[JackSpratts]

The Professional Suicide of a Recording Musician
Bob Ostertag

In March 2006 I posted on the Web all of my recordings to which I have rights, making them available for free download. This included numerous LPs and CDs created over 28 years. I explained my motivations in a statement on the Web site:

I have decided to make all my recordings to which I have the rights freely available as digital downloads from my web site. [...] This will make my music far more accessible to people around the globe, but my principal interest is not in music distribution per se, but in the free exchange of information and ideas. "Free" exchange is of course a tricky concept; more precisely, I mean the exchange of ideas that is not regulated, taxed, and ultimately controlled by some of the world's most powerful corporations ...

One year later, I continue to be amazed at how few other musicians have chosen this route, though the reasons to do so are more compelling than ever. Why do musicians remain so invested in a system of legal rights which clearly does not benefit them?

When record companies first appeared, their services were required in order for people to listen to recorded music. Making and selling records was a major undertaking. Recording studios and record manufacturing plants had to be built, recording technology and techniques developed. Records not only had to be manufactured but also distributed and advertised. Record executives may have been crooked in their business practices, callous about music, or racist in their treatment of artists, but the services the companies provided were at least useful in the sense that recorded music could not be heard without them. Making recorded music available to the general public required a significant outlay of capital, which in turn required a legal structure that would provide a return on the required investment.

The contrast with the World Wide Web today could not be more striking. Instant, world-wide distribution of text, image, and sound have become automatic, an artifact of production in the digital realm. I start a blog, I type a paragraph: instant, global "distribution" is a simple artifact of the process of typing. Putting 28 years of recordings up on my Web site for free download was a simple procedure involving a few hours of effort yet resulting in the same instant, free, world-wide distribution. It makes no difference if 10 people download a song or 10,000, or if they live on my block or in Kuala Lumpur: it all happens at no cost to either them or me other than access to a computer and an Internet connection.

So much for distribution. What about production? Almost none of my releases were recorded in a recording studio provided by a record company. They were either recorded on-stage, in schools or radio stations, or in living rooms, bedrooms, and garages with whatever technology I could cobble together. They are made either by myself alone or with a small handful of close collaborators. In one sense this is atypical, because I intentionally developed an approach to recording that was premised on never needing substantial resources, with the explicit goal of maintaining maximum artistic autonomy. Yet while this approach may have been unusual 20 years ago, it is less and less so today as digital technology has drastically reduced the cost of recording. There are very few recording projects today that actually require the resources of the sort of high-end recording studios record companies put their artists in (and for which the artists then pay exorbitantly -- bills which must be paid off before the musicians see any royalties from their recordings). Just as the Web has changed the character of music distribution, laptops loaded with the hardware and software necessary for high-quality sound recording and editing have changed the character of music production.

Record companies are not necessary for any of this, yet the legal structure that developed during the time when their services were useful remains. Record companies used to charge a fee for making it possible for people to listen to recorded music. Now their main function is to prohibit people from listening to music unless they pay off these corporations.

Or to put it slightly differently, they used to provide you with the tools you needed to hear recorded music. Now they charge you for permission to use tools you already have, that they did not provide, that in fact you paid someone else for. Really what they are doing is imposing a "listening tax."

Like all taxes, if you don't pay you are breaking the law; you are a criminal! Armed agents of the state have shown up at private residences and taken teenagers away in handcuffs for failure to pay this corporate tax. It is worth noting how draconian state coercion has been in this field in comparison to many others. For example, almost everyone I know (including myself) has a unpaid copy of Microsoft Word on their computer. I am certain that some kids who have run into legal trouble for sharing music without paying the corporate tax also had unpaid copies of Microsoft Word on the very same hard disks that were taken as "evidence" of their musical crimes. Yet no state agents are knocking on the doors of our houses to see if we have pirated software. Music alone is singled out for this special treatment.

You would think that musicians would be leading the rebellion against this insanity, but most musicians remain firmly committed to the idea of charging fees for the right to listen to their recorded music. For rock stars at the top of the food chain, this makes sense economically (if not politically). The entire structure of the record industry is built around their interests, which for all their protesting to the contrary dovetails fairly well with those of the giant record companies.

But the very same factors that make the structure of the record business favor the interests of the sharks at the top of the food chain work against the interests of the minnows at the bottom, who constitute the vast majority of people actually making and recording music. Most records, in fact, produce good money for corporations and little or none for the musicians. This is because the recording studios and engineers, art departments, advertising departments, A&R departments, legal departments, limo services, tour agencies, caterers, and distribution networks that swallow up the sales revenue for all but the big hits are owned by these very same corporations. Records that sell tens of thousands don't "break even" not because no money comes in, but because all the money goes to keeping the corporation in the black. Revenue for the corporation starts coming in with the first CD sold, royalties for artists don't kick in until every part of the bloated corporate beast is adequately fed.

What exactly are these corporations? To begin with, we should note that the major "record companies" are not actually record companies at all but huge media conglomerates. Most "independent" labels are owned by a corporate label. Each "major" is in turn owned by an even bigger corporation, and so on up the food chain. At the top of the chain sit a tiny handful of media giants: Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, Viacom (formerly CBS) and General Electric. These corporations are among the world's largest. All are listed in Fortune Magazine's "Global 500" largest corporations in the world. They have integrated both horizontally (owning lots of record labels, lots of newspapers, and radio stations) and vertically (controlling newspapers, magazines, book publishing houses, and movie and TV production studios, as well as print distribution systems, cable and broadcast TV networks, radio stations, telephone lines, satellite systems, web portals, billboards, and more).

This incredible concentration of power over news, entertainment, advertising, music, and media of all kinds is a recent phenomena, and is fueled by the very same digital technology that has made the Web and the recording-studio-in-the-bedroom possible. In 1983, 50 corporations dominated US mass media, and the biggest media merger in history was a $340 million deal. By 1997 the 50 had shrunk to 10, one of which was created in the $19 billion merger of Disney and ABC. Just three years later, the end of the century saw the 10 shrink to just five amidst the $350 billion merger of AOL and Time Warner, a deal more than 1,000 times larger than "the biggest deal in history" just 17 years before. As Ben Bagdikian, author of the classic study The New Media Monopoly noted, "In 1983, the men and women who headed the first mass media corporations that dominated American audiences could have fit comfortably in a modest hotel ballroom ... By 2003, [they] could fit in a generous phone booth."

These companies own the most powerful ideology-manufacturing apparatus in the history of the world. It is no wonder they have convinced most musicians, and most everyone else, that the entire endeavor of human music-making would come to a screeching halt if people were allowed to listen to recorded music without first paying a fee -- to these corporations. I know many musicians for whom making records in an environment dominated by corporate giants has been an exhausting and thankless task from which they have derived little or no gain, yet they remain convinced that taking advantage of the free global distribution offered by the Internet would constitute some sort of professional suicide.

Here is how the structure of this industry ruins the aspirations of independent-minded musicians and labels. Mainstream CDs sell in really large numbers only for a short window of time, usually while songs from the CD are on the radio. Unless those CDs are on the shelves of stores while the songs are on the air, potential sales are lost. In order to get stores to order large numbers of CDs in advance, the industry evolved with the norm that stores can return unsold CDs at any time. If your company sells pants, or toasters, or bicycles, retailers cannot do this, but record shops can. As a result, record labels must have more money in the bank per unit sales -- be more capitalized -- than other kinds of companies.

Unfortunately, with almost all independent labels this is far from the case. Most are started by music fans driven in to the business by their passion for the music they love. They operate on a shoestring. They send out a bunch of records and hope for the best. Sales might look good at first, but at some later point they get swamped with returns and they have a cash flow crisis. To survive the crisis they engage in creative bookkeeping, telling themselves it is OK because they are really doing this in the interest of the artists, and when things improve everything will get sorted out. But things only get worse, until they collapse or they get bought by a bigger company with more capital. If they collapse, artists don't get paid and there is a storm of mutual recrimination. If they get bought, the company that buys them is generally only interested in the top selling artists in the catalog, and may well take all the other titles out of print.

I know one artist who had ten years of his recordings vanish into the vault of a big label that bought the little label he recorded for. He approached his new corporate master and asked to buy back the rights of his own work and was refused. In the company's view, his work did not have sufficient market potential to justify releasing it and putting corporate market muscle behind promoting it, but neither did they want his work released by anyone else to compete with the products they did release. From their perspective it was a better bet to just lock it up.

I could relate many more anecdotes here, or delve deeper into the structure of the industry, but I think what has been said so far should suffice. Among people in my immediate social circle of musicians, John Zorn, Mike Patton, and Fred Frith have, over the years, sold CDs in sufficient quantity to actually make money. For all the rest of us, selling recordings in whatever format has been a break-even proposition at best. Not only have we not made any money, for most people in the world our music is unavailable. My works provide an excellent example.


• My first LP, with the Fall Mountain ensemble, was released on Parachute, a small label run by Eugene Chadbourne which folded long ago and the music has been unavailable ever since.

• My Getting A Head and Voice of America were released on Rift, a small label run by Fred Frith which suffered the same fate. It remained unavailable until I put it on line for free.

• My Attention Span, Sooner or Later, Burns Like Fire, and Say No More were released on RecRec in Switzerland, a label launched by a music fan that went through exactly the trajectory typical of small labels I described above. By the time that I, and other artists recording for the label, discovered that we were being cheated out of our royalties the label was already collapsing. Here again, all this music remained unavailable until I put it on line for free. Since then, several thousand people have heard it.

I could continue this list but there are a lot of CDs and the stories would become dully repetitive. Of course, my music is pretty far off the beaten path. But if I had instead spent the last decades playing in rock bands that had released a series of recordings that each sold in the tens of thousands, the details would be different but the result would be the same. This is the structure of music distribution it is allegedly in the interests of musicians to defend.

There is now a very simple alternative, which is to simply post your music on the web. No, you won't make any money from it, but the odds are overwhelming that you would never make any money from it anyway if you charged for it. And by posting it on the Web a remarkable thing happens. People all over the world can actually hear it. When I was making my music available for sale on CD, I would often hear from people who had spent years unsuccessfully trying to find a copy of a particular CD, and these were dedicated hard core listeners, who put a lot of their free time into music. Now anyone with even a passing interest can find my music easily and hear it.

People have actually been convinced that if it were not possible to charge fees for listening to recorded music, there would be no "incentive" to play music. It's time to take a step back and see the big picture. As recently as 60 years ago, most people who made their livelihood from music viewed the recording industry as a threat to their livelihood, not the basis of it. Given the mountains of money that big stars have made during the intervening decades, this fear has generally been viewed in retrospect as hopelessly naïve.

But consider the following: A few years ago I performed in the cultural festival organized by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and witnessed the parade and dance party which is this festival's culminating event. The parade brought roughly half a million people into the streets, including participants and observers. It took hours for the parade to slowly move through its course. Every contingent in the parade had its own choreography and music. The participants danced through the street, and many spectators danced alongside. So that's half a million people dancing in the street for several hours. The parade ended in a 12-hour dance party attended by over 20,000, featuring seven different pavilions with non-stop music in each. Before the era of recording, the number of musicians required to keep half a million people dancing in the street for six hours, and then 20,000 dancing for 12 hours more, would have easily run in to the thousands.

At the event I attended, the musicians involved numbered exactly one. No contingent in the parade included a live musician -- all were dancing to recordings. All the music at the dance party was recorded as well. In the largest pavilion, at the climax of the party, an actual live singer, Chaka Kahn, emerged in a blaze of fireworks and lights to sing a short medley of her hits -- to recorded accompaniment.

Humans have walked this earth for about 195,000 years. We don't know exactly when music emerged, but it was certainly a very long time ago, long before recorded history. There is evidence that music may have been integral to the evolution of the human brain, that music and language developed in tandem. The first recording device was invented just 129 years ago. The first mass-produced record appeared just 110 years ago. The idea that selling permission to listen to recorded music is the foundation of the possibility of earning one's livelihood from music is at most 50 years old, and it is a myth. The fact that most musicians today believe in this myth is an ideological triumph for corporate power of breathtaking proportions.

I should note that I do have serious reservations about the emerging culture of on-line music, but they have nothing to do with money. My music is made for sustained, concentrated listening. This kind of listening is increasingly rare in our busy, caffeine-driven, media-drenched, networked world. I suspect it is even rarer for music that was downloaded for free, broken up and shuffled through fleeting "playlists", and not objectified in an object that one can hold in one's hand, file on the shelf, or give to a friend. But this concern has nothing to do whether we charge money to hear recorded music, and everything to do with how we live in a culture in which there is a surplus of information and a scarcity of time to pay attention.

The issues involved here are hardly limited to music, but extend outward to a legal and corporate structure that shapes our culture so profoundly its importance can hardly be exaggerated. Music is no longer just music but a small subset of a corporation's properties. Property rights have become so absurdly swollen that they now constitute a smokescreen hiding a corporate power grab on a scale rivaling that of the great robber barons of the nineteenth century. Instead of grabbing land or oil, today's corporate barons are seizing control of culture. They are using the legal construct of property to extend the reach of corporate power into parts of our lives that were previously beyond their grasp.

There are so many shocking anecdotes one could relate in this regard; here is one from my own recent experience. If it seems trivial at first glance, it is because it is. That is precisely my point, as you will see if you bear with me.

It has been my privilege to have John Cooney as a student. John is young, bright, enthusiastic, hard-working, politically engaged, and artistically gifted. During his freshman year at UC Davis, he made a short animation about global warming that won the Flash Contest prize from Citizens for Global Solutions, and the Environmental Award of the Media That Matters Film Festival. He also made a computer game that he put on-line for free, and that was listed as a "Top Free Online Games" by Freeonlinegames.com, a "Game of the Week" by ActionFlash.com, and a "Featured Game," by Addicting Games. John's game also made the "Flash Player Top Games List," and was even the subject of a story on BBC World News.

Not bad for an 18-year old college freshman. But both his projects resulted in cease-and-desist letters from corporate lawyers, including one from Tolkien Enterprises demanding that he not refer to an animated character in a game he was offering on-line for no charge as a "hobbit." None of this involved high stakes or dire consequences. John's game no longer features a "hobbit." This case is trivial compared to parents getting sued for vast sums because their kids are downloading pop songs, or the unhappy plight of Eyes on the Prize, a film which beautifully documents the civil rights movement in the US, yet was withdrawn from circulation because its makers could not afford to renew all the necessary permissions on the incidental music that "leaked" into the film via documentary footage (which included a substantial payment to the copyright holders of the "happy birthday" song as the film shows Martin Luther King Jr.'s family at home celebrating the civil rights leader's birthday).

But John's experience is important precisely because it did not involve important people or high-profile issues. Even though there was no realistic possibility that anyone would think Tolkien Enterprises had somehow endorsed or been involved in John's project, the mere fact that someone, somewhere was making new, independent culture using Tolkien Enterprises' copyrighted character was enough to set the corporate reflexes in motion. The key thing here is the convergence of corporate power with the growth of the World Wide Web. If John had just shown his game in class and not put it on the Web, Tolkien Enterprises would have never known or cared. If his animation had not won an award, there would likely have been no legal threats. Together, the episodes offer an elegant demonstration of how copyright law punishes success and deters creative use of the World Wide Web.

Anything on the Web is available to anyone, which is of course both its promise and its peril. Corporate legal departments can write automated programs that crawl through the Web 24/7 searching for copyrighted works. The "hits" then generate threatening letters that intimidate anyone who doesn't have deep pockets and a lot of time on their hands. The cost to the sender is almost nil; the cost to society is, in a literal sense, immeasurable.

Getting a threatening letter for a corporate legal department is not a pleasant experience for anyone, least of all an 18-year old kid. Keep in mind that more and more students turn in homework assignments via the Web, and not just in college but in high school too. All of that work is now exposed to the corporate vultures.

"Property rights" have bloated to the point where they can dictate the content of freshman art projects. But that is not all. Altogether more and more of what we do in our lives passes through the Web. People invite friends to parties, view art, listen to music, play games, have political discussions, date and fall in love, post their family photo albums, share their dreams, and play out sexual fantasies -- all on line. Since corporate legal departments claim their copyright privileges extend to anything on the Web, the result is a huge extension of corporate power into private lives and social networks.

But that is just the beginning of the story, for the accelerating rate of technological change continues to push digital technology further and further into our lives in just about any direction you might look. To pick just one example, boundaries between our bodies and minds and our technology are blurring. Cochlear implants, for example, now allow deaf people to hear via computer chips loaded with copyrighted software which are implanted in their skulls and in response to which their brains reconfigure, growing new synapses while unused synapses fade. Cochlear implants are wirelessly networked to hardware worn outside the body which usually connects to a mic, thus allowing the deaf to hear the sound environment around them. But the external hardware can just as easily be plugged into a laptop's audio output for a direct audio tap into the Web.

When the Web extends into chips in our skulls, where is the boundary between language that is carved up into words that are corporately owned and language that is free for the thinking?

I don't wish to be sensationalist. We are not all about to turn into corporately-owned cyborgs. But I do wish to point out that the issues around turning culture into property are urgent, and far-reaching. Society is not well-served if we treat specific matters like downloading music on the Web as isolated problems instead of one manifestation of a vastly bigger struggle in which much more is at stake.
From April, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/50416/





Lyle Lovett Sells Millions, Earns Nothing

Lyle Lovett says he has "never made a dime" from album sales during his two-decade career, and hopes to rectify that situation when his contract expires.

The eclectic country singer has two more albums on his deal with Curb/Universal, his home since 1985, and figures the horizons are wide open.

"The possibilities are very exciting, I think," Lovett told Billboard.com. "I've never made a dime from a record sale in the history of my record deal. I've been very happy with my sales, and certainly my audience has been very supportive. I make a living going out and playing shows."

Lovett, 50, has sold 4.6 million albums in the United States since 1991, the year when SoundScan sales data were introduced. His most recent release, "It's Not Big It's Large," has sold about 145,000 copies since debuting at a career-best No. 18 on the Billboard 200 last September, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

"Records are very powerful promotional tools to go out and be able to play on the road, but you do have to think about it as a way of sustaining itself at some point. I'm very excited about being able to do some of that on my own, maybe," Lovett said.

He did not, however, rule out another label deal.

"Certainly if a major label is interested in working with me after these next two records and is able to come up with a strategy that does engage some of the new technology in a way that can benefit everybody, I'd be very interested in that."

Lovett said he hopes to start work on his next album in time for a 2009 release. He has a direction in mind but says, "I don't know if I want to talk about it yet."

He is currently touring North America with his Large Band through mid-August, and has also financed an album recorded at some of the singer/songwriter shows he does with John Hiatt, Guy Clark and Joe Ely but is having trouble getting his label interested in putting it out.

Lovett, who has graced the big screen in such films as "The Player" and "The Opposite of Sex," recently added to his acting resume with "a very small contribution" to Michael Meredith's film "The Open Road," which stars Justin Timberlake and Jeff Bridges, and is expected to open later this year.

"I got to do a scene with Justin, which was fun. I enjoyed meeting him," said Lovett, who also performed a song for the soundtrack with Charlie Sexton, who's scoring the film.
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...30835920080710





A Private Dance? Four Million Web Fans Say No
Charles McGrath

There are no weekend box office charts for online videos. But if there were, near or at the very top of the list right now might well be a four-and-a-half-minute video called “Dancing,” which more than four million people have viewed on YouTube, and perhaps another million on other sites, in the just over two weeks since it appeared. It’s the online equivalent of a platinum hit, seeping from one computer to the next like a virus.

The title is not misleading. “Dancing” shows a guy dancing: a big, doughy-looking fellow in shorts and hiking boots performing an arm-swinging, knee-pumping step that could charitably be called goofy. It’s the kind of semi-ironic dance that boys do by themselves at junior high mixers when they’re too embarrassed to partner with actual girls.

The dancer is Matt Harding, the 31-year-old creator of the video, and with some New Agey-sounding music playing in the background, he turns up, grinning and bouncing, in 69 different locations, including India, Kuwait, Bhutan, Tonga, Timbuktu and the Nellis Airspace in Nevada, where he performs the dance in zero gravity.

He started doing it at work, years ago, when he was living in Brisbane, Australia. “I’d dance at lunchtime or during an awkward pause or just to annoy people,” Mr. Harding said. “It was sort of a nervous tic.”

Now he’s on the streets in Mumbai one minute, balanced on the Giant’s Causeway rock formation in Northern Ireland the next, and then he’s in a tulip field in the Netherlands or in front of a geyser in Iceland. Sometimes Mr. Harding dances alone. On a Christmas Island beach he has an audience of crabs, and on Madagascar he performs for lemurs.

But more often — and this accounts for much of the video’s appeal — he’s in the company of others: South African street children in Soweto, bushmen in New Guinea, Bollywood-style dancers in India, some oddly costumed waitresses in Tokyo, crowds of free spirits in Paris, Madrid and rainy Montreal, all copying, or trying to, his flailing chicken-step. Mr. Harding even dances for a lone military policeman (unmoved to join him) in the Korean demilitarized zone.

In many ways “Dancing” is an almost perfect piece of Internet art: it’s short, pleasingly weird and so minimal in its content that it’s open to a multitude of interpretations. It could be a little commercial for one-world feel-goodism. It could be an allegory of American foreign policy: a bumptious foreigner turning up all over the world and answering just to his own inner music. Or it could be about nothing at all — just a guy dancing.

However you interpret it, you can’t watch “Dancing” for very long without feeling a little happier. The music (by Gary Schyman, a friend of Mr. Harding’s, and set to a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, sung in Bengali by Palbasha Siddique, a 17-year-old native of Bangladesh now living in Minneapolis) is both catchy and haunting. The backgrounds are often quite beautiful. And there is something sweetly touching and uplifting about the spectacle of all these different nationalities, people of almost every age and color, dancing along with an uninhibited doofus.

Children, not surprisingly, turn out to be the best at picking up on Mr. Harding’s infectious vibe. There’s frequently a grown-up, on the other hand — especially one in the front row of a crowd — who tends to ham it up and make a fool of himself.

The other remarkable thing about the “Dancing” phenomenon is that it is, to a very considerable extent, a creation of the Internet. It doesn’t just live, so to speak, on the Web; it was the Web that, more or less accidentally, brought it into being. The current video is actually the third iteration of a project that began in 2003, when a friend, using a Canon pocket camera with the capacity to record brief videos (when it was still something of a novelty), shot Mr. Harding doing his dance in Hanoi.

It was the equivalent of taking a photograph as a souvenir, Mr. Harding said in a phone conversation recently while driving with his girlfriend in Northern California. Mr. Harding, who grew up in Westport, Conn., skipped college at the suggestion of his father, who didn’t see the point of paying tuition for someone he thought was unmotivated. He has been employed in a video game store and as a designer of video games, but prefers just to travel. “It’s one thing I’m really good at,” he said.

He collected all the dancing shots from that first trip in 2003, edited them into a little video with a soundtrack from an adaptation of a traditional song from the Solomon Islands, performed by the group Deep Forest, and, at his sister’s suggestion, posted it on his Web site, wherethehellismatt.com. (No reference intended to the “Today” show feature “Where in the World Is Matt Lauer?” “I’m almost never up that early,” Mr. Harding said.)

The video went up in the fall of 2004, before YouTube or the other big video upload sites, but even so it quickly became a hit among the people trolling the Internet back then.

“It got picked up by somethingawful.com and sites like that,” Mr. Harding recalled. “Usually, what they showed was people getting hurt or doing something really stupid, so I was bracing myself for abuse, but everyone seemed to like it.”

So did the newly formed Stride chewing gum company, which offered to underwrite Mr. Harding’s subsequent travels, virtually no strings attached. (In the 2006 version the Stride name pops up in the corner of the screen every now and then, and, in the newest video, the company is acknowledged at the very end, but amazingly, in this era of shameless commercial tie-ins, Mr. Harding is not obliged to wear a Stride T-shirt or deliver a little pitch for the product. Exactly what connection the company sees between gum and a guy dancing, but not chewing, remains a bit of a mystery.)

In 2005 Mr. Harding released a second video much like the first — exotic locations, guy dancing, New Agey music — except with better sound and camera resolution, and in 2006 he went back to Stride and asked if he could repeat the venture, this time with other people dancing along with him.

The idea first came to him in 2006, he recalled, when he was dancing with some street kids in Rwanda. “If I had tried dancing with kids in a mall in San Francisco, say, I probably would have got arrested,” he said. “But in Africa there aren’t any barriers, and there’s immediate access to this kind of joy and irreverence.”

He added: “Those first videos were something I needed to do for me, but I realized then that watching me dance was getting a little old. The new video pushes a different button — you’ve got all these different people doing the same thing. I remember thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat if you could capture that?’ ”

The new video has better photography still and a score, called “Praan,” that Mr. Schyman orchestrated for a 25-piece band. For the lyrics, he and Mr. Harding decided to stick with a language other than English (because it’s less of a cliché, Mr. Harding said) — but how do you find someone who can sing Bengali? On the Internet, of course. Mr. Harding’s girlfriend, Melissa Nixon, who works for Google, discovered Ms. Siddique on YouTube.

Mr. Harding is aware that fame on the Internet is fleeting, and needs novelty for life support. On the one hand, data is never lost — it’s floating out there in cyberspace forever — but, on the other, our memories (and those of our computers) are limited and subject to constant upgrades. A video is downloaded, sent to a friend or two and then quickly forgotten. Who anymore goes back to look at that animated dancing baby that was all the rage in the ’90s? So Mr. Harding isn’t certain yet whether he wants to make a sequel.

“I wouldn’t want to make another video unless there was something to say that I hadn’t said,” he explained. “I’m going to see if there’s something more to be done, but if not, I’m happy with what there is. I don’t want to pop the bubble.”
http://nytimes.com/2008/07/08/arts/t...ncer.html?8dpc





Boyz 2 Pipettemen

Lab equipment gets the X factor.
Brendan Maher

Could these five men persuade you to buy their automated pipette?

In a dreary, lonely lab a young female postdoc puts down her pipette to massage her aching latexed hands. Sounds like the perfect set-up for a hot new music video. Well at least it does to Tyler Kay, creative director at Compare Networks Production Group (CNPG) in San Francisco, California.

A recent release from CNPG features a group of five winsome young men singing the praises of a new automated pipetting system called epMotion, made by international biotech company Eppendorf. As the lab heroine is whisked to a beach under the Golden Gate Bridge, the band members gyrate around her and her glasses are shed along with her inhibitions, just before the chorus. “Girl you need epMotion” (whispered: “yeah girl it's time to automate.”)

Stefanie Noehren, online project manager at Eppendorf in Hamburg, says the company was looking for a 'viral marketing' campaign that would spread the word about the epMotion product rapidly through the Internet. And CNPG, the video production company of online biotech marketers Biocompare, was the obvious choice. In January, it created a minor internet sensation with The PCR Song by the mock group, Scientists for Better PCR — PCR (the polymerase chain reaction) is a lab technique used to amplify DNA. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. This advertisement from Bio-Rad Laboratories, based in Hercules, California, was styled after megastar group recordings of the 1980s like Band Aid's chart topping Do They Know It's Christmas. In The PCR Song, crooners mawkishly sing their way through lyrics like: “PCR, when you need to find out who the daddy is (who's your daddy?)” In the finale, one singer lovingly smooches a thermal cycler.

“That thing took a life of its own,” says Kay. It attracted more than 700,000 web-page views and spawned several homage videos from fans, singing or lip-synching the words. At Eppendorf, says Noehren, marketers decided in March to try out the music video format, this time aping one of the prototypical manufactured male pop groups known colloquially as boy-bands — standard-bearers include 'N Sync, Take That, 98° and the Backstreet Boys.

Kay, a self-taught film-maker with Biocompare since near its inception, wrote the song with a list of product features and intense background research. “I had to listen to a whole lot of boy-band songs,” says Kay. “I started to gain an appreciation for it. Those guys really know how to crank out the hits on a few chords.” The result is It's Called epMotion, a saccharine-sweet parody of songs like 98°'s Because of You. Next they needed a band to sing it.

In the true tradition of boy-band manufacture, the members represent a variety of races and styles: the tough-looking Asian, the Latin lover, the bad-boy surfer, the African American with a winning smile and an odd-looking skinny one with a surprisingly deep voice. The result is a slick, if inexpensively produced video. The cost to Eppendorf for the video was just US$50,000, says Noehren.

But does it sell the product? Amy Wagers at Harvard's Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts, says “It didn't tell me much about the product, if that's what they were going for, but it's working in that now I've gotten two of these videos via e-mail.” YouTube shows nearly 22,500 views and counting. More may have found the video through other sites, and Noehren says a comparable number has clicked through to the website since the video was launched in early June. “We are quite satisfied,” she says.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/0807...l/454149a.html





Internet is 'Pharmaceutical Candy Store'

Report: Drugs Still Easy to Buy Online Without Prescription Despite Crackdown
Megan Chuchmach

OxyContin. Valium. Xanax. Vicodin. Ritalin. Adderall. Despite being some of the most commonly abused and misused prescription drugs in the country, each of these controlled drugs is readily available online and most websites sell them without prescriptions, according to a report released today by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA). Despite recent crackdowns by federal and state agencies, the report entitled, "You've Got Drugs!" found that prescription drug trafficking is alive and well on the web.

"The bottom line is that any person of any age, including children, can, with a click of a mouse, order these drugs online and get them," said CASA Chairman and President Joseph A. Califano, Jr.

Out of 365 Web sites that CASA found advertising or selling controlled prescription drugs drugs that the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) controls because of abuse potential or risk only two sites were certified by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy as legitimate online pharmacies.

"The other 363 were rogue sites," said Califano, a former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

The study also found that 85 percent of Web sites selling prescription drugs do so without a physician's prescription. Of those, 42 percent stated that no prescription was required, 45 percent offered online consultations, and 13 percent did not mention prescriptions at all.

Federal law prohibits consumers from purchasing controlled prescription drugs without a valid prescription from a physician. These sites, Califano said, get around the law by having consumers complete online questionnaires or participate in virtual meetings with doctors employed by the sites.

"They're sham consultations," said Califano. "They ask you a few medical questions and then say you need this drug."

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says that prescriptions written by these "cyber doctors" are not legitimate under the law. But at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee last month, DEA Deputy Assistant Administrator Joseph Rannazzisi said that the proliferation of rogue Internet pharmacies has created new legal challenges, including the involvement of internet web site operators, medical practitioners and pharmacists in online consultations.

"This process is designed to elicit what drug the customer wants and what the method of payment will be," Rannazzisi said, "rather than diagnosing a health problem and establishing a sound course of medical treatment."

Rannazzisi said that most illegal pharmacies are run by people with no medical or pharmaceutical training but who get doctors to approve prescriptions in exchange for $10 to $25. Some doctors, he said, authorize hundreds of prescriptions a day through Web sites.

"In short, the Internet has provided drug trafficking organizations with the perfect medium," Rannazzisi said. "It connects individuals from anywhere in the globe at any time it provides anonymity, and it can be deployed from almost anywhere with very little formal training."

CASA's study was conducted by entering various keywords and phrases into popular search engines, where unlicensed pharmacies are allowed to advertise their services, said Califano, who thinks it should be illegal for the search engines to have these pharmacies on their sites unless they've been certified.

Eight states passed laws in 2006 and 2007 to regulate the online selling of prescription drugs. The Senate passed a bill in April that prohibits the online distribution, dispensing and delivery of controlled substances without a prescription from a practitioner who has evaluated a patient in-person and which requires online pharmacies to be federally certified. It is now before the House.

"This report further emphasizes the need to take immediate action to stop rogue pharmacies on the Internet," said Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) who, along with Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), introduced the "Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act."

The bill is named after Ryan Haight, a 25-year-old San Diego man who died of a drug overdose in 2001. Feinstein said Haight purchased hydrocodone, a cough suppressant with effects similar to morphine, on the Internet after completing an online questionnaire. According to Feinstein, Haight said he had chronic back pain but was not examined by, nor did he meet, the doctor who eventually wrote the prescription.

Feinstein said she knows of at least 17 other people who have died due to overdoses from drugs purchased online through these types of pharmacies.

CASA has been tracking the online availability of controlled prescription drugs for five years. While this year's report, which calls the Internet a "pharmaceutical candy store," found a decline in the number of Web sites advertising or selling these drugs down to 365 from 581 in 2007 it found, for the first time, that some Web sites are now selling prescriptions that consumers can print off at home and take to a local pharmacy.

"And the prescriptions actually get filled," said Califano. "What's the real killer here is that any kid can get this stuff."

On its website, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that some drugs sold online are fake, expired or handled incorrectly. The agency recommends that consumers make sure that online pharmacies are licensed through the National Association of Boards of Pharmacies and that any potential Web site requires a prescription and has a pharmacist available for questions.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/st...5334828&page=1





Loan Pains Turned Site Into a Hit
Louise Story

The misery in the housing market is registering on the Implode-O-Meter.

As millions of homeowners fall behind on their mortgages, a fledging Web site called the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter is gleefully tallying the number of lenders that run into trouble too. On Monday, the count was 265 — and rising.

With its tongue-in-cheek tone and running lists of the “imploded” and the merely “ailing,” the Implode-O-Meter has become a sort of Gawker of the subprime world. At a recent Mortgage Bankers Association conference, a speaker addressed what has become a hot topic among lenders: how to keep your company’s name off the site.

“No one wants to be number 266,” said Jim Reichbach, a vice chairman and leader of Deloitte’s banking and securities team. “This is a death toll that is equivalent to the casualty ticker of the Vietnam War.”

The Implode-O-Meter is the brainchild of Aaron Krowne, a former researcher at Emory University in Atlanta. A computer scientist and mathematician, Mr. Krowne, 28, started the site in 2007, believing that the troubles in the housing market, and by extension the mortgage industry, would worsen.

He was right — and the Implode-O-Meter took off. Traffic on the site soared, reaching as many as 100,000 regular visitors, and advertising dollars rolled in. Mr. Krowne quit his day job and hired 10 people for his company, Implode-Explode Heavy Industries.

“The crisis has come in waves,” Mr. Krowne said. “It just keeps coming.”

With the economy struggling, more financial companies, even well-known ones, are finding themselves on the fated list. When parts of Bear Stearns’s residential mortgage unit were sold to private equity investors, for instance, the Implode-O-Meter recorded the sale. And E*Trade Financial could not remove the link on its site to its mortgage division or change the recording on its mortgage division’s 1-800 number without the site chiming in.

The tips usually come anonymously from employees at the troubled mortgage companies. Critics of the site say some of the tips have been more gossip than reality. But the Implode-O-Meter often posts the phone recordings and company e-mail to back up the bad news coming out of places like Merrill Lynch, which in March fired nearly everyone at First Franklin Financial, a business it purchased in 2006.

The Implode-O-Meter is just the latest iteration of online death-watch lists. When the dot-com bubble burst, a slew of similar sites popped up, most notably one with an obscene name playing off the title of Fast Company, the magazine. That site and others like it faded when the technology company blowups were no longer front-page news.

Mr. Krowne is hoping to keep his franchise around longer by looking for trouble in areas like hedge funds, banks, home builders — the list goes on. It has been an adventurous 18 months for the site, including a nasty lawsuit, a run-in with a celebrity and attention from financial commentators like CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

As more mortgage companies go broke, Mr. Krowne hopes to turn a tidy profit by selling his site, possibly to a media company. He takes advertising from “nonimploded lenders,” which, he says, his company has scrutinized. On occasion, he says, he has had to remove a lender’s name from the safe list as their fortunes turn, though he declined to name which ones.

The Implode-O-Meter, Mr. Krowne likes to say, has beat out the mainstream media time and again. Case in point, he says, was last October when it broke the news that Michael Jackson faced foreclosure on his Neverland property. Mr. Jackson’s representatives quickly denied the Implode-O-Meter’s story, which Mr. Krowne chalks up to his start-up status. His response? He posted the notice of Mr. Jackson’s defaults.

In December, proof of trouble at one mortgage company came in the form of a 42-second audio track. Family First Mortgage, a lender in Palm Coast, Fla., now out of business, laid people off by phone recording. The call began, “Thank you for calling Family First Mortgage Corp. If you have been directed to this voicemail box, your employment with Family First Mortgage Corp. has been officially terminated, effective immediately.”

Glenn Hill, the vice president of the company, wrote by e-mail in late June that the recording as played on the Implode site had been altered, but he did not provide evidence backing up the claim. Implode-O-Meter denies it altered the recording. The Family First call, which is still available on the Implode-O-Meter site, explains that the company was trying to focus attention on brokers who were still generating profits. It ends with: “Thank you to everyone, and have a great day.”

Mr. Krowne can hardly suppress a laugh when describing the recording. What surprises him is that failing companies seem to put on “Herculean efforts” to convince the rest of the world, and their own employees, that they are sound.

“Every company thinks it is different,” Mr. Krowne says. He points to April last year as an example. Employees of SouthStar Funding, a mortgage company in Atlanta, bombarded him with phone calls at his day job, trying to persuade him that the company was fine after he placed it on his Ailing Lender list, he said. After all, the employees told him, they were being sent on a team-building trip to the Bahamas. Soon, Mr. Krowne said, he started getting threats from the company.

When SouthStar folded, Mr. Krowne wrote: “I have to say that it is with genuine satisfaction that I post this report of SouthStar’s closure.”

Not every company goes down without a fight, though. Loan Center of California, of Suisun City, Calif., sued Mr. Krowne’s company over a posting, saying it published false information, including that the company was out of business when it says it was still making loans. The parties settled in December, and Mr. Krowne insists he was unfairly pursued as a small Web entrepreneur.

But while Mr. Krowne records the pain of the mortgage industry, he said he does not relish it. “I really wish that our esteemed policy makers would pay attention and not repeat the same mistake,” Mr. Krowne said. “It’s so depressing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/bu...08implode.html





Bend Over Dude, You’re Getting A Dell
Chad Lakkis

Manufacturers strive to create innovative products and we as consumers work day and night to afford them. We exit our vehicles and are greeted by the open arms of big box retailers housing shelf after shelf of electronic excess.

We fork over handfuls of hard earned cash for microscopic phones and wafer thin laptops. Each item is priced, each price must be met, and it is instilled in our minds that we get what we pay for … but do we really?

As a blogger you are expected to offer up your opinion and provide your readers with a unique perspective. The more successful outlets do this in a timely and creative fashion on a daily basis. Staying on top means getting every ounce of capability out of everything you have at your disposal … including your hardware.

I bought a Dell laptop months ago with the intention of using it as a command center both at home and on the road. I wanted something powerful enough to run all the image and video editing software that I would need to keep Ripten rocking day and night. I hit the ground running, and everything seemed to be working great, until I decided to record some on-screen video.

Time and time again I tried to record audio and video feeds that displayed on my screen with no luck. I would get the video to record no problem, but the audio just wouldn’t record. I searched for alternative drivers and consulted Dell’s support page to no avail.

Fully frustrated with my semi new purchase, I opened my wallet and switched my focus to software. I began to buy different types of software in the hopes that one would work. I tried Camtasia, Super Screen Recorder, WM Recorder, and a few others I can’t even remember. None remedied the situation. Thoroughly exhausted I gave up for a while, but eventually found myself needing to do it again.

As I began my prep work for this years E3, I thought I would give it one last go before scrapping my laptop (HULK SMASH) and buying a new one. At this point I was convinced that it was a hardware issue, and that the manufacturer of the video card built it with their head up their ass. In what I promised myself would be my final attempt, I searched the web for software yet again.

Being that my problem was audio, I limited my search to “record on screen audio”. The suggested software Google spit back was the ACA Screen Recorder. I installed the trial version, but was met by the same unsuccessful result. The software did however display a link that claimed to address the issue, so I clicked through and discovered that my sound card should have three audio recording options (listed below).

• Microphone/Mic - The audio will be captured from the microphone port
• Line-in/Line In - The audio will be captured from the Line-in port
• Stereo Mix/Mono Mix/WAVE Out - The audio will be captured from the sound card’s speakers port

What? Stereo Mix? Where the fuck is my stereo mix? I only see two options, Mic and Line-in. Perplexed, I refocused my efforts on Google and began to search for the missing third option.

It was not long before I encountered multiple threads started by equally frustrated and confused consumers suffering from the same misfortune. Oddly enough they were all Dell owners with the same SigmaTel brand audio card that I had.

As I dug deeper into the various threads, I soon discovered that the issue had nothing to do with the hardware itself, and everything to do with the restrictions placed on it by the PC manufacturers.

It appears that Dell, and several other computer manufacturers such as Gateway and Pac Bell, were pressured by the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) into disabling the stereo mix functionality. If true, I find it disturbing that at no time did any of the aforementioned manufacturers see it fit to explain the restrictions they were imposing on our hardware.

One blogger explained that he contacted Dell seeking a solution for his stereo mix woes, and they offered him one — for a $99 fee.

“Since my desktop is new, I decided to contact Dell. After a long online chat and a phone call, Dell told me they had the solution, but if I wanted to know it would cost me $99.00.”

So that we are all clear, the evidence points to Dell appeasing the RIAA by disabling hardware, only to have their customer service reps turn around and offer a solution to their consumers that reverses the alteration they made in the first place at a premium price. I am no rocket scientist, but that sure as fuck sounds fishy to me.

In the end, I was able to restore my laptop’s stereo mix functionality by following a series of registry edits outlined here. While I am now able to record on-screen audio and video, this solution is not something that I recommend everyone attempt, as those who lack the necessary experience to make registry edits could unintentionally cause more harm than good.

The unfortunate reality here is that prebuilt computers are potentially becoming nothing more than an advertising platform for big time brands and a way for highly influential organizations to impose their will on the unaware masses. In the event I decide to make use of a PC again in the future, I will build it with my own two hands.

Update: A Dell Community Ambassador has responded to this post in the comments section below stating that the outbound links in this article are specific to laptops (as was the issue I was having). He has provided a link he claims will rectify the issue, however it is unclear if this will work for all Dell computers that have had the sound card feature disabled by the company.

Also, this does not explain why it was disabled in the first place. If you have a Dell desktop computer with this issue, or the link below simply does not work for your Dell laptop, please let me know in the comment section below or email me at chad@ripten.com.
http://www.ripten.com/2008/07/07/ben...etting-a-dell/





Can’t Find a Parking Spot? Check Smartphone
John Markoff

The secret to finding the perfect parking spot in congested cities is usually just a matter of luck. But drivers here will get some help from an innocuous tab of plastic that will soon be glued to the streets.

This fall, San Francisco will test 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spaces in the nation’s most ambitious trial of a wireless sensor network that will announce which of the spaces are free at any moment.

Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.

Solving the parking mess takes on special significance in San Francisco because two years ago a 19-year-old, Boris Albinder, was stabbed to death during a fight over a parking space.

“If the San Francisco experiment works, no one will have to murder anyone over a parking space,” said Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose work on the pricing of parking spaces and whether more spaces are good for cities has led to a revolution in ideas about relieving congestion.

“It will have a cascade of positive effects on transportation and the economy and environment,” he said. About a dozen major cities are in discussions with technology companies to deploy so-called smart parking systems, though San Francisco is ahead in its efforts.

New York City is not among them. The Bloomberg administration’s plan for easing traffic through a congestion pricing plan died in the State Legislature this spring, though high gas prices are reducing traffic somewhat on their own.

Not that New Yorkers need any reminders of their traffic problems, but a study released in June by Transportation Alternatives, a public transit advocacy group, reported that 28 percent to 45 percent of traffic on some streets in New York City is generated by people circling the blocks.

The study also said that drivers searching for metered parking in just a 15-block area of Columbus Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side drove 366,000 miles a year.

Gavin Newsom, San Francisco’s mayor, said that better parking systems were part of a broader approach to managing congestion without imposing restrictive tolls, as used in London and Singapore to discourage driving in downtown areas.

For Mr. Newsom the largest part of the challenge is replacing the city’s aging infrastructure.

“When I watch the movie ‘Vertigo,’ ” I still recognize every single traffic signal,” said the Mr. Newsom, referring to the 50-year old Alfred Hitchcock film.

SFpark, part of a nearly two-year $95.5 million program intended to clear the city’s arteries, will also make it possible for the city to adjust parking times and prices. For example, parking times could be lengthened in the evening to allow for longer visits to restaurants.

The city’s planners want to ensure that at any time, on-street parking is no more than 85 percent occupied. This strategy is based on research by Mr. Shoup, who has estimated that drivers searching for curbside parking are responsible for as much of 30 percent of the traffic in central business districts.

In one small Los Angeles business district that he studied over the course of a year, cars cruising for parking created the equivalent of 38 trips around the world, burning 47,000 gallons of gasoline and producing 730 tons of carbon dioxide.

To install the market-priced parking system, San Francisco has used a system devised by Streetline, a small technology company that has adapted a wireless sensor technology known as “smart dust” that was pioneered by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

It gives city parking officials up-to-date information on whether parking spots are occupied or vacant. The embedded sensors will also be used to relay congestion information to city planners by monitoring the speed of traffic flowing on city streets. The heart of the system is a wirelessly connected sensor embedded in a 4-inch-by-4-inch piece of plastic glued to the pavement adjacent to each parking space.

The device, called a “bump,” is battery operated and intended to last for five and 10 years without service. From the street the bumps form a mesh of wireless Internet signals that funnel data to parking meters on to a central management office near the San Francisco city hall.

Streetline has technology that will display open parking spaces on Web sites that can be accessed through wireless devices like smartphones. They are also developing a low-cost battery-operated street display that will be able to alert drivers to open parking spots nearby.

The San Francisco project is part of a more ambitious sensor network that will use technology for a range of services. It will be possible to monitor air quality as well as deploy noise sensors that act as sentries for everything from gunshots to car crashes. Advocates assert that wireless sensor technology is now so inexpensive and reliable that it is practical to use for essential city services.

“The broader picture is what we’re building is an operating system for the city that allows you to talk to or control all the inanimate objects out there to reduce the cost and improve quality of city services,” said Tod Dykstra, chief executive of Streetline, the company that is supplying the wireless sensor technology to San Francisco.

Mr. Newsom thinks that San Francisco will rally behind the sensor technology and will expand it to all of the city’s on-street and parking garage spaces in 2010.

“There isn’t a person who hasn’t experienced the travails of going around the block multiple times searching for a parking space, using gas and wasting time and generating greenhouse gases,” he said. “It will scale in people’s consciousness to the point that the public will demand more.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/bu...12newpark.html





Apple’s Latest Opens a Developers’ Playground
John Markoff and Laura M. Holson

When Apple opens its online App Store for iPhone software on Thursday, Steven P. Jobs will be making an attempt to dominate the next generation of computing as it moves toward Internet-connected mobile devices.

The store, which will offer more than 500 software applications, including games, educational programs, mobile commerce and business productivity tools, may be a far more important development than the iPhone 3G, which goes on sale at the same time. An abundance of software could make the iPhone’s operating system dominant among an abundance of competing phones.

“The reaction we have gotten so far has been really strong,” Mr. Jobs said in a telephone interview this week. “The quality and the sophistication of the applications you can write for the iPhone is in a different class.”

Mr. Jobs failed to make his personal computers dominant, in part because software developers did not write as many programs for Mac-based machines as they did for Microsoft Windows PCs. He did not make the same mistake when he developed the iPod music players. Apple’s iTunes stores, with easy and inexpensive downloads of music, gave the device an insurmountable lead, to date, over other players.

With the App Store, Apple simplified the process of adding software to the phone. Mr. Jobs contends that Apple does not plan to make much money on games and other applications; he has also said the company does not make much money selling music on iTunes. “We are not trying to be business partners,” Mr. Jobs said of the App Store. Instead, he said, the goal is to “sell more iPhones.” Apple gives developers a 70 percent cut of sales.

The enthusiasm among software developers is high, from San Jose to San Francisco. But, at the same time, some developers are approaching Apple with caution as they figure out what their relationship with the company will be. Many expect the dealings to be more lucrative than those with wireless carriers, which in large part control what programs end up on phones. But there are still many unknowns, especially for developers whose applications will compete with the popular iTunes music and video store.

Apple has a substantial way to go to catch its competitors. Palm, Microsoft, R.I.M., Nokia and Symbian have all enticed developers to write software for their smartphone operating systems. Palm, for example, says that it has 30,000 active software developers, and Microsoft said last month that it had more than 18,000 applications available for its Windows Mobile operating system, which is available from 160 cellular carriers around the world.

Still, Mr. Jobs is catching up quickly, and none of his rivals are dismissing him.

“Everybody wants to build an iPhone app,” said Gene Munster, a senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. “It’s pretty rare you hear things like this. The enthusiasm is surprising.”

Matt Murphy, a partner in a fund set up by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to invest in iPhone apps, ascribes the intense interest to the consumer demand for the iPhone, as well as the unfettered distribution promised by the App Store: it limits the phone company’s role as a gatekeeper.

“A lot of the best entrepreneurs haven’t wanted to start anything because the carriers had to bless you,” he said. “There were a lot of unknowns.” For instance, there was no standard deal for what carriers would be paid. Carriers also rejected some applications and, Mr. Murphy said, “No one wanted to fall on their face.”

One indication of how much the iPhone changes the scene is Mr. Murphy’s fund, the iFund, which plans to invest $100 million in new iPhone-related software firms. In the last four months, the Kleiner fund has received 2,000 financing requests from developers, 85 percent of them intended for consumers.

Mr. Murphy said that Kleiner was serious about 100 of those ideas. The fund expects games, health care, social networking, mobile commerce and location-based services to be the most popular types of software. An application that would allow Bay Area surfers to check tides and network with other surfers failed to past muster.

Instead, Kleiner is backing, among others, iControl Networks, which is creating an application to let homeowners turn off their lights and alarms at home, as well as monitor security cameras, via their iPhones.

Still, Apple could end up at odds with some developers — particularly creators or distributors of content and media — who offer applications that compete directly with iTunes. Rajeev Raman, chief executive of Mywaves, an ad-sponsored free mobile video service available on millions of handsets, including Nokia and BlackBerry smartphones, said he would like to offer Mywaves in the App Store.

But he has made little headway in his discussions with Apple, he said: “We have a reverse conflict because they are not providing video for free, but we are. We are interested, but we don’t want to jump into anything that will have our hands tied behind our backs.“

When asked about it, Mr. Jobs said: “He’s right. We will compete.” He added, “That’s a discussion to have.”

Twenty-five percent of the first 500 applications at the store will be free, Mr. Jobs said. Of the commercial applications, 90 percent will be sold for $9.99 or less, he said, adding that a third of the first wave of applications will be games.

Mr. Jobs insisted that the 30/70 split is a more generous deal for developers than what is common in the video game industry. And he said that Apple would provide distribution and marketing.

The question that remains unanswered is how Apple and Mr. Jobs will manage the relationship with software developers. When the iPod was released, music executives hailed him as a savior for their flagging business. But they later complained they were not paid enough. Hollywood studio executives were even more cautious, dragging their feet for months before allowing full-length movies on iTunes.

Mr. Jobs declined to elaborate on how he expected to foster a more positive relationship with software developers, but Mr. Murphy of the iFund said: “He can’t kill the golden goose. The promise of the iPhone is developers. If you choke them off, there are a lot of other platforms waiting.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/te...10apps.html?hp





A First Look at the iPhone Apps Store

Well, the iPhone Apps Store went live last night, and it’s just crazy, insane fun. I’ve just downloaded about 30 programs to play with on the iPhone 3G. As I predicted, it’s just a blast.

One of the first things I found was the free, 1-megabyte program called Remote, from a company called Apple.

It lists all the iTunes libraries on all the computers in your house. You pick the one you want to control. The iPhone displays a four-digit passcode, which you type into a new box that appears in iTunes (version 7.7).

Suddenly, instantly, your entire iTunes library shows up on the iPhone’s screen. You can view the list by artist, album, playlist, whatever, or you can search the whole library.

You tap a song, and it starts playing on your computer. The album art fills the iPhone screen. You control playback and volume, you can rewind and fast-forward, you can skip around among your tunes, and so on. Response is instantaneous. (It can also work to control playback on an Apple TV.)

It’s that simple: the iPhone is now a house-wide wireless remote control for your music library.

I would hate to be one of the companies that sells house-wide wireless remote controls for your music library right about now.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/.../index.html?hp





For iPhone, the ‘New’ Is Relative
David Pogue

One year and 11 days ago, our nation was swept by iPhone Mania. TV news coverage was relentless. Hard-core fans camped out to be the first in line. Bloggers referred to Apple’s new product as the “Jesus phone.”

It was a stunning black slab of glass: a cellphone, a brilliant music and video player and the best pocket Internet terminal the world had ever seen. The huge, bright, touch-sensitive screen made it addictive fun to rotate, page through or magnify your photos, videos and Web pages.

Today, the iPhone is in the hands of six million people. Clumsy touch-screen lookalikes from rival phone makers line the shelves.

And Friday is the iPhone’s second coming.

This time, though, when the iPhone 3G goes on sale in AT&T and Apple stores, iPhone Mania will be considerably more muted. That’s partly because the mystery is gone, partly because the AT&T service costs more and partly because there aren’t many new features in what Apple is calling the iPhone 3G.

The new name hints at the biggest change: this iPhone can bring you the Internet much faster. It can exploit AT&T’s third-generation (3G) cellular network, which brings you Web pages in less than half the time as the old iPhone.

As a handy bonus, 3G means that you can talk on the iPhone and surf the Internet simultaneously, which you couldn’t do before.

There is, however, a catch: you don’t get that speed or those features unless you’re in one of AT&T’s 3G network areas — and there aren’t many of them. The 3G coverage map at wireless.att.com/coverageviewer (zoom in and turn on “View 3G/Mobile Broadband Coverage” below the map) reveals that in 16 states, only three cities or fewer are covered; 10 states have no coverage at all. (Tip: Whenever you’re outside of a 3G area, turning off the iPhone’s 3G feature doubles the battery’s talk time, to 10 hours from 5.)

AT&T hastens to note that its 3G coverage will expand, and also that it will get even faster over time. (3G is a much bigger deal in the 70 other countries where the iPhone will soon be available because 3G is much more common.)

The other drastic change is the iPhone’s price: $200 for the 8-gigabyte model, $300 for the 16-gig. Those are terrific prices for a machine with so much sophistication, utility and power; a year ago, an 8-gig iPhone would have cost you $600.

But the iPhone 3G is not really, as Apple’s Web site puts it, “half the price.” The basic AT&T plan — unlimited Internet and 450 minutes of calling — now costs $70 a month instead of $60 (plus taxes and fees), and comes with no text messages instead of 200. (Adding text messaging costs at least $5 a month more.)

True, iPhone 3G service now matches the plans for AT&T’s other 3G phones; still, by the end of your two-year contract, the iPhone 3G will have cost you more than the old iPhone, not less.

The third improvement is audio quality, which has taken a gigantic step forward. You sound crystal clear to your callers, and they sound crystal clear to you. In fact, few cellphones sound this good.

The other improvements are smaller, but welcome. For example, the new iPhone feels even better in your hand, thanks to a gracefully curved, shiny plastic back. It also has a standard headphone jack — hallelujah! — so no clunky adapter is required for your favorite non-Apple headphones. The power adapter has been shrunk down to a one-inch cube, so it doesn’t hog an extra spot on your power strip.

The new iPhone has true G.P.S. now, too, in addition to the fake G.P.S. of its predecessor — an ingenious system that shows your location on a map by analyzing nearby cellphone towers and Wi-Fi hot spots.

Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do with the G.P.S. According to Apple, the iPhone’s G.P.S. antenna is much too small to emulate the turn-by-turn navigation of a G.P.S. unit for a vehicle, for example.

Instead, all it can do at this point is track your position as you drive along, representing you as a blue dot sliding along the roads of the map. Even then, the metal of a car or the buildings of Manhattan are often enough to block the iPhone’s view of the sky, leaving it just as confused as you are.

There are lots of small software improvements. The four-function calculator now turns into a scientific calculator when you rotate the phone 90 degrees. There’s an address book search box, parental controls and instant language switching. (That feature is made possible by the on-screen keyboard, with keys that change to reflect the language you’ve selected. “That’s really hard to do on your BlackBerry,” says an Apple rep.)

And speaking of the BlackBerry crowd: Apple also says that the iPhone works better with corporate systems, like Microsoft Exchange and ActiveSync.

Note, though, that these software tweaks aren’t iPhone 3G features. They’re part of the free software upgrade called iPhone 2.0, which will be available to the six million original iPhones, starting Friday. For $10, even iPod Touch owners can get this upgrade.

Unfortunately, most of the standard cellphone features that were missing from the first iPhone are still missing. There’s still no voice dialing, video recording, copy-and-paste, memory-card slot, Bluetooth stereo audio or phone-to-phone photo sending (MMS). And when the battery needs replacement after a couple of years, you’ll still have to pay Apple $86 for a replacement.

Plenty of Appleholics have expressed dismay at how little the handset has changed. They’d gotten their hopes up for the second-generation iPhone: video phone calls! iPhone Nano! 3G hovercraft!

But there is one towering tsunami of a feature that may well shut them up.

It’s the iPhone App Store: a central, complete, drop-dead simple online catalog of new programs for the iPhone. Hundreds will be available when the store opens Friday, with thousands to follow. You browse, download and install new programs directly on the iPhone; they don’t have to be transferred from a computer, and you don’t have to hack the phone to use them. Most of the programs will be free or cheap.

Apple has demonstrated 16 of these programs, including an instant message program, an eBay auction tracker, medical references and a touch-sensitive musical keyboard; the best of them exploit the iPhone’s orientation sensor, wireless technologies and other high-tech components.

One coming program, called iCall, will give you free phone calls when you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot. Another, called G-Park, exploits G.P.S. to help you find where you parked. Yet another, Urbanspoon, is “a cross between a magic eight ball and a slot machine:" you shake the phone, and it randomly displays the name of a good restaurant nearby, using the iPhone’s G.P.S. and motion sensor.

You can also expect to see a time and expense tracker, home-automation remote control, voice recorder, Etch-a-Sketch, a recipe box, tip calculator, currency converter, e-book reader and so on.

Above all, the iPhone is about to become a dazzling hand-held game machine. The games revealed so far feature smooth 3-D graphics and tilt control; in one driving simulator, you turn the iPhone itself like a steering wheel, and your 3-D car on the screen banks accordingly. Other games exploit the multitouch screen, so you and a buddy can sit at opposite ends of the screen and fire at each other.

In short, the iPhone is about to become much more than a phone. And here’s the best part: the App Store is also available to the original iPhones and the iPod Touch.

So the iPhone 3G is a nice upgrade. It more than keeps pace with advancing technology, and new buyers will generally be delighted.

But it’s not so much better that it turns all those original iPhones into has-beens. Indeed, the really big deal is the iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store, neither of which requires buying a new iPhone. That twist may come as a refreshing surprise to planned-obsolescence conspiracy theorists — and everyone who stood in line last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/te...h/09pogue.html





iPhone 3G Review
Ryan Block

It's hard to think of any other device that's enjoyed the level of exposure and hype that Apple found in the launch of the first iPhone. Who could forget it? Everyone got to be a gadget nerd for a day; even those completely disinterested in technology seemed to come down with iPhone fever. But the original device was still far from perfect: its limited capabilities (especially in the 3G department), high price of entry, and the small number of countries in which it was available kept many potential buyers sidelined. Until now -- or so Apple hopes.

The wireless industry is a notoriously tough nut to crack, and it's become pretty clear that the first iPhone wasn't about total domination so much as priming the market and making a good first impression with some very dissatisfied cellphone users. With the iPhone 3G, though, Apple's playing for keeps. Not only is this iPhone's Exchange enterprise support aiming straight for the heart of the business market, but the long-awaited 3rd party application support and App Store means it's no longer just a device, but a viable computing platform. And its 3G network compatibility finally makes the iPhone welcome the world over, especially after Cupertino decided to ditch its non-traditional carrier partnerships in favor of dropping the handset price dramatically. $200? We're still a little stunned.

So now that Apple finally stands poised for an all out war on cellphone-makers everywhere, will the iPhone 3G stand up to the competition -- and higher expectations than ever? Read on for our full review.

Update: Our first iPhone 3G battery test is in and we're guardedly underwhelmed, to put it mildly. Last year we raved over the original iPhone's "Herculean" ability to play video for up to 9-hours on a single charge. So surely Apple's iPhone 3G, capable of playing video at "up to 7 hours," would easily best yet another conservative threshold quoted by Apple. Nope, not even close. Repeating a near identical test from last year (and mimicking Apple's own testing methods), we managed just 5 hours and 24 minutes of continuous playback of our 320 x 176, H.264 video encoded at 127kbps. Our test, was conducted with the screen at half brightness, half volume (Apple-supplied headphones inserted), WiFi on but not connected to a network, Bluetooth off, 3G and cellular radios on, and location services on (default). Add our result to Mossy's disappointing battery test for 3G voice and we're already feeling nostalgic for our first-generation, aluminum-backed, long-lasting friend. Granted, our battery might require some breaking in (it's been discharged and recharged fully only once) so we'll continue testing and get back to you on the quick with our results.

The hardware
No one will have any trouble recognizing the new device from its face -- it's essentially identical to the original iPhone. Thankfully, the bright, high quality, high resolution 480 x 320 3.5-inch display that's just so easy to love, hasn't been changed a bit. Unfortunately, it's still every bit as much a magnet for smudges and fingerprints -- in fact, even more so now that the rear of the device has dropped its chic matte aluminum in favor of black (or white, optional on the 16GB model) plastic. Hey, at least now it's more symmetrical.

The move to plastic seemed almost inevitable now that the iPhone has so many radios, frequencies, and antenna needs (GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS), but while we do prefer the original aluminum, the plastic does feel pretty solid and not at all flimsy, which is more than we can say for a hell of a lot of handsets. There's no doubt about the fact that we'd have preferred a matte or soft-touch finish to the glossy plastic, but that's all a matter of taste.

The body of the phone is slightly thicker at its center than its predecessor, although the edges are tapered and thinner than before, which is always a good way to make a device feel smaller than it actually is. (Palm learned this a long time ago.) There are a couple downsides to the body shape, though: first, when you're tapping off-center on a hard, flat surface, the phone wobbles (but only a little, oh well).

Second, the new shape means you won't be using it in your original device's dock. This really wouldn't be all that bad if Apple included a dock with the 3G like they did with the first iPhone, but now they want you to buy that separately. Did we mention they're asking $30 for it? Way lame. That absurdly small power adapter kind of makes up for it, but only a little.

One thing Apple was keen to talk up is the vastly improved call quality of the iPhone 3G. Those in the know understand that 3G call quality is often better than regular GSM -- but it turns out Apple made a huge improvement on both sides. iPhone 3G calls made over 3G and GSM both sounded significantly better than calls made on the original iPhone. If you're upgrading your device iPhone you may not necessarily notice it, but on a side by side it was pretty obvious.

Of course, call quality most often depends on coverage, and coverage varies between 3G and GSM networks depending on where you are. 3G calling also requires more battery power. Where are we going with this? Well, despite many of the painstaking measures Apple's taken to preserve battery power, the iPhone 3G doesn't do any real time signal detection to help determine whether you currently have better 3G or GSM voice coverage. If you suspect you might get better coverage either on or off 3G, it's up to you to dig down through a few settings menus to flip the switch. Not a deal breaker by any means, but it'd make for a welcome fix.

We're still working on our battery testing on the iPhone 3G (which can take a number of days -- we'll post a supplemental), but our preliminary results are tracking near Apple's stated expectations. For reference, Apple's numbers on the iPhone peg it at 10 / 5 hours talk on GSM / 3G (respectively), 5 hours 3G data, 6 hours WiFi, 24 hours music and 7 hours video.

There have been a number of other fixes to better the device as well. For example, the phone now has two proximity sensors to better detect when it's held to your ear. We also found that while the camera was essentially identical, we were getting images that were ever so slightly sharper and crisper than the original iPhone on 1.1.4 (check it out below). Still, knowing that HTC's Touch Diamond -- which features a 3.2 megapixel sensor and mechanical autofocus -- could pack such a great camera in an even smaller form factor than the iPhone's left us pining for something a bit more than the same 2 megapixels from the first time around.

What we're probably the most excited about, though, is that two of our biggest hardware-related gripes from the original device have finally been addressed: first, the headphone jack is now flush, which means any standard (3.5mm) headphones will work in the iPhone without the need for an adapter. The new jack has a solid, confidence-inspiring feel that won't leave you worrying about damaging the device or your headphones. To this day we still have no clue why Apple pushed the jack in -- it was kind of funny hearing Steve pitch the flush jack as a feature at WWDC. It's the simple things, you know?

Second, the speaker volume has been jacked up significantly, giving your calls (or music) a much more workable volume level if you're not blessed with superhuman hearing. It's not the loudest speaker we've ever heard on a device, and unlike many Nokia Nseries phones, it's still mono. But it's definitely a step up compared to the first iPhone, which was not only quiet, but also seemed to distort at much lower volumes.

Speed and location
At the end of the day, it's the 3G data that's important enough to become part of the new iPhone's namesake. Speed testing the iPhone 3G hasn't been disappointing in the slightest. We've seen speeds between 300 - 500Kbps in the US (roughly equivalent of other HSDPA devices we've tested), and in networks abroad where the data rates are even faster, we've gotten consistent data rates of over 700-800Kbps. It's pretty clear the iPhone 3G isn't hitting hardware limits right now, so much of what you can prepare to see in terms of speed in the US will depend directly on reception with AT&T's network -- which doesn't have the most outstanding reputation, nor the broadest 3G rollout.

Interestingly, in one test, our iPhone 3G had worse reception on AT&T than a Nokia N78, yet managed speeds of over 100Kbps faster. So ultimately, where 3G coverage is decent, you should be seeing speeds that will no longer have you tearing your eyes out, as was so often the case with little mister sometimes-takes-minutes-to-load-a-small-page first-gen iPhone.

GPS acquisition has also been surprisingly fast for a cellphone. AGPS devices use traditional GPS receivers, but help speed up location acquisition and accuracy by using cellphone towers to triangulate. As far as we know, the iPhone 3G is the only device out right now that not only has AGPS, but takes advantage of Skyhook's proprietary WiFi-based location system, giving it a total of three ways to help find where you're at. We were able to acquire GPS in as little as a second or two, although depending on your location and reception, you might see that take longer. It's important to note, though, that the iPhone's was clearly intended to be a location-aware smartphone -- not a dedicated GPS device. There's a big difference.

That said, there's an enormous amount of interest by people hoping they can add one more to the pile of devices their iPhone has taken over for. It's pretty clear why people might want the iPhone 3G to replace their car's dedicated GPS nav, too. It's not just a location-aware device with a large, bright screen -- it's also connected (with service you're already paying for), thus able to get traffic updates, routing information, and so on. The Google Maps app doesn't provide turn by turn route guidance, though, so while it does provide directions, you can only use it as a stand-in -- and not as a full replacement -- for a proper GPS device. This problem might be solved later by some intrepid 3rd party developer (like, say, TomTom or Telenav), but there's been some confusion as to whether this might actually happen, and what Apple's official stance on GPS nav actually is. And even if this GPS software does eventually come out, the speaker on the iPhone 3G simply won't be loud enough to be heard over most road noise, so you'd also have to make use of a line-out. In other words, don't sell your GPS device just yet, okay?

The software
Anyone that's used the original iPhone knows what a delight the device can be to use -- except when using the old mail app -- but the hardware is only one part of that. An accurate capacitive touchscreen and well optimized mobile processors form the basis of that experience, but the iPhone continues to derives its real power in usability. The iPhone 3G and the second release of mobile OS X have given the device numerous useful new features while keeping in line with expectations that they not slow down the experience, nor overwhelm new or experienced users. So far, so good.

Easily the most significant addition to the iPhone 3G (as well as the original iPhone and iPod touch) is the App Store, which finally enables users to trick out their phone with whatever programs make it through Apple's rigorous developer screening and software testing process. We've got as many mixed feelings about that closed-but-open model as we do about many of the programs that launched with the device -- especially the AIM client, which we were most excited about, but that kind of flopped. (Disclosure: Engadget is owned by AOL / TimeWarner. Sorry gang!)

Although the App Store isn't open to any developer, it's worth noting that Apple's implementation wrests all control from its carrier partners, which typically expect 3rd party applications to be either side-loaded (i.e. more for the power user set), or simply want complete control of sales through their own walled garden. It's easy to argue that the App Store just trades one walled garden for another, but what the hell, we'll happily Apple's over AT&T's.

The applications themselves vary in price, and are purchased after you've logged in with your iTunes account. (Yeah, you'll need one even if you're only downloading free programs.) Apps under 10MB download over the air, and are immediately deposited in your first available slot, where they can be moved (or removed) as you see fit. As new versions of the apps become available, the App Store notifies you of updates and manages the downloads. Yes, it's a new kind of walled garden, but the App Store is also a category-redefining experience. We've already heard a radically open version will be making its way to Android, and we hope it will eventually find its way to platforms like Windows Mobile and Symbian as well.

Another new addition is character recognition support for logographic-based languages, such as Traditional Chinese, as well as localized keyboards for nearly two dozen languages and markets worldwide. But the touchscreen keyboard can still be a major sticking point for some -- ourselves enthusiastically included -- and Apple hasn't given any more of its default programs (like SMS) the increased ease of typing that comes with using the keyboard in landscape mode. There's simply no question that in terms of efficiency, on an iPhone we're nowhere close to where we can get on a spacious (or even not so spacious) QWERTY keypad. To their credit, though, Apple's made a few tweaks over the last year that have made typing a little faster and easier (like letting you pre-type the next letter before your first finger has lifted). But the fact is this defining feature of the iPhone remains one of its biggest drawbacks.

Although we've been unable to extensively test MobileMe (namely due to the fact that the service has been more or less completely offline since they flipped the switch this week), we have found the Exchange support to be simple enough to set up and use that you may not have to bug your IT dude. Some hardcore enterprise users will miss the full Exchange suite, including synced notes and tasks, but the core functionality (email, calendar, contacts) work very well.

Our biggest gripe with Exchange isn't small, though: the system is unable to let enterprise contacts and calendars coexist on the same device with personal contacts and calendars. (Personal and corp email get along just fine, though.) When you turn on Exchange-synced contacts and calendars, you're notified that it's a one or the other kind of a situation, and your personal data will be removed from the phone. Though that data isn't purged from your host machine, of course, you do immediately lose the ability to change contact or calendar sync settings. This effectively means that your device can only serve as an enterprise device OR a personal device, but not both at once. Kind of defeats the purpose of convincing your boss to get you an iPhone in the first place, you know?

Some other new and noteworthy features:

• As mentioned, Google Maps now shows a pinging blue locator that can track your movement. As of right now there's no way to convert this to KML or anything usable for geocaching.
• The camera will also now ask you permission to use GPS to geotag photos with your current location. Once you grant that permission, it will add the necessary standard EXIF data to your photos. Trés useful, but you can't refer back to those geotags to bring up a location in Google Maps.
• Side note: there's now an option to reset location notifications, if you accidentally granted permission to an app you don't want knowing where you are.
• The iPhone can now read PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote documents. It's still incapable of editing or creating new documents, however, and outside of sending yourself these files via email, there's no accessible file storage.
• You can now save images from the web to your camera roll by tapping and holding.
• The calculator goes into scientific mode when the device is tilted sideways.
• Entering passwords is a little easier -- the last character you entered is temporarily shown at the end of the string. Keeps things safe but makes sure you know if you mistyped.
• One of the very first things we ever requested the iPhone see fixed is finally fixed: calendar colors are now supported, meaning you can finally visually tell your appointments apart based on calendar.
• You can now control email, contact, and calendar fetching from system settings, giving you granular control over push and pull data on your various accounts.
• You can also enable parental controls if you got the device for your kids. Or you just want to curb temptation to constantly watch Charlie the Unicorn on YouTube or buy Lil Wayne tracks on the WiFi Store, weirdo.
• Screen captures can be taken by holding home, then pressing sleep. They're dropped in the camera roll.
• Doing a hard reset now fully purges the device's memory, thereby making it much more difficult to recover the kind of data you don't want someone else recovering.

We'd also be remiss if we didn't namecheck a few of the things missing from the device, some likely to be inconveniences, others outright dealbreakers:

• Easily-replaceable battery -- especially being that 3G is much more demanding on battery power than EDGE data. We haven't popped the back off, but even if replacing the battery were as simple as unscrewing the two screws at the bottom (and it's not), that's still not what we'd call easily replaceable.
• Copy / paste. As if we even needed to mention this.
• MMS. Ditto.
• Expandable memory still isn't in the cards (har). 8 and 16GB capacities are very decent, but the ability to go further with microSDHC would be welcomed by many. As would be a 32GB model.
• A2DP (stereo Bluetooth). If this was an unlikely addition before, it's all but written off now. A2DP is a notorious battery hog on devices like cellphones, and the iPhone is already pushing the limits on power conservation and efficiency. It pains us to say it, but we just don't see A2DP happening any time soon.
• Push Gmail. Hey, if Helio can have it on the Ocean, and Samsung on the Instinct, why is Apple stuck with only push Yahoo mail?
• Service-independent device to machine wireless syncing. Exchange and MobileMe are nice, but even nicer would be a way to easily sync data directly to your machine without having to pay or have some kind of service.
• Tethered data. Hey, you're paying $30 a month for data (likely more if you're using it outside the US), your laptop should be able to use some of it too.
• No way to open a link in a new tab in mobile Safari. We also wish the browser was still a bit better about caching data, too -- it'd be nice not to have to do so many reloads when switching between tabs or moving back and forward through history.

Wrap-up
If you're an avid Symbian, BlackBerry, or Windows Mobile / Exchange user, chances are you might think the iPhone 3G is Apple playing catch-up -- and you're not wrong. 3G, GPS, third party apps, enterprise messaging, these are all old hat. But even the would-be iPhone killers being churned out weekly haven't yet found a way to counter the iPhone's usability and seamless integration of service and software, desktop and mobile, and media and internet.

There are always things that could be improved, features to be added, fixes that should be applied -- but from first to second gen, from year one to year two, Apple has proven itself a relentless upstart in the mobile space, and is showing no signs of slowing down. All those new features give the iPhone even more appeal than ever, but the price is what really seals the deal.

For our money, you're going to have a hard time finding a better device for two hundred bucks -- or maybe even for any price. But that doesn't mean you ought to toss your original iPhone, either. With the release of iPhone 2.0, Apple's given early adopters every possible new feature for free, meaning the iPhone 3G's biggest roadblock to adoption in the US may be its still very worthy predecessor. But as Steve says, "If anybody is going to cannibalize us, I want it to be us." As for the rest of the world? Things are about to get interesting.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/11/iphone-3g-review/





Apple and AT&T Stores Having Difficulty Activating iPhones (UPDATE: It's the iPocalypse)

We've heard four many accounts now from varying Apple store and AT&T locations that employees are having problems while trying to activate phones through iTunes. From Atlanta, one camper reports:

A 'teal shirt' apple representative came out to let us know they are having difficulty accessing accounts on the iTunes system. The line has been amazingly slow, but at least we are inside! In the last maybe 30 minutes only 5 people got into the store. Time to get comfy.

UPDATE: Here's the official word from AT&T:

We have had reports that customers attempting to download new iTunes 7.7 software to their new iPhone may get an error message saying "page not found." We have reported this issue to Apple. While Apple works to resolve this issue, we are asking customers to sync their newly activated phone later at home.

This does not look good. Apparently people at home can't even upgrade to firmware 2.0 and the problem is afflicting iTunes on an international scale. Here are a running tally of notifications we've received from the US:

"I was in the first group of 30 to get an iPhone 3g at the biggest AT&T Experience store in Houston, Texas. The staff couldn't get anyone's phones to activate, so they let us take them home.....where I still can't get it to activate - itunes keeps timing out for activation, but not the itunes store or anything else."

"Not sure if you have heard this, but I'm in an att store in nj and they can't activate the phones because itunes is so slow. I've been waiting for 30 mins with the new iphone attached to itunes in the store and there is no end in sight... Have you heard about others having problems activating the phones? Sounded like other stores are having the same problem..."

"I bought an iPhone 3G and the AT&T activation isn't working. They are using iTunes to do it and there is network problems. Went home, and iTunes still won't activate. Seems to be an iTunes network issue."

"Apparently Apple completely underestimated the load on their servers for activation and ALL COMPUTERS in the Boston Apple store are stuck in the iPhone activation screen. No iTunes are able to connect to the central server, so no iPhones can be activated. "

Even the iTunes link on Apple is gone.

"I was at the AT&T store in Dublin, OH this morning, 7th in line. They were letting people in 4 at a time and it took them about 30-40 minutes to get the first person done because of the servers crashing. I eventually got in and got my new iphone, but not until almost 9:00."

"Jordan creek in west DES moines is down as is the apple store. A teal shirt said that they're contemplating going with the old activate at home method. Told everyone in the line to get comfy. No one entered either store for 30 minutes"

"Atlanta update: nothing. People who went inside an hour ago are either still in there or escaped through a trap door. 3 words about why waiting this year us better than last year— 'super monkey ball'"

"Apple store in Skokie il (north suburb of Chicgao) is down. It's been an hour and 15 minutes and only 4 people have left. I'm still waiting for mine!"

"iPhone 3G San Antonio: I waited about 15 minutes for activation, and nobody else's was working either so I just took my phone and left. They kept telling me that wasn't allowed, but I had already paid for the phone so there was nothing they could do to stop me."

From our own Benny Goldman in NY: "We spoke with several people who walked out of the store without a working iPhone, as the iTunes/iPhone server appears to be overloaded since around 9:45. Two people said they waited for 15 minutes without any luck, and another two were advised to try activation tomorrow. In my own experience, I left the store without activating because I thought I would do it on my laptop, but I wasn't able to. I went back inside the Apple store and didn't fare any better. We were just told by an Apple employee that they are slowing down the number of people they are letting into the store and working on the servers in order to fix the problem."

"I work for a Rogers dealer up in Canada and I just read this post and wanted to say that we’re having the same problem up here as well. Yay."

Also, a special thanks to commenter brianhatch for the headline.
http://gizmodo.com/5024187/apple-and...the-ipocalypse





Technology Reshapes America's Classrooms
Jason Szep

From online courses to kid-friendly laptops and virtual teachers, technology is spreading in America's classrooms, reducing the need for textbooks, notepads, paper and in some cases even the schools themselves.

Just ask 11-year-old Jemella Chambers.

She is one of 650 students who receive an Apple Inc laptop each day at a state-funded school in Boston. From the second row of her classroom, she taps out math assignments on animated education software that she likens to a video game.

"It's comfortable," she said of Scholastic Corp's FASTT Math software in which she and other students compete for high scores by completing mathematical equations. "This makes me learn better. It's like playing a game," she said.

Education experts say her school, the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Boston, offers a glimpse into the future.

It has no textbooks. Students receive laptops at the start of each day, returning them at the end. Teachers and students maintain blogs. Staff and parents chat on instant messaging software. Assignments are submitted through electronic "drop boxes" on the school's Web site.

"The dog ate my homework" is no excuse here.

The experiment at Frederick began two years ago at cost of about $2 million, but last year was the first in which all 7th and 8th grade students received laptops. Classwork is done in Google Inc's free applications like Google Docs, or Apple's iMovie and specialized educational software like FASTT Math.

"Why would we ever buy a book when we can buy a computer? Textbooks are often obsolete before they are even printed," said Debra Socia, principal of the school in Dorchester, a tough Boston district prone to crime and poor schools.

There is, however, one concession to the past: a library stocked with novels.

"It's a powerful, powerful experience," added Socia. Average attendance climbed to 94 percent from 92 percent; discipline referrals fell 30 percent. And parents are more engaged, she said. "Any family can chat online with teacher and say 'hey, we're having this problem'."

Unlike traditional schools, Frederick's students work at vastly different levels in the same classroom. Children with special needs rub shoulders with high performers. Computers track a range of aptitude levels, allowing teachers to tailor their teaching to their students' weakest areas, Socia said.

Surge In Online Courses

The Internet is also a catalyst for change. U.S. enrollment in online virtual classes reached the 1 million mark last year, 22 times the level seen in 2000, according to the North American Council for Online Learning, an industry body.

That's only the beginning, said Michael Horn, co-author of "Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns".

"Our projections show that 50 percent of high school courses will be taught online by 2013. It's about one percent right now," said Horn, executive director of education at Innosight Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Massachusetts.

K12 Inc, which provides online curriculum and educational services in 17 U.S. states, has seen student enrollment rise 57 percent from last year to 41,000 full-time students, said its chief executive, Ron Packard.

Much of the growth is in publicly funded virtual charter schools.

"Because it is a public school, the state funds the education similar to what they would in a brick and mortar school, but we get on average about 70 percent of the dollars," Packard told Reuters.

"We don't usually get capital dollars, or bond issue dollars. Sometimes we don't get local dollars. So on average it works out 70 percent of the per pupil spending that an average school in the state would receive," he said.

"We're getting the kids who the local school is not working for. And the spectrum goes from extreme special education to extremely gifted kids," he said.

U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley says K12 and similar companies look set to capture an increasing share of the $550 billion publicly funded U.S. education market for children aged from about 5 to 18 as more U.S. states adopt virtual schools.

Virginia-based K12 recently opened an office in Dubai to expand overseas. Packard says he expects strong offshore demand for American primary and secondary education tailored for foreign nationals who want to enter U.S. universities.

Apex Learning Inc, based in Bellevue, Washington, is seeing a similar surge in demand. It started in 1997 by offering online advanced-placement courses to parents and individual schools but now sells an array of online classes for entire school districts and state departments of education.

"Over the last two years in particular we have seen very, very significant growth in the interest and demand for our type of digital curriculum," Apex chief executive Cheryl Vedoe said in a telephone interview.

Apex enrollments rose 50 percent to 300,000 in 2006-2007, and likely grew at the same pace last year, she said.

"Where we see the greatest growth today is actually in brick and mortar high schools for programs for students who are not succeeding in the existing programs," she added.

Online tutoring is also expanding rapidly. Bangalore-based TutorVista, which launched online U.S. services in 2005, estimates its average global growth in active students at 22 percent a month -- all taught by "e-tutors" mostly in India.

Horn expects demand for teachers to fall and virtual schools to boost achievement in a U.S. education system where only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school -- a proportion that slides to 50 percent for black Americans and Hispanics, according to government statistics.

"You deliver education at lower cost, but you will actually improve the amount of time that a teacher can spend with each student because they are no longer delivering one-size-fits-all lesson plans," he said. "They can actually roam around."

(Reporting by Jason Szep; Editing by Eddie Evans)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...47885520080707





Rainy day fun

Cut and Paste One Line of Code to Make Any Website Editable
Patrick Altoft

Have you ever wanted to edit the web pages of another website? This simple line of code makes it possible.

Of course you can’t actually edit the actual web page but you can edit the page as you see it on your screen.

This is one of the ways scammers create fake screenshots, fake Adsense & affiliate earnings and even fake Paypal transactions.

All you need to do is visit the site you want to edit, paste the code below into your web browser address bar (tested in Firefox & IE7) and hit the Enter button.
Then simply select a portion of text on the page and start editing.

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/cut-and-p...site-editable/





Spammers Announce World War III
Robert Jaques

Hackers are deluging web users with malware-laden spam claiming that World War III has started following a US invasion of Iran.

Security experts warned today that spam emails with subject lines including 'Third World War has begun', '20000 US Soldiers in Iran' and 'US Army crossed Iran's borders' have been intercepted.

The emails contain links to a malicious webpage that displays what appears to be a video player showing the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion.

Text on the page reads: 'Just now US Army's Delta Force and US Air Force have invaded Iran.

'Approximately 20000 soldiers crossed the border into Iran and broke down the Iran's Army resistance.

'The video made by US soldier was made today morning. Click on the video to see the first minutes of the beginning of World War III. God save us.'

However, Sophos warned that users visiting the webpage and clicking on the 'video player' run the risk of being infected with the Troj/Tibs-UO Trojan and a malicious JavaScript hidden on the website as Mal/ObfJS-AY.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: "Hackers are taking advantage of the fact that many people today get their fix for breaking news via the internet.

"People, especially those with loved ones in the Middle East, may rush to watch the video without engaging their common sense.

"Everyone should ensure that they keep their antivirus protection up-to-date and never follow links in unsolicited email messages."
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/80088,...d-war-iii.aspx





Seagate's Latest Desktop HDD Has 1.5TB Capacity
Daniel A. Begun

Seagate announced three new consumer-level hard drives today, which it claims are the "industry's first 1.5-terabyte desktop and half-terabyte notebook hard drives." The company claims that it is able to greatly increase the areal density of its drive substrates by utilizing perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology. Wikipedia states that PMR is "capable of delivering more than triple the storage density of traditional longitudinal recording."

Seagate's latest desktop-class hard drive, the Barracuda 7200.11, will be available in a 1.5TB capacity starting in August. The 3.5-inch drive is made up of four 375GB platters and has a 7,200-rpm rotational speed. It has a 3Gb/second SATA interface, or 1.5Gb/second using Native Command Queuing (NCQ). Seagate also claims that the new 1.5TB drive supports a sustained data rate of up to 120MB/second. This represents a slight improvement in performance over the existing drives in Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 series, which have stated sustained data rates between 105 and 115MB/second--with the 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 on the slow end of that scale at 105MB/second. While many of the existing drives in the 7200.11 series have both 16MB and 32MB cache versions, the 1.5TB will likely only be available with a 32MB cache--similar to its 1TB sibling. Pricing has yet be announced.

For the moment, Hitachi and Western Digital's highest-capacity desktop hard drives top out at 1TB--the Hitachi Ultrastor AK71000 and the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS--both of which share similar specs with the Barracuda 7200.11 series (other than Seagate's 1.5TB capacity, of course).

Seagate also announced today two new 500GB notebook hard drives, the Momentus 5400.6 and Momentus 7200.4. As its name implies, the 5400.6 spins at 5,400-rpm, and it includes an 8MB cache. The 7200.4 spins at 7,200-rpm and has a 16MB cache. Both drives use 3Gb/second SATA interfaces. Seagate also claims that both drives are reasonably vibration-resistant and are low on power consumption:

"Both Momentus drives are built tough enough to withstand up to 1,000 Gs of non-operating shock and 350 Gs of operating shock to protect drive data, making the drives ideal for systems that are subject to rough handling or high levels of vibration. For added robustness in mobile environments, the Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 are offered with G-Force Protection, a free-fall sensor technology that helps prevent drive damage and data loss upon impact if a laptop PC is dropped. The sensor works by detecting any changes in acceleration equal to the force of gravity and parks the heads off the disc to prevent contact with the platter in a free fall of as little as 8 inches and within 3/10ths of a second.

Seagate's new Momentus drives are lean on power consumption, allowing notebook users to work longer between battery charges, and are virtually inaudible thanks to Seagate’s innovative SoftSonic fluid-dynamic bearing motors and QuietStep ramp load technology."

Despite Seagate's claims, the new 500GB Momentus are not the first "half-terabyte notebook hard drives." Not only have Hitachi and Fujistu already announced their 500GB, 2.5-inch hard drives earlier this year, but Samsung's 500GB, 2.5-inch, Sprintpoint M6 (model HM500LI) has been shipping since March. Oh well, you can't blame Seagate for trying. Both of their 2.5-inch, Momentus drives are expected to start shipping sometime in the fourth quarter of this year, and pricing has not be set yet.
http://www.hothardware.com/News/Seag...15TB_Capacity/





2010: the 5TB 3.5in HDD Cometh
James Sherwood

Hitachi has pledged to release a 5TB 3.5in hard drive within two years, and it claims two of the drives will boast enough capacity to store everything in your brain.

According to a report by Nikkei Net, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies will use Current-Perpendicular-to-Plane Giant Magnetoresistance (CPP-GMR) magnetc read heads to achieve the aim. This, the firm claims, will allow its drives to store 1TB of data in every square inch of the recording surface.

Hitachi’s announcement is a step on from a claim it made back in October 2007 that 4TB of storage could become a reality by 2011.

It’s worth noting though that Hitachi’s not the first storage company to promise super-capacity HDDs. Back in August 2007, rival Fujitsu announced that 2.5in disks were its proposed ‘patterned medium’ for such compact storage. It too plans to have commercial models available by 2010.

Fujitsu's approach uses anodised aluminium to create a pattern of "nanoholes", each holding a portion of magnetic material used to store a single bit of data. The aluminium-oxide surrounding these so-called 'nanoholes' helps magnetically insulate each bit from all the others, preventing one from affecting another, which might lead to data corruption.

Nonetheless, Dr Yoshihiro Shiroishi from Hitachi has claimed that two of its 5TB will together “provide the same storage capacity as the human brain”.

So, if your memory’s not great, then just buy a couple of 5TB drives from Hitachi and download all your thoughts and memories onto them, before wiping the slate clean and staring afresh with another 10TB of brain capacity.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07..._5tb_hdd_2010/





Pioneer Promises 400GB Optical Discs

Pioneer has developed a 16-layer read-only optical disc which it claims can store 400GB of data..

The per-layer capacity is 25GB, the same as that of a Blu-ray Disc, and the multilayer technology will also be applicable to multilayer recordable discs.

Multi-layered discs have been difficult to develop because 'crosstalk' from adjacent layers and transmission loss mean that getting a stable signal from the disc is often nearly impossible.

Pioneer achieved stability in the playback of recorded signals by employing a wide-range spherical aberration compensator and light-receiving element that can read out weak signals at a high signal-to-noise ratio in the optical pick-up mechanism.

The huge capacity of these discs means that the new technology will be best suited for applications such large volume data archiving, rather than consumer use.

Pioneer will present the details of this research at the International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage 2008 in Hawaii on 13 July.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/79933,...cal-discs.aspx





Alcatel-Lucent Appeals Loss of $1.5 Billion Award

Appeals court arguments in a battle over MP3 digital music patents between Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft Corp focused Monday on a joint development pact struck nearly two decade earlier.

Alcatel-Lucent is looking to restore a $1.5 billion judgment against Microsoft awarded by a lower court jury that was later overturned.

Much of the arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit centered on a 1989 joint development agreement between AT&T and German research organization Fraunhofer Gesellschaft.

Microsoft has said that it licensed the MP3 technology from Fraunhofer for $16 million, and is innocent of any infringement.

Alcatel-Lucent, however, maintains the patent was based on work that was done previously by Bell Labs, now the research arm for Lucent Technologies, and could not legally be licensed by Fraunhofer to Microsoft. Lucent was spun off from AT&T in 1996 and owns Bell Labs.

MP3 is the standard digital music format, which allows audio to be compressed so that it can be easily played on computers, mobile phones or digital music players.

The case caused an uproar last year when a jury in San Diego ruled that Microsoft had infringed two patents and awarded Alcatel-Lucent $1.5 billion.

But U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster disagreed with the jury, and said Microsoft had not violated one of the patents and had licensed the other. The judge threw out the jury's award.

"We are hopeful that they (federal circuit judges) will agree that the jury was correct in its original judgment and that the jury's verdict should be reinstated," Alcatel-Lucent said on Monday in a statement.

Microsoft reiterated its innocence. "Judge Brewster was correct when he ruled that Microsoft did not infringe the '457 patent and that Microsoft properly licensed the technology embodied in the '080 patent from its co-owner and industry recognized MP3 licensor -- Fraunhofer," said Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...43569320080707





Dutch Chipmaker Sues to Silence Security Researchers
Elinor Mills

Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors has sued a university in The Netherlands to block publication of research that details security flaws in NXP's Mifare Classic wireless smart cards, which are used in transit and building entry systems around the world.

NXP, formerly Philips Semiconductors, sued to prevent Radboud University Nijmegen from publishing a scientific paper on the technology in October. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in the Dutch court, Rechtbank Arnhem.

"We feel the publication would not be responsible," NXP said in an e-mail statement when asked to comment for this article on Wednesday. "We cannot give further comments at this time, as it is in the hands of the court and the court has given a confidentiality order."

A court decision on the matter is expected next week, according to Karsten Nohl, a University of Virginia graduate student who worked with others to break the crypto algorithm last year and has been closely following the case.

The Dutch university's research builds upon Nohl's work. Nohl said he plans to publish his research in August and that NXP has not sued him to halt publication of his work.

"NXP spent most of this year defending the technology," Nohl told CNET News in a phone interview this week. "Only recently have they started admitting that the security is flawed, but they are still not ready for this to leak into the public domain."

"The only thing NXP would achieve if they win the lawsuit is prevent information from getting to other research groups that might very well be looking for solutions to this problem," Nohl said. Meanwhile, information on how to break the cryptography on the smart cards is already available to criminals who are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars, he added.

A statement issued by the Dutch University in March says: "Because some cards can be cloned, it is in principle possible to access buildings and facilities with a stolen identity. This has been demonstrated on an actual system."

Dr. Bart Jacobs of Radboud University Nijmegen demonstrated last month how he could ride the London transit system for free. Once he obtained the key used by the London transit system, he then brushed up aside passengers carrying the Oyster transit cards and was able to collect their card information on his laptop and make a clone of it.

This YouTube video shows how it is done.

In addition to the transit system in The Netherlands, the technology is used in the subway systems in London, Hong Kong and Boston, as well as in cards for accessing buildings and facilities. The Mifare technology is used in more than 80 percent of the market, Nohl said.

The university defended its plans to publish the research in a statement released Monday in Dutch, saying it has a duty to research and publish data on security technology flaws so that they can be fixed.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-99....html?hhTest=1





Linux for Housewives. XP for Geeks.
Robin Harris

The computer proletariat is rising up - and computing will never be the same. Tiny, sub-$500 “netbooks” like the Asus Eee are the hottest thing going in notebooks today. And some surprising things are happening. Like housewives on Linux.

Asus is forecasting worldwide shipments of 10 million 7 to 10 inch screen netbooks this year! And a billion in 2018.

Appliance computing
In an article in the Asian business publication Tech-on reporter Tomohiro Otsuki writes:

Retailers and contract manufacturers in Taiwan say that novice PC users there, like students and housewives, tend to buy the Linux version of the Eee PC701, while geeks go for Windows XP.

Does that sound backwards?

Yet a quick look at Amazon shows that Asus Eee’s with XP roughly $35-$100 more than their Linux brethern. Housewives know a bargain when they see one.

Microsoft Research’s Gordon Bell noted that every 10 years a new form of computing emerges thanks to Moore’s Law and the declining cost/increasing performance of ICs. Looks like the netbook is this decade’s new form: a minimalist computer for Internet, email, chatting, video and light application use.

The new market leaders
A big surprise is that inventors and leaders in this new segment are the Taiwanese firms that build, for other people, most of the world’s notebooks. The contract manufacturers, who mostly assemble to spec, are enjoying the freedom to build their own products using their own sense of what the market wants.

Taiwan is the wild East. Expect some crazy experiments - and some revolutionary products.

The Storage Bits take
This is the chance Linux partisans have been waiting for - and it’s coming faster than I’d expected. Microsoft is reportedly charging $60 for netbook XP - a big chunk of a $200 computer’s cost. As Netscape discovered it is hard to compete with “free.”

If Taiwanese housewives are buying Linux the guys in Redmond need to sharpen their pencils. Housewives don’t need Office and Exchange. What do they need?

And Apple will be late to this party as they’ve got their hands full with the iPhone and Snow Leopard. Apple has a history of missing these big shifts - if they haven’t invented them - as they did with towers replacing desktops in the mid-90s.

The netbook space promises to be a lot of fun.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=342





Google, Zen Master of the Market
Steve Lohr

Bill Gates, who walked away from full-time work at Microsoft last month, was perhaps the foremost applied economist of the second half of the 20th century.

Mr. Gates and Microsoft fundamentally shaped how people think about the behavior of modern markets in which technology plays a central role. Under Mr. Gates, Microsoft also challenged the conventional wisdom about competition, business strategy and even antitrust law.

Now, in the early years of the 21st century, Google is the company prompting a rethinking of assumptions.

Microsoft was a master practitioner of “network effects,” the straightforward precept in economics that the value of a product or service often goes up as more people use it. There is nothing new about the concept. It was true of railways, telephones and fax machines, for example.

Microsoft, however, applied the power of network effects more lucratively than any company had done before it.

Microsoft attracted consumers and software developers to use its technology, the software that controls the basic operations of a personal computer. The more that people used Microsoft’s operating system (DOS and later Windows), the more that third-party developers built products to run on Windows, which attracted more users.

So Microsoft’s success snowballed, and the company owned the essential technology, making it harder for users and developers to switch to alternatives.

But the Internet has changed the rules of networked competition, partly because Internet software standards are more open than those in the PC industry. That helps explain why Microsoft has struggled to catch up with Google in the rich new market for Internet search advertising.

Google’s huge, widening lead in that business suggests that while some weapons of competition have changed, the market dynamics are similar, say economists and industry experts. At this stage, they note, Internet search appears to be a market that is winner take most, if not all.

Google, it seems, is the emerging dominant company in the Internet era, much as Microsoft was in the PC era. The study of networked businesses, market competition and antitrust law is being reconsidered in a new context, shaped by Google. Google’s explanation for its large share of the Internet search market — more than 60 percent — is simply that it is a finely honed learning machine. Its scientists constantly improve the relevance of search results for users and the efficiency of its advertising system for advertisers and publishers.

“The source of Google’s competitive advantage is learning by doing,” said Hal R. Varian, Google’s chief economist.

In the Internet marketplace, Mr. Varian notes, users can easily switch to another search engine by typing in another Web address, so there is no tight technology control, as there is with proprietary PC software. Similarly, Mr. Varian says, advertisers and publishers can switch fairly easily to rival ad networks operated by Yahoo, Microsoft and others.

But economists and analysts point out that Google does indeed have network advantages that present formidable obstacles to rivals. The “experience effects,” they say, of users and advertisers familiar with Google’s services make them less likely to switch. There is, for example, a sizable cottage industry of experts who tailor Web sites to get higher rankings on search engines, which drive user traffic and thus ad revenues. These experts understandably focus their efforts on the market leader, Google — another network effect, analysts say.

Google executives often point out that personal data in its services like Web e-mail is not held in proprietary document formats, as it is in PC software. Formats aside, however, a person with a year or so of e-mail housed in Gmail is highly unlikely to switch as a practical matter, analysts say.

Taken together, these networked advantages enjoyed by Google are significant, most analysts agree. “It certainly does have an impact on whether other companies can be competitive threats to Google,” said Michael Katz, an economist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “But it’s a very different way to lock people in than it was for Microsoft. It would be a lot easier for people to walk away from Google.”

Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sees the difference in terms of what he calls “direct network effects” and “indirect network effects.” The direct effects, he says, include software document formats and technology standards that are owned by one company and that are incompatible with a rival’s technology. The indirect effects, he adds, include large numbers of users, the ability to learn from those users, the power of a well-known brand and user inertia.

“For Google,” Mr. Cusumano said, “the indirect network effects are very powerful.”

Google’s market power, it seems, is the economic equivalent of what in foreign affairs is called “soft power,” a term coined by the political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr. This is the power to co-opt rather than coerce.

The implications of Google’s market power for antitrust law are just beginning to be considered. The Justice Department is reviewing Google’s planned partnership with Yahoo. Under the agreement, Yahoo, the No. 2 company in search, would farm out some of its search advertising to Google, the leader. Google has said the deal is simply a voluntary outsourcing arrangement, while opponents say it will reduce competition in search advertising even further.

Google’s market share alone invites scrutiny worldwide. In the United States, antitrust law defines a dominant firm with potentially monopolistic power as a company with 70 percent market share or more. In America, Google has garnered more than 60 percent of searches conducted and about 70 percent of the search ad market. In Europe, the definition of a dominant firm is one that has as little as 35 percent of a market, legal experts say.

Still, dominance alone is not an antitrust problem. The issue is the powerful company’s behavior, says Andrew I. Gavil, a professor at the Howard University School of Law. “You have to be big and bad, not just big,” he said.

The telltale signs of a company’s bad behavior include raising prices, hindering innovation and excluding competitors. There is no evidence that Google is engaged in suspect behavior, but it could be hard to spot. Its ad auction system, for example, is essentially a private marketplace run by Google, without much disclosure to advertisers or to Web publishers.

Mr. Varian, Google’s chief economist, acknowledges that the company has been criticized for its lack of transparency. But he says that the Google approach is a byproduct of its virtue as a fast-moving learning machine. “The system is constantly evolving to optimize efficiency, improve ad quality and make the pricing smarter, so you don’t want set rules that say we do X and we don’t do Y,” Mr. Varian explained.

Whether that kind of “trust us” explanation will satisfy government regulators, if Google’s market power continues to grow, remains to be seen. But Google seems to have learned a lesson from Microsoft and its antitrust troubles. Mr. Varian said antitrust training is mandatory now for Google managers.

“Google looks at what happened to Microsoft, and we’re going to follow the rules,” he said. “If you’re really successful, you need to know about antitrust. That goes with the territory.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/te.../07google.html





Google Ventures Into Virtual Reality With ‘Lively’
AP

In the latest expansion beyond its main mission of organizing the world's information, Internet search leader Google Inc. hopes to orchestrate more fantasizing on the Web.

The Mountain View-based company unveiled a free service Tuesday in which three-dimensional software enables people to congregate in electronic rooms and other computer-manufactured versions of real life. The service, called ''Lively,'' represents Google's answer to a 5-year-old site, Second Life, where people deploy animated alter egos known as avatars to navigate through virtual reality.

Google thinks Lively will encourage even more people to dive into alternate realities because it isn't tethered to one Web site like Second Life, and it doesn't cost anything to use. After installing a small packet of software, a user can enter Lively from other Web sites, like social networking sites and blogs.

The Lively application already works on Facebook, one of the Web's hottest hangouts, and Google is working on a version suitable for an even larger online social network, News Corp.'s MySpace.

''We know people already spend a lot of time online socializing, so we just want to try to make it more enjoyable,'' said Niniane Wang, a Google engineering manager who oversaw Lively's creation over the past year.

Although Google is best known for the search engine that generates most of its profits, the company has introduced other services that are widely used without making much, if any, money. Google's peripheral products include its 3-D ''Earth'' software, Picasa for sharing photos and programs for word processing, calendars and spreadsheets.

Google has no plans to sell advertising in Lively, Wang said.

But the service could still indirectly help the company if it encourages people to remain online longer. Google's management reasons that more frequent Web surfing ultimately will lead to more moneymaking clicks on the ads it shows alongside its search results and millions of other Web sites.

Lively's users will be able to sculpt an avatar that can be male, female or even a different species. An avatar can assume a new identity, change clothes or convey emotions with a few clicks of the mouse.

The service also enables users to create different digital dimensions to roam, from a coffeehouse to an exotic island. The settings can be decorated with a wide variety of furniture, including large-screen televisions that can be set up to play different clips from YouTube.com, Google's video-sharing service.

Lively users can then invite their friends and family into their virtual realities, where they can chat, hug, cry, laugh and interact as if they were characters in a video game.

As a precaution, Google is requiring Lively's users to be at least 13 years old -- a constraint that hasn't been enough to prevent young children from running into trouble on other social spots on the Web.

Google spent several months testing Lively among a group of Arizona State University students before opening the service to the public through its ''Labs'' section -- a technology sandbox set up for the company's experimental products.

------

On The Net:

http://www.lively.com

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/busi...l-Reality.html





US Pirate Party Study Shatters MPAA Claims
Ernesto

While the Pirate Party might be well known in Sweden, and heard of elsewhere around Europe, it’s not really taken off in the country that prides itself as being ‘the land of the free’. Unperturbed, the US Pirate Party has soldiered on and with the preliminary release of data from it’s first study, it’s hitting back at the media lobbyists.

Claims by the music or film industries that ‘piracy is costing billions’ are commonplace. In 2005, for instance, the MPAA funded the LEK study, which claimed that over $6 billion was lost to MPAA members due to piracy. However, the figures and data behind those claims have never been publicly released, a fact underscored this past January when the MPAA had to release a statement saying ‘they made a mistake’ in one of the figures. It’s a figure that’s been quoted a lot, to this day, and was something that rankled US Pirate Party Administrator, Andrew Norton.

“I was tired of seeing those claims on every press release,” he tells TorrentFreak, “knowing there was no evidence to back them up. They could have said that the loss was $20 billion, if they think they could bluff it out. The sad fact is that we have news outlets, and politicians quoting this figure as fact, and yet not one verified any claim. If I said I could turn lead into gold, I would be bombarded with requests to prove it. They have turned air into $6billion, and supposedly smart people accept it without question.”

Frustrated, Norton decided he should study the MPAA’s own figures. When he couldn’t find any data to support their claims, he decided that there needed to be a study of the data the MPAA did put out. “I was thinking about where I could look, when the MPAA announced a new record year, and I thought ‘of course’. The MPAA can hardly question the accuracy of the data published by its members, and itself.”

The preliminary findings of the study, published today, show a different picture to the one the MPAA paints. Norton took the view that the films most likely to be distributed on filesharing networks, and sold on street corners, would be the big blockbuster films, and so he should look at the top 10 films of each year. The results from that are shown below.

With average growth throughout the time period, it would seem that claims of cinema piracy hurting box office figures (leading to cinemas issuing night vision goggles to staff, and teenagers being charged with crimes for recording 20-second clips) are unfounded. When certain p2p protocol lifespans are marked on the graph, for comparison, the MPAA claims are pretty much shattered.

Mr. Norton is also aware that he will have to prove he is not just making things up. The US Pirate Party, who is publishing the study, has stated that all data used in the study will be available when the full study will published at the end of July. He does have a comment for the MPAA however. “Prove your claims, or shut up about them.”
http://torrentfreak.com/us-pirate-pa...claims-080709/





‘Hancock’ Powers to the Top of Box Office
Michael Cieply

Will Smith’s “Hancock” scored a strong $66 million in domestic ticket sales over the weekend, affirming his drawing power but leaving Hollywood short of the peaks it hit during last year’s Fourth of July holiday period.

Since opening with previews Tuesday evening, “Hancock,” Sony Pictures Entertainment’s comic action movie about a damaged superhero, took in $107.3 million at the domestic box office and $78 million more from 50 countries around the world, studio executives said.

That marked a personal triumph for Mr. Smith, as audiences flocked to the film despite soft reviews. “He’s just the guy everybody loves,” said Rory Bruer, the Sony Pictures distribution president. “Everybody wants to see what he’s up to.”

Mr. Bruer noted that the film was Mr. Smith’s eighth consecutive No. 1 opening, beginning with “Men in Black II,” which opened over the July Fourth holiday in 2002.

The current Top 10 films took in about $155.5 million for the weekend, down 2.9 percent from $160.1 million for the Top 10 during the equivalent weekend last year, according to figures compiled by Screenline, the box-office reporting service.

“Hancock,” an unusually complex take on the superhero genre, took in far less over the extended holiday period than did Paramount Pictures’ toy-based action film “Transformers,” which had $155.4 million during the equivalent period last year.

“Kit Kittredge: An American Girl,” a G-rated film, took in just $3.6 million over the weekend for Picturehouse to place No. 8 as it expanded in its third weekend from a handful of screens to more than 1,800 in a bid to capitalize on the popularity of the American Girl doll line.

Other top performers included “Wall-E” from Walt Disney, which placed at No. 2 with $33.4 million in sales for its second weekend; “Wanted” from Universal Pictures, which was No. 3 with $20.6 million in its second weekend; and “Get Smart” from Warner Brothers, which was No. 4 with $11.1 million in its third weekend.

The weekend performance by “Hancock” may have been dampened slightly by unusually intense fan anticipation for a more conventional superhero movie, “The Dark Knight,” another entry in the Warner Brothers Batman series. While that movie will not open in the United States until July 18, the Fandango.com and Movietickets.com ticket services have reported high levels of advance sales, with midnight and 3 a.m. showings on opening day already selling out.

Still, the weekend was a vindication not just for Mr. Smith and for Sony, but also for the director Peter Berg and a producing team that included Akiva Goldsman, Michael Mann and Mr. Smith’s longtime partner James Lassiter. The filmmakers had bucked conventional wisdom by casting Mr. Smith as a drunken antihero who needs as much help as he can offer others.

Some critics rebelled — and Variety caused ripples in Hollywood by comparing the film to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s failed turn in the action movie sendup “Last Action Hero,” released by Sony in 1993. Yet the audience galloped past the reviews to give Mr. Berg the highest ticket sales of his directing career in just five and a half days.

Much of Hollywood, meanwhile, spent the weekend pondering a tally of another sort. A closely watched vote on a tentative contract between the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Aftra) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is expected to be completed on Tuesday. As of late last week, industry players with ties to Aftra and the Screen Actors Guild were privately predicting that the Aftra contract would be approved by a clear margin, though without the overwhelming support that is common in union ratification votes.

The SAG leadership has campaigned strenuously against the pact, contending that its terms undercut the guild’s ability to reach a new agreement of its own. The guild’s contract with producers expired last Monday, but actors have continued working without a new pact.

Because the unions have overlapping membership, the Aftra vote is expected to provide a gauge of SAG’s ability to hold out for better terms.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/movies/07box.html





Hollywood Studios Say Actors Rebuff "Final" Offer

Hollywood's major studios said the Screen Actors Guild on Thursday rebuffed the industry's "final" contract offer, a move the studios said "puts labor peace at risk."

The statement from the studios' bargaining agent, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, came hours after a SAG delegation delivered its formal response to an offer the studios had presented last week as a take-or-leave proposition.

The contract at issue covers the work of 120,000 SAG members in prime-time television and movies, an industry still recovering from a 14-week screenwriters strike that ended in February.

"The refusal of SAG's Hollywood leadership to accept this offer is the latest in a series of actions by SAG leaders that, in our opinion, puts labor peace at risk," the producers alliance said.

The industry group called again on SAG's leaders to submit the offer, a package the studios say is worth $250 million in additional compensation to actors over three years, to the union's rank-and-file for a ratification vote.

"The last thing we need is a long, hot summer of labor strife," the producers said in their statement.

There was no immediate word from SAG on the outcome of Thursday's meeting.

The studios' latest offer to SAG essentially mirrors the terms of a separate TV-only deal ratified on Tuesday by members of the smaller American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or AFTRA.

The AFTRA deal won approval despite an all-out campaign by SAG to persuade some 40,000 of its members who belong to both unions to reject the settlement, which SAG leaders have branded as inadequate.

As of this week, SAG leaders have downplayed the likelihood of calling a strike, a move that would take weeks to organize and require a 75 percent vote by members.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...47597820080711





Aftra Votes for Deal With Hollywood Producers
Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes

Members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists approved their new contract with Hollywood’s major production companies by a solid margin on Tuesday, dealing a blow to the efforts of another actors’ union that is holding out for substantially better terms.

Leaders of the federation said members ratified the deal with 62.4 percent approval in a vote that concluded late Tuesday evening. The margin of approval was smaller than the overwhelming endorsements typical of union ratification votes. The federation declined to give an exact vote count, citing longstanding practice.

But the margin was large enough to create a migraine for the Screen Actors Guild, the dominant actors’ union with some 120,000 members. The guild has been demanding higher pay, an increase in payments connected to DVD sales, restrictions on the placement of commercial products in shows and movies and a bigger take from the use of their work in new media.

S.A.G. members have been working without a contract for the last week, even as their negotiators ponder what producers termed a final offer. The guild has not yet taken a strike authorization vote — a process that might take weeks and would require 75 percent approval. That level would be difficult to achieve now that so many actors have already approved the Aftra pact, which stops short of guild demands.

About 75 percent of Aftra’s 70,000 members are actors. Those figures suggest that a large number of actors are weary of Hollywood’s labor unrest and are not eager for a new strike. About 40,000 actors belong to both Aftra and S.A.G.

Alan Rosenberg, S.A.G.’s president, said in a statement: “Clearly many Screen Actors Guild members responded to our education and outreach campaign and voted against the inadequate Aftra agreement.”

He added, “We will continue to address the issues of importance to actors that Aftra left on the table.”

On Tuesday, S.A.G. was dealing with what two board members described as deepening internal dissent. More moderate members, which include many top-earning actors, were arguing that an Aftra ratification by any margin erased S.A.G.’s bargaining power, while more militant leaders held fast to the position that a contract approval by the smaller union was not a death blow.

Regardless, S.A.G.’s leaders are now left with a set of tough choices: They can risk a strike authorization vote that might not pass, concede points they have been pressing for months or prolong the current uncertainty despite the growing impatience of many union workers whose income is evaporating as production slows down.

A guild spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment. In brief statements on Tuesday, the guild and the producers’ alliance said the actors would respond to the companies’ latest offer at a meeting on Thursday.

On May 28, Aftra reached a tentative deal with producers, which became the focal point of a bitter public dispute with S.A.G. The guild urged Aftra members to reject the contract as a way of pressuring the companies to sweeten terms that have now been accepted in substantially similar form by the Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West.

Prominent performers weighed in on all sides. Tom Hanks spoke for the Aftra deal, Sean Penn campaigned against it, and George Clooney had a middle response, proposing that actor pay be reviewed annually by a panel of big stars.

While the cut-and-thrust continues, Hollywood has been edging forward on makeshift production schedules aimed at suspending movie and television shoots should the actors strike.

In announcing Tuesday’s results, Roberta Reardon, national president of the federation, said her union was planning steps to close its rift with S.A.G. The two unions had negotiated jointly for years before differences over goals and process caused a separation in recent months.

Those steps included a planned meeting of performers and union leaders and a proposal that various guilds coordinate efforts before any new contract talks. Aftra will also promise to review measures that may lead to a resumption of joint negotiations with S.A.G. before a pair of contracts with commercial producers expires in the fall.

At the same time, Ms. Reardon made clear that she resented the attack by Mr. Rosenberg and his associates on her union’s dealings. In a statement, she thanked members of her union who endorsed the new contract in the face of what she called “potential retribution” by its opponents.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/bu...a/09aftra.html





Studios, SAG Still Can't Agree

AMPTP says SAG rejected offer; guild says it didn't
Leslie Simmons

After a five-hour meeting between SAG and the studios Thursday, Hollywood is in the very same place it has been since talks started April 15: without a new actors contract.

The studios said Thursday that SAG officially rejected their final offer. The guild says it didn't.

"The refusal of SAG's Hollywood leadership to accept this offer is the latest in a series of actions by SAG leaders that puts labor peace at risk," the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television said in a strongly worded statement after talks broke off just before 7:30 p.m. The studios said the guild was "unreasonably" seeking more than other unions and that they're not interested in further negotiations.

"We believe the bargaining is continuing," Alan Rosenberg countered in a terse statment that reflected a diametrically opposed interpretation of the meeting at the AMPTP headquarters in Sherman Oaks.

"We did not reject their offer," SAG's chief negotiator Doug Allen said. "We made a comprehensive counterproposal that adopted some of their proposals and offered alternatives on others.

A studio source said the counterproposal contained dozens of changes to the AMPTP's offer, including a continued push for more DVD residuals, product integration proposals and new-media residuals

"These counterproposals could've been done over the last five weeks," AMPTP spokesman Jesse Hiestand said. "SAG wasted the last five weeks fighting with AFTRA.

Allen said he would not discuss the particular proposals anywhere but at the bargaining table with the AMPTP.

"We're disappointed with SAG not accepting our final offer, and we're calling on SAG to have its membership vote on the final offer," Hiestand said.

A SAG spokeswoman said it's not up to the studios to decide how and when SAG's members should ratify a contract.

No new talks were scheduled.

In a two-sentence official statement, SAG said its negotiating committee members presented the AMPTP with their response to the producers' proposal and that its bargaining committee would meet today to discuss the AMPTP's response.

The conflicting views of what transpired Thursday are not the result of a misunderstanding. Rather, they reflect the two sides' strategic jockeying as they try to bring their increasingly acrimonious talks to an endgame.

If the two sides reach an impasse the studios have the right to impose all or part of its final offer on the guild, which is working without a contract but working under its conditions. Thus, it's now very much in the studios' interest to declare the talks deadlocked.

The guild can avoid imposed conditions as long as bargaining is continuing.

Early in the afternoon SAG officials delivered a roughly 30-minute formal response to the studios so-called "last, best and final" offer, and the two sides then peeled off into a series of private caucuses and sidebar meetings.

News crews milled about outside AMPTP headquarters, but neither side issued any indication of how talks were proceeding.

It was the groups' first face-to-face sit-down since AFTRA's members ratified their contract Tuesday. It's also the fourth major labor negotiation that the AMPTP has been caught up in during the past nine months.

Actress Connie Stevens, who is on the SAG negotiating board, was spotted smiling outside the proceedings late in the afternoon catching a breath of fresh air.

"There's always talking and room for understanding, and we're doing our best," she told The Reporter. "There's great people on both sides, a lot of dedicated people on both sides, and I'm optimistic."

Her optimism, however, was mixed with some frustration, as she said she couldn't understand how "people can get stuck on the smallest things and smallest amounts that a couple of years ago I would have pitched in and paid for myself."

The AMPTP's offer was delivered June 30, after 42 days of negotiating and just hours before SAG's contract expired.

Tuesday's ratification of AFTRA's primetime/TV contract, which the studio said mirrors those signed off on by the WGA and DGA and offered to SAG, has put added pressure on SAG to reach a deal.

Included in that offer was an Aug. 15 deadline for SAG to ratify the deal so that it could be retroactively put in place. The deadline came to light this week, but was something that has always been in the offer and that SAG is aware of since it was first made, Allen said.

The AMPTP sees the retroactive offer deadline as an incentive for the guild.

"It's a good way for them to get paid what they've missed so far since the contract has expired," Hiestand said.

What would happen after Aug. 15 remains to be seen. The AMPTP has indicated that the impasse process is a lengthy one, in which the studios would have to prove to the National Labor Relations Board that any further meetings with SAG would be fruitless.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...65edac15?imw=Y





Cannes Success Gives Italian Cinema a Boost
Elisabetta Povoledo

When two Italian films won the top runner-up prizes at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the reaction at home was akin to that usually reserved for victorious national soccer teams.

The news media went wild.

“The Italian redemption,” the critic Natalia Aspesi wrote in a front-page article in the Rome daily La Repubblica, lavishly praising the two films for their clean break from the spiritless cinema that had taken root in Italy in recent years.

“Gomorrah,” Matteo Garrone’s unblinking exposé of the Neapolitan underworld, won the grand prix, and “Il Divo” (subtitled “The Extraordinary Life of Giulio Andreotti”), Paolo Sorrentino’s unflattering portrait of the man who was prime minister of Italy seven times, took home the jury prize.

Intellectuals jumped on the bandwagon, pronouncing the birth of a new movement that some dubbed neo-neorealism, in homage to the golden postwar era when directors like Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica and Federico Fellini captivated audiences and critics alike.

“You can call it neo or whatever you want,” said Caterina d’Amico, chief executive of RAI Cinema, a division of the national broadcaster RAI, which helped finance “Gomorrah.” “The fact is that great Italian cinema is rooted in reality. At the heart is a way of looking at the world or a person or society for what it is.” Americans, she added, “are good at telling dreams; we’re good at telling reality.”

The last time Italy won two top prizes at Cannes was in 1972, when two films that also skewered contemporary Italy shared the highest award, the Palme d’Or: Francesco Rosi’s “Mattei Affair” and Elio Petri’s “Working Class Goes to Heaven.”

Mostly, though, many critics and industry experts see the recent recognition at Cannes as a positive sign that after a protracted dark age, periodically brightened by hits that turned out to be flashes in the pan, Italian cinema is finally back on track.
“The fact that two fine and important films won gives resonance to both films,” said Irene Bignardi, the president of Filmitalia, which promotes Italian cinema abroad. The films were not made in a vacuum, she noted, but “emerged from an overall situation that is quite bright.”

Ms. Bignardi had just returned from New York and the eighth edition of the Open Roads film festival, which showcases emerging Italian talents.

“There’s a new generation of directors in Italy making interesting and entertaining films that look at reality through a very personal lens,” she said.

For many years independent Italian cinema languished under the often justified allegation that its excessive navel-gazing held little appeal beyond the country’s borders.

But while “Gomorrah” and “Il Divo” deal with distinctly Italian themes, they use a narrative and visual language that is decidedly international, and that, critics concur, accounts for their success at Cannes.

Mr. Sorrentino, the director of “Il Divo,” said the “novelty of the language” of his film, which uses a raucous soundtrack and lush, innovative cinematography to turn Mr. Andreotti’s story into a larger meditation on power, “has given this film a life outside Italy.” Distribution rights have been sold to several European countries, including France and Britain.

At home “Il Divo,” which cost about $6.7 million to make, has grossed about that much in its first six weeks. “Gomorrah,” which cost about $6.2 million, has made about $15 million since its release in mid-May (second only to the latest “Indiana Jones” installment).

That flush bottom line could have a long-term effect on the Italian film industry in general.

“Until this spring producers were oriented toward comedies because they make money,” Mr. Sorrentino said. “But after Cannes another mind-set kicked in, making producers realize that it’s possible to produce independent films without losing” a great deal of money. “I think it’s a good starting point,” he added.

Weeks after their release on hundreds of screens, “Gomorrah” and “Il Divo” are still playing on dozens. By comparison, Francesco Munzi’s “Resto Della Notte,” a biting snapshot of Italian middle-class wealth and immigrant violence that also showed at Cannes, was playing on only 61 screens when it opened in June, which is far more typical of independent films here. (“But 10 years ago it would only have played in two,” Ms. d’Amico said.)

The Cannes awards have also stoked the never-ending debate on the Italian model of public financing for films, an approach that has been as vehemently criticized as a system of private patronage using public money as it has been praised post-Cannes.

A report published in May by the Italian screenwriters’ association underscored the “primary importance” of the state in keeping reels rolling in Italy. (Television has also been a significant investor, since a 1994 law mandated that a percentage of advertising revenue had to be invested in film production.)

Drafted “as a response to attacks in the national press that the public financing is a thing of the past,” said Alessandro Rossetti, a board member of the association and one of the authors of the study, the report also suggests that loans made to support Italian films are ultimately repaid through indirect conduits, like value-added tax and income tax.

Each winning film received money from the state, “which shows that Italy’s cultural and industrial policy regarding film works and bears fruit,” said Andrea Occhipinti of Lucky Red, an Italian production and distribution company that co-produced “Il Divo.” He said that the film, “like most important Italian films of recent years,” could not have been made without public money.

What is not in dispute is the effect an important prize has on box office fortunes. The classic example is Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Cinema Paradiso,” which opened on a limited number of screens and made a pittance, Mr. Rossetti said. It was rereleased after it won a grand jury prize at Cannes in 1989 and an Oscar in 1990 and went on, he said, to “become a huge box office hit.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/movies/09film.html





Great Photo on Flickr? Getty Images Might Pay You For It
Miguel Helft

If you are a photographer with high-quality images posted on Yahoo’s Flickr service, you may soon get an e-mail inviting you to become a paid contributor to Getty Images, the world’s largest distributor of pictures and video.

Yahoo and Getty Images said Tuesday that they have entered into a partnership under which Getty editors will comb Flickr in search of interesting images. They will then invite photographers to participate in the program and ensure that their images have the proper releases to be licensed legally. Those who are included in the program will get paid at the same rates that Getty pays photographers who are under contract with the company.

“We believe that Flickr will be an important addition to the mix that we have,” said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and chief executive of Getty Images. Mr. Klein said Flickr photographers will increase the depth of Getty’s catalog on certain subjects and certain regions of the world. And they will be bringing an element that professional photography often lacks, he said. “Because the imagery is not shot for commercial services, there is more authenticity,” Mr. Klein said. “Advertisers are looking for authenticity.”

Getty will make payments to Flickr, but detailed terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Mr. Klein said that financially the deal will be immaterial for both Yahoo and Getty Images. Over time, however, thousands of Flickr photographers may benefit.

Mr. Klein said that Getty charges on average between $500 and $600 for “rights managed” images, which are used by a customer exclusively for a period of time. Photographers get between 30 percent and 40 percent of that. The company charges on average of $250 for non-exclusive use of images and gives photographers a 20 percent cut of that, Mr. Klein said.

Getty also runs a site called iStockPhoto, where amateurs contribute photos that the company markets at lower rates. The photos on Flickr are of sufficent quality to demand higher prices, Mr. Klein said.

“It is a real testament to the quality of the photography on Flickr,” said Kakul Srivastava, general manager of Flickr.

The program will be rolled out in the coming months, and all Flickr photographers will be eligible to participate.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...-it/index.html





An Artist of the Cutting-Room Floor
Manohla Dargis

Bruce Conner's ecstatic films — fabricated from bits of old documentaries and educational reels, from mass-cultural snips and snails and recycled movie tales — were at once salvage projects and assertions of individuality in an increasingly anonymous age. In their modest way (modesty, in this case, being less a virtue than a worldview), they were acts of resistance, an aesthetic rejoinder to a world drowning in its own image. Just as important, they are generally a blast — witty, exuberant, despairing, engaged, apocalyptic.

As it happens, a real blast figures large in his most famous film, “A Movie,” which was also made under a (mushroom) cloud in 1958, the year a B-47 lost a hydrogen bomb off the coast of Georgia and a second B-47 accidentally dropped an atom bomb in South Carolina. (No one was killed, but yikes.) There are jokey sections in “A Movie,” funny if sinister laughs, but mostly there are found-footage wipeouts and crashes, firing guns and dropping bodies and that very big bomb. An elephant dies, and Mussolini shows up dead. As a chronicle of the first half of the 20th century, the film takes you down, down, down, even as its kinetic editing brings you up, up, up.

Mr. Conner, who died on Monday at 74 after a long illness, made some two dozen films. Even if you think you’ve never seen any of them — “A Movie,” “Cosmic Ray,” “Report,” “Mongoloid” — you probably have, if only by proxy, because of their influence and cultural dispersion. (Generally short, they make for friendly viewing, if deeper thinking, which is why they show up in college courses.) Dennis Hopper has said that the editing of “Easy Rider,” his wiggy 1969 generational cri de coeur, was directly influenced by Mr. Conner. For better and sometimes worse, scores of other filmmakers in both the avant-garde and the commercial mainstream have been influenced by Mr. Conner’s shocking juxtapositions and propulsive, rhythmically sophisticated montage. MTV should have paid him royalties.

Mr. Conner was already a critically recognized assemblage artist when he turned to cinema in his mid-20s. In his hands film became an extension of assemblage and, arguably, an elaboration. Where once he used physical detritus like scraps of lace and junk to make art, he now used old Hollywood movies, newsreels and stock footage. Where once his materials included nylon stockings, they now included a clip of Marilyn Monroe (or a lookalike). Mr. Conner used that Marilyn image early in “A Movie” for a startling sequence that features a man peering through a periscope, a submarine discharging a torpedo, and an exploding nuclear bomb. With a few deft edits, he transformed innocuous cheesecake into a disquieting riff on annihilation.

Somewhat paradoxically, while Mr. Conner liked to say that an inspiration for “A Movie” was the Marx Brothers’ comedy “Duck Soup,” even this teenage favorite had its dark lining. “There’s a war going on,” he explained to an interviewer in 1976, “and Groucho tells Harpo that we need help, and he runs out and puts a ‘Help Wanted’ sign on the front of the building. Then you start seeing all these tanks, and airplanes, and soldiers, and porpoises, and giraffes — I don’t know — all sorts of creatures and things rushing to help them.” He added, “After that I started thinking about all the things I could stick together in a sequence like that: elephants running, trains blowing up, cars going, cars crashing, and so on and so forth.”

It wasn’t all crashes, wipeouts and dead presidents. (His 1963-67 film “Report” explores the image-exploitation of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.) His 1966 “Breakaway,” for instance, features his original footage of the singer and choreographer Antonia Christina Basilotta, a k a Toni Basil, dancing dressed and undressed, in forward and backward motion, to her rendition of the catchy song of the title. (“I’m gonna breakaway, breakaway from the everyday.”) On one level, the black-and-white film recalls Eadweard Muybridge’s early motion studies — Ms. Basil’s joy in her own physicality is glorious — but it’s particularly self-conscious and liberated. In contrast to Muybridge’s subjects, she looks as if she’s having the time of her life, her hair whipping and body thrashing in perfect harmony with Mr. Conner’s staccato and strobe-like editing. She’s a different kind of explosion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/movies/12conn.html





Talk of Isolation and Expectations Follows a Young Model’s Death in New York
Cara Buckley

There was a grim inevitability to the questions that followed that dark moment in Lower Manhattan last Saturday when a young woman known as the “Russian Rapunzel” tumbled to the earth.

The woman, Ruslana Korshunova, was 20, and her nine-story fall from her apartment balcony on Water Street was ruled a suicide by the police. It was a conclusion that Ms. Korshunova’s family and friends passionately refute, largely because they believe she may have slipped.

Regardless of what caused Ms. Korshunova’s fall, her death set off a small media storm. Ms. Korshunova was a model; young and beautiful, she had worked for some of the world’s top designers.

Some wondered whether the pressures of her industry, riddled with tales of young women succumbing to depression, anorexia and drugs, had something to do with her death. After all, in popular imaginings, models lead opulent and edgy lives: being fawned over by older, richer men, partying all night, jetting around the world. All of which might seem a little much for a young woman like Ms. Korshunova, who was in a fiercely competitive city far from home — in her case, Kazakhstan — and barely out of her teens.
Yet many people in the industry say that that image of models is a stereotype that often has little in common with reality.

Instead, they say, the biggest peril that afflicts foreign models in New York City is a far more ordinary one: loneliness.

“A lot of these girls are very young, they’re still learning English, and they’re expected to be on their own and grow up overnight, basically,” said Megan Walsh, a studio manager for the fashion photographer Craig McDean. “They’re not ready. I used to be a model scout, and that’s why I got out of it. One day it just hit me; I was like, ‘I can’t believe we’re taking these young girls from their small towns, be they in Ohio or Estonia. They’re not given a chance to be kids and grow up.’ ”

In recent years, the popularity of models from Russia and Eastern Europe has soared, supplanting the zeal for Brazilian women ushered in by the supermodel Gisele Bündchen about eight years ago. Sciascia Gambaccini, who was the fashion director for Jane magazine, now defunct, said that a big part of what has made Russian and Central and Eastern European models so appealing was how seriously they took their jobs. Many of the young women come from humble beginnings, and send a good chunk of their earnings home.

“People love working with Eastern European girls; they’re hard working, and they’re beautiful,” Ms. Gambaccini said. “I worked in fashion during the ’80s. Now girls are much smarter, and maybe even better business girls.”

Unlike the hard-partying models of the past, Ms. Gambaccini and Ms. Walsh said that while there were still models who stayed up all night, they could not recall the last time a model showed up late for a shoot.

“The successful ones, the ones that we work with, that we’re shooting Dior campaigns with, those girls are not going out and partying,” said Ms. Walsh, who had worked with Ms. Korshunova and described her as “very, very sweet.” “They treat it like a business,” she said. “They keep healthy.”

Foreign models in the city do have support networks. Models from Russia or Eastern Europe tend to stick together. Irina Miccoli, 20, a Russian model who divides her time between South Africa and New York, described the cliques of foreign models in the city as “mini societies.” “And it’s a big help,” she said.

Fashion agencies also often ensure that younger models are accompanied to shoots by their mothers or other caretakers, and they assign under-age models to live with other models, as well as a chaperone. Iulia Cirstea, 20, a Romanian who recently moved into a models’ apartment on the East Side, said she rarely felt alone. She also draws support from the in-house chaperone. “She’s like a mommy to all of us,” Ms. Cirstea said.

Still, the challenge of working in a foreign land and not speaking English can be especially isolating. Dasha Vlasenko, 26, an Estonian-born model who lives on the Upper East Side, said younger models often pined for home. “I see girls being constantly very homesick,” she said.

And competition is fierce in New York, where a premium is placed on young women who fit a certain fashion mold. Anine Bing, 25, a Danish-born model, left New York after four months, after being told that she was too shapely and too short, and that her looks were more suited to California.

“New York’s like the toughest place in the world,” said Ms. Bing, who now lives in Los Angeles. “All the top models are there, and you have to be super tall and super skinny. It was too tough for me. I couldn’t handle — I couldn’t handle the pressure.”

At 5 feet 8 inches, Ms. Korshunova was on the shorter side for a model. Yet she landed highly coveted work, shooting a perfume commercial for Nina Ricci and appearing in a DKNY ad and on the covers of French Elle and Russian Vogue. Working for IMG Models, which represents some of the world’s highest-earning models, including Ms. Bündchen, Heidi Klum and Kate Moss, she was most likely earning a six-figure salary, people in the industry said, and perhaps $7,000 a shoot. Still, she was not in the coveted top rung occupied by models whose faces are universally known.

“It can provide an extreme high when you’re doing very well, but it can also provide an extreme low,” said Jesper Lannung, a model who also runs Modelshotel.com, a social networking Web site. “It can be very lonely. You’re pushed in different ways. There’s a lot of expectations, and you’re expected to maintain a certain image.”

Ms. Korshunova’s death has caused some reflection in an industry long seen as superficial.

“There’s not one person I know in this business that has not said, ‘This is really upsetting and tragic, and what a horrible thing,’ ” said Neal Hamil, director of Elite Model Management’s North America operations. “And everyone has taken a harder look at young girls, asking: ‘Are you O.K.? Is there anything you want to talk about? Because you can tell us anything.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/ny.../05models.html





Dorian Leigh, Multifaceted Cover Girl of the ’40s, Dies at 91
Douglas Martin



Dorian Leigh, who combined pristine blue eyes, curling eyelashes, an arresting intelligence and intoxicating sexuality to become one of history’s most photographed models — perhaps the first to truly merit the adjective super — died Monday in Falls Church, Va. She was 91.

The death was announced by her grandson Thibaut Dubois.

Ms. Leigh graced seven Vogue covers in 1946, according to a New Yorker magazine article of the time, and in the next six years appeared on more than 50 more covers of various magazines, Playbill reported.

Her images in Revlon’s “Fire and Ice” nail polish and lipstick campaign in the 1950s — “For you who love to flirt with fire ...who dare to skate on thin ice” — were shot by Richard Avedon and became Madison Avenue legend.

“Dorian was truly the best model of our time,” Eileen Ford, the doyenne of the modeling agency industry, said in an interview with The Roanoke Times in 1997. “She instinctively knew what every photographer wanted, and she came alive just at the moment the shutter clicked.”

Cecil Beaton wrote in his book “Photobiography” (1951) that Ms. Leigh was as demanding as the eminent photographers who shot her, including Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Irving Penn.

He said she could convey many moods, including “the sweetness of an 18-century pastel, the allure of a Sargent portrait, of the poignancy of some unfortunate woman who sat for Modigliani.”

Ms. Leigh’s mystique was enhanced by her many romances, which included five marriages — counting the one in Mexico to a Spanish marquis who turned out to be already married. There were also the many real or imagined affairs with famous writers, musicians and photographers, eagerly tabulated by gossip columnists. Ms. Leigh was definitely attractive, standing 5 feet 5 inches, with an hourglass figure and an alluring smile.

“She had so much estrogen, like some men are full of testosterone,” Carmen Dell’Orefice, who started modeling in 1945, a year before Ms. Leigh, said in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2006. “Dorian was so sexy without saying a word. And she was her own person.”

Truman Capote called his friend Ms. Leigh “Happy-Go-Lucky,” and she had many similarities to Holly Golightly, the heroine of Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” — not least what Vanity Fair called her wayward lifestyle and reckless bravado.

(Gerald Clarke, Capote’s biographer, cautioned skepticism about this resemblance: “Half the women he knew, and a few he did not, claimed to be the model for his wacky heroine,” he wrote in 1988.)

It is incontrovertible that Ms. Leigh paved the way for her youngest sister, Suzy Parker, to become a supermodel, one who possibly eclipsed even Ms. Leigh. According to Vanity Fair, Ms. Leigh called Ms. Ford and made an offer that Ms. Ford was forever glad she accepted.

“I will come to your agency if you’ll tell me now you’ll take my little sister Suzy sight unseen,” she said. Ms. Parker died in 2003.

Dorian Parker was born on April 23, 1917, in San Antonio. Her daughter Young Eve Paciello said her middle name was Leigh, contradicting published reports that she picked up that name in adulthood on the advice of a numerologist.

The family later moved to Queens, where her father, a chemist and inventor, concocted an improved form of etching acid that made him rich.

Ms. Leigh attended what was then Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Va., majoring in English. While there, she married Marshall Hawkins, with whom she had two children; they were divorced in 1937. She later studied calculus at New York University and got a job working for the Navy doing mechanical drafting.

She next worked for the Eastern Aircraft Corporation, helping design airplane wings, beginning at 65 cents an hour and ending up at a dollar. When her eyes bothered her, she took a job with Republic Pictures as an apprentice copywriter.

There are many stories of how she fell into modeling, but all begin with her finding her way to the Harry Conover Agency. Mr. Conover advised her to go immediately to Harper’s Bazaar and tell the editor, Diana Vreeland, that she was 19. (She was 27.)

The first thing Ms. Vreeland said was never to touch her exquisite zigzag eyebrows. Dahl-Wolfe photographed her the next morning wearing a little black tulle hat trimmed with a pink rose. Ms. Leigh was on the cover of the June 1944 Harper’s Bazaar. Soon she was making $1 a minute, which she said astounded her.

Her father insisted she drop the name Parker, because he did not approve of modeling. (Ms. Leigh’s success caused him to change his mind about Suzy.)

Besides her daughter Ms. Paciello, of Northport, Ala., from her second marriage, Ms. Leigh is survived by a son from her first marriage, T. L. Hawkins of McLean, Va.; and a daughter from her marriage to Serge Bordat, Miranda Bordat; three grandchildren; and two step-grandchildren.

A daughter from her marriage to Mr. Hawkins, Marsha Lynn Smith, died in the early 1990s. A son, Kim Blas Parker, from her liaison with the Spanish racing-car driver and athlete Alfonso Cabeza de Vaca, marquis of Portago, committed suicide in 1977 at 21. Her last husband was Iddo Ben-Gurion, whom she married in 1964 and divorced two years later.

After modeling, Ms. Leigh opened what is usually called the first modeling agency in Paris, ran gourmet restaurants in France and had successful catering operations in the United States, among other endeavors. She wrote several books about food, including one about pancakes and another featuring fritters.

Perhaps mindful of models’ concerns about diet, she included a recipe in the fritter book for low-fat, low-cholesterol chocolate doughnuts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/arts/09leigh.html





Nude Girl Art Row Flares in Australia

The Art Monthly cover photo, featuring Olympia Nelson and taken by her mother Melbourne photographer Polixeni Papapetrou

A photograph of a nude six-year-old girl on the cover of a high-brow Australian art magazine today sparked an uproar after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called it disgusting, infuriating liberal art critics.

This month's taxpayer-funded Art Monthly Australia magazine placed the photograph of the young dark-haired girl on the cover, sitting and with one nipple showing, to protest censorship of a recent photo exhibition featuring similarly naked children.

"I can't stand this stuff," said Rudd, a staunch Christian whose centre-left Labor government won a sweeping victory over conservatives last year, in part on a vow to reinvigorate Australia's small but influential arts community.

"We're talking about the innocence of little children here. A little child cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in this way," Rudd added, as officials said they would review the magazine's funding.

Magazine editor Maurice O'Riordan said he hoped the July edition of the monthly magazine would restore "dignity to the debate" about artistic depictions of children and anyone else.

The magazine cover followed confiscation by police in May of photographs of a young girl taken by artist Bill Henson and briefly on display in a Sydney art gallery.

The cover photo, which had been on public exhibition in Australia for some time, was taken in 2003 by Melbourne photographer Polixeni Papapetrou and depicted her own daughter, Olympia Nelson, now aged 11.

The Australian Childhood Foundation said parents had no ethical right to consent to nude photographs being taken of their children, as it could have a psychological impact in later years.

But Nelson and her father, art critic and professor Robert Nelson, defended the photo in a press conference outside their home in the southern city of Melbourne.

"I love the photo so much. I think that the picture my mum took of me had nothing to do with being abused, and I think nudity can be a part of art," Olympia Nelson said.

Rudd last week met with the leaders of Australia's six states and said he would forge a national child protection system following a spate of shocking cases of child neglect and abuse.

His government also criticised Australia's "binge drinking" culture and sharply lifted taxes on so-called "alcopops" blending alcoholic drinks like vodka or rum with
soft drinks and juices, making them popular with young adults, especially women.

"We're sick of being unjustly targeted by a small minority group of wowsers," Australian Hotels Association chief executive Sally Fielke said, using an Australian term for an excessively puritanical person.

Fielke represents mainly the $25bn local alcohol industry, but her thoughts echoed those of many social commentators and liberals.

Martyn Jolly, the head of photography and media arts at the elite Australian National University, said of the latest art controversy that the Henson photographs had been reviewed and approved by government censors.

"We aren't going to let politicians who are always wanting to jump on populous bandwagons dictate what we can and can't show," Jolly said.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...ia-861720.html





Qwest to Block Known Child Porn Internet Sites
Jasa Santos

Qwest Communications will now block customer access to known child pornography Web sites through a voluntary agreement with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"Our agreement with the national center really helps us advocate for children and online safety," said Qwest spokeswoman Johnna Hoff.

The national center works with law enforcement to identify and list Web sites containing child pornography. Qwest will use that list to block customer access to those sites.

Hoff said Qwest has already created several other programs that address Internet safety for its customers. The agreement with the national center is a continuation of that process, she said.

"This is our way of working with the national center to protect customers and help combat online child exploitation," Hoff said.

Other area Internet service providers offer security measures for customers, though they don't specifically block child pornography cites.

Bresnan's vice president of public affairs said the company is cautious about channel blocking due to concerns about First Amendment rights of customers, technological issues and proper identification of sites.

Shawn Beqaj said the company offers Bresnan Safety Net, a comprehensive child safety program.

The program offers free Internet blocking software to parents, offered free digital identification of children and offers resources, tools and information to its customers.

"Internet safety, and particularly Internet safety with children, is the paramount concern that we have," Beqaj said. "From a perspective of an Internet service provider, it is our primary concern. The Internet itself is a phenomenal tool, but with it comes responsibility."

Beqaj said Bresnan also recently worked with the national center to provide all its employees with a wireless Amber Alert system.

"That's a really specific way where we can become part of the solution here," Beqaj said.

Like Bresnan, wyoming.com is respectful of a customer's First Amendment rights, said Chris Robisch, the director of interconnection and public policy for the site and Contact Communications.

Customers of wyoming.com sign acceptable use agreements at the beginning of their service, Robisch said. If the agreement is violated, the company can terminate Internet services.

The company also adheres to all federal regulations and complies with federal investigations into customers suspected of visiting inappropriate sites.

"Our position has been and continues to be the First Amendment is important, and we acknowledge that," Robisch said. "At this time, we do not block any content. However, that doesn't say that we allow it.".
http://www.trib.com/articles/2008/07...7e007d4326.txt





NY Attorney General Gets More ISPs to Block alt.* Newsgroups
John Timmer

Last month, the New York state Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, announced that a sting operation had uncovered an indifference on the part of Internet service providers regarding complaints about child porn accessible through their networks. Using a combination of legal threats and public shaming, Cuomo was able to get three ISPs to drop access to the entire alt.* hierarchy of Usenet, a move that encouraged California to request similar measures. Now, in a sign that these efforts against child porn were becoming a movement, Cuomo has announced the launch of a web site, nystopchildporn and agreements with two more ISPs.

AOL is the subject of one of the new agreements, which isn't much of a surprise, given that its corporate sibling, Time Warner Cable, had already signed on with Cuomo. It will apparently require no changes on its part, as CNET reports that the company had already implemented a policy of blocking child porn access. AT&T is the other, and, given that it's apparently the US' largest service provider, it represents a significant accomplishment for the AG. Apparently, AT&T's efforts will be as indiscriminate as those pursued by Verizon, in that they plan on blocking access to the entire alt.binaries.* hierarchy.

Cuomo's new web site signifies that he's clearly not done yet. It includes contact information for 20 ISPs that presumably operate in New York, and text of a letter to send to them to urge that they sign on to the campaign. Its promised link to a printable PDF of the letter, however, is nonfunctional.

Regardless of how you feel about Cuomo's efforts or the implementation of his agreements by the ISPs, it's difficult to interpret the new site as anything more than an effort in self promotion. Its intent is signaled by the entry page, which is entitled "Press Releases" and contains an animation that rotates through four photos of Cuomo announcing the site's launch. Three of the four sentences in the draft letter to ISPs include Cuomo's name, and the fourth refers to him by his title.

The letter is also notable for the fact that it no longer focuses on the actual accessibility of child porn via the ISP, and instead simply requests they join in Cuomo's campaign. The rapid shift of focus from an identifiable problem to a high-publicity campaign seems as likely to produce cynicism as it is to lead to progress on the underlying issue.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ewsgroups.html





Blumenthal Wants Video Game Ratings Change after Beer Pong Game
AP

Connecticut's attorney general wants a video games rating board to change its methods so games involving alcohol aren't recommended to minors.

Richard Blumenthal says the Entertainment Software Rating Board made a mistake by clearing a game called Beer Pong for minors as young as 13 years old.

The game is made by Las Vegas-based JV Games Inc., and designed for Nintendo Co.'s popular Wii game system. JV Games officials say they're renaming the game Pong Toss and eliminating all references to alcohol.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board's president justified the rating of the original Beer Pong game, saying that alcohol played a minimal role in the game and nobody was shown drinking beer.
http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_9808079





Google Faces 'Street View Block'

Google's plans to launch a mapping tool in the UK could be referred to the Information Commissioner.

Street View matches photos of locations to maps, including passers-by who were captured as the photograph was taken.

Privacy International, a UK rights group, believes the technology breaks data protection laws.

"In our view they need a person's consent if they make use of a person's face for commercial ends," said Simon Davis of the group.

Street View has already been launched in the US and includes photos of streets in major American cities. Photographing of areas in the UK, including London, is believed to have started this week.

Some individuals in the US have complained about their images being used and Google has said it removed their presence on request.

The company has said it had begun to trial face blurring technology, using an algorithm that detects human faces in photographs.

But Privacy International says it has doubts about the technology.

It has written to the search giant and asked for technical information about the system.

If the group does not get the answer it seeks within seven days, Mr Davies said it would write to the Information Commissioner seeking a suspension of the service in the UK.

"We've spoken to Google in the past about this and received a snide response telling us to look more closely at their blogs.

"We've been told by engineers at Google that the technology is not ready to be deployed."

In the US it is legal to take photos of people on public streets. But Mr Davies believes that because Street View is being used for commercial ends anyone in the UK who appears in the photo needs to grant his or her consent.

Google has said it complies with all local laws.

In a letter to Jane Horvath, senior privacy counsel at Google, Mr Davies said that Google's track record on deploying technology designed to protect privacy was patchy.

He said: "I recall the promise made by Google to the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] during the Doubleclick acquisition that "crumbling cookies" would be developed.

"We have seen no evidence that this technology has been deployed. In response to concerns expressed at the time of our 2007 internet privacy rankings, Google also promised a "privacy dashboard" to help consumers understand the functionality of their user settings. This technology has not appeared."

Privacy International has also asked Google about "the steps, if any, that you have taken to consult the public over the use of their images for what is, in effect, a commercial purpose".

Mr Davies added: "Google likes to think of itself as a global player. In reality it is acting like an irresponsible adolescent.

"It's time for the company to take responsibility for its actions and to do the right thing."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7488524.stm





'Public' Online Spaces Don't Carry Speech, Rights
Anick Jesdanun

Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative.

Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.

Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services - from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video - become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.

Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) (YHOO)'s photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. Dors eventually convinced a Yahoo manager that - far from promoting smoking - the photo had value as a statement on poverty and street life in Romania. Yet another employee deleted it again a few months later.

"I never thought of it as a photo of a smoking kid," Dors said. "It was just of a kid in Romania and how his life is. You can never make a serious documentary if you always have to think about what Flickr will delete."

There may be legitimate reasons to take action, such as to stop spam, security threats, copyright infringement and child pornography, but many cases aren't clear-cut, and balancing competing needs can get thorny.

"We often get caught in the middle between a rock and a hard place," said Christine Jones, general counsel with service provider GoDaddy.com Inc. "We're obviously sensitive to the freedoms we have, particularly in this country, to speak our mind, (yet) we want to be good corporate citizens and make the Internet a better and safer place."

In Dors' case, the law is fully with Yahoo. Its terms of service, similar to those of other service providers, gives Yahoo "sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse or remove any content." Service providers aren't required to police content, but they aren't prohibited from doing so.

While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities - ones where minors may be roaming.

Guidelines help "engender a positive community experience," one to which users will want to return, said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president for policy.

Dors ultimately got his photo restored a second time, and Yahoo has apologized, acknowledging its community managers went too far.

Heather Champ, community director for Flickr, said the company crafts policies based on feedback from users and trains employees to weigh disputes fairly and consistently, though mistakes can happen.

"We're humans," she said. "We're pretty transparent when we make mistakes. We have a record of being good about stepping up and fessing up."

But that underscores another consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion.

Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines.

To wit: Verizon Wireless barred an abortion-rights group from obtaining a "short code" for conducting text-messaging campaigns, while LiveJournal suspended legitimate blogs on fiction and crime victims in a crackdown on pedophilia. Two lines criticizing President Bush disappeared from AT&T Inc. (ATT)'s webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. All three decisions were reversed only after senior executives intervened amid complaints.

Inconsistencies and mysteries behind decisions lead to perceptions that content is being stricken merely for being unpopular.

"As we move more of our communications into social networks, how are we limiting ourselves if we can't see alternative points of view, if we can't see the things that offend us?" asked Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online communities.

First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child.

With online services becoming greater conduits than shopping malls for public communications, however, some advocacy groups believe the federal government needs to guarantee open access to speech. That, of course, could also invite meddling by the government, the way broadcasters now face indecency and other restrictions that are criticized as vague.

Others believe companies shouldn't police content at all, and if they do, they should at least make clearer the rules and the mechanisms for appeal.

"Vagueness does not inspire the confidence of people and leaves room for gaming the system by outside groups," said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and Internet activist. "When the rules are clear and the grievance procedures are clear, then people know what they are working with and they at least have a starting point in urging changes in those rules."

But Marjorie Heins, director of the Free Expression Policy Project, questions whether the private sector is equipped to handle such matters at all. She said written rules mean little when service representatives applying them "tend to be tone-deaf. They don't see context."

At least when a court order or other governmental action is involved, "there's more of a guarantee of due process protections," said Robin Gross, executive director of the civil-liberties group IP Justice. With a private company, users' rights are limited to the service provider's contractual terms of services.

Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor who recently published a book on threats to the Internet's openness, said parties unhappy with sensitive materials online are increasingly aware they can simply pressure service providers and other intermediaries.

"Going after individuals can be difficult. They can be hard to find. They can be hard to sue," Zittrain said. "Intermediaries still have a calculus where if a particular Web site is causing a lot of trouble ... it may not be worth it to them."

Unable to stop purveyors of child pornography directly, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently persuaded three major access providers to disable online newsgroups that distribute such images. But rather than cut off those specific newsgroups, all three decided to reduce administrative hassles by also disabling thousands of legitimate groups devoted to TV shows, the New York Mets and other topics.

Gordon Lyon, who runs a site that archives e-mail postings on security, found his domain name suddenly deactivated because one entry contained MySpace passwords obtained by hackers.

He said MySpace went directly to domain provider GoDaddy, which effectively shut down his entire site, rather than contact him to remove the one posting or replace passwords with asterisks. GoDaddy justified such drastic measures, saying that waiting to reach Lyon would have unnecessarily exposed MySpace passwords, including those to profiles of children.

Meanwhile, in response to complaints it would not specify, Network Solutions LLC decided to suspend a Web hosting account that Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders was using to promote a movie that criticizes the Quran - before the movie was even posted and without the company finding any actual violation of its rules.

Service providers say unhappy customers can always go elsewhere, but choice is often limited.

Many leading services, particularly online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp. (NWS) (NWS)'s MySpace or media-sharing sites such as Flickr and Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG)'s YouTube, have acquired a cachet that cannot be replicated. To evict a user from an online community would be like banishing that person to the outskirts of town.

Other sites "don't have the critical mass. No one would see it," said Scott Kerr, a member of the gay punk band Kids on TV, which found its profile mysteriously deleted from MySpace last year. "People know that MySpace is the biggest site that contains music."

MySpace denies engaging in any censorship and says profiles removed are generally in response to complaints of spam and other abuses. GoDaddy also defends its commitment to speech, saying account suspensions are a last resort.

Few service providers actively review content before it gets posted and usually take action only in response to complaints.

In that sense, Flickr, YouTube and other sites consider their reviews "checks and balances" against any community mob directed at unpopular speech - YouTube has pointedly refused to delete many video clips tied to Muslim extremists, for instance, because they didn't specifically contain violence or hate speech.

Still, should these sites even make such rules? And how can they ensure the guidelines are consistently enforced?

YouTube has policies against showing people "getting hurt, attacked or humiliated," banning even clips OK for TV news shows, but how is YouTube to know whether a video clip shows real violence or actors portraying it? Either way, showing the video is legal and may provoke useful discussions on brutality.

"Balancing these interests raises very tough issues," YouTube acknowledged in a statement.

Unwilling to play the role of arbiter, the group-messaging service Twitter has resisted pressure to tighten its rules.

"What counts as name-calling? What counts as making fun of someone in a way that's good-natured?" said Jason Goldman, Twitter's director of program management. "There are sites that do employ teams of people that do that investigation ... but we feel that's a job we wouldn't do well."

Other sites are trying to be more transparent in their decisions.

Online auctioneer eBay Inc. (EBAY) (EBAY), for instance, has elaborated on its policies over the years, to the extent that sellers can drill down to where they can ship hatching eggs (U.S. addresses only) and what items related to natural disasters are permissible (they must have "substantial social, artistic or political value"). Hypothetical examples accompany each policy.

LiveJournal has recently eased restrictions on blogging. The new harassment clause, for instance, expressly lets members state negative feelings or opinions about another, and parodies of public figures are now permitted despite a ban on impersonation. Restrictions on nudity specifically exempt non-sexualized art and breast feeding.

The site took the unusual step of soliciting community feedback and setting up an advisory board with prominent Internet scholars such as Danah Boyd and Lawrence Lessig and two user representatives elected in May.

The effort comes just a year after a crackdown on pedophilia backfired. LiveJournal suspended hundreds of blogs that dealt with child abuse and sexual violence, only to find many were actually fictional works or discussions meant to protect children. The company's chief executive issued a public apology.

Community backlash can restrain service providers, but as Internet companies continue to consolidate and Internet users spend more time using vendor-controlled platforms such as mobile devices or social-networking sites, the community's power to demand free speech and other rights diminishes.

Weinstein, the veteran computer scientist, said that as people congregate at fewer places, "if you're knocked off one of those, in a lot of ways you don't exist."
http://apnews.myway.com//article/200...D91OGQ680.html





Rockwell Re-enlisted for a Nation’s Darker Mood
Damien Cave

Elliott Earls’s reinterpretation of Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” practically screams. A little girl seems to be crying, her eye bruised, with an American flag in the background and two words framing her figure: “Liberty Weeps.” The color scheme is red, white and blue, but patriotic pride has been supplanted by sadness.

“She is begging us with her eyes to take responsibility for our actions as a nation,” Mr. Earls said of his creation in an e-mail message. “And to live up to the greatness embedded in our social fabric by the brilliance of our founding fathers.”

Clearly, Rockwell’s America this is not. It is Sunday afternoon at the Aventura Mall in South Florida, and I’ve come to gauge the impact of a handful of images displayed in 14-foot-high posters near Nordstrom. Culled from a surprising new exhibition at the Wolfsonian museum at Florida International University titled “Thoughts on Democracy,” they are all artists’ responses to Rockwell’s wartime “Four Freedoms” series.

Sixty artists contributed to the show. But their creations bear little resemblance to the Rockwell paintings, which helped raise $133 million for the war effort in 1943 after the government turned them into posters. There is no folksy man standing up to speak his opinion (exemplifying “Freedom of Speech”), no devout group praying (“Freedom of Worship”) no wholesome family sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal (“Freedom From Want”).

And while the fourth freedom, “Freedom From Fear,” does reappear, the message seems ominous. In Guillermo Kuitca’s rendition of Rockwell’s image of parents putting their small children to bed, the family is surrounded by a sea of blackness. In James Victore’s remake, tears burst from the parents’ eyes as they pull an American flag over a wooden coffin.

What all of this suggests is not just a reinterpretation of Rockwell but a meditation on an American crisis of self-confidence: the sense that trust in American ideals is giving way to fear and uncertainty about how they are exploited. Culture has long been a documentarian of sorts, and this somber mood is also reflected at the box office these days, where the dystopian world of “Wall-E” is a hit, and in bookstores, where titles like “Are You There, Vodka, It’s Me, Chelsea” are best sellers.

Many of the artists interviewed said they felt that now was not the time to emphasize American greatness, as Rockwell did, but rather to caution people about the risks of complacency. They said they created the posters because they loved their country — about two-thirds of the 60 are American — but felt that their fellow citizens needed to wake up, to break free from anxiety and a habit of looking away.

In the mall at least, the artists’ instincts seemed to be borne out. In an hour and a half, more than 100 people walked by the exhibit. Only 8 stopped to look.

“People don’t care anymore,” said David Babich, 31, one of the few who lingered, gazing at the prints. “They aren’t as affected by stuff that happens.”

Rockwell time might not have been entirely different. Nostalgia for World War II has often obscured what the era’s most famous war correspondent, Ernie Pyle, once wrote during a visit home: “A great many people don’t know there’s a war on, or don’t seem to care.”

Rockwell’s art, too, has been obscured or whitewashed. His scenes of domestic bliss are far better known than later images like “The Right to Know” (1968), which shows a group of Americans clamoring around an empty chair that is meant to signify government bureaucracy during the Vietnam War.

Nonetheless, the divide between battlefront and home front seems to be widening. When I returned from Iraq in January, after reporting there for about 18 months on and off, I found myself stunned by the war’s lack of impact on people’s lives or thoughts.
“OURS ... to fight for.” That simple phrase sits atop the Rockwell “Freedom From Want” and “Freedom From Fear” posters. But today, as many returning soldiers have witnessed, that sense of collective responsibility often seems absent, except for the occasional campaign speech.

There are no calls to arms among the 80 posters in the Wolfsonian’s show. Those that directly tackle the war — including Mr. Victore’s coffin and Helene Silverman’s poster of a soldier’s face, striped in red and white with the names of other soldiers laid over it — emphasize the losses.

Words like “ours” also seem to have disappeared, just as they have from posters on the walls of recruiting offices nationwide and military bases in Iraq. In urging people to sign up or re-enlist, they do not address why “we” fight but rather what “you,” the average 18-year-old, can get from a job in uniform.

That has been the government’s pitch for decades. “Back in 1973 when we made the decision to end conscription, part of the Pentagon’s decision was, we’re going to compete in the labor market and we’re going to work with ideas that get people to work for the armed forces,” said David R. Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland. “There was a decision made to downplay values and emphasize economic incentives.”

Not surprisingly, many of the Wolfsonian artists blame the Bush administration for discouraging broad-based sacrifice and starting a war that proved to lack a credible cause. Mr. Victore, an independent designer in New York, who comes from a military family and whose father flew refueling missions over Vietnam, said he had been particularly disillusioned by what he sees as the government’s use of fear to drum up support. He said he hoped his poster would remind Americans to raise questions suppressed by anxiety.

“A fearful public is a submissive one, and we willingly — with no clear cause submitted as reason — continue into this quagmire,” he said.

Many of the images in “Thoughts on Democracy” can also be viewed as a rebuttal of the president’s call after Sept. 11 to keep shopping, lest the terrorists win. In Daniel Arsham’s gray and white poster, “WANT” is a building that towers over everything else. Chip Kidd, a well-known book-jacket designer, produced four posters, with “Freedom From Want” appearing above the image of an obese man’s stomach.

The most powerful efforts tackle the tension between the American democratic ideal and its practice. The Map Office, a design studio in New York, produced three unequivocal images. One poster shows democracy as a green goo spread across a pristine landscape; another reads, “kiss the fist of democracy.” A third says, “Democracy is the Helvetica of Politics,” reflecting its ubiquity, openness and adulteration, the artists said.

In some images, government seems to be the problem, a seller of enlightenment ideas that have been so used and reused that their meaning has been diminished.

In George Mill’s poster, “FREEDOM” comes with a disclaimer. “Certain restrictions apply,” it says. “Subject to change without notice. The right of Freedom is made available ‘as is’ and without warranty of any kind.”

Oh, and one more thing: “The right of Freedom may be exercised on the strict understanding that neither the Government nor its ministers, employees or agents shall be liable for losses of any kind.”

A paradox is embedded in this round of cynicism and self-doubt. American ideas like free markets and democracy are on the march. Poverty has declined, with 18 percent of the world’s population living on $1 a day in 2004, down from 40 percent in 1981, as Fareed Zakaria points out in his book “The Post-American World.” And a recent poll of 17,000 people in 19 nations by researchers at the University of Maryland found that 85 percent agreed that “the will of the people should be the basis for the authority of government.” Tellingly, the most robust support surfaced not in Western democracies but in countries like Ukraine, Nigeria and Indonesia.

Even at the Wolfsonian, a handful of posters suggest that the globalization of democracy can be a force for good. In a piece by the Zimbabwean-born artist Chaz Maviyane-Davies, “We the people” appears in five languages, including Arabic and Spanish.

Why, then, are we so depressed? Perhaps, as the artists’ work suggests, because we are no longer so young and naïve. The spread of democracy has been messier than Rockwell’s generation expected, and better publicized.

Iraq is a potent example, but there are so many others. Salvador Orara, a designer at The Map Office, said assassination attempts against his cousins who work in the Filipino government made him realize that American-exported democracy did not necessarily mean security.

Mr. Mill recalls coming of age in the former Yugoslavia during the 1980s and believing deeply in freedom and human rights. A decade later, during the Balkan war, he said, “those values disintegrated before us in the name of ‘higher causes.’ “

In many cases the results feel more like heartbreak than like anger. The emotion in more subtle works, like Richard Tuttle’s simple drawing of Uncle Sam hidden behind a wall, reminded me of what I saw in the faces of Iraqis and Americans when things went horribly wrong. It was the marine frustrated by his inability to protect a Sunni ally from assassination; the reporter crushed to discover the lies of an American official; the Iraqi politician saddened by the circus of his country’s Parliament.

Democracy often seems to grow uglier with age.

But amid the happy, escapist shoppers at the Aventura mall, these thoughts felt as out of place as Rockwell’s proud posters. The sprawling darkness of Mr. Kuitca’s remake of “Freedom of Fear,” with the original tucked in the corner, seemed far more apt.

“Thoughts on Democracy” is on view through Dec. 7 at the Wolfsonian museum at Florida International University, 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach; (305) 531-1001, wolfsonian.org.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/ar...gn/09rock.html





Want Some Torture With Your Peanuts?
Jeffrey Denning

Just when you thought you’ve heard it all...

A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers.

This bracelet would:

• take the place of an airline boarding pass

• contain personal information about the traveler

• be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage

• shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes

The Electronic ID Bracelet, as it’s referred to as, would be worn by every traveler “until they disembark the flight at their destination.” Yes, you read that correctly. Every airline passenger would be tracked by a government-funded GPS, containing personal, private and confidential information, and that it would shock the customer worse than an electronic dog collar if he/she got out of line?

Clearly the Electronic ID Bracelet is an euphuism for the EMD Safety Bracelet, or at least it has a nefarious hidden ability, thus the term ID Bracelet is ambiguous at best. EMD stands for Electro-Musclar Disruption. Again, according to the promotional video the bracelet can completely immobilize the wearer for several minutes.

So is the government really that interested in this bracelet? Yes!

According to a letter from DHS official, Paul S. Ruwaldt of the Science and Technology Directorate, office of Research and Development, to the inventor whom he had previously met with, he wrote, “To make it clear, we [the federal government] are interested in…the immobilizing security bracelet, and look forward to receiving a written proposal.” The letterhead, in case you were wondering, came from the DHS office at the William J. Hughes Technical Center at the Atlantic City International Airport, or the Federal Aviation Administration headquarters.

In another part of the letter, Mr. Ruwaldt confirmed, “It is conceivable to envision a use to improve air security, on passenger planes.”

Would every paying airline passenger flying on a commercial airplane be mandated to wear one of these devices? I cringe at the thought. Not only could it be used as a physical restraining device, but also as a method of interrogation, according to the same aforementioned letter from Mr. Ruwaldt.

Would you let them put one of those on your wrist? Would you allow the airline employees, which would be mandated by the government, to place such a bracelet on any member of your family?

Why are tax dollars being spent on something like this? Is this a police state or is it America?

As we approach July 4th, Independence Day, I can’t help but think of the blessing we have of living in America and being free from hostile government forces. It calls to mind on of my favorite speeches given by an American Founding Forefather, Patrick Henry, who said,

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblo...-your-peanuts/





Crowd-Controlling MEDUSA Ray Gun Puts Voices Inside Your Head

The Sierra Nevada Corporation claimed this week that it is ready to begin production on the MEDUSA, a damned scary ray gun that uses the "microwave audio effect" to implant sounds and perhaps even specific messages inside people's heads. Short for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio, MEDUSA creates the audio effect with short microwave pulses. The pulses create a shockwave inside the skull that's detected by the ears, and basically makes you think you're going balls-to-the-wall batshit insane. The MEDUSA can also "produce recognizable sounds" and is aimed primarily at military uses, but New Scientist revealed there are other uses in the works, too.

And if you're thinking ear plugs are this thing's Kryptonite, think again. Lee Sadovnik of Sierra Nevada Corp. said normal audio safety limits are off the table since the sound bypasses the eardrums and emanates from within the skull. "The repel effect is a combination of loudness and the irritation factor," he said. "You can’t block it out."

Wet blanket James Lin of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago wants more testing done, however, because of the perceived health ramifications of such a device. Lin said lower, whisper-level intensities work fine, but the higher incapacitating levels expected by the military could fry more than a few brains out on the battlefield. "I would worry about what other health effects it is having," Lin said. "You might see neural damage."

And those "other uses" hinted at above? Try subliminal advertising; or suggestive subconscious comments that you don't really "hear" but can influence decision-making anyway. Or, alternatively, the beam can be ramped up to 11 and just kill you outright. WIN!

Fun Gizmodo Fact: The MEDUSA is useless against a raging pack of schizophrenics. [New Scientist via Danger Room]
http://gizmodo.com/5022355/crowd+con...side-your-head





Russian Blogger Sentenced for "Extremist" Post
Chris Baldwin

A Russian man who described local police as "scum" in an Internet posting was given a suspended jail sentence on Monday for extremism, prompting bloggers to warn of a crackdown on free speech online.

Savva Terentiev, a 28-year-old musician from Syktyvkar, 1,515 kilometres (940 miles) north of Moscow, wrote in a blog last year that the police force should be cleaned up by ceremonially burning officers twice a day in a town square.

Convicted on charges of "inciting hatred or enmity", Terentiev was given a one-year suspended term on Monday, Russian news agencies reported.

Free speech campaigners said the ruling could create a dangerous precedent for free speech on the Internet, a vibrant forum for political debate in a country where the mainstream traditional media is deferential to authority.

"This was an absolutely unjustified verdict," Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA centre in Moscow, a non-governmental group that monitors extremism, told Reuters. "Savva for sure wrote a rude comment ... but this verdict means it will be impossible to make rude comments about anybody."

The verdict was discussed in Russian blogs on Monday. "I don't know now if I should be writing here or not," blogger Likershassi posted on one website.

"The fact that Terentiev got a conditional sentence is unimportant. What's important is the precedent," a blogger named Puffinus wrote.

Bonfire

Contacted by Reuters on Monday, Terentiev confirmed the sentence but said he was unable to make further comment.

The blog entry for which he was prosecuted has been removed from the Internet. Russia's Kommersant newspaper quoted him as saying in the post: "Those who become cops are scum," and calling for officers to be put on a bonfire.

After the prosecution was launched, Terentiev wrote an open letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev protesting his innocence.

"It is our duty to take responsibility for words on the Internet but ... I did not call for the inflaming of social hatred towards the employees of the police department," he wrote in the letter, posted at one of his sites, www.zasavva.ru.

Most Russians receive their news and information from television stations and newspapers controlled by the state or by businessmen with links to the Kremlin, with opposition voices confined largely to the Internet, talk radio and low-circulation publications.

Medvedev has said he views freedom of speech and a flourishing civil society as essential and that Russia should use a light touch when policing the Internet.

"Thank God we live in a free society," Medvedev said last month in an interview with Reuters.

"It's possible to go on to the Internet and get basically anything you want. In that regard, there are no problems of closed access to information in Russia today, there weren't any yesterday and there won't be any tomorrow," he said.

(Additional reporting by Aydar Buribaev; Editing by Catherine Evans)
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/200807...r-566e283.html





Chinese Bloggers Evade Censors by Writing Backwards
Mark O’Neill

You have to hand it to Chinese bloggers - they are determined to get the truth out, no matter what. OK, they are not facing the death sentence like their fellow counterparts in Iran but nevertheless, they still face prison for their opinions. At the very least, their work will be deleted by faceless humorless bureaucrats.

So the bloggers are trying out new methods to evade Chinese government censors - the latest one is they are using tools and software to write backwards. Or write vertically instead of horizontally. This is apparently confusing the censors because they now cannot automatically track “objectionable phrases” (aw my heart bleeds for them). One such “text flipping” tool is here. Obviously the government will eventually find a way around it but the resourceful bloggers will probably have found another solution by then and will have moved on.

It’s easy for us in the democratic west to take our freedom of speech for granted. We don’t think twice about giving an opinion online and then hitting the “publish” button. We don’t have to fear the knock on the door or awkward questions being asked about our loyalty to the state. We take our freedoms for granted because they’ve always been there. But our fellow bloggers in China and Iran are not so lucky. They have to look over their shoulder all the time and resort to text flipping tools, codes and guarded language to protect themselves and their family, while at the same time trying to break through all the officially sanctioned propaganda and get the real truth out to the world.

These are the unsung unrecognised heroes of the world. It’s time we should recognise them more. Plus if Iran passes that idiotic and insane death sentence law, we should all as an international community collectively do something, short of invading the country.
http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2008/07/...ing-backwards/





The Pirate Bay Wants to Encrypt the Entire Internet

The team behind the popular torrent site The Pirate Bay has started to work on a new encryption technology that could potentially protect all Internet traffic from prying eyes. The project, which is still in its initial stages, goes by the name “Transparent end-to-end encryption for the Internets,” or IPETEE for short. It tackles encryption not on the application level, but on the network level, the aim being that all data exchanged on your PC would be encrypted, regardless of its nature — be it a web browser streaming video files or an instant messaging client. As Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij (a.k.a. Tiamo) told me, “Even applications that don’t supporting encryption will be encrypted where possible.”

Neij came up with the idea for IPETEE back when European politicians were starting to debate a Europe-wide move to DMCA-like copyright enforcement efforts, which were eventually authorized in the form of the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive in the spring of 2007. “I wanted to come up with something to make it harder for data retention,” said Neij. But he didn’t publish the initial draft proposal until early this month, when the discussion about privacy and surveillance online suddenly became urgent again. The Swedish parliament passed a new law in June that allows a local government agency to snoop on “the telephony, emails, and web traffic of millions of innocent individuals,” as the EFF’s Danny O’Brien put it. Neij promises that his new encryption scheme will be ready before the law takes effect next January.

IPETEE will likely be implemented as an add-on to operating systems like Windows and OS X. It will essentially do its work in the background, handling all incoming and outgoing IP traffic without any further interference from the user.

Let’s say you want to open a video download from a remote machine. IPETEE would first test whether the remote machine is supporting the crypto technology; once that’s confirmed it would then exchange encryption keys with the machine before transmitting your actual request and sending the video file your way. All data would automatically be unscrambled once it reaches your machine, so there would be no need for your media player or download manager to support any new encryption technologies. And if the remote machine didn’t know how to handle encryption, the whole transfer would fall back to an unencrypted connection.

Neij told me that IPETEE could be easily implemented for data transfers between end users, such as files shared through P2P. “The proof-of-concept code will be available both on Windows and Linux,” he explained, but the next step would be to make it scalable and available for operations in a server-based environment so that administrators could use IPETEE to protect their users’ web or email transmissions.

IPETEE could be a big step towards standardizing the encryption of web, email and even VoIP traffic, but it wouldn’t protect against all types of interference. Your ISP could still kill your video downloads via BitTorrent, because newer traffic management solutions can identify P2P transfers by simply looking at the patterns of your uploads and downloads and not at the individual data packets. It could also potentially slow down certain transfers, because it takes time to establish encrypted connections. There might be other flaws in the architecture of the IPETEE system as well, which is why Neij’s team is currently talking to crypto and network experts. But he seemed optimistic that he would have at least a proof of concept implementation ready by the end of the year.

Of course, the Pirate Bay folks don’t exactly have a good track record when it comes to following through with their plans. NewTeeVee alumn Jackson West pointed out back in March that long-planned projects like The Video Bay, the music site PlayBle and a new and secure P2P protocol have yet to be launched, and that’s still true today. Adding an ambitious project like IPETEE to the list doesn’t seem likely to solve that problem, but maybe this time Neij and his crew will overcome their ADD.
http://newteevee.com/2008/07/09/the-...net/#more-4585





Intro to StealthNet

What is StealthNet?

StealthNet is based on the original RShare client and has been enhanced by a developer team who consists of Planet Peer community members. In comparison with the current RShare client StealthNet offers a lot of new features like download resuming (interrupted downloads can be resumed), multilanguage support, a search filter for several file types and much more.

In the early stages StealthNet was known as RShare Community Edition (RShare CE). However, due to several reasons we had to rename this project to its new name StealthNet. This is the reason why the RShare forums on the Planet Peer Board also have been renamed to RShare/StealthNet.

Both clients are open source and source code is available. They are released under the GPL.

How does it work

The RShare network as well as the network protocol were developed by Lars Regensburger with strong anonymity/security and acceptable download rates in mind. All traffic in the RShare network is routed trough other nodes in the network. Furthermore, traffic is encrypted with point-to-point encryption. In combination this two techniques provide a very high level of anonymity.

If you want to learn more about RShare/StealthNet and his tech specs the Planet Peer Wiki is highly recommended:

a) RShare: http://www.planetpeer.de/wiki/index.php/RShare_(English)

b) StealthNet: http://www.planetpeer.de/wiki/index....thNet_(English)

Advantages over other anonymous P2P networks

As a matter of course StealthNet is not the only client for anonymous file sharing. There are a lot of others available, like ANts or MUTE. However, StealthNet has one important advantage: In comparison with its competitors it is under _active_ development by a developer team and feature requests from the community are incorporated.

Some more advantages are:

• Straightforward handling, even for beginners: Install, enable port forwarding and you are good to go! Anonymous P2P can´t be easier
• Modern and user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI): Due to a GUI similar to eMule users are able to work in no time with StealthNet
• Fast file transfers: As measured by the fact that StealthNet is an anonymous P2P client it has great download rates, especially when it comes to small files (depends on several factors)
• Has anti-flood-measure in place to avoid network sabotage like flooding the network with useless data packets or so
• Command line client for systems with Mono support like Linux, OSX and so on is available

Why should one use StealthNet instead of eDonkey & co.?

That´s pretty simple. StealthNet was primarily developed with strong anonymity and security in mind. It offers a great level of protection which other networks lacks of. In comparion with regular P2P networks like eDonkey it is nearly impossible to locate users who provide content within the RShare network. The complete traffic within the network is encrypted by approved and popular encryption techniques and downloads are routed through several other nodes so nobody can correlate what´s going on between the nodes.
http://stealthnet.de/en_index.php

















Until next week,

- js.



















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