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Old 07-12-06, 11:48 AM   #2
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Interview: Warner Music Boss Edgar Bronfman
Adam Pasick

Warner Music Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman sat down in Second Life on Friday for a broad-ranging interview about CopyBot, the balancing act between the content industry’s copyrights and the creativity of its customers, and the time he caught his own kids illegally downloading songs.

The following is an edited transcript:

Adam Reuters: How has the music industry, from production to marketing to distribution, changed in the MySpace, YouTube era we find ourselves in?

Edgar Bronfman: It really is all about the sense of community. There used to be a sense of community if you remember a really great record store where you could go through all the albums and talk about your records. Now you can have that sort of sharing in a virtual community or on an Internet community, and therefore do it much more broadly.

It not only gives access to far more artists on something like MySpace but so many more people can interact with each other and with artists, and so the sense of community grows. Music is very much about community and a sense of shared passion.

AP: So how does the business model work? Your artist is in the middle, you’ve got conversations on music, streaming music on MySpace, uploading on YouTube.

EB: The business models will vary with the platform. What we’re trying to do as a music company is first to enable as many uses of the content as possible to allow others to innovate. We’ll figure out what the business model is as certain things have traction and other things don’t.

We’re trying to enable as much progress as quickly as possible rather than wait to see a business model develop.

AP: Does that mean becoming a little more permissive? For example, on Second Life you can create a house and stream music, just like you’d play it in your real-life living room. But there might be some copyright issues there. Do you think the industry as a whole needs to loosen up a bit to let the new areas emerge?

EB: I think there needs to be flexibility on the part of content owners, and respect for the communities that are developing. We also feel that there needs to be some recognition that intellectual property is real property. We need a find a middle ground that allows both communities, the owners and the users, to be happy.

AP: The music industry’s approach to illicit uploading and downloading has been to take a carrot and stick approach, offering legal alternatives like iTunes on one hand and filing lawsuits against uploaders on the other. We’re a couple years into this now, you’ve paid a PR price for some of these lawsuits. Now that we’re maybe in the middle era of the copyright issue, has the equation changed at all?

EB: The approach isn’t different, but the effect is. There are now many more carrots than sticks. We’ve got all kinds of carrots. Running a red light is wrong, stealing a CD out of the store is wrong, stealing music is wrong, and that’s not going to change. What we’ve tried to do is make a distinction, not go after the casual jaywalker, but the car thief.

We don’t want to go after people who are casually downloading a few songs, but people who are massively uploading tracks. Having said that, it’s not the centerpiece of our strategy.

AP: Taking a question from the audience, McLuhan Ennis asks: “Can you give a description of the what you describe as middle ground? Say, within the context of a mash-up, what would be an example of fair use?”

EB: It’s our hope we can find a way to generally license much or all of our content for users to adapt in any way they see fit. We want people to use their creativity to take our content and do what they think is an interesting thing.

AP: So, you have seven children, have you ever caught any of them using Gnutella or Limewire or the P2P network?

EB: I have. I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle involved is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child, a bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.

AP: What were the consequences?

EB: I think I’ll keep that within the family. (Laughter)

AP: We have a question from Prokofy Neva: How do you view the recent CopyBot scare, and how would you address this issue if you owned Second Life?

EB: I’m not sure I’d address it differently than I address our own issues. Intellectual property is intellectual property, whether it’s in the form of an avatar or a song or any such thing. These are the creations of someone’s mind, and it’s property as real as real estate. It needs to be protected on the one but made available as broadly as is reasonable on the other.

That balance will always be difficult to strike, and people will always disagree about the appropriate balance. But as long as the argument is what’s the balance, rather than whether we should make it available, we can make more people more people happy than unhappy.

AP: Part B to that question from Prokofy, and I should say you are also part of a venture capital fund, is whether you would ever consider buying Linden Lab.

EB: I don’t know that we would or wouldn’t, but what I can say is I really admire Second Life, it’s building something really extraordinary and terrific. I wish Phil Rosedale and the entire team really great things. I think it’s great to see people take the potential of new technologies and create a community that will be a great benefit to its users whoever owns it, and wherever it goes.

AP: So will we see Warner Music in Second Life anytime soon?

EB: I sure hope so. We already had an artist Regina Spector and we introducer her album in a virtual loft, I hope we can do more of those things, and that the Second Life community will tell us what it is they think we should be doing to enhance our experience.

AP: Do you see user-generated content as something significant, rather than a flash in the pan?

EB: I do. Virtual communities let us have millions of people connecting. To tap that creativity is fantastic, and we’ll see it more and more.
http://secondlife.reuters.com/storie...dgar-bronfman/





The Most Dangerous Download of All
Robert MacMillan

Using online music services to share songs without paying for them may be illegal, but casual users don’t usually find themselves under the steely gaze of an angry recording industry executive. Unless Dad is the head of Warner Music Group.

We asked Edgar Bronfman, the head of the world’s fourth largest music company, at the Reuters Summit whether any of his seven kids stole music.

“I’m fairly certain that they have, and I’m fairly certain that they’ve suffered the consequences.”

We couldn’t begin to guess what that means. He explained to our Second Life reporter, Adam Pasick:

“I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.”

Great, but what did he do to them?

“I think I’ll keep that within the family.”


Chatterbox

17 responses to “The most dangerous download of all”
Please note that comments should not be regarded as the views of Reuters.

iburl says:
December 2nd, 2006 at 3:07 pm GMT

So the concequences for 14 year old Susie Q. Public downloading some stupid song that she could have legally taped off of the radio are that her parents and her a put through a protracted form of legal extortion, resulting in the depletion of their family’s life savings and plunged into debt, perhaps permanently effecting the child’s future education. The concequences for this guy… he has to give a stern lecture. Now we know why everyone loves record company weasels!

Paul says:
December 2nd, 2006 at 7:55 pm GMT

If he didn’t donate their college funds to his company and trample their futures, he didn’t punish them appropriately.

Linden says:
December 3rd, 2006 at 3:42 pm GMT

I bet he didn’t try and sue em’ in court like he would everyone else!

Finite says:
December 4th, 2006 at 1:00 am GMT

Record executives should be jailed for violating their customers’ civil rights with these unfounded lawsuits. (Are they even checking if users are just replacing tracks from scratched CDs they legitimately own?)

That people are allowed to equate copyright infringement with stealing, and not be called out as absurdists immediately thereafter, is the fault of the journalist. In this sad case, the journalist even does it himself! Hey, you there! Stop that!

The notion of “intellectual property” only exists to confuse people: there really is no such thing! Trademark law, patent law, and copyright law are all real (and separate) bodies of law, and violating them is no more theft than it is arson or assault.

You devalue the _actual_ concept of physical property when you apply its terminology to infinitely replicateable things like computer data files.

Music Executives Behaving Badly Pt II | Josh Smith Online says:
December 4th, 2006 at 3:26 am GMT

[…] Somebody must have spiked the punch at the last price fixing collusion industry conference. These Music executives are letting it all out these past few weeks. First Doug Morris of Universal Music Group calls iPod owners theives, now Edgar Bronfman an executive at Warner Music Group admits that his children have downloaded music illegally! To top it off he won’t go into the punishment details other than saying, “I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.” […]

RSS fabriek » Blog Archive » CE-Oh no he didn’t! Part XX - Warner Music CEO “fairly certain” his kids pirate music says:
December 4th, 2006 at 1:07 pm GMT

[…] We’re going to assume you’re well versed with the RIAA, just about the most god-forsaken industry group that ever did roam the earth (much like its unofficial partner in crime, the MPAA); and more importantly for the purposes of this post, Warner Music, one of the four major labels, which all, incidentally, back the RIAA. So what did Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner Music, have to say when questioned as to whether any of his seven kids pirate music? “I’m fairly certain that they have, and I’m fairly certain that they’ve suffered the consequences.” Funny, we haven’t heard about any inter-familial lawsuits involving Bronfman sr. v. Bronfman jr. concerning definitions in fair use and music piracy. In fact, given that he knows what pirates live in his house using his internet connection, it should only follow that he sue his children into eternal debt (not before having Warner Music shut off their household internet connection at the ISP level). After all, what’s good for the goose is good — ah forget it. Every time we try to apply logic and reason to the executives behind the RIAA our brains do a zero divide. […]

Chevs says:
December 4th, 2006 at 4:13 pm GMT

BWAHAHAHA!! I just read “moral responsibility” and “music industry” in the same article! The folks that have brought us such ‘morally responsible’ artists as: 2 Live Crew, Marilyn Manson, Motley Crue, ‘Ol Dirty Bastard and ON AND ON AND ON..These losers would hang your children over a nickel. Here’s to this corrupt and creatively BANKRUPT industry to continuing to circle the abyss while technology leaves them further in the vapors..Cheers..

Jeremy says:
December 4th, 2006 at 7:29 pm GMT

“A bright line around moral responsibility is very important.”
Is it morally responsible for the recording industry to take the largest cut from the efforts of artists?

tssci security » CEO kids steal music, get slap on the wrist says:
December 4th, 2006 at 9:24 pm GMT

[…] …while the rest of us get subpoenaed and sued for more money than we can afford to pay off in a lifetime! Well, that’s exactly what Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner Music told Reuters. What a bunch of crap. We asked Edgar Bronfman, the head of the world’s fourth largest music company, at the Reuters Summit whether any of his seven kids stole music. […]
http://blogs.reuters.com/2006/12/01/...wnload-of-all/





Bronfman has his; do you have yours?

Richest 2 Pct Own More Than Half The World: Study

Two percent of adults have more than half of the world's wealth, including property and financial assets, according to a study by the U.N. development research institute published on Tuesday.

While global income is distributed unequally, the spread of wealth is even more skewed, the study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the U.N. University said.

"Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe and high income Asia-Pacific countries. People in these countries collectively hold almost 90 percent of total world wealth," the survey showed.

The Helsinki-based institute said its study was the first global research on the topic, for which there is only limited data.

"We've estimated that the richest 2 percent of adults own more than half of global wealth, while the bottom half own 1 percent," said institute director Anthony Shorrocks.

He likened the situation to that where, in a group of 10 people, one person has $99, while the remaining nine share $1.

"If you think income has been distributed unequally, wealth has been distributed even more unequally," Shorrocks said.

According to the study, in 2000 a couple needed capital of $1 million to be among the top 1 percent on the wealth list -- the richest 37 million people in the world.

More than one in every two of those people lives in the United States or Japan.

And it found that net assets of $2,200 per adult would put a household in the top half of the world wealth distribution.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...News-newsOne-8





DivX CEO on Video, YouTube, iPod

Jordan Greenhall talks about DivX’s hacker roots, YouTube, iTV—and what's wrong with iPods.
Scott Martin

DivX CEO and founder Jordan Greenhall’s laid-back Southern California image belies the fact that he heads a billion-dollar digital video compression company.

San Diego-based DivX went public—raising $145.6 million—in September to a warm investor reception (see DivX Climbs in Nasdaq Debut). Since its market debut, shares have steadily gained over 50 percent, signaling staying power.

Wall Street may be onto something. DivX has become a de facto standard for digital video compression. So far that technology is finding its way into chips used inside DVD players. For DivX, that means licensing fees from millions of DVD players sold.

DivX gives people the power to compress movie files from the Internet for playback on the PC or in the living room. Fascination with Internet video—culminating in Google’s $1.65-billion purchase of YouTube—hasn’t hurt either.

Mr. Greenhall acknowledges that YouTube has raised digital video’s profile, saying that DivX provides a far richer, big-screen viewing experience for serious enthusiasts. He’s among a handful of companies including Microsoft, Sony, and Apple that are banking on convergence in the living room.

Emerging from DivX’s IPO quiet period, Mr. Greenhall talked recently with Red Herring about the company’s strange start. It began with tracking down a French hacker known simply as Gej, who had hacked together the earliest version of the DivX video codec.

Gej's DivX rose to fame as a wildly popular video download format on the P2P site Napster. Few knew who Gej was at the time because of the way DivX had been hacked together.

“So I went out on IRC and the underground Internet to look for him,” Mr. Greenhall said. “Most people thought he was Russian. The next likely place was the Netherlands. I contacted some folks who actually knew who he was. After I went through some hazing rituals, they put me in contact with him.”

Gej, whose real name is Jerome Rota, and Mr. Greenhall talked by long distance and came to agree on what could happen with DivX in the coming years, deciding to work together. At first, “we worked remotely together,” Mr. Greenhall said.

One day Mr. Rota finally flew in for a meeting in San Diego, where Mr. Greenhall went to go get the French hacker at the airport. “He came with nothing but a pack of cigarettes.” It was an unusual start.

Finally, just before the dot-com downturn, Mr. Greenhall said, venture capital interest swarmed around DivX. Ultimately, it went with Zone Ventures. Mr. Greenhall holds about 8 percent of DivX.

Q: How did you get started in digital video?

A: Basically, what was happening was I was working on this specific strategy around digital media and looking for when and how video would get rolled into digital media. At exactly that same time, Jerome in France, who had a degree in computer science as well as video editing was employed as a video creator.

And he had a specific material need for the ability to take some video he made in his house and move it through a DSL line to another location, and he wanted to keep the quality as high as possible. And he didn’t have anything available at the time to do that. So he created the first DivX.

And he created it and he did in a very open way, which was out on the Internet. He said, “Anybody know anything that works?” Various people said, “Here’s different tools, and here’s things that work.”

He sort of put it together. Not a linear engineering, but rather what’s available, put it together, what can we do right now that really works, and how can we put it together—sort of kludge it. And it went from version one to version three. And by version three, I got wind of it.

People were talking about, “Hey, this thing is being used because it can take very high-quality DVD and make it small enough for the Internet like MP3.” Being at MP3.com, I had been broadcasting out to my network of people, and I needed something like this for video.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about your video codec?

A: Video compression technology is a pretty well understood science. And it’s made of a bunch of different tools. When you’ve invented an algorithm that does compare this frame to this frame and see if there’s any difference between them, it’s done.

And then somebody else can do it. And then you can develop more sophisticated algorithms that might have a better ability to then very rapidly compare the two.

Q: DivX came on most people’s radar in the late 90’s as a download format on file-sharing networks. Can you describe how it grew out of that period?

A: The two places where it took off were university local networks, where you have high-bandwidth, and students typically had a PC as their primary media device. They didn’t have a TV and a PC, so video on their PC made a lot of sense. Downloading over the Internet was trivial even back in 2000.

And then of course the other one was that this was in the heyday of Napster. People were cognizant of the notion of P2P networks and cognizant of getting digital media content from other people on the Internet.

And it turned out with DivX you could turn a P2P network into a viable way to distribute video content, and people did, which of course when we wrote our original business plan was predictable.

We sat down and said what you just created will do these things, people will adopt it, they will use it to transmit high-quality video, probably movies, probably television shows, probably porn—on the Internet—and in this domain and in this particular way.

In some timeframe, they will want to be able transmit that from the PC into the living room. It will be the kind of content that wants to live in the living room—just like what happened with MP3. You had music files sitting in your PC and you wanted to take them portable.

Somebody had to invent the portable MP3 player. In fact, I was at MP3.com at the time, I got to physically touch the first MP3 player ever made. It was made by these guys from Korea—it was literally duct tape.

Q: What’s the next evolutionary phase for DivX in the era of YouTube?

A: It’s called Stage 6. It’s about two months old. We’re putting a stake in the ground, saying we know more about this phenomenon than most people. If you’re serious about creating your content as a content creator, then you use Stage 6. If you’re not, then YouTube is great. One of the things that YouTube is very good for is acting as a marketing vehicle.

Q: How important has YouTube been in raising the profile of what you’re doing?

A: It’s been very good. I mean the more people who are exposed to the notion of being able to use the Internet to access media or to use the Internet as a way to create and publish media is good in general.

We’ve actually found a reasonable number of people who have published to YouTube and then published to Stage 6. If you want to watch it in higher quality, then you watch it in DivX. And remember, we own the living room, so if you want to watch it on your TV, that’s the end of the game.

Q: Where does this fall into the bigger picture, where iTV and Xbox are going after this market?

A: iTunes took the traditional music industry and converted that into a new media industry. Xbox, iTV, and DivX connected—they’re all trying to solve that same problem and create convergence. And once the access part is solved—and you’re able to take that content into your living room—you’ll get a massive acceleration of the market opportunity for all content.

Q: What are the chances of getting DivX into Apple devices?

A: Random. Technically easy. It’s all about Apple. Apple right now is trying to rule. They’re trying to keep a closed system, where everything is Apple.

Q: At what point do you think Apple would work with DivX?

A: Apple will trail. They will actually have to take one on the chin before they change their ways. But what we’re just seeing in the iPod world is we’re just starting to see the demographics where the iPod is no longer considered hip. Kids these days are starting to see the iPod as passé. That’s the problem with being a fashion accessory.

The beauty of the iPod is that it is a fashion accessory, that it can be very rapidly absorbed. It’s not a gadget anymore—it’s a piece of fashion.

The problem with being a piece of fashion—that people in the fashion world will tell you—is that you gotta turn that shit over pretty quickly because it falls out of fashion. Apple kind of went through the iPod, the iPod Mini, the different colors, and the nano, but it’s kind of the same thing. Once it becomes uncool to have an iPod, price becomes the differentiator.

Q: When did it become apparent you could make a real business out of DivX?

A: The video content that is being created is video content that wants to live on your TV. It looks best on your big-screen TV. So one can predict with a high degree of precision that when a critical mass of content is sitting out there on PC hard drives around the world that a market will exist.

And that market demand will cause entrepreneurial entities to meet that market demand by taking DivX and putting it into devices so that it can go into your living room. So our job as a company is to simply build that market.

As it turned out, in 2002 we got our first calls from consumer electronics manufacturers. When we first called the chip guys, they said, “I don’t know who the hell you are. Why would I want to do this?”

From mid-2002 to 2004 we went on a complete rampage signing up all the chip vendors and then all the major OEMs. And by the end of 2004, Sony signed and they were the last of the major OEMs. We have all the major OEMs signed and shipping at least one DivX certified.
http://www.redherring.com/Article.as...ube%2C+iPo d#





Net Neutrality Stalemate on AT&T Merger
Scott M. Fulton, III

A two-month stalemate among commissioners of the US Federal Communications Commission regarding the proposed merger of AT&T and regional provider BellSouth may be reluctantly broken by one commissioner who had earlier recused himself, having previously served as counsel for a firm that lobbied on behalf of AT&T's competitors.

It could be the largest merger in American history, currently valued at $82.2 billion. It could also be the most costly irony in history, as some government regulators, legislators, and the whole of the Dept. of Justice is actively behind a deal to sew back together what the 1984 divestiture order made the former AT&T Corp. tear from its ribs: the southeastern US service arm of the former Bell System.

If the merger does go through, it would be the fourth Baby Bell (RBOC) to be reabsorbed under the AT&T umbrella, although last year, it was AT&T Corp. that was merged into SBC (the former Southwestern Bell), which then assumed the old name but left the RBOC's corporate structure mostly intact.

What's holding up the party is debate over whether one fewer competitor, especially in the southeast, would lead to a systematic reduction in competition. While the DOJ is arguing that one fewer competitor never hurt anyone, opponents point out that the new entity could hold all the cards with regard to the leasing of communications lines to smaller companies that have to provide service over those same lines in order to survive. It was the idea that telecom companies should not have to lease service lines from Ma Bell on her own terms, that led to the creation of MCI and the breakup of AT&T in the first place.

Nominated last January by President Bush to fill a vacant seat after Kevin Martin ascended to the chairman's seat, Commissioner Robert McDowell was previously assistant general counsel for COMPTEL, an association representing smaller communications companies' interests before the federal government.

Last October, COMPTEL put itself on record not as opposing the concept of the merger, but for opposing the terms the two companies negotiated, which the association argued did not do enough to promote competition. The association would possibly support a merger, if its terms included extending provisions that would compensate for the loss of competition in BellSouth's coverage area.

While McDowell was attempting to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, Chairman Martin is now considering, according to multiple reports this afternoon, asking the FCC's general counsel, Sam Feder, to rule on the matter of whose interests are more important: the government's in seeing this matter through, or the public's in seeing it ethically decided.

However, if Feder rules that McDowell must vote, there's no guarantee that he would break the logjam. He could abstain, forcing a newly installed 110th Congress -- with a Democratic majority in both houses -- to take up the matter after the holidays.

In COMPTEL's petition before the FCC last October, its attorneys wrote, "The Applicants' proposed thirty-month limitation with an automatic sunset on conditions and commitments must be considered in light of the substantial competitive harms that would result from the combination of AT&T and BellSouth. The damage to competition and innovation can only be cured by the assurance of a pro-competitive environment that reasonably and effectively invites the entry and expansion of competitive carriers. It will take new entrants many years to expand sufficiently to replace the competition lost due to the merger.

"When viewed from such a perspective," the petition continued, "it is clear that the proposed limitation will cause the conditions to lapse before they are fully and sufficiently implemented and before the pre-merger levels of competition can be replaced."

The Justice Dept. swiftly approved the AT&T/BellSouth merger early last October, almost as soon as the matter was brought up, saying the fact that there are so many competitors in telecom markets already indicated that they wouldn't be harmed by one fewer player.

"The presence of other competitors, changing regulatory requirements and the emergence of new technologies in markets for residential local and long distance service indicate that this transaction is not likely to harm consumer welfare," stated DOJ Antitrust division chief Thomas O. Barnett following the approval, adding, "The proposed acquisition does not raise competition concerns with respect to Internet services markets or 'net neutrality."'

But immediately afterward, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein went on record condemning the DOJ's move, questioning why it acted so swiftly without waiting for the results of a congressional inquiry, when it had urged caution on other merger matters in the past.

"Today's move by the Department of Justice to approve the proposed AT&T-BellSouth combination without condition is a reckless abandonment of DOJ's responsibility to protect competition and consumers," Adelstein wrote. "By failing to issue a complaint, consent decree or condition, it appears DOJ took a dive on one of the largest mergers in history just to avoid further court scrutiny."

One concern, raised by COMPTEL last October, is whether the newly merged entity could force smaller competitors, not just in the southeast but across the country, to lease access to its lines in bundle deals only. This could effectively limit potential lessees to just the major players - those with the capability to provide voice, data, and television service in a "triple play," or not at all. That makes the merger conditions effectively a net neutrality issue, merging -- if you will -- the AT&T/BellSouth debate with the existing fracas in Congress over whether national Internet licensing would lead to favoritism among the major players.

But another issue could be equally as intriguing: A newly merged telecom powerhouse could conclude it needs fewer providers of raw materials, especially copper, as it continues its conversion to a fiberoptic system. Smaller telecom competitors don't have the capital required to compete in the fiberoptic space, and continue to require copper in order to complete "the last mile" between private telecom lines and households.

But if AT&T decommissions the copper plants, they could cease to produce copper altogether. "Putting the brakes on this anti-competitive activity, and preserving the copper last mile access required for intra-modal competitors to reach customers, is critical to ensuring that consumers have more than one or two choices of service providers," COMPTEL wrote.

Its proposed solution would apparently keep copper providers in business, at least for awhile. But lawmakers and commissioners on both sides of the merger issue may argue, why force a phone company to purchase raw materials it doesn't need?

With the absence of McDowell to break any ties, the remaining four commissioners have been hopelessly deadlocked over the past two months over whether to impose these and other conditions upon the deal. The deadlock has led to a bigger debate throughout Washington, over whether such conditions would amount to too much government control over what industry leaders consider innovation.

Last month, the merger partners agreed to provide DSL broadband service to customers in outlying areas for as low as $10 per month, and not requiring customers to subscribe to AT&T phone service in order to qualify for good rates on broadband, in response to requests from House Democrats. But part of the current debate concerns whether this is actually a good thing: The new AT&T already has an advantage in being able to install DSL service in rural areas, that its competitors don't enjoy. If AT&T clinches those customers before others have a chance, they may never get that chance.

After the DOJ decision in October, Commissioners Adelstein and Michael Copps wrote FCC Chairman Miller, urging him to open up the merger matter before a public hearing.

"Given the limited analysis from our leading antitrust authorities," the commissioners wrote, "it is all the more imperative that we now employ an open process to fully involve all affected parties, including the applicants, in order to get the public and expert review that is otherwise lacking...To put this in context, we are still six months ahead of the time it took us to complete the Adelphia-Comcast-Time Warner merger, a transaction less than one-fifth the size of this one."

But when protracted debate forced Miller on November 2 to pull the public hearing from the docket, COMPTEL went on record as supporting Miller's move to suspend a public hearing.

"COMPTEL applauds the FCC for choosing not to consider the proposed merger of AT&T and BellSouth at its Nov. 3 open meeting," a COMPTEL statement said. "Given AT&T's failure thus far to make a good faith effort to address legitimate public interest concerns, COMPTEL is heartened that the Commission did not bend to AT&T's pressure tactics. It remains to be seen whether AT&T ever engaged in any meaningful attempt to resolve those concerns but we look forward to seeing what, if any, last-minute proposals they may have made to the Commission."

So even if McDowell were compelled to vote, and chose not to abstain, it isn't exactly clear at this time that he'd necessarily vote in accordance with his old employer even if he opposed the merger in principle. And however he votes, legislators early next year may take up the issue over whether a matter this important, with enormous impact on the future of global telecommunications, should ever be hoisted onto the shoulders of just one man.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Net_...ger/1165266208





AT&T: We Don't Need no Stinking Fiber to the Premises
Eric Bangeman

Did AT&T make the right call when it decided to only run fiber to the node instead of to each dwelling? The telecom thinks so. AT&T CFO Richard Lindner defended the company's decision at a conference held by investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston, according to Reuters.

"Our view at this point is that we're not going to have [to run] fiber to the home," Lindner told the conference. "We're pleased with the bandwidth that we're seeing over copper."

Verizon, in contrast, has chosen to go with a more costly strategy of running fiber to the premises with its FiOS service. It costs much more, about $900 to pass a home during deployment, but not every home passed will sign up for FiOS. As a result, analysts estimate that the actual cost per customer acquired is along the lines of $9,650.

AT&T's cost is significantly less. By running fiber to the local node and using the existing copper wiring to cover the distance between node and dwelling, AT&T is able to cut costs. AT&T plans to make its U-Verse service available to 19 million homes by the end of 2008 at a cost of around $5.1 billion, which works out to around $270 per home. Verizon expects to spend approximately $18 billion to reach around 18 million homes.

From a financial standpoint, the numbers add up. But questions remain over the ability of AT&T's U-Verse network to scale with traffic growth. Verizon FiOS subscribers can get speeds of 30Mbps/5Mpbs (for $179.95 per month) and 15Mbps/2Mbps for $44.95; those figures appear to be fairly future-proof. AT&T's U-Verse offering looks downright paltry in comparison, maxing out at 6Mbps down and 1Mbps up; when the copper link between the node and each home is only capable of 25Mbps, that's the best the company can hope to do given current technological limitations.

AT&T's reliance on existing copper infrastructure is the driving force behind its decision to use IPTV for its cable television offering. By treating television as just another type of switched packet traffic, AT&T is able to make the most of that 25Mbps of bandwidth. In contrast, Verizon is using plain old television service for its cable offering, with IPTV reserved for video on demand. Verizon has up to 620Mbps of bandwidth available just for Internet traffic.

In the near term—maybe the next three to five years—AT&T should be fine; not everyone wants or needs 6Mbps Internet. Will AT&T regret its fiber-to-the-node strategy down the line? It might, especially if subscribers are unable to fully take advantage of especially bandwidth-hungry services. Should that be the case, the telecom will be faced with an expensive network upgrade. Perhaps most importantly, the company's Internet offering might prove lacking in the eyes of consumers, especially as the cable industry moves towards the rollout of DOCSIS 3.0 and 100Mbps speeds. In areas with meaningful broadband competition, AT&T may find itself coming in third place—a bad position in a three-horse race.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061205-8356.html





Energy Crisis Seen For Tech

Valley rivals meet with feds amid fears that growth could be stunted
Sarah Jane Tribble

The nation's biggest technology companies sat down with federal regulators Wednesday to assess the industry's thirst for power amid fears that volatile and expensive energy could hinder the growing sector.

The fierce competitors at the table -- including Google, IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard -- rarely gather to talk strategy. But they were lured by the chance to influence the development of national energy standards.

``I think we may be at the beginning of a potential energy crisis for the IT sector,'' Victor Varney, a vice president for Silicon Graphics, told the regulators. ``It's clearly coming.''

Already, local companies are adjusting growth plans, and data centers have moved out of California for more stable power supplies, he said.

Google's Bill Weihl, who works with energy strategy engineering and operations, countered that the crisis isn't upon the industry yet but is possible in the next five to 10 years if adequate and reliable energy supplies are not ensured.

The U.S. Department of Energy, which measures power use in various industries, hopes to learn from the companies, and to design guidelines for building efficient facilities and technology, said Andrew Karsner, assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy for the department. He also is considering eventually auditing energy use in technology facilities, much like the department's audits of steel and paper plants.

The round table, hosted by Advanced Micro Devices, was the first meeting in what Karsner called a public and private partnership. Research firm Gartner estimates that within two years about half of the world's data centers will have insufficient power and cooling capacity to service the high-density servers companies need to keep up with demand for their services and products.

The use of electricity plays a vital role in powering the offices, research-and-development laboratories and massive data centers for the technology sector, which is one of America's fastest-growing industries.

Concern about electricity pricing and volatility has led Microsoft to talk with its network manufacturers about building more efficient servers. IBM and Hewlett-Packard -- which both build data centers -- want to improve efficiency at the facilities. AMD promotes changing the design of data centers to increase airflow to keep the supercomputers cool.

The technology industry's need for energy should worry everyone, Karsner said Tuesday before sitting down with the executives. Protecting the technology sector from an energy crisis is akin to protecting the American economy, he said.

To illustrate his point, Karsner hypothesized: ``What happens to national productivity when Google goes down for 72 hours?''

It's a far-fetched and grim possibility Karsner said he doesn't want to consider.

Karsner and members of his energy team asked the technology executives about productivity and took notes during what turned into a four-hour brainstorming session about the need to create more efficient equipment and develop standards for building data centers.

Executives at Google, which is working on its own data center in the Northwest, charged that the energy used by laptops and personal computers should be considered in the discussion, while others argued that standards needed to be set for the development of data centers.

The executives also urged the regulators to work with efforts already under way, such as the Green Grid group Silicon Valley companies began quietly organizing in April to address the same energy concerns.

``There are not all that many experts who understand this problem holistically, and the worst thing that we could do is to fracture the bandwidth,'' said Paul Perez, vice president for storage, networks and infrastructure and enterprise servers for Hewlett-Packard.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...y/16181886.htm





AMD: New Chips Consume Half the Power of Core 2 Duo

Moves to 65-nm generation
Mark Hachman

AMD announced its entry into the 65-nm manufacturing generation Tuesday with a new line of 65-watt "energy-efficient" processors that the company claimed already consumes just under 50 percent less power than the Intel Core 2 Duo.

AMD's novel argument provided a backdrop for four new chips – the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+, 4400+, 4800+, and 5000+ – will be sold for the same price as their older counterparts, which were fabricated on the 90-nm process. The Athlon 64 X2 line will receive the 65-nm conversion treatment first, which will be completed by the first quarter of 2007 in its Fab 36 in Dresden.

AMD's notebook and server processor lines will receive the same 65-nm treatment, which will be completed some time in 2007, according to Jack Huynh, responsible for marketing and business development at AMD's desktop division. AMD's standard Athlon 64 and Sempron lines will lag the X2's conversion, as they are not "mainstream" parts, Huynh said.

Shifting to a finer manufacturing process means less power and waste heat is needed to run at a given speed. In desktops, that means that the chip can be clocked faster while still maintaining the given power; in notebooks, the overall power consumption can be reduced while still maintaining a given speed. AMD's energy-efficient chips split that difference, offering power savings and a quieter desktop PC environment.

"With the Vista rollout, it's more and more important to multitask and multicore without a super loud box -- that's the end goal," Huynh said.

In May, AMD announced an energy-efficient processor roadmap, up to the 4800+ chip, that established a 65-watt power threshold. Certain other Athlon 64 X2 processors, including the 3500+ and 3800+, were also classified as "small form factor" energy-efficient processors and designed to run at a maximum of 35 watts. All of the new 65-nm energy-efficient chips are classified to run at 65 watts maximum power.

But AMD's sales team is also attempting to convince customers that even its older "Rev. F" 65-watt, 90-nm chips actually consume less power than Intel's Core 2 Duo components, with the delta even more magnified when its new 35-watt, 65-nm chips are compared.

AMD's argument goes like this: modern desktop and notebook processors constantly scale up and down between full speed and an idle state, which AMD has branded "Cool 'n' Quiet". At a given time, pushed to full load by an application, AMD's chips run hotter and consume more power. But across a typical computing day – where a user might check his email or surf the Web – the processor idles more often then not. At idle, AMD's 90-nm Athlon 64 X2 consumes 7.5 watts. Its latest 65-nm chips idle at 3.8 watts. By comparison, the 65-nm Core 2 Duo idles at 14.3 watts.

AMD's 90-nm/65 watt Athlon 64 X2 chips consumed 47.6 percent the power of a 65-nm Core 2 Duo chip, the company said. A 35-watt X2 consumes 73.3 percent of the power of the same Core 2 Duo. However, directly comparing the two chips' power load, in a real-world computing environment, over the course of a day, would be a daunting task, Huynh acknowledged.

Comparing processors by the power consumed has either been done using real-world measurements or via a number called "Thermal Design Power," a guideline given to engineers that estimates the maximum amount of power that a chip would consume. Huynh called TDP and process technology comparisons "purely a numbers game".

"We don't want to get caught in the processor technology game," Huynh said. "We have superior power management features than our competition."

The new processors meet or exceed the new Energy Star requirements for idle power consumption, which go into effect in July 2007, Huynh added.

Huynh also discouraged those who might hope that AMD might create a low-power version of the Quad FX or "4x4" platform that was criticized for its high power consumption. "We always have to look at all the options, but that [the Quad FX] roadmap is 125-watts, extended through next year," he said.

The 65-nm development work was researched in conjunction with IBM. Normally, a processor conversion would take nearly a full year; AMD's goal is to complete it within about half that time, Huynh said. The next step? To catch up with Intel on 45-nm, which last week announced test samples of its 45-nm "Penryn" processors. AMD's goal is to catch up with Intel in 18 months, he said.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2068252,00.asp





UCF Researcher’s 3-D Digital Storage System Could Hold a Library on One Disc
Zenaida Gonzalez Kotala

Imagine taking the entire collection of historical documents at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and storing it on a single DVD.

University of Central Florida Chemistry Professor Kevin D. Belfield and his team have cracked a puzzle that stumped scientists for more than a dozen years. They have developed a new technology that will allow users to record and store massive amounts of data -- the museum’s entire collection or as many as 500 movies, for example -- onto a single disc or, perhaps, a small cube.

Belfield’s Two-Photon 3-D Optical Data Storage system makes this possible.

“For a while, the community has been able to record data in photochromic materials in several layers,” Belfield said. “The problem was that no one could figure out how to read out the data without destroying it. But we cracked it.”

Think of it this way. Television viewers can tape a show on a VHS tape. They can use the tape several times. But each time the same segment of the tape is used, the quality diminishes as the tape wears out. Eventually, the data is lost. The same is true of recordable DVDs.

Belfield’s team figured out a way to use lasers to compact large amounts of information onto a DVD while maintaining excellent quality. The information is stored permanently without the possibility of damage.

The process involves shooting two different wavelengths of light onto the recording surface. The use of two lasers creates a very specific image that is sharper than what current techniques can render. Depending on the color (wavelength) of the light, information is written onto a disk. The information is highly compacted, so the disk isn’t much thicker. It’s like a typical DVD.

The challenge scientists faced for years was that light is also used to read the information. The light couldn’t distinguish between reading and writing, so it would destroy the recorded information. Belfield’s team developed a way to use light tuned to specific colors or wavelengths to allow information that a user wants to keep to stay intact.

The UCF team’s work was published in Advanced Materials (2006, vol. 18, pp. 2910-2914, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adma.200600826) and recently highlighted in Nature Photonics (http://www.nature.com/nphoton/reshig...n.2006.47.html ). A patent is pending.

Once the technology is fine-tuned, it could be used to store historical documents or create complicated databases that could give decision-makers quick access to critical information, Belfield said.

Blu-Ray Disc Association and industrial leaders in computer and other media recently commercially introduced Blu-Ray Disc technology that allows for storage of 25 gigabytes (GB) on a single layer of a disc and 50 GB on two layers. It has been referred to as the next generation of optical disc format, and it offers high-definition quality.

Belfield’s technique allows for storing on multiple layers with the capacity of at least 1,000 GB and high-definition quality.

The UCF team has received a $270,000, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to continue its work. The team will focus on making the technique even more efficient, partly by reducing the required laser power.

The team’s work with lasers and lights has other practical applications. Belfield and his colleagues in the Department of Chemistry are exploring the use of light to detect and treat certain types of cancer.

Belfield’s research team is creating chemical agents that, after being injected into patients, will travel within the bloodstream to find and bind with cancer cells. Using light, doctors would then be able to see if and where a patient has cancer cells. Another agent could be injected that would then destroy the cancer cells when activated by light, without damaging other healthy cells.
http://news.ucf.edu/UCFnews/index?pa...0c76ce2f00409b





Scientific Remedies
Paul D. Thacker

Science and technology underpin the modern American economy, but as a steady drumbeat of recent reports have suggested, experts fear that the current trajectory for the U.S. scientific enterprise could eventually undermine the country’s competitive stance. Attempting to find solutions, the Brookings Institution brought together a handful of scholars Tuesday to suggest and discuss federal strategies to head off the problem.

Lawrence H. Summers, the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and the former president of Harvard University, concisely summed up the day’s concerns. The last century was the century of physics, and it was a century directed by America, he said. The 21st century will likely be defined by advances in the biomedical sciences.

“The question is,” he asked, “‘Will the United States be the leader?’ ”

Thomas Kalil, special assistant to the chancellor for science and technology at the University of California at Berkeley, proposed that the federal government provide prizes as an incentive to spur research. Kalil’s idea originates from a contest in 1919, when a New York hotel owner, Raymond Orteig, offered a $25,000 purse to the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. While Charles Lindbergh ultimately succeeded in 1927, nine different teams spent more than $400,000 going after the money, helping to spawn the multibillion-dollar aviation industry.

Dangling prizes in front of innovators has benefits not found in the typical funding process. By offering a prize, government pays for success instead of rewarding a research proposal, as occurs with grants. Second, prizes can stimulate private investment by attracting entrepreneurs and corporate enthusiasts interested in capturing a trophy. Finally, there is nothing like a cash jackpot to stir public interest.

“I’m not saying that we don’t have to fund research, but we should look to prizes as a complement,” said Kalil. Drawbacks exist, however. Kalil noted that small companies and individual inventors face difficulty raising funds to pursue cash awards, and prizes can work only for narrowly tailored projects. A contest simply would not work, he said, for a highly complex project like discovering a Higgs boson particle.

But prizes can spur research in areas like space exploration. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration recently announced that it will sponsor competitions to invent technologies such as flexible astronaut gloves, and Kalil recommended that NASA create prizes for more ambitious contests such as building a lunar lander-rover. Kalil also suggested that prizes may be the way to spur innovations in African agriculture, vaccines for diseases that afflict the poor, energy policy and even learning technologies.

Researchers need to design learning software that is as interesting to students as video games, he argued. Kalil said that this policy shift would not require huge amounts of money. For instance, he recommended that NASA initially devote around $100 million of its $16.8 billion budget to contests.

Richard Freeman, professor of economics at Harvard, made a similar plea for targeted spending, focused instead on graduate research fellowships sponsored by the National Science Foundation. In the early 1960s, NSF funded about 1,000 graduate students in the Graduate Research Fellowship Program and three decades later, it sponsors the same number. Freeman said that the government needs to triple that number and increase the value of each fellowship from $30,000 to $40,000 annually.

Funding more graduate students would not solve all the problems in science, but Freeman said that the minimal cost ($375 million a year) would galvanize the younger generation to set the future agenda for science. “The point is that we would get a substantial response to this and all the good things would follow,” he said.
http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/12/06/innovate.





Review: Gaming PCs Surpass New Consoles
Matt Slagle

The new video game consoles already look pretty wimpy compared with the latest gaming PCs. The Wii? Whatever. The Xbox 360? No match. The PlayStation 3? You can't find one, anyway.

Featuring water-cooled microprocessors, beefy graphics cards and gigabytes of memory, current high-end gaming PCs are light years ahead of the latest consoles from Microsoft Corp., Nintendo Co. or Sony Corp. However, they come at a hefty price, however.

Together, two new systems I tested cost nearly $16,000 - as much as a new Honda Civic. But a new car can't run video games, and that's where the Mach V from boutique computer maker Falcon Northwest ($9,621.83 as tested, including a 30-inch display, wireless mouse and keyboard) and Alienware's Area-51 7500 ($5,419) excel. These two screamers are among the fastest, most capable machines money can buy for all your video gaming needs.

So what exactly do you get for that much cash? Each system includes fairly similar innards: two gigabytes of memory and an advanced 3-D graphics card from Nvidia Corp. that alone retails for $600 - as much as a high-end PlayStation 3. Perhaps the most significant feature is the new microprocessor from Intel Corp., known as Core 2 Extreme, which acts as the computing brain of each system.

Sporting four tiny processing engines on a single chip instead of just one or two, it means you can play online games like "World of Warcraft" and "work" programs like Microsoft Office without skipping a beat.

The consoles, on the other hand, tend to use customized chips tuned especially for games, and for the most part that's still the case.

The Xbox 360's CPU was designed by IBM Corp. and has three cores compared to the four cores found in the Mach V and Area-51 7500. The Wii uses a much less advanced processor also created by IBM.

The exotic processor in the PS3 is nothing to sneeze at: called Cell, the chip packs so much power that it's being used in an upcoming supercomputer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Keep in mind, however, that the technology in the consoles is locked and unlikely to change in the next five years or so, when the Xbox 720, the PS4 and the Wii 2 arrive. PCs, meanwhile, can constantly be upgraded.

The current technology in the Mach V and the Area-51 7500 meant I could frag opponents in ultrahigh 2,560-pixel-by-1,600-pixel resolutions - effectively double that of high-definition TVs - in games like "Quake 4" while maintaining a silky-smooth frame rate.

The recent strategy game "Company of Heroes" was simply amazing as WWII battles were waged with stunning clarity in real time.

As with most new technology, however, today's crop of games are not yet programmed to tap the full potential of the advanced processors and graphics cards.

At this point, more cores aren't necessarily faster. That should all change next year with Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system and a slew of snazzy new video games like the upcoming first-person shooter "Crysis" due later in 2007.

Interestingly, neither the Area-51 nor the Mach V included a next-generation Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive for high-definition movies, something now available for the PS3 and the Xbox 360. Instead, both had standard DVD drives.

The Mach V was so new, in fact, I experienced some bugs such games that froze up and stuttered at times. The problem vanished after I downloaded newer software drivers for the video card.

Beyond the shiny parts, these two PCs have a sense of style that's a huge departure from the normal boring beige, black or silver computers. (Alienware is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dell Inc.)

The Mach V is a hulking tower with hand-painted blue flames around the entire case. There's a clear plastic panel on one side of the machine so fellow geeks can gawk at the system's snazzy circuit boards. For added effect, the interior is lit up by a blue neon light.

The Alienware system was even more bizarre. The curvaceous, glossy black case was encrusted with colored lights and logos that look like small alien heads, and the case itself is actually shaped like the head of some alien from "The X-Files."

The Area-51 7500 would certainly look right at home in Darth Vader's office. (One cool feature is a software utility that lets you adjust the colors of the exterior lighting.)

If there's one complaint with these new PCs (and all PCs, for that matter), it's that they don't play the massive variety of games available for the consoles.

On the flip side, these are computers that can be used to surf the Internet, edit videos, download music and process words in addition to games. Try that with your Wii.

And really, you can't call yourself part of the wealthy computer geek club until you've edited a spreadsheet on a 30-inch screen with one of these monsters.

Deciding between the two? I'd have to give the edge to the handcrafted, fine-tuned Mach V, but really, it's like choosing between a Ferrari and a Lotus sports car. It's largely a matter of personal preference between two distinctly different designs - and either way, you'll have to spend a small fortune.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-06-17-14-17





Shrinking the Time It Takes to Shrink Those Video Files
J. D. Biersdorfer



Sometimes the destination is much more fun than the journey — for example, when converting video files or home movies for use on portable gadgets like the iPod and Sony PSP. Trimming videos down to the right size for a pocket player can take hours, but the new Instant Video To-Go hardware accelerator from ADS Technologies promises to cut that down to minutes.

At first glance, the Instant Video To-Go device looks like a U.S.B. flash drive. It comes with ArcSoft Media Converter 2 software in the box, but the real work is done by the accelerator. By the company’s estimates, a 100-minute two-gigabyte video in the MPEG2 format that would take around five hours to shrink down with software alone takes only 20 minutes to be transformed into the high-quality H.264 MPEG4 video used by many portables.

The device sells for around $80 and works with Windows XP systems with a U.S.B. 2.0 port; full specifications and a link to buy are at www.adstech.com. It can convert video to several formats, including Windows Media Video and QuickTime. It does not, however, capture video from outside sources like DVDs, just video stored on your computer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/te...ref=technology





HDTVs, Ripe for the Picking
Eric A. Taub

FALLING prices, improved technology and more programming choices have made this year absolutely, positively and finally the time to jump in and buy a high-definition TV.

Wait a minute. Wasn’t that what they were saying last Christmas?

According to the industry’s boosters, when it comes to HDTV, every year is the best year to buy such a set.

But this year seems better than the others — really.

Those waiting for lower prices do not need to wait more than a few weeks. The equivalent high-definition set from Sony that cost $10,000 five years ago now costs $1,000. In the last three months, the cost of flat-panel HDTV sets has dropped 12 percent on average, said Tamaryn Pratt, the principal owner of Quixel Research of Portland, Ore.

And Consumer Reports has enthusiastically recommended HDTV for the first time since the magazine began covering the technology. In terms of price, programming and quality, “HDTV has reached a tipping point,” said Paul Reynolds, the magazine’s electronics editor.

Yet those who want to upgrade from their once-giant 27-inch TVs are still in for sticker shock. While less expensive today, a high-definition set of comparable size costs hundreds of dollars more than a standard TV.

For many people, it will cost even more after they experience the superior picture quality, Dolby Digital surround sound and wide-screen image. They will be enticed not just to replace their aging tube set, but to trade up to a flat-panel or rear-projection model the size of a Smart car.

Today, 50-inch and larger flat-panel TVs are finding their way into more dens and living rooms. And larger rear-projection sets are producing images approaching the size of art-house movie screens.

Here is a look at some trends in HDTV pricing, features and technologies.

Pricing

HDTV-set prices are in free fall. “Prices are dropping literally by the week,” Ms. Pratt said. “We call it the pricing Armageddon.”

A Panasonic 42-inch plasma set that cost $3,000 last Christmas is $1,800 today (and can be found at Amazon.com for $1,450). Similarly, Panasonic’s 50-inch model was $5,000 last Christmas, but is now $2,800, and can easily be found for $2,250.

Liquid-crystal-display sets, which used to cost much more than plasma TVs of the same size, are reaching price parity in the smaller sizes.

The prices of larger-size L.C.D. sets will continue to fall as manufacturers improve their ability to carve out more L.C.D. panels from a single piece of glass.

While the price drops have been steep, they are not finished. “The price decline is accelerating,” Ms. Pratt said. She predicted that a typical 42-inch flat panel TV would drop to $1,400 retail by this time next year, and a 50-inch model to $2,000.

720P VS. 1080I VS. 1080P

Depending on the model, HDTVs display images at different resolutions. The highest is known as 1080p, and is now featured on many large-screen high-end sets.

While 1080p creates the best high-definition image, no programs are broadcast in that standard because too much bandwidth is required.

So the only way to see a true 1080p image is to watch an HD DVD that has been recorded in one of the high-definition formats: high-definition DVD or Blu-Ray. Otherwise, HDTV images from broadcasters are converted to 1080p, with pixels added to the image to improve the resolution.

Whether you can see the difference between a 720p, 1080i or 1080p picture depends on the set’s quality, screen size and the distance you are sitting from it.

L.C.D. VS. Plasma ...

The performance of L.C.D. sets has been plagued by blurred images during fast-moving scenes. But L.C.D. pictures appear to have better contrast than plasma sets when viewed in bright light.

On the other hand, plasma TVs have traditionally come with a wider viewing angle. But the sets weigh considerably more than L.C.D.’s, so they are more difficult to hang on a wall. (Not many people do that anyway.)

With Sharp’s newest generation of L.C.D. sets, motion-blurring problems have been solved, said Bob Scaglione, the company’s senior vice president for marketing.

Two new Sharp models (a $3,200 46-inch set and a $4,300 52-inch unit) feature a four-millisecond picture response time, half that of previous models, Mr. Scaglione said.

He called the reduced response time “a major seismic shift in technology,” adding, “This takes the wind out of the sails of the plasma camp that has long said L.C.D. TVs were not good for watching sports.”

... VS. Rear-Projection Sets

As the prices for ever-larger L.C.D. and plasma sets drop, they are nudging less-expensive rear-projection sets out of the market. As a result, rear-projection sets are growing, sold in sizes where L.C.D. and plasma still cannot compete.

A new 56-inch 1080p rear-projection model from Samsung, the $4,200 HL-S5679W, uses red, green and blue light-emitting diodes to illuminate the screen, rather than the traditional bulb used in a rear-projection set. The picture is created with digital light processing technology (D.L.P.); a chip contains millions of tiny mirrors that move to allow light to pass through to the screen.

The advantage of L.E.D.’s is that the light lasts 20,000 hours at full brightness, compared with a 4,000-hour life for a traditional bulb, said Dan Schinasi, a Samsung senior product marketing manager.

Sony’s two new top SXRD 1080p rear-projection sets use a different technology, called LCoS, or liquid crystal on silicon, to create an image. Both sets, the $6,000 70-inch KDSR70 XBR2 and the $3,800 60-inch KDSR60 XBR2, feature the same electronics and a 2.5-millisecond response time, an “advanced iris” to improve color rendition, a 10,000:1 contrast ratio and automatic adjustment of brightness based on the room illumination.

HDMI

To ease the task of connecting DVD players, set-top boxes, game consoles and audio receivers to an HDTV, the industry has adopted a standard called HDMI. An HDMI plug carries both audio and video signals in one cable, eliminating the nest of wires that plague many home theater setups.

Next year, HDMI version 1.3 will begin to appear on TVs and other components. The new standard gives manufacturers the ability to display billions rather than millions of color gradations, and to introduce auto-correction of lip-synch problems.

Bells And Whistles

It may be simple to hide a 27-inch TV in a corner, but giant plasma or L.C.D. sets are another matter.

To improve the sets’ decorative qualities, manufacturers are paying more attention to design issues. Sony offers interchangeable bezels on its 40- and 46-inch Bravia L.C.D. models. The company has sold 1,000 of the $300 colored frames, which come in red, black, blue, brown or white, since their introduction in August.

Philips’ Ambilight technology, available on select models, projects variable colors onto the wall behind the set, complementing the colors of any particular scene.

For those who place a set away from a wall, Philips has introduced a 42-inch L.C.D. model with four-sided Ambilight technology. The colors are projected onto the attached frame rather than onto the wall.

The Future

Look for more TVs to feature HDMI inputs on the front and sides of the set, making it easier to connect game consoles, video cameras and other devices that use the HDMI connection standard.

Taking the concept of TV as a home-entertainment center further, Sharp will introduce a set next year that comes with an Ethernet jack, so users can download entertainment content from specific Web sites.

When You Get The Set Home

The picture you see on an HDTV in the store will invariably look different when you get the set home. Every manufacturer cranks up the TV’s brightness and color controls at the factory, so images look good in a fluorescent showroom.

Once the set is unpacked, you can adjust the brightness and color controls. TVs from Philips now incorporate a settings assistant, in which a split screen shows before-and-after views of an image, reflecting the changes you have made.

Sharp and other manufacturers incorporate automatic tuning circuitry; once activated, the set will adjust its color and brightness to match the room’s conditions.

For those who want the best picture, use a tuning DVD, like Digital Video Essentials. The disc guides you through a series of tests that help you adjust the display optimally.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/te...c20&ei=5087%0A





GIZMOS

Media Players Tout Portable Music, Video
May Wong

Portable media players and related accessories are among the hottest gift items this holiday season. People can now carry thousands of songs in their pocket, and many of the sleek gizmos can display photos and videos as well.

It's an alluring new kind of lifestyle: entertainment on-the-go. A soundtrack for your life.

A sampling of what's available:

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Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod

The most popular line of portable players, commanding 75 percent of the U.S. market, is known for its sleek design, ease of use and integration with Apple's iTunes software and online store. The iPod Shuffle is the smallest in the lineup - tinier than a matchbook. The Shuffle lacks a display, playing songs in random order or according to a playlist. The iPod Nano, which has a 1.5-inch display, is the midsize model but still super-slim, using up to 8 gigabytes of flash memory to store 8,000 tunes or 25,000 photos. The full-size iPod has a beefier 30- or 80-gigabyte hard drive and can play back video on a bright 3.5-inch screen. (Manufacturer's suggested retail price: 1GB Shuffle $79; Nano, from $149 for 2GB to $250 for 8GB; video-capable iPod $250 for 30GB, $350 for 80GB)

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SanDisk Sansa e200R Rhapsody series

An MP3 player with an easy, integrated way to access millions of songs through the Rhapsody subscription music service. Sansa players are the second-most popular in the U.S. market with a 10 percent share, according to The NPD Group, a research company. Unlike iPods, the e200R players also offer an FM tuner/recorder, voice recording and a memory card slot for additional storage. The 1.8-inch color screen displays photos and video, though video playback is not a main feature. Comes preloaded with music from Rhapsody. (MSRP: Four models from $140 for 2GB to $250 for 8GB. Separate music subscription needed)

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Creative Zen Vision W

A portable video player with a generous, bright 4.3-inch wide-screen display. It supports MP3 and WMA audio files and a variety of video standards, including Windows-based formats used by movie download services like Amazon.com's Unbox. Compatible with TiVoToGo so TiVo users can transfer recorded television programs onto the device. A CompactFlash slot can be used to play back photos or videos from digital cameras. ($300 for 30GB, $400 for 60GB)

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Archos 604 WiFi

Play music and videos that are streamed from your PC or stored on this 30-gigabyte multimedia player with built-in Wi-Fi wireless networking. It features a vibrant 4.3-inch touch screen and supports a variety of video formats, including copy-protected files from movie download services that use Microsoft's digital rights management technology. It also can be used to surf the Web. It records TV shows when docked to an optional digital video recording station. The device turns into a hard drive-based camcorder when it's connected to a digital camera and an optional adapter - or a separately sold helmet mini-cam. (MSRP: $450)

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iRiver Clix

The Clix is a compact, rectangular media player with a 2.2-inch color display that can handle songs, photos and video. It features an FM tuner/recorder and voice recording, and also works with Windows-based music services, including immediate, integrated compatibility with MTV Network's Urge download/subscription music service. The device also can play downloaded casual games. It comes preloaded with games and songs from eMusic. (MSRP: $170 for 2GB model, $200 for 4GB)

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Pioneer Inno

The Inno is a portable XM satellite radio that also plays MP3 and Windows Media song files stored on its 1-gigabyte of internal memory. It not only can directly record your favorite XM radio channels but also features a built-in FM transmitter and integration with the Napster music service. If you hear a tune you like on XM, you could tag it for purchase later on Napster. (MSRP: $300. Napster subscription sold separately)

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Myvu Personal Media Viewer

Watch videos or downloaded TV programs while you're washing dishes with this personal media viewer that's worn like a pair of space-age style sunglasses. It hooks up to a portable media player so it seems like you're watching video on a 27-inch screen instead of a 2.5-inch one. There's a universal version that weighs 2.4 ounces and works with any media player or a lighter, made-for-iPod version. (MSRP: $269 for universal model, $400 for iPod model)

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Marware's Sportsuit Sensor(plus) with the Nike/ iPod Sport Kit

This combination creates a pedometer system that could be your virtual running coach while pumping out your exercise tunes. The Nike/iPod kit has a receiver that connects to an iPod Nano and wirelessly communicates with a sensor that slides into a pocket under the insole of specially designed Nike shoes. It tracks speed, time, distance and calories burned - data which can be uploaded later to your workout log on NikePlus.com. The velcro pouch from Marware means you could attach the sensor to the straps of any running shoe and not just special Nike treads. (MSRP: $10 for the Marware pouch, $29 for the Nike + iPod Sport Kit)

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Bose QuietComfort 3 headphones

Listening to tunes on a digital music player while riding in subways, airplanes or cars could be less of an audio challenge with this noise-canceling headphone set. It's worn over the ear and uses electronic wizardry to dampen noise from the outside world. This latest model is smaller than its QC2 predecessor. Instead of large cups that envelop the ears, it has pads that rest on them. (MSRP: $349)

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I177 iLuv Stereo Docking System

Forego the chatter of morning DJs with this iPod-compatible clock radio. If folks are already toting their own music everywhere with iPods, why not also the bedroom where you can fall asleep or wake to your favorite tunes? This iPod-compatible clock radio - with a traditional design and alarm clock features - will also simultaneously recharge the iPod. (MSRP: $90)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-05-17-44-20

Some Gadget Gifts Make Work, Play Easier

Nothing shows how much you care more than a gift that makes play more fun and work less arduous. From an advanced computer mouse to a robot vacuum that sucks up nails, there's no shortage of gadgets to stuff into stockings or place under trees.

A sampling of gadget gifts for the home, office, car, train and anywhere:

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Nintendo Wii

Watch where you swing. Nintendo Co.'s new gaming console with an unusual motion-sensing controller promises to get families off the couch, using the wand controller like a virtual tennis racket, baseball bat, football, steering wheel or weapon. Who would have thought video gaming could make you break into a sweat? The graphics are nowhere near as impressive as those on Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, but it's more affordable and somewhat easier to find. (Manufacturer's suggested retail price: $250. Games sold separately.)

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IRobot Dirt Dog

Now you can clean the floors of your garage and not just your home with the push of a button. The maker of the Roomba and Scooba - the popular disk-shaped robots that vacuum carpets and scrub hard floors - has designed the Dirt Dog rover to fetch heavy-duty workshop messes, including wood chips, material scraps and small nails. (MSRP: $130)

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Garmin nuvi 660

Quibbles over reading maps could be relegated to the past with a growing crop of car satellite-navigation systems. This latest pocket-sized GPS travel assistant with a 4.3-inch color widescreen display does more than give you turn-by-turn directions, traffic alerts and the location of the nearest gas station. It also lets you make handsfree cell phone calls via a Bluetooth microphone and speaker. A built-in FM transmitter also lets you listen to MP3s or audio books stored on the gadget through your car stereo. (MSRP: $900)

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Philips VoIP 321 Cordless Phone

More people than ever are using the Internet to chat with family and friends but haven't ditched their trusty land lines at home. This cordless phone straddles both worlds and can handle both kinds of calls with eBay Inc.'s Skype as the Internet telephone service provider. It features a speakerphone, caller ID and displays whether an incoming call is Skype-based or from your traditional phone company. The base station needs to be connected to both a phone socket and a computer's USB port. (MSRP: $99)

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Logitech MX Revolution Cordless Laser Mouse

This might be the quickest, slickest and smartest mouse around for computer-weary hands. It's the only mouse with a tiny motor so users can flick the scroll wheel into a free-spin for hyperfast navigation through huge documents or Web sites. Imagine zipping through 10,000 Microsoft Excel rows with a single flick. You can even set up different mousing modes to kick in depending on the software program in use. It has a dedicated button, too, for quick Web searches. (MSRP: $100)

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Pinnacle Systems PCTV HD Pro Stick

Watch high-definition television on a desktop or laptop PC with this portable TV tuner that plugs into a USB 2.0 port. About the size of a pack of gum, it retrieves over-the-air high-definition or standard-definition TV signals and can turn the computer into a digital video recorder, though you'll need to be mindful of the hard drive space available for recordings. It's a relatively cheap way to view HDTV - and from any place you can tote a laptop. Comes with a thumb-sized wireless remote control and a retractable antenna. (MSRP: $129)

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Nikon D40 Digital SLR Camera

Do you want your pictures to look professional but have no clue what ISO levels are? This entry-level, 6.1-megapixel, single lens reflex camera has built-in shortcuts and a cheat sheet of sorts that can guide SLR rookies to shooting better photos. It's lightweight and one of the smallest SLRs on the market. The fast-handling speed - a key difference between any SLR and point-and-shoot digital camera - means better action shots and fewer missed images as your pet or toddler turns away from the lens. (MSRP: $600, includes a 3x zoom, 18mm-to-55mm lens)

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Sony Reader

An electronic book reader doesn't offer the tactile satisfaction of turning a page, but the Sony Reader is the first e-book to at least imitate the look of paper by using an innovative screen technology. The 6-inch display appears more like a grayish piece of paper than a monochrome LCD screen, making the text easy on the eyes. The Reader's internal memory holds up to 100 books and can be expanded with memory cards. Load books or other documents from your PC, or buy e-books at Sony's online store where prices are generally a dollar or so less than the printed book. (MSRP: $350)

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Seagate Portable External Hard Drive

Consider it a vault for digital valuables. Using this compact external drive as a backup or additional storage for photos, videos, music, important e-mails and documents will save people from deep regret should their computer's hard disk fail. It's quiet, weighs less than a pound, has a footprint that's smaller than a 4-by-5 inch photo, and is rugged enough for travelers on-the-go. Plugs into a computer's USB port. A range of capacities are available; the largest, a 160-GB model, can hold 51,200 photos, 2,665 hours of music, or 160 hours of video. (MSRP: from $90 for 40GB to $230 for 160GB.)

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Harmony 1000 Remote Control

A sleek universal remote control with a 3.5-inch color touch screen. Easy enough for self setup and less expensive than rival high-end touchscreen models that are typically custom-installed. After an initial setup that involves connecting it to a computer and entering the model numbers of your entertainment devices, a single button press is all that's needed to watch TV or a movie, listen to music or play a game. It handles up to 15 audio or video devices. (MSRP: $500)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-05-16-41-13

Cell Phones for the Holidays
Bruce Meyerson

No longer is the cellular phone selection limited to the RAZR, a $500 Treo and hundreds of look-alikes and act-alikes. Recent months have brought a wave of new devices that stand apart from the pack in terms of looks and next-generation features.

Dominating the new crop is a widening array of BlackBerry-like "smart" phones designed to be more consumer-friendly in function and price. As compared with the $300 to $500 traditional price tag for higher-end devices, these handsets are debuting at $200 with a two-year contract.

More than ever, thin is also in, with the carriers offering a growing number of slenderized clamshell and candy-bar phones. Yet despite the shrinking size, phones are coming with more built-in bells and whistles: external memory slots for storing music and photos, higher-resolution cameras and high-speed Internet capabilities.

A sampling of notable new handsets:

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BlackBerry Pearl from T-Mobile and Cingular Wireless

The first BlackBerry targeting the consumer market, the Pearl is the first with a digital camera (1.3 megapixels), an MP3 music player and a memory slot. Just 2-inches wide and weighing 3.2 ounces, the Pearl's narrow QWERTY keyboard features two letters per key, relying on predictive software to suggest and choose the desired letter. A glowing navigational trackball - dubbed the Pearl - on the front replaces the signature side track wheel on other BlackBerry models. ($349.99 to $399.99 list price, depending on carrier, $199.99 with contract commitments and rebates)

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LG "enV" from Verizon Wireless

The enV, also called the VX 9900, is a slimmer and lighter upgrade to the "V," a clamshell that opens to reveal a spacious QWERTY keyboard and dual speakers on the sides of a wide screen. Though a smidge longer and wider than the V, the enV is almost a quarter-inch thinner at 0.78 inch deep and half an ounce lighter at 4.6 ounces. The enV also features GPS satellite navigation and a higher-resolution 2 megapixel camera. ($319.99 list price, $129.99 with two-year agreement and $50 rebate)

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Nokia E62 from Cingular Wireless

The E62 is the first mass-market smart phone based on the Symbian operating system offered in the United States. There's a heavy focus on e-mail through multiple applications. It also features a full-QWERTY keyboard and an external memory slot, but no camera. The E62 is "quad-band" compatible with four common wireless frequencies for overseas roaming. ($349.99 list price, $99.99 with two-year contract and rebate)

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Motorola KRZR K1m from Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Alltel

An offshoot of the sleek RAZR line, the KRZR is a third of an inch smaller from side to side compared with its famous cousin, though a tad thicker, taller and heavier. Unlike the RAZR, the KRZR features external music controls. The version of this handset currently available in the United States also features a 1.3 megapixel camera, a memory slot and GPS location tracking. A version sold overseas and expected to be offered by other U.S. carriers next year has a 2 megapixel camera. ($349.99 to $399.99 list price, depending on the carrier, $199.99 to $249.99 with contract commitments and rebates)

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Motorola ic502 from Nextel

The first dual-network phone since the merger of Sprint and Nextel, the ic502 offers Nextel subscribers decent wireless Internet speeds for the first time using Sprint's network. It also provides access to Nextel's hugely popular walkie-talkie services. The GPS-enabled handset is built to military specifications to withstand rugged conditions. While it doesn't sport a camera and other consumer-ish features, the higher data bandwidth is a major upgrade from the sub-dialup speed of other Nextel phones. ($249.99 list price, $59.99 with mail-in rebate and two-year contract)

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Palm Treo 680 from Cingular Wireless

The first Treo targeting the consumer market, the 680 is slightly slimmer in size and far more slender in price than its predecessors. This QWERTY-keyboard device runs on the Palm platform and features a new 5-button "quick launch" toolbar on the touch screen. An ounce lighter than the pricier Treo 700, other physical distinctions include an internal antenna and a memory slot on the side. On the downside, the 680 has a lower-resolution camera and doesn't connect with Cingular's speedier data network. ($449.99 list price, $199.99 with two-year contract and rebate)

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Samsung BlackJack from Cingular Wireless

A small and sleek handset packed with high-end features, the Windows-based BlackJack is less than half an inch thick and weighs 3.5 ounces. Features include high-speed "3G" Internet access and a choice of navigation with either a front four-way key or a thumb wheel on the side. There's also a full-QWERTY keyboard,1.3 megapixel camera and external memory slot. It's quad-band compatible with four common wireless frequencies for overseas roaming. ($449.99 list price, $199.99 with two-year contract and rebate)
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Samsung M610 from Sprint

Billed as the thinnest clamshell phone in the United States, the M610 is just 0.47 inch thick, or about a tenth of an inch thinner than the RAZR. It's also about a fifth of an ounce lighter at 3.28 ounces. Perhaps more importantly, it connects with Sprint's broadband-speed Power Vision network. Other features include a 2 megapixel camera, external memory slot and GPS location tracking. ($329.99 list price, $179.99 with two-year contract)

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Samsung Trace from T-Mobile

At just 0.3 inch thick, the Trace is a new slimness champ among "candy bar" (non-flip) phones. Despite the small size and weight - 2.5 ounces - the phone offers an unusually large screen and multimedia features: 1.3 megapixel camera, MP3 music player and external memory slot for storing pictures and music. ($199.99 list price, $99.99 with two-year contract)

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Sidekick 3 from T-Mobile

The newest addition to the popular Sidekick family is about 20 percent smaller than its predecessor and features a new trackball for one-handed navigation. Other improvements on the SideKick 2 include the addition of an MP3 player, external memory slot, and a removable battery. ($479.99 list price, $249.99 with two-year contract)

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T-Mobile Dash

A cellular and Wi-Fi smart phone running on Windows Mobile. Features include a full-QWERTY keyboard, 1.3 megapixel camera, external memory slot, Windows Media Player Mobile. The phone also offers quad-band compatibility with four common wireless frequencies for overseas roaming, and an internal Wi-Fi antenna to connect to the Internet over a home or public wireless network (such as T-Mobile Hotspots at Starbucks and other retail locations). ($349.99 list price, $199 with a two-year contract)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-05-18-05-31





Accidents, yes. Cancer, apparently not

Cell Phones Don't Raise Cancer Risk: Study
Will Dunham

Using a cellular phone does not increase a person's risk of cancer, according to a broad study released on Tuesday involving more than 400,000 Danish cellular telephone users.

A team of researchers used data on the entire population of Denmark to determine that neither short- nor long-term use of cellular phones, also called mobile phones, was linked to a greater risk of tumors of the brain and nervous system, salivary gland or eyes, leukemia or cancer overall.

It is estimated that more than 2 billion people worldwide use cellular phones.

"I think the results of this study are quite reassuring," Joachim Schuz of the Danish Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen, the lead researcher, said in an interview by cellular phone from Denmark.

The study, one of the most comprehensive to date, represented the latest evidence endorsing the safety of cellular phones. The data available to the researchers allowed them to look at a large number of cell phone users and assess potential risks many years after they first used them.

"The big advantage is a whole nation is included in the study," Schuz said.

The phones emit electromagnetic fields that can penetrate into the brain, and some scientists have sought to determine if this could cause cancer or other health problems.

Schuz's team studied data on 420,095 Danish cell phone users (357,553 men and 62,542 women) who first subscribed for mobile service between 1982 and 1995 and were followed through 2002 -- meaning some were tracked for two decades. The researchers then compared their cancer incidence to the rest of Denmark's population.

A total of 14,249 cancer cases were seen among the cellular telephone users, a number that was lower than would be expected for that population, according to the study appearing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Clean Bill Of Health

"We were not able to identify any increased risks of any cancers that could be related to the use of the cellular phones," John Boice, a cancer epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University who worked on the research, said in an interview.

Boice said the type of radiation involved in cell phones is not known to damage cells or DNA. "So there's no biological mechanism that would suggest that even this type of exposure could cause cancer or DNA damage," Boice said.

The study reinforces the consensus among leading health organizations that cellular phones do not cause harmful health effects, a wireless industry group said.

"The overwhelming majority of studies that have been published in scientific journals around the globe show that wireless phones do not pose a health risk," said Joseph Farren, spokesman for CTIA, the Washington-based wireless industry group.

The researchers acknowledged some limitations in their work. Schuz said they could not differentiate between people who used the phones frequently and those who did so sparingly, meaning the researchers could not rule out the possibility that some type of increased risk exists among heavy users.

"There is, in fact, a hazard from the use of a cellular phone that we have to all be concerned about," added Boice, but it is not cancer-related. "And that's using a phone when we're driving an automobile," leaving a driver distracted and causing accidents.

The study was funded by the Danish Cancer Society and Danish Strategic Research Council.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...2_healthNews-3





NTT DoCoMo Recalls Sanyo Battery Packs
AP

NTT DoCoMo said Thursday it is recalling 1.3 million battery packs made by Sanyo Electric Co. because some of them could generate excessive heat and rupture.

The battery packs made by Sanyo and installed in Mitsubishi Electric Corp's D902i handsets are subject to recall, according to NTT DoCoMo spokesman Kazunori Higuchi.

The model is only sold in Japan, Higuchi said.

The battery packs were made through May 2006 and owners of the handsets will be directly notified, Japan's largest mobile phone service operator said in a statement.

The problem is due to deformed parts installed in the battery. If the surface of the battery pack is dented accidentally, the battery could general excessive heat and rupture during or immediately after charging, NTT DoCoMo said.

The company has confirmed at least one battery rupture due to the problem and there were 17 other reports of overheating or rupture.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-07-04-56-41





NRK, Ericsson Wireless Announce Ad Test

Norwegian broadcaster NRK and Swedish wireless equipment maker LM Ericsson AB on Wednesday announced what they called the world's first test of customized advertising for mobile phone television.

For the next two months, volunteers in Norway will receive interactive commercials tailored to their age, gender, interests and location while watching television on their mobile phones, the Norwegian state broadcaster said. Some 20 Norwegian and international advertisers are also participating, a news release said.

"Bonuses include fast channel-switching, built-in interactivity and easy access to new services," said NRK Director of Development Gunnar Garfors. "And many viewers even appreciate adverts, as long as they are relevant and may help lower the price of the service."

During the test, anyone in Norway who volunteers will be able to access NRK's two television stations and five of its radio channels with their normal mobile phones, using existing mobile phone infrastructure and a Java application.

For the test period, NRK is broadcasting a made-for-mobile television show, called "Paa traaden," or "On the Line," which allows views to interact by mobile phone with hosts, through voting, chatting, or sending photos or video clips. Mobile phone users can watch other programs live or on demand, as well.

The advertising will also be interactive, and is on the forms ranging from videos to downloadable products, a news release said.

"Our solution makes it possible for viewers to interact with their trusted brands, and it provides the advertising industry with an innovative, high-involvement customer marketing tool," Kurt Sillen, vice president for Ericsson Mobility World, said in a news release.

NRK said the trial could form the basis for a mobile TV advertising business model, possibly drawing more viewers, increasing traffic and revenues, while opening for new advertising formats. It said users could get a better mobile TV experience, possibly with sponsored programs.

A year ago, NRK and Ericsson on Friday announced what they say was the world's first test of interactive mobile television, and have been involved in a series of new media tests and projects.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-06-08-31-19





VoIP Subscribers Grow 18 Percent in 3Q
Bruce Meyerson

U.S. subscribers to Internet-based telephone services grew 18 percent to 8.2 million in the third quarter, but the growth rate slowed for a second straight quarter, according to the research firm TeleGeography.

The latest tally on the market for Voice over Internet Protocol, better known as VoIP, is more than double the total of a year ago.

VoIP revenues for the second quarter were up about two and a half times - $732 million across the United States, compared with a year-ago level of $298 million.

Vonage Holdings Corp. remained the biggest provider with 1.95 million subscribers, followed again by Time Warner Inc.'s cable TV business at 1.64 million. But Comcast Corp. moved into third place with 1.35 million, surpassing Cablevision Systems Corp.'s 1.10 million.

TeleGeography predicted the market would grow by roughly 1.5 million subscribers in the fourth quarter to end the year with 9.7 million, or about 8.7 percent of the nation's households. Revenues are expected to approach $2.6 billion for the year, or more than 2.5 times the 2005 total of just over $1 billion.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-08-17-16-11





India Web Calls By BPOs Face Axe
Joji Thomas Philip & Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee

After blogs and websites, the government is planning a clampdown on BPOs and KPOs over, what it feels is, illegal use of internet telephony.

It is giving final touches to a proposal under which ITeS companies must furnish the names of authorised service providers from whom bandwidth and internet telephony minutes have been taken. The companies will also have to give an undertaking that they will not use the services of unlicensed foreign service providers such as Net2Phone, Vonage, Dialpad, Impetus, Novanet, Euros, Skype and Yahoo.

As per Department of Telecommunications’ (DOT) estimates, these unlicensed service companies provide 30 million minutes of internet telephony per month to corporates, call centres and BPOs in the country.

According to official sources, foreign players such as Skype, in addition to disturbing the level-playing field for bonafide licensees, were also causing great revenue loss to the government as they did not pay the 12% service tax and 6% revenue share on internet telephony. Sources said DoT was keen to implement this move on security grounds too. Foreign service providers could be a “serious security threat as they did not come under any Indian regulator and policy framework,” they added.

The CEO of a leading BPO company claimed, on conditions of anonymity, that the larger ITeS organisations were well aware of regulatory issues, and were abiding by the law, but pointed out that the issue may be more prevalent in case of smaller BPOs. “However, one also needs to keep in mind that technology is changing rapidly and it will be hard to monitor such things. The policy in the next few years also needs to look at cost-effective technologies that offer significant economic benefits to businesses,” the executive said.

The government move, when implemented, will fulfil a long-pending demand of internet service providers (ISPs). Internet Service Providers Association of India president Rajesh Chharia said: “It is essential that the government seeks this undertaking from call centres as these foreign service providers do not possess the requisite licences as mandated by the Government of India for Indian ISPs.”

Once this proposal is implemented, the government, in case of an emergency, would be able to trace details of all internet telephony minutes. This is because, when minutes are purchased from authorised players, the company is mandated to provide any data pertaining to the use of internet telephony like call detail record, if required by the security agencies.

ISPAI has also demanded that the DoT put a notice on its websites indicating the names of operational ISPs having internet telephony licenses so that call centres and BPOs can ensure that they are availing services from an authorised service provider.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...how/726843.cms





The DOJ's New Spin on Blocking Software
Bennett Haselton

"In recent arguments over the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, both sides have argued over the efficiency of Internet blocking software. While COPA would prohibit commercial U.S. websites from publishing freely available material that is "harmful to minors", the ACLU has argued that blocking software is a far more effective alternative, since among other things it can block porn sites located overseas, non-commercial websites, and p2p programs, all of which are beyond the reach of COPA. On the other hand, we had the surreal experience of watching the Department of Justice lawyer arguing in favor of a censorship law by saying that the blocking software alternative was unfair to children -- because it blocked too much legitimate material."

"For example," said DOJ attorney Eric Beane during opening arguments, "one filter even blocked a website promoting a marathon to raise funds for breast cancer research. Part of the CIA's World Fact Book was blocked. And a page with an ACLU calendar. [Blocking software blocks] a significant portion of other materials on the World Wide Web, materials that in many cases are necessary for a child to complete his homework." (Opening arguments transcript, p. 37.) As someone who has been publishing critiques of blocking software for years, I read those words and felt like cheering, despite the fact that I'm sitting in the other side's fan section for this match. (Beane is right, but he's missing the point, which is that whatever problems exist with blocking software, are minor compared to the problems with COPA -- because blocking software raises no constitutional issues when it's used by a private party in their own house, whereas COPA affects everyone in the U.S.)

The irony, of course, is that three years ago, in the trial over the similarly-named Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) which required blocking software in all schools and libraries that receive federal funds, it was the ACLU pointing out the flaws in blocking software and the Department of Justice claiming that blocking software was accurate and effective.

At first it would seem that both sides are now guilty of flip-flopping. But reviewing what was said then and what was said now, my conclusion is that the ACLU did nothing more than shift their focus to a different set of facts, while the government did contradict themselves. And the source of this seeming flip-flop actually comes down to something pretty simple: two different ways of stating one set of numbers.

Now before going further I can't resist saying that I think the whole debate over "harmful to minors" material is pretty silly, because I don't think the pro-censorship side has ever put forth a reason why they think that pictures of naked people, or even people having sex with each other, are harmful to people under 18. I disagree with some people on matters like abortion and the death penalty, but I at least think they have some facts on their side; but I don't know of any facts supporting people who think that pornography is dangerous. Why is a woman's nipple harmful but a man's nipple isn't? How are the majority of high school students who have already had sex anyway, supposed to be harmed by pictures of other people having sex? And apart from the logical paradoxes, the pervasiveness of the Internet has now given us empirical data too: virtually all minors have now have access to anything they want to get on the Internet (either at home, or by sneaking to a friend's house), and where's the evidence that adolescents' brains have been hormonally turned to mush any more than they always have been?

But for the remainder of the discussion, suppose you're addressing people who believe that nudity and sexual material really are harmful to people under 18. (In any case, the judges probably believe it, and even if they don't, they're bound by legal precedents that assume as much.) The question is how accurately blocking software achieves this goal.

Blocking software has two types of error rates: underblocking (failure to block porn sites) and overblocking (blocking of non-pornographic sites). Underblocking errors are usually expressed one way: the percentage of porn sites in a given sample that are not blocked. But overblocking errors can be stated in two ways: the percentage of non-porn sites that are blocked, or the percentage of blocked sites that are not pornographic. (There are borderline cases like nude art sites, but it turns out they're not common enough to affect the margin of error much; the vast majority of sites are either clearly porn or clearly not.)

The key is that if you want the overblocking rate to sound low, you talk about the percentage of non-porn sites that are blocked. If you want it to sound high, you talk about the percentage of blocked sites that are non-porn.

For example, in the 2003 Supreme Court arguments over CIPA, Department of Justice attorney Theodore Olson downplayed the error rates of blocking software by saying:

"But even if it's tens of thousands of the -- of the 2 billion pages of material that is on the Internet, we're talking about one two-hundredths of 1 percent, even if it's 100,000, of materials would be blocked."

Here he's referring to the percentage of non-porn sites that are filtered. Attorney Paul Smith, arguing against the law, countered: "And so we have -- on these lists is a proportion, a huge proportion, perhaps 25, perhaps 50 percent of the sites that are blocked that are not illegal even for children."
"And so we have -- on these lists is a proportion, a huge proportion, perhaps 25, perhaps 50 percent of the sites that are blocked that are not illegal even for children."
and: "And the evidence is that there's about 11 million websites on the Internet, in --in the accessible part of the Internet and that 100,000 of those are the sexually explicit ones and that the --there are at least tens of thousands more that are on the list. So it's --the Government also says in their brief that about one percent of the Internet is over- blocked, which would be about 100,000 sites. So it is a substantial percentage. It is also a substantial amount. And most importantly, it's a very large percentage of what they're blocking is not what they intend to block."
"And the evidence is that there's about 11 million websites on the Internet, in --in the accessible part of the Internet and that 100,000 of those are the sexually explicit ones and that the --there are at least tens of thousands more that are on the list. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. So it's --the Government also says in their brief that about one percent of the Internet is over- blocked, which would be about 100,000 sites. So it is a substantial percentage. It is also a substantial amount. And most importantly, it's a very large percentage of what they're blocking is not what they intend to block."

-- that is, talking about the percentage of blocked sites that were non-pornographic. Both sides cited the same figure (100,000 non-pornographic sites blocked, apparently referring to an average across all blocking programs) -- but that same number could be seen as an "error rate" of either one hundredth of one percent, or 50%, depending on which formula you use.

Then in this year's COPA trial, the ACLU called CMU professor Lorrie Faith Cranor who testified that in tests that she reviewed,
"[blocking software programs] correctly blocked an average of approximately 92 percent of objectionable content. And they incorrectly blocked an average of 4 percent of content not matching the test criteria."
(Oct. 24th transcript, p. 57.) Back to talking about the percentage of non-porn sites that are blocked -- which, again, when you put it that way, sounds low. On the other hand, although I couldn't find exact numbers cited by the DOJ's lawyers on the number of sites that were incorrectly blocked, in the portions of his opening argument quoted above, Eric Beane focused on the sad fact of the sites that were blocked -- not the fact that they comprised only a tiny fraction of sites on the Web. The two sides simply swapped formulas.

As for Peacefire's own studies over the years of blocking software error rates, one of the legitimate criticisms that could be made about our efforts was that we focused almost exclusively on the second number, the percentage of blocked sites that were non-porn. If you were interested in how blocking software actually affects the surfing experience of minors who are forced to use it, perhaps you would focus more on the first number, the percentage of non-porn sites that are blocked. Perhaps, you might say, that as an organization addressing the blocking software issue specifically from a minors' rights point of view, we really should have focused on that number quite a bit! But I did get a bit preoccupied with playing "gotcha" with the blocking companies, focusing on the percentage of blocked sites that were obvious mistakes, because it was frankly too much fun publicizing the absurdly high error rates of their programs, which belied the claims made by most blocking companies that all sites on their blacklist were examined by a human at their company before being added. (Although it seems to have done some good -- as far as I know, no blocking company is making that claim about their product today.)

The error rates were indeed absurdly high; we took a sample of the first 1,000 .com domains in an alphabetical list, ran them through several programs, and found that of the sites blocked, between 20% and 80% (!) were errors. (The median error rate was about 50%, which corresponds to the figure given by Paul Smith in the CIPA trial oral arguments quoted above.) This surprised even critics of blocking software, and skeptics complained that we must have made mistakes or simply fudged the numbers. (The whole point of using the first 1,000 .com domains was that if we had used a random sample and gotten error rates like that, we could have been accused of "stacking the deck" and using a fake random sample that was loaded with known errors and not truly random.) Years later, it came out that the companies whose products we'd tested, had been following a policy that if they found an objectionable site on a given IP address, all sites on that IP would be blocked, on the theory that hosting companies often group porn sites together on the same machine. Trouble was, while this may have often been true for bona fide porn sites, it was not true for most sites that featured just an incidental shot of someone's bare breasts or a large amount of profanity -- but this would also be enough to get all sites blocked at a given IP. So the 80% error rate was about what you'd expect after all.

You might think that a product with an 80% error rate could never survive in the marketplace, but consider who was buying the software. On the one hand, you had schools and companies buying the programs -- but they didn't care whether it worked so much as they cared about being able to show, for liability reasons, that they did something. On the other hand, you had parents who really did care about keeping porn off their computer -- but how many parents really did any thorough testing of the product, other than making sure it blocks the obvious sites like Playboy.com? A serious test could take days. Their kids are the only ones who would end up doing any thorough "testing" of the product, and if they found a way around it, it's not likely that they would tell their parents. With no market pressure to fix problems, an 80% error rate wasn't really surprising.

But even the most vocal critics of blocking software only pointed out that blocking software sometimes blocked sites about plumbing, or soccer, or aluminum siding; we never claimed that most of those sites would be blocked. Even with our high numbers of wrongly blocked sites, if they had been expressed as a percentage of non-porn sites that are blocked, they would have still sounded like a "low error rate".

The moral is, always keep track of what the "error rate" refers to in these debates. By moving around a few variables in a formula, the Department of Justice was able to go from saying in 2003 that blocking software was minimally intrusive, to making a speech in 2006 that made blocking software sound so tragically limiting that you could practically hear the violins playing. (I know, people who live in glass houses... *ahem*)

And what about the ACLU? If the Department of Justice is guilty of flip-flopping, from saying in 2003 that blocking software is a reasonable and narrowly tailored solution, to saying in 2006 that it's clumsy, ineffective, and overbroad, is the ACLU guilty of flip-flopping in the opposite direction?

Actually, the ACLU's position has always been consistent: blocking software has First Amendment problems when used in a school or library, due to overblocking and underblocking errors, but if used in the home it is still a lot more effective than a law like COPA, which would score pathetically on the same scale. As ACLU attorney Chris Hansen stated in opening arguments:
"COPA does not reach the 50% of all speech that is overseas... Filters are the most effective. Almost all of the filters that [expert witness] Mr. Mewett tested were at least 95% effective. Think about the 5% ineffectiveness compared to where we start with COPA being 50% ineffective..."
(Opening arguments, p. 22. Note: Chris Hansen has confirmed that the official transcript is wrong; it has him saying "35%" instead of "95%", which wouldn't make any sense.) As for overbreadth, COPA would criminalize speech by adults, intended for adults, something that no blocking program could ever do -- and as for minimizing collateral damage to innocent sites, does anyone think that even if COPA is upheld, parents will throw out their blocking software?

Even though the ACLU focused on different statistics in the two trials, in both cases they were focusing on the numbers that were relevant to the issue. When talking about constitutional problems with blocking software in schools and libraries, the percentage of blocked sites that are incorrectly blocked, is important, because it's their First Amendment rights that are at issue. The DOJ lawyer talking about all the sites that weren't blocked, was missing the point. If your site is being blocked, it hardly matters to you that for every blocked site there are hundreds that are not. "Hey, your site is not accessible, but don't worry, your competitors' sites are!"

On the other hand, when talking about the use of blocking software in the home, the publisher's First Amendment rights are not at issue; the issues that most parents would care about, are how effective it is, and whether most clean sites are still accessible. Well of course most of them are. Blocking software is not that bad.

Confused? The option to just stop making a big deal out of porn on the Internet is looking better all the time, isn't it?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/06/1356239





How to Disable Your Blocking Software
You'll understand when you're younger

To get around your blocking software:

1. First, try a circumvention site like https://www.StupidCensorship.com/. Be sure to type https at the beginning of the URL, not 'http'. Even though this site has been widely known for months, many networks have their blocking software set up incorrectly so that sites beginning with https:// are not blocked, and https://www.StupidCensorship.com/ will still be accessible.

2. If that doesn't work, you can join our e-mail list where we mail out new Circumventor sites every 3 or 4 days. Of course, employees of blocking software companies have gotten on this list as well, so they add our sites to their blocked-site database as soon as we mail them out, but in most places it takes 3-4 days for the blocked-site list to be updated. So the latest one that we mail out, should usually still work.

3. If you have a computer with an uncensored Internet connection, you can follow these easy steps to set up your own Circumventor site. For example, if you want to get around blocking software at work, and you have a home computer with an uncensored Internet connection, you can install the Circumventor on your home computer. Then it will give you a new URL, and you can take that URL in with you to work and type it into your browser to get around the network blocking software.

4. If you're trying to get around blocking software that's installed on the local computer, and not on the network, use these instructions to boot from the Ubuntu Live CD. (These instructions include tips on how to tell the difference between blocking software that's installed "on the local computer" and software that's installed "on the network".)
http://www.peacefire.org/





News Corp. to Buy Out Malone’s Shares
Richard Siklos

Rupert Murdoch and John C. Malone have settled their long-running corporate feud, as Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation agreed to buy out Mr. Malone’s big stake in the company in exchange for a controlling stake in DirecTV, cash and other assets valued at $11 billion, according to people briefed on the transaction.

After more than two years of on-and-off negotiations and jockeying that included Mr. Murdoch’s company adopting a poison pill takeover defense, a preliminary deal has been worked out that is expected to lead to a signed contract within two weeks, a banker briefed on the deal said.

If the deal goes forward as planned, Mr. Malone’s Liberty Media Corporation will acquire the News Corporation’s 39 percent stake in DirecTV as well as some $550 million in cash and other operating assets in a transaction that will allow both sides to avoid paying taxes. The News Corporation would simultaneously retire Liberty’s 19 percent voting stake in it in what amounts to a huge stock buyback.

For Mr. Murdoch, the deal would remove the threat of Mr. Malone’s challenging his family’s 31 percent voting interest in the News Corporation, which he has led for five decades. By virtue of shrinking the number of the company’s shares outstanding, it would also increase the Murdochs’ ownership to about 36 percent.

But it would come at the cost of selling a business, DirecTV, that Mr. Murdoch aggressively pursued for years before finally acquiring control of it in 2003 from General Motors. DirecTV is the nation’s largest satellite broadcaster with 15.5 million subscribers as of June 30, and another 1.7 million subscribers in South America.

Mr. Murdoch’s willingness to sell the stake may reflect recent concerns about how satellite broadcasters will compete against cable and telephone industry rivals in selling broadband Internet access and other nonvideo services.

It also would give the News Corporation a gain of close to $5 billion on the investment, based on DirecTV’s closing stock price of $23.53 today and the roughly $14 a share the company paid.

For Mr. Malone, the transaction also satisfies several financial and strategic objectives at once — not least of which is the ability to cash in on his big stake in News Corporation without paying taxes.

But it also puts Mr. Malone, the one-time king of cable television, back in the big leagues of companies that sell video services and could lead to a further reorganization of Liberty programming assets. These include half ownership of Discovery Communications, the QVC home-shopping channel and the Starz pay-television service.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/bu...rtner=homepage





Copying bad. Copying good.

Novelists Defend One of Their Own Against a Plagiarism Charge
Sarah Lyall

A basic indignation underlies the letters of support gathered here on behalf of the novelist Ian McEwan, who has been accused of plagiarizing from a historical memoir in his novel “Atonement.” If he can be so easily charged with lifting someone else’s work on the basis of such scant evidence, the other authors declare, than what about them?

The letters — from heavyweights like Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, John Updike, Zadie Smith, Martin Amis and, in an unusual gesture for a man who shuns publicity, Thomas Pynchon — were published here on Wednesday in The Daily Telegraph, which reported that a campaign of sorts had arisen in defense of Mr. McEwan. Most of the writers said that they were intimately familiar with what Mr. McEwan had done, having done the same thing themselves.

“If it is sufficient to point to a simultaneity of events to prove plagiarism, then we are all plagiarists, and Shakespeare is in big trouble from Petrarch, and Tolstoy stole the material for ‘War and Peace,’ ” wrote the Australian writer Thomas Keneally, the author of “Schindler’s List.” “Fiction depends on a certain value-added quality created on top of the raw material, and that McEwan has added value beyond the original will, I believe, be richly demonstrated.” If not, Mr. Keneally added, “God help us all.”

The issue arose late last month when The Mail on Sunday printed an article pointing to similarities between several passages in “Atonement,” Mr. McEwan’s novel about a young woman whose overactive imagination sets in motion a chain of tragic events, and “No Time for Romance,” the autobiography of the romance novelist Lucilla Andrews, who died in October.

In a section describing a hospital for wounded British soldiers in World War II, Mr. McEwan used details very similar to ones in Ms. Andrews’s book, including descriptions of the treatment of injuries, the bathing of the patients and the nurses’ use of life-size dolls to practice on.

Mr. McEwan wrote an article for The Guardian the next day pointing out that he had freely acknowledged using Ms. Andrews’s book for its period detail, and indeed had gone out of his way to praise her publicly. Any similarities in phrasing were inadvertent, he said.

In the London literary world the general feeing was that Mr. McEwan had been unfairly accused and that the controversy, if it was indeed a controversy, had been stirred up needlessly.

“I thought, well, we have come to a pretty pass where an author like Ian McEwan has to write on the front page of The Guardian explaining what research is,” Erica Wagner, literary editor of The Times of London, said in an interview. “We have perhaps lost this sense of literature as a conversation.” She added: “The myth of originality? There’s no such thing.”

Meanwhile Julia Langdon, who wrote the Mail on Sunday article, said that she had been presented unflatteringly by some of Mr. McEwan’s supporters. “What I am utterly astonished by is the suggestion that I had some sort of motive,” she said in an interview. “I’ve been accused of envy and malice and being a publicist for the film of ‘Atonement.’ I’m just a journalist. I don’t have an agenda.”

Ms. Langdon said she was careful not to accuse Mr. McEwan outright of plagiarism, and merely laid out the case as perceived by others. “Nor at any point have I said that I do not admire Ian McEwan, although I’m beginning to admire him a little less as a result of what he’s organizing,” she said.

But Mr. McEwan has not organized anything, according to his editor, Dan Franklin, the publishing director of Jonathan Cape. Mr. Franklin said via e-mail on Wednesday that he had originally asked several authors to submit statements supporting Mr. McEwan, and that the effort had snowballed, with others joining in spontaneously. Only a handful of the authors are also published by Jonathan Cape.

In the statements the authors cheerfully admitted to plundering other work — historical writing, autobiography, primary-source documents, other novels — for their own books, and said that such research was the lifeblood of any novel that depended on period detail. Colm Toibin said in his statement, for instance, that his book “The Master,” a fictional imagining of an important period in the life of Henry James, was peppered with phrases and sentences from the work of James and others.

Meanwhile Rose Tremain wrote that her book “Music & Silence” depended “to a shocking extent on one extremely small illustrated book, ‘Christian IV,’ by Birger Mikkelson.” Mr. Ishiguro said that if Mr. McEwan is guilty of plagiarism, “at least four of my own novels will have to be marked down as plagiarized.”

The Australian writer Peter Carey, who has twice won the Booker Prize, Britain’s best-known literary award, described the work of the novelist as “mixing what we see with what we think, with that which can never be.”

Referring to sources and inspirations for his own books, he went on: “There’s a line from ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ in ‘Bliss.’ ‘Jack Maggs’ is scattered with little pebbles of Dickens, and all sorts of stuff stolen from his and his family’s life. ‘Oscar and Lucinda’ has a Christmas pudding lifted from Edmund Gosse’s ‘Father and Son’ and a number of consecutive zoological words practically snipped from the zoological notes of P.H. Gosse. There are also sentences from the Bible and a tourist brochure, too.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/books/07pync.html







Daily Telegraph



How the World Caught Up With Pynchon
Michael Shelden

The reclusive American author has been unmasked by some technology that even he couldn't have dreamt up, says Michael Shelden

For most of his long literary career Thomas Pynchon has been as elusive as one of the murky plot lines in his notoriously convoluted novels. Unlike that other famous recluse of American literature – J D Salinger – Pynchon avoided publicity from the very start of his career and has done his best to hide all traces of his private life since, prompting some to call him the "Greta Garbo of American letters".

But this week he has issued one of his rare public statements – defending fellow novelist Ian McEwan against the charge of plagiarism – and has reminded everyone in the literary world not only of how powerful his support can be, but of how little is known about him.

Though the 69-year-old author has a large cult following, many of his most devoted readers couldn't tell you what he looks like or where he lives. In a big country like America, he has found it relatively easy to avoid the fame that came to him in the Sixties and Seventies with the publication of his two weighty masterpieces, V and Gravity's Rainbow.

There are only a handful of grainy photographs in circulation, all from his youth as a student at Cornell University, or during his brief service as a sailor in the US navy. In these pictures he appears as a gawky kid with a gap-toothed grin who seems to have little in common with the man he has since become – the mysterious conjurer of elaborate fictions that rival even those of his Cornell professor, Vladimir Nabokov.

Some determined readers have tried to fill in the great white blank of the author's biography. They've had only a few basic facts to work from. It was generally known that he came from an old and distinguished New England family and had been born on Long Island in 1937. At university, he studied engineering and worked for a short time at Boeing, serving as a technical writer in a division that developed the first long-range anti-aircraft missile.

But after he left Boeing, rumours about his life were far more plentiful than facts. It was said that he had moved to San Francisco and was living as a hippie, or that he was hiding out in Mexico as a smuggler of guns or drugs or both. Wherever he was, he had a good library. The multitude and range of literary references is mind-boggling in Gravity's Rainbow, which is set during the period of the V-2 assault on London and deals with a subject closely connected to the author's first job – missile development.

By the mid-Nineties, Pynchon was such an enigmatic figure that some critics were speculating that he might be the so-called "Unabomber" who was sending small packages of explosives to scientists and corporate leaders as a protest against uncontrolled technological growth.

And then, shortly after the Unabomber was caught hiding out in the wilds of Montana, Pynchon's cover was blown by an enterprising television crew from CNN. What they found was not a wild-eyed rebel or wizened hermit, but a prosperous, spry gent wearing a red baseball cap, a white moustache and a hip uniform of olive-green jacket and blue jeans.

He was living in a nice apartment on the Upper West side of Manhattan with a wife and child. His wife is Melanie Jackson, with whom he fell in love while she was working as his literary agent. Their son is called Jackson Pynchon, now aged 15.

The author didn't take kindly to being filmed and used his considerable influence among media types in New York – some of whom had loyally protected his identity for decades – to suppress the CNN video. The network reported their discovery and aired part of their film, but agreed not "to isolate [Pynchon] and identify him specifically." The report did add, however, in Pynchonesque fashion, that the author "does happen to be among the people you will see in street scenes in the movie accompanying this story".

It was an extraordinary effort to aid and abet the novelist in what seems an increasingly pointless attempt to continue weaving a spell of mystery around what is a very ordinary life. Pynchon admitted to the CNN crew that the word "recluse" was hardly appropriate to the active existence he enjoys in the media capital of America.

Yet he remains today as evasive as ever, emerging only periodically from his self-imposed obscurity to bring out a new book – his latest, Against the Day, was published only last month – or to issue short statements through intermediaries, such as his recent declaration of support for Ian McEwan.

But his days of anonymity may be coming to an end. Ten years ago, when the CNN video first aired, it was next to impossible to find bootleg copies of it. Now, thanks to youtube.com, anyone can watch the footage of Pynchon strolling down his street in New York.

It seems a fitting conclusion to a game of hide-and-seek played by a man whose work is obsessed with the dangers of living in a world where rampant technological progress threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone. His novels imagine all sorts of strange scientific marvels that the world must learn to live with, but even Thomas Pynchon's fertile brain couldn't have predicted that one day he would be unmasked by something bearing the wonderfully weird title of YouTube.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main...opynchon07.xml





Book Review

From Soup to Guts, the Making of a Foodie
Janet Maslin

HANNIBAL RISING

By Thomas Harris

Delacorte Press. 323 pages. $27.95.

This is what Thomas Harris’s readers would least like to hear from Mr. Harris’s flesh-eating celebrity, Dr. Hannibal Lecter: “I deeply regret any pain I may have caused for the victims and their families. For years I have helplessly battled the problem that caused me to misbehave. I intend to seek treatment for it immediately.”

Now for the second-least-welcome thoughts about Lecter. And these, unlike the above, actually were written by Mr. Harris. They come from “Hannibal Rising,” his final (please!) effort to cash in on a once-fine franchise that fell from grace. Plot points: Hannibal suffered a terrible trauma in childhood. Bad, bad men cooked and ate his baby sister. This gave him no choice but to become a cannibal himself. Monkey see, monkey do.

Does that motivation sound primitive? It shouldn’t. It is no more crude than the revenge plot that drives “Hannibal Rising” or the market forces that impelled Mr. Harris to cough up this hairball of a story. The book is the evil companion piece of a forthcoming film version of “Hannibal Rising,” for which Mr. Harris also wrote the screenplay, and is the supposed story of how the man became a monster.

“Here in the hot darkness of his mind, let us feel together for the latch,” Mr. Harris writes ludicrously. “By our efforts we may watch as the beast within turns from the teat and, working upwind, enters the world.”

Poetic pretensions notwithstanding, this particular beast is not slouching toward Bethlehem. Little Hannibal is headed from Lecter Castle in Lithuania (once home to Hannibal the Grim, a 14th- to 15th-century forebear) to Paris, by way of some grisly detours. “Hannibal Rising” begins as the Nazis invade Lithuania and drive the Lecters into hiding. Then it makes a meal of darling little Mischa Lecter, who cried out heart-rendingly for her brother (“Anniba!”), as her captors boiled a big pot of water.

On the theory that one such hellish vision is not enough, “Hannibal Rising” flashes back to it repeatedly. Supporting roles in Hannibal’s memory sequences are played by the corpses of his mother and beloved Jewish tutor. Suffice it to say that he is a scarred and lonely 13-year-old by the time he reaches France and encounters a vision of beauty: Lady Murasaki, the stately, exquisitely alluring Asian wife of Hannibal’s uncle.

Picture the magnificent Gong Li in this role — or just wait, because she’ll show up soon enough in the film version (due early next year). It will require all of her formidable acting skills to deliver dialogue like: “You are drawn toward the darkness, but you are also drawn to me.” Or this: “If you are scorched earth, I will be warm rain.” Hannibal himself, equally purple with Mr. Harris’s prose, prefers to speak in cricket imagery. For instance: “My heart hops at the sight of you, who taught my heart to sing.”

Despite lovely Lady Murasaki’s willingness to rain on him, Hannibal shows signs of teenage trouble. When a butcher makes crude remarks about Lady Murasaki’s anatomy, Hannibal savagely attacks him. “Flog no one else with meat,” a French police official warns him, but Hannibal will not heed that warning. While the book contains tranquil moments (“Hannibal sat on a stump in a small glade beside the river, plucking the lute and watching a spider spin”), Mr. Harris has not been summoned back from the Land of Writer’s Block to create lute-playing scenes.

A word about this elusive author: he has produced only five books since 1974, and his cult reputation as a superb thriller writer was once well deserved. After “Black Sunday” (about a blimp poised to attack a full stadium at the Super Bowl), he introduced Dr. Lecter and built two top-notch books around him: “Red Dragon” and “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Then something went terribly wrong. It took 11 years for Mr. Harris to add a new installment (“Hannibal” in 1999) that turned crisp, riveting precision into self-parody. The character lost all traces of his brilliance and ate the brains out of a living man’s sawed-open skull.

That was a hard act to follow, horror-wise. “Hannibal Rising” doesn’t come close. Its sadism is subdued (though still sickening), and its young Hannibal sounds nothing like the older one. The reader who begins with this new book will have no idea why any of the older ones are well regarded. Nor is there any notion of what makes Hannibal diabolically clever — beyond his rooting for Mephistopheles while watching “Faust” at the Paris Opera.

That glamorous setting is one of many, many theatrical cues and flourishes featured in the new book. Mr. Harris has specialized in highly visual imagery since his Super Bowl blimp days, but “Hannibal Rising” takes this tendency to crass extremes. Leaving no doubt that this book is part screenplay, Mr. Harris provides background music (part of Humperdinck’s opera “Hansel and Gretel” for the eating of Mischa), symbolism (the brutalization of beloved swans), horror-prone settings during Hannibal’s medical school years (“Night in the gross-anatomy laboratory”) and grandiose locations for big thoughts. Hannibal’s major epiphany conveniently comes while he is contemplating the votive candles at Notre Dame.

Although much of “Hannibal Rising” is earnestly cinematic (watch out for an underwater corpse “no longer bald, hirsute now with green hair algae and eelgrass that wave in the current like the locks of his youth”), this material also has its campy side. The cannibalism is ugly but silly, with Hannibal menacingly wielding mayonnaise during one sequence. The story’s main villain is so evil that he’s seen getting a pedicure from a woman with a black eye.

And when this villain turns desperate, so does Mr. Harris. “We are alike!” the character cries. “We are the New Men, Hannibal. You, me — the cream — we will always float to the top!” Pity the poor actor forced to say those lines. Then remember that cream can turn sour.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/books/08book.html





Microsoft Debuts Book Search Tool

Anyone wanting to view an obscure 19th Century tome from the vaults of the British Library will be able to look for it online from Thursday.

Microsoft is releasing its Live Search Books, a rival to Google's Book Search, in test, or beta, version in the US.

The digital archive will include books from the collections of the British Library, the University of California and the University of Toronto.

Books from three other institutions will be added in January 2007.

Search full text

All the books currently included in the project will be non-copyrighted but later it will also add copyrighted work that publishers have given permission to include in the project.

"We feel very strongly about copyright. We don't do any mass scanning of in-copyright works," said Danielle Tiedt, the general manager of Live Search Selection for Microsoft.

Initially the database of available books will be searchable from the book search engine's home page or as a category on the main Windows Live Search page.

Later Microsoft plans to integrate all the books scanned into its general search engine.

"What we are focusing more of our efforts on for live searching is integrating all of those content types together to give you the most relevant results. If, for example, it's a search on historical content, chances are the most authoritative content may be found in a books search," said Ms Tiedt.

The system has a feature called "search inside a book" which will allow users to search the full text of books.

"We've focused on making the search experience really impactful...People will have full access to all of the text," said Ms Tiedt.

A separate global digital library plan by Google is also under way.

The search giant is spending $200m (£110m) to create a digital archive of millions of books from four top US libraries. It is also digitising out-of-copyright books from the UK's Oxford University.

In contrast to Microsoft Google's plans include adding both copyright and non-copyright books from participating institutions.

Although only non-copyrighted books will be available to view in full text, its project has come under fire from the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/6213260.stm





Vista Is Ready. Are You?
Larry Magid

WINDOWS VISTA, the latest iteration of Microsoft’s operating system, is finally here. It was officially released to corporate users last week and will be available to consumers on Jan. 30. But now that Vista is ready, will your computer be? And what will be involved in an upgrade?

Microsoft says Vista offers increased security, along with an improved search function, an excellent calendar program, improved networking and a sidebar with quick access to mini-programs called gadgets. With the right display adapter, some editions of Vista will also offer a new interface called Aero that lets you preview what is inside a running program by placing your cursor over its thumbnail in the task bar.

It will be possible for many PC users to spend $99 to $259 to purchase a Vista DVD to upgrade their existing Windows XP machines. But before you do that, you need to take a good look at your PC as well as your peripherals and software. If your system isn’t quite compatible, it might be possible to make it ready for Vista with some additional memory or perhaps a new video card.

Even if your PC is Vista-ready, that doesn’t mean you should buy the upgrade kit. For most users, especially those whose hardware isn’t quite up to speed, it might make sense to wait until it’s time for a new PC.

The easiest way to get Vista is to buy a new PC after Jan. 30. If you want a new PC sooner, make sure the hardware is Vista-ready and see if the vendor is offering a coupon for a free or low-cost upgrade when Vista comes out. It is essential to compare the cost of buying a new system against purchasing Vista and upgrading your current PC. By the time you add up the cost of Vista plus any required hardware, it might be make more sense to get a new machine.

One variable for those thinking of upgrading is Vista’s system requirements, which vary by edition. Microsoft will offer a $99 Home Basic Edition that provides limited functionality but runs on more basic equipment. Unlike the higher-end versions, Home Basic won’t support the new Aero interface.

The minimum configuration to run the Home Basic Edition of Vista is a PC with 512 megabytes of memory, at least an 800-megahertz processor and a graphics card that is DirectX9-compatible; this includes most graphics adapters sold in the last few years. In other words, a vast majority of PCs that have been purchased in recent years are able to run this stripped-down version of Vista — but just because they’re able doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth the cost, effort and potential compatibility problems with existing software and peripherals.

Most consumers will find the $159 Home Premium edition more suitable. It includes the Aero interface along with Windows Media Center (to manage audio and video resources) and other features. The minimum hardware for the Premium edition is a gigabyte of memory and a one-gigahertz processor. You’ll also need DirectX 9 graphics with a Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) driver and at least 128 megabytes of graphics memory and pixel shader 2.0. Pixel shader refers to the ability of your graphics processor to render the surface properties of an image including lighting, shadows and other visual qualities.

Your machine must also have at least a 40-gigabyte hard drive with 15 gigabytes of free space as well as a DVD-ROM drive and audio output. While you can never have too much memory, Microsoft’s Vista group product manager, Greg Sullivan, said that one gigabyte was plenty. I’ve been running Vista on a 1.5-gigabyte machine and haven’t had any memory-related problems.

If your machine has Windows XP, an easy way to find out if it’s Vista-ready is to download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft’s Vista Web site (www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready). The program, which is available now, will scan your PC to determine which edition of Vista, if any, can run on your machine.

Be sure to plug in all your external peripherals, like printers, scanners and external hard drives, as they, too, need to be evaluated by the upgrade tool. When the upgrade adviser scan is finished it will tell which edition it recommends. You don’t necessarily have to buy the recommended edition. To the left of the screen is a list of other editions. Click on the ones you’re considering and scroll down to see what changes you might have to make to run that edition.

Don’t panic if the upgrade adviser finds that some of your device drivers aren’t Vista-compatible. Chances are there are new drivers available to fix the problem. Microsoft has included many drivers within the operating system so, if all goes well, it will take care of making sure that your display adapter, sound card, printer, Ethernet card and other devices have the software they need to operate correctly.

But the list of included drivers is not exhaustive. Very old, very new and relatively obscure hardware might not be included, so to be safe, before you install Vista, visit the Web site for each of your hardware vendors to download the latest Vista drivers. The upgrade adviser looks for minimal, not optimal requirements.

For the Aero interface, the video card or Graphics Processing Unit (G.P.U.) is the most important component. The chips on that card (or on your PC’s system board) do the heavy lifting when it comes to displaying images on your monitor. Vista’s Aero interface, according to Rob Csongor, vice president of Nvidia, a leading maker of chips for computer graphics, is especially taxing on video processors because of the way it renders windows.

The use of Vista’s Flip 3-D window changer, for example, requires the video card to render a 3-D image of all of your open windows every time you press Alt Tab. The Windows desktop, according to a Microsoft Web site, “will be dynamically composed many times a second from the contents of each window.”

Even if your graphics card is Aero-compatible, you may still want to upgrade for faster performance. In my tests, a three-year-old Aero-compatible card from ATI (now part of Advanced Micro Devices) was noticeably slower than newer, moderately priced (about $130) cards from both ATI and Nvidia. I noticed it and so did the Windows Experience performance scanning program that comes with Vista.

If you have a desktop PC with a graphics card that’s not up to the task, you can replace the card with one that is Vista Aero-ready, and if your PC system board has an embedded graphics system, it may still be possible to add an external card. If you have a notebook PC whose graphics processor isn’t Vista-ready, you’re pretty much out of luck because, other than adding additional memory, it’s generally not possible to upgrade internal components of a laptop.

Another way to improve performance is to use a U.S.B. thumb drive or SD card to take advantage of Vista’s ReadyBoost feature. Vista uses that memory to store some of your program code so that programs load much faster than if it had to load from the hard drive.

Whether or not your machine is compatible, upgrading an operating system can be challenging despite Microsoft’s efforts to make it as smooth as possible. You should definitely back up your data files before starting. You have the choice of doing an “in place” upgrade, which retains your applications and data files, or a “full install,” which requires you to reinstall your programs.

A full install by default will not delete your data, though it may make the data more difficult to find. It often results in a faster and more reliable system because it cleans up the Windows registry and deletes any spyware and possibly problematic software on your machine.

And if you’re reluctant to upgrade, don’t fret. If Windows XP works for you now, it will continue to work long after Jan. 30. Besides, Vista isn’t going away anytime soon. Whether you want to or not, you’ll probably be using it on your next PC.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/te...ref=technology





How Vista Lets Microsoft Lock Users In

Technology called "Information Rights Management," combined with copyright law and Windows Vista, give Microsoft the tools to hold users' data hostage in Office, says Cory Doctorow.

What if you could rig it so that competing with your flagship product was against the law? Under 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act, breaking an anti-copying system is illegal, even if you're breaking it for a legal reason. For example, it's against the law to compete head-on with the iPod by making a device that plays Apple's proprietary music, or by making an iPod add-on that plays your own proprietary music. Nice deal for Apple.

Microsoft gets the same deal, courtesy of something called "Information Rights Management," a use-restriction system for Office files, such as Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets.

We've had access control for documents for years, through traditional cryptography. Using PGP or a similar product, you can encrypt your files so that only people who have the keys can read them.

But Information Rights Management (IRM), first introduced in Office 2003, goes further -- it doesn't just control who can open the document, it also controls what they can do with it afterwards. Crypto is like an ATM that only lets you get money after you authenticate yourself with your card and PIN. IRM is like some kind of nefarious goon hired by the bank to follow you around after you get your money out, controlling how you spend it.

With IRM, an Office user can specify whether her documents can be printed, saved, edited, forwarded -- she can even revoke access to the documents after sending them out, blocking leaks after they occur. Documents travel with XML expressions explaining how they can and can't be used.

Now, if anyone was allowed to make a document reader, it would be simple to make a reader that ignores the rules. This is a perennial problem for Adobe's password-restricted PDFs -- the only thing that distinguishes them from normal PDFs is a bit that says, "I am a restricted PDF." Just make a PDF reader that ignores the bit and you've defeated the "security." It's about as secure as one of those bogus "Confidentiality notices" that your mail-server pastes in at the bottom of every email you send.

There are plenty of readers for Microsoft's Office formats these days. Apple makes at least two -- Pages and TextEditor. Google and RIM both have Office readers they use to convert Office documents to other formats. And there's also free readers like OpenOffice.org, which are open source and so can be modified by anyone with the interest to write or commission new code for them.

But now that the format is well understood, Microsoft needs another way to ensure that it only hands keys out to readers that can be trusted to follow the rules that accompany them. Pages or OpenOffice.org can request a set of document keys just as readily as Office can. Microsoft can try to create secret handshakes to make sure it only gives out the keys to authorized parties, but just as the document format can be cracked, so can the handshaking.

IRM has an answer. Unlike a crippled PDF, a restricted Word file is encrypted. Only authorized readers will get the keys. This technology will return Office users to the days before the file format had been reverse-engineered by competing products like WordPerfect, where reading an Office file meant licensing the file-format from Microsoft.

If anyone makes a client that listens to its owner instead of Microsoft, then the system collapses. No-print, no-forward, revoke and other flags for the document can simply be ignored. Once Microsoft sends a decryption key to an untrusted party, all bets are off -- Microsoft loses its lock-in and you lose any notional security benefits from IRM. This has been a purely theoretical problem until recently -- but the advent of Vista and Trusted Computing should put it front-and-square on your radar.

Microsoft has an industrial-strength answer to the problem of figuring out whether a remote client is authorized to request keys. Trusted Computing. For years now, most PC manufacturers have been shipping machines with an inactive "Trusted Computing Module" on the motherboard. These modules can be used to sign the BIOS, bootloader, operating system, and application, producing an "attestation" about the precise configuration of a PC. If your PC doesn't pass muster -- because you're running a third-party document reader, or a modified OS, or an OS inside a virtual machine -- then you don't get any keys.

What this means is that Apple can make Pages, Google can make its Doc-converter, and OpenOffice.org can make its interoperable products, but none of these will be able to get the keys necessary to read "protected" documents unless they're on the white-list of "trusted" clients.

What's more, adding crypto to the mix takes us into another realm: the realm of copyright law. The same copyright law that prohibits competing head on with Apple also prohibits competing head-on with IRM. EDI and other middleware companies built their fortunes on writing software that unlocks your data from Vendor A's format so you can use it with Vendor B's product. But once Vendor A's data-store is encrypted, you run afoul of the law merely by figuring out how to read it without permission.

Vista is the first operating system to begin to use the features of the Trusted Computing Module, though for now, Microsoft is eschewing the use of "Remote Attestation" where software is verified over a network (they've made no promise about doing this forever, of course). No company has spent more time and money on preventing its competitors from reading its documents: remember the fight at the Massachusetts state-house over the proposal to require that government documents be kept in open file-formats?

The deck is stacked against open file formats. Risk-averse enterprises love the idea of revocable documents -- HIPPA compliance, for example, is made infinitely simpler if any health record that leaks out of the hospital can simply have its "read privileges" revoked. This won't keep patients safer. As Don Marti says, "Bill Gates pitch[ed] DRM using the example of an HIV test result, which is literally one bit of information. If you hired someone untrustworthy enough to leak that but unable to remember it, you don't need DRM, you need to fix your hiring process." But it will go a long way towards satisfying picky compliance officers. Look for mail-server advertising that implies that unless you buy some fancy product that auto-converts plain Office documents to "revocable" ones, you're being negligent.

No one ever opts for "less security." Naive users will pull the "security" slider in Office all the way over the right. It's an attractive nuisance, begging to be abused.

The Trusted Computing Module has sat silently on the motherboard for years now. Adding Vista and IRM to it is takes it from egg to larva, and turning on remote attestation in a year or two, once everyone is on next-generation Office, will bring the larva to adulthood, complete with venomous stinger.
http://www.informationweek.com/story...SSfeed_IWK_All





TV Show Directory QuickSilverScreen.com Threatened by Fox
IPTV Guy

Summary: QuickSilverScreen is a US based website that is being forced to shut down or be given away for free after Fox claimed that LINKING to TV Shows on video sharing sites like YouTube and DailyMotion is illegal. Fox also alledgedly claims the site cannot be sold by the owner so therefore it must be given away for free.

In case you havn’t noticed there have been a number of directories popping up that link to full TV shows that are available online through video sharing sites such as YouTube and DailyMotion.

A few examples are All About South Park, Daily Motion Episodes and IPTV To Me, and apparently under US law all these sites are illegal. One such site has been targeted by Fox and asked to shut down, this site is QuickSilverScreen.

What Fox Says

The owner of the site recently disregarded a letter he received from Fox which stated that linking to copyrighted TV shows on the net is illegal.

”On behalf of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and/or its subsidiaries and affiliated companies (hereinafter collectively referred to as “Fox”), I am writing to notify quicksilverscreen.com of the infringement of Fox’s intellectual property rights in the above listed television series on the http://quicksilverscreen.com/ website and to demand that quicksilverscreen.com take immediate action to stop such infringements.”

The Legal Situation

“QuickSilverScreen may in fact violate US law”

QuickSilverScreen is owned and hosted in the USA and quickly reacted by switching to servers in Malysia. However, when Steve, the owner of QuickSilverScreen approached the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — A foundation that addresses social and legal issues arising from the impact of computers on society – he was told by EFFs Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann that “QuickSilverScreen may in fact violate US law, and that the EFF cannot represent him”.

I’m no Intellectual Property Lawyer but I think the legality around the site and linking to copyrighted content is very hazy. I’d like to emphasize the word may in the sentence “QuickSilverScreen may in fact violate US law”.

I’m pretty damn sure there is a strong argument that QuickSilverScreen is completely legal in the USA but at the same time there is also a strong argument it is illegal. I’m sure the last thing it wants is a legal battle with a big corporation like Fox.

“Fox is effectively being a Bully”

This law (if it were true) effectively takes freedom away from people by dictating what they can and can’t link to. This law is a grey area and Fox could very well be proved wrong. Luckiyl got Fox it can happily dictate what it believes to be the law unchallenged because they have the bigger pockets. Fox is effectively being a Bully trying to force sites like QuickSilverScreen so shut down.

What does this “law” mean?

Looking at recent South Park episodes that have appeared on YouTube you can see they are getting close to 10,000 views before they are taken down. Is it illegal for me to link to such an episode and tell people it’s there? That just doesn’t seem right.

If it is illegal for me to link to copyrighted content is it also illegal for me to write down the web address and give it to my friend? If I can’t communicate it on the internet then surely I can’t communicate it offline either. Am I not allowed to utter the words “South Park Episodes, Free, You Tube, Search” to my friends?

Where does the blame lie?

The people and companies who are really responsible for letting this copyrighted content become available on the internet are the video sharing sites for hosting the content and the people who upload the content.

YouTube and similar sites currently get away with hosting copyrighted content under the Safe Harbor laws by simply taking down any content when requested to do so by content owners.

Since illegal copyrighted content makes up a small proportion of content on video sharing sites and because it is uploaded by a user and not the website itself, the Safe Harbor laws hold quite strong, although they are not without holes.

Lucky for YouTube, it has some powerful Google lawyers behind the company to argue it’s point. Google has also reportedly paid off some content owners for the time being.

Also let’s not forget about that person who uploaded the copyrighted video? They knew exactly what they were doing and have no right to do it. But their identities are somewhat protected by the video sharing sites and the worst thing that happens to them is that they upload it again under a different username, while someone who links to that copyrighted video gets their site shut down.

Looking at this from a different perspective YouTube also seperates itself from a site like QuickSilverScreen because YouTube’s sole use is not to provide access to copyrighted content whereas QuickSilverScreen is solely to provide access to illegal content.

The Future of QuickSilverScreen

The owner of the QuickSilverScreen (QSS) who goes by the name of Steve says he has worked on the site for 8 years, since he was 18. Steve has built up a loyal community that has helped shape the website into a useful tool for finding TV shows online.

The ultimatum from Fox left Steve with a decision of closing the site or selling it, after putting years into the site he decided to sell it. According to Steve Fox were not too happy with this and told him he was not allowed to sell it.

In the QSS forum Steve said: “SitePoint banned my auction. (Thanks Fox!). Yes, Fox forced SitePoint to ban my auction, or at least that’s what SitePoint told me.”

Steve’s only option to keep the site alive is to give it away for free. He is asking anyone in a country which allows linking to copyrighted content to take over the site and promise to keep it alive. He is asking for $50 to cover the transfer of 5 domains associated with QSS.

Steve’s only option to keep the site alive is to give it away for free

On the QSS forum Steve said “Fox now claims that it is illegal for me to even SELL QSS to someone else. That’s why I’m giving it away” and in a separate thread he stated “Now I have to GIVE it away to whoever will take it, and that has not only made me cry once today, it has literally made me vomit three times in the last three hours.”

I feel sorry for Steve who’s obviously worked on the site for a long time and now has to give it away or see it shut down. However, anyone could see it would only be a matter of time before the TV companies gave QSS a kick with their boot of legal ‘justice’.

QSS will likely live on and move to some other distant foreign country away from the grasps of TV lawyers and even if it doesn’t there are plenty of other similar sites doing similar things that will continue to exist outside the US.

The Impact on Video and the Internet

Getting rid of QSS will not stop people watching free TV shows, they will just simply move onto somewhere else and use a site that is not based in the USA.

If TV companies want to stop this problem they need to tackle sites like YouTube head on to prevent them from hosting copyrighted TV shows and/or to provide a legitimate legal way to watch the TV shows online which is easy to use, not littered with adverts and fairly priced.

I do not agree with or condone pirating TV shows, but at the same time I do not agree with high DVD prices, excessive adverts on TV, and that there is no easy or fair way to download legitimate content off the net which is not overpriced and crippled with DRM.

For that reason I think TV shows appearing for free on the internet is a good thing and I hope it will eventually force content owners to distribute video fairly. Until that happens I won’t be siding with the TV companies when they threaten sites like QuickSilverScreen.
http://www.webtvwire.com/tv-show-dir...atened-by-fox/





Yahoo Shakeup Highlights Web Video Shift
Gary Gentile

The departure of television veteran Lloyd Braun from Yahoo Inc. underscores a shift, or at least a major hiccup, by Internet companies away from creating costly original content.

Braun, who once ran primetime programming for the Walt Disney Co.'s ABC network, left Yahoo this week after his role was greatly diminished in a companywide reorganization that placed his group into a newly created division.

Yahoo's hiring of Braun to run the new Yahoo Media Group two years ago sparked speculation that the online company was itching to become, in effect, a TV network on the Web, producing its own shows to attract eyeballs to its lucrative Internet advertising.

After all, Braun was responsible for ABC's nascent turnaround and the genius behind its hit show "Lost." Analysts saw great symbolism in the consolidation of Yahoo's far-flung media sites - music, video, finance and news - into a new Santa Monica office that was once home of fabled movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

But two years ago, no one foresaw the rise of sites such as YouTube and MySpace, which became huge companies by aggregating user-generated videos and creating communities where people could network. YouTube was eventually bought by search giant Google Inc. for $1.76 billion, while MySpace was snatched by News Corp. for $580 million.

Few people also foresaw that major media companies such as Disney, CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc. would begin selling TV episodes or full-length films over Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes store.

As YouTube and similar sites grew in popularity, Braun struggled to get competing Yahoo divisions to think in terms of content rather than technology, Braun recounted in an interview at his Santa Monica office several weeks before his departure.

One major glitch that consumed more than a year, for instance, was the lack of common software for producing and publishing content at the various product units inside Yahoo. Incompatible technology made it nearly impossible to design a template that could be easily shared by the various sites.

Before redesigns of such services as Yahoo Music or Yahoo Games could be launched, Braun's unit had to develop a common software platform, a task now completed. Yahoo recently started to rollout redesigned sites and introduced a new offering, Yahoo Food.

Braun also had to curtail ambitions to produce original shows for the Web. Replicating the TV network model would be prohibitively expensive, especially if such shows could only be viewed on a small computer screen.

Yahoo did create several new video and other programs, including news dispatches from war journalist Kevin Sites. The company also recently launched a series of live music performances similar to those featured on rival AOL's site.

But in a twist, one of its most popular shows, called "The Nine," features host Maria Sansone counting down nine notable user-generated video clips found on other sites such as YouTube.

Yahoo isn't alone.

When Time Warner Inc.'s AOL started breaking down its walls of exclusivity two years ago, the company cited its own video productions of concerts and other events as reasons people would want to visit its free, ad-supported sites. AOL even won a broadband Emmy for last year's "Live 8" concert special.

Although AOL isn't abandoning those productions, its focus lately has been on search. It wants to be the starting point for online video, whether it's hosted at AOL or at a rival like YouTube. AOL also started its own video-sharing service, UnCut Video, where users can share clips they produce with camera phones and camcorders.

The rapidly changing Web landscape has left Yahoo playing catch up, a situation this week's reorganization is designed to address.

"Frankly I'm surprised it took Yahoo so long to make this decision," said Dmitry Shapiro, chief executive of video startup Veoh Networks Inc. "I think it's been known for at least a year, with the success of YouTube and hundreds of media aggregator players like Veoh that are jumping into the game, that this is the way it should be done. But large companies move slowly."

Veoh wants to distribute user-generated and Hollywood content, but has no plans to create its own shows.

Nonetheless, original content created for distribution over high-speed Internet connections shouldn't be dismissed just yet, said former Disney chief executive Michael Eisner, who now invests in media-related startup companies such as Veoh.

"The production of original content for broadband is coming and will be significant and important just like it was significant and important for cable," Eisner said.

Eisner said traditional media and online companies are in a transitional period where Hollywood-generated programs, TV shows and films are competing for attention with user-generated material. Makers of original Web content aren't wrong, he said, but may be hurt by pushing it before consumers are ready.

"To take a position that it's all going to move to user-generated and be this anarchy and democracy is wrong," Eisner said. "To take the point of view that it's all going to be distribution of ancillary product from the studios and others is wrong. And to take the position that it's all going to be original product is wrong.

"It's all three and it's all a matter of being too early or too late."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-07-18-49-15





Newspaper revenue continues to fall

Tribune November Sales up Despite Slowdown in Publishing Revenue
AP

Tribune Co. said Thursday that sales edged higher last month despite a continued slowdown in publishing revenue as the media company's broadcasting and entertainment group delivered an outsized gain.

Tribune, whose publishing properties include the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun, said consolidated revenue in the four weeks ended Nov. 19 rose 0.8 percent to $433 million from $429 million the previous November.

The company has been under fire from investors disappointed with its slumping share price and is reviewing a possible sale of some or all of its assets.

In Connecticut, Tribune owns The Hartford Courant, Greenwich Time and The Advocate of Stamford newspapers, along with television stations WTIC and WTXX.

Publishing revenue fell 1 percent to $326.3 million, hurt by a 0.3 percent decline in advertising revenue to $262.7 million. Circulation revenue fell 6 percent to $43 million as the company offered deep discounts to retain readership.

Retail ad revenue added 1.6 percent, with hardware and home improvement ads driving the gain. The recent slowdown in the housing market has led homeowners to redirect money into refurbishing existing houses instead of buying new.

National advertising revenue fell 1.7 percent, hurt by a drop in help wanted and automotive classified, which were off 6 percent and 5 percent respectively. Real estate ad revenue rose 6 percent.

Tribune, which also owns 24 television stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team, said its broadcasting and entertainment group delivered a 6.9 percent revenue increase to $106.9 million.

Tribune shares slipped 4 cents to close at $32.16 on the New York Stock Exchange.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-07-17-08-23





ICANN Reviews Revoking Outdated Suffixes
Anick Jesdanun

Over the past few years, the Internet has seen new domain names such as ".eu" for Europe and ".travel" for the travel industry. Now, the key oversight agency is looking to get rid of some.

Meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers began accepting public comments this week on how best to revoke outdated suffixes, primarily assigned to countries that no longer exist.

The Soviet Union's ".su" is the leading candidate for deletion, although the former Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro are transitioning from ".yu" to their own country codes. A Google search generated millions of ".su" and ".yu" sites.

East Timor now uses ".tl," though about 150,000 sites remain under its older code, ".tp."

Also obsolete is Great Britain's ".gb," which produced no sites on Google. Britons typically use ".uk" for the United Kingdom.

ICANN assigns country codes based on standards set by the International Organization for Standardization, which in turn takes information from the United Nations.

Conflicts can potentially occur when codes are reassigned.

Czechoslovakia didn't need ".cs" after it split into the Czech Republic (".cz") and Slovakia (".sk"). Serbia and Montenegro got ".cs" following the breakup of Yugoslavia, before further splitting into Serbia (".rs") and Montenegro (".me"). (In this case, a crisis was averted because Czechoslovakia let go of ".cs" long before it was reassigned, and Serbia and Montenegro never used it before splitting up.)

A few other domains have already disappeared, including East Germany's ".dd" and Zaire's ".zr" after the country became the Democratic Republic of the Congo (".cd").

ICANN wants to establish a formal policy and is accepting comments online until Jan. 31. Further deletions will likely take a year or longer to give users time to change.

Reductions in the number of domains - now 265 - are likely to be temporary. ICANN is crafting rules on how to roll out additional domains, including ones in non-English characters.

ICANN also is launching a review of eligibility rules for ".int," a domain reserved for international organizations.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-06-18-11-58





Q & A

Adding Up Drive Capacity
J. D. Biersdorfer

Q. I have two 250-gigabyte external drives that I use with my PowerMac. When I open the Mac’s System Profiler program, it says that the drives are 232 gigabytes each. I’m wondering why this discrepancy exists.

A. The discrepancy you see between the advertised capacity of the hard drive and what the computer reports reflects different mathematical measurement systems being used to calculate the size. Computer operating systems use binary math to measure capacity, in which a kilobyte is not 1,000 bytes but 1,024 bytes — or 210.

Hardware manufacturers, on the other hand, use the base 10 system.

So while a hard drive may be advertised by its maker as having a capacity of say, 80 gigabytes (on the base 10 system), the computer will report the same drive as having a capacity of about 74 gigabytes in the binary math system.

Breaking it down into bytes shows the discrepancy more clearly: the drive manufacturer is counting one gigabyte as one billion bytes (1,0003) and the computer is counting that same one gigabyte in binary as 1,073,741,824 bytes (1,0243). As drives get bigger, the discrepancy gets larger. (An explanation of binary math is at kb.iu.edu/data/ackw.html.)

The hard drives on new computers may also show less available space than advertised. In addition to the differing math systems calculating the size of the drive, many new computers ship with a significant amount of installed software, including the operating system, free and sample programs and other applications that take up room.

Battery Changes on a Laptop

Q. My laptop is old and its battery won’t hold a charge anymore, so I always have to keep it plugged in to use it. How difficult is it to replace the battery?

A. Laptop batteries are usually pretty easy to replace, since they were generally designed to be removable in the first place and pop out once you press the release switch on the underside of the computer. As for finding a replacement battery, you can usually get one from your laptop’s manufacturer.

There are also many online stores that sell batteries for many different brands of laptops, but make sure you get the right type with the correct voltage for your model. Laptops for Less (www.laptopsforless.com) and Batteries.com (www.batteries.com) are two such shops.

Personal Zing in Your Ring

Q. Is there an easy way to make a ring tone for my phone from a CD track or MP3 file?

A. Making your own ring tones isn’t too difficult if you have a mobile phone that supports MP3 ring tones and a way to transfer files onto the phone from your computer. If you’re not sure about either, check your phone’s manual or wireless carrier’s Web site for the technical specifications for your phone model.

One of the simpler ways to make and install your own ring tones is to use software dedicated to the task. Programs like ToneThis (free at www.tonethis.com) for Windows or Xingtone Ringtone Maker for Windows and Mac OS X (xingtone.com; $20 to buy, free trial available) are options.

These types of programs let you edit the sound clip of your choice to the appropriate length and send it to your phone as a file download that you can assign as a ring tone. Most ring tone software makers list phone models and carriers on their Web sites so you can make sure your handset is compatible.

You may also be able to convert and edit a CD track or MP3 file with free or inexpensive audio programs available around the Web if your computer doesn’t have any sound-editing software already installed. Audio Shareware sites like HitSquad (www.hitsquad.com) and Audio Utilities (www.audioutilities.com) are two such sites. The open-source program Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net) is a free audio editor for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux systems, but you need to download the program’s optional LAME MP3 encoder to export edited MP3 files.

Once you have edited your new ring tone with your audio program, you can transfer it to your phone as you do other files — U.S.B. cable, Bluetooth connection and e-mail download are some methods available. Check your phone’s manual for instructions on transferring audio files to the proper place for use as ring tones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/te...ref=technology





Poll: 'IM-Ing' Divides Teens, Adults
Will Lester

Teenager Michelle Rome can't imagine life without instant messaging. Baby boomer Steve Wilson doesn't care that it even exists. They're part of an "instant messaging gap" between teens and adults. And the division is wide, says an AP-AOL survey on how Americans use or snub those Internet bursts of gossip, happy date-making and teen tragedies that young people exchange by the hour while supposedly doing homework.

Rome, 17, a high school senior in Morristown, N.J., spends more than two hours each day sending and receiving more than 100 instant messages - or "IM-ing."

"I use it to ask questions about homework, make plans with people, keep up with my best friend in Texas and my sister in Connecticut," she said. "It has all the advantages."

The 51-year-old Wilson, a mechanic in Kutztown, Pa., prefers using e-mail and the telephone.

Instant messaging "is the worst of both worlds," he said. "It manages to combine all the things I don't like about each. I'm more or less a dinosaur. I use the Internet for things like buying car parts, reading celebrity gossip."

Almost half of teens, 48 percent of those ages 13-18, use instant messaging, according to the poll. That's more than twice the percentage of adults who use it.

According to the AP-AOL poll:

- Almost three-fourths of adults who do use instant messages still communicate with e-mail more often. Almost three-fourths of teens send instant messages more than e-mail.

- More than half of the teens who use instant messages send more than 25 a day, and one in five send more than 100. Three-fourths of adult users send fewer than 25 instant messages a day.

- Teen users (30 percent) are almost twice as likely as adults (17 percent) to say they can't imagine life without instant messaging.

- When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail.

- About a fifth of teen IM users have used IM to ask for or accept a date. Almost that many, 16 percent, have used it to break up with someone.

The bug can be contagious at any age.

Faith Laichter, a 50-year old elementary school teacher from Las Vegas, says she started using instant messaging after watching her children.

"I do it more now," she said, boasting: "Sometimes I do two conversations at once."

That's nothing for young people who check their e-mail, download music and perform other tasks at the same time.

"It's kind of remarkable to watch," said Steve Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "They can keep half a dozen conversations or more going at the same time."

But that can be more of a distraction than an accomplishment, says Naomi Baron, a linguistics professor at American University.

"If you have 15 conversations going simultaneously," she said, "sometimes you're just throwing things out there and then dashing off to the next customer."

A bow to the traditional: When sharing serious or confidential news, both teens and adults prefer to use the telephone, the poll said.

The survey of 1,013 adults and 500 teens was conducted online by Knowledge Networks from Nov. 30-Dec. 4. The margin of sampling error for the adults was plus or minus 4 percentage points, 5.5 points for teens.

Technology for instant messaging has been available to the general public for about a decade. Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN are the major IM operators.

---

AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this story.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...12-08-06-37-43





BlackBerry Orphans

The growing use of email gadgets is spawning a generation of resentful children. A look at furtive thumb-typers, the signs of compulsive use and how kids are fighting back.
Katherine Rosman

There is a new member of the family, and, like all new siblings, this one is getting a disproportionate amount of attention, resulting in jealousy, tantrums, even trips to the therapist.

As hand-held email devices proliferate, they are having an unexpected impact on family dynamics: Parents and their children are swapping roles. Like a bunch of teenagers, some parents are routinely lying to their kids, sneaking around the house to covertly check their emails and disobeying house rules established to minimize compulsive typing. The refusal of parents to follow a few simple rules is pushing some children to the brink. They are fearful that parents will be distracted by emails while driving, concerned about Mom and Dad's shortening attention spans and exasperated by their parents' obsession with their gadgets. Bob Ledbetter III, a third-grader in Rome, Ga., says he tries to tell his father to put the BlackBerry down, but can't even get his attention. "Sometimes I think he's deaf," says the 9-year-old.

The household tension comes as gadgets like BlackBerrys and Treos -- once primarily tools for investment bankers and lawyers -- have entered the pantheon of devices, including the TV, the personal computer and the cellphone, that have forcefully inserted themselves into the American home. Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry, logged 6.2 million subscribers at the end of the second quarter this year, up from 3.65 million in the same period last year. Palm sold 569,000 Treos in the first quarter this year, up 21% from the same quarter the previous year. The problem has only gotten worse as more devices combine phone and email. Since people rarely leave home without a cellphone, even events that were once BlackBerry-free are now susceptible to office email.KICKING THE HABIT

Engaging in near-constant BlackBerry checking is similar to acts associated with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. We sought advice for curbing the habitual email itch from professionals.

The gadgets are recognizable to young children. A few parents say "BlackBerry" is in their toddlers' early vocabulary. Lucas Ellin, a Los Angeles 5-year-old, pretends he has his own, parading around the house with a small toy in his hand while shrieking, "Look, Mommy, it's my BlackBerry!" Earlier this fall, Novelty Inc., a manufacturer in Greenfield, Ind., unveiled its "My Very Own Berry Assistant" toy, available at convenience stores and gas stations under a sign reading, "Just like Dad and Mom's." The company expects to sell nearly 100,000 units before the end of the year.

'Very Annoyed'

In Austin, Texas, Hohlt Pecore, 7, and his sister, Elsa, 4, have complicated relationships with their mother's BlackBerry. "I feel very annoyed," says Hohlt. "She's always concentrating on that blasted thing." (Hohlt says he picked up the word "blasted" from the film "Pirates of the Caribbean.")

Elsa has hidden the BlackBerry on occasion -- Hohlt says she tried to flush it down the toilet last year. Their mother, Elizabeth Pecore, who co-owns a specialty grocery store, denies the incident. But Elsa also seems to recognize that it brings her mom comfort, not unlike a pacifier or security blanket. Recently, seeing her mom slumped on the couch after work, Elsa fished the BlackBerry from her mother's purse and brought it to her. "Mommy," she asked, "will this make you feel better?"

Emma Colonna wishes her parents would behave, at least when they're out in public. The ninth-grade student in Port Washington, N.Y., says she has caught her parents typing emails on their Treos during her eighth-grade awards ceremony, at dinner and in darkened movie theaters. "During my dance recital, I'm 99% sure they were emailing except while I was on stage," she says. "I think that's kind of rude."

Emma, 14, also identifies with adults who wish their kids spent less time playing videogames. "At my student orientation for high school, my mom was playing solitaire," she says. "She has a bad attention span." Her mother, Barbara Chang, the chief executive of a nonprofit group, says, "It's become this crutch."

Safety is another issue. Will Singletary, a 9-year-old in Atlanta, doesn't approve of his dad's proclivity for typing while driving. "It makes me worried he's going to crash," he says. "He only looks up a few times." His dad, private banker Ross Singletary, calls it "a legit concern." He adds: "Some emails are important enough to look at en route."

Some mental-health professionals report that the intrusion of mobile email gadgets and wireless technology into family life is a growing topic of discussion in therapy. They have specific tips for dealing with the problem, like putting the device in a drawer during a set time period every day. "A lot of kids are upset by it," says Geraldine Kerr, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Morristown, N.J. She says parents need to recognize that some situations require undivided attention. When you shut off the device, she says, "You're communicating nonverbally that 'you matter and what's important to you is important to me.' "

Still, like teenagers sneaking cigarettes behind school, parents are secretly rebelling against the rules. The children of one New Jersey executive mandate that their mom ignore her mobile email from dinnertime until their bedtime. To get around their dictates, the mother hides the gadget in the bathroom, where she makes frequent trips before, during and after dinner. The kids "think I have a small bladder," she says. She declined to be named because she's afraid her 12- and 13-year-old children might discover her secret.

Even in the context of close relationships, the issue is thorny. Christina Huffington, 17 years old and the older daughter of the Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington, introduced the topic of her mom's constant emailing during a session with the family therapist. Her mother carries two BlackBerrys with her at all times. She looks at them while shopping and doing the downward-dog pose in yoga practice. "I had the feeling that my mom never listened to me," Christina says. The therapist advised that the family dinner table be an email-free zone. Still, Christina has her own BlackBerry -- a gift from her mother -- and she often uses it to communicate with her mom.

For many parents, finding the right balance is a struggle. Although mobile email allows them to attend a soccer game in the middle of the day, it also brings the office into the family room after dinner. In an age of connectedness, they sometimes have trouble disengaging from the office -- and many admit they check their messages more often than required. Bob Ledbetter Jr., whose son questions his hearing, agrees that he spends too much time checking his email. The commercial real-estate developer usually turns off his BlackBerry each night around 7:30 but then sometimes finds himself fiddling on his laptop computer. Totally disconnecting during family time "is a discipline I need to learn," says Mr. Ledbetter. "Even though I'm home, I'm not necessarily there."

Parents point out they're not alone in their habits. Jerry Colonna, father of ninth-grader Emma, says that for her birthday earlier this month, she asked for and received a T-Mobile Sidekick. "She's obsessively on email now," he says. "Kind of ironic." Emma responds: "I use it a moderate amount."

One of BlackBerry's biggest defenders, Jim Balsillie, the chairman of Research In Motion, says children should ask themselves, "Would you rather have your parents 20% not there or 100% not there?" Yet he, too, struggles with the issue. His wife tried to keep him off the device after work, asking him to leave it by the front door every night. When he snuck it in his pocket, he feared getting caught.

Chris DuMont, 15, of San Marino, Calif., recognizes that his father's habit helps bring in income. "Sometimes when we're on vacation he'll be on" his device, Chris says. "But the whole reason we're on vacation is because he's working."

Part of the blame certainly lies with the corporations that are outfitting their staffs with email devices, creating the expectation that employees will be available and responsive at all times. Still, some professionals have successfully carved time away from email, says Melissa Mazmanian, a fourth-year doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. For her dissertation, Ms. Mazmanian, 31, is studying the patterns of BlackBerry use among nearly 200 bankers, lawyers and employees of a footwear manufacturing company. People with infants and toddlers most actively set aside personal time, and colleagues learned to leave them alone.

More often, intervention is required. Lucas Ellin, the son of "Entourage" creator Doug Ellin, says his dad checks his email at restaurants, during Lucas's soccer games and on school visits. Lucas sometimes tries to divert his father's focus away from the device by hiding it or taking his dad's face in his hands to physically get his attention. When nothing else works, Lucas turns to the highest of authorities. "I go tell my mom that Daddy's not listening and then my mom yells at him," he says.

Sophie Singletary, the 7-year-old daughter of BlackBerry-driver Ross Singletary, can only dream of the day when she gets to call the shots. "I would say, 'You can only use the BlackBerry for two hours a day,' " she says. Then she pauses, and reconsiders: "Oh, actually, make it five minutes!"
http://online.wsj.com/public/article...od=tff_article





Ka-Ching

Recreating ‘A Christmas Story’ for Tourists in Cleveland
Christopher Maag

If Denny Renz were a boy again, he said, he would love nothing more than to re-enact Ralphie Parker’s childhood.

He would crawl under the kitchen sink the way Ralphie’s brother, Randy, did to hide from Mr. Parker, their father in the 1983 movie “A Christmas Story.” He would swing from the tree in the backyard, he said, dodging imaginary BBs fired from Ralphie’s coveted “official Red Ryder 200-shot carbine action range model air rifle.”

“I’ve never seen this house before, but it’s like I grew up here,” said Mr. Renz, 62, who drove 103 miles from Fairview, Pa., to see the home here where exterior shots of “A Christmas Story” were filmed.

Though originally panned by critics as a dark depiction of the holidays, “A Christmas Story” has earned status as a movie classic, rivaling long-time seasonal favorites like “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Now fans from as far away as Los Angeles and Phoenix are flocking to a gritty Cleveland street overlooking a steel factory to visit the Parker family house restored to its movie glory.

A San Diego entrepreneur, Brian Jones, bought the house sight unseen on e-Bay for $150,000 in December 2004. He grew up watching “A Christmas Story” every year with his family. After Mr. Jones failed the vision test required to become a Navy pilot, his father tried cheering him up by building him a lamp with a woman’s leg as the base, similar to the one that enchanted Ralphie’s father in the movie.

Mr. Jones loved the gift so much that he started manufacturing copies of the lamps himself. Complete with fishnet stocking and a black high-heeled shoe, most lamps sell for $139 each; more than 7,500 have sold. Mr. Jones used the proceeds to cover the down payment on the house.

“When I first saw the house, there was snow on the ground, and I started running around the backyard,” said Mr. Jones, 30. “It felt like I was a little kid again.”

Unlike the Parkers’ single-family home in the movie, the Cleveland house was a duplex. (All the movie’s interior scenes were filmed on a sound stage in Toronto, Mr. Jones said.) Previous owners had installed modern windows, and covered the original wood siding with blue vinyl.

Watching the movie frame by frame, Mr. Jones drew plans of the Parker home. He spent $240,000 to gut the interior and transform the house into a near-exact copy of the movie set. (Darryl Haase, a tour guide, apologizes that the new stairwell is a few inches narrower than the one where Ralphie modeled his pink bunny pajamas.)

“Now I watch the movie and I catch myself looking at the background for anything we’re missing in the house,” Mr. Jones said.

To make the home feel more authentic, Mr. Jones hopes to install a stereo that recreates the sounds of Mr. Parker in the basement, swearing at the furnace. He briefly considered a Cleveland businessman’s offer to blow artificial smells of food, including Mrs. Parker’s cooked cabbage, through the house’s heat ducts.

Mr. Jones borrowed $129,000 to turn the house across the street into a museum and gift shop. Displays include the comically immobilizing snowsuit worn by little Randy, who famously cried, “I can’t put my arms down!”

Fans can buy a copy of the movie script for $40. Chunks of the house’s original wood siding cost $60.

About 4,300 people toured the house on opening weekend in November, Mr. Jones said. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for children 12 and under. He has no official attendance projections, but expects at least 50,000 visitors a year.

In a city starved for jobs and tourist dollars — the Census Bureau ranked Cleveland as America’s poorest big city in 2006 — the house has sparked a miniature tourism boom. For $159 the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel offers “Christmas Story” packages, which include overnight accommodations for two, tickets to the house and the movie playing continuously on the room television set.

Patty LaFountaine-Johnson, an actor from Cleveland, sews red-and-green felt hats like the one she wore as an elf in the movie. Autographed, they sell in the gift shop for $35 each. “A veritable steal, made personally by the elf from hell herself,” Ms. LaFountaine-Johnson said.

At C&Y Chinese Restaurant, the official restaurant of the “Christmas Story” house, waiters copy the movie’s Christmas turkey scene by taking a roasted duck to customer’s tables, where they chop its head off with a giant cleaver. The promotion has doubled the restaurant’s weekend sales to over 1,000 people a day, said Jimmy Fong, the manager.

“Before last month, I never heard of this movie,” Mr. Fong said. “Now I’ve seen it over 100 times. I like it very much.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/us...c&ei=508 7%0A

The Renovation – Jack.

















Until next week,

- js.



















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