[JackSpratts]

Is That Your Cellphone in Your Pocket...?

Adult content from Telus
Siri Agrell

The telecommunications company Telus Corp. began offering adult content to its Canadian cellphone customers this month.

Available on a "pay-per-download" basis, the service introduced on Jan. 8 will allow cellphone users to download pornographic photographs and videos, charging them an average of $3 to $4 for each item.

Jim Johannsson, a Telus spokesman, said yesterday that pornographic material was already widely available on mobile phones equipped with Internet browsers.

"So we've introduced -- in a very responsible way -- adult content that's in behind proper age verification and that's compliant with provincial standards and regulations," he said.

Mr. Johannsson said the company can track what its customers are searching for via Internet connections on their cellphones and noticed a definite interest in some of the Web's more provocative sites.

"We can't see at an individual level, but we can tell on an aggregate level if they're going to Google or Canoe, and we could see they were heading to adult-oriented Web sites," he said. "There is a segment of the population that is interested in that content."

Telus is not the first company to make this observation.

In 2005, Reuters reported that North American mobile phone users spent US$400-million on adult photos and video during the previous year.

Last month, the magazine Charged featured an article about the quiet promotion of adult content on cellphones, saying that Playboy TV has been marketing itself to telecommunications companies and that content specifically geared to the technology is already being produced.

Taanta Gubta, a spokeswoman for Rogers Communications, said it does not currently offer a similar service, but that it would not "comment about anything ahead of time."

Paolo Pasquini, a spokesman for Bell Canada, also said its cellphones do not offer adult content services.

"Obviously, we continually review a range of potential services," he added. "You can rest assured that we'll always remain competitive in our markets."

Mr. Johannsson said he does not know what other companies are contemplating adult content, because it's "not the kind of thing people advertise.

"But we're fairly certain that if our competitors in Canada haven't launched it, they will soon. Same in the U.S.," he said.

Mark Goldberg, a Toronto telecommunications consultant, said the move is not unlike Pay- Per-View TV, and will be subject to the same protections.

"A huge amount of that is adult programming, and we don't seem to have concerns about our ability to block children from accessing that," he said. "Frankly, their mobile screen is probably more private than aTV or computer screen. They can keep it in their pocket."
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/s...274215&k=60979





Ted Stevens Returns, Wants to Ban Kids from MySpace

Remember Senator Ted Stevens, who famously described the Internet as a “series of tubes”? And how about the Deleting Online Predators Act, which would have banned access to interactive websites like MySpace, Facebook and Digg in US schools and libraries? Well, it seems that both have returned - Stevens is replacing the failed DOPA bill with the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act, which is even more extensive.

As explained by Andy Carvin on Friday, Senator Stevens recently introduced Senate Bill 49, which has just become publicly known as the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act. This act is far more extensive than the DOPA, and breaks into three sections: Protecting Children, Deleting Online Predators and Children’s Listbroker Privacy.

The first part of the bill would force video service providers to prevent the distribution of child pornography over their services - sites most at risk would be Pornotube and its ilk, which have no real way of establishing whether a person in a clip is a child or not. It also means that sites wouldn’t be allowed to post adult material on their homepages, and that internal pages containing adult material must contain a special mark. Site owners who fail to comply would face a 5 year jail sentence, but this only applies to sites based in the US.

Section 2, meanwhile, is DOPA: The Sequel. DOPA, you’ll remember, would ban access to social networks and chat rooms in US schools and libraries. Banning MySpace, Bebo, Xanga, YouTube or Friendster in school sounds like no bad thing, you might think. But the DOPA bill was so extensive that it could have meant Wikipedia and many news sites were also banned - any site, really, that allowed users to sign up. The terms of this new bill are the same - schools would have to filter sites that are offered by a commercial entity; allow the creation of profiles; allow blogging or journals; allow users to enter personal information or enable communication between users. In short: almost all interactive websites would be blocked. The new bill adds another requirement, too: “monitoring the online activities of minors”, which sounds like schools would have to track the sites kids visit. There’s one exception, however: the sites can be unblocked if a teacher is supervising the child (however, many teachers don’t have the ability to disable filters).

Part 3, meanwhile, sounds reasonable at first look: it makes it illegal for anyone to sell or purchase private data about a child. However, it’s worth reading the whole bill and making your own interpretations of this section and the overall document.

In summary: Ted Stevens, who knows nothing about the web, is trying to push a bill that was already killed and widely criticized for being full of flaws. The DOPA terminology has hardly changed, and it’s so wide reaching that it would block a wide array of sites in libraries and schools. But hey, who would dare to oppose a bill that wants to prevent child porn? Great way to block those tubes, Ted!
http://mashable.com/2007/01/28/ted-stevens-ban-myspace/





Hillary: The Privacy Candidate?
Sarah Lai Stirland

The issue of digital-era privacy did not make it to the top of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's legislative to-do list at the Saturday launch of her presidential campaign. But for those who look, the New York Democrat has clearly staked out her positions on the esoteric subject, and they're sending electronic civil libertarians' hearts a twitter.

Clinton, the presidential front-runner among Democrats in way-early polling, addressed electronic privacy issues at a constitutional law conference in Washington, D.C. last June. There she unveiled a proposed "Privacy Bill of Rights" that would, among other things, give Americans the right to know what's being done with their personal information, and offer consumers an unprecedented level of control over how that data is used.

"At all levels, the privacy protections for ordinary citizens are broken, inadequate and out of date," Clinton said.

These ideas have long been championed by consumer groups and civil liberties advocates, but are largely strangers to presidential campaigns. Other Democrats who have announced presidential exploratory committees for the 2008 election -- including Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards -- have worked on privacy issues through their careers as government officials. But Clinton's approach is notable for its range and detail, say privacy advocates.

"Sen. Clinton's plan is well-informed and the most sophisticated statement in recent years by a presidential candidate on privacy issues," said Chris Hoofnagle, a law professor at UC Berkeley's School of Law. "She grasps consumers' frustrations with the annoyance of direct marketing, but also the more important point that a lack of privacy can lead to lost opportunities and oppressive social control."

Clinton's stance on consumer privacy hearkens back to the debates of the '90s when Congress and the public began agonizing over the question of who should wield the most control over consumers' transactional data. Her general policy position is that companies should cede more control to consumers, and that new legislation should be enacted to make it easier for consumers to recover monetary damages from companies that violate their privacy policies.

For example, Clinton said that financial companies as a rule should not be allowed to share consumers' transactional information without first obtaining their permission. Under current law, financial institutions freely share certain kinds of customer information unless consumers specifically opt-out.

But some observers are doubtful of Clinton's ability -- whether as senator, or commander-in-chief -- to garner widespread support for what would amount to a complete reversal of a decade of privacy-hostile laws and policies spewing from Washington.

"The reality (of her proposals) is that they would almost turn the information economy inside out -- it's like saying, 'OK, now the water in the stream is going to flow in the other direction,'" said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian think tank The Cato Institute. "It's easy to imagine, but changing the way information moves in the economy is very, very hard to do."

"I think that over time that these ideas will reemerge (and gain momentum)," said Marc Rotenberg, the Electronic Privacy Information Center's executive director, who adds that the second half of this congressional session will provide the senator with many opportunities to support privacy-related legislation.1

Legal and technical checks on government snooping and well-managed data collection policies would also get a boost under Clinton's regime. Among other things, her plan calls for the restoration of a White House privacy czar -- a position that was last held by current Ohio State University law professor Peter Swire under Clinton's husband's tenure as president.

Swire noted in an interview that privacy issues are inextricably tied to health care and its efficient management and delivery -- a No. 1 topic on the Clinton agenda.

"Hillary is an expert in health care -- she even did joint sessions with Newt Gingrich on building electronic health records," he says. "One of the trickiest problems is building a safe and secure system."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...l?tw=rss.index





DRM in the BitTorrent and Broadband Age
Alan

Summary: DRM can be a good thing. Unfortunately, the way DRM has been handled by the industry has not been so good.

Digital Rights Management is a good thing. The problem is that the way digital rights management has been handled by the industry has not been so good. We have copy protection software that act just like malicious viruses and rootkits.

Defining the Problem

The industry needs to recognize that it'll be impossible to stop piracy. The more complex, innovative, or intricate the content protection system, the more interest and zeal crackers will have in subverting such protection. If the US was unable to keep nuclear weapons technology secret after WW2, there is no way the MPAA can ask consumer electronics companies to keep movies and music 100% secure, especially when the whole intent of music/movies is to be seen and heard.

The industry needs to recognize that most people are reasonable. The US gaming industry is over $10 billion dollars. The home video market is over $24 billion dollars. If everyone was a pirate, shouldn't that be zero? Flawed logic, I know, but these are still thriving industries despite the fact that "most games" and "most movies" really just aren't special to begin with. What's changed is how we choose to experience our media. We want movies that can be enjoyed in our home theater, airplane, or portable music player. We want security where a hard drive crash or malicious virus doesn’t mean that we’ve lost the digital content we've purchased with our hard-earned money. If our hardware is capable of enhancing the original content such as upsampling beyond 1080p, then let the consumer do so.

The industry needs to recognize that most people are... human. We may tell a store clerk they've given us to much change back, but our hunter-gathering DNA makes us look for bargains. Who among us hasn't jumped at a chance to stack multiple coupons or shopped at a clearance or special limited quantities sale? The promise of "free" movies and music is one that is hard to give up. When the CEO of Time Warner admits that his kids illegally downloaded music off the Internet too, it should show the industry that software piracy isn't something limited to l33t hax0rs. That doesn't mean everyone jumps at the opportunity of a five-finger discount at your local Best Buy though.

People are reasonable. The difference is that intuitively, stealing a physical item from a store is fundamentally different from copying bits in which the opportunity cost to the manufacturer is zero.

The Fundamental Issue

The general public just doesn't appreciate the true value of intellectual property. You can list off a ton of famous actors and directors, but how many famous screenwriters (who aren't directors or actors) can you name?

The problem with DRM is that it hasn't been done correctly to date. Every implementation of DRM has only hurt honest users. More frustrating is that HDCP should have been the first to prove that DRM could be done in a reasonable manner.

The original idea of HDCP was to stop casual copying of high-definition uncompressed digital video. Since the decryption/encryption had to be done in real-time, the goal was to make the algorithm simple. The fact that HDCP has been demonstrated by computer science researchers to be easily compromised provided that a handful of keys are leaked isn’t an issue. However, HDCP itself remains secure because its security is tied into licensing.

You can't buy the HDCP keys unless you agree not to use it in a recording device. The keys themselves are located in hardware, making it more difficult for casual users to crack. Movie studios were saying "we won't release digital HD content unless you electronics manufacturers guarantee that you won't build digital recording devices." The crypto ROMs, etc. were just ways to make this gentlemen's agreement formal.

In exchange for this gentlemen's agreement, enforced by relatively low-cost crypto ROMs, consumers should have been able to transparently enjoy HD content. Yes, early adopters of televisions would have to buy new TVs, but with HDCP, "advance warning" was available. Figuring out how to transcode content to portable players or other formats (i.e. a desktop PC or media server) would have been something to be addressed in the future (ultimately resulting in AACS and BD+). Remember, HDCP was simply intended to limit the creation of a high-definition VCR capable of recording “protected” content.

What ended up happening was that the graphics board manufacturers betrayed our trust, HDCP handshake protocols have been poorly implemented, and HDCP ended up being far from that “seamless” integration.

"Perfect DRM" already exists today. Perfect from both the perspective of consumers and the industry.

It's called the printed book. As big as the video game industry is, the book industry is bigger. Last year, Barnes & Nobles, Borders, and Amazon pulled in $11.5 billion in terms of book sales (this isn't including sales of coffee or non-book items in these stores). Add in the sales of Wal-Mart, Target, and local independent retailers and you'll have to agree that it's still a big market even in today’s age.

Go to any Barnes and Nobles and you'll see a ton of people reading for free. Someone might walk into a B&N, pick up a magazine and read it cover to cover, or even pick up a self-help book, and read it while taking notes on a separate sheet of paper. Sometimes, you might actually buy a book when you want to enjoy re-reading the material at home, or if you want it as part of your collection. Books are cheap. Hardcover books are more expensive than paperbacks; and art books may be the most expensive of them all but the print quality and binding makes it all worth it.

Casual copying is possible but not easy. There's nothing stopping me from photocopying a whole book cover-to-cover, but very few of us have stacks upon stacks of copied books. It's too inconvenient to copy something when it's cheap enough to buy. Likewise, everyone has taken a class or two where the professor hands out a photocopied textbook chapter, recognizing that students are unlikely to find value from the rest of the textbook or beyond the term.

If a book publisher thought like the movie industry and wanted to prevent casual copying of a book, they would have made every page black text on a red background. It'd be so hard to read and intrusive that no one would ever buy a book again.

Finally, all of us can name plenty of famous authors. We recognize the effort and time an author has put into his work and may purchase a book in order to support an author in the hopes of seeing a sequel, even if only in theme.

The Difference Between Books and Movies

That's the predicament of digital music and digital video right now. Unprotected content over large BitTorrent networks is akin to having a Star Trek replicator. In order to have a DRM model that parallels the book model, you have to make copying music and movies as tough as photocopying a book.

Hollywood studios shouldn't panic about sites like YouTube or even the torrent sites. I can see the problems with leaked prerelease copies of shows like 24, but after a show has been broadcast, it’s hard to make a reasonable common-man standard against sharing of the recording. You can already get the full book experience for free, and it doesn't stop people from buying books to support their favorite authors.

The next step is appropriate pricing. There's something wrong when a soundtrack CD costs almost as much as the entire movie on DVD. In countries like China, where pirated CDs can be bought by the pound, Hollywood has tried releasing lower-priced DVD movies with good success. Again, most people are reasonable. Just look at iTunes when it comes to music. DVD movies and DVD television shows continue to have good sales thanks to bonus features like behind the scenes footage, or commentaries. Many people without a HDTV prefer DVDs for the 16:9 widescreen experience. As long as there is added value (think hardcover book) or convenience, physical media will continue to thrive.

The biggest hurdle will be promoting authorship. In books it's easy. In the movies, it's hard to get people excited about buying a DVD or Blu-Ray/HD-DVD to support the actor who already makes $20M a movie, or the director who's first in line for that latest supercar. People never hear about the screenwriters who may only get $100K for the first draft of their screenplay and another $30K for their second draft. Since a screenplay can take several years of work, many writers are making less than minimum wage. I challenge you to name ten successful screenwriters. Do you know who Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot are? What about Felix Chong and Siu Fai Mak? David Koepp?

Promoting the screenwriter also serves an additional purpose. Right now, it's easy to see the actor's work and even the director's work. It's tangible and direct. What's often lost is the contribution of the screenwriter. I'm not talking about the dialogue (ultimately only a minor element in the grand scheme of things) but in terms of the story, character, and theme. These are purely concepts of intellectual property.

Until Hollywood can turn screenwriters into celebrities too, they'll never be able to convince the public to buy movies even if they can enjoy it for free in the same way the public buys books even after reading it for free.

The solution to movie piracy isn't fancier and more complex copy protection, it is bringing screenwriters, the creators of Hollywood's most conceptually-pure intellectual property, to the center stage. Only when Hollywood recognizes the value of pure intellectual property will consumers also recognize the true value of intellectual property and support their favorite screenwriter.

In some ways, the HD ecosystem is going to buy time to help DRM reach that magic steady state that we enjoy with books. With HD movies requiring huge amounts of space, there's already a barrier to casual copying if only for HDD space issues. The HD-DVD rips that have been unleashed onto the Internet still represents gigabytes and gigabytes of storage. As bandwidth and HDD space increases, technologies such as BD+ potentially will maintain sufficient copy protection to prevent casual copying while still ensuring that the optical disc is a) not counterfeit and b) can be used for managed copy (allowing you to transcode the content to portable players). Potentially being the key phrase – the industry has had rough enough start with HDCP.

People buy more DVDs than music CDs because they see it as a better value. Fortunately, HD content remains aggressively priced. Although Blu-Ray and HD-DVD products are more expensive than DVD products, prices will see more parity as production ramps up and more consumers transition to HD. DVD players launched at $1000 (FiringSquad’s retired Editor-in-Chief Kenn Hwang spent that much on his Sony DVP-S7000) and by 2009 there will be no more analog TV in the United States.

I'm even hopeful about Hollywood increasing the visibility of screenwriters in the industry. As movies like Fight Club and TV shows like 24 and Heroes continue to push the envelope of storytelling and captivate an increasingly sophisticated audience, writers are increasingly forced to write more sophisticated movies. A screenplay from a 1990's Van Damme movie wouldn't fly today. Would any movie which uses "it was just a dream" as a plot device work today? Only if it's told like A Beautiful Mind. The elite group of screenwriters who are capable of writing such movies is relatively small, and that is good news because it means Hollywood only needs to spend a lot of money on a few number of people. So if anyone you know is a creative executive at a studio, debate with them why stories like Thank You For Smoking, Good Will Hunting, Napoleon Dynamite, Pirates of the Caribbean, Finding Nemo or God forbid, Titanic were more successful than Stealth, Lady in the Water, Basic Instinct 2, Poseidon, and Flushed Away...
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/drm_editorial/





DRM, Vista and Your Rights

In the US, France and a few other countries it is already forbidden to play legally purchased music or videos using GNU/Linux media players. Sounds like sci-fi? Unfortunately not. And it won’t end up on multimedia only. Welcome to the the new era of DRM!
Borys Musielak

In this article I would like to explain the problem of Digital Rights (or restrictions) Management, especially in the version promoted by Microsoft with the new Windows Vista release. Not everyone is familiar with the dangers of the new “standard” for the whole computer industry. Yes, the whole industry — because it goes way beyond the software produced by the giant from Redmond and its affiliates.
DRM, Trusted Computing — what kind of animal is that?

Quoting Wikipedia:

Digital Rights Management (generally abbreviated to DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to any of several technologies used by publishers or copyright owners to control access to and usage of digital data or hardware, and to restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work or device. The term is often confused with copy protection and technical protection measures; these two terms refer to technologies that control or restrict the use and access of digital content on electronic devices with such technologies installed, acting as components of a DRM design.

A similar (but a bit more specialized) term to DRM is Trusted Computing. The term is intentionally misleading. It does not try to improve the security of the user, but rather wants to ensure that the user can be “trusted”. Obviously it’s not about the trust, it’s about the money. The companies that deliver content (specially multimedia, but it’s not restricted to media only) to the client want to be able to control the way it is used. For example, they want the content to be displayed on approved media only, banning all the “illegal” applications (illegal does not mean that it violates the law, but rather the agreement between the client and the company that sells the media). More on Trusted Computing can be found (as always) in Wikipedia.

So, what’s wrong with the practice? Why shouldn’t the companies be able to control their content? The idea of DRM has two aspects that are important (and may be dangerous) for computer users. First aspect is technological, the second is ethical. We are going to cover both.

In a nutshell, the technological aspect is that DRM implies that the software, or even worse — hardware — should be manufactured not for the highest stability and performance, but rather for the best copyright protection possible. This means, that we — the users — are supposed to pay more money for a product that is defective (does not allow certain functionality for non-technical reasons) and provides an inferior performance.

Ethical aspect is even more dangerous. In the world of DRM, it turns that we cannot do whatever we want with the legally purchased products (like software, music, videos or text documents). What we can and what we cannot do is decided the provider, not by ourselves. For example, a DRM-protected product can be disabled at any time by the producer if he believes that we violate the terms of the agreement. This means that your collection of “protected” music can be rendered useless (e.g. by decreasing the quality or even deleting the content) in a matter of seconds, without your approval. It that some horrible vision of a sick and evil overlord? Nope. This is an upcoming, terrifying era of DRM.

DRM by example

So, what does DRM look like? Can we see it or is it hidden? Actually, quite a lot of famous companies have already decided that DRM is the way to go. Below we present only a short list of the most popular formats that are affected (tainted) by the “rights protection”:

· DVD — the disk itself does not contain any hardware DRM, but a lot of providers decided to use the restrictions recommended by the DVD CCA organization, such as CSS (content scrambling by using encryption mechanisms) or RPC (region codes).
· HD DVD — the new standard that will probably replace DVDs has been unfortunately tainted by DRM since its creation. The main restriction used is AACS, a modern version of CSS.
· AAC — audio file format invented and promoted by Apple and its iTunes Music Store. In the version with FairPlay (sic!) protection system, it contains DRM-type restrictions (encrypting) aimed at making it impossible for competitive portable players to support this format (encrypted AAC works flawlessly only on Apple products like iTunes player or iPod and a few other players approved by Apple)
· Windows Media — each of the media formats of the Windows Media pack (WMV, WMA, WMP or ASF) has been tainted by some kind of DRM, usually meaning that the content is symmetrically encrypted and if the keys are not accessible, the user can watch/listen to only the scrambled version of the content (very low quality).

What is interesting and not widely known, DRM is not restricted to media only. It can be used to secure any other “digital goods”, especially the software. The idea to restrict access to proprietary software using hardware DRM technology is getting more and more popular around major software vendors, like Microsoft and Apple. If this gets implemented, the software producer will be able to, for example, block the use certain programs if they recognize it harmful or illegal. This could mean blocking programs of competitors if they violate the company’s internal rules (e.g. enable the user to play encrypted DVDs or AAC files, even though it is not illegal to do it in the user’s country). Blocking Peer2Peer clients, like eMule or Gnutella (nevermind if used legally or not) could be another option. And there are many more options available, provided that DRM is publicly accepted…

The price of DRM, or… what says Gutmann

Peter Gutmann in his recent publication analyzed the cost of Windows Vista Content Protection with emphasis on the actual cash to be spent for the computer user if these recommendations are implemented by the hardware vendors. The article is interesting, but long and very technical, so I decided to summarize the main points here. If you prefer to read the original article, we strongly recommend you doing so (WiR – Dec 23rd ’06). Otherwise, you can read our short summary, so that you know what we are talking about.

So, what will happen if the Microsoft vision comes true?

· If you have recently bought a high-end sound card you may be surprised, since in Windows Vista you won’t be able to play any “protected content” due to the incompatibility of interfaces (S/PDIF).
· Significant loss of quality of the audio may be common due to the need to test every bit of streaming media for the use of “protected content”
· The idea of open-source drivers will be abandoned since the whole DRM thing is based on the fact that the content decrypting takes place in a “black box” and only a few selected corporations may have a look at it. Security through obscurity, that’s what it’s called. Open source stands in complete opposition to this concept.
· Removing any standards from the hardware world is one of the Microsoft goals. According to the Microsoft theory, each device will need to communicate with the operating system in a unique way in order for DRM work as required. This will enforce the incompatibility of the devices, killing the existing interface standards.
· Denial of Service attacks will be a common place. The new era of DoS attacks will be more harmful than ever before. This is connected with the tilt bits introduced in Windows Vista. The malicious code will be able to use the DRM restrictions in any suitable way and the detection of this activity will be almost impossible if not illegal (sic!) thanks to the infamous DMCA act that prohibits the use of any reverse engineering techniques used to either understand or break DRM.
· The stability of the devices will be decreased due to the fact that the devices will not only have to do their job but also “protect” (who? obviously not the user…) against the illegal use of the audio and video streams. This “protection” requires a lot of additional processing power and of course a lot of programmers man days. Who’s gonna pay for that? Of course us — the customers.
· Issuing the specification by Microsoft seems to be the first case in the history when the software producer dictates the hardware producers how their hardware should be designed and work. Seems dangerous, especially when we all realize the intentions of Microsoft.

The conclusions are rather sad. If the major hardware vendors like Intel, NVidia and ATI take these recommendations seriously and implement them in their products, it may occur that the client will not only get an inferior product (defective by design), but will also have to pay the extra cost of implementing DRM restrictions (the vendors won’t be probably willing to spend the extra costs for something that does not give them any profits).

Update: there has already been a Microsoft response to the Gutmann’s paper: Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions (and Answers). The advocacy is however very poor. The Lead Program Manager for Video (Dave Marsh) confirmed most of the Gutmann’s conclusions, but presented them as “inevitable” and “providing additional functionality”. The OSNews readers seem to agree that Marsh’s response was basically the act of admitting the guilt

What we have covered so far are only the technical costs of DRM/Trusted Computing in the form proposed by the Redmond giant. The ethical costs of the “innovation” are even more interesting… or rather depressing. Read on.

DRM and freedom, or what says Richard Stallman and FSF

According to Stallman,

DRM is an example of a malicious feature - a feature designed to hurt the user of the software, and therefore, it’s something for which there can never be toleration.

Stallman is not the only person respected in the IT world who believes that DRM is pure evil. Another known DRM-fighter is John Walker, the author of the famous article “Digital imprimatur: How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle”. Walker compares the Digital imprimatur with DRM in the Internet and computing in general.

In Windows Vista it has been decided that the most restrictive version of DRM ever known will be implemented. If the Redmond dreams come true and the large hardware producers also decide to implement the DRM bits in their chipsets, it may lead to the situation in which we — the users, practically won’t be able to decide about our own software of legally purchased media. And this is actually only the beginning of what we can expect if a massive consumer protest against DRM does not begin. In the near future it may turn out that we will not be able to run any programs that violates one of the absurd software patents in the US or any kind of so-called intellectual property (just as if the ideas could have an owner!). And almost everything will be patented or “owner” in some way by that time.

I have a science-fiction vision of the IT underground, where the only hardware not tainted with DRM is made in China and using it is illegal in most of the “civilized” countries. And the only software that allows users to do anything they want with it is (also illegal) the GNU software, developed in basements by so-called “IT terrorists” — Linux kernel hackers, former Novell and Red Hat employees and sponsored by the Bin Laden of the IT — Mark Shuttleworth. Sounds ridiculous? Well, hopefully so. But I don’t think Microsoft and Apple would be protesting when this ridiculous and insane vision comes true…

What is it all about and how can you protect yourself?

So, where is this all heading to? It seems that, for Microsoft, controlling the desktop software market is not enough anymore. Now they try take control of the hardware market as well. Currently only by “recommending” their solutions to external hardware companies. But in the future, if the current pro-DRM lobbying proves successful, it may happen that Microsoft and other big software companies will be dictating how the hardware is designed. And all this — of course in their argumentation — only for securing the end user and protecting the intellectual property of the artists and programmers. This situation is rather paranoid. The hypothetical pact between the software vendors, hardware vendors and the content providers (RIAA, MPAA) could slow down the innovation in the entire IT industry for many years. This would be also one of the first times in the history where certain new technology is introduced not based on the customers’ demands, but rather on the need of large and influential companies. The customers (those aware of their rights) cannot be satisfied by this kind of agreement by no means.

So, how can you protect yourself from this “pact of evil”?

First of all — ignore the hardware and software using DRM techniques to restrict the rights of the user. Do not purchase music, movies and other content secured by DRM mechanisms. Instead, use alternative services recommended by the Defective By Design campaign — these are the tools and services DRM-free.
Secondly — talk, talk and once again, talk — make your family, friends, co-workers aware of the dangers connected with the use of DRM in the products. This is the best way to educate people what DRM really is and why they should care. Nobody wants to be restricted. When people become aware of the restrictions, they will not buy the products that restrict them. Simple enough

Breaking the DRM — it’s… easy

OK, and what if we have already legally purchased some content (like multimedia or text document) secured by some kind of DRM? Do not worry. Most of them has been broken a long time ago. For example, in order to play an CSS-encrypted DVD under GNU/Linux, you can use almost any player like VLC, MPlayer or Xine with libdvdcss2 enabled (this is a non-licenced library used to decrypt DVDs encrypted with CSS). If you posses music in AAC format (e.g. purchased at iTunes), you can easily convert them to a friendly format using JHymn without losing quality. The story repeats with each and every new introduced DRM technology, like encrypted PDFs, Windows Media, or recently HD-DVD (see the muslix64 post on BackupDVD) and BluRay.

Breaking the DRM restrictions is hard but always possible, due to the fact that all DRM mechanisms need to use symmetric encryption in order to work. This kind of encryption requires the keys to be hidden either in the hardware or software — in both ways it’s possible to access them by the hacker, analyze and find the way to decrypt the data streams. If you are interested in the details of DRM hacking, read the lecture of Cory Doctorow for Microsoft Research about the nonsense of DRM.

OK, but is it legal?

We know that we can break almost any DRM restriction using easily available open source software. But what about the legal part? Is it legal to do this at home? Well, this depends… Depends on where you live actually. For instance, if you have the misfortune of being located in the United States or France, you are prohibited by law to play your legally purchased music or films (sic!) that are secured by DRM if you don’t buy an approved operating system (like MS Windows or MacOS) with an approved media player (like PowerDVD or iTunes). In the US this has been enforced by the DMCA act. In France, a similar act called DADVSI.

Fortunately, in most other countries, it is still completely legal to use free software to break any DRM restrictions, like DeCSS to play your DVDs. What we, as the free software supporters, need to do is to constantly watch the law-makers in our own countries so that they do not try to introduce similar restrictions as in France or US. In Poland, for instance, a protest led by one of the big pro-Linux portals and thousands of computer users made the leading party to abandon the project to introduce a DMCA-like law in Poland. Free-software supporters in other countries, like the United Kingdom go even further and try to completely ban the use of DRM in the British law system.

Of course, breaking the restrictions is fighting the results, not the causes. The real problem is the pure fact that DRM exists and is widely accepted by the (unaware) majority. If the computer users do not unite and protest against including DRM in more and more products, nobody will, and the DRM will become our every-day experience which we will need to fight just like viruses or malware. This year may be the one in which the major decision will be made both by the industry (whether or not to apply DRM in the products) and by the customers (whether or not accept DRM as is). If we miss this fight, we may have to accept what we get. I don’t think we can afford missing it. Do you?
http://polishlinux.org/gnu/drm-vista-and-your-rights/





Vista "Upgrade" Drops Compliance Checking, Requires Old OS to Install
Ken Fisher

Microsoft's quest to closely control the way Windows Vista can be used on PCs has taken a turn for the worse as new information indicates that the company is breaking tradition when it comes to Windows Vista upgrades. With Windows Vista, users will not be able to use upgrade keys to initiate completely new installations. It is a change that will affect few users, but enthusiasts will certainly be amongst those pinched.

Upgrade versions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Premium, and Starter Edition will not install on any PC unless Windows XP or Windows 2000 is already on the machine in question. In years previous, upgrade versions of Windows could be installed on any PC. If a PC did not have an older version of Windows installed, users could provide an older installation CD of Windows for verification. After dropping a qualifying CD in the CD-ROM drive, the installation routine would verify the disc and you'd be on your way. With this approach, one could use an "upgrade" copy of Windows to lay a new Windows install on a computer.

One again, Microsoft appears to have made licensing decisions without considering how people actually use their products. Last fall the company trotted out changes to its retail licensing that would have punished users who frequently upgrade their PC hardware had the company not relented. Now Microsoft seeks to complicate our ability to start a crisp, new install with an upgrade version. Why?

A 'per device' obsession

Microsoft has been adamant in recent years that Windows is licensed per device and not per person. One practical ramification of this viewpoint is that the company typically does not allow users to install one copy of Windows across multiple machines, even if only one machine is in use at a time. According to Microsoft, only the full retail license of Windows Vista can be transferred to new devices (retail pricing here). OEM versions are ostensibly tied to motherboards, and upgrade versions are now technically tied to previous installations.

What does all of this mean on a practical level? Users who purchase upgrade copies of the aforementioned versions of Vista will find that they can only upgrade PCs that already have Windows installed. KB930985 clearly states: "you cannot use an upgrade key to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista." According to Microsoft, this happens because Windows Vista does not check for upgrade compliance. If you do not have a previous installation of Windows available, Microsoft recommends that you "purchase a license that lets you perform a clean installation of Windows Vista."

For its part, Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista repair process should be sufficient to solve any problems with the OS, since otherwise the only option for disaster recovery in the absence of backups would be to wipe a machine, install XP, and then upgrade to Vista. This will certainly make disaster recovery a more irritating experience.

Fortunately, the change will not mean that users cannot install Windows Vista to a new directory. Windows Vista's upgrade process includes the option of backing up previous installations, and in fact, in some scenarios a "clean" upgrade is required. "Clean" or not, the requirement that the previous OS be installed puts a bit of a damper on those of us that like the do periodic system refreshes.

What does Microsoft hope to gain out of all of this? I can only speculate. First, the change prevents a dual-license situation with all of the free Vista upgrade coupons out there. If things worked according to the old scheme, people with upgrade coupons would essentially get a "free" OS because they could install the Vista upgrade anywhere, and continue to use the version of Windows XP that came with their computer. Did Microsoft fear that this would happen quite a bit? It seems like an unlikely scenario.

Second, and likely more important to Microsoft, this should make it difficult for users to use a single upgrade copy of Vista throughout the years. I'm quite sure many of you in readerland have done exactly that in years past: build a computer, use your Windows upgrade disc. Build a new box three years later, use that same upgrade disc. Microsoft's preference would be for users in such situations to either purchase OEM copies for each new machine, or pay for a full version of the retail product.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070128-8717.html





Workaround Discovered For "Clean Install" With Vista Upgrade DVDs
Brandon Hill

When you first encounter this prompt for your product key, just hit next and proceed with setup.

Choose which version of Windows you have purchased, check the box and click Next.

Once the first install of Vista is completed and you start the second install from within Vista, you'll need to enter your product key.

Choose "Custom (advanced)" to perform a clean install.

Once the second install of Vista has been completed, you can activtate your installation through Microsoft.
Microsoft internal documentation reveals workaround for Vista Upgrade DVDs with no need for a previous version of Windows

Just when everyone thought that all hope was lost when it comes to performing a clean install with a Windows Vista Upgrade DVD, a gleam of light can now be seen at the end of the tunnel. A new workaround proposed by Paul Thurrott (via Microsoft internal documents) has been confirmed to work by DailyTech.

We reported on Monday that Microsoft doesn't perform disc checking anymore during an operating system install. In the past, when performing a clean install, a user could boot from an install CD and insert a disc from a previous version of Windows for upgrade compliance.

Per Microsoft's new licensing requirements for Vista, users are required to install a Windows Vista Upgrade from within Windows XP. When this occurs, the Windows XP license is forfeited and the Windows Vista installation process can take place.

Now, however, this workaround allows users to perform a “clean install.” The process is a bit tedious, but is not hard at all to complete. Users have to perform these simple steps to perform a clean install of Vista without a previous version of Windows installed with an upgrade DVD:

1. Boot from the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD and start the setup program.
2. When prompted to enter your product key, DO NOT enter it. Click "Next" and proceed with setup. This will install Windows Vista as a 30-day trial.
3. When prompted, select the edition of Vista which you have purchased and continue with setup.
4. Once setup has been completed and you have been brought to the desktop for the first time, run the install program from within Windows Vista.
5. This time, type in your product key when prompted.
6. When asked whether to perform an Upgrade or Custom (advanced) install, choose Custom (advanced) to perform a clean install of Vista. Yes, this means that you will have to install Vista for a second time.
7. Once setup has completed for the second time, you should be able to activate Windows Vista normally. You can also delete the Windows.old directory which contains information from the first Vista install.

There's no telling why Microsoft left this loophole wide open with Windows Vista Upgrade DVDs, but this means that any retail upgrade DVD can be used as a fully functioning full retail copy of Vista.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5932





Say what?

Vista Hole Opens Door to 'Shout Hacking'
Paul F. Roberts

The honeymoon ended early for Microsoft's Vista operating system, after word spread Wednesday about a flaw that could allow remote attackers to take advantage of the new operating system's speech recognition feature.

Microsoft researchers are investigating the reports of a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to use the speech recognition feature to run malicious programs on Vista systems using prerecorded verbal commands, the company said in an e-mail statement.

The potential security hole was discovered after an online discussion prompted blogger George Ou to try out a speech-based hack. Ou reported on ZD Net on Tuesday that he was able to access the Vista Start menu and, conceivably, run programs using voice commands played over the system's speakers.

The speech recognition flaw is novel and notable for being the first publicized hole in the new operating system since the public launch of Vista on Tuesday.

The impact of the flaw, however, is expected to be small. Vista users would need to have the speech recognition feature enabled and have a microphone and speakers connected to their system. Successful attackers would need to be physically present at the machine, or figure out a way to trick the computer's owner to download and play an audio recording of the malicious commands. Even then, the commands would somehow have to be issued without attracting the attention of the computer's owner.

Finally, attackers’ commands are limited to the access rights of the logged on user, which may prevent access to any administrative commands, Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft recommends that users who are concerned about having their computer shout-hacked disable the speaker or microphone, turn off the speech recognition feature, or shut down Windows Media Player if they encounter a file that tries to execute voice commands on their system.

Customers who believe they have been shout-hacked can contact Microsoft Product Support Services, the company said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20...Ymh vBHNlYwM-





Gates Contends Microsoft's New Windows System Has 'Wows All Over The Product'
AP

"Wow" hasn't tended to be a big part of Bill Gates' vocabulary, but to hear him speak in the hours before Microsoft Corp.'s planned launch of the long-awaited Vista operating system, you'd never know it.

"This 'Wow' thing is a great way of describing what we've got here," Microsoft's chairman told The Associated Press on Monday as the software maker scheduled a slate of splashy events in New York. "There are chances for wows all over the product."

More than five years in the making, Vista was released for business customers Nov. 30, but the new Windows operating system's unveiling for consumer buyers was scheduled for Tuesday around the world.

In Tokyo, about 80 people lined up at the Bic Camera Department Store to become among the world's first consumers to own Vista. Celebrities and executives were on hand as a large-screen television set
displayed a countdown to the midnight launch (10 a.m. EST).

The second person on line, Fumihiko Koyama, 33, waited three hours and was hoping the new operating system will make his work in Web design easier.

"My expectations are very high for Vista," he said. "I want to try it out because it's new."

He said he felt compelled to be among the first Vista owners because of the parties Bic and other major retailers were holding.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker contends that Vista is such a huge improvement over previous computing platforms that users inevitably say "Wow" when they see it _ and so the word plays a big role in the company's marketing campaign.

When users boot up Vista for the first time, they'll be wowed by the slick 3-D graphical user interface and document icons that give at-a-glance previews, Gates said. The next wow comes when they start using a system-wide search program that Microsoft's engineers built into both the operating system and new versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and other Office 2007 elements, which also hit store shelves at midnight.

Then, Gates said, there are layers of wows for all the different types of PC users: the gamers, the students, the business users, the moms.

But will this talk of "wow" translate into crowds at the CompUSA and Best Buy stores that are staying open until past midnight to sell the very first Vista machines?

Gates said Microsoft actually wasn't pushing midnight sales events _ after all, the software will be available as a download over the Web for the first time.

And while the software is prettier and more secure, "the biggest impact is always what partners do with it," Gates said in an interview.

Still, Gates didn't play down Vista's importance. He argued that as the PC has morphed from a souped-up typewriter to a networked entertainment center, personal media library and gateway to the Internet, the operating system itself has earned a higher profile.

"When people think about their PC, they think about Windows even more than who the manufacturer is. That determines how it looks, how you navigate, what the applications are that are available," Gates said. And in this case, Vista has folded in programs that users once bought separately _ including automated back-up systems and some spyware protections.

Microsoft shares dropped 20 cents to $30.40 in late morning trading Monday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1029799





A Bonus from Microsoft Vista: Leonardo's Notebooks
Thomas Crampton

Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft, marked the consumer release of his company's latest personal computer engine, Vista, with a low-key event Tuesday in a small auditorium at the British Library in London.

Gates, whose appearance here began a four-day European tour that was to include stops in Scotland, Hungary and France, announced a joint project with the British Library to make the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci available on the Internet for those using Vista.

Improvements in this version of the world's dominant PC operating system, which arrives at retailers two years later than Microsoft first planned, focus on managing digital media and protecting users from the dangers of the Internet.

For all of the bells and whistles, however, analysts expect most consumers to buy Vista only when it comes on new PCs that they purchase. Those sales could total 100 million worldwide within 12 months, according to some estimates.

British retailers are selling Vista Home Basic separately at around £99, or $194, while retailers in France are offering it for about €270, or $350.

In Europe, which supports an active open-source software community, Microsoft is grappling with particular challenges that it did not face for the debut of its previous big system introduction, Windows XP in 2001. Here and elsewhere, it must battle a host of rivals from a reinvigorated Apple and its desktop to Web-based challengers like Google, which is delivering services and software online.

Yet even with the relative success of the Linux system, the free software that was created by a Finn and is the main rival to Windows, Vista will help Microsoft maintain its dominant market position, said Brian Gammage, an analyst at Gartner, the consulting firm. Vista was made available to large corporate customers in November.

"There is a large investment that companies or governments need to make if they want to change to open source," Gammage said. "Microsoft is basically competing against a 'good enough' technology."

While open-source operating systems are run on about 2 percent of the 189 million personal computers in western Europe, Vista likely will carve out a market share of 7.1 percent by the end of this year and 64 percent by the end of 2010, Gammage predicted.

A separate critique of Vista that featured recently in Internet discussions is the integration of digital copying protections. Microsoft says that the system is intended to prevent illegal piracy, but critics say that the system is crippled for some legitimate uses.

A widely circulated posting by Peter Gutmann, a computer science professor at the University of Auckland, declared that Microsoft's extensive programming of content protection into Vista "could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history."

Consumers could react negatively to restrictions, said Tristan Nitot, president of Europe for the Mozilla Foundation, which produces the open-source Internet browsing software, Firefox.

"The default condition of Vista is to presume that when you copy, it is an act of piracy," Nitot said. "It was crazy for Microsoft to choose the interests of music companies and Hollywood over their own consumers."

The appearance by Gates before 100 journalists at the British Library complex was a sharp contrast with the British launch of Windows XP six years ago at the Royal Festival Hall in London and a guest list that topped 1,000. The event Tuesday also was more subdued than the marketing blitz Microsoft put on in Times Square in New York on Monday.

By holding the event at the British Library, Microsoft officials said they hoped to highlight the Leonardo project.

Vista users visiting the British Library Web site can page through a three-dimensional set of notes assembled from two of the notebooks kept by Leonardo. The selection is a combination of two books, the 535-page Codex Arundel owned by the British Library, and the 35-page Codex Leicester, which is owned by Gates.

The pages include notes, diagrams and sketches Leonardo made while investigating subjects ranging from mechanics and engineering to optics and the properties of the moon. The manuscripts are kept under secure and controlled conditions in Britain and the United States, but will be viewable together online for this project.

"Using Vista allowed us to put together the pages of these two notebooks as they were 500 years ago," said Clive Izard, head of creative services at the British Library. "We plan to make it a platform for scholars to share knowledge."

While Gates and Microsoft emphasized the project as opening knowledge and education to the world, only users of Vista will be able to access the 35 pages owned by Gates, who is making the digital version available to British Library for six months. Gates paid $30 million for the manuscript in 1994.

Izard said British Library policy calls for making all of its digitized books available regardless of the brand of software. "Sometimes you have to go with a single system to begin with to make something innovative," Izard said. "Our underlying objective is to make our whole collection available to as many people as possible."

Over the course of the codex project, the British Library has received software development assistance worth about $200,000 from Microsoft in addition to technical assistance for more than year, Lawrence Christensen, a library spokesman, said.

Microsoft recommends using Vista on machines with a minimum of 512 megabytes of memory, an 800-megahertz processor and 15 gigabytes of hard disk space.

In London, Gates described features including television recording directly onto computers, built-in safeguards to prevent damage from software viruses spread from the Internet, and parental controls on Internet use — which did not receive a great review from his own family.

"When I told my son about the new feature to limit his amount of Internet time, he asked, 'Jeez, is it going to be this way for the rest of my life?'" Gates said. "I told him, it probably will be as long as you live at home."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/...money/msft.php





Where's The Software To Catch Up To Multicore Computing?

IBM's chief architect for next-generation systems software wonders how far we'll be able to push the software required to take advantage of supercomputer-class machines.
Catherine Crawford

In terms of available floating-point operations per second on processors and systems, Moore's Law hasn't yet reached its limits. But in terms of usable performance by most software--even advanced technical computing software--perhaps it already has.

A look at the Top500 Supercomputer Sites List (www.top500.org) shows that a large portion of the technical computing workload has moved to commodity Linux clusters: commodity servers, commodity networks and commodity storage. At the same time, novel multicore processor architectures, such as the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE), show the potential for substantial computing power (hundreds of gigaflops) to reside in entry-level servers, with, say, two to four processors.

With so much computing power so readily accessible--whether in systems-on-chip or commodity clusters--companies and industries of all sizes anywhere in the world, and perhaps even individuals, may be able to tap this power to solve more problems than ever before. There's only one problem: Where's the software to take advantage of all these processors, cores and threads? For the most part, it's not there yet--even in areas historically focused on leading-edge technology enablement, such as technical computing. In fact, IDC's Earl Joseph concluded in a study on technical computing software that "many ISV codes today scale only to 32 processors, and some of the most important ones for industry don't scale beyond four processors" (www. hpcwire. com/ hpc/ 43036§0. html).

His study also found that even when a vendor has a strategy to parallelize or scale its code, the cost of rearchitecting and recoding is too high relative to the perceived market benefits.

Enter Roadrunner.

Roadrunner will be the world's first supercomputer based on the Cell BE. When it is up and running at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008, it will be capable of peak performance of more than 1.6 petaflops, or 1.6 thousand trillion calculations/s.

Roadrunner is the first rendering of a hybrid computing architecture: multiple heterogeneous cores with a multitier memory hierarchy. It's also built entirely out of commodity parts: AMD Opteron-based servers, Cell BE-based accelerators and Infiniband interconnect. Standard processing (e.g., file system I/O) will be handled by Opteron processors, while more mathematically and CPU-intensive elements will be directed to the Cell BE processors.

To make this complex architecture useful to even the most advanced scientific simulation application developers, much of the work on the system development is in the programming methodology enablement and corresponding application framework and tooling.

The application enablement application programming interfaces are simple but extensible, designed to take advantage of various types of memory and I/O subsystems while keeping changes in the underlying implementation hidden from the developer. The focus is also on enabling a set of core, efficient scatter/ gather memory operations of different topologies and to hide such things as computation and communication overlay from the developer.

The philosophy is a "division of labor" approach. There will continue to be a set of computational kernel developers maximizing performance out of the microprocessor ISA; in fact, many such kernels already exist (matrix multiply is a good example). Library developers will use frameworks such as the one developed for Roadrunner to synthesize the kernels into multicore, memory hierarchy libraries. Application developers will then link in those libraries using standard compiler and linker technology. Consistent APIs and methodology across a number of mutlicore architectures without the introduction of new languages will limit the cost of code maintenance. Thus, library developers get improved ease of use not just for accelerator systems but also for general-purpose multicore approaches and clusters.

Roadrunner is not just a single custom project for a national lab supercomputer; it represents a new architecture. We are inviting industry partners to define the components (APIs, tools, etc.) of the programming methodology so that the multicore systems are accessible to those partners as well. In this way, major scientific developments need no longer be limited to big universities or major research labs. The benefits of such focused industry enablement can "trickle down" to almost every aspect of our daily lives. Potential uses include:

• Financial services. By calculating cause and effect in capital markets in real-time, supercomputers can instantly predict the ripple effect of a stock market change throughout the markets.

• Digital animation. Massive supercomputing power will let movie makers create characters and scenarios so realistic that the line will be blurred between animated and live-action movies.

• Information-based medicine. Complex 3-D renderings of tissues and bone structures will happen in real-time, with in-line analytics used for tumor detection as well as comparison with historical data and real-time patient data. Synthesis of real-time patient data can be used to generate predictive alerts.

• Oil and gas production. Supercomputers are used to map out underground geographies, simulate reservoirs and analyze the data acquired visually by scientists in the field.

• Nanotechnology. Supercomputing is expected to advance the science of building devices, such as electronic circuits, from single atoms and molecules.

• Protein folding. Supercomputers can be used to provide an understanding of how diseases come about, how to test for them and how therapies and cures might be developed.

As architectures become more complex, from the multicore microprocessor to hybrid systems like Roadrunner; as supercomputing power becomes a commodity; and as developers still seek to get more performance out of their software without having to rely on the rate of "frequency bumps" that prevailed in the past, we are focused on keeping application development simple--forcing the art of the engineering into the framework enablement, not the application development. And by returning to a simpler way of doing things, we allow the software to catch up with advances in silicon, making teraflops on the desktop not just a feasible technical accomplishment, but a useful one as well.
http://www.informationweek.com/story...leID=197001130





TomTom Admits Satnav Device is Infected With Virus
Davey Winder

It started with an email from a worried satnav user, Lloyd Reid of Trichromic LLP an IT consultant who knows his way around a computer and knows a virus when his AV software flags one up. The cause for his concern being a newly purchased TomTom GO 910 satnav unit that, once connected to his PC, immediately caused an anti-virus software alert. Not one, but two alerts in fact. The win32.Perlovga.A Trojan and TR/Drop.Small.qp were identified as being resident on the satnav hard drive, within the copy.exe and host.exe files.

That’s worth repeating, two Trojans resident on the hard drive of a brand new, straight from the shop, satnav unit.

Worth repeating, perhaps, that this was a unit connected to a PC already protected by AV software, a clean PC, a PC belonging to an experienced IT consultant. It was for this reason that I believed him, that I did not simply assume it was a case of mistaken identity as is so often the case with such reports where the infection was already there, or came via a route unconnected to the accused party.

Also worth repeating is the response that this particular chap got from the TomTom support line, which was simply to let his AV software delete the virus and move on as these ‘are not dangerous’ Trojans. Upon pressing his point that the tech support guy was missing the point, he was told to submit a report to the TomTom website. Being the pushy type, my informer called a TomTom number in the Netherlands but only got the run around and an email address which he complained to, copying me in on the message.

Naturally, having more than a passing interest in the field of IT security, I started investigating immediately. It didn’t take long to find a few scant mentions of one or two other users asking about the same infections, on the same device, in a couple of satnav user forums. It also didn’t take long to discover that there was no real response from TomTom being reported anywhere, no mention on the TomTom website that there was a potential problem (a search for the infected files, virus or even a warning on the TomTom support site flagged no hits at all) and no warnings being given to the public at large.

I made sure that my friendly contact at the PR agency that handles TomTom in the UK was aware of my interest and he promised to pass my questions on to TomTom for a detailed, official, technical comment ASAP. That response was delivered by the end of play the next day. I note, however, that as I write this there is still no official warning on the TomTom site regarding the fact that a number of satnav devices are known to be infected with a virus…

Here is that response in full:

“It has come to our attention that a small, isolated number of TomTom GO 910’s, produced between September and November 2006, may be infected with a virus. The virus is qualified as low risk and can be removed safely with virus scanning software. Appropriate actions have been taken to make sure this is prevented from happening again in the future.

Affected devices

It has been confirmed that a small number of TomTom GO 910 devices, produced between September and November 2006, and shipped with software version 6.51, may be infected with a virus.

Known risks

The viruses that were detected present an extremely low risk to customers’ computers or the TomTom GO 910. To date, no cases of problems caused by the viruses are known.

How to detect the virus

In the isolated cases that a virus was detected, it was found when the TomTom GO 910 was connected to the computer and for example a back-up of the content on the device was being made.

What to do when a virus is found

TomTom highly recommends that all TomTom GO 910 customers update their virus scanning software, and if a virus is detected, allow the virus scanning software to remove the ‘host.exe’ file, ‘copy.exe’ file or any other variants.

The above identified files or any variants can safely be removed from the device with virus scanning software, and are NOT to be removed manually, as they are not part of the standard installed software on a TomTom GO 910. They present no danger whilst driving with the TomTom GO 910.

Customers that do not have virus scanning software are advised to install virus scanning software. The internet offers many free online virus scanners like Symantec and Kaspersky (www.symantec.com or www.kaspersky.com) that will remove the virus safely from the TomTom GO 910 as soon as it is detected.

Any customers who experience problems or have further questions are welcome to contact our Customer Support department.

===========================================

UPDATE Following the publication of this news story, and the interest it has sparked amongst many online and print publications, TomTom has now posted the same statement as above on its website. Sadly, there is no sign of an apology alongside it...
http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1276.html





Blockbuster Down on Netflix Earnings
AP

Blockbuster Inc. shares fell Thursday after competitor Netflix Inc. beat analysts' quarterly profit and revenue expectations.

Blockbuster's Total Access plan, which allows customers to rent DVDs online and return them to a Blockbuster store in exchange for a new movie, helped the company add 700,000 new online customers in the fourth quarter, for a total of 2.2 million. But Netflix said late Wednesday it signed 654,000 new subscribers in the quarter, and predicts it will match Blockbuster's gains next year.

Netflix shares had fallen sharply in recent weeks as investors anticipated the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company would miss its forecast for the quarter. But the company instead posted profit of $14.9 million, or 21 cents per share, for the fourth quarter, easily topping the average earnings estimate of 15 cents per share among analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Blockbuster shares hit a new 52-week high of $6.92 Thursday, but then dropped 24 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $6.55 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Netflix stock gained 46 cents, or 2 percent, to $23.21 on the Nasdaq.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4499612.html





Don't Go Back Jack, Do It Again
Mark Brown

Although David Byrne was more than willing to play two songs with the Talking Heads when the band was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame, he always has been adamant that a "real" reunion would never happen.

Years ago he said he simply wasn't interested.

"It's very common for people to think that you can go back in time and have the same impulses and create more of the same thing," he told me in a 1994 interview.

"That's like saying, 'Why don't you go marry your first wife again and be just as happy and loving and exciting as you were then?' There's just no way in a million years it's going to happen, unless you're Elizabeth Taylor. And even then I'm sure it isn't quite the same.' "

Fans and critics do stubbornly cling to beliefs that if band members would only get back together, they could replicate something. And that too often is just impossible. The drive, the influences, the shared vision and the need to succeed that fuels a band's early days are elements that can't be repeated after members are older, richer, successful and driven by different motives.

The Beatles knew that. Despite huge offers, they never came close to even considering it.

For some acts it works. The Eagles picked up where they left off in 1994 and continue to pack arenas. Fleetwood Mac pulled it off successfully in 1997, but took it a step too far in later years when they continued to tour without Christine McVie. Lindsey Buckingham promises another Mac outing in '08.

The Pixies reunion brought them the riches and acclaim they should have been given the first time around. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are still far more interesting than just Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Fans of the Replacements would love to see Tommy Stinson and Paul Westerberg get back together for some shows, but realize that magic was dicey night-to-night even at the band's peak.

The Clash was perennially rumored to reunite, and Mick Jones even joined Joe Strummer onstage - a month before Strummer died. Led Zeppelin turned down $100 million to tour, with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant doing a more tasteful, low-key tour together.

Despite a reported $5 million one-off offer to play a festival, The Smiths have never gotten together.

"There has never been a financial offer for a reunion," Morrissey told the Rocky a few years back.

"It's interesting that you think there would be. There has never been an approach from any sort of established promoter or agent. Just goes to show that people's preconceptions about these things are miles away from the truth."

Besides, he added: "We don't like each other at all. We couldn't bear to be in a room for five minutes with each other. And money doesn't come into that at all."

But money, of course, is what comes into it completely for most other acts. So we're looking at the most reunion tours in years for the summer of '07. By the time you read this, Van Halen should have made their announcement, and others are already out there or imminent. A quick review of what's coming up:

Van Halen with David Lee Roth: You thought the reunion with Sammy Hagar was Spinal Tap-ish and tense? It's a walk in the park compared to the always-fractious relationship between Roth and Eddie Van Halen. The Roth era was definitely VH's high point, so let's celebrate that with releasing DVDs of those classic performances, not by tarnishing the legacy.

Genesis: No, not the Peter Gabriel (i.e., "good") era, but the latter day Phil Collins era. Granted, there were far bigger hits from this lineup, but far less challenging, too. It'll be huge.

The Police: This could work. They went out at their peak after selling out stadiums worldwide with their biggest album, Synchronicity. All three principals are healthy and have kept up their chops. Fans will turn out in droves no matter where they play.

Crowded House: After finally releasing Farewell to the World, the DVD of their final concert in 1996, Neil Finn announced a Crowded House reunion for later this year. Despite the death of drummer Paul Hester, fans have been waiting for this.

Rage Against the Machine: Reuniting for the Coachella Festival and a likely tour, it remains to be seen if volatile frontman Zack de la Rocha can keep it together after a seven-year split and translate his political lyrics into the 21st Century.

Reunions that worked

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Back with passion and a renewed appreciation of what they had together.

Pink Floyd: The one-off at Live 8 was a splendid performance. A full-scale reunion tour needs to happen, but may never.

The Who: Joke all you want, but they still are a force to be reckoned with onstage.

Simon & Garfunkel: One wondered if both egos could possibly fit in one arena, but they pulled it off without bloodshed.

Reunions that wrecked

Van Halen with Sammy Hagar: We would have told Eddie to put his shirt back on, but honestly, maybe he didn't know it was off.

Cream: Nice try, but upon further review, it was a touch underwhelming musically.

Duran Duran: Why? Why?

The New Cars: Fans preferred the earlier model with Ric Ocasek at the wheel.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...308014,00.html





How to Make a Record. Literally.

Part 1

Part 2





If anyone does any exploiting it’ll be Paris

Paris Hilton Sues Web Site That Displayed Personal Items
AP

Paris Hilton filed a federal lawsuit Monday, seeking to shut down a Web site that displays personal photos, videos, diaries, and other belongings once kept at a storage facility.

The Web site was launched last week claiming the items were auctioned off after Hilton neglected to pay the Los Angeles-area storage facility. It also promises visitors who pay a fee of $39.97 access to Hilton's passport, medical records and other legal documents.

In her lawsuit, Hilton said she put her possessions in storage two years ago when she and her sister, Nicky, moved out of a house that had been burglarized.

The 25-year-old heiress said a moving company was supposed to pay the storage fees and was "shocked and surprised" to learn her belongings were sold at a public auction.

"I was appalled to learn that people are exploiting my and my sisters' private personal belongings for commercial gain," Hilton said in a declaration supporting the lawsuit, adding she was concerned the information could be used for identity theft or harassment.

The lawsuit alleges defendants Nabil and Nabila Haniss paid $2,775 for the contents of the storage unit and later sold the items for $10 million to entrepreneur Bardia Persa, who created the site ParisExposed.com.

Phone numbers for Nabil and Nabila Haniss of Culver City could not be located. Persa did not immediately respond to an e-mail Monday seeking comment.

Hilton's publicist Elliot Mintz said that she would like the site shut down and "would like all of these items returned to her."
http://www.newstimeslive.com/storyprint.php?id=1029863





Toilet Bomber Freed From Federal Custody for Medical Testing
AP

A federal judge has granted a Weston man accused of setting off several explosions, including blowing up portable toilets, two weeks of freedom.

Bruce Forest, 50, was granted a two-week release from a federal prison Monday to receive medical advice for a heart condition and a possible cancer diagnosis.

Forest posted a $1 million bond and agreed to put up his Weston home and his mother's Westport home as collateral. He is to return to federal custody in two weeks to honor an agreement worked out with federal prosecutors in November to plead guilty to blowing up a portable toilet in Weston on Feb. 21, 2006.

Forest will be prohibited from leaving his Weston house except when escorted by off-duty police officers to at least three scheduled medical appointments in the next 14 days.

Once Forest returns to court Feb. 12 and pleads guilty to blowing up the portable toilet, prosecutors will drop 13 charges contained in a 14-count federal grand jury indictment, Forest's attorney, Richard Kascak said Monday.

After the next court appearance, Forest will return to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Rhode Island to await sentencing.

Prosecutors said Forest began a string of bombings in Weston where he blew up three portable toilets in 2005 and 2006.

The indictment also charges Forest with blowing up another toilet along Route 53 in Redding and destroying a road sign there. He is also charged in explosions at the former Fitch School on Strawberry Hill Avenue in Norwalk and at an abandoned gas station in Weston.

Before his arrest in March, Forest worked as a consultant for a major media company on illegal online distribution of movies.

Forest was once known as one of the Internet's most notorious pirates of music and movies.
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1029886





How to Find Fake Torrents Uploaded by the MPAA and RIAA
Ernesto

The MPAA, RIAA and several anti-piracy organizations are constantly trying to trap people into downloading fake torrents. These torrents are hosted on trackers that are setup to collect IP addresses of all the ‘pirates’ who try to download these files.

To make these traps more visible, Fenopy just introduced the FakeFinder. The FakeFinder lists the most popular fake torrents and the latest fake trackers. It also allows you to search for fake torrents by keyword or infohash.

The actual .torrent links for these fake files are blocked, and FakeFinder serves an informational purpose only. It is actually quite amusing to browse through these fake files and trackers. The companies that host these anti-piracy trackers came up with some interesting hostnames like “dirtydevils.cyberbox.com.br” and “bittorrent.isthebe.st“.

Although most of the IPs of these fake trackers are already blocked by blocklist software like PeerGuardian, they still manage to collect the IP addresses of thousands of users who do fall for this trap. Most torrent site admins are aware of these fakes, and remove them as soon as they are uploaded. It is kind of a paradox. On the one hand anti-piracy organizations send thousands of takedown requests to torrent sites, while they upload fake files with similar titles themselves.

Some might argue that downloading a fake file is not really a criminal offense. And yes, it is doubtful if this evidence will hold up in court. However, the job of organizations like the MPAA is to scare people, and that is often enough for them. The first thing they will probably do is send a letter to your ISP saying that you tried to download so-and-so file. And even if they take it a step further, they try to settle before these things are played out in court.

FakeFinder shows that BitTorrent site admins are trying to track down these fake torrents, and it’s a nice way to expose the darker side of anti-piracy organizations like the MPAA.
http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-find-...mpaa-and-riaa/





A Mechanic’s Laptop Makes Manuals All but Obsolete
Scott Sturgis

WHEN Donny Seyfer started fixing cars a couple of decades ago, a mechanic could still count on his internal database — a well-developed blend of observation, experience and instinct — to diagnose most breakdowns. The worn-out brushes in a dead starter or a short circuit in a sparkless ignition distributor would eventually be revealed to a mechanic who carefully dug through the clues.

But as carburetors became extinct and electrical systems evolved from bundles of color-coded wires to inscrutable digital networks, the ability to determine where faults lay demanded new skills and savvy. No longer would basic tools like a test light and a compression gauge be enough.

To make a living fixing the new generation of computer-controlled cars, a general practitioner like Mr. Seyfer, 43, had to become something of a technical wizard, reaching for a laptop — not a wrench — when a customer drove in with problems.

He has also become a booster of technology, as a teacher of shop technicians and as education director of the Automotive Service Association. An early adopter who dug into the changes sweeping auto technology in the ’80s and never looked back, Mr. Seyfer (pronounced SIGH-fer) manages the computer systems at his family’s repair shop in Wheat Ridge, Colo., a western suburb of Denver. He also spreads the word as the co-host of a local radio show, taking questions from owners baffled by misbehaving vehicles.

That does not mean he has all the answers. In a recent struggle, Mr. Seyfer matched wits with the onboard computer of a 2006 Lincoln Zephyr.

When the car was parked with its doors locked, the sunroof would start opening and closing. Beyond solving the obvious problem, Mr. Seyfer wanted to complete the repair by clearing the fault message, or trouble code, recorded in the car’s computer and turning off the check-engine light. He researched a repair Web site operated by the Ford Motor Company. He checked independent information services used by mechanics like Alldata, Identifix and the International Automotive Technician’s Network; none answered the question.

As it turned out, the solution was tucked away in his memory. “I remembered a similar model that you had to tell the computer whether it was front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive,” Mr. Seyfer said. “I punched in that information, and it cleared the codes.”

The sources of repair information that today’s mechanics must be familiar with — diagnostic codes, Web-based data-sharing, online forums — raise the question of how an independent shop, working on many brands of vehicles, can possibly keep up with the technology.

As information goes from printed repair manuals to the Web, are manufacturers sharing the information the way they should? More important, who is going to fix that sophisticated new Mercedes-Benz 10 years from now, when the factory warranty has expired?

Patricia Serratore, group vice president for industry relations for the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence, said that the future should be bright for independent shops.

She said there had always been a gap between the introduction of new technology and getting repair information to mechanics.

“Years ago, when disc brakes came out, when fuel injection came out, there was the same kind of lag,” Ms. Serratore said.

Mr. Seyfer told a similar story. He started his career in 1983, just as devices like computer-controlled carburetors arrived. “It was doom and gloom. ‘Independent shops aren’t going to be able to fix anything.’ ”

Although he said he found the new technology “kind of fun,” he also discovered that getting the information to fix a car could be a problem because it was no longer covered by a comprehensive factory shop manual. It is now on a manufacturer’s Web site, so access becomes more critical and more dependent on the manufacturer.

Manufacturers charge independent shops for access to their Web sites. Charles Territo, director of communications for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry trade group, said that most automakers made access for a 24-hour period available for about $25. Subscriptions are also available for longer use.

While the information is not free, Mr. Seyfer does not begrudge the automakers the money. He said he would rather have thorough and accurate information available on the automaker sites, rather than encounter a reluctance on the part of the manufacturers to provide repair information because they are losing money.

Mr. Territo said manufacturers wanted independent shops to have access to the information as well.

“Seventy to 80 percent of post-warranty repairs are performed by independent repairers,” Mr. Territo said.

It does add to the mechanics’ overhead. Mike Brewster, owner of Gil’s Garage in Burnt Hills, N.Y., pays subscription fees for independent services like Alldata, Mitchell’s and Identifix; such services typically cost $150 a month. Mr. Brewster will buy 24-hour access to a manufacturer’s site only as needed.

“It’s just a part of the cost of doing business,” Mr. Brewster said. “But having current information available is such a pleasure.”

Mr. Seyfer said he barely spent $100 a month for the few times he buys access to automakers’ sites. He also subscribes to Alldata and Identifix.

In New Jersey, a right-to-repair act began working its way through the state Legislature last year. The bill would set up a state agency and require manufacturers to provide diagnostic, service and repair information free to vehicle owners and repair facilities.

The Automotive Service Association opposes passage of this bill, which the organization said would jeopardize relations between the association and automakers and limit the information available to what the government requires. The bill remains in the Legislature.

One free service is from the National Automotive Service Task Force, a clearinghouse that provides help on specific repair issues to independent mechanics. Starting in 2000 and modeled on a pilot program in Arizona, the task force’s members include independent mechanics, information providers and virtually every automobile manufacturer producing cars for the North American market.

While Mr. Seyfer was not able to resolve the problem he had with the Lincoln sunroof when he posted an inquiry on the task force site, he said information was easy to get most of the time.

“A tech gets in trouble, gets angry because he can’t fix the car and submits a complaint,” Mr. Seyfer said, adding that the manufacturer usually calls the next day and tells the technician where to find the solution.

Mr. Brewster knows all about keeping up with technology. He entered Chrysler’s training program after high school in the late 1970s. Within four years, onboard computers made much of what he knew obsolete.

But after almost 30 years in the business, he said getting information from manufacturers had actually gotten easier.

“We struggled a lot more in the early ’80s trying to get current information than I believe we do today,” Mr. Brewster said.

Mr. Seyfer said that as the technology evolved, so had the skills of aspiring repair technicians. “The trend toward students who are adept at computers, math and reading has been going on for a number of years,” he said. His technicians attend traning and online classes, too.

And the printed shop manual? Ancient history. “Manuals? I think they’re still available,” Mr. Brewster said. ”But I don’t know any shop that actually utilizes them.”

Mr. Seyfer said his shop of eight employees had nine computers around the repair area for the technicians to use. Mr. Seyfer and Mr. Brewster keep libraries of manuals for repairing older cars.

“Who would have thought you could use a laptop as a diagnostic tool?” he said. “Now it’s the first thing we whip out.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/au...s/28SHOPS.html





'Dumb Terminals' can be a smart move

Computing Devices Lack Extras but Offer Security, Cost Savings
Christopher Lawton

Since the early 1980s, corporate computing power has shifted away from the big central computers that were hooked to "dumb terminals" on employees' desks and toward increasingly powerful desktop and laptop computers. Now, there are signs the tide is turning back.

A new generation of simplified devices -- most often called "thin clients" or "simple terminals" -- is gaining popularity with an increasing number of companies and other computer users in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The stripped-down machines from Wyse Technology Inc., Neoware Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and others let users perform such tasks as word processing or accessing the Internet at their desks just as they did with their personal computers.• What's News: So-called dumb terminals hooked to central computers, now often called thin clients, are making a comeback with companies attracted by cost savings and security benefits.

• The Background: Thin clients can't run most software or store data on their own, offering both pluses and minuses that can vary by company.

• The Outlook: World-wide shipments of such simple terminals are expected to rise 21.5% annually through 2010, according to research firm IDC.

These simple terminals generally lack features such as hard drives or DVD players, so they can't run most software or store data on their own. Instead, the software applications used on a thin terminal's screen are actually running on a server, often in a separate room.

One company that recently moved away from PCs to these new bare-bones terminals is Amerisure Mutual Insurance Co. Last year, the Farmington Hills, Mich., insurer shelled out around $1.2 million for simple terminals to replace 750 aging desktop personal computers in eight offices.

Jack Wilson, Amerisure's enterprise architect who led the project, says the reasons behind the switch were simple. The company was able to connect all of the employees to the network through the terminals and manage them more easily from 10 servers in a central location, instead of a couple servers at each of the eight offices previously. While the company spent around the same total as it would cost to buy new PCs, Mr. Wilson says, the switch will save money in the long run because he won't have to replace -- or "refresh" -- the machines as often.

"I did a PC refresh every three years, but with these thin clients, I should be able to bypass two or maybe three refreshes," Mr. Wilson says. Because it costs around $1 million each time Amerisure buys upgraded PCs for its staff, he adds, "That's a significant savings just there."

While these terminals remain a small fraction of the market, thin-client shipments world-wide in 2006 rose to 2.8 million units valued at $873.4 million, up 20.8% from the previous year, according to projections from technology-research firm IDC. The category is expected to increase 21.5% annually through 2010.

Like Amerisure's Mr. Wilson, other companies and institutions cite lower costs in spurring their interest in simple terminals. Because the terminals have no moving parts such as fans or hard drives that can break, the machines typically require less maintenance and last longer than PCs. Mark Margevicius, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc., estimates companies can save 10% to 40% in computer-management costs when switching to terminals from desktops.

In addition, the basic terminals appear to offer improved security. Because the systems are designed to keep data on a server, sensitive information isn't lost if a terminal gets lost, stolen or damaged. And if security programs or other applications need to be updated, the new software is installed on only the central servers, rather than on all the individual PCs scattered throughout a network.

"People have recognized if you start to centralize this stuff and more tightly manage it, you can reduce your cost and reduce the security-related issues, because you have fewer things to monitor," says Bob O'Donnell, an IDC analyst.

Thin clients can also have what some computer buyers think are significant drawbacks. Because data and commands must travel between the terminal and a central server, thin clients can sometimes be slower to react than PCs.

Simplified terminals can translate to less freedom for individual users and less flexibility in how they use their computers. Without a hard drive in their desktop machines, users may place greater demands on computer technicians for support and access to additional software such as instant messaging, instead of downloading permitted applications themselves. Analysts say it takes time for employees to get used to not controlling their own PCs.

"It's a paradox. People want their cake and eat it, too. They want the security, they want the consistency...but they want the functionality of a PC," says Gartner's Mr. Margevicius.

At some companies, the math works in favor of simple terminals. Morrison Mahoney LLP deployed terminals last year to connect the New England law firm's 375 employees to the network and manage them from a central data center. By making the switch, Frank Norton, director of information technology for the firm, projects that over the next six years, Morrison Mahoney will save around $750,000 in hardware and labor costs.
Simple terminal setups, such as the H-P Compaq t5135, are showing signs of a comeback.

Mr. Norton says going to thin clients from personal computers was a change for employees, but the firm has always had strict policies against downloading, which made it easier to adjust. "It's definitely a culture shock, saying how can my same PC go to this little box with no moving parts," Mr. Norton says.

Meanwhile, Jeffery Shiflett, assistant director of information technology for the County of York, Pa., deployed such terminals throughout the county starting in 2002. What started as a setup of 45 terminals in a small county-run nursing home four years ago has expanded to 925 terminals.

Mr. Shiflett says that using the terminals has helped the county stay current with regulations such as the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act enacted in 1996, which requires the medical industry to do a better job of securing private medical information. "The need to secure the desktop and provide that sort of compliance...was a key factor that moved us toward implementation of thin clients and a separation from the traditional PC," Mr. Shiflett says.

Simplified computing terminals are starting to go international. H-P, of Palo Alto, Calif., last week announced that a line of its slimmed-down PCs, which reside in the data center and enable users to connect through a thin client or other devices, was being made available in Europe, Canada and China for the first time. Meanwhile, other companies are updating their dumb-terminal technology. Neoware, of King of Prussia, Pa., in October introduced a thin-client notebook computer that uses a wireless network to connect to a central server. Today, Wyse released a set of software tools aimed at delivering a better experience on a thin client.

Amerisure's Mr. Wilson says he is testing a thin-client laptop computer. If deployed, he says, the notebooks wouldn't store data and would connect wirelessly to the network. Mr. Wilson wants to make sure the wireless connections for the notebooks would be adequate in some remote areas that Amerisure covers in the Southeast and Texas.

"Security is very important to us. You have to find a level of security that allows you to function as a business," he says.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs





Wi-Fi Phone Buyer's Guide

VoIP service providers Skype and Vonage have each partnered with hardware manufacturers to release cell-like phones that can use their services via Wi-Fi networks. Here's how to get started.
Peter Jacobson

The days of trying to make an important call from the bowels of a data center, only to find that your cell phone doesn't have a signal, may soon be coming to an end. New services and devices designed to extend the reach and reduce the cost of traditional cell phone service are beginning to reach the market, and are certain to change the industry's landscape.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers Skype and Vonage have each recently partnered with hardware manufacturers to release cell-like phones that can use their services via Wi-Fi networks.

Not to be left behind, traditional cell carriers are launching dual-mode phones and services that run over the cellular networks, but switch to cheaper (for carriers), faster (for customers) Wi-Fi networks when one is available. T-Mobile launched a trial of this type of service, dubbed HotSpot@Home, in October 2006. Although the service is currently only available in Washington state, it's likely to be extended to other cities in 2007.

But before we get in too deep, let's get familiar with the technology and some terminology.

Wi-Fi phone services can be divided broadly into two categories: mobile phones that use a wireless network to connect to a VoIP service such as Skype or Vonage, and dual-mode phones that have the capability to run over both wireless networks and a cellular network. The goal of both of these approaches is the Holy Grail of fixed mobile convergence, which brings mobile and landline services together into a single device.

By the end of the second quarter of 2006, more than 9 million homes in the United States were using some sort of VoIP service, according to a December 2006 report from In-Stat. That number includes facilities-based providers, such as Vonage and the cable companies, as well as software-based providers such as Skype. Although the rate of growth for VoIP services is brisk, the next logical step is to offer alternatives to using the services only through a traditional handset or a headset tethered a PC. Enter Wi-Fi phones.

While dozens of telecom and networking companies have launched facilities-based VoIP services, the majority of these services are intended for use only within the confines of a home or business. They run over the customer's Internet connection and terminate in a traditional digital or analog handset. Several software-based VoIP services, such as Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Gizmo, and Skype, take this one step further by running on subscribers' PCs, allowing them to make free "calls" over their Internet connections to other users running the same software. A few of these services, most notably Skype, also offer an option to make and receive calls from landlines for an additional monthly or per-minute fee.

As for dual-mode phones that hop between wireless and cellular networks, the current leading approach uses Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology to handle the wireless side, with a seamless handoff to and from a traditional GSM/GPRS cellular network when a high-quality wireless signal isn't available. If the phone has an active voice or data session and an available wireless signal is detected, the phone will hop to the cheaper, faster wireless network. In theory, the handoffs back and forth between the two types of networks should be transparent to the subscriber.

UMA, which also is referred to as a Generic Access Network (GAN), uses the same slice of the broadcast spectrum -- 2.4 GHz -- used by many wireless networks, cordless phones, and Bluetooth devices. While there's also some question about whether or not UMA/GAN will remain the long-term solution for fixed mobile convergence, once dual-mode phones gain wider acceptance, it's certainly possible that changes to the network infrastructure will be made.

Service And Device Options
A handful of VoIP providers, Skype and Vonage among them, have partnered with device manufacturers to offer "single-mode" Wi-Fi phones that connect to their services. Devices touted as "Skype certified" are being offered by Netgear, SMC, Belkin, Sony, and others, while Vonage offers only one, manufactured by UTStarcom.

A fairly significant issue faced by single-mode Wi-Fi phones is that the current crop can only connect to open access points or those secured by WEP or WPA-PSK (the security code can be entered into the phone). Hotspots that require a user name and password, or even free hotspots that require a Web page to load prior to granting access, aren't supported.

While dual mode cellular/Wi-Fi service is more broadly established in the U.K. (BT Fusion is the most prominent service), T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home is still the only publicly available dual-mode option in the U.S. While about two dozen handsets from various manufacturers are available worldwide, only two devices -- one from Samsung and one from Nokia -- are compatible with the HotSpot@Home trial.

Below is a quick summary of services and devices available:

Skype
As of September 2006, eBay-owned Skype reported that it had a jaw-dropping 113 million registered users worldwide. With a base that large, it's fair to assume that offering a Wi-Fi phone compatible with the service could find a substantial audience. Skype also recently announced an unlimited outgoing Skype-to-landline calling plan for $30 a year, with incoming landline-to-Skype calls available at an additional fee. Dirt cheap, by almost any measure.

Skype has about a half dozen certified options for phones, and also is compatible with any Pocket PC device with Wi-Fi support that can run the Skype software.

Three of the most interesting phones are the Netgear Skype Wi-Fi Phone (model SPH101, list price: $230); the Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype (model F1PP000GN-SK, list price: $180); and the Sony Mylo (list price: $350).

Netgear was the first to market, launching the SPH101 in early 2006, and since then the phone has gotten generally positive reviews. The Skype software is embedded in the device and the user can sign up for a new Skype account or use an existing one. The Netgear phone supports connecting to 802.11b/g wireless networks, but doesn't yet have support of the emerging 802.11a standard, which is still in draft form.

Belkin's Wi-Fi phone also is designed to work with Skype. One interesting and useful function is the integrated hotspot manager from wireless provider Boingo, which allows the phone to connect to one of Boingo's 60,000 hotspots in 60 different counties worldwide for an $8 monthly fee. Boingo has denser coverage in the U.K. and Europe, but its presence in the U.S. is growing.

The Sony Mylo is the priciest, but also the most feature-rich. It's essentially a media player with a mini keyboard, with 802.11b wireless connectivity. It comes with Skype as well as Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger pre-installed, and unlike most other Wi-Fi phones, includes a Web browser.

In addition to its current crop of Wi-Fi-only phones, Skype also has reportedly been in discussions with several cell phone manufacturers about launching dual-mode handsets, presumably in some sort of partnership with a cellular carrier.

Vonage
Like Skype, Vonage also offers a Wi-Fi phone, but just one model: the UTStarcom F1000 (list price: $130). But the company says it expects to certify and release a number of additional devices in 2007. The F1000 works in very much the same way as other devices; the Vonage software is embedded into the device itself, and it connects to the service via an available Wi-Fi network.

Vonage currently offers unlimited local and long distance calling for $25 a month.

T-Mobile
The only dual mode Wi-Fi/cellular service in the bunch, T-Mobile HotSpot@Home requires that the subscriber use a Nokia 6136 or Samsung SGH-T709. Both phones are steeply discounted when signing up for the plan, and end up costing less than $100 before additional rebates. The plans themselves cost a minimum of $60 per month -- a cellular plan for $40 or more and an additional $20 month for the Wi-Fi service.

The Wi-Fi aspect of the service is delivered by having customers install a T-Mobile-provided wireless router at their home or business. This router is currently free after rebate, but does require that the customer have high-speed Internet service. The phones will also work on any T-Mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, of which there are some 7,000 locations across the U.S.

Additional details on the plan can be found at theonlyphoneyouneed.com, T-Mobile's site for marketing the service.

EarthLink
EarthLink officially launched its first city-wide municipal Wi-Fi network in Anaheim, Calif. in mid-2006, and added Philadelphia shortly thereafter. Although a Wi-Fi-only phone plan for these municipalities was rumored to be announced by the end of 2006, it looks as if these will be available at some point in 2007. EarthLink also has indicated that it plans to offer a dual-mode service through its Helio cellular joint venture with SK Telecom.

Other Players
Cingular and Sprint Nextel have discussed testing consumer-oriented dual-mode services, and it's possible that their trials may be opened up in 2007. Nothing is official yet, and most carriers aren't yet willing to discuss their plans publicly.

As more cities roll out municipal Wi-Fi networks, many of which are ambitious projects intended to blanket entire areas with free or cheap Wi-Fi access, the opportunity for Wi-Fi phone providers comes into focus. Once Wi-Fi access is ubiquitous and affordable, the phone services begin to reach the critical mass where the benefits to consumers and businesses become more apparent.

Although EarthLink and Google have driven some of the most high-profile municipal Wi-Fi efforts, Microsoft also has recently announced sponsorship of a municipal Wi-Fi project run by MetroFi in Portland, Ore. And many cities and towns simply choose to do it on their own, albeit often on a smaller scale.

Even with the fast pace of cities rolling out these services, there are likely to be a number of challenges. Imagine a busy public space with a Wi-Fi network being bombarded by dozens of people trying to use their Wi-Fi phones simultaneously. The quality of service could drop precipitously, rendering it all but useless for anyone but the most patient.

Nevertheless, emerging technology, such as the faster, longer-range 802.11n wireless networking standard, could be a boon for municipal wireless plans and Wi-Fi phone service providers.

Challenges Remain
While the promise of Wi-Fi phones is enticing, many challenges lie ahead before customers and businesses fully accept the products.

For single-mode phones, finding a wireless network to log into could be a headache. Wi-Fi coverage in virtually any metropolitan area is a mishmash of open and closed networks running different standards, and connecting reliably to this could be a major challenge. This is less of an issue for the dual-mode services which can use cellular service as a safety net.

While the service providers potentially save a lot of money on cellular backhaul fees by running traffic over cheap wireless networks, these cost savings may not trickle down to the consumer, other than in the form of saved cellular minutes. Also, Wi-Fi phones themselves are fairly expensive, with the most basic devices -- no camera, MP3 player, or Web browser -- starting at well over $100. And if the T-Mobile trial is any indication, service providers can be expected to charge a premium for offering service via wireless hotspots.

None of the VoIP services running on Wi-Fi phones currently support emergency calling such as E911, which makes having a Wi-Fi phone as your only phone service a risky proposition. Vonage provides a valuable service, though; if 911 is dialed from one of the Wi-Fi phones using its service, the call will be answered by a Vonage emergency call center, which will help contact the appropriate local emergency resources.

Because of the power requirements of including a Wi-Fi radio in phones, these first-generation Wi-Fi phones can drain a battery in standby mode in just a day, and offer only a couple of hours of talk time. Some power-saving advancements are being made, such as technology that allows certain devices to lower their power consumption when not actively making calls, but things will need to come a long way before Wi-Fi phones can deliver the days of standby and hours of talk time taken for granted with traditional cell phones.

None of these factors may matter much in the long haul if customers and businesses deem the convenience and flexibility of Wi-Fi phones to be worth more than any potential headaches. Add that to the constant improvements in technology and the rapid pace of new phones being released and you may find your next phone is a Wi-Fi phone.
http://www.ddj.com/197002806;jsessio...e stid=170993





FBI Turns to Broad New Wiretap Method
Declan McCullagh

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible.

Call it the vacuum-cleaner approach. It's employed when police have obtained a court order and an Internet service provider can't "isolate the particular person or IP address" because of technical constraints, says Paul Ohm, a former trial attorney at the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. (An Internet Protocol address is a series of digits that can identify an individual computer.)

That kind of full-pipe surveillance can record all Internet traffic, including Web browsing--or, optionally, only certain subsets such as all e-mail messages flowing through the network. Interception typically takes place inside an Internet provider's network at the junction point of a router or network switch.

The technique came to light at the Search & Seizure in the Digital Age symposium held at Stanford University's law school on Friday. Ohm, who is now a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Richard Downing, a CCIPS assistant deputy chief, discussed it during the symposium.

In a telephone conversation afterward, Ohm said that full-pipe recording has become federal agents' default method for Internet surveillance. "You collect wherever you can on the (network) segment," he said. "If it happens to be the segment that has a lot of IP addresses, you don't throw away the other IP addresses. You do that after the fact."

"You intercept first and you use whatever filtering, data mining to get at the information about the person you're trying to monitor," he added.

On Monday, a Justice Department representative would not immediately answer questions about this kind of surveillance technique.

"What they're doing is even worse than Carnivore," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who attended the Stanford event. "What they're doing is intercepting everyone and then choosing their targets."

When the FBI announced two years ago it had abandoned Carnivore, news reports said that the bureau would increasingly rely on Internet providers to conduct the surveillance and reimburse them for costs. While Carnivore was the subject of congressional scrutiny and outside audits, the FBI's current Internet eavesdropping techniques have received little attention.

Carnivore apparently did not perform full-pipe recording. A technical report (PDF: "Independent Technical Review of the Carnivore System") from December 2000 prepared for the Justice Department said that Carnivore "accumulates no data other than that which passes its filters" and that it saves packets "for later analysis only after they are positively linked by the filter settings to a target."

One reason why the full-pipe technique raises novel legal questions is that under federal law, the FBI must perform what's called "minimization."

Federal law says that agents must "minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception" and keep the supervising judge informed of what's happening. Minimization is designed to provide at least a modicum of privacy by limiting police eavesdropping on innocuous conversations.

Prosecutors routinely hold presurveillance "minimization meetings" with investigators to discuss ground rules. Common investigatory rules permit agents to listen in on a phone call for two minutes at a time, with at least one minute elapsing between the spot-monitoring sessions.

That section of federal law mentions only real-time interception--and does not explicitly authorize the creation of a database with information on thousands of innocent targets.

But a nearby sentence adds: "In the event the intercepted communication is in a code or foreign language, and an expert in that foreign language or code is not reasonably available during the interception period, minimization may be accomplished as soon as practicable after such interception."

Downing, the assistant deputy chief at the Justice Department's computer crime section, pointed to that language on Friday. Because digital communications amount to a foreign language or code, he said, federal agents are legally permitted to record everything and sort through it later. (Downing stressed that he was not speaking on behalf of the Justice Department.)

"Take a look at the legislative history from the mid '90s," Downing said. "It's pretty clear from that that Congress very much intended it to apply to electronic types of wiretapping."

EFF's Bankston disagrees. He said that the FBI is "collecting and apparently storing indefinitely the communications of thousands--if not hundreds of thousands--of innocent Americans in violation of the Wiretap Act and the 4th Amendment to the Constitution."

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., said a reasonable approach would be to require that federal agents only receive information that's explicitly permitted by the court order. "The obligation should be on both the (Internet provider) and the government to make sure that only the information responsive to the warrant is disclosed to the government," he said.

Courts have been wrestling with minimization requirements for over a generation. In a 1978 Supreme Court decision, Scott v. United States, the justices upheld police wiretaps of people suspected of selling illegal drugs.

But in his majority opinion, Justice William Rehnquist said that broad monitoring to nab one suspect might go too far. "If the agents are permitted to tap a public telephone because one individual is thought to be placing bets over the phone, substantial doubts as to minimization may arise if the agents listen to every call which goes out over that phone regardless of who places the call," he wrote.

Another unanswered question is whether a database of recorded Internet communications can legally be mined for information about unrelated criminal offenses such as drug use, copyright infringement or tax crimes. One 1978 case, U.S. v. Pine, said that investigators could continue to listen in on a telephone line when other illegal activities--not specified in the original wiretap order--were being discussed. Those discussions could then be used against a defendant in a criminal prosecution.

Ohm, the former Justice Department attorney who presented a paper on the Fourth Amendment, said he has doubts about the constitutionality of full-pipe recording. "The question that's interesting, although I don't know whether it's so clear, is whether this is illegal, whether it's constitutional," he said. "Is Congress even aware they're doing this? I don't know the answers."
http://news.com.com/FBI+turns+to+bro...3-6154457.html





Spam Made Up 94% Of All E-Mail In December

The Postini report says the rise of botnets and image spam is causing e-mail systems at some companies to melt down.
Thomas Claburn

Legitimate e-mail now constitutes a rounding error when compared with spam, thanks to a standing army of more than a million zombie PCs waging war on in-boxes worldwide on any given day.

Some 94% of all e-mail last December was spam, according to Postini's annual communications intelligence report, which the managed e-mail security company released today.

In 2006, the volume of spam rose 147% by Postini's measure. The company attributes the surge in spam to PCs that have been commandeered by cybercriminals without the knowledge of their owners.

In and of itself, this sounds like the same mixture of marketing and reporting that messaging security firms have engaged in for years. And it is that. But that doesn't diminish the real difficulties businesses face in coping with spam.

"There were two fundamental changes in the world of business communications in 2006 that are going to get even bigger in 2007," says Daniel Druker, executive VP of worldwide marketing for Postini. "The major event in communications security is the emergence of botnets. This has changed the game, the dynamics, and economics of the Internet security marketplace. When the bad guys can now harness more than a million computers around the world and use them to push an increasing amount of attacks, that's a major change."

It's not just the rising volume of spam that's a problem, but the size of the spam messages. Because botnets use stolen bandwidth, spammers can send files of any size at no cost. And that's just what they're doing. In order to defeat content filters that might block their messages, spammers are increasingly using images. The result is that unsolicited bulk e-mail is getting bulkier. The 147% increase in spam that Postini observed in 2006 resulted in a 334% increase in e-mail processing requirement for companies. "This is causing the e-mail infrastructure of many businesses to melt down," says Druker. "Nobody budgeted for four-and-a-half times more infrastructure capacity in one year."

Image spam does represent a growing problem, says Howard Schmidt, president and CEO of R&H Security Consulting and former White House cybersecurity czar, noting that in some ways, image spam is easier to filter. "Probably the biggest issue is the use of botnets."

The second major change, says Druker, "is there is a tremendously heightened concern about the regulatory environment and the increased litigation risk related to business communications."

Now that 90% of business communications are electronic, says Druker, "attorneys have figured out this stuff is gold." And thanks to the new Federal Rules for Civil Procedure that went into effect on Dec. 1, businesses now have to comply with legal discovery requests quickly. That's something the majority of companies aren't prepared for, says Druker.

Implicit in Postini's findings is a pitch for managed e-mail services such as those the company provides. And while there may be compelling reasons to turn the dirty job of e-mail cleaning over to an e-mail security company, Schmidt isn't convinced that's the only way to survive the bot assault. "I'm not sure I agree with that whole concept of 'you can't do it, somebody else has got to do it for you,'" he says. "I use a desktop tool which is basically a toolbar and it's been almost two years now since I've had a spam, phishing e-mail, malware, any of that hit my in-box." http://www.informationweek.com/story...leID=197001430





PC World Says Farewell to Floppy

The time has come to bid farewell to one of the PC's more stalwart friends - the floppy disk.

Computing superstore PC World said it will no longer sell the storage devices, affectionately known as floppies, once existing stock runs out.

New storage systems, coupled with a need to store more than the 1.44 megabytes of data held by a standard floppy, have led to its demise.

Only a tiny percentage of PCs currently sold still have floppy disk drives.

"The floppy disk looks increasingly quaint and simply isn't able to compete," said Bryan Magrath, commercial director of PC World.

Iconic status

It is not the first time the death-knell for the floppy has been sounded. The first nail in the coffin came in 1998, when the iMac was revealed without a floppy disk drive.

Then in 2003, Dell banished disk drives from its higher spec machines.

FLOPPY FACTS

The original floppy disk held 100KB of data
The standard disk held 1.44 megabytes of data - equivalent to a three-minute song
In South Africa, floppy disks are commonly known as stiffies
Best-selling 12 inch Blue Monday was sold in a sleeve designed to look like a floppy disk

In 1998, an estimated 2 billion floppy disks were sold, according to the Recording Media Industries Association of Japan.

Since then global demand has fallen by around two-thirds to an estimated 700 million by 2006.

Only 2% of PCs and laptops currently sold by PC World still have built-in floppy disk drives and by the summer it will phase even these out.

It is with mixed feelings that the computer store has decided call time on the floppy.

"The sound of a computer's floppy disk drive will be as closely associated with 20th Century computing as the sound of a computer dialling into the internet," said Mr Magrath.

But with computer users increasingly using the internet or USB memory sticks - some of which store 2,000 times the capacity of the floppy disk - to transfer data, it is becoming redundant.

It is a far cry from its halcyon days in the 1980s and 1990s, when floppies provided essential back-up as well as playing a crucial role in transferring data and distributing software.

Shrinking disk

The first floppy disk was introduced in 1971 by IBM and heralded as a revolutionary device.

The brainchild of a group of Californian engineers led by Alan Shugart, it replaced old-fashioned punch-cards.

An eight-inch plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide, the nickname "floppy" came from its flexibility.

In 1976 the disk shrank to five-and-a-quarter inches - developed again by Alan Shugart, this time for Wang Laboratories.

By 1981, Sony shrank it some more - this time to three-and-a-half inches - the standard used to this day.

By the early 1990s, the growing complexity of software meant that many programs were distributed on sets of floppies. But the end of the decade saw software distribution swap to CD-ROM.

Vista icon

Alternative backup formats, new storage such as the CD-RW and the arrival of mass internet access, consigned the floppy disk to the dusty corner of peoples' desks and, eventually, the bin.

For those in the industry, there is little to mourn in the loss of floppy disks.

"You can get so much more information on other forms of storage. Technology moves on," said Bryan Glick, editor of Computing.co.uk.

But, he said, its demise, could prove problematic for those who have stored precious data on disk.

"There will be shops where they can get the data transferred but it they still have the original data they would be advised to invest in a portable hard drive or put it online," he said.

Interestingly, software giant Microsoft seems to be keeping the flame alight for the floppy.

Its newly-released operating system Vista still pays homage to it by continuing to use a floppy disk as the icon for saving a document in Microsoft Word 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/6314251.stm





Silicon Valley’s High-Tech Hunt for Colleague
Katie Hafner

When James Gray failed to return home from a sailing trip on Sunday night, Silicon Valley’s best and brightest went out to help find him.

After all, Dr. Gray, 63, a Microsoft researcher, is one of their own.

The United States Coast Guard, which started a search Sunday night, suspended it on Thursday, after sending aircraft and boats to scour 132,000 square miles of ocean, stretching from the Channel Islands in Southern California to the Oregon border. Teams turned up nothing, not so much as a shard of aluminum hull or a swatch of sail from Dr. Gray’s 40-foot sailboat, Tenacious.

In the meantime, as word swept through the high-technology community, dozens of Dr. Gray’s colleagues, friends and former students began banding together on Monday to supplement the Coast Guard’s efforts with the tool they know best: computer technology.

The flurry of activity, which began in earnest on Tuesday, escalated as the days and nights passed. A veritable Who’s Who of computer scientists from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, NASA and universities across the country spent sleepless nights writing ad hoc software, creating a blog and reconfiguring satellite images so that dozens of volunteers could pore over them, searching for a speck of red hull and white deck among a sea of gray pixels.

Coast Guard officials said they had never before seen such a concerted, technically creative effort carried out by friends and family of a missing sailor. “This is the largest strictly civilian, privately sponsored search effort I have ever seen,” said Capt. David Swatland, deputy commander of the Coast Guard sector in San Francisco, who has spent most of his 23-year career in search and rescue.

On Tuesday evening, as the Coast Guard’s search continued, Joseph M. Hellerstein, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, sent out an e-mail message with the subject: “Urgent ... Jim Gray.” One recipient, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, wrote back within an hour, and offered to enlist Google Earth’s satellite imaging expertise.

By Wednesday, Professor Hellerstein had started a blog and earth sciences experts at the Ames Research Center of NASA in Moffett Field, Calif., had sprung into action. They secured the promise of help from a high-altitude aircraft equipped with a high-resolution digital camera that was already scheduled for a flight Friday from Dryden Research Center in Southern California but whose pilot could make sure his path included the search area.

By Thursday morning, in response to calls from Google, NASA and the Coast Guard, DigitalGlobe, an imaging company in Longmont, Colo., had commanded its satellite to capture images of strips of the coastline based on the most likely areas where Dr. Gray’s boat might have drifted.

Throughout the day, Dr. Gray’s friends sent out low-flying private planes to search the ocean and hidden coves along the coastline that the Coast Guard planes might not have been able to reach.

By Friday morning, more planes were sent out.

Dr. Gray, a renowned computer scientist and skilled amateur sailor, set out on a calm, clear morning last Sunday for a daylong trip to the Farallon Islands west of the Golden Gate, to scatter his mother’s ashes. His wife, Donna Carnes, reported him missing at 8:35 Sunday night. As of Friday there was still no trace of him.

Professor Hellerstein said it was unusual for him and his circle of colleagues to feel so helpless.

“It’s a group of people who are used to getting stuff done,” he said of the highly accomplished group of dozens of computer scientists who have stepped in to help. “We build stuff. We build companies. We write software. And when there are bugs we fix them.”

The intense search is also a testament to the reverence with which Dr. Gray is regarded among computer scientists. And it speaks volumes about the unusually strong glue that binds the technical community.

“The number of people who feel they owe him in so many ways, personally and professionally, as a role model and friend is incredible,” Professor Hellerstein said.

Dr. Gray is a leader in the field of database systems and transaction processing and has received several computer science awards, including the prestigious Turing Award in 1998.

And there is an infinitesimal degree of separation between Dr. Gray and nearly everyone involved in the search for him.

“Nearly every major research project he worked on has been hugely influential on later research and products,” said Phil Bernstein, a principal researcher at Microsoft who is a colleague of Dr. Gray.

Mike Olson, vice president for embedded technology at the Oracle Corporation, who has worked with Dr. Gray on research projects, said Dr. Gray also happened to be a pioneer in applying computer science to data collected from buoys to gauge wind direction and sea surface conditions, as well as satellite imagery.

Thursday’s weather posed a problem for the satellite effort, as a layer cake of clouds hovered over the search area. “There definitely was a significant cloud cover,” said Chuck Herring, a spokesman for DigitalGlobe. But because of the high and urgent demand for that particular strip, he said, the shot was taken.

Once the satellite’s images were received by imaging experts on Thursday, Digital Globe engineers worked on making them accessible to engineers at Amazon, who divided them into manageable sizes and posted them to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk site, which allows the general public to scrutinize images in search of various objects.

“This is a first sift through these images,” said Werner Vogels, chief technology officer at Amazon, who had Dr. Gray on his Ph.D. committee at Vrije University in Amsterdam. “If the volunteers see something, we ask them to please mark the image, and we’ll take all the images that have been marked and review them.”

Similarly, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth division, is having satellites capture high-resolution imagery in an area along the coastline and will post the images for volunteers to scrutinize. Microsoft is also collecting radar satellite images which penetrate clouds and is using them together with its Oceanview software, which can automatically detect vessels.

Lt. Amy Marrs, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard, said that should a volunteer find something in one of the satellite images that appeared to be a “convincing and tangible” lead, the Coast Guard would follow up.

Lieutenant Marrs said it was highly unusual for there to be no trace whatsoever of a missing vessel, not even an oil slick.

As the mystery deepened, speculation among the public increased: grief-induced suicide, perhaps, or a heart attack; a run-in with a band of pirates or a pod of orca whales; a collision with a partly sunken cargo container.

But most of the computer scientists preferred to remain scientifically sound. As of Friday, the blog dedicated to the search had started filling up with ideas and educated guesses about Dr. Gray’s cellphone, which had transmitted a signal as late as 7:30 Sunday evening, an hour before he was reported missing. And more private planes went up, with a run down the California coastline.

Prof. James Frew, an associate professor of environmental information management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has worked with Dr. Gray and is helping to coordinate the search, said he was uncertain at first about how the Coast Guard would react to the scientists’ involvement.

“It wouldn’t have surprised me to get a brush off,” Professor Frew said. “They’re professionals, and they know what they’re doing, and here comes this army of nerds, bashing down the doors. But they’ve dealt with us very nicely.”

Several of the scientists said they preferred not to speculate on when they might cease their efforts to find Dr. Gray. “I prefer to stay concrete and positive for now,” Professor Hellerstein said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/te...BGWUK5+XWD0iUg





More power to you

Water from Wind
Phillip Adams

FOR all sorts of personal and political reasons, Max Whisson is one of my most valued friends. We first made contact at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, when this most ethical of men was a principal guardian of our Red Cross blood supply. More recently he's been applying his considerable scientific skills to the flow of another precious fluid. Water.
Does this country face a more urgent issue? Will the world have a greater problem? While we watch our dams dry, our rivers die, our lakes and groundwater disappear, while we worry about the financial and environmental costs of desalination and the melting of the glaciers and the icecaps, Max has come up with a brilliant and very simple idea.

It involves getting water out of the air. And he’s not talking about cloud-seeding for rain. Indeed, he just might have come up with a way of ending our ancient dependence on rain, that increasingly unreliable source.

And that’s not all. As well as the apparently empty air providing us with limitless supplies of water, Max has devised a way of making the same “empty” air provide the power for the process. I’ve been to his lab in Western Australia. I’ve seen how it works.

There’s a lot of water in the air. It rises from the surface of the oceans to a height of almost 100 kilometres. You feel it in high humidity, but there’s almost as much invisible moisture in the air above the Sahara or the Nullarbor as there is in the steamy tropics. The water that pools beneath an air-conditioned car, or in the tray under an old fridge, demonstrates the principle: cool the air and you get water. And no matter how much water we might take from the air, we’d never run out. Because the oceans would immediately replace it.

Trouble is, refrigerating air is a very costly business. Except when you do it Max’s way, with the Whisson windmill. Until his inventions are protected by international patents, I’m not going to give details. Max isn’t interested in profits – he just wants to save the world – but the technology remains “commercial in confidence” to protect his small band of investors and to encourage others.

In essence, windmills haven’t changed in many centuries. The great propellers producing electricity on modern wind farms are direct descendants of the rusty galvo blades that creak on our farm’s windmills – and the vanes that lifted Don Quixote from his saddle.

Usually a windmill has three blades facing into the wind. But Whisson’s design has many blades, each as aerodynamic as an aircraft wing, and each employing “lift” to get the device spinning. I’ve watched them whirr into action in Whisson’s wind tunnel at the most minimal settings. They start spinning long, long before a conventional windmill would begin to respond. I saw them come alive when a colleague opened an internal door.

And I forgot something. They don’t face into the wind like a conventional windmill; they’re arranged vertically, within an elegant column, and take the wind from any direction.

The secret of Max’s design is how his windmills, whirring away in the merest hint of a wind, cool the air as it passes by. Like many a great idea, it couldn’t be simpler – or more obvious. But nobody thought of it before.

With three or four of Max’s magical machines on hills at our farm we could fill the tanks and troughs, and weather the drought. One small Whisson windmill on the roof of a suburban house could keep your taps flowing. Biggies on office buildings, whoppers on skyscrapers, could give independence from the city’s water supply. And plonk a few hundred in marginal outback land – specifically to water tree-lots – and you could start to improve local rainfall.

This is just one of Whisson’s ways to give the world clean water. Another, described in this column a few years back, would channel seawater to inland communities; a brilliant system of solar distillation and desalination would produce fresh water en route. All the way from the sea to the ultimate destination, fresh water would be produced by the sun. The large-scale investment for this hasn’t been forthcoming – but the “water from air” technology already exists. And works.

If you’re interested, email me at PhillipAdams1@bigpond.com. After some filtering I’ll pass the messages on to Max, particularly if you have a few million to invest. Better still, you may be the Premier of Western Australia or the Prime Minister of a drought-afflicted country suddenly expressing concerns about climate change. In that case, I’ll give you Max’s phone number.

Australia needs a few Whissons at the moment – and the Whissons need some initial government funding to get their ideas off the ground. For the price of one of John Howard’s crappy nuclear reactors, Max might be able to solve a few problems. Ours and the world’s.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...-12272,00.html





New York Lawmaker Wants to Ensure Healthy Fashion Models
Mark Johnson

Fearing that young models strutting down the runways in New York City are too skinny, a lawmaker says there should be weight standards.

Bronx state Assemblyman Jose Rivera wants to create a state advisory board to recommend standards and guidelines for the employment of child performers and models under the age of 18 to prevent eating disorders. Aides to Rivera knew of no other similar bill nationwide aimed at the fashion and entertainment industries.

"New York City is one of the world's leaders in fashion and entertainment and we don't want to do anything to harm those industries," Rivera said. "At the same time we need responsible protections in place, especially for younger workers."

The world of high fashion and modeling has long been targeted by critics who say it encourages women and girls to emulate waif-like models. The November death of a 21-year-old Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston, who weighed 88 pounds when she died, heightened criticism.

Rivera pointed to a 2000 British Medical Association study that found a link between the images of the "abnormally thin" models found in fashion magazines and an increase in disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia.

"Eating disorders come from a combination of environment and genetic makeup," said Dr. Sharon Alger-Mayer, an associate professor of medicine at Albany Medical Center. "Being exposed to an environment with a lot of emphasis on thinness can put someone with a predisposition to eating disorders in a very high-risk situation."

The proposed board would include health experts, industry representatives, models and entertainers. It would report to the state Labor Department on the need for employment restrictions, weight or body mass index requirements, medical screenings, protocols to refer people for treatment and educational programs on eating disorders.

Earlier this month, the Council of Fashion Designers of America released a list of recommendations as part of a new health initiative to prevent anorexia, bulimia and smoking.

The guidelines, which are not binding for the industry, include keeping models under 16 off the runway, educating those in the industry about eating disorders and prohibiting smoking and alcohol during fashion shows.

The voluntary guidelines, however, were criticized by some because they were voluntary and did not include any mention of using body mass index, a tool used to determine if people are carrying a healthy amount of weight for their height.

"This is long overdue," said Lynn Grefe, chief executive of the National Eating Disorders Association. "I consider this a workplace issue. You have this industry that has really not been looking out for the health and welfare for those that are in it."

In September, Madrid Fashion Week banned models with a body mass index of less than 18. The standard accepted by the World Health Organization is that anyone with an index under 18.5 is underweight.

In a December deal with the Italian fashion industry, designers there agreed not to hire models younger than 16, and to require all models to submit medical proof that they do not suffer from eating disorders.

While Rivera's bill does not yet have a sponsor in the Republican-controlled state Senate, the chamber's majority leader, Joseph Bruno, has supported numerous eating disorder related measures in the past.

Bruno last year divulged that his granddaughter suffers from anorexia.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...EAST&TEMPLATE=





Where Are They Now? Interview with “Switcher Girl” Ellen Feiss
Dr. Macenstein

“I’m Ellen Feiss and I’m a student”.

Back in the Spring of 2002, those words launched one of Apple’s more memorable, if not effective, ad campaigns. Known as the “Switcher” ads, the spots featured real people telling real stories of being fed up with the hassles of PC ownership, and their subsequent relief upon switching to the Mac. By far the most popular of the ads from this series starred Ellen Feiss, a 14-year-old girl who ended up in the commercial totally by chance. While other “switchers” quickly fell into obscurity, Ellen grew into an overnight internet cult hero of sorts, her fame spurred largely by the rumor she was high during the filming of her spot. Sites selling merchandise with her image sprung up on CafePress shops across the web, and fan sites declared their undying love for her.

Ellen recently started college, but not before taking a year off to star in an independent foreign film entitled Bed and Breakfast. We caught up with Ellen to see what she thinks of those Switcher Ads five years later, how she feels about acting, internet fame, and what she thinks about her image being on a Frisbee.

Macenstein: Hi Ellen. Thanks for taking the time to meet with us. The last time most of us saw you, you were what, 14? What have you been up to?

Ellen: Well. I finished high school, got accepted to college and then got a call from the Bed and Breakfast director. I decided to go to France in August and put college off. Two free tickets to Europe later I would say it was worth it for me, I’m not sure how they feel about it.

Macenstein: Why’s that? Do you think the movie didn’t turn out well?

Ellen: I think it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t really make sense. But it was really fun to make and the other actors are, in reality, very talented. The crew was also incredibly impressive and on to better things. I think it was just a fun silly project and perhaps somewhat of a joke for everyone.

Macenstein: Where can someone see it? There’s very little info on IMDB.com other than a 2006 release date.

Ellen: Contact Screenrunner, the production office if you want to buy a copy.

Macenstein: Take us back to that Switcher ad shoot. I understand you were not actually supposed to even be in the ads, you were actually just a friend of the Director’s (Errol Morris) son and just happened to stop by the set?

Ellen: That’s true. I was friends with his son Hamilton in high school and a few friends and I went with him to watch him make his ad. The two other girls I was with that day also made ads. We were asked to when we got there. What I was wearing in the ad was what I had worn to school that day.

Macenstein: So, were you really a Mac user at the time?

Ellen: Yes. I still have the same powerbook G4 at school with me.

Macenstein: Really? Apple never offered you any free gear?

Ellen: I got a free iPod.

Macenstein: So, that “beep, beep, beep” story was 100% true? How soon after your dad’s PC “ate” your paper did you force him to get you a Mac?

Ellen: The story is true, the 15-page paper was about the history of Chinatowns in America and I wrote it for my 8th grade history class. My parents bought my sister and I the G4 to share the next year.

Macenstein: So how did that shoot work? Was it all just stream-of-consciousness, or did they give you a script or direction of some kind? Multiple takes, etc.?

Ellen: The camera Errol used you could see his face in. So while he interviewed me, I was looking at him, and into the camera the whole time. The commercial was engineered for non-actors. It was literally an interview about my computer. He asked me questions to get me to tell him stories.

Macenstein: You achieved a sort of “instant internet celebrity” based on your Switcher ads that didn’t seem to fall upon any of the other “Switchers”. What do you think it was about your ads that made you a stand out?

Ellen: I don’t know? Because people thought I was stoned, because there aren’t that many young girls in computer commercials.

Macenstein: So back in 2002, you were just a regular kid, no agent, no manager etc. How soon after your ad aired did Hollywood call?

Ellen: Quickly. I got all the calls within a month or two. The “movie” I was ultimately in called 3 years after I shot the commercial. Everything else was all at the same time and fizzled out within the first year after the ad had finished airing. The online stuff has, obviously since we’re doing this, surprisingly held out.

Macenstein: What was the best thing to come out of appearing in the Apple ads?

Ellen: Making the movie, Bed and Breakfast, was really fun. The film itself is really not a reflection of all the great people that worked on it. I enjoyed the shooting immensely. It’s something I would do again even though I don’t consider myself an actress. Plus I then lived in France for free for most of the next year. A lot of astounding things have come out of that 30 second spot.

Macenstein: And the worst (aside from this interview)?

Ellen: Being “famous” in high school isn’t fun. I got bitter pretty quickly. For some reason people lose their sense of what’s appropriate social conduct when you have any kind of celebrity persona. People would come up to me and say really rude things that they either thought or they had read someone else had said. People for some reason have an urge to tell you what they think about you and your fame. You feel relatively powerless.

Macenstein: You seem to have a large male following, even to this day. Does it creep you out that they are, in effect, into a 14-year-old Ellen Feiss?

Ellen: It was creepy from the beginning. It was always one of the worst aspects about the whole thing. I was famous but not that famous. It’s not like I had to get a body guard, but my parents stopped letting me go out alone for a while. It was an annoying balance and the constant commentary I was constantly reminded of pissed me off. Plus a lot of my fame seemed to me to be based on the fact that I seemed to be a vulnerable (stoned) young girl. That is never who I was or am. I don’t want that kind of gendered fame and I was never proud of the fact that a bunch of dudes on the internet thought I was hot, or ugly or stoned or stupid or any of the other things people talked about. That being said, a lot of my fans have turned out to be nice, intelligent Mac using people. Mostly men but a few women too.

Macenstein: So aside from the positive experience of making the movie, do you wish you had not made the ads?

Ellen: No. I think ultimately the benefits have outweighed the negatives. Plus it has been so long I don’t know what my life would have been like had none of it ever happened.

Macenstein: You were actually offered guest spots on both Letterman and Leno following the success of those ads, yet you turned them both down. Why?

Ellen: Because it seemed like I would be the guy with the talking cat on the show. I would be the side guest the host would make fun of and then move on to the real celebrity guest. Mostly I didn’t do it because I was told my fame would escalate. My then agent told me there would probubly be people outside my house if i did the talk shows. I didn’t see any real acting jobs or cool things/opportunities coming out of that, especially because going on the talk shows would be categorizing myself as a stoner computer chick. It didn’t seem worth it to me.

Macenstein: Now, you actually made 2 ads, but the 2nd one (”I love my
G4“) was never officially released. Were both shot the same day, or did they ask you to come back and shoot a second based on the success of the first?

Ellen: Both were taken from the 20 minute interview / stream-of-consciousness I did initially.

Macenstein: Do you still get recognized today?

Ellen: I got recognized last year in NYC. But not frequently.

Macenstein: Has any one ever asked you to sign their laptop or iPod or anything?

Ellen: I signed a printed still of the ad once.

Macenstein: You recently started college. Did word of your “celebrity” follow you there?

Ellen: Actually no. I don’t mention it unless someone specifically asks me about it. No one figured it out until a month into school someone Googled me for another reason.

Macenstein: So, in that short film, Bed And Breakfast, you star as one-half of an American couple searching for a friend across France. How did you land that job? Were you actively seeking acting roles?

Ellen: I was in my last year of high school and the director called me after having Googled me, found the name of my school somehow, called the school and got my home phone number. This disgusted me at first. It took him 2 and 1/2 months to convince me to do the unpaid role. My flight, ticket and housing were paid for though. He had seen the commercial and wanted me for this particular part-mostly because there is a scene where I trip on mushrooms in it. Plus it’s a short movie, he thought the internet star power would help. I never officially began looking for roles. Right after the commercial aired, I had an agent, but I would have had to move to LA to really attempt any kind of career. Acting was never something I was actively interested in. But i do like it.

Macenstein: Did you have a problem taking the role at first because of the drug theme?

Ellen: I didn’t read the script-so I didn’t know about the scene beforehand, but furthermore I don’t care about being depicted taking drugs.It took them 2 months to convince me because I didn’t want to put off college for two weeks of shooting. Plus, they got my number in an illegitimate way so that took a while to convince me they weren’t illegitmate as well.

Macenstein:That’s a pretty brave thing to do, going to Europe at 18 to do a film with a stranger who found you on the internet. Without any real acting experience, and no script, what convinced you you could handle the part?

Ellen: I got nervous once I was there and on set, but when I decided to do it, my performance in it wasn’t really a concern for me. I thought about it as: they chose me, so if they don’t like how it turns out, that’s not my problem. They know I have no acting experience, it’s their risk. I think ultimately I did ok.

Macenstein: I read that after the Apple ads aired, Apple sort of advised you to not try to capitalize on your celebrity, and sort of fade away. Why do you think that was?

Ellen: A multinational company obviously doesn’t want to be associated with weed. Their instructions made me want to capitalize on it though.

Macenstein: So as far as you know, your friends who did the ads with you did not get those same instructions from Apple? You were singled out because of the “stoner” moniker?

Ellen: Hamilton’s ad was the only ad besides mine that was picked up. The other two girls I was with, their ads never aired. Apple was advising me not to take acting roles, not to go on the talk shows, so they were talking specifically to me.

Macenstein: Soon after your Switch Ad aired, there were T-Shirts, coffee mugs, etc. with your image for sale all over the internet on sites put up by your fans, as well as folks out to make a quick buck. Those sites seem to be largely gone now. Did you (or your agent) have to go after them, or did Apple do that for you?

Ellen: Apple did that for itself. My image in that commercial belongs to them. The money from Ellen Frisbees and alarm clocks would have to partially go to Apple.

Macenstein: Do you have a MySpace site? There is one called “http://myspace.com/ellenfeiss”

Ellen: i don’t have a MySpace.

Macenstein: There are 131,000 returns on a Google search for you. What’s it like to still have fan sites and folks pretending to be you on MySpace? Do you ever miss your anonymity?

Ellen: It’s not present in my day-to-day life, so I don’t think about it unless someone asks. Plus I rarely meet fans.

Macenstein: A large part of your mythology seems to stem from the internet’s obsession with the idea that you were “high” during the filming of your Switch ad. We’ve read past interviews where you attribute your slightly dazed look and red eyes to a late night shooting and your allergy medicine. That all seems perfectly plausible. However, you are now in college… Ever tried marijuana?

Ellen: I was not high during the ad. But I have smoked weed. Is that really surprising? You just had to ask.

Macenstein: So what are you majoring in at college?

Ellen: Photography/video or women’s studies.

Macenstein: Are you contemplating a show-biz career of any sort?

Ellen: Not really.

Macenstein: You met Steve Jobs after the debut of your spot at the 2002 MacWorld. What was your impression?

Ellen: I don’t really remember, it was very brief.

Macenstein: What do you think of the newly announced Apple iPhone?

Ellen: Sounds expensive.

Macenstein: Ok, we’ve taken up far too much of your time already. Let’s wrap this up with a quick lighting round to get to know Ellen Feiss:

What’s on your iPod right now?
Ellen: Nelly Furtado, Sleater Kinney, The Organ, Patti Smith, Sassie.
What’s your favorite movie?
Ellen:Bed and Breakfast. psych! anything with Diane Keaton.
What’s your favorite book?
Ellen:The Happening by Annie Ernaux
What’s your favorite TV show?
Ellen:Next, The L Word.
Currently single or taken?
Ellen: No comment
Do you currently own a Mac now?
Ellen:Same computer I had when I made the ad. G4

Macenstein: Thanks again for taking the time to answer our questions and update our readers on what you’ve been up to. It really is an honor to speak to a Mac-icon.

Ellen: Oh stop. No big deal.

The Ad

http://macenstein.com/default/archives/509





Proceed and Continue

This notice is provided on behalf of Linden Research, Inc. (“Linden Lab”), the owner of trademark, copyright and other intellectual property rights in and to the “Second Life” product and service offering, including the “eye-in-hand” logo for Second Life and the website maintained at http://secondlife.com/.

It has come to our attention that the website located at http://www.getafirstlife.com/ purports to appropriate certain trade dress and marks associated with Second Life and owned by Linden Lab. That website currently includes a link in the bottom right-hand corner for “Comments or cease and desist letters.”

As you must be aware, the Copyright Act (Title 17, U.S. Code) contains provisions regarding the doctrine of “fair use” of copyrighted materials (Section 107 of the Act). Although lesser known and lesser recognized by trademark owners, the Lanham Act (Title 15, Chapter 22, U.S. Code) protecting trademarks is also limited by a judicial doctrine of fair use of trademarks. Determining whether or not a particular use constitutes fair use typically involves a multi-factor analysis that is often highly complex and frustratingly indeterminate; however a use constituting parody can be a somewhat simpler analysis, even where such parody involves a fairly extensive use of the original work.

We do not believe that reasonable people would argue as to whether the website located at http://www.getafirstlife.com/ constitutes parody – it clearly is. Linden Lab is well known among its customers and in the general business community as a company with enlightened and well-informed views regarding intellectual property rights, including the fair use doctrine, open source licensing, and other principles that support creativity and self-expression. We know parody when we see it.

Moreover, Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody. Indeed, any competent attorney is well aware that the outcome of sending a cease-and-desist letter regarding a parody is only to draw more attention to such parody, and to invite public scorn and ridicule of the humor-impaired legal counsel. Linden Lab is well-known for having strict hiring standards, including a requirement for having a sense of humor, from which our lawyers receive no exception.

In conclusion, your invitation to submit a cease-and-desist letter is hereby rejected.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, it is possible that your use of the modified eye-in-hand logo for Second Life, even as parody, requires license from Linden Lab, especially with respect to your sale of goods with the parody mark at http://www.cafepress.com/getafirstlife/. Linden Lab hereby grants you a nonexclusive, nontransferable, nonsublicenseable, revocable, limited license to use the modified eye-in-hand logo (as displayed on http://www.getafirstlife.com/ as of January 21, 2007) to identify only your goods and/or services that are sold at http://www.cafepress.com/getafirstlife/. This license may be modified, addended, or revoked at any time by Linden Lab in its sole discretion.

Best regards,

Linden Lab

http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archiv...#comment-75509





Expats Find on TV all the Comforts of Home
Shelley Emling

For Chip Lowry, an American in London, keeping up with U.S. television shows is nearly a full- time job. Fortunately, he loves his job.

"Being a geek at heart, I hacked together a solution when I moved to London two years ago," said Lowry, who works in the e-commerce department of a large bank.

"I have a summer home on Cape Cod complete with Internet access and cable TV. I used a ReplayTV device, similar to TiVo, to record the shows I wanted and then connected to a PC on the Cape and copied over the shows to that PC. I scrunched it down and copied it over to the Internet to my place in London where I watched shows on a PC that I hooked up to a TV here."

If any of that sounds like a foreign language to you, you clearly have not been keeping up with advances in broadcast and broadband technology that, among other things, are helping television-loving expatriates survive on a diet of much more than dubbed episodes of "The Simpsons."

Like Lowry, there are many expatriates who crave TV shows from home as much, if not more, than their favorite comfort foods, and they will go to great lengths to see them — even if the shows turn up on local television eventually.

New technology now allows impatient expatriates to view their favorite shows when they air, instead of having to wait a year or longer for their local station to show it.

Eexpatriates of all nationalities crave the familiar when far from home. French expatriates who love satire, try to find shows like "Les guignols de l'info," a puppet show that lampoons politicians. Latin American expatriates seek out Spanish-language soap operas, or telenovelas. Indian viewers want Bollywood films and all expats want programming in their native tongues.

Karin Möller, a German living in London, said the one TV show she really likes is "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" — not the original version, in English, but the German version, called "Millionar," which she cannot see in Britain.

"I just like the German quizmaster a lot, so watching it here is not quite the same," she said. "I try to watch it when I am back in Hamburg, but since it is a weekly show it is difficult to keep up."

Robin Pascoe, a Canadian author who has written several books on the challenges faced by expatriates, places a person's favorite TV shows in the same category of home comfort as a favorite breakfast cereal or brand of peanut butter.

"There's nothing like watching a favorite show to feel distracted, even for an hour or two, from the culture shock after a relocation," she said.

But she warned parents to keep an eye out for children who stay too connected to "back home" by watching a lot of TV and by not immersing themselves in the local culture.

Lee Harrison, a Uruguay-based contributing editor to International Living Magazine, a publication for expatriates, said that when it came to small-screen viewing, generally expatriates in Latin America fell into three categories.

About 20 percent, he said, do not watch TV at all; another 20 percent watch local TV, and perhaps cable channels like CNN or BBC for news. The remaining 60 percent could be called the hard core: They find TV very important, especially in their new home away from home, and will go to lengths to obtain it.

"These folks will install DirectTV if they can't get satisfactory cable," Harrison said, referring to the satellite television service available to more than 15 million subscribers in the Americas.

"I've been told that CNN International isn't good enough for some people and that they have to have the U.S. version," he said. "These people also keep up with their favorite sports teams. As an aside, this group often does not speak the local language."

Fortunately for this group, technology that includes file-sharing networks like BitTorrent allows you to download your favorite TV programs directly from the networks.

ReplayTV is a device that allows viewers to record TV programming on an internal hard disk for later viewing — sort of a souped-up VCR with better playback and more capacity. But for experienced techo-geeks like Lowry, there are simpler, more elegant solutions.

Network Web sites, like bbc.co.uk, carry live broadcasts of network shows.

Obscure channels such as the Asia Movie Channel are part of the budding Internet Protocol TV industry and can be seen with a broadband- connected computer.

The viral-video site YouTube.com is well known for the ability of users to post snippets from TV shows. Although watching "24" in 18-minute bites may not be everyone's cup of tea, the site gets 50 million video views each day.

The iTunes Store, run by Apple, carries current episodes of hit television shows like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," which have also built audiences outside the United States and the expat community. The already vast iTunes library is expected to expand so that programming from Canada and other countries besides the United States might be available soon.

Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, a technology research firm in California, said that, in addition to iTunes, an Internet-to-TV video-on-demand service called Akimbo also did a good job of providing overseas shows for expatriates.

Akimbo offers more than 8,000 titles including foreign-language content. Its TV offerings include programming from Britain, such as "Fawlty Towers" and other comedies. The monthly subscription fee of $9.99 covers most of the shows in the Akimbo library, although some videos cost extra.

The Slingbox device from Sling Media, a California company, has become popular with expatriates. The technology allows users to stream the content they want to watch from a set-top box or digital video recorder directly over the Internet to a computer or other Web-connected device. Slingbox costs between $180 and $250, depending on the model; there is no service fee. It is available in the United States and Britain and is scheduled to be introduced in Europe this year.

Similar to Slingbox, in features and in price, is LocationFree, a device from Sony that also delivers programming to a computer. Though conceived as a way of extending TV throughout a house, LocationFree also works across borders. It is available in Europe and North America.

Claiming to take "the home out of home entertainment," the French- American company Orb Networks offers a similar service to Slingbox, but with additional features for accessing content stored on a home PC. Orb relies on software rather than hardware and has been available globally for more than a year.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/26/news/atv.php





Cap and gown

Captain Copyright, meet Tad.

Tad Campaign to Encompass File Sharing, Piracy
Keith Lorio

Students walking on campus might have encountered Tad Ramey, not in person, but in handouts, flyers, advertisements and e-mails, reminding them to log off their PAWS account and to avoid phishing attempts from fraudulent Web sites and servers.

Tad Ramey is a character created by the University's Information Technology Services and paid for with student technology fees to educate and remind students and faculty of computer and technology misuses, mistakes and cyber-crimes.

Tad advocated the dangers of identity theft, credit monitoring and cyber security awareness month.

ITS said they will be releasing a new line of Tad advertisements soon with the goal of reinforcing the public that peer-to-peer music sharing is illegal.

The new advertising line shows Tad behind bars after downloading music. It stresses the penalties one may incur for committing music piracy.

Sheri Thompson, IT communications and planning officer, said ITS has plans to boost his popularity in the near future.

"Though he's a made-up creation based off a government PDF, he has a driver's license, both a MySpace.com and Facebook.com profile, and we hope to eventually get a life-size cut-out poster of Tad so that people passing can take their picture with him," Thompson said.

Many students said they were familiar with Tad but didn't always heed his advice. The new angle on Tad's file sharing habits had some students wondering about music piracy and if its worth the penalties.

Kayne Gorney, English freshman, said he uses file sharing to get his music and doesn't care if people have been charged before.

He said the number of people using peer-to-peer music sharing are too numerous for the law to be enforced.

"I am going to keep downloading music simply because I got to have my Grand Funk Railroad and not pay for it," Gorney said.

Amanda Kasson, psychology freshman, said she buys her music from iTunes but only because she doesn't trust the security of free peer-to-peer trading sites.

"If there was a site that was safe and contained no adware that was free for its users, I would use it in a heartbeat," Kasson said.
http://www.lsureveille.com/news/2007...-2679938.shtml





File Sharing Violations Increase

Students receive e-mail notifications reprimanding illegal downloading
Tabitha Earp

Although 99 cents may seem like a high price to pay for the song you've been humming all week, it might be a better option than facing the consequences of illegal file sharing.

However, those who choose to acquire tunes from friends or free internet sites may find not-so-friendly notices concerning the legality and serious nature of avoiding music costs in their email in-boxes.

"[File-sharing is] exactly what it sounds like -- sharing files with someone else," Carrie Levow, ResNet Coordinator said.

According to Levow, larger companies such as Universal Studios and Paramount track students through file sharing sites. Once a company finds copyright material on a student's computer, it notifies ResNet which in turn forwards the complaint to the students in question via a "Webform."

Levow said as long as the student abstains from continuing the illegal downloading then the issue is dropped. However, she said if the student repeats the offense after the initial e-mail notification, then the case is directed to the Office of Student Conduct. Levow said ResNet received 585 complaints last semester. According to a ResNet bar graph categorizing its copyright infringement data over the past four years, the amount of complaints has increased by 399 since last spring. Levow said ResNet works to promote students to utilize legal methods such as paying downloading sites like iTunes and Napster. "[We are] encouraging legal methods," she said. According to Levow, the number of complaints has increased recently. She said this is most likely because of improved methods of tracking illegal downloads -- not necessarily due to increased student file sharing. Levow said a surprising fact concerning complaints is that the majority of them fall into the category of television shows and movies as opposed to music.

According to ResNet, 45 percent of complaints submitted between Aug. 15, 2002 and Dec. 12, 2006, were due to movies and television. Jessica Putney, a freshman in First Year College, said she experienced ResNet's process of dealing with illegal downloaders recently. According to Putney, she did not know that her Internet service was being monitored. "I was downloading off of LimeWire and I got a message one day from this lady, Carrie Levow or something, and she was like 'you have placed an infringement,'" Putney said. Putney said following that message she stopped. However, she said she received an additional e-mail notification regarding illegal file sharing about a month after the initial e-mail. According to Putney, the misunderstanding was eventually cleared up through voicemail and e-mail correspondences. "I haven't done anything," Putney said. "I stopped downloading music immediately [after the first notification]." Cyndi Lawler, a freshman in English, echoed Putney's experience with ResNet. "I got an e-mail and it was all technical. It kind of freaked me out," Lawler said. "It was like 'you can be kicked out of school; this is federal law.'" The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. According to Lawler, ResNet required her to submit an explanation of the downloading incident so her Internet would not be disconnected. "I just basically told her that I didn't know that I couldn't use it for personal use and I would stop," she said. According to Putney, she was not aware of the enormity of the situation in the eyes of the University. "I thought that it was like every college kid did it, and that it wasn't something that you would get in trouble for," she said. Lawler reverberated Putney's statement. "I knew it was illegal to burn CDs and sell them," she said. "But I didn't know downloading music was illegal just for your own personal use.
Article





Online File Sharing is Inevitable

OUR OPINION: While we acknowledge sharing music and video files online is stealing, the University should not delegate its own punishment and expel students who get caught by production companies.
Ever since the Napster craze, while most of us were in high school, "free" online file sharing has gained so much momentum that it will never be stopped.

The moment a solution is put forth, programmers will find a new loophole and the cycle will continue.

Users of programs such as BitTorrent are nearly impossible to track because files are broken down into small pieces and downloaded from various locations.

Every once in a while, we hear about a student on campus getting fined or even worse, threatened with expulsion, and we don't see any logical reason for that.

People get punished much less for doing things that are much worse.

When people are caught "stealing" music or videos, they are subject to hefty fines from major production companies. In that situation, the last thing a student needs is to be kicked out of college.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the fines are so astronomical that even they are too extreme to be considered a fair punishment.

Not to mention, there are upsides to downloading media for free. All of us have heard a song by an unknown band and gone out and purchased its music.

This is very helpful to small, new or independent bands who are trying to give more people access to their music.

File sharing certainly hurts major production companies and artists, but if anyone has ever watched MTV Cribs, we know they aren't suffering -- including the producers themselves.

Besides, if you really like a band -- especially one that is relatively unknown -- you should go out and support it by buying its CD and going to its shows.

Programs such as iTunes, which allows you to download songs digitally for 99 cents, are revolutionizing the way people get their music.

Many bands encourage people to share their music by providing free downloads on their Web sites or other domains such as MySpace.

It is time for production companies to emerge from the Stone Age and start finding a reasonable solution -- a compromise between all three entities: the consumer, the artist and the producer.
File sharing is going to happen, students will participate, and the thorn in production companies' sides won't disappear until they find some other way to make money.

Threatening to punish students so severely for something so trivial on a University scale is beyond any logical solution to illegal file sharing.
http://www.technicianonline.com/medi...82.shtml&cid=0





Peer-to-Peer File Downloads Stop
Juana Summers

Stealing music will no longer be as simple as a click-and-drag for MU students and could be more costly.

Information and Access Technology Services banned peer-to-peer and Internet based file-sharing programs in cooperation with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. File-sharing programs were blocked as of Jan. 12. Students and staff members were notified through a mass e-mail before the winter semester began.

Internet-based peer-to-peer file-sharing programs, such as BitTorrent and LimeWire, are blocked by these changes.

“I always thought music was about the artists getting their music to the fans,” freshman Cori Dover said. “I guarantee that they’re still making plenty of money and people can still hear their music.”

Dover said she plans to continue to download music through peer-to-peer programs but not while on campus.

Downloading copyrighted material through peer-to-peer programs is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal law passed in 1998. The act defines sharing multimedia files with other users over the Internet as stealing. IATS, as well as colleges and universities across the country, receives complaints from organizations or record labels when users download material illegally while using their Internet service.

After IATS receives a complaint, the computer or device under suspicion is temporarily removed from the network, and the owner is informed of the complaint, IATS spokesman Terry Robb said.

First-time offenders will be required to complete the Safe and Legal Computing on the Internet course and to sign an agreement to cease file-sharing activities. Computers and other devices used for sharing could also be blocked from the network for a minimum of two weeks, according to the IATS Web site.

“It reminds them of the legal status of copyrights,” Robb said. “Music and movie companies want to be paid for artistic and intellectual works.”

If IATS, as an Internet service provider to the students, faculty and staff at MU, were to refuse to follow up DMCA and other complaints, the university could be the victim of a lawsuit.

Robb said the university receives a number of DMCA violations because peer-to-peer software is used to share copyrighted material often. The campus had 122 DMCA violations in 2006. This year, there has already been one reported DMCA violation.

Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, testified before the subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce in Sept. 2006. Sherman discussed file sharing on college campuses. He said university students are some of the largest consumers of digital music.

Sherman said frequent comments made by academic officials when presented with the problem of illegal file sharing are connected with academic freedom.

“Allowing illegal file sharing is antithetical to any educational institution’s objective to instill in its students moral and legal clarity,” Sherman said. “No academic institution would teach its students that stealing is OK.”

According to its Web site, the RIAA is representative of the recording industry in the United States and promotes legal sale of creative and intellectual property. The organization’s members are responsible for the manufacturing of 90 percent of recordings produced and sold in the U.S.

“Songwriters, studio producers and countless other less celebrated people who earn a living in the music industry are the ones who are hurt most by piracy,” RIAA communications staff member Amanda Hunter said. “Unauthorized downloading is just as illegal as shoplifting and it is every bit as wrong.”

Sophomore Aaron Channon said he had downloaded files through peer-to-peer software in the past but stopped after a file he downloaded corrupted his computer’s hard drive.

Channon no longer downloads illegally from file sharing applications but still gets most music for free from compact discs.

“Mostly I just think if illegal downloads continue that it would cause a rapid and constant overturn of artists,” Channon said.

In late 2004, the RIAA filed copyright infringement lawsuits against more than 500 individuals suspected of sharing copyrighted material over the Internet. The users were only identified by their IP addresses and were referred to as John Does.

The RIAA does not make its interactions with universities public, but one UM-Rolla student could be among those included in the litigation, according to an article published by the UMR department of public relations.

Brian Buege, the university’s interim director of Information Technology, said he was unable to comment officially on litigation involving students.

Compared to numbers of DMCA violation complaints at MU, Buege said it is likely there are more at UMR due to a different philosophy on the use of technology. He said they encourage students to comply with copyright law, but do not limit their technological access.

“Part of attending school at the University of Missouri-Rolla is to learn how to behave ethically or morally within a technological society and to understand the ethical implications of their action,” Buege said.
http://www.themaneater.com/article.php?id=25694





TechnoFile: File Sharing is Not a Crime

Peter Hurley takes McGill to school on the ins-and-outs of file sharing programs

Shortly before going home for break, I got an email from the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of McGill regarding file sharing. It said, “Some members of our community may not know that file or internet share systems, such as Bear Share [sic] or Bit Torrent [sic], automatically distribute such material when outbound functions are on and your computer is hooked up to the Internet. As a consequence, even if you have legally purchased a copy of material, for example on CD or DVD, if that material is loaded on your computer and you run one of these systems, you may be in violation of law for distributing it over the internet.”

At the time, I restrained myself from writing a vitriolic reply. What is said above about file sharing is not true. BearShare (one word), in its free version, was a spyware-laden load of crap that used the Gnutella protocol to perform transfers between its users and legitimate Gnutella clients such as Morpheus, Limewire, and Gtk-Gnutella. BitTorrent (also one word) is a protocol that many applications use to distribute data.

Before I explain why a program wouldn’t search for legal media on your computer to upload, we should know a bit about file sharing. Since BitTorrent is the most legitimate protocol our CIO attacked, let’s take a closer look at it.

BitTorrent is a protocol that breaks a big file, such as an installation CD for Linux, into small chunks that are then shared among peers connected to a tracker. To get fast downloads, you also have to upload, so the load of sharing the data is spread out among many sources. This system takes the load off of the original data source because once it has sent out at least one copy of each chunk, it can, in theory, step out of the picture and users will just re-share the chunks between each other. The beauty of data is that you can make an infinite number of perfect copies like that.

That’s all great, but is it legal? Well, yes. BitTorrent and other transfer protocols are used for many legal and legitimate purposes. Anyone who plays World of Warcraft, for example, uses BitTorrent to download patches. Blizzard, the developer of World of Warcraft, uses an implementation that is boringly called Blizzard Downloader. My personal choice for file sharing is Azureus (it’s a bit bulky but highly customizable and works on just about any system). Also, most Linux distributions encourage those interested in getting a CD to download it using BitTorrent, as it is one of the most efficient ways to distribute large files like 700 megabyte CD images.

Can people use file sharing programs like BitTorrent to download illegal files? Yes, but people can also use streets to transport illicit goods. People will choose the most efficient way of getting what they want, legal or not. Blame the letter, not the post office.

Now, back to that email I got.

Although I adamantly refuse to install BearShare on my computer to check if it in fact searches for files tagged as music or video and then uploads them, I doubt that it does. BitTorrent would need to know what the file is and make sure that it is bit-by-bit identical to other copies out there for it to be useful. While some bad applications might search your computer for uploadable files, the trick is not to use these applications (and in doing this without your consent, the author of the application is committing the crime, not you). Good file sharing applications only upload files that you downloaded using them when they are running.

So if you didn’t download illegally, you won’t be uploading illegally. Also, you can simply choose to not run the application all the time. If it tries to turn on at startup, turn it off, and use Start > Run > msconfig to keep it from starting again when you don’t want it to.
http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5829





The Cost of a CD Should be Exponentially Higher, According to the RIAA
Ben Woods

The Recording Industry Association of America hasn't been making too many friends these days. I guess I should say that the organization does have many friends inside the music industry, because that's who makes up the the RIAA.

I'm not here to argue whether it's right or wrong to download free music where it's available, or whether it's OK to listen to your friend's "Beach Boys Greatest Hits Album." I'm just here to point out what the RIAA wants you to believe about the cost of music and CDs.

If you visit the Key Stats/Facts page on the RIAA website, you'll notice a justification for pricing CDs. The biggest argument appears to be the fact that the Consumer Price Index rose nearly 60 percent between 1983 and 1996, even though the price of a CD actually went down. While this might be a true statement, this is virtually worthless in determining how much a CD should cost.

Let's examine this statement, directly from the website:If CD prices had risen at the same rate as consumer prices over this period, the average retail price of a CD in 1996 would have been $33.86 instead of $12.75.

I know that the CPI has risen, but these numbers don't seem to translate properly. So I visited the Bureau of Labor Statistics Data site u>, which contains a CPI Inflation Calculator. Unfortunately, I needed the initial value (of a CD in 1983), instead of the theoretical value in 1996. Since I didn't have that, I just guessed until I came up with $33.86 in 1996. I finally found that value: $21.50.

This means that the RIAA is claiming that the average cost of a CD in 1983 was $21.50. How many CDs have you purchased for more than $20?

True, the CD was new technology at the time, and it's quite possible that the price, in some places, was more than $20. Where the RIAA deviates from basic technology knowledge, however, is that more often than not, the cost of producing something like a CD almost always goes down over time.

What better example of electronics getting cheaper than taking a look at the history of the calculator. From the website listed above, Texas Instruments came out with a calculator in 1972 (TI-2500) that cost $119.95 (actually, the suggested retail price was $149.99). If we take a look at the CPI inflation calculator, using the calculator cost and a 13-year span, from 1972 to 1985 (the same time length the RIAA used), we see that the calculator should have cost about $308.77 in 1985.

Maybe this isn't fair, considering the time periods are different. So I'll try $119.95 in 1983, and the value in 1996 is $188.96.

How much do you think a calculator that could do only basic math functions (add, subtract, divide, multiply) was worth in 1996? By 1981, Texas Instruments had already developed a model that included more functionality for $19.99. Granted, the technology involving calculators and CDs are vastly different. My point is that when you are in the technology world, most of your products, with the same level of functionality, do not get more expensive.

The CPI is useful for looking at the prices of raw material, grocery items, etc. Sorry RIAA, but buying a CD isn't like buying a bushel of Korn.
http://www.whas11.com/news/woods/sto...44a095ba.html#





SlySoft Working on an HD-DVD Ripper
TankGirl

SlySoft, an Antigua-based software company behind popular DVD backup programs AnyDVD and CloneDVD, is working on AnyDVD HD, a product that will make it easy for the consumer to rip and decrypt high definition DVDs for backup and sharing purposes. A hacker known by nickname Muslix64 has recently gained a lot of publicity with his work on circumventing the protections for HD-DVD and Bluray DVD disks but Muslix64's method requires digging up protection keys from computer's memory left there by insecure software DVD players - which is beyond common consumer's capabilities. SlySoft's developers are obviously far ahead in the process of cracking the HD-DVD protections and packing their technology into a consumer-friendly product. A forum post by a SlySoft team member reveals that an alpha version of the software is already being tested, and the poster told he has been able to decrypt with it all HD-DVD disks he has tried so far. The product will allow users not only to decrypt their disks but also to skip annoying FBI warnings and obligatory trailers for better viewing convenience.
http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=12078





Shrinkwrap Licenses: An Epidemic Of Lawsuits Waiting To Happen

We mostly ignore the terms of shrinkwrap and clickwrap licenses, but pretty soon the lawyers are going to come sniffing around, says columnist Cory Doctorow.
Cory Doctorow

Anybody who bothered to read a clickwrap or shrinkwrap agreement would never install any software, click on any link on the Web, open an account with anyone, or even shop at many retail stores. The terms of these agreements are onerous and ridiculous. We go along with the gag because we think nobody's paying any attention. But somebody's going to start paying attention soon, and when they do, the results will be disastrous for the electronic economy.

Clickwrap and shrinkwrap agreements start with the phrase READ CAREFULLY, all in caps. The phrase means, "IGNORE THIS." That's because the small print is unchangeable and outrageous.

Why read the "agreement" if you know that:

1) No sane person would agree to its text, and

2) Even if you disagree, no one will negotiate a better agreement with you?

We seem to have sunk to a kind of playground system of forming contracts. Tag, you agree! Lawyers will tell you that you can form a binding agreement just by following a link, stepping into a store, buying a product, or receiving an email. By standing there, shaking your head, and shouting "NO NO NO I DO NOT AGREE," you agree to let the other guy come over to your house, clean out your fridge, wear your underwear and make some long-distance calls.

For example, if you buy a downloadable movie from Amazon Unbox, you agree to let them install spyware on your computer, delete any file they don't like on your hard-drive, and cancel your viewing privileges for any reason. Of course, it goes without saying that Amazon reserves the right to modify the agreement at any time.

The worst offenders are people who sell you movies and music. They're closely seconded by people who sell you software, or provide services over the Internet. There's supposed to be a trade-off to this -- you're getting a discount in exchange for signing onto an abusive agreement. But just try and find the software -- discounted or full-price -- that doesn't come with one of these "agreements."

For example, Vista, Microsoft's new operating system, comes in a rainbow of flavors varying in price from $99 to $399, but all of them come with the same crummy terms of service, which state that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software," and that Windows Defender, the bundled anti-malware program, can delete any program from your hard drive that Microsoft doesn't like, even if it breaks your computer.

It's bad enough when this stuff comes to us through deliberate malice, but it seems that bogus agreements can spread almost without human intervention. Google any obnoxious term or phrase from a EULA, and you'll find that the same phrase appears in a dozens -- perhaps thousands -- of EULAs around the Internet. Like snippets of DNA being passed from one virus to another as they infect the world's corporations in a pandemic of idiocy, terms of service are semi-autonomous entities.

Indeed, when rocker Billy Bragg read the fine print on the MySpace user agreement, he discovered that it appeared that site owner Rupert Murdoch was laying claim to copyrights to every song uploaded to the site, in a silent, sinister land-grab that turned the media baron into the world's most prolific and indiscriminate hoarder of garage-band tunes.

However, the EULA that got Bragg upset wasn't a Murdoch innovation -- it dates back to the earliest days of the service. It seems to have been posted at a time when the garage entrepreneurs who built MySpace were in no position to hire pricey counsel -- something borne out by the fact that the old MySpace EULA appears nearly verbatim on many other services around the Internet. It's not going very far out on a limb to speculate that MySpace's founders merely copied a EULA they found somewhere else, without even reading it, and that when Murdoch's due diligence attorneys were preparing to buy MySpace for $600,000,000, Murdoch's attorneys couldn't be bothered to read the terms of service.

In the attorneys' defense, EULAese is so mind-numbingly boring that you can hardly blame them.

If you wanted to really be careful about this stuff, you'd prohibit every employee at your office from clicking on any link, installing any program, creating accounts, or signing for parcels. You wouldn't even let employees make a run to Best Buy for some CD blanks -- have you seen the fine print on their credit-card slips? After all, these people are entering into "agreements" on behalf of their employer -- agreements to allow spyware onto your network, to not "work around any technical limitations in their software," and they're agreeing to let malicious software delete arbitrary files from their systems.

Which raises the question -- why are we playing host to these infectious agents? If they're not read by customers or companies, why bother with them?

So far, very few of us have been really bitten by EULAs, but that's because EULAs are generally associated with companies who have products or services they're hoping you'll use, and enforcing their EULAs could cost them business.

But that was the theory with patents, too. So long as everyone with a huge portfolio of unexamined, overlapping, generous patents was competing with similarly situated manufacturers, there was a mutually assured destruction -- a kind of detente represented by cross-licensing deals for patent portfolios.

But the rise of the patent troll changed all that. Patent trolls don't make products. They make lawsuits. They buy up the ridiculous patents of failed companies and sue the everloving hell out of everyone they can find, building up a war-chest from easy victories against little guys that can be used to fund more serious campaigns against larger organizations. Since there are no products to disrupt with a countersuit, there's no mutually assured destruction.

If a shakedown artist can buy up some bogus patents and use them to put the screws to you, then it's only a matter of time until the same grifters latch onto the innumerable "agreements" that your company has formed with a desperate dot-bomb looking for an exit strategy.

More importantly, these "agreements" make a mockery of the law and of the very idea of forming agreements. Civilization starts with the idea of a real agreement -- for example, "We crap here and we sleep there, OK?" -- and if we reduce the noble agreement to a schoolyard game of no-takebacks, we erode the bedrock of civilization itself.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=197003052





Fighting to Protect Copyright 'Orphans'
Daniel Terdiman

An effort among Internet activists to halt the extension of copyright protections for orphan works--out-of-print books and media--was dealt a setback last week by a U.S. appeals court decision.

The case, Kahle v. Gonzales, was filed in 2004 by, among others, Internet Archive co-founder and director Brewster Kahle. Plaintiffs argued that extending such copyrights harmed the public's ability to access orphan works. The Internet Archive has been joined by companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in attempting to gain public domain status for these works.

But a U.S. district court had already rejected the lawsuit, and last week, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the lower court's decision, saying that plaintiffs' arguments were essentially the same as those rebuffed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which affirmed the constitutionality of new copyright laws expanding the protections for orphaned works.

For Kahle, the ruling was a blow to his goal of preserving as many forms of media as possible for posterity. But he hardly views the result as a final defeat.

Still, Kahle and the Internet Archive are also gaining momentum, and recently received a $1 million grant from the Sloan Foundation for the scanning of public domain works.

Recently, Kahle visited CNET's Second Life auditorum for a discussion in front of an eager audience about the case, as well as about the Internet Archive, Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop project and other issues.

Q: Please explain the mission of the Internet Archive.

Kahle: We're out to help build the Library of Alexandria version 2, starting with humankind's published works, books, music, video, Web pages, software, and make it available to everyone anywhere at anytime, and forever. We started archiving the Web in 1996 with snapshots every two months of all publicly accessible Web pages. The "Wayback Machine" is now about 85 billion pages and 1.5 petabytes. Then we moved on to books, music and video. We work with great lawyers, the U.S. Copyright office, the Library of Congress and the American Library Association. We have 30,000 movies, 100,000 audio recordings and now we're digitizing books.

How do you deal with the copyright issues?

Kahle: For the Web, we followed the structure of the search engines and the opt-out system for doing the first-level archiving. If folks write to us not wanting to be archived, then we take them out. For music, we offered free unlimited storage and bandwidth, forever, for the recording of "trader friendly" bands in the tradition of the Grateful Dead.

We now have over 2,000 bands and 36,000 concerts. With packaged software, our lawyers told us that digital rights management (DRM) would pose a problem under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), so we got an exemption from the copyright office allowing us to rip software and break the copy protection for archival purposes. With books, we are starting with out-of-copyright (works) and wanting to move to orphan works, then out-of-print works, then finally in-print (works). We digitize 12,000 books a month and have 100,000 on the site now for free use and download. But we just had a setback. Larry Lessig brought a suit on our behalf, Kahle v. Gonzales, to allow orphan works to be on digital library shelves. But the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals just rejected it.
We digitize 12,000 books a month and have 100,000 on the site now for free use and download.

Can you talk more about Kahle v. Gonzalez?

Kahle: Fundamentally, this is an issue for the Supreme Court and the Congress. What kind of world do we want in the digital era? Do we want to have libraries like we grew up with, ones with old and new books available to those that go to the library? Or do we only want what corporations are currently peddling? Of course people want the library, but how do we do that in such a way it does not sink an industry? Libraries worked because they were a pain to go to. So instead of frequently going to a library for new books, people went to book stores. Also, libraries spend $3 to $4 billion each year on publishers' products. So how do we build a digital environment and ecology that allows new works to get created and paid for, preserve them long-term, provide access to the underprivileged, provide a different kind of access for scholarship and journalism and all in the new world. It is not simple. But it is important.

Talk about book-scanning projects currently going on.

Kahle: There are a couple of major scanning projects in this country: Google is leading one, and a large group of libraries and archives are working together on another. Also, there's the Open Content Alliance, which is attempting to keep the public domain public domain, so if a book passes into the public domain, the digital version is not locked up again as a copyrighted work. There are other projects that are putting perpetual restrictions on what can be done with digitized public domain works.

That's a bit scary from my point of view. We need help keeping the libraries open and unencumbered by new restrictions on public domain works. We have been able to scan books for a total cost of 10 cents a page, so about $30 a book. And what we really need is more folks to want this done or want to scan themselves.

Who are the natural "enemies" of the Internet Archive?

Kahle: Everyone seems to like the idea of preservation of cultural materials. But folks are nervous about disruptions in commercial practices that are just now getting formed. Libraries and publishing, however, have always existed in parallel. What happened is that some overzealous copyright laws got passed with heavy lobbying from folks like Disney and these are screwing things up. I think of it as collateral damage. Instead of keeping just Mickey Mouse or just the profitable works under copyright for longer, they fundamentally changed the structure of copyright. So the problem we find mostly is not that we are stepping on toes, it's that we run the risk of stepping on a legal landmine from a previous war. You have one of the first $100 laptops. What is your take on that project?

When I got to hold the $100 laptop in my hand, I had one of those experiences that does not happen very often: This is important. The organization is nonprofit, the goal is great, and it has to be open to succeed. It is bottom-up, built for Linux and openness. We are a library for the machine, so we hope to have millions of new users in the coming year. I am very interested in the rise of the technical nonprofits. There are very interesting things happening there, where the new products out of big companies are getting more locked down and closed all the time.

How is the Wayback Machine distributed around the world?

Kahle: We have our servers in San Francisco. What happens to libraries is they are burned, and they are usually burned by governments. So we are working to build an "international library system" of a few great libraries that have exchange agreements. Our first was the library of Alexandria in Egypt, and they got a full copy of what we have and vice versa. They are scanning Arabic books. We are just starting to work with the European Archive in Amsterdam. They have a partial mirror and are looking for funding and help. It is an exciting time and scary time. Hard drives fail all the time, people screw up and governments make bad calls.
What happened is that some overzealous copyright laws got passed with heavy lobbying from folks like Disney and these are screwing things up. I think of it as collateral damage.

Rik Riel (from the audience) asks: What's your opinion on the potential threats of ISPs throttling certain content (i.e. violating Net neutrality)?

Kahle: It is a huge and important issue. A way to frame it is that in the '80s, the battle was over the "transport layer." Basically ArpaNet/Internet vs. the phone companies. We, in the open world, made huge wins, companies prospered and all sorts of things went great. The battle in the '90s was at the software level: browsers, protocols, etc. Basically it was the open world of the Web vs. the closed worlds of AOL and Lexis/Nexis. Again, we made huge wins there. Yes, the dominant browser was closed source, but it talked the open protocols. And the great progress of Firefox, Linux and Ubuntu give reason for hope at that layer.

The 2000s is the battle at the content layer: open or closed. iTunes is a loser in this view. DRM, central control, etc. Google's restrictions on the books they are scanning is a loss on this front. So we need real help to build an open content layer that is not centrally controlled. Wikipedia is a great example of a win. But now we are seeing new attacks on fronts we thought we won--most particularly the transport layer. The phone companies have all gotten back together again to make their monopoly. In the ultimate thumbing of the nose they are calling it AT&T. And they are at their old tactics again. So we have to fight like nuts to keep the transport open, the software open and the content open. It is good for the public and it is good for businesses. It is just not good for monopolies, and that is a good thing in most people's views.

AlexisJ Onmura (from the audience) asks: Which new technology--if the Internet Archive had the opportunity to try--do you think can do what stone has done for ancient civilizations in terms of longtime storage?

Kahle: You can make a durable printout on something like stone and the like, but I would like to argue for something else. If you look at the world as a whole since writing started in Sumeria, there has been an up-and-running civilization somewhere. So I believe we can have long term storage and access--which is key--by building a set of International Libraries in different jurisdictions that have active trade agreements. When one melts down, then when they come back up, the others can and are motivated to rebuild it. If this were in place, I could sleep.
http://news.com.com/Fighting+to+prot...3-6154860.html





Wanted: One Tropical Paradise for File-Sharing, Freedom
Nate Anderson

The dream refuses to die. After The Pirate Bay failed in its quest to buy Sealand, some supporters of the idea believed that the idea of a libertarian paradise was too precious to drop, and they entertained hopes of hoisting the "live free or die" flag over another island, possibly Ile de Caille, a small and uninhabited island off the South American coast.

Thus began the Free Nation Foundation, a group that hopes to form its own country governed by a "philosophy of freedom" where "people could actually live" (as opposed to all those other countries, where living has been outlawed by tyrants).

The failure of the Sealand deal, it turns out, was a good thing. The rusting naval platform "was too small and aesthetically displeasing to support such a goal," according to the group, and the weather in the middle of the English Channel is not the stuff of which vacation fantasies are made.

The Free Nation Foundation is a bit like the Free State Project on steroids. The Free Staters hope to convince 20,000 committed libertarians to pull up stakes and relocate to New Hampshire, a state chosen for its long history of independence, its low tax rate, and its unrestrictive gun laws that allow people to pack heat anywhere except in a courtroom, without even picking up a permit.

The Free Nation Foundation hopes for something similar, but their focus is more global. The idea is that libertarians from around the world will converge on an island paradise where they can live truly free lives, a place where "the only valid restrictions are those upon actions that disallow the freedom of others."

Suggested principles for the place include absolute democracy and the free flow of information—as a group that sprung from The Pirate Bay, we imagine that information will flow very freely. The idea is still in the incubation period, though if it ever comes to fruition, it would be a fascinating sociological experiment (documentary filmmakers, are you listening?). Would it end up like utopia, or Lord of the Flies?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070202-8762.html





Democracy Rules, and Pop Culture Depends on It
Jeff Leeds

No one will vote to declare the winner of the Super Bowl on Sunday. But you might be excused for thinking it possible.

Before the game, three amateur singers selected by voters online will be named as finalists in a contest to perform with Justin Timberlake at the Grammy Awards.

During the game, aspiring advertising writers — also anointed in voter contests — will see the broadcasts of the ads they created for Chevrolet, Doritos and the National Football League itself.

Once it’s all over, fans on YouTube.com can vote for their favorite Super Bowl commercials.

Inspired by the success of Fox’s “American Idol” and the open culture of the Internet, voter-based competitions are proliferating in every corner of the entertainment world.

Fans are asked to vote on who should earn a record contract with a major label, win the chance to produce a soap opera, create a music video for a Hollywood movie studio, and star in a restaging of “Grease” on Broadway.

The trend goes beyond mere “Idol” mimicry.

The impulse for self-expression and the new outlets for it — from YouTube’s user-generated content to video chats on Stickam.com — are reshaping how consumers interact with television programs, music, film, video games and other entertainment media.

“They’re less willing to be spoon-fed,” said Simon Fuller, the entertainment impresario behind “American Idol.” There is, he added, “this need for a modern person to do more than just watch. We want to get involved. We want to post blogs. We’re more vibrant in opinion.”

Yet even as entertainment democracy proliferates, some question how well it works. While “Idol” continues to draw huge audiences, ABC’s singing competition, “The One,” last year drew record low ratings. A CBS show, “Rock Star,” raised modest interest in two seasons but is seen as a long shot to return. Winners of another recent contest, YouTube’s “Underground” music video competition, landed an appearance on “Good Morning America” but remain a long way from stardom.

And some skeptics ask whether the spread of such contests is a reflection less of rising populism than of new marketing tricks.

“What it really represents is an ever more cleverly manipulated pop culture,” said Dave Marsh, a longtime rock critic and host of a Sirius satellite radio show. “Empowerment becomes a commodity.”

Indeed, if the contests so far are any indication, entertainment executives and network officials are not prepared to turn over decisions just yet. Usually a panel of judges made up of established industry figures winnow down the candidates either before or after voters have their say.

In criticizing the contests, Mr. Marsh said the mass market spots talent well enough: “The mob chose Elvis Presley, the mob chose James Brown, the mob chose the Beatles.” With executives filtering the process, he said, the result is “disposable” performers “who are selected because they stay away from anything that’s personal or controversial.”

The voting processes themselves vary. In “Idol,” viewers vote as often as they want.

Other contests, though, are trying to restrict the number of votes a single fan can cast. In the Grammy contest, organizers have accepted only one vote per e-mail address, and say they have received more than 150,000. A similar process is in place at the Web site Music Nation, where fans this week began voting online for musicians from three genres who submit videos. The winner will receive a record contract and a chance to perform in studio for broadcast by Clear Channel, the radio giant.

And so the onslaught continues. The NBC series “Grease: You’re the One That I Want” is scouting new talent for a Broadway revival, and is even asking fans to vote on how they will vote. “When voting, what is the most important thing you are going to look for in all the performers competing?” an online poll asks.

Inviting people to offer their views “has become an expectation, and it’s a way of life,” said Neil Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which runs the Grammy Awards.

The academy learned that firsthand last year when “Idol” pummeled the Grammy telecast in the ratings. Mr. Portnow said that the academy had been looking for new ways to connect with young people. So it ran a contest in which unsigned performers sent in videos of themselves singing a cappella.

It received more than 3,000 submissions. An academy panel picked 12, and voters online are to determine who will sing with Mr. Timberlake.

Mr. Fuller, the creator of “Idol,” said that the crush of contests — whether as part of talent searches or simply of promotions — suggests that the trend “will just burn out, because people will be sick of it. I think it’s got to go to another level.”

Of the current crop of vote-driven ventures, he predicted, “80 percent of those will fail because the motivation for doing them is flawed.” Most, he said, “just think, ‘It’s people like contests and they like to vote, so let’s give them something to do.’ It’s not that simple.”

Key to the success of “Idol,” Mr. Fuller and other entertainment executives agree, is stimulating viewer interest in the narratives of contestants pursuing the spotlight — not just giving fans the power to vote.

“Voting is actually incredibly easy and therefore not that meaningful,” said Michael Hirschorn, executive vice president for original programming and production at VH-1, which plans a voting-based show of its own, “Acceptable.tv,” this spring. “I don’t think there’s a desperate hunger in the public to grab the reins of artist development.” He added: “But I do think there’s a desire for a deeper emotional connection to artists.”

It is far from clear, though, that the connections voters make with their favorite new talents are the sort that are built to last. “Idol” winners like Ruben Studdard and Fantasia Barrino have generally fared poorly with their later albums.

Even the debut album of the most recent winner, Taylor Hicks, has tumbled down the charts after selling 298,000 copies in its first week on sale in December, according to Nielsen SoundScan data.

Chris Daughtry, a fourth-place finisher on “Idol” last year, does have a best-selling CD. Unlike Mr. Hicks, though, he has benefited from a hit song, “It’s Not Over,” that radio stations put in heavy rotation.

That, analysts say, suggests that aspiring stars — even those backed by a bloc of voters — still need support from old-line media gatekeepers like radio and TV stations.

Daniel Klaus, Music Nation’s chief executive, said that the future of fan voting was most likely the creation not of superstars but of “microstars” who draw small but avid audiences. Gaining popularity through contests like his, he said, might help a new act sell only 10,000 to 20,000 copies of a song online, for example, but “there will be a few that will go on to bigger and better things.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/bu... tner=homepage





No Smoking in the Theater, Especially Onstage
Zachary Pincus-Roth

HAND me a cigarette ..., lover,” Martha says to her conquest Nick in the second act of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” The stage directions then read: “He lights it for her. As he does, she slips her hand between his legs.”

This scene cannot take place as written in Lincoln, Neb.; Colorado; Scotland; or, starting April 2, in Wales. Smoking bans are so strict in these places that actors cannot legally light even herbal cigarettes onstage.

In Colorado three theater companies — the Curious Theater Company and Paragon Theater, both in Denver, and Theater13 in Boulder— have gone so far as to sue the state, arguing that smoking in the course of a play is a form of free expression. The claim echoes the arguments once made to defend the nudity in the musical “Hair” against indecency laws. “It will deny residents in Colorado access to great prior works, and cutting-edge new plays as well,” said Bruce Jones, the lawyer representing the theaters.

In October a judge ruled against the theaters. The companies are now awaiting an appeal, although they have not decided what they will do if it fails. Paragon is committed to staging “Virginia Woolf” in July, though it has not decided whether to follow the antismoking law or not. A spokesman in the Colorado attorney general’s office said he could not comment on an active case.

Not all smoking bans are quite as rigid. In Ireland herbal cigarettes, which do not contain tobacco and which actors frequently use as an alternative, are permitted. England’s ban, which begins July 1, allows actors to smoke only “if the artistic integrity of the performance makes it appropriate for them to smoke.” In New York City theaters, which fall under a statewide smoking ban in place since 2003, actors may smoke herbal cigarettes. If they want to use the real deal, the production has to apply for a waiver from the city.

Many productions, like “Chicago” on Broadway, use herbal cigarettes instead of bothering to get a waiver.

Abbie M. Strassler, the general manager of the 2005 Broadway revival of “The Odd Couple,” in which Oscar Madison is constantly chomping his cigar, did decide to apply for a waiver. The entire process, starting from when she first inquired, took four months, she said, calling the procedure “absurd.” But she admitted that she did not get approval for a three-week Broadway run of Hal Holbrook’s “Mark Twain Tonight!” in June 2005. “I figured I’d take my chances,” she said. No legal action was taken.

Actors aren’t technically allowed to smoke onstage under the ban in Chicago, but when they do, the law is simply not enforced. Tim Hadac, a spokesman for the Chicago Public Health Department, said that the enforcement was complaint-driven, and that he had not heard of any complaints about actors puffing away onstage.

In Colorado, where no version of a lighted cigarette is permitted onstage, aggrieved producers argue that tobacco is an integral part of the work of playwrights like Mr. Albee, Henrik Ibsen and Noël Coward. The company Next Stage canceled planned productions of the musical “A Man of No Importance,” by Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, which takes place partly in a smoky Dublin pub in the 1960s, and Stephen Belber’s play “Match,” in which a pivotal scene involves characters smoking hashish, causing the revelation of crucial information.

Theater13 — which has a bigger budget and can risk a fine — defied the law by staging “Match” with herbal cigarettes in September. “We put up signage, it’s written in the programs, and then we make an announcement before the show,” said Judson Webb, one of the company’s founding members. “We give people four or five chances every step of the way to make their own decision. If they walk out of the room, we’ll give them a full refund.” In 10 performances no one did, and no charges were brought.

When the touring production of the Broadway revival of “Sweet Charity” visited the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in December, Molly Ringwald, playing the title character, used a special cigarette that doesn’t light but emits a cloud of powder. But Randy Weeks, the president and chief executive of the center, has had to cancel “Mark Twain Tonight!”

“Samuel Clemens had a cigar in his mouth 99 percent of his waking hours,” Mr. Weeks said. “It is part of our history that people smoked.”

In Scotland, Keith Richards famously flouted the law in August by lighting up at a Rolling Stones concert in Glasgow. Since the local authorities are in charge of enforcing the ban, the city council simply declared the hall exempt. That same month in Edinburgh, where the fringe festival presented more than 1,800 shows, all performances had to be smoke-free. The festival had lobbied the Scottish Executive, Scotland’s governing body, for an exemption, but to no avail.

“If you start to make exceptions, you start to have loopholes and so on and you start to have a debate over what is or isn’t covered,” a spokesman for the Scottish Executive said. Regarding herbal cigarettes, he said, “We wanted to ensure that the law was as comprehensive and enforceable as possible, even if new products come onto the market.”

The actor Mel Smith got some attention for defiantly smoking a cigar during one of his performances as Winston Churchill in “Allegiance: Winston Churchill and Michael Collins.” But Paul Gudgin, the director of the festival, said that to his knowledge no other performer knowingly disobeyed the law, and the ban didn’t prevent any shows from being performed.

“Opinion was very divided amongst performers,” he added. Some were unfazed, arguing that “it’s acting, and you work around it,” he said. “They feel there’s very few plays, really, where it’s absolutely fundamental to the plot.”

Molly Ringwald, a nonsmoker, said of her Broadway role of Sally Bowles in “Cabaret,” “At that time every woman who’s cutting edge, a little bit fashionable, unconventional, is going to smoke, and that’s Sally Bowles.” Of her one smoking scene in “Sweet Charity,” she said, “This whole thing that I do lasts all of 10 seconds, and the theaters that we’re playing are so huge that it’s not realy affecting anyone so much except for me.”

As for Theater13, it is planning to produce “My Life Is My Sundance,” based on a memoir by the Indian activist Leonard Peltier, who comes from a culture in which tobacco plays a large spiritual role. It is unclear if smoking will be involved.

Still Mr. Webb points out that his company is not blindly pro-smoking. “We’re a bunch of non- or ex-smokers,” he said. Other than his one complaint, “I think the smoking ban is fantastic.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/theater/28pinc.html
















Until next week,

- js.



















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