solely in print.

Now they will see whether users share their vision. In the meantime, Mr. Minor and the 8020 staff are kicking around ideas for the next magazine. Mr. Minor said he was in the venture for the long haul. “I would be really upset if it didn’t work because it should work,” he said. “We should be able to build a large media company based on people publishing for themselves.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/bu...dia/24mag.html





Pride and Nostalgia Mix in the Times’s New Home
Nicolai Ouroussoff

Writing about your employer’s new building is a tricky task. If I love it, the reader will suspect that I’m currying favor with the man who signs my checks. If I hate it, I’m just flaunting my independence.

So let me get this out of the way: As an employee, I’m enchanted with our new building on Eighth Avenue. The grand old 18-story neo-Gothic structure on 43rd Street, home to The New York Times for nearly a century, had its sentimental charms. But it was a depressing place to work. Its labyrinthine warren of desks and piles of yellowing newspapers were redolent of tradition but also seemed an anachronism.

The new 52-story building between 40th and 41st Streets, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, is a paradise by comparison. A towering composition of glass and steel clad in a veil of ceramic rods, it delivers on Modernism’s age-old promise to drag us — in this case, The Times — out of the Dark Ages.

I enjoy gazing up at the building’s sharp edges and clean lines when I emerge from the subway exit at 40th Street and Seventh Avenue in the morning. I love being greeted by the cluster of silvery birch trees in the lobby atrium, their crooked trunks sprouting from a soft blanket of moss. I even like my fourth-floor cubicle, an oasis of calm overlooking the third-floor newsroom.

Yet the spanking new building is infused with its own nostalgia.

The last decade has been a time of major upheaval in newspaper journalism, with editors and reporters fretting about how they should adapt to the global digital age. In New York that anxiety has been compounded by the terrorist attacks of 2001, which prompted many corporations to barricade themselves inside gilded fortresses.

Mr. Piano’s building is rooted in a more comforting time: the era of corporate Modernism that reached its apogee in New York in the 1950s and 60s. If he has gently updated that ethos for the Internet age, the building is still more a paean to the past than to the future.

What makes a great New York skyscraper? The greatest of them tug at our heartstrings. We seek them out in the skyline, both to get our bearings and to anchor ourselves psychologically in the life of the city.

Mr. Piano’s tower is unlikely to inspire that kind of affection. The building’s most original feature is a scrim of horizontal ceramic rods that diffuses sunlight and lends the exterior a clean, uniform appearance. Mr. Piano used a similar screening system for his 1997 Debis Tower for Daimler-Benz in Berlin, to mixed results. For The Times, he spent months adjusting the rods’ color and scale, and in the early renderings they had a lovely, ethereal quality.

Viewed from a side street today, they have the precision and texture of a finely tuned machine. But despite the architect’s best efforts, the screens look flat and lifeless in the skyline. The uniformity of the bars gives them a slightly menacing air, and the problem is compounded by the battleship gray of the tower’s steel frame. Their dull finish deprives the facades of an enlivening play of light and shadow.

The tower’s crown is also disappointing. To hide the rooftop’s mechanical equipment and create the impression that the tower is dissolving into the sky, Mr. Piano extended the screens a full six stories past the top of the building’s frame. Yet the effect is ragged and unfinished. Rather than gathering momentum as it rises, the tower seems to fizzle.

But if the building is less than spectacular in the skyline, it comes to life when it hits the ground. All of Mr. Piano’s best qualities are in evidence here — the fine sense of proportion, the love of structural detail, the healthy sense of civic responsibility.

The architect’s goal is to blur the boundary between inside and out, between the life of the newspaper and the life of the street. The lobby is encased entirely in glass, and its transparency plays delightfully against the muscular steel beams and spandrels that support the soaring tower.

People entering the building from Eighth Avenue can glance past rows of elevator banks all the way to the fairy tale atrium garden and beyond, to the plush red interior of TheTimesCenter auditorium. From the auditorium, you gaze back through the trees to the majestic lobby space. In effect, the lobby itself is a continuous public performance.

The sense of transparency is reinforced by the people streaming through the lobby. The flow recalls the dynamic energy of Grand Central Terminal’s Great Hall or the Rockefeller Center plaza, proud emblems of early-20th-century mobility.

Architecturally, however, The New York Times Building owes its greatest debt to postwar landmarks like Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Lever House or Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building — designs that came to embody the progressive values and industrial power of a triumphant America. Their streamlined glass-and-steel forms proclaimed a faith in machine-age efficiency and an open, honest, democratic society.

Newspaper journalism, too, is part of that history. Transparency, independence, the free flow of information, moral clarity, objective truth — these notions took hold and flourished in the last century at papers like The Times. To many this idealism reached its pinnacle in the period stretching from the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War to Watergate, when journalists grew accustomed to speaking truth to power, and the public could still accept reporters as impartial observers.

This longing for an idealistic time permeates the main newsroom. Pierced by a double-height skylight well on the third and fourth floors, the newsroom has a cool, insular feel even as the facades of the surrounding buildings press in from the north and south. The well functions as a center of gravity, focusing attention on the paper’s nerve center. From many of the desks you also enjoy a view of the delicate branches of the atrium’s birch trees.

Internal staircases link the various newsroom floors to encourage interaction. The work cubicles are flanked by rows of glass-enclosed offices, many of which are unassigned so that they can be used for private phone conversations or spontaneous meetings. Informal groupings of tables and chairs are also scattered about, creating a variety of social spaces.

From the higher floors, which house the corporate offices of The Times and 22 floors belonging to the developer Forest City Ratner, the views become more expansive. Cars rush up along Eighth Avenue. Billboards and electronic signs loom from all directions. By the time you reach the 14th-floor cafeteria, the entire city begins to come into focus, with dazzling views to the north, south, east and west. A long, narrow balcony is suspended within the cafeteria’s double-height space, reinforcing the impression that you’re floating in the Midtown skyline.

Many of my colleagues complained about the building at first. There’s too much empty space in the newsroom, some groused; they missed the intimacy of the old one. The glass offices look sterile, and no one will use them, some said.

I suspect they’ll all adjust. One of the joys of working in an ambitious new building is that you can watch its personality develop. From week to week, you see more and more lone figures chatting on cellphones in the small glass offices with their feet atop a table. And even my grumpiest colleagues now concede that a little sunlight and fresh air are not a bad thing.

Even so, you never feel that the building embraces the future wholeheartedly. Rather than move beyond the past, Mr. Piano has fine-tuned it. The most contemporary features — the computerized louvers and blinds that regulate the flow of light into the interiors — are technological innovations rather than architectural ones; the regimented rows of identical wood-paneled cubicles chosen by the interior design firm Gensler could be a stage set for a 2007 remake of “All the President’s Men,” minus the 1970s hairstyles.

Maybe this accounts for the tower’s slight whiff of melancholy.

Few of today’s most influential architects buy into straightforward notions of purity or openness. Having witnessed an older generation’s mostly futile quest to effect social change through architecture, they opt for the next best thing: to expose, through their work, the psychic tensions and complexities that their elders sublimated. By bringing warring forces to the surface, they reason, a building will present a franker reading of contemporary life.

Journalism, too, has moved on. Reality television, anonymous bloggers, the threat of ideologically driven global media enterprises — such forces have undermined newspapers’ traditional mission. Even as journalists at The Times adjust to their new home, they worry about the future. As advertising inches decline, the paper is literally shrinking; its page width was reduced in August. And some doubt that newspapers will even exist in print form a generation from now.

Depending on your point of view, the Times Building can thus be read as a poignant expression of nostalgia or a reassertion of the paper’s highest values as it faces an uncertain future. Or, more likely, a bit of both.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/ar...gn/20time.html





Amazon Reading Device Doesn’t Need Computer
Saul Hansell

Jeff Bezos knows that the world is not exactly clamoring for another way to read electronic books.

“If you go back in time, the landscape is littered with the bodies of dead e-book readers,” Mr. Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com, said yesterday.

Mr. Bezos is hoping that Kindle, an ambitious $399 e-book device that he introduced in New York, will avoid that fate. Kindle, which Amazon spent three years developing, lets users wirelessly download best sellers for $9.99 each, and it is designed to be simpler to use and more comfortable to hold than similar devices.

Most significant, Amazon has made it easy to shop for and buy books through Kindle without using a computer. The device connects to a high-speed wireless data network from Sprint, and wireless delivery is included in the cost of books and other products. Downloading a book takes less than a minute.

Mr. Bezos said Kindle was most likely to appeal to travelers and others who want to carry several books with them.

“Anyone who is reading two, three, four books at the same time should have one of these,” he said in an interview. Kindle can store 200 books at once.

Mr. Bezos added that he thought Kindle would be more comfortable for people to curl up with than previous reading devices. It weighs 10.3 ounces and uses so-called electronic ink technology licensed from the company E Ink, based in Cambridge, Mass.

The screen reflects light, making it easier to read in a bright room, and it uses less power and generates less heat, because there is no backlight to the display.

Kindle will also download and display newspapers, magazines and blogs. Among the newspapers available are The New York Times for $13.99 a month and The Wall Street Journal for $9.99 a month. Some 300 blogs are available for 99 cents or $1.99 a month. Amazon shares some of that fee with newspaper and blog publishers. The device will only be available at Amazon.

Amazon, which is one of the world’s largest booksellers, reached agreements with all the major publishers to sell their wares on Kindle. It has about 90,000 titles so far and 90 percent of current best sellers.

Sony, which introduced an e-book reader a year ago, has about 20,000 titles for sale.

Publishing executives said they were optimistic about Kindle.

“You kind of understand why it has been three years in development because it offers so much in an uncomplicated way,” said David Young, the chief executive of the Hachette Book Group USA, which owns Little, Brown.

“The big challenge, of course, is that it is still relatively expensive,” he added. “You have to be a very committed book person to get a repay on that investment.”

The publishers themselves are concerned about return on investment; most have been spending a great deal to digitize their libraries for electronic readers, with little to show for it so far.

“If it does contribute to the many millions of dollars we have invested as an industry, that’s great,” Mr. Young said.

Amazon and the publishers declined to discuss the specifics of their financial arrangements. But several publishing executives said the industry practice was to sell an electronic version of a hardcover with a list price of $27 for about $20. While deals vary, the wholesale price of a $20 e-book is about $10, and most retailers have been selling them for about $16. The publishers said Amazon was paying about the same wholesale price as Sony and other e-book vendors.

By offering best sellers for $9.99, Amazon is leaving no profit margin, and it will have the expense of paying Sprint for the data transmission. Amazon says it hopes to make money on older titles that have better profit margins.

Digital distribution of books would seem to have a lot of benefits for publishers. So far there is not much book piracy online (although there have been some high-profile leaks, most notably that of the latest Harry Potter book).

There also is not much pressure to break books into smaller pieces, in the way that people want to buy songs, not albums. And there are no conflicts with distributors of the sort that complicate the online video business.

Indeed, e-books have the potential to save publishers the cost of printing, distribution and returns. But publishers said their biggest hope was that Kindle would expand sales of books to a new generation of gadget lovers.

“We have great authors, and we want to get our books to readers, and this is another channel to us,” said Kate Tentler, senior vice president for digital media at Simon & Schuster.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/bu.../20bookxx.html





Kindle Sells Out in 5.5 Hours
Nilay Patel

Amazon isn't disclosing how many Kindles it actually had ready to go, but apparently the idea of a tiny e-book reader with free EV-DO and the visual flair of an Apple IIc hit home for quite a few people, because they sold out in just five and a half hours. Amazon's site says they'll be back in stock on the 29th, but availability is first-come, first-served, so it looks like you'll have to act fast if you want to get one before gift-giving time sets in.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/21/k...t-in-two-days/





Part of an Oil Book Relied on Wikipedia
Noam Cohen

The publisher John Wiley & Sons confirmed last week that its book “Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors” by George Orwel had lifted almost word for word about five paragraphs from a Wikipedia article on the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

The book discusses the 1996 terrorist bombing, which killed 19 United States servicemen, as part of an overview of the situation in the Middle East as it affects the oil supply. Mr. Orwel, who lives in Brooklyn, has written about the industry for a variety of specialized publications; reached at home, he said his publisher’s statement spoke for him.

True to the ever-changing nature of Wikipedia, a comparison of Mr. Orwel’s book, which was published in 2006, and the current article on the bombing would show significant differences. But when compared with a 2005 version — available on a discussion page there about the incident — the text is virtually identical. A typo or two has been fixed, a phrase or two added, and the word “saw” had been changed to “witnessed,” for example.

The principal author of the Wikipedia article, reached via his user page there, wrote in an e-mail message that he considered the damages “insignificant,” and had “made no effort to contact the author or publisher.” He described himself as follows: “I’m male, in my 40s, have a Ph.D. in physics, and work as a professor at a university in California. I view my Wikipedia writings as a form of procrastination from real work, so I’d prefer to remain anonymous and not reveal the extent of my procrastination to colleagues.”

Copying from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia produced by tens of thousands of contributors, does not raise the same legal complications as copying from a copyrighted book. According to Mike Godwin, the lead lawyer at the Wikimedia Foundation, under Wikipedia’s license anyone can reprint material found there as long as Wikipedia is given credit and the license itself is reprinted, assuring that the material continues to roam free.

“Wiley’s concern is not over copyright trouble,” Mr. Godwin said. “They want to represent their work as scholarly work. Their name is on the line in terms of scholarly ethics, more than the copyright issue.”

A Wiley spokeswoman said in a statement that the publisher would “provide corrections to all future reprints of this book.” In its statement, Wiley, which is based in Hoboken, N.J., said the passages were “inadvertently added by our author to the text without attribution.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/te...gy/19wiki.html





Ministry Bans Wikipedia Editing
AP

The Dutch justice ministry is to temporarily block its 30,000 employees from using Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, at work after a magazine reported that ministry computers had been used to edit more than 800 entries.

Intermediar said that while most of the changes were not objectionable, some involved changing the positions of political parties or the profiles of people in criminal cases. Many others were obscene.

"We're doing this as a temporary measure while we investigate how much use - and misuse- our people make of Wikipedia, and what we can do about it," said ministry spokesman Ivo Hommes. "You'd think it should be OK for someone to update an entry on their favourite football star during lunch, but obviously we don't want people doing things that are tasteless or worse during working hours."

The Intermediar report said one employee had changed a reference to the punishment given to a member of the Dutch nobility who was caught speeding.

The original text said "her driving licence was not revoked", while the revised version added "as is typical in such cases".

Anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry anonymously, but Wikipedia records the exact time and IP address - the numerical identifier of each computer on the internet - when any user alters a page.

Similar concerns about public-sector employees editing Wikipedia from work computers have cropped up in the United States and Japan in recent months.

The Intermediar report found 821 edits in all from justice ministry computers, more than from any other single ministry. But hundreds of edits came from computers at other ministries and at dozens of Dutch councils.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ernationalnews





To Free or Not to Free - the Big Question
nic

Right, so there's this guy, TayZonday, and he put his song up on YouTube and it's called Black Rain and it makes it to the front page, and millions of people are watching it. And tho it's really simple the melody is quite catchy and this guy has a real deep voice like old school soul. And now each of his songs are getting millions of views and four stars ratings, and he doesn't just sing for free on YouTube he also lets you download MP3s of his work for free, and download Acapellas and remix his work, and re-record his work and do all the sorts of things creative people like to have done with their work.

And he's famous. And he has an audience - 11 million views of one his songs on the tube . And he's in charge of his destiny as a musician.

And no-one from the label is saying, look man, we like what you do, but could you include some trumpets. Or could you get some dancing girls? Or, really without more tits and ass your video isn't going to make MTV. And without MTV no-one is going to know who you are. And without our lawyers, we're not going to be able to stop people from ripping you off - like that was possible anyway, when in fact the only person who really would ever rip him off, is the entity taking at least 95% of his turnover - the music machine itself, and the huge aparatus it traditionally needed to create, distribute and market the whole shebang.

So now he's a star, and he's his own boss, and people want to make donations, and no doubt will want to buy his limited edition album if/when it comes out, and all the rest of it. And of course this why Radiohead and Madonna are already changing their act.

And I keep thinking of the two women i spoke to at Edinburgh who were like, 'don't put your films online!'. Tell your friends, they said, tell em, don't put em on the web, they'll never get into festivals, they'll never make a TV sale. And Yousef Ali Khan (Skin Deep) had said the same thing a few months previously so while I was shocked, it seems, like, the common thinking on this issue in the UK. And I'm like, well, surely the festivals and the TV will be forced to change their position if more and more great films end up online?

Because if a filmmaker has a choice between 10 million views online or 100 at London Film Festvial, or, what, 25 at Edinburgh, well if they want to make a career out of making films, it's hardly a choice, unless they feel really confident that the 'established' model of film development/finance/production/marketing/distribution both works well and will survive, and furthermore is likely to give them a job.

And then it became clear that maybe the people who were saying 'Don't Put Online' are largely those who have something to lose by the replacement of much of the industry with technology - the sales agents, distributors and festivals (tho surely festivals will only benefit in this new world as webshooters encourage their fans to meet them and watch their film on the big screen).

Likewise the many artists want only to communicate and be true to themselves, and for them money is a nice side effect. And that the industry talks bullshit about all these models because they think they don't have a job if the models crumble. when in fact they just need to start again and think about new models.

But it's annoying how much crap filmmakers are being told, how much crap. And how far behind those who pay to go hear these panels and training courses will end up if they follow all the advice. It's a brave new world, with a billion people waiting to see your work. M'kay?
http://www.netribution.co.uk/2/content/view/1348/108/





Radiohead Frontman Pays Nothing for His Album
Mike Nizza

Rock fans and the music industry have watched with great interest as Radiohead offered downloads of its latest album, “In Rainbows,” to the world at the vaguest of price points. Allowed to pay whatever they wanted, how many would jump at the chance to pay zero?

One study concluded that the early answer was 62 percent, a larger-than-the-optimists-expected group that we learned today included none other than the band’s frontman, Thom Yorke.

“I downloaded it for nothing, obviously,” he told the BBC.

Jaws dropped. “Obviously”? Is the singer in league with the freeloaders, the very group that threatens to sink the whole music industry? Et tu, Thom Yorke?

Well, not exactly. Mr. Yorke said that in his case, paying for the album would have been an empty gesture. “There wasn’t any point,” he said. “I just move some money from one pocket to the other.”

Radiohead was so intent on keeping the album from leaking to illegal downloading sites — a near certainty these days — that, according to the band’s guitarist, Ed O’Brien, they decided “to literally tell no one” about their plans.

“I didn’t tell my wife we were going to release it like this,” he continued.

Keeping secrets from his wife? What kind of family man is that? Well, the kind who spent $800 more than his lead singer did, buying ten special boxed sets of the new album. Why? He has a big family, he told the BBC.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/200.../index.html?hp





Open-Source Software Rated: Ten Alternatives You Need
Nate Lanxon

Open source products comprise the work of many collaborators -- sometimes thousands of them, and often separated by oceans. Each person works on small portions of a project, and anyone is welcome to contribute. The finished product will be available freely for anyone to download and, in most cases, modify.

All very touchy-feely, carey-sharey, but why should you care about open source? You should care because the vast majority of common applications, even complex commercial stuff such as Adobe Photoshop, Windows Media Player and Microsoft Office, have free, open-source alternatives. And this point is worth reiterating: open-source software is free. No cost. Zero. Zilch.

We've put together a collection of ten free open-source applications that will potentially save you hundreds of pounds. We've outlined their pros and cons and compared them to the nearest commercial alternative.


Paid-for version: Microsoft Office
Open-source alternative: OpenOffice

OpenOffice is a feature-packed alternative to Microsoft Office. It's developed by Sun Microsystems in collaboration with a community of dedicated contributors. The primary applications of OpenOffice consist Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentations), Base (databases), Draw (vector graphics editor) and Math (mathematical formulae editor, similar to Microsoft Equation Editor).

The good: For home users and families it offers everything you'll need to write letters, publish documents, formulate graphs, build slideshows and design simple Web pages. It looks and works like Microsoft Word and because it's free, it'll save you about £119 -- the cost of Microsoft Office 2007. For families, OpenOffice is an absolute must.

The bad: Microsoft Office comes with Outlook, which is vital for most business users. For this reason, OpenOffice isn't an alternative to Microsoft's corporate solutions. It's also lacks some of the advanced design functions of the 2007 version of Word.

Conclusion: OpenOffice will be perfect for most home users. Business users will almost certainly need Outlook, though OO may still provide all the functionality needed for word processing and spreadsheet work.

Paid-for version: Microsoft Windows Media Centre
Open-source alternative: MediaPortal

MediaPortal is an open-source alternative to Microsoft's Media Centre and offers PVR functionality as well as management of all your videos, photos, music and radio stations. It runs on Windows and has the ability to display RSS feeds and weather information. The attractive GUI can be re-skinned with loads of free and professional-looking skins and a vast array of plugins written by the community extend functionality in loads of ways.

The Good: It's an extremely easy piece of software to use and looks and feels just like Windows Media Centre. For use as a living-room PVR and a media handler it's superb. More advanced users will appreciate the many layers of customisability offered, too. High-definition content is fully compatible as long as your PC is up to the job, so wiring your box up to that shiny new HDTV will be no problem.

The Bad: The software suffers a few bugs that could be something of a hurdle for newbies. It's in the advanced pre-release stages, meaning the team developing it hasn't deemed it suitable for general release, but it's well on its way. More tech-savvy users will work around any bugs they uncover, but technophobes may want to stick to Media Centre until a final release has been made.

Conclusion: MediaPortal is ideal for anyone who isn't afraid of looking at a program's preferences screen. If looking at settings confuses and scared you into a dark corner, stick with Microsoft's Media Centre for now. Otherwise, go grab yourself MediaPortal, because it's bloody marvellous.

Paid-for version: Windows Media Player
Open-source alternative: VLC media player

VLC is an exceptionally functional media player that not only handles almost any media format you throw at it, but will stream stuff from the Web and play your DVDs. It's also a great tool for anyone who downloads large video files, since VLC can play incomplete or damaged media.

The Good: For the home and for the office, VLC will work for you. If you use Windows, Mac OS X, Linux or BeOS, VLC will work for you. Almost regardless of what media formats you use, VLC will work for you. If you're an absolute newbie to computers, VLC will work for you. Do you see where we're going with this?

The Bad: VLC won't let you sync your media library with your new MP3 player. True, Windows Media Player doesn't work with an iPod anyway, and the vast majority of other models that claim to need WMP will actually let you drag and drop your content into their memory through Windows Explorer anyway. There are no radio services directly available through VLC, so if the integration of these services is important to you, you might still want to have WMP sticking around in the background.

Conclusion: For almost all uses, VLC will suit the beginner and the amateur. The experts will already be using it. There are loads of skins available to make it look much prettier than it is by default, and its undeniably superb functionality makes it a crucial download for any computer user.

Paid-for version: WinZip
Open-source alternative: 7-Zip

7-Zip is a file archiver that handles not only its own file compression format, but also the common .zip format, meaning it's ideal for everyday home and office use. It'll also unzip other popular archiving formats such as RAR, CAB and ISO. 7-Zip can be integrated into the Windows Shell for easy right-clicking compression of desktop files and folders.

The Good: Zipping and unzipping .zip files is the main function of the popular commercial application WinZip. 7-Zip performs this task without requiring any purchases. For this reason, it's a solid alternative for most people. It's also capable of encrypting archives for that added peace of mind.

The Bad: WinZip offers a vast array of features for advanced users, such as intelligent compression, which chooses the most efficient archiving method based on the type of files being compressed. WinZip will also let you schedule backups and periodic and automatic updating of existing backup archives.

Conclusion: Home users won't use most of the features in WinZip, so 7-Zip is highly recommended. It's lightweight, easy to use and will let you send batches of photos to friends as well as back up archives to DVDs.

Paid-for version: Adobe Photoshop
Open-source alternative: GIMP

GIMP is a package for creating digital images and manipulating photographs. It's been in production for 12 years and is compatible with most of the commonly used image formats such as JPG, TIFF, PNG, BMP and GIF, as well as most Adobe Photoshop and PaintShop Pro files.

The Good: It's no secret that many people download illegal copies of the enormously feature-packed Adobe Photoshop purely for cropping and resizing photos. GIMP takes care of this task without the risk of lawsuits. It's also got an array of tools for creating original raster graphics. The whole colour spectrum can be used with existing brushes or user-created ones, an array of filters and effects can be applied -- drop shadow being a popular choice. Once you've had some practice it's very easy to use and quickly proves itself to be a capable image editor.

The Bad: GIMP doesn't offer the extensive design and manipulation options that the £500 industry-standard Photoshop offers, though it has never aimed to. There really isn't any bad side to GIMP, considering what it's capable of doing. If you're used to editing images in Windows Paint, you'll need to spend a few hours getting to know it, but that's true with all applications that aren't aimed at children and the artistically backwards.

Conclusion: There's no need to illegally download spend £500 on Photoshop if all you're doing is resizing images, applying fancy effects and cropping photos, because GIMP is extremely capable at these tasks. If you're looking for a career in design however, you might still want to keep saving for the Adobe standard.

Commercial version: Google Reader, Bloglines
Open-source alternative: RSSOwl

RSSOwl is a simple and lightweight desktop feed reader. It offers multiple viewing options and easy importing of XML files.

The good: The 'Owl offers an uncluttered interface that allows easy navigation of multiple feeds. A Web browser is built in, so there's no need to leave the application to click through the Web sites. The application itself is extremely fast and very friendly, though rather basic, aesthetically. There's a feature that lets you enter a Web site's URL and RSSOwl will scour it for RSS feeds, which can then be imported with the click of a button. It's even possible to export all feed entries to PDF form for easy offline reading.

The bad: The built-in Web browser is Internet Explorer, raising the usual security issues common to IE.

Conclusion: Since you need to be online to use an RSS reader properly, RSSOwl is a great application. The ability to export feed items to offline documents could be a huge bonus over Web-based apps such as Google Reader.

Commercial version: Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger
Open-source alternative: Pidgin

Pidgin combines the IM functionality of popular IM clients such as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger into one lightweight application. This allows for seamless use of multiple clients and address books from the comfort of a single window.

The good: On computers with limited RAM, Pidgin does away with the need for multiple individual clients, which can greatly increase available memory. Multiple chat networks can be used simultaneously so there's no restriction on what networks you're connected to at any given time. It'll run on all the popular operating systems and a text-based alternative is available for anyone wanting to use the program within a console window.

The bad: It's not as attractive as the standard IM chat clients and it's not blindingly obvious which contacts are part of each network.

Conclusion: If you'd like all your contacts in one place, Pidgin is a superb option. Its functionality is flawless and features such as emoticons and file transfers are seamlessly integrated. It's not a particularly attractive program though, so if aesthetics are important to you, you might want to stick to separate chat clients.

Paid version: Nero Burning Rom
Open source alternative: InfraRecorder

InfraRecorder is an open-source alternative to commercial CD- and DVD-burning software. It was first developed during Google's Summer of Code in 2006. It uses a standard graphical interface for creating disc images and an express creation wizard that helps guide you through the process.

The good: InfraRecorder is a really capable piece of software that allows you to burn all the usual kinds of CD and DVD types. It also supports the creation of dual-layer DVDs and the burning of ISO and BIN images. We got perfect results from discs burned with the software and had no trouble using it from start to finish.

The bad: The interface is quite basic and not as accessible to less tech-savvy users. More sophisticated and well-designed wizards in programs such as Nero are better at easing newbies through the creation process. The program is also a little slow when preparing to burn a disc.

Conclusion: If you're used to manually creating DVDs and CDs, InfraRecorder is perfect. It worked flawlessly for us and produced great results. Technophobes, however, will prefer the idiot-proof wizards provided by commercial software bundled with pre-built PCs.

Paid-for version: Adobe Audition
Open-source alternative: Audacity

Audacity is a digital audio editor and mixing platform, complete with a graphical user interface and cross-platform OS support. It's one of the most popular open-source downloads in the world.

The good: One of the most common uses of the program is audio file conversion, as it handles a wide range of audio formats, including FLAC and OGG. It's easy to record, cut and edit sounds, remove noise, adjust levels and alter equaliser settings. An array of plugins allow you to extend core functionality, such as overlaying sound effects and samples. Audacity is a superb package for home users who want more control over their audio than the super-awesome-amazing Sound Recorder that comes with Windows allows.

The bad: While it's superbly kitted out for home users and podcasters, it can't match commercial products like Adobe's Audition software for studio recording. The GUI is also rather plain and not as easy to read as some paid-for alternatives.

Conclusion: Be prepared for a steep learning curve, but rest assured it'll pay off. Audacity offers a great set of features and is suited for loads of purposes. If you're setting up a home studio, you'll want to look for something vastly more capable. But for anyone who just needs to record, cut, manipulate and export, it's a killer.

Paid-for version: Internet Explorer
Open-source alternative: Mozilla Firefox

You didn't think we'd forget the 'Fox, did you? With over 400 million downloads and counting, the Firefox Web browser is more popular than even the most downloaded application of all time on SourceForge.net, eMule. It has snagged almost 15 per cent of the global browser market as of October 2007, translating to roughly 110 million global users.

The good: Firefox is commonly referred to as the most secure Web browser available. With a massive team of worldwide developers and contributors, holes and bugs can be patched and pushed out with extraordinary speed. Thousands of extensions are available, too, which are simple ways to add functionality to the browser. Tabbed browsing lets you have multiple Web sites open within a single browser window without cluttering the Windows taskbar. There's also an integrated download manager, RSS management and an integrated search bar for hundreds of Web sites.

The bad: Firefox can sometimes devour a system's RAM, though this is reportedly the result of certain extensions and plugins. It can also take a few seconds longer to load a page than Opera or Internet Explorer.

Conclusion: There is no reason not to use Firefox. It is the best, most configurable browser available. If you're used to Internet Explorer, you'll find the switch to Firefox painless. It looks similar and offers the same 'back, forward, stop, refresh' functionality, but offers as many extra features as you care to get hold of. If you're not using it, you're missing out.
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,3...294100,00.htm#





Why is the iPlayer a Multi Million Pound Disaster?
Chris Williams

Beeb Week The story of the BBC's iPlayer is of a multi-million pound failure that took years to complete, and was designed for a world that never arrived. More was spent on the project than many Silicon Valley startups ever burn through, but only now can we begin to piece together how this disaster unfolded.

When the iPlayer was commissioned in 2003, it was just one baffling part of an ambitious £130m effort to digitise the Corporation's broadcasting and archive infrastructure. It's an often lamented fact that the BBC wiped hundreds of 1960s episodes of its era-defining music show Top of the Pops, including early Beatles performances, and many other popular programmes.

The scope of the restructure was welcomed: it would be hard for anyone who values the BBC's place in society to argue against preserving and making available the huge investment in quality programming by licence fee payers over the last 50 years.

The iPlayer was envisaged as the flagship internet "delivery platform". It would dole out this national treasure to us in a controlled manner, it was promised, and fire a revolution in how Big TV works online.

For better or worse it's finally set to be delivered with accompanying marketing blitz this Christmas - more than four years after it was first announced.
Babylonian

When the BBC embarked on its first concerted effort at delivering internet video - the service was called iMP - it included both download and streaming options. Fast-forward two years to 2005, and iMP has been rebranded iPlayer, and streaming had been inexplicably binned and several million pounds burned.

One experienced web developer, who wishes to remain anonymous, described the project to us at the height of its Babylonian excess. He painted a picture of mismanagement and spiralling costs.

"The disorganisation was incredible. It was clear to me that the management had lost track of where they wanted [iPlayer] to go," he told us.

"I can honestly say it was the biggest mess I've ever worked on. There were individual executives within the BBC who ran their part of the project as a personal fiefdom, yet wanted involvement in all outside decisions."

He left the huge iPlayer team as soon as his freelancer's contract allowed.

Another source explained how every content department affected demanded a say in the direction of the iPlayer, including meetings deciding low-level technical decisions. The project encompassed over 400 staff at its height.

"It was worse than Boo.com," said one source.

Senior technical staff at the BBC tell The Reg that today the iPlayer is better managed, and less bureaucratic, following a big reorganisation (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/18/iplayer_rose/) and injection of new blood over this summer. The download iPlayer remains as a festering reminder of years of bloat, however.

Clunky

According to new-media boss Ashley Highfield, spending on the iPlayer has now hit £4.5m. Meanwhile, a variety of streaming products are making the running in internet TV. They're more widely used, interoperable, and support more "platforms" - particularly mobile devices such as phones and iPods.

Today, YouTube, Joost and BT Vision deliver video on demand to millions using streaming and P2P techniques that are evolving rapidly. For a large proportion of the web viewing public even YouTube's poor quality video is good enough.

The iPlayer now looks like an anachronism; a clunky, proprietary client in a world where content producers of the Beeb's quality should be more powerful than ever and "platform" operators are beating a path to their door.

As it turns out, the Beeb itself has proved that making shows available with streaming solution would have been cheaper and quicker to develop. The Flash player catch-up service cobbled together (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10...h_adobe_cloud/) in response to Mac and Linux iPlayer interoperabilty gripes took just a few months.

Before we examine why a download "platform" was wrong, we want to make it clear we're not making a happy-clappy anti-DRM argument against the iPlayer. The BBC has unshakeable obligations to producers who spend vast sums on the expensive telly-making process.

Downloads take time and build up certain expectations. Anyone prepared to wait for a download of their favourite programme to finish before they can watch it, expects it to last longer than 30 days - or however long it takes for the DRM to disable the file.

PC users who have become accustomed to using BitTorrent as a main source of TV aren't interested in iPlayer's lower resolution encoding.

And in the real mass market, most licence-fee payers won't be enamoured to learn that the iPlayer's Kontiki P2P system is distributing programming on the BBC's behalf - via their bandwidth. For the average consumer it's been made tricky to turn off, too.

It'll leave us, the British public, with a multimillion-pound internet curio.
Special Needs

Despite the widely reported problems and mistakes made over iPlayer, the BBC has keenly stage-managed its drunken stumble into the limelight. A bizarre opinion piece by Silicon.com in July, which called for a "ceasefire" on iPlayer from Linux enthusiasts, made the claim that "so far, it seems the Corporation has managed the development well".

As we wrote (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11...field_tactics/) earlier this month, arguments over interoperability have provided a convenient diversion for the spinners from our bigger question of how to deliver BBC shows over the net. In focusing on DRM and Linux interoperability, campaigners have missed the bigger picture.

The irony of this is that the whole free software versus BBC bunfight would have been avoided if the Corporation had only been more patient. It should have concentrated on getting the content management and archives right before spending big on a consumer-facing distribution system.

Even today, the internet TV business is immature: a special needs six-year-old who still wears nappies. Yet the BBC was teased into an expensive and premature attempt to second guess the market, and technology.
Rebirth?

BBC on demand via broadband and a TV set-top box - the real reason the BBC spent £130m - is on the cards, and makes much more sense than a redundant PC desktop app. Whether it'll be branded iPlayer remains to be seen, but hopefully it'll bear little resemblance to Auntie's current digital village idiot.

Today, the the size of the team that is building the second generation iPlayer client is closer to 15 - a far cry from 400, and far more productive.

Banishing the desktop download service altogether would be even better.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11...layer_comment/





Multiple Vulnerabilities In .FLAC File Format and Various Media Applications

Release Date:
November 15, 2007

Date Reported:
September 28, 2007

Patch Development Time (In Days):
48


Severity:
High (Remote Code Execution)

Vendor:
Multiple Vendors

Systems Affected:
Applications with FLAC Support

Overview:
eEye Digital Security has discovered 14 vulnerabilities in the processing of FLAC (Free-Lossless Audio Codec) files affecting various applications. Processing a malicious FLAC file within a vulnerable application could result in the execution of arbitrary code at the privileges of the application or the current user (depending on OS).

Technical Details:
The vulnerabilities in the .FLAC format are due to improperly handling metadata values from malformed files. The file format is available here: http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html.

Vulnerability #1: Metadata Block Size Heap Overflow
The first notable vulnerability is the Metadata Block Size Overflow vulnerability. Editing any Metadata Block Size value to a large value such as 0xFFFFFFFF may result in a heap based overflow in the decoding software.
Whenever vulnerable software open or process a malformed FLAC file, they use the size fields for reference points to allocate memory (malloc) and write the contents of these files into those memory buffers. Setting these values to an overly large value, such as 0xFFFFFFFF, could cause an exploitable condition. Passing a size of 0xFFFFFFFF would cause a malloc(0) immediately followed by a buffer overflow on the read. This results in an exploitable heap overflow. Exploitation is dependent on the data allocation location, heap structure and error handlers of the affected software. After overwriting a large amount of memory and pointers with arbitrary data, code execution could then be redirected to the attacker’s payload located inside the FLAC file.

Vulnerability #2: VORBIS Comment String Size Field Heap Overflow
The second vulnerability lies within the parsing of any VORBIS Comment String Size fields. Settings this fields to an overly large size, such as 0xFFFFFFF, could also result in another heap-based overflow allowing arbitrary code to execute in the content of the decoding program. Similar to the Metadata Block Size Overflow vulnerability above, exploitation depends on data allocation location, heap structure and error handlers of the affected application. Exploitation would be achieved by overwriting pointers in memory with arbitrary values stored inside the FLAC file or hard coded addresses in DLL files that directing code execution toward the attacker’s payload.

Vulnerability #3: VORBIS Comment String Size Length Stack Overflow
This is due to predetermined buffer sizes in applications when handling data in the VORBIS Comment Metadata block. By inserting an overly long VORBIS Comment data string along with an large VORBIS Comment data string size value (such as 0x000061A8 followed by 25,050 A's), applications that do not properly apply boundary checks will result in a stack-based buffer overflow. This is due to most applications reading data until they encounter a NULL byte.

Vulnerability #4: Picture MIME-Type Size Heap Overflow
The Picture Metadata block allows the insertion of a MIME-Type for the embedded album art in a FLAC file. This field is vulnerable to a heap-based overflow when applications that support FLAC album art attempt to process an overly large MIME-TYPE Size field. Again arbitrary code execution depends on the location of the overwritten memory, the vulnerable programs exception handling, structure of the heap at the time of the overflow, and the ability to process Picture Data within FLAC files.

Vulnerability #5: Picture MIME-Type Stack Overflow
By using the same technique as the VORBIS Comment String Stack Overflow, by setting a large size value at roughly 5000 bytes (depending on the vulnerable application) and a large string value for the Picture MIME-Type a stack-based overflow can be reached. Exploitation depends on bounds-checking within the application in conjunction with the ability to process Picture Data within FLAC files.

Vulnerability #6: Picture Dimension Size Heap Overflow
By modifying the width and height values in the PICTURE Metadata block, a heap-based overflow could be achieved. When a vulnerable application that supports FLAC images attempts to render the excessively large image, the application allocates memory based on the dimension fields, which could be used to overwrite memory values and pointers with arbitrary values that could lead to code execution.

Vulnerability #7: Picture Description Size Heap Overflow
Overly large Description Size values such as 0xFFFFFFFF can lead to a heap based memory corruption and execute arbitrary code on vulnerable applications that support the Picture Metadata block. Successful exploitation depends on the location of the overwritten memory, the vulnerable programs exception handling, and structure of the heap at the time of the overflow.

Vulnerability #8: Picture Description Length Stack Overflow
Similar to the VORBIS Comment String Length Stack Overflow, this would be conducted in the same manner, by entering both an overly large Description Size value in conjunction with an excessively large Description String value. This could also lead to a stack based buffer overflow with the potential to overwrite any exception handlers depending on the vulnerable application.

Vulnerability #9: Picture Data Length Heap Overflow
By modifying the Picture Data Length field to an excessively large value, such as 0xFFFFFFFF, a heap based overflow can be achieved. When a vulnerable application that supports Picture Metadata blocks processes an album art image, it uses this field to determine the size in bytes of the embedded image file. This memory is allocated without bounds checking and could be used to overwrite memory and pointers with arbitrary values from inside the FLAC file.

Vulnerability #10: Picture URL Stack Overflow
Whenever a FLAC file’s MIME-Type is set to "-->" this is a flag to indicate that the value for Data is not actually the contents of an image file but a URL to where the image file is located. By setting this value to an overly large string value, applications with FLAC image support could be vulnerable to a stack based buffer overflow that could allow arbitrary code execution.

Vulnerability #11: Malformed Image/File Download Vulnerability
Using the "-->" MIME-Type flag to signal a URL for a FLAC image file could allow the possibility of arbitrary file downloads if the application does not verify the file-type prior to downloading the file. This could also be combined with GDI+ or other picture rendering vulnerabilities to allow code execution depending on the application. This could also be applied to image files inserted into the FLAC file. Alternatively, this might be a vector to store malicious data, such as an attacker's payload. This could then be combined with another vulnerability to allow a more reliable exploit especially if the data retrieved by the vulnerable application is stored in a reliable memory address.

Vulnerability #12: Padding Length Heap Overflow
An overly large Padding length field value would set the basis for another heap overflow inside a vulnerable application. By setting this value to a large value such as 0xFFFFFFFF, a malformed FLAC file could cause a heap based corruption scenario when the memory for the Padding length is calculated without proper bounds checks.

Vulnerability #13: Seektable Out-Of-Scope Double Free Condition
By modifying the Seektable values with invalid data point references inside a malformed FLAC file, a Double Free (deallocation of a pointer not malloc'd) condition could be initiated. Furthermore the location of the freed pointer could be controlled by arbitrary values hosted inside the FLAC file. This could lead to an exploitable condition that could allow arbitrary code execution under the right circumstances.

Vulnerability #14: Malformed Seektable Double Free Condition
Setting multiple Seektable Data Offsets to large values such as 0x41414141 and then setting Seektable Points to cross reference each other can lead to multiple Double Free conditions (up to 12 in our tests) particularly on Mac OS. This is ideally achieved using multiple FLAC files with multiple malformed seektables. These conditions are not trivial to exploit but could lead to arbitrary code execution particularly since the deallocated pointers can be controlled by values from within the file, similar to the above condition.

Protection:
Retina Network Security Scanner has been updated to identify this vulnerability.
Blink Endpoint Vulnerability Prevention preemptively protects from this vulnerability.

Vendor Status:
libFLAC version 1.2.1 was released in September, 2007, fixing these vulnerabilities for most vulnerable applications. Unfortunately, many vendors that were using libFLAC within their media applications or using their own homegrown FLAC file parsers had not been informed that their FLAC file parser was vulnerable. Because of that, the release of this advisory was postponed until all vulnerable vendors were contacted in coordination with US-CERT.

Credit:
Greg Linares

Related Links:
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/544656

http://research.eeye.com/html/adviso...D20071115.html





USB 3.0 -- 10 Times Faster -- In the Works for 2009
Christopher Null

USB, that little rectangular plug that can be found on just about every computer peripheral cable you come across, is one of the biggest success stories in the history of computing. Ditching the slow serial and parallel cables of yore and replacing them with a fast, universal standard that could draw power and allowed connecting of dozens of peripherals without rebooting... well, it was genius. When USB 2.0 arrived, with much faster performance, it got even better. It's not hyperbole to say that USB, despite its humble status as a mere connector, is one of the most important computer technologies to ever be invented.

Well, USB fans, things are going to get even more interesting and soon. USB 2.0 may be fast enough right now, but with more high-definition video products arriving and bigger and bigger files being transferred, that won't be the case forever. Enter USB 3.0, which moves the bandwidth needle from 480Mbps to roughly 4.8Gbps, 10 times faster than the current version.

The new standard, which was recently demonstrated using a new optical cable (but the same connector), will be backward compatible with older USB formats and promises better power efficiency, too, in order to decrease the load on portable devices. Possibly in the works: Better ability to charge devices over USB, some of which still require an A/C adapter or two USB connections to draw enough juice.

Specs are planned to be delivered early next year with commercial availability for 2009. Just do us a favor and clearly label USB 3.0 products with an appropriate logo this time! (USB 2.0 got caught up in a mini scandal when vendors started labeling USB 1.1 products as "USB 2.0 capable," with vendors later claiming they only meant the products worked with USB 2.0 connections. Fail!)
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/58765





Lahore Universitys ‘Poor Man’s Broadband’ to Allow Faster Downloads

London, November 20 (ANI): Students at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) are gearing up to test a new system called “poor man’s broadband” (PMB), which may allow faster download of big files without having to depend on the Internet.

The new system enables computers to link to each other directly for faster downloads, and it continues working as long as at least one computer running the software has already downloaded the desired file from the internet.

It is believed that the system will reduce the universitys risk of overloading the bandwidth supplied by its Internet service providers.

According to New Scientist magazine, PMB is a mixture of peer-to-peer (P2P) software, touted as the Internet’s future, and pre-internet techniques, whereby users dial other computers directly to exchange files.
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/...e_1005811.html





SyncTV: a New Video Download Concept, Just Add Content
Brad Linder

Pioneer spinoff SyncTV launches in private beta today. The service is hardly the first, or even the 30th company trying to get into the video download game. But there are a few things that set SyncTV apart from competitors like Amazon, Apple, and NBC.

First up, although SyncTV uses DRM, the system is pretty flexible. It works with Mac, Linux, and PCs. You can specify up to 5 computers for playing back videos. And once compatible portable media players are released, you'll be able to watch videos on up to 10 different devices.

The service uses a subscription model. Engadget reports you'll pay about $2 to $4 per channel of content you want to subscribe to. A limited number of channels will make their content available on a pay per download basis. But generally, once you shell out the monthly fee, you can download as many episodes as you'd like, even entire seasons of TV programs.

The biggest problem with the service is the same that faces every new startup in this space: a lack of content. The only big name that appears to be attached to SyncTV right now is Showtime. And while we love us some Dexter, it'd be nice to have a bit more variety. Because honestly, we don't feel like signing up with 12 different services just to download the handful of TV shows we're willing to pay to watch.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/11...t-add-content/





Microsoft Struggling to Convince About Vista

Another survey highlights business concern about migration
Denise Dubie

The majority of IT professionals worry that migrating to Windows Vista will make their networks less stable and more complex, according to a new survey.

Ninety percent of 961 IT professionals surveyed said they have concerns about migrating to Vista and more than half said they have no plans to deploy Vista.

"The concerns about Vista specified by participants were overwhelmingly related to stability. Stability in general was frequently cited, as well as compatibility with the business software that would need to run on Vista," said Diane Hagglund of King Research, which conducted the survey for systems management vendor Kace. "Cost was also cited as a concern by some respondents."

The survey, echoing one from Forrester last week, shows most IT professionals are worried about Vista and that 44% have considered non-Windows operating systems, such as Linux and Macintosh, to avoid the Microsoft migration.

"Clearly many companies are serious about this alternative, with 9% of those saying they have considered non-Windows operating systems already in the process of switching and a further 25% expecting to switch within the next year," the report "Windows Vista Adoption and Alternatives" reads.

Macintosh leads the pack of Vista alternatives, with support from 28% of respondents. About a quarter said they would opt for Red Hat Linux, with SUSE Linux and Ubuntu each garnering 18% of the vote. Another 9% cited other Linux operating systems and 4% were unsure.

IT professionals also said that virtualisation is one of the technologies making a move away from Microsoft possible. About two-thirds reported that the use of virtualisation has made it easier to implement an alternative.

Yet heterogeneous systems management could be a barrier to going with a provider other than Microsoft, the survey found. Respondents reported that challenges include the need to manage multiple operating systems (49%) and the need to learn a different set of management tools (50%). Sixty percent manage their Windows systems with tools that don't support non-Windows environments.

"Almost half of all participants (45%) cited challenges with system management in non-Windows operating systems as preventing them from adopting" alternatives, the report states.
http://computerworlduk.com/managemen...fm?newsid=6258





Plumber’s Progress
Seth Schiesel

Mario, the goofy, fat Italian plumber, is by far the most famous character in video games and perhaps one of the world’s most-recognized fictional characters in any medium. Think back, if you can, to 1981 and Donkey Kong. Mario was there.

After selling almost 200 million games over more than two decades and generating untold billions in revenue for Nintendo of Japan, Mario is back. Super Mario Galaxy, released this month for Nintendo’s Wii console, is the first major new Mario game in five years and is certain to end up one of the best-selling games of 2007.

But wait, there’s more! In a collaboration akin to an unthinkable Mick Jagger team-up with Paul McCartney, Mario shares top billing with his longtime rival Sonic the Hedgehog in a separate new game, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, that is a droplet in what will surely become a torrent of marketing for the Beijing Olympics next summer.

There are plenty of games for serious gamers, but Mario has always starred in games for everyone. So to test whether Mario could still appeal to an overeducated, media-saturated audience, I assembled a panel of nongaming yuppies in their 30s at my house last weekend, put the Wii controls in their hands and sat back to check the reaction.

Judging by the hours of giggles, chortles and downright guffaws, especially from two women who hadn’t played a video game in many years, Mario still has the goods: the madcap visual humor, the cheesy yet oddly compelling musical score and that incessant tug to play just five more minutes.

Watching the scene took me straight back to 1985 and a pizza parlor where my friends and I would set up shop on Saturday afternoons to play the arcade version of the original Super Mario Bros., one of the most influential and successful games of all time. Mario made his debut as the protagonist in Donkey Kong, but the fluidity and addictiveness of Super Mario Bros. made it a revelation. “The only way to really put it is that Mario is the Man,” Andy McNamara, editor in chief of Game Informer, the No. 1 game magazine, said by telephone this week. “He’s definitely like the Steamboat Willie of the video-game industry. Back in 1985 everyone thought the video-game industry was dead, and when Super Mario Bros. came out, it revitalized the whole thing. Mario is really in some ways the quintessential game experience, in that you get to have fun and explore places you would not normally visit, with all these crazy mixed-up worlds and the magic mushrooms and crazy stars. Also, every Mario game gets fairly challenging in the end, but anyone of pretty much any age can just sit down and start playing.”

Judging by the reaction in my living room and elsewhere around the world, Super Mario Galaxy is more than a worthy successor to the franchise’s considerable legacy of smiles. It is being widely hailed as the best game yet for the Wii and is drawing plaudits like this, from Hardcore Gamer magazine: “What I’ve been experiencing since first putting this game in my Wii is the culmination of several lifetimes of game design mastery by its creators.”

Like dancing or physical intimacy, a great game can truly be understood only through experience, not words. When reduced to a mere description — “Pass around small bits of laminated card stock in place of money” (poker), or “Roll imprinted cubes and buy fictional properties” (Monopoly) — even the most captivating games can seem impossibly boring.

Likewise, Super Mario Galaxy is really just about jumping, spinning and flying as you try to save the de rigueur kidnapped princess. There’s no rational reason that hopping around giant mushrooms on a purple planet in space should be so much fun, but it is. The best video games, like Mario, Ms. Pac-Man and Space Invaders, have the ability to make the absurd irresistibly seductive. When you do it, it makes all the sense in the world.

Super Mario is generally a single-player game, but in a nice innovation, a second player can jump in and use a Wii remote to control a separate cursor on the screen that can stun enemies, pick up treasure and otherwise assist the main user controlling Mario. The game’s whole feel is so finely tuned, so infectiously enjoyable, that it’s understandable why Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario’s creator, has been one of the most famous game designers in the world for decades. (Nintendo’s Japanese operation is almost as well known for its reticence as it is for its creative talents; more than a week of intercontinental negotiations failed to secure any comment from Mr. Miyamoto.)

Mr. Miyamoto’s stature in the game world is so grand that Simon Jeffery, president of Sega of America, resorted to a religious analogy in describing how his company collaborated with Nintendo in making the Mario and Sonic Olympics game.

Asked recently if Mr. Miyamoto had set up a satellite office at Sega headquarters, Mr. Jeffrey laughed and shook his head. “No, no, Muhammad doesn’t go to the mountain,” he said. “The mountain goes to Muhammad. We would bring versions of the game to him for him to consult on.”

My panel of nonexperts had a lot of fun with the game’s Olympic “events” (up to four can play at one time), especially the trampoline, but that game still is not receiving the praise being lavished on Super Mario Galaxy. As a reviewer on Yahoo put it: “Super Mario Galaxy is a reminder that games don’t have to be ultraviolent, make clever social statements or ride the marketing machine to succeed. They simply have to be fun, and you’d be hard pressed to find one as genuinely enjoyable as Mario’s latest.”

Super Mario Galaxy for Nintendo’s Wii, $49.99, rated E for Everyone. Mario & Sonic at the Olympics for Wii, Sega of America, $49.99, rated E for Everyone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/ar...ic/23mari.html





Senators Urge Tougher Rating for "Manhunt" Game

A bipartisan group of lawmakers including a Democratic presidential hopeful is calling on the makers of video games to review the industry's ratings system.

In letter to the Entertainment Software Rating Board, the lawmakers complained about its decision to give an "mature" rating Rockstar's "Manhunt 2" game.

Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., Sam Brownback, R-Kan., Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said the game's violent content, which includes "many graphic torture scenes and murders," should have garnered an "adults only" rating.

Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, has long pressed for tougher ratings and has called for a unified ratings system for movies, games and TV shows.

"We ask your consideration of whether it is time to review the robustness, reliability and repeatability of your ratings process, particularly for this genre of 'ultraviolent' video games and the advances in game controllers," the senators wrote. "We have consistently urged parents to pay attention to the ESRB rating system. We must ensure that parents can rely on the consistency and accuracy of those ratings."

Rockstar also makes the controversial "Grand Theft Auto" series of games.
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...54151420071120





Italy Cracks Down on Gossip in Media
Eric J. Lyman

An Italian circuit court ruled Friday that reporting gossip in Italy will be illegal unless it helps make a larger point about the figure in question.

The case is part of a wider effort to improve standards on Italian television. State broadcaster RAI said this year that it would stop airing reality programming when current contracts run out, and the company also announced plans to remove advertising from one of its three networks by the end of 2009 in order to allow it to broadcast more cultural programs without consideration for economic factors.

Upon announcing the ruling, the Rome court said it would "remove gossip that exists only for gossip's sake." But critics said it will have little impact on content producers adept at framing reporting so that it can take on an unexpected context.

The most significant aspect may be that it gives prosecutors ammunition for attacking problematic programs that are guilty of breaking only the anti-gossip rules.

"Everyone will abuse the gossip rules, but now those who do will risk being sanctioned," said one television producer quoted by news agency ANSA. "The rules cannot be enforced universally but some will have to worry about their rivals using the rules against them."

The rules apply to television, print and radio media.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...d410bb7f?imw=Y





What to Do When Goliaths Roar?
Randall Stross

AS shoppers arm themselves for post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting later this week, they’ll also indulge in another, newer annual tradition: surfing the Web for advance information about Black Friday retail sales. By organizing sale prices from scattered newspaper circulars into a single database, the Internet has made it easy to search for particular items and compare prices — too easy, at least in the eyes of many major retailers.

For the last several years, Wal-Mart Stores and other large chains have threatened legal action to intimidate Web sites that get hold of advertising circulars early and publish prices online ahead of company-set release dates. The retailers’ threats rest upon some dubious legal arguments, however, which may be the reason they haven’t shown a keen interest in actually going to court over the issue.

Wal-Mart has been among the most aggressive retailers in trying to cow consumer Web sites. Last month, it sent a cease-and-desist letter to BFAds.net, a site devoted to publishing Black Friday ads. Wal-Mart sent the letter even before BFAds had published Wal-Mart’s sale prices, so the cease-and-desist letter would be more properly called a “don’t even think about it” letter.

Wal-Mart asserts that its sales-price data are “protected by copyright and other laws.” The “other laws” were never identified or explained in the letter, and the claim of copyright protection for facts themselves, like sales prices, that exist separately from their original expression was rejected by the courts long ago. In a 1991 case, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that names and phone numbers in a telephone directory could not be copyrighted and thus could be freely copied.

BFAds operates two months a year, as a sideline for a 20-year-old college student, Michael Brim, and his business partner, Dan Silvers, also a college student. The Wal-Mart letter posed a quandary for Mr. Brim. Should he assert his rights as a publisher who believed he had broken no laws? Or should he acknowledge that Wal-Mart (with revenue last year of $349 billion) and its law firm of Baker Hostetler (600 partner attorneys) had the resources to litigate him out of existence?

Mr. Brim chose the latter. He announced on his site that he had no other choice but to heed Wal-Mart’s letter. When Macy’s sent a similar letter, he gave ground again, under protest. BFAds did not post sale prices early for Wal-Mart and Macy’s this year.
Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, said she believes that companies like Wal-Mart dispatch the letters without intending to pursue the matter in court, where their claims would be put to a test before a judge. “It’s cheap to send out lots of letters,” she said. “If many sites take the material down, that’s good bang for the buck.”

Ms. Seltzer oversees the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, a Web site that publicizes what it calls corporate misuse of cease-and-desist letters to curb legally protected speech on the Internet. The clearinghouse, sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the clinics of seven law schools, posts copies of cease-and-desist letters that Wal-Mart, Macy’s and others send to Web publishers. One aim of the project is to publicly shame companies that casually dash off the letters.

Wal-Mart defends its practice. “All retailers are harmed in the same way when this information is leaked — it tips off competitors,” said John Simley, a Wal-Mart spokesman.

But he also said he was unaware of any time when Wal-Mart had taken a Web site to court for divulging Black Friday sale prices prematurely. I was curious to learn what criminal statutes Wal-Mart referred to when it alerted BFAds’s principals in its letter about the possibility that they may have engaged in “criminal activity.” Mr. Simley declined to be specific, other than to say that “there are laws to protect advertisers.” Baker Hostetler didn’t respond to my requests for a similar tutorial.

If early disclosure was indeed a grave concern of everyone in retailing, why has Best Buy come around to the idea that Black Friday sales sites, above all else, offer an opportunity for free advertising, whetting appetites with a sneak preview of what will be officially announced? At present, Best Buy’s only concern is that inaccurate information may circulate on the sites, so it encourages customers to verify prices on its own site before going to the store. Brian Lucas, a Best Buy spokesman, said, “We don’t want people to wait in a line all night for a deal that doesn’t exist.”

Best Buy’s stance has changed considerably since 2002, when, like other retailers, it sent threatening letters to Web site publishers. In 2003, it did the same — and one site, FatWallet.com, struck back with a lawsuit asking a judge to declare that sale prices cannot be copyrighted. The case was dismissed on a technicality, but Fat Wallet is now happy to dare retailers to give it a chance to go to court again. Tim Storm, FatWallet’s founder and chief executive, said his company tells any retailer who makes threats, “Are you guys sure you really want to do this?” To date, he says, no company has answered yes.

TWO years ago, the young entrepreneurs at BFAds tried a linguistic ploy to avoid legal difficulties when companies complained about posting of sales data. As soon as Office Depot, for example, dispatched a cease-and-desist letter, its name was removed from BFAds’s site. But visitors could still look for sale prices from a company BFAds had renamed “Office Despot.”

Office Depot was not amused. It sued Mr. Brim and sought a temporary restraining order. The court turned down the request, and the company withdrew the suit 14 months later, before a trial could take place.

Shoppers clearly appreciate the convenience of looking at sale prices online. Last November, BFAds served up 55 million page views, and this year, traffic has increased by a multiple of three. Wal-Mart, unwilling to forgo a chance to engage those prospective customers, maintains an “affiliate” relationship with the site, paying a commission to BFAds for linking to Wal-Mart’s site.

Yes, Wal-Mart welcomes referrals from BFAds, where visitors come for nothing other than the earliest possible word of sale price information. Wal-Mart’s lawyers, meanwhile, are ordering BFAds to keep Wal-Mart’s own sales prices hidden. “They want the best of both worlds,” Mr. Brim said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/te...gy/18digi.html





The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos
Dan Ackerman Greenberg

This guest post was written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, co-founder of viral video marketing company The Comotion Group and lead TA for the Stanford Facebook Class. Dan will graduate from the Stanford Management Science & Engineering Masters program in June.

Have you ever watched a video with 100,000 views on YouTube and thought to yourself: “How the hell did that video get so many views?” Chances are pretty good that this didn’t happen naturally, but rather that some company worked hard to make it happen – some company like mine.

When most people talk about “viral videos,” they’re usually referring to videos like Miss Teen South Carolina, Smirnoff’s Tea Partay music video, the Sony Bravia ads, Soulja Boy - videos that have traveled all around the internet and been posted on YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Facebook, Digg, blogs, etc. - videos with millions and millions of views.

Over the past year, I have run clandestine marketing campaigns meant to ensure that promotional videos become truly viral, as these examples have become in the extreme. In this post, I will share some of the techniques I use to do my job: to get at least 100,000 people to watch my clients’ “viral” videos.

Secret #1: Not all viral videos are what they seem

There are tens of thousands of videos uploaded to YouTube each day (I’ve heard estimates between 10-65,000 videos per day). I don’t care how “viral” you think your video is; no one is going to find it and no one is going to watch it.

The members of my startup are hired guns – our clients give us videos and we make them go viral. Our rule of thumb is that if we don’t get a video 100,000 views, we don’t charge.

So far, we’ve worked on 80-90 videos and we’ve seen overwhelming success. In the past 3 months, we’ve achieved over 20 million views for our clients, with videos ranging from 100,000 views to upwards of 1.5 million views each. In other words, not all videos go viral organically – there is a method to the madness.

I can’t reveal our clients’ names and I can’t link to the videos we’ve worked on, because YouTube surely doesn’t like what we’re doing and our clients hate to admit that they need professional help with their “viral” videos. But I can give you a general idea of who we’ve worked with: two top Hollywood movie studios, a major record label, a variety of very well known consumer brands, and a number of different startups, both domestic and international.

This summer, we were approached by a Hollywood movie studio and asked to help market a series of viral clips they had created in advance of a blockbuster. The videos were 10-20 seconds each, were shot from what appeared to be a camera phone, and captured a series of unexpected and shocking events that required professional post-production and CGI. Needless to say, the studio had invested a significant amount of money in creating the videos but every time they put them online, they couldn’t get more than a few thousand views.

We took six videos and achieved:

• 6 million views on YouTube
• ~30,000 ratings
• ~10,000 favorites
• ~10,000 comments
• 200+ blog posts linking back to the videos
• All six videos made it into the top 5 Most Viewed of the Day, and the two that went truly viral (1.5 million views each) were #1 and #2 Most Viewed of the Week.

The following principles were the secrets to our success.

2. Content is NOT King

If you want a truly viral video that will get millions of people to watch and share it, then yes, content is key. But good content is not necessary to get 100,000 views if you follow these strategies.

Don’t get me wrong: the content is what will drive visitors back to a site. So a video must have a decent concept, but one shouldn’t agonize over determining the best “viral” video possible. Generally, a concept should not be forced because it fits a brand. Rather, a brand should be fit into a great concept. Here are some guidelines we follow:

• Make it short: 15-30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips
• Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others. Ex: “Dramatic Hamster”
• Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing. Ex: Sony Bravia
• Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further. Ex: “UFO Haiti”
• Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy shit, did that actually happen?!” Ex: “Stolen Nascar”
• Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video. Ex: “Yoga 4 Dudes”

These recent videos would have been perfect had they been viral “ads” pointing people back to websites:

• Model Falls in Hole on Runway
• Cheerleader Gets Run Over By Football Team
• PacMan: The Chase
• Dude
• Dog Drives Car
• Snowball – Dancing Cockatoo

3. Core Strategy: Getting onto the “Most Viewed” page

Now that a video is ready to go, how the hell is it going to attract 100,000 viewers?

The core concept of video marketing on YouTube is to harness the power of the site’s traffic. Here’s the idea: something like 80 million videos are watched each day on YouTube, and a significant number of those views come from people clicking the “Videos” tab at the top. The goal is to get a video on that Videos page, which lists the Daily Most Viewed videos.

If we succeed, the video will no longer be a single needle in the haystack of 10,000 new videos per day. It will be one of the twenty videos on the Most Viewed page, which means that we can grab 1/20th of the clicks on that page! And the higher up on the page our video is, the more views we are going to get.

So how do we get the first 50,000 views we need to get our videos onto the Most Viewed list?

• Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.
• Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.
• MySpace: Plenty of users allow you to embed YouTube videos right in the comments section of their MySpace pages. We take advantage of this.
• Facebook: Share, share, share. We’ve taken Dave McClure’s advice and built a sizeable presence on Facebook, so sharing a video with our entire friends list can have a real impact. Other ideas include creating an event that announces the video launch and inviting friends, writing a note and tagging friends, or posting the video on Facebook Video with a link back to the original YouTube video.
• Email lists: Send the video to an email list. Depending on the size of the list (and the recipients’ willingness to receive links to YouTube videos), this can be a very effective strategy.
• Friends: Make sure everyone we know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.

Each video has a shelf life of 48 hours before it’s moved from the Daily Most Viewed list to the Weekly Most Viewed list, so it’s important that this happens quickly. As I mentioned before, when done right, this is a tremendously successful strategy.

4. Title Optimization

Once a video is on the Most Viewed page, what can be done to maximize views?

It seems obvious, but people see hundreds of videos on YouTube, and the title and thumbnail are an easy way for video publishers to actively persuade someone to click on a video. Titles can be changed a limitless number of times, so we sometimes have a catchy (and somewhat misleading) title for the first few days, then later switch to something more relevant to the brand. Recently, I’ve noticed a trend towards titling videos with the phrases “exclusive,” “behind the scenes,” and “leaked video.”

5. Thumbnail Optimization

If a video is sitting on the Most Viewed page with nineteen other videos, a compelling video thumbnail is the single best strategy to maximize the number of clicks the video gets.

YouTube provides three choices for a video’s thumbnail, one of which is grabbed from the exact middle of the video. As we edit our videos, we make sure that the frame at the very middle is interesting. It’s no surprise that videos with thumbnails of half naked women get hundreds of thousands of views. Not to say that this is the best strategy, but you get the idea. Two rules of thumb: the thumbnail should be clear (suggesting high video quality) and ideally it should have a face or at least a person in it.
Also, when we feel particularly creative, we optimize all three thumbnails then change the thumbnail every few hours. This is definitely an underused strategy, but it’s an interesting way to keep a video fresh once it’s on the Most Viewed list.

See the highlighted videos in the screenshot below for a good example of how a compelling title and screenshot can make all the difference once the video is on the Most Viewed page.

6. Commenting: Having a conversation with yourself

Every power user on YouTube has a number of different accounts. So do we. A great way to maximize the number of people who watch our videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video. We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this). Everyone loves a good, heated discussion in the comments section - especially if the comments are related to a brand/startup.

Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment. We can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.

We usually get one comment for every thousand views, since most people watching YouTube videos aren’t logged in. But a heated comment thread (done well) will engage viewers and will drive traffic back to our sites.

7. Releasing all videos simultaneously

Once people are watching a video, how do we keep them engaged and bring them back to a website?

A lot of the time our clients say: “We’ve got 5 videos and we’re going to release one every few days so that viewers look forward to each video.”

This is the wrong way to think about YouTube marketing. If we have multiple videos, we post all of them at once. If someone sees our first video and is so intrigued that they want to watch more, why would we make them wait until we post the next one? We give them everything up front. If a user wants to watch all five of our videos right now, there’s a much better chance that we’ll be able to persuade them to click through to our website. We don’t make them wait after seeing the first video, because they’re never going to see the next four.

Once our first video is done, we delete our second video then re-upload it. Now we have another 48-hour window to push it to the Most Viewed page. Rinse and repeat. Using this strategy, we give our most interested viewers the chance to fully engage with a campaign without compromising the opportunity to individually release and market each consecutive video.

8. Strategic Tagging: Leading viewers down the rabbit hole

This is one of my favorite strategies and one that I think we invented. YouTube allows you to tag your videos with keywords that make your videos show up in relevant searches. For the first week that our video is online, we don’t use keyword tags to optimize the video for searches on YouTube. Instead, we’ve discovered that you can use tags to control the videos that show up in the Related Videos box.

I like to think about it as leading viewers down the rabbit hole. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible for viewers to engage with all your content, rather than jumping away to “related” content that actually has nothing to do with your brand/startup.

So how do we strategically tag? We choose three or four unique tags and use only these tags for all of the videos we post. I’m not talking about obscure tags; I’m talking about unique tags, tags that are not used by any other YouTube videos. Done correctly, this will allow us to have full control over the videos that show up as “Related Videos.”

When views start trailing off after a few days to a week, it’s time to add some more generic tags, tags that draw out the long tail of a video as it starts to appear in search results on YouTube and Google.

9. Metrics/Tracking: How we measure effectiveness

The following is how we measure the success of our viral videos.

For one, we tweak the links put up on YouTube (whether in a YouTube channel or in a video description) by adding “?video=1” to the end of each URL. This makes it much easier to track inbound links using Google Analytics or another metrics tool.

TubeMogul and VidMetrix also track views/comments/ratings on each individual video and draw out nice graphs that can be shared with the team. Additionally, these tools follow the viral spread of a video outside of YouTube and throughout other social media sites and blogs.

Conclusion

The Wild West days of Lonely Girl and Ask A Ninja are over. You simply can’t expect to post great videos on YouTube and have them go viral on their own, even if you think you have the best videos ever. These days, achieving true virality takes serious creativity, some luck, and a lot of hard work. So, my advice: fire your PR firm and do it yourself.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22...y-viral-videos





The Lasting Digg Effect
Ben Cook

Just about every blogger around knows how powerful hitting the front page of Digg.com can be. We’ve all heard the stories about the massive hoard of visitors swarming over a site in just a few short hours. However, few people talk about the amount of traffic a front page Digg story leaves in it’s wake. Many seo sites have written about the influx of links that often follow a popular story, but I’d always read about it as one component of an overall link building or seo campaign. I hadn’t ever heard about a site that relied solely upon one Digg story for it’s promotion and traffic. So, I decided to make one.

The Idea

About 6 months ago an idea for a great article sprang to mind after a discussion with a co-worker. Originally I had planned to publish the article as a post on one of my existing blogs, but after a bit of thought decided to wrap an entire site around the article. I jumped online, was pleasantly surprised that my first choice of domain names was available, registered said domain, installed WordPress, and quickly typed out the post. After installing a new theme and cranking out an about page, HilariousNames.com was ready to roll.

The Digg

At that time I was very active on Digg and had been on a good run of submissions becoming popular. Since the site was brand new and no one knew it existed, much less that it was my own site, I decided I’d be ok to submit my own work. Obviously this is something normally frowned upon by the Digg community but occasionally you can get away with it. This was one of those occasions. The submission took off very quickly and became popular within a matter of hours. The traffic poured in at such a frantic pace that my host thought it was a DDOS attack and shut down the site. After two hours of panicked support tickets, the site came back up and the traffic resumed. In fact my follow up post (describing my dealings with my hosting provider) very nearly went popular on Digg as well. After all was said and done, the site had seen about 20,000 visitors over the course of a few hours.

The Lasting Effects

After a couple of days the blog was shelved for a different project I was working on (this very site in fact) and I decided to just let it sit to see what would happen. I hadn’t promoted the site anywhere else other than Digg and I hadn’t done any seo work on it. The popular post did get picked up by several other social sites and the traffic over the next week or so remained fairly high for a brand new site (around 1,000 visitors a day). After that, traffic began to trail off and eventually dropped down to under 10 per day. I figured the site had probably run its course but left it up to age just in case I ever decided to come back around to it. I recently decided to check my stats for all of my sites and was surprised to see the blog is now averaging nearly 40 visitors a day! 75% of the traffic is coming from search engines with another 19% clicking over from the Digg submission. Apparently the site ranks first in Google and Yahoo for the term “hilarious names” and also appears on the first page for other searches such as “worst names”, and “worst names ever”, etc.

While 40-50 visitors a day certainly won’t raise many eyebrows, keep in mind that this is entirely the result of a single popular story on Digg. Any and all links, rankings, and traffic the site has is due to the long term effects of that single post. I mean shoot, the last update was hours after the article hit the front page. No this level of traffic won’t shut your server down or spike your Alexa rankings. But these are the results I’ve seen without doing ANYTHING else with the site. Imagine the kind of growth and popularity that could be achieved if you leveraged the initial traffic into readers.

Imagine how many more links and how much more traffic your site would receive if you were able to make it to the front page of a popular social site multiple times. Hell, imagine how much better the results would be if you simple wrote posts regularly after becoming popular. This is the lasting Digg effect, and it might just be more powerful than the tsunami of traffic Digg is famous for.
http://bloggingexperiment.com/archiv...igg-effect.php





In Korea, a Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession
Martin Fackler

MOKCHEON, South Korea — The compound — part boot camp, part rehab center — resembles programs around the world for troubled youths. Drill instructors drive young men through military-style obstacle courses, counselors lead group sessions, and there are even therapeutic workshops on pottery and drumming.

But these young people are not battling alcohol or drugs. Rather, they have severe cases of what many in this country believe is a new and potentially deadly addiction: cyberspace.

They come here, to the Jump Up Internet Rescue School, the first camp of its kind in South Korea and possibly the world, to be cured.

South Korea boasts of being the most wired nation on earth. In fact, perhaps no other country has so fully embraced the Internet. Ninety percent of homes connect to cheap, high-speed broadband, online gaming is a professional sport, and social life for the young revolves around the “PC bang,” dim Internet parlors that sit on practically every street corner.

But such ready access to the Web has come at a price as legions of obsessed users find that they cannot tear themselves away from their computer screens.

Compulsive Internet use has been identified as a mental health issue in other countries, including the United States. However, it may be a particularly acute problem in South Korea because of the country’s nearly universal Internet access.

It has become a national issue here in recent years, as users started dropping dead from exhaustion after playing online games for days on end. A growing number of students have skipped school to stay online, shockingly self-destructive behavior in this intensely competitive society.

Up to 30 percent of South Koreans under 18, or about 2.4 million people, are at risk of Internet addiction, said Ahn Dong-hyun, a child psychiatrist at Hanyang University in Seoul who just completed a three-year government-financed survey of the problem.

They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.

To address the problem, the government has built a network of 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers, in addition to treatment programs at almost 100 hospitals and, most recently, the Internet Rescue camp, which started this summer. Researchers have developed a checklist for diagnosing the addiction and determining its severity, the K-Scale. (The K is for Korea.)

In September, South Korea held the first international symposium on Internet addiction.

“Korea has been most aggressive in embracing the Internet,” said Koh Young-sam, head of the government-run Internet Addiction Counseling Center. “Now we have to lead in dealing with its consequences.”

Though some health experts here and abroad question whether overuse of the Internet or computers in general is an addiction in the strict medical sense, many agree that obsessive computer use has become a growing problem in many countries.

Doctors in China and Taiwan have begun reporting similar disorders in their youth. In the United States, Dr. Jerald J. Block, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health and Science University, estimates that up to nine million Americans may be at risk for the disorder, which he calls pathological computer use. Only a handful of clinics in the United States specialize in treating it, he said.

“Korea is on the leading edge,” Dr. Block said. “They are ahead in defining and researching the problem, and recognize as a society that they have a major issue.”

The rescue camp, in a forested area about an hour south of Seoul, was created to treat the most severe cases. This year, the camp held its first two 12-day sessions, with 16 to 18 male participants each time. (South Korean researchers say an overwhelming majority of compulsive computer users are male.)

The camp is entirely paid for by the government, making it tuition-free. While it is too early to know whether the camp can wean youths from the Internet, it has been receiving four to five applications for each spot. To meet demand, camp administrators say they will double the number of sessions next year.

During a session, participants live at the camp, where they are denied computer use and allowed only one hour of cellphone calls a day, to prevent them from playing online games via the phone. They also follow a rigorous regimen of physical exercise and group activities, like horseback riding, aimed at building emotional connections to the real world and weakening those with the virtual one.

“It is most important to provide them experience of a lifestyle without the Internet,” said Lee Yun-hee, a counselor. “Young Koreans don’t know what this is like.”

Initially, the camp had problems with participants sneaking away to go online, even during a 10-minute break before lunch, Ms. Lee said. Now, the campers are under constant surveillance, including while asleep, and are kept busy with chores, like washing their clothes and cleaning their rooms.

One participant, Lee Chang-hoon, 15, began using the computer to pass the time while his parents were working and he was home alone. He said he quickly came to prefer the virtual world, where he seemed to enjoy more success and popularity than in the real one.

He spent 17 hours a day online, mostly looking at Japanese comics and playing a combat role-playing game called Sudden Attack. He played all night, and skipped school two or three times a week to catch up on sleep.

When his parents told him he had to go to school, he reacted violently. Desperate, his mother, Kim Soon-yeol, sent him to the camp.

“He didn’t seem to be able to control himself,” said Mrs. Kim, a hairdresser. “He used to be so passionate about his favorite subjects” at school. “Now, he gives up easily and gets even more absorbed in his games.”

Her son was reluctant at first to give up his pastime.

“I don’t have a problem,” Chang-hoon said in an interview three days after starting the camp. “Seventeen hours a day online is fine.” But later that day, he seemed to start changing his mind, if only slightly.

As a drill instructor barked orders, Chang-hoon and 17 other boys marched through a cold autumn rain to the obstacle course. Wet and shivering, Chang-hoon began climbing the first obstacle, a telephone pole with small metal rungs. At the top, he slowly stood up, legs quaking, arms outstretched for balance. Below, the other boys held a safety rope attached to a harness on his chest.

“Do you have anything to tell your mother?” the drill instructor shouted from below.

“No!” he yelled back.

“Tell your mother you love her!” ordered the instructor.

“I love you, my parents!” he replied.

“Then jump!” ordered the instructor. Chang-hoon squatted and leapt to a nearby trapeze, catching it in his hands.

“Fighting!” yelled the other boys, using the English word that in South Korea means the rough equivalent of “Don’t give up!”

After Chang-hoon descended, he said, “That was better than games!”

Was it thrilling enough to wean him from the Internet?

“I’m not thinking about games now, so maybe this will help,” he replied. “From now on, maybe I’ll just spend five hours a day online.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/te...8rehab.html?hp





Online crooks often escape prosecution

Justice Department Declines Nearly Three OF Four Cases
Ryan Blitstein

Even as online crime has mushroomed in the past few years into a multibillion-dollar problem, federal prosecution of Internet crooks nationwide has not kept pace, a Mercury News analysis shows.

In nearly three of four cases, federal prosecutors are choosing not to pursue the computer-fraud allegations that investigators bring them. And whether a case is prosecuted appears to vary widely, depending upon where the crime is committed or who the victims happen to be.

Those conclusions come from an examination of federal prosecutions, based on Justice Department data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, at Syracuse University, as well as more than two dozen interviews with federal authorities and private security consultants. Outside critics question why the Justice Department has not intensified efforts to prosecute the most dangerous cybercriminals, particularly those attacking American citizens from abroad.

"How long are you going to study the disease before you cut out the tumor?" asked Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.

The Mercury News "Ghosts in the Browser" series last week documented a dramatic rise in financial cybercrime attacks in recent years, and the failure of businesses, individuals and the U.S. government to respond adequately to the threat. The new analysis identifies one more area where the government has fallen short: in aggressively pursuing criminal cases against the cybercrooks.

From 1995 through 2002, the U.S. government responded aggressively to cybercrime. Prosecutions and convictions for computer fraud, a category that includes such crimes as hacking and phishing, rose dramatically over that time. There were more than 500 percent more convictions and prosecutions in 2002 than in 1995.

In 2002, there were 239 prosecutions and 146 convictions. But even as the threat from cybercrooks became pervasive since then, the number of cases increased far more modestly. Last year, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 265 computer-fraud cases, winning 194 convictions.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said cybercrime has been a "high priority" for a decade, citing an expansion of its Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property program to 200 attorneys. Though she said TRAC's analysis may fail to identify all computer-crime cases, alternate figures the department provided show similarly slow growth in prosecutions.

The Mercury News last week reported that federal investigators have faced many problems in building cases. But the federal data collected by TRAC shows that prosecutors are declining to bring a large number of the cases, even when investigators refer them.

Last year, U.S. prosecutors nationwide declined to prosecute 74 percent of the computer-fraud cases referred to them, according to TRAC - a proportion that has remained relatively constant since 2000. By comparison, U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute 55 percent of all white-collar crime cases that investigators referred.

Where an online crime takes place has a significant bearing on whether the crook will be pursued. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, which includes the Bay Area, boasts comparatively high rates of prosecuting cybercrime. Buoyed by cooperation from Silicon Valley companies, investigators refer more cases than any other district in the country. The U.S. attorney here brings prosecutions in more than half the cases that are referred, winning convictions in most of them.

Yet Northern California seems to be the exception, not the norm: It's one of six tech-heavy jurisdictions that accounted for more than 40 percent of computer-fraud prosecutions last year. U.S. attorneys in more than a dozen districts - including three states the FBI lists among the top 10 for online fraud victims - failed to bring a single computer fraud case in 2006, TRAC data shows.

U.S. efforts

Prosecutors slow to act, critics say

Even the Justice Department's cyberprosecution successes have been met with derision within the security community.

Azusa "phisher" Jeffrey Goodin became the first person found guilty by a jury under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, a much-ballyhooed law aimed at shutting down criminal spammers. But after Goodin was convicted in January in federal court in Los Angeles of identity theft and credit card fraud, the University of Alabama's Warner noted the prosecution came four years after the law took effect.

"Why spend so much time writing laws we never have any intention of enforcing?" asked Warner, who also serves as an adviser to the U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Alabama.

The June announcement that three "bot-herders" were arrested as a result of Operation BotRoast, a federal investigation to capture cybercriminals launching Internet attacks from remote-controlled "botnet" computers, raised similar concerns.

"They were, in my opinion, slow to the table," said Keith Schwalm, a former Secret Service agent and administration cyber official.

Complex cases

Ex-U.S. attorney cites 'a fear factor'

There are a number of reasons why more prosecutions are not brought.

The cases are complex, and require special understanding. "There's a fear factor," said Kevin Ryan, the former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, about prosecutors' reluctance to learn what they need to successfully bring charges. "It was hard for me to convince folks to go into that area."

Criminals may be difficult to track, and many are based in foreign countries where cooperation is non-existent. In July, for example, a Lithuanian court rejected the extradition of Paulius Kalpokas, a cyberfraud suspect indicted in Nashville in August 2006. Kalpokas is now scheduled to be tried in his home country.

In cyberfraud cases, unlike traditional white-collar crime, authorities often are unable to identify the suspect until very late in the investigation - at which point a promising case may come to an abrupt halt.

"Despite the fact that the criminals don't recognize borders, we do," said Mitch Dembin, the cybercrime prosecutor in California's Southern District. Some countries cooperate, but others "don't even want to work with us," he said. "That's a brick wall."

Several prosecutors cautiously point the finger as well at the lack of investigative resources and shortage of trained agents caused, in part, by Secret Service and FBI rotation policies.

"We have been unable to pursue some cases because of that," said Kathryn Warma, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington.

The issue intensified after Sept. 11, 2001, when counterterrorism sucked away prosecution resources. The Southern District of California's cybercrime unit was disbanded in 2002, with several of its members reassigned to prosecute terrorism. It wasn't until April 2005 that the U.S. attorney's office re-established the unit - this time, with a single prosecutor.

Feds' attention

Spam e-mail sent to SEC attorney

The identity of the victim also appears to play a role in whether crimes are prosecuted. Those who suffer large losses in a single event may be more likely to see their crimes prosecuted than victims of "salami attacks" built from many small, individual slices.

And some targets are inherently more likely to attract federal attention.

Darrel Uselton and his uncle Jack Uselton sent millions of spam e-mails through botnets over a two-year period, urging their victims to buy thinly traded penny stocks. When investors pushed up the stock prices by following the foolish advice, the Useltons dumped their holdings, earning about $4.6 million, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC and Texas authorities unraveled the scheme after one of the spam e-mails ended up in the inbox of an SEC attorney.

The lesson: "If you're unlucky, and you catch them on a bad day and they take it personally, then you might get caught," said Richard Clayton, security researcher at University of Cambridge.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci...nclick_check=1





'Virtual Theft' Leads to Arrest

A Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from "rooms" in Habbo Hotel, a 3D social networking website.

The 17-year-old is accused of stealing 4,000 euros (£2,840) worth of virtual furniture, bought with real money.

Five 15-year-olds have also been questioned by police, who were contacted by the website's owners.

The six teenagers are suspected of moving the stolen furniture into their own Habbo rooms.

A spokesman for Sulake, the company that operates Habbo Hotel, said: "The accused lured victims into handing over their Habbo passwords by creating fake Habbo websites.

"In Habbo, as in many other virtual worlds, scamming for other people's personal information such as user names has been problematic for quite a while.

"We have had much of this scamming going on in many countries but this is the first case where the police have taken legal action."

Habbo users can create their own characters, decorate their own rooms and play a number of games, paying with Habbo Credits, which they have to buy with real cash.

"It is a theft because the furniture is paid for with real money. But the only way to be a thief in Habbo is to get people's usernames and passwords and then log in and take the furniture.

"We got involved because of an increasing number of sites which are pretending to be Habbo. People might then try and log in and get their details stolen."

Six million people in more than 30 countries play Habbo Hotel each month.

Virtual theft is a growing issue in virtual worlds; in 2005 a Chinese gamer was stabbed to death in a row over a sword in a game.

Shanghai gamer Qiu Chengwei killed player Zhu Caoyuan when he discovered he had sold a "dragon sabre" he had been loaned.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/7094764.stm





Overly-Broad Copyright Law Has Made USA a "Nation of Infringers"
Nate Anderson

How many copyright violations does an average user commit in a single day? John Tehranian, a law professor at the University of Utah, calculates in a new paper that he rings up $12.45 million in liability over the course of an average day. The gap between what the law allows and what social norms permit is so great now that "we are, technically speaking, a nation of infringers."

Tehranian's paper points out just how pervasive copyright has become in our lives. Simply checking one's e-mail and including the full text in response could be a violation of copyright. So could a tattoo on Tehranian's shoulder of Captain Caveman—and potential damages escalate when Tehranian takes off his shirt at the university pool and engages in public performance of an unauthorized copyrighted work.

Singing "Happy Birthday" at a restaurant (unauthorized public performance) and capturing the event on a video camera (unauthorized reproduction) could increase his liability, and that's to say nothing of the copyrighted artwork hanging on the wall behind the dinner table (also captured without authorization by the camera). Tehranian calculates his yearly liability at $4.5 billion.

And all of this infringement could easily be done without even engaging in "wrong" behaviors like P2P file-sharing. Tehranian wants to make clear how such copyright issues don't simply affect those operating in the grey or black zones of the law; they affect plenty of ordinary people who aren't doing anything that they consider to be illegal, immoral, or even a little bit naughty.

The "vast disparity between copyright law and copyright norms" simply highlights the need for effective copyright reform. Since the 1976 Copyright Act, when all creative works automatically gained copyright protection without the need for registration, our lives have been awash in the copyrighted materials of other people. The advent of digital technology means not only that such works are simpler to use and to share, but that content owners for the first time have a realistic shot at enforcing their maximum rights.

That has led to plenty of bad press for copyright holders, as in the case of the "terminally ill Mexican immigrant on welfare" whose case Tehranian handled when the man was sued by the RIAA for his son's alleged file-swapping. More serious than such isolated cases, though, is the fact that the law currently gives so much power (even if much of it is not used) to content owners that it risks eroding respect for the necessary and even important uses of copyright law.

What better way could there be to create a nation of constant lawbreakers than to instill in that nation a contempt for its own laws? And what better way to instill contempt than to hand out rights so broad that most Americans simply find them absurd?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...nfringers.html





How to Win the P2P War and Stuff the Content Maffiaa

Decentralise, my son
Charlie Demerjian

THE IMPOTENT LEGAL rampage of the content mafiaa has had a lot of effect lately - people hate them, piracy is way up, and the word is out that they are no longer necessary or relevant. Their legal shenanigans are annoying, but there is a simple thing that someone can write to make them totally irrelevant.

Let's back up to what they are doing. Their lawsuits against the handicapped, aged and non-computer users have pretty much run their course. In the meantime, piracy has gone up by hundreds of times. The new legal tactics like trying to hold colleges' feet to the fire are going to have about the same effect, a lot of innocent people will suffer and the few remaining people that haven't heard will hear about Piracy: The Better Choice(TM)(R)(C).

In short, pirates couldn't ask for a better PR machine than the content mafiaa's legal team. It would be impossible to get the word out as to how easy and effective piracy is without them. The problem is that their stupidities do have an effect, it hurts my ability to find and download legal materials via P2P.

When I want to get the latest Fedora Core build or check out Vuse, I can't without something or someone causing me slowdowns or getting on someone's radar. Tracker sites are getting nailed one by one for the most dubious reasons and, in general, precedents are being set unfairly on the backs of those who can't afford to defend themselves.

There is one way to stop this litigious, greedy game of whack-a-mole, and it is the same way that P2P services themselves evolved from a single target to an unstoppable hydra. Someone needs to write a torrent tracker site construction kit (TTSCK).

Think about it: the way the mafiaa stopped Napster was by suing a central authority. They went after the database and killed it. Legal dubiousnesses aside, there was a single point of failure, and the legal vultures put a stake in it.

The result was pretty obvious, P2P protocols became disaggregated, first eDonkey/eMule, then on to BitTorrent, each became more and more decentralised and content - in this case the metadata, not the files - became redundant. Killing the messenger in this case became impossible, and the mafiaa lost by winning. The people adapted better, faster and smarter than they could be reacted to.

Torrents are now unassailable, in addition to being the method of choice for distribution for just about every major open source project out there, there are just to many nodes out there for all the lawyers in the world working 24/7 to put a dent in. The cat is out of the bag.

So the mafiaa, in its myopic rage, attacked the tracker aggregation sites one by one. These sites contain absolutely nothing illegal, if you download a .torrent file and open it in a text editor, you will see it is nothing more than a list of files and a location. Try and tell me a directory listing of files you don't have on hand is infringing on someone's copyright. If you can prove this in court, short Amazon stock because they list such things - track listings and chapter titles are just as infringing.
What effect has this attack on tracker sites had? Well, to use the example of Oink, it has been entirely negative for the mafiaa. I didn't know what Oink was, as I had never heard of it, until it was busted. I now do know the names of the two successor sites now based on news reports of what happened after Oink went to piggy heaven. Should I ever care, I now know where to go for illegal torrents. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. I suspect there are several million more like me who were handed a roadmap by just about every IT news site out there, along with the news that absolutely zero people using the site were busted along with the ops. Can you say own goal?

Getting back to the point of what you and I can do to distract the mafiaa while defanging them, the idea is simple: decentralise the tracker sites. Make them self-replicating, encrypted from start to finish, and multi-homed.

How do you do this? Someone needs to write a TTSCK so any idiot with the barest minimum knowledge of setting up a site can put up a tracker site node. I assume there aren't more than a few dozen tracker sites that matter, and every time one gets killed, a few more spring up. With thousands, they become impervious to attack.

If you get a cease and desist letter, legal or not, don't fight it, take the site down. Get a new ISP, and put it up again and join the swarm again. Some sites will be more popular than others, some will have no purpose other than to keep the database alive and replicated. You could even put in 'dark' nodes where there is no outside access, just a supernode that replicates the databases of torrents. Try swatting one of those under legal pretenses if there are no users downloading from it.

The TTSCK needs a few key attributes. First, it must be 100 per cent free, legal and open source. You must be able to get it for nothing, set it up for nothing, and improve on it openly. Second, it must be very easy to set up, scripted with ample help files, taking nothing more than Azareus to run. Third, to join the swarm, you must be able to do it from any point on the swarm, that is, any site should allow any other site to join with the click of a link.

On the more technical side, all traffic must be encrypted 100 per cent of the time, and must pass over ports commonly used by net protocols, HTTP, ICMP, POP, and SSH to name a few. Lets see how far the ISPs get when they try and filter HTML off the backbones, especially encrypted traffic on port 443. Also, each new node must not only connect to the node it joined from, but also at least a dozen others, preferably randomly selected.

If you want to be really snarky, writers of the TTSCK can put in a nice EULA that determines who and what is allowed to be on the network. Preclude common methods of poisoning and spying on the network. If the mafiaa does either of those things, the comedy of them arguing EULAs are invalid is worth the price paid to do it. In fact, it might be worth it to let them set a precedent that EULAs are invalid. That will send a few corporate lawyers into twitching fits, which side do they weigh in on?

In the end, what needs to be done is take the tracker aggregators out of the attack loop. The method is simple, distribute the infrastructure and make it easy to set up. This isn't rocket science, nor does it do anything other than rehash pieces of what is there already. Someone need to package it ASAP, and then the war, not just a battle, with the content mafiaa will be won.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...re-win-p2p-war





TOR Anonymisation Network Phished, part 2

By publishing his TOR hack, Swedish researcher Dan Egerstadt recently provided users with a timely reminder that The Onion Router (TOR) anonymisation network should be enjoyed with caution. By setting up five exit-nodes, Egerstad sniffed out large amounts of e-mail access data from embassies and government agencies and published some of this data on the internet. Since a user cannot know who operates the individual exit-node through which his traffic passes,

TOR users are advised to always make use of additional encryption.

Members of the Teamfurry community got curious and took a look at the advertised configurations of a few randomly selected TOR exit-nodes. They stumbled on some extremely interesting results. There are, for example, exit-nodes which only forward unencrypted versions of certain protocols. One such node only accepts unencrypted IMAP and POP connections (TCP ports 143 and 110) and only forwards messenger connections from AIM, Yahoo IM and MSN Messenger if they are received on ports on which traffic is handled as plain text. The same procedure is applied to Telnet and VNC connections, used for remote access to systems. Further, there are systems which are only interested in specific destinations and, for example, exclusively forward HTTP packets bound for MySpace and Google. HTTPS traffic to these destinations is, however, blocked.

These peculiar configurations invite speculation as to why they are set up in this way. The Teamfurry blog declines to go so far as to impute nefarious motives to these nodes. Nevertheless, the report does raise the question of whether users should route personal data via such nodes. It is certainly generally believed that Chinese, Russian and American government agencies operate TOR exit-nodes. Large companies and illegal hacker groups are also thought to operate exit-nodes. Looking through the list of TOR exit-nodes, it is striking that the number of exit-nodes in China and the US has increased disproportionately over the last year.

Employing channel encryption may also be of little help. The Teamfurry blog reports the existence of an exit-node in Germany which apparently attempts to hitch itself into an SSL connection using a man-in-the-middle attack. A certificate forwarded via an SSL connection running through this node is returned as a fake, self-signed certificate. This generally produces an error message, but users will often ignore this. This 'phishing node' has since disappeared from the network.

Into exactly whose hands any stolen data has fallen is not known. However, Dan Egerstad last week found out what happens if you publish such data on the internet, when he received a visit from Swedish law enforcement agencies. Following a complaint, they turned his apartment upside down and interrogated him for several hours. The source of the complaint is not known, but it is thought it may have come from a foreign government agency whose e-mail details had been published by Egerstad.
http://www.heise-security.co.uk/news/99333





Going to the UK? You'll Have No Secrets

Have a spotty record? The only London Bridge you'll ever see is this one in Lake Havasu, Arizona
Stephan Wilkinson

Disabuse yourself of any notion that those nice people who wrote the Magna Carta are any more concerned about personal freedoms and privacy than are U. S. border collies. Whether it's to show us that anything we can do they can do better or simply creeping authoritarianism, the British government is putting into effect a hugely expensive plan ($2.5 billion over the next 10 years, the cost to be passed on to travelers) to collect a wide variety of data on every traveler daring to enter or leave those sceptered isles, whether by air, sea or ground (the Chunnel).

How wide? Well, everything from name, rank and serial number to your rap sheet, FBI file, automobile license plate and credit card number. And who knows, probably your FaceBook page and that New Year's-party video your neighbor posted on YouTube. Up to 53 different pieces of information, which will be recorded when you buy a ticket to or from the UK. And the Brits will keep the information for as long as they please.

Got an outstanding traffic ticket or any other court fine? Go back home or pay it. You were once arrested for peeing beer in a dark parking lot and it got turned into a sex-offense charge? Don?t even bother to pack. Involved in a messy child-support case that hasn't been settled? Stay home. Somebody has a file on you because you were thrown out of a Bush rally? Go to France instead.

Oh wait, the French might do it too.

The European Union's Justice Commissioner, one Franco Frattini, last week came up with a plan to collect and store such data on anyone flying into or out of the entire European Union, thus creating a vast no-fly list. Though as one opponent of the expense pointed out, "political activities like opposing the Iraq war lead to people getting on no-fly lists [in the U. S.]." There you go.

Granted, the offenses and penalties I listed before the jump are far-fetched, and initially, at least, the plan will only ding travelers who raise the usual border-crossing red flags -- narcotics arrests, military awols and the like -- but we're getting used to seeing the outer limits of personal freedoms and civil rights pushed, extended and ignored.

The United Kingdom plan is called Project Semaphore, and it involves the creation of an "e-border" ringing the UK -- e for electronic. The people patrolling that electric fence say that "all data that we are currently legally able to obtain when a passenger enters the UK will be collected," and that the data will be "captured prior to the passenger's arrival."

Identifying potential terrorists is a valid pursuit. But somehow, using that intent to also target every other variety of malfeasance bothers me. "Data searches have already led to the tracing of persons wanted for murder and other serious crimes," the UK's Border and Immigration Agency says. "[It] has identified several sex offenders. Alerts have led to the seizure of large quantities of cocaine, cannabis and tobacco [and] have led to the identification of persons traveling on forged documents, suspected asylum abuse and facilitators. Successful trials of the new system have already led to more than 1,000 criminals being caught and more than 15,000 people of concern being checked out by customs, immigration or the police."

Yes, but what's next?
http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/...to-the-uk.html





Japan Fingerprints Foreigners as Anti - Terror Move

Japan began fingerprinting foreigners entering the country on Tuesday in an anti-terrorism policy that has sparked complaints from human right activists, business travelers and long-term residents.

"At a time when terrorism is occurring throughout the world, we want foreigners entering Japan to cooperate, and to understand that it is better for them as well that Japan be safe," said Hisashi Toshioka, head of the Immigration Bureau at Narita airport, the main international airport serving Tokyo.

"The biggest objective is to prevent terrorism."

Critics, however, say the new procedures reflect a deeply entrenched view in Japan of foreigners as more likely to commit crimes and plays down the possibility of home-grown terrorism.

"In Japan, fingerprinting has been limited to those arrested for crimes, so treating foreigners the same way is a serious human rights violation," said Mitsuru Namba, a lawyer at the Japan Federation of Lawyers Associations.

"The government says the aim is to prevent terrorism, but in the background is discrimination linking foreigners with crime and overstaying visas," Namba said, noting the data would be kept even after a visitor was deemed not to be a terrorist suspect.

Some foreign visitors arriving at Narita were unfazed by the new procedures, which involve electronic scanning of both index fingers as well as taking a digital facial photo.

The data is compared with international and domestic lists and anyone considered to be a terrorist -- or refusing to cooperate -- will be denied entry and deported.

"It didn't bother me at all. It was pretty uninvasive," said Jake Heinrich, 33, an Australian who works at a language school.

"These days, it probably makes you feel a little safer."

The measures are similar to the "U.S. Visit" system introduced in the United States after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

In a nod to historical sensitivities, "special" permanent residents of Korean and Chinese origin -- many born in Japan and descended from those brought as forced labor before and during World War Two -- are exempt, as are diplomats and children under 16.
Global Business

Fingerprinting of such residents was abolished in 1992 after a lengthy campaign, while fingerprinting of all foreign residents ended in 2000.

"Japanese will get the message that foreigners are incipient criminals," said Choi Sun-ae, a Korean resident of Japan who campaigned to abolish fingerprinting and on Tuesday took part in a protest outside the Justice Ministry in Tokyo.

Unlike the United States, Japan requires resident foreigners as well as visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed every time they re-enter the country, although if they pre-register they can go through a fast-track line.

That has angered many resident foreigners, who have until now been able to line up with Japanese for faster processing.

"My husband is Japanese. I have two Japanese adult children working in Tokyo. I feel slightly insulted," said Briton Jennifer Ukawa, 69, who has lived in Japan off and on since 1969 and also took part in Tuesday's protest.

Britain this month began requiring people applying for UK visas to have their fingerprints scanned and photographs taken digitally.

Some worry that longer lines at points of entry could discourage tourists and business travelers, even as Japan tries to polish its image as a tourist destination and global financial centre.

"Suddenly grouping long-term residents and taxpayers in Japan with occasional visitors risks creating excessive delays for frequent business travelers and imposing unacceptable costs on businesses," said the European Business Council in Japan and the Australian and New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Japan in a letter to the Justice Ministry.

Immigration officials said the procedures went smoothly on Tuesday morning except for a glitch with one machine and that the average wait was 20 minutes.

(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg and Olivier Fabre, Editing by Michael Watson)
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world...rprinting.html





Moussaoui Judge Questions Government
Matthew Barakat

A federal judge expressed frustration Tuesday that the government provided incorrect information about evidence in the prosecution of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and raised the possibility of ordering a new trial in another high-profile terrorism case.

At a post-trial hearing Tuesday for Ali al-Timimi, a Muslim cleric from Virginia sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for soliciting treason, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she can no longer trust the CIA and other government agencies on how they represent classified evidence in terror cases.

Attorneys for al-Timimi have been seeking access to documents. They also want to depose government witnesses to determine whether the government improperly failed to disclose the existence of certain evidence.

The prosecutors have asked her to dismiss the defense request. The government has denied the allegations but has done so in secret pleadings to the judge that defense lawyers are not allowed to see. Even the lead prosecutors in the al-Timimi case have not had access to the information; they have relied on the representations of other government lawyers.

After the hearing, the judge issued an order that said she would not rule on the prosecutors' motion until the government grants needed security clearances to al-Timimi's defense lawyer, Jonathan Turley, and the lead trial prosecutor so they can review the secret pleadings.

Brinkema said she no longer feels confident relying on the government briefs, particularly since prosecutors admitted last week that similar representations made in the Moussaoui case were false.

In a letter made public Nov. 13, prosecutors in the Moussaoui case admitted to Brinkema that the CIA had wrongly assured her that no videotapes or audiotapes existed of interrogations of certain high-profile terrorism detainees. In fact, two such videotapes and one audio tape existed.

Moussaoui, who had pleaded guilty to terrorism charges, was sentenced to life in prison last year. Because Moussaoui admitted his guilt, it is unlikely that the disclosures of new evidence would result in his conviction being overturned.

Turley, al-Timimi's defense lawyer, praised Brinkema for taking a skeptical view of the government's assertions in addressing al-Timimi's case.

"We believe a new trial is warranted," he said in a phone interview. "We are entirely confident that there are communications that were not turned over to the defense. These are very serious allegations."

Al-Timimi challenged his conviction in 2005 after revelations that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to conduct certain types of domestic surveillance without a search warrant. Turley contends that the program is illegal and that any evidence obtained from such surveillance should have been turned over to defense lawyers.

He is confident that al-Timimi, a prominent U.S. Muslim cleric who was known to keep close ties with radical Saudi clerics would have been a target of the surveillance program.

Brinkema made no rulings during the brief, 20-minute hearing in Alexandria, but her displeasure at the government was apparent. Prosecutors did not have the opportunity to speak during the hearing, except to note their appearance for the record.

Al-Timimi, a born U.S. citizen from Fairfax, was convicted after prosecutors portrayed him as the spiritual leader of a group of young Muslim men from the Washington area who played paintball games in 2000 and 2001 as a means of preparing for holy war around the globe.

After Sept. 11, they said, al-Timimi told his followers that the attacks were a harbinger of a final apocalyptic battle between Muslims and nonbelievers and exhorted them to travel to Afghanistan and join the Taliban to fight U.S. troops.

Several of his followers admitted that they traveled to Pakistan and received training from a militant Pakistani group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, but none actually joined the Taliban.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria declined to comment Tuesday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071120/...rror_paintball





Cops lied about “restricted” airspace

Local 2 Investigates Police Secrecy Behind Unmanned Aircraft Test
Stephen Dean

Houston police started testing unmanned aircraft and the event was shrouded in secrecy, but it was captured on tape by Local 2 Investigates.

Neighbors in rural Waller County said they thought a top-secret military venture was under way among the farmland and ranches, some 70 miles northwest of Houston. KPRC Local 2 Investigates had four hidden cameras aimed at a row of mysterious black trucks. Satellite dishes and a swirling radar added to the neighbors' suspense.

Then, cameras were rolling as an unmanned aircraft was launched into the sky and operated by remote control.

Houston police cars were surrounding the land with a roadblock in place to check each of the dignitaries arriving for the invitation-only event. The invitation spelled out, "NO MEDIA ALLOWED."

HPD Chief Harold Hurtt attended, along with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and dozens of officers from various police agencies in the Houston area. Few of the guests would comment as they left the test site.

News Chopper 2 had a Local 2 Investigates team following the aircraft for more than one hour as it circled overhead. Its wings spanned 10 feet and it circled at an altitude of 1,500 feet. Operators from a private firm called Insitu, Inc. manned remote controls from inside the fleet of black trucks as the guests watched a live feed from the high-powered camera aboard the 40-pound aircraft.

"I wasn't ready to publicize this," Executive Assistant Police Chief Martha Montalvo said. She and other department leaders hastily organized a news conference when they realized Local 2 Investigates had captured the entire event on camera.

"We still haven't even decided how we were going to go forward on this task, so it seemed premature to me to announce this to the media," Montalvo said. "But since, obviously, the media found out about it, then I don't see any reason why just not go forward with what we have so far."

Montalvo told reporters the unmanned aircraft would be used for "mobility" or traffic issues, evacuations during storms, homeland security, search and rescue, and also "tactical." She admitted that could include covert police actions and she said she was not ruling out someday using the drones for writing traffic tickets.

A large number of the officers at the test site were assigned to the department's ticket-writing Radar Task Force. Capt. Tom Runyan insisted they were only there to provide "site security," even though KPRC cameras spotted those officers heavily participating in the test flight.

Houston police contacted KPRC from the test site, claiming the entire airspace was restricted by the Federal Aviation Administration. Police even threatened action from the FAA if the Local 2 helicopter remained in the area. However, KPRC reported it had already checked with the FAA on numerous occasions and found no flight restrictions around the site, a point conceded by Montalvo.

HPD leaders said they would address privacy and unlawful search questions later.

South Texas College of Law professor Rocky Rhodes, who teaches the constitution and privacy issues, said, "One issue is going to be law enforcement using this and when, by using these drones, are they conducting a search in which they'd need probable cause or a warrant. If the drones are being used to get into private spaces and be able to view where the government cannot otherwise go, and to collect information that would not otherwise be able to collect, that's concerning to me."

HPD Assistant Chief Vickie King said of the unmanned aircraft, "It's interesting that privacy doesn't occur or searches aren't an issue when you have a helicopter pilot over you and it would not be used in airspace other than what our helicopters are used in already."

She admitted that police helicopters are not equipped with cameras nearly as powerful as the unmanned aircraft, but she downplayed any privacy concerns, saying news helicopters have powerful cameras as well.

HPD stressed it is working with the FAA on reviewing the technical specifications, the airworthiness and hazards of flying unmanned aircraft in an urban setting. Future test flights are planned.

The price tag for an unmanned aircraft ranges from $30,000 to $1 million each and HPD is hoping to begin law enforcement from the air by June of 2008 with these new aircraft.
http://www.click2houston.com/investi...66/detail.html





Cops are Such Funny People. A Real Laugh Riot.
CLS

Cops are funny people -- a real laugh riot. They should be given their own comedy series they are so funny.

Police officer Joseph Vega, of the Tinley Park police force, dropped in to order some pizza at Guardi’s Pizza. The owner, Alexanader Mendez and his wife, were working the counter. Officer Vega ordered the pizza and Mendez went to the cooler to get it and prepare it.

While he was gone Office Vega asked Mrs. Mendez if she wanted to see him scare her husband. She told him she wasn’t interested. But this jokester had a hilarious prank up his sleeve and couldn’t wait to show it off.

He pulled out his Taser weapon and pointed it toward Mendez as he was coming out of the cooler. And then for a really funny punchline he pulled the trigger. Wait! It gets even funnier.

Mr. Mendez was hit in the head and the shoulder by the barbs and, of course, shocked by the electric charge. I hope you are sitting down because this prank will have you in stitches -- no doubt it had Mr. Mendez in stitches. After he was hit Mendez falls to the ground and goes into convulsions that causes him to bite off part of his tonque. Now isn’t that a slide splitter?

Vega rushes over and pulls out the barbs which causes profuse bleeding. And he calls the local cops to come and provide assistance. They get there and grab the bloody towels, they take Mr. Mendez’s glasses which were covered in blood. And they confiscate the restaurants surveillance camera which recorded the entire event.

As funny as that is you should hear the cop’s version of the events. According to them the officer didn’t stop in to order a pizza he was conduct “a routine check on the business” -- the thoughtful man. And he just happened to notice that his Taser had its safety deactivated. And being a diligent, fine, upstanding servant of the people he took it out in order to put the safety back on since we all know cops are so very reluctant to Taser people. And for some unknown reason the Taser just shot off and hit poor Mr. Mendez entirely accidentally since we are dealing with a diligent, concerned police officer with nothing more than the safety of the public his main concern.

The Tinley Park police department immediately announced that the Taser was obviously defective since defective cops are so very rare. So they sent all their Tasers backs to the factory to be diligently checked. All of them, including the one that shot Mr. Mendez were sent back and certified to be in perfect working order.

The local town officials refuse to speak about the matter on advise of their attorneys. A law suit has been filed against the city by the poor man and his wife.

Speaking of fine, upstanding servants of the people do you remember the story we did about the ticket trap of St. George, Missouri. It was here that office Sgt. James Kuehnlein walked up to a parked car and started threatening the young drive. The officer told him that he could invent charges against the man and have him arrested. He went ballistic acting in what can only be described as a unprofessional manner, if you like understatment. He was unhinged.

Well, the rot in St. George seems rather pervasive. We next discovered that the police chief, Scott Uhrig, was a sexual predator who used his previous job as a police officer in another town to try and force a teenaged girl into having sex with him. He was disciplined for this by the state but that was no barrier to getting hired in St. George.

Of course the top of the chain of command was the mayor, Harold Goodman. Mr. Goodman was arrested for having pot. He said it was for medicinal purposes. The pot was found while police were searching the mayor’s home. At the time they wouldn’t say why. Apparently the reason for the raid was that the good mayor was somehow involved with child pornography and he was later arrested on those charges as well.
http://freestudents.blogspot.com/200...eal-laugh.html





Atlanta Police Overhaul Raid Procedures
UPI

To mark the anniversary of a botched drug raid that killed an elderly woman, Atlanta police announced new policies and a procedural overhaul.

At a news conference with Mayor Shirley Franklin by his side, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington announced changes to prevent a recurrence of the Nov. 21, 2006, shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnson in her home.

Police smashed into her home using flawed information from an informant without warning, and she fired a shot at them and missed. She was shot multiple times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said.

Among the changes Pennington disclosed were that "no-knock" search warrants must be approved by a major and officers conducting raids will wear special uniforms, not street clothes.

The chief said all 15 officers on the narcotics squad have been replaced, and the number of officers doubled to 30.

Wednesday, lawyers for Johnston's family reportedly were set to file a lawsuit against the chief, the mayor, the city and the police officers involved in the shooting, the newspaper said.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_New...ocedures/3947/





Man’s Conviction for Standing on Sidewalk Is Overturned
Sewell Chan

The Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, threw out the conviction today of a man who was arrested for standing and not moving on a Times Square corner in June 2004.

As Nicholas Confessore has reported on City Room and in The Times’s print edition, the man, Matthew Jones, was on corner of 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue in the early morning of June 12, 2004, chatting with friends as other pedestrians tried to get by.

As a result of Mr. Jones’s behavior, “numerous pedestrians in the area had to walk around” him and his friends, the arresting officer, Momen Attia, wrote. Mr. Jones refused to move when asked, Officer Attia later wrote, then tried to run away. Mr. Jones was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. After spending the night in jail, the next day, June 13, he sought to have the charges dismissed, but his motion was rejected. He then agreed to plead guilty to one count of disorderly conduct and was sentenced to time served. But he immediately filed an appeal.

The conviction was upheld by an appellate court, but today, the Court of Appeals unanimously reversed that decision. Writing for the court, Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick concluded that the allegations in the document used to charge Mr. Jones did not meet the burden of factual proof required.

“Nothing in the information indicates how the defendant, when he stood in the middle of a sidewalk at 2:01 a.m., had the intent to or recklessly created a risk of causing ‘public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm,’” Judge Ciparick wrote.

She later added: “Something more than a mere inconvenience of pedestrians is required to support the charge. Otherwise, any person who happens to stop on a sidewalk — whether to greet another, to seek directions or simply to regain one’s bearings — would be subject to prosecution under this statute.”
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20.../index.html?hp

















The first copy of the Week in Review was posted here on November 22nd, 2002. Thanks to all the writers and editors who have made each succeeding issue possible over these last five years. Happy Thanksgiving everyone and a happy fifth birthday to the Week in Review!

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