Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 20th, ’05

[JackSpratts]

"I think it has alienated a large part of the new generation of music lovers and I think it's radicalized a lot of kids. In many ways, it may seem trite, but this is this generation's Vietnam. Iraq should be this generation's Vietnam, but I think free music, at least in terms of emotion and commitment and politicizing kids, may be it." – Paul Rapp



















August 20th, 2005




Local News

No Reasonable Expectation Of Privacy In Internet Subscriber Information

Court dismisses civil suit against city and police officers for obtaining information about AOL subscriber without warrant.

Plaintiff Freedman used his AOL e-mail account to anonymously send a message to two other residents of his Connecticut town. The message contained the statement "The end is near," and the recipients interpreted this as a threat to their safety. They immediately filed a police report.

A Detective Young and an Officer Bensey drafted an affidavit and application for a search warrant to seek information that would help them identify who sent the complained-of e-mail. Without submitting the paperwork to the state's attorney's office or a judge, Young faxed it to AOL's legal department. A week later, AOL provided Freedman's name, address, phone numbers, and various pieces of information relating to his account with AOL, including his screen names. No charges were ever filed.

Angry that his subscriber information had been released, Freedman filed suit against AOL, the City of Bridgeport, Detective Young, and Officer Bensey. (The case against AOL was transferred to federal court in Virginia.) Freedman argued, among other things, that the release of his account information was an intrusion into his privacy that violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

The defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that Freedman's Fourth Amendment rights could not have been violated, because he did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his subscriber information. The court agreed, and granted the motion for summary judgment on this issue.

Freedman was unable to show that any expectation of privacy he had regarding his subscriber information was objectively reasonable. The court pointed to three different reasons why one would not reasonably expect his or her subscriber information to be private for Fourth Amendment purposes.

First, by signing up for service, a subscriber knowingly discloses information to the ISP, which is accessed and used by the ISP to provide services. Second, AOL's terms of service provided that AOL would release subscriber information "in special cases such as a physical threat to [its customer] or others." Such a provision was especially relevant given the underlying facts of this case. Third, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. §2510 et seq. provides that subscriber information can be divulged in situations where the risk of physical injury justifies its release.

Given these factors, one should not reasonably believe that his or her subscriber information would be private for Fourth Amendment purposes. With no reasonable expectation of privacy, Freedman's Fourth Amendment claim was without merit.
http://www.internetcases.com/archive...nable_e_1.html





Singapore Cracks Down On Music File-Sharing Offenders
Nur Dianah Suhaimi

Three Internet users have been arrested in Singapore and charged with distributing digital music files in the city-state's first crackdown on illegal file sharing, Singapore police said on Thursday.

The three young men who were arrested, between the ages of 16 to 22, had shared more than 20,000 files in internet chatrooms.

It was the first time Singapore police have clamped down on web surfers who download pirated music and films since new copyright laws came into effect in January this year.

Under the amended Copyright Act, anyone who illegally downloads files on a "commercial scale" could face criminal charges, including five years in jail and fines of up to S$100,000 (33,322 pounds).

Police were tipped off by the Record Industry Association of Singapore (RIAS), an association representing local and foreign record companies. The suspects used an Internet chat programme as well as a music-sharing programme to distribute the music files, a police statement said.

RIAS, which conducts constant checks to curb illegal file sharing told Reuters it has sent warning letters to those engaged in illegal file-sharing on the Internet.

"Prosecution was a last-resort measure," said RIAS Chief Executive Officer Andrew Neubronner.

Industry analysts say the rollout of high-speed broadband Internet in Asia, particularly in countries with high piracy rates like China, India and Indonesia, has sent the number of people downloading free music off the Web spiralling up by millions a month -- and recorded music sales to tumble.

Singapore has one of the world's highest Internet penetration rates, with over 60 percent of its 4.2 million people living in homes wired to the Internet.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/news...NET-PIRACY.XML





Computer Worms Attacking Each Other

Computer worms that have brought down systems around the world in recent days are starting to attack each other, Finnish software security firm F-Secure said on Wednesday.

"We seem to have a botwar on our hands," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure.

"There appear to be three different virus-writing gangs turning out new worms at an alarming rate, as if they were competing to build the biggest network of infected machines."

Hypponen said in a statement that varieties of three worms -- "Zotob", "Bozori" and "IRCbot" -- were still exploiting a gap in Microsoft Corp.'s <MSFT.O> Windows 2000 operating system on computers that had not had the flaw repaired and were not shielded by firewalls.

"The latest variants of Bozori even remove competing viruses like Zotob from the infected machines," Hypponen said in a statement on the company's Web site. (http://www.f- secure.com)

The worms were blamed for major system trouble at some media outlets and companies in the United States on Tuesday, causing personal computers to restart repeatedly and potentially making them vulnerable to attack.

Microsoft and the top computer security companies, Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc, said damage to systems on Tuesday had been limited and was unlikely to cause widespread havoc like that which resulted from other malicious software such as "SQL Slammer" and "MyDoom".
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...RS&srch=+Worms





Industry Targeting File-Sharing Music Lovers

This is the first in a two-part series on music file-sharing, and its legal ramifications.
John E. Mitchell

If rock 'n' roll is considered the traditional opening salvo announcing music as the line in the sand between kids and adults, file sharing has turned the battle into a war. Since the late 1990s, peer-to-peer file sharing has become the hottest and most controversial way to obtain music and Recording Industry Association of America has responded with lawsuits that have only added to public confusion on the issue.

Paul Rapp is an attorney practicing in New York and Massachusetts. He is currently representing at least 20 people who have been slapped with an RIAA lawsuit and has consulted on the phone with dozens more. Rapp also is a musician who has found file-trading works for him and his band. Rapp is the drummer for the Albany, N.Y., area band Blotto, which may be best remembered as one of the earliest MTV stars with their song "I Wanna Be A Lifeguard."

Rapp first began to look into file sharing in 2000, when he downloaded Napster and typed in his band's name to see what the big deal was, sarcastically interested to see how much the band might be losing through downloading.

"As the search thing was flashing, all of a sudden I got this chill of 'What am I going to be if we're not on there? How much would that suck?'" said Rapp. "It came up and there were half a dozen files of 'I Wanna Be a Lifeguard' up there to be traded and I was relieved. Here's a song that's 20 years old and it's still got viability, people are still listening to it, and that's when I realized the real beauty of the file-sharing services."

Rapp said many musicians on his level and above feel the same way about file sharing, especially since recording contracts often penalize the musicians monetarily for not being platinum sellers. To musicians in this situation, whatever theoretical "lost sale" they might have for any given download is far outweighed by the positive publicity they received from still having their work out there, which translates into sales and concert attendance.

The band may never know -- or care -- how many of their songs are being traded, but the RIAA does and when Rapp gets a settlement agreement for one of his clients, it is accompanied by a list of files that were found on the offending computer.

"I'm looking at one here," said Rapp. "It's a stack of papers, each one has 15 to 20 tracks on it, and it's a stack of papers that's about 3 inches thick, it's about 450 pages."

Rapp goes over the list with his client to make sure it accurately reflects what is in the share folder on the computer. The answer is usually that the file list is accurate, although sometimes the client does dispute some of the list.

"I've had some kids come in and say 'Well, look, a lot of this stuff I have is indie stuff by labels that aren't members of the RIAA.' One kid said 'Most of what I've got is Malaysian folk music,'" said Rapp.

The music industry is giving the contents of a share folder a quick check -- RIAA doesn't verify that each and every file is under its jurisdiction or is, in fact, really the song that the file name claims. Given these facts, Rapp can help a client whittle down a file list, but that really doesn't really matter, he said, since the client will be taken to court regardless if he doesn't agree to the settlement.

"The alternative is if you challenge them and go into full-scale litigation, that settlement number goes off the table and if you lose, you're in the tank for significant damages plus all their attorney's fees, so there's a considerable risk," said Rapp.

Rapp and other people involved in file-sharing cases say the RIAA's tactics are plainly bullying, but that this makes sense when you consider that the purpose of the lawsuits has nothing to do with compensation for copyrighted music.

"The industry isn't suing you for damages, that's not what they're doing here," said Rapp. "They're suing you so that they can issue a press release that they're suing you. It is simply playing to the cheap seats and it has nothing to do with actual damages, it's all about public relations and trying to change the behavior of -- the last I heard -- something like 50 million people."

In other words, the music industry slaps 2,000 people with easily settled lawsuits in order to spread fear among consumers. Consider that their target lawsuit also is their target sales audience: College kids.

"Whenever they do a wave of 750 lawsuits at 20 colleges across the country," said Rapp, "they very methodically issue press releases that are dutifully picked up by the wire services about the RIAA's targeting 750 and they always call them 'thieves.' It's less about litigation and more about public relations, to be sure."

Demonizing your target audience is few businesspeople's idea of sound publicity, yet the music industry bandies around the term "piracy" in their press releases despite the fact that downloaders aren't attempting to sell anything for an illegal profit. In this climate, "pirate" might as well be slang for "music enthusiast" -- file sharing is a similar phenomenon to the age-old record collector practice of trading sides and making mix tapes. Rapp thinks that treating the audience this way is encouraging those who might not be downloading under other circumstances to do just that.

"I think it has alienated a large part of the new generation of music lovers and I think it's radicalized a lot of kids," said Rapp. "In many ways, it may seem trite, but this is this generation's Vietnam. Iraq should be this generation's Vietnam, but I think free music, at least in terms of emotion and commitment and politicizing kids, may be it."

Part Two will trace the music industry's role in the downloading boom and what the future holds for file sharing.
http://www.thetranscript.com/Stories...search=filter#





Single Mother Of Five Takes On RIAA In Downloading Case

Patricia Santangelo claims no one in her house downloaded music.
Gil Kaufman

Over the past three years, thousands of people have settled lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally uploading copyrighted songs. But Patricia Santangelo doesn't plan on being one of them.

The 42-year-old divorced mother of five from Wappingers Falls, New York, didn't set out to be a trailblazer, but when she was served with a lawsuit late last year claiming songs had been illegally shared using her computer, there was no way she was going to pay up to make it go away.

"I was shocked because I didn't understand how someone could be sued for something they didn't do. I didn't know what was going on," said Santangelo. "When [the RIAA's lawyers] called me, there was no music on my computer and they had an old IP address."

Once the judge in the case suggested Santangelo hire a lawyer to help her case, she tapped New York's Morlan Ty Rogers, who quickly suspected that the case might be the first one in which a defendant could fight the RIAA, and maybe even win.

"Many of the people who have been sued in these cases did do the downloading, and they haven't been willing to fight the complaints because if they lose, they could end up owing hundreds of thousands of dollars," Rogers said. "In my client's case, she did not know about Kazaa being on her computer, had no idea any of this was going on, and her understanding is that it was not her kids who were doing it." Rogers said it's possible the files were downloaded without Santangelo's knowledge by someone using a wireless connection.

The RIAA has filed federal lawsuits against more than 13,000 Internet users since September 2003, with nearly 3,000 of those accused settling for an average of $4,000-$5,000 (see "RIAA Sues 784 For File-Sharing, Gives Props To Supreme Court Ruling"). To date, none of the other cases have advanced beyond the early trial stages. In Santangelo's case, as in the others, the RIAA's computerized 'bot detected copyrighted songs available for uploading on her computer, but in what Rogers claims is a novel defense, it's the very fact that the RIAA found the songs that could end up exonerating his client.

"As an exhibit in the complaint, they typed up a list of six songs that RIAA investigators downloaded from a shared account that was supposedly on my client's computer," Rogers said. "The complaint said those files were there for sharing, but they have no evidence that anyone did share them. For them to prove copyright infringement, they have to show that there was unauthorized distribution of a copyrighted file to the public. If they knew some 16-year-old who downloaded those songs from my client's drive, that would be copyright infringement, but if their own investigators did it, it's not distribution to the public. A copyright owner cannot infringe on their own copyright."

Rogers, who recently filed a motion to dismiss the complaint against Santangelo, also said he thinks the "boilerplate" language of the suits is too vague to stand up to the scrutiny of a copyright case. "Other than changing the names, this is the same complaint used in thousands of other lawsuits, and they don't have any specific allegations about anyone uploading music from a file on someone else's computer," he said. "They're just using their software to find the person whose name is on the IP account, but that doesn't mean that person was at a computer downloading stuff. It could be anyone outside the home with a wireless connection doing it without the person's knowledge."

Santangelo said the lawyers representing the recording industry offered her a chance to settle the case for $7,500, and later reduced the sum to $3,500, but she refused. "I just felt like what they were doing was wrong and how they did it wasn't proper," said Santangelo, who added that she's never used Kazaa and that the screen names on the complaint did not belong to any of her kids.

RIAA spokesperson Jonathan Lamy declined to comment on the specifics of the Santangelo case, but said, "We believe that we have ironclad evidence that the illegal downloading occurred in this person's house. The ISP identified her as an account holder and all of the evidence supports our belief to file a good-faith claim."

In a unanimous decision in June in the case of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., the Supreme Court ruled that file-trading networks can and should be held liable when they create programs that are used primarily to illegally swap music, movies and other copyright-protected works. Lamy said that just as the RIAA will continue to hold accountable businesses that engage in theft, it will pursue individuals who engage in the uploading of copyrighted works.

Lamy noted that several other users have taken the RIAA to court over the suits, and to date none have had judgements in their favor.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon is expected to issue a judgement in the Santangelo case soon. She can either dismiss the charges, or find in favor of the RIAA, in which case Santangelo could be on the hook for much more than $3,500, plus the RIAA's legal fees.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/150...headlines=true





The Gloves Come Off

Thanks to the Supreme Court and the FCC, U.S. Telcos Are About to Reinvent Their DSL Businesses
Robert X. Cringely

Last week, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission again bowed to the interests of the big telephone companies, and ruled that those telcos have no obligation to provide other Internet Service Providers wholesale access to their DSL networks. While this might look like a death knell for Earthlink DSL, for example, and vindication for AOL's and MSN's decisions to drop their own DSL businesses, that isn't necessarily the case. What IS the case, however, is that the decision has as much to do with telephone service as broadband, and the telcos are positively gleeful. Whether we consumers should be gleeful, too, isn't yet clear, but the answer right now is, "Probably not."

Let's first look at the decision. The short version is that the FCC, seeing enough incumbent and emerging broadband alternatives to DSL (cable modems, power line, WiMax, and 3G cellular data) no longer felt that alternate ISPs had to be guaranteed access to the local phone company's DSL plant. The ruling didn't look at the DSL infrastructure, itself, other than to place it in this broader network and legal context and say there seems to be plenty of competition now.

Not in my town there isn't. Here in Charleston, SC, my choices are BellSouth DSL which, as my 81 year-old mother put it, "sucks" (the first time I ever heard her use that term), or a Comcast cable modem, which is faster but brainless in that Comcast hasn't done a very good job of provisioning Domain Name Service. Power line, WiMax, and 3G cellular are nowhere to be seen in my neighborhood, and so far aren't even on the drawing board, either (I checked).

But through the Beltway glasses of the FCC, the nation apparently looks awash in broadband alternatives, so they gave the poor telephone companies this sorely-needed relief.

Here's where I get really confused.

It seems to me that the telcos got their relief a year ago when the FCC -- in an earlier decision -- concluded that the companies didn't have to share their next-generation networks with third-party ISPs. Fiber-to-the-home, fiber-to-the-curb, fiber-to-the-neighborhood, and even certain copper services like ADSL2 and 2+ were exempt from required sharing, leaving plain old original ADSL the only network they were required to share. The idea last year was that telcos wouldn't invest in these new networks at all if they had to share them, so the FCC said they didn't have to, with the goal that we'd all then get faster service. This, of course, completely ignored the existence of the same cable, power line, WiMax and 3G cellular infrastructures that today -- only months later - - are justifying the current decision.

So the telcos were first exempted from having to share their faster services in order to encourage them to build those services, which we sorely needed. And now they are exempted from having to share their slower service specifically because there are so many broadband alternatives.

Huh?

Remember, "share" means "sell" or "rent" to the third-party ISPs for rates that are higher than I expected, and a lot higher than the telcos suggested. For all the talk of having to sell "at cost," those agreements are profitable for the telcos, and we'll see that proved next year when the agreements are generally renewed. You see, this new FCC decision didn't prohibit telcos from reselling DSL, it just made doing so optional.

One thing that's very true is the phone companies WILL shortly begin a frenzy of broadband improvements, but my belief is that this isn't based on the logic stated to be at the basis of either of the two enabling FCC decisions. It's based, instead, on the implicit result of these two decisions, which is a fundamental change in the way telcos are regulated.

The basis of utility regulation is that for the privilege of being allowed to have a monopoly, utilities have to accept obligations in the form of reasonable profits and additional public services. These privileges and obligations are supposed to balance each other. But what happens if you take away the obligations, as the FCC appears to be consistently doing? Then all that's left is privilege.

What's happening here is the telephone companies are getting parity with the cable TV companies. Last year, the FCC reclassified cable modems from being common carrier services -- that is, COMMUNICATION services -- to being INFORMATION services. The distinction here is critical, because a communication service is regulated while an information service is not. A communication service is like a phone company or a cable TV company, while an information service is like a Yahoo or a Google -- except, of course, Yahoo and Google don't own any wires. The cable decision was tested recently in the U.S. Supreme Court and upheld, with the ultimate result being this DSL decision.

And here are the two most important bits of both decisions: 1) the cable and telephone companies now have an effective broadband oligarchy that is pretty much without regulation, and 2) any additional services that are encapsulated within the now deregulated ISPs will be, themselves, deregulated. Initially, this will mean phone service, but eventually it will mean EVERYTHING.

So here's the new landscape of DSL as it is about to be rolled-out by my local phone company, BellSouth. I am sure similar initiatives are happening at your phone company, too.

At BellSouth, I'm told, DSL will shortly become the core service. The company will begin rolling-out 6 megabit-per-second service, followed later by 24 megabit-per-second service. The former is possible under the current ADSL spec, though only within a short distance from the telephone company DSLAM where DSL signals begin their journey. My friend Stephen in San Francisco lived perhaps 100 meters from the DSLAM and consistently saw 8 megabit-per-second speeds even though he was only paying for 1.5 megabits. But given the poor quality of phone lines here in Charleston, I'm guessing even the six megabit service will be ADSL2.

ADSL2, which the ITU calls G.992.3, uses the existing copper infrastructure in a smarter way. It offers slightly faster speeds -- up to 8 megabits-per-second -- but more importantly it has greater range, supports true ATM Quality of Service, uses less power, and has significant self-diagnostic and bandwidth optimization capabilities. Remember, this is one of the technologies the telephone companies said they couldn't afford to install if the FCC didn't get the third-party ISP's off their backs. Yet the bottom line for ADSL2 is simple: It costs no more to build and costs less to run, leading to significant overall cost savings for the telco. ADSL2 will run over lines that wouldn't work for original ADSL, it will run further over lines of any type, and the diagnostics mean fewer truck rolls, which cost real money.

This is a service the phone companies had to essentially be bribed to provide, yet it is clear they would have built it anyway. And that bribe came not just in the form of eliminating mandatory wholesaling, but ADSL2 and everything carried by it is pretty much unregulated.

So BellSouth, for example, will roll out ADSL2 and throw its own VoIP phone service on top. But instead of fighting with the state utility commissions about rates and taxes, this new VoIP service will be as unfettered as a Vonage or a Skype. As a result, BellSouth will be able to offer very competitive VoIP rates and still make more money than a Vonage, and in fact, more money than they made with the previous regulated phone service, which will quickly die.

There's a push and a pull here. Buy ADSL2 and get cheap phone service. Want cheap phone service? Buy ADSL2.

Then comes ADSL2+ (G.992.5), a four-wire service running at up to 24 megabits-per-second, most of which will be used for (again unregulated) video. Those who think Internet cable TV is too expensive are caught up in the idea of the phone company having to use their Internet backbone connections for any of this, which they won't. They'll get TV signals the same way the cable companies do -- by satellite. But the available LOCAL bandwidth of a DSL plant is so much larger than any digital cable system (up to 1,000 lines per seven-foot rack, all running at up to 24 megabits-per-second) that the phone companies will right from the beginning be selling value-added services like Digital Video Recording, except the DVR will be at the phone company, not at your house.

This is why the cable TV companies are all ramping-up their Internet bandwidth. For the moment, they still have an advantage, but in another year or two that will be lost, so they are trying to bulk-up now, hoping customers will later be too lazy to switch.

The ultimate result of all this FCC rule-making is that the big get bigger, and the small learn to adapt or they die. There is a quid pro quo of sorts, and that's the conversion of regulation from governing rates to mainly governing emergency services. It looks like beyond e911 and supporting digital wire taps, the feds don't really care what the cable TV and telephone companies do or what they charge. And many of the telephony services currently subsidized by carrier fees will probably die or be pushed off on the states as a result of this effective telco tax cut.

And maybe that's good. Maybe a thousand flowers will bloom.

Or not.

But for sure, the logic used to support all these decisions is, itself, bogus.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050811.html





Google Library Database Is Delayed
Edward Wyatt

Google said yesterday that it would temporarily halt its program to make searchable, digital copies of the vast contents of three university libraries to give publishers and other copyright holders the chance to opt out of having their protected works copied.

But a publishing trade association called the opt-out offer inadequate, saying it did not address the main concern of its members: the belief that the entire program, the Google Print Library Project, is built on a foundation of purposeful copyright violation.

Google said it would go ahead with plans to digitize, and make searchable, works that are in the public domain, that is, those whose copyrights have expired. But in response to discussions with publishers, authors and others who hold copyrights, Google said it would wait until at least Nov. 1 before beginning to scan works that are still under copyright.

In the meantime, Google will allow publishers and others to tell it which of their works they do not want included in its searchable database of printed material.

Adam M. Smith, a senior product manager at Google, said in an interview that the opt-out policy was consistent with the way Google maintains its relationships with Web site owners, allowing them to say when they do not wish to be included in a searchable index.

"We believe this program is consistent with the principle of fair use, and it will allow authors to write more books, allow publishers to sell more books and to have a more robust publishing industry," Mr. Smith said.

But Patricia Schroeder, the former Colorado congresswoman who is president and chief executive of the Association of American Publishers, the trade group, said that while publishers were "very happy" with the suspension of copying, the program still set a damaging precedent that copyrighted works could be reproduced at will, as long as a copyright holder had not pre-emptively objected.

"That is really turning it on its head," Ms. Schroeder said. "How is an author even supposed to know that his or her work is being copied?"

Ms. Schroeder said that the publishers were in favor of expanding access to the content that they publish. But some publishers have said they were concerned that Google might begin to sell advertising related to the results of searches of copyrighted material without sharing the revenues with the copyright owners.

The dispute stems from a deal, announced in December, that Google struck with libraries at three American universities - Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan - as well as with Oxford University and the New York Public Library.

The agreements with Oxford and the New York library allow Google to make copies of all of the works in those institutions that are no longer protected by copyright. Once the project is up and running, the company will allow users of its Google Print site (print.google.com) to search those works and display contents that match a search term.

The agreements with the three university libraries have proved more problematic. The libraries agreed to let Google copy their entire collections, of both public domain and copyrighted works, to allow searching. When a search request produces a result in a protected work, Google displays only a snippet of text, plus bibliographic information and, if the book is still in print, links to sites where it might be available for purchase.

Publishers have objected to the program, however, saying that even if only snippets of a protected work are displayed in the search results, Google has still violated the copyright by making a wholesale copy and keeping it on the company's computers.

In June, the publishers' association asked Google to suspend its project for six months while questions about the copyright issues were discussed. And in May, the Association of American University Presses sent Google a letter with 16 detailed questions about the program's parameters, and plans for storage and use of the copied materials.

Ms. Schroeder said that her association was preparing to propose potential changes to the program, but that Google rejected them after receiving a briefing on the plans. She declined to characterize further what changes the publishers were seeking, and Mr. Smith of Google declined to comment on discussions with the publishers, which he said were continuing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/13/arts/13goog.html





S.F. Wants Wireless for Everyone

San Francisco wants ideas for making the entire 49-square-mile city a free -- or at least cheap -- Wi-Fi zone.

Taking a step toward bridging the so-called digital divide between the tech-savvy and people who can't afford computers, the city government issued guidelines for a plan to "ensure universal, affordable wireless broadband access for all San Franciscans."

The city is soliciting ideas for an ambitious system that would put Wi-Fi in the hands of people whether they are working in a high-rise office tower, riding on a cable car or living in a low-income housing project.

According to an annual ranking compiled by Intel, San Francisco already ranks just behind Seattle as the most "unwired city" in America, thanks to a ubiquity of cafes and restaurants that offer Wi- Fi.

Last year, the city erected antennas to make one of its most popular tourist destinations, Union Square, a free hot spot, and three others are set to go up later this year.

- - -

360 for 400: When Microsoft's (MSFT) new Xbox video game console comes out this fall, consumers will be able to choose between a fully loaded system and a more basic version without a hard drive, wireless controller and other features.

The premium Xbox 360 console will sell for $400 in the United States, Canada and Mexico -- nearly triple the price of the current system -- and 400 euros in continental Europe. Meanwhile, the scaled-back version, dubbed "Xbox 360 Core System," will go for $300, and 300 euros in Europe.

Various accessories, like a 20-GB detachable hard drive and wireless controller that will come standard with the premium version, will be sold separately and can be added to the less expensive "core" console.

Other features that can be added to that console include a TV remote, a headset for the Xbox Live online service and an ethernet cable for high-speed internet connections.

- - -

Micro magic: Nintendo will launch its Game Boy Micro, a portable mobile-phone-sized gaming console, in Europe on Nov. 4 for the price of 100 euros.

The Japanese company hopes to attract women and so-called casual gamers -- those unwilling or unable to spend hours playing games on a PC or console at home -- with the new device, which is available in metallic pink, green, blue and silver.

Nintendo said the Game Boy Micro would be available from the end of September in the United States for $100. Nintendo does not yet know whether buyers of its current consoles would switch to the Micro, or whether the device would lure new customers.

Around 500,000 Micros will be available at the European launch. The sleek Game Boy Micro, which weighs just 3 ounces, will be able to play a library of up to 700 Game Boy games. Nintendo says it is the world's smallest console.

- - -

Qwest completed: Qwest Communications (Q) and its largest union reached a tentative contract agreement, removing the threat of a strike by 25,000 telephone workers in 13 states.

The agreement includes a 7.5 percent wage increase over three years, changes to health care to reduce overall costs for many employees and an eight-hour cap on mandatory overtime. Workers must still ratify the pact.

The bargaining teams put the final touches on the tentative pact after several days of intermittent negotiations that intensified after the union's previous contract expired.

The union agreed to keep talking without a contract in hopes of avoiding a strike, and the resulting hike in basic wages is the first since 2003.

- - -

Compiled by Keith Axline. AP contributed to this report.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,68555,00.html





Surveillance

The FCC's Invite To Big Brother
Declan McCullagh

It's cheaper and easier than ever to make phone calls over the Internet, thanks to innovative gadgets like a Wi-Fi handset from ZyXel.

With the ZyXel phone, you can make phone calls wherever there's an accessible Wi-Fi connection. But if the federal government has its way, you'll be tracked wherever you go.

Buried in the convoluted 91-page legalese of a recent Federal Communications Commission release on voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a proposal with worrisome privacy implications.

It isn't wise to copy regulations crafted for analog phone networks and apply them to a packet- switched universe.
In it, the FCC suggests ways to "automatically identify the location" of all VoIP callers with handsets that connect to the telephone network. Those methods include creating an "inventory" of every Wi-Fi access point in the United States, engaging in "mapping and triangulation" of those access points, compiling an "access jack inventory" for wired VoIP users, or even mandating that Net phones include GPS receivers and broadcast their exact latitude and longitude.

The justification for those regulations sounds reasonable enough: to let emergency services identify an Internet caller's location when he or she dials 911. It's part of an ongoing proceeding in which the FCC gave VoIP operators until October to route 911 calls to the geographically appropriate call center.

It's easy enough to identify the location of office VoIP phones that stay in one spot. But the FCC is worried about the arrival of mobile VoIP phones such as ZyXel's, as well as business travelers taking a Vonage-like wired handset on the road.

The FCC warned in the 91-page document released in June that companies "often have no reliable way to discern from where their customers are accessing the VoIP service...There currently are no solutions that allow a provider of portable VoIP services to determine the location of an end user absent the end user affirmatively telling the service provider where he or she is."

"We intend to adopt in a future order an advanced e911 solution for interconnected VoIP that must include a method for determining a user's location without assistance from the user, as well as firm implementation deadlines," the FCC added.

In a subsequent appearance before a gaggle of Washington, D.C., telecommunications lawyers, a senior FCC official from the wireline competition bureau predicted a location requirement deadline of July 1, 2006. (As a side note, I think it's cowardly for FCC officials to refuse to have their names mentioned, but it was a condition of attending the event.)

"Public safety is not keen on solutions with customer intervention," the official said, adding that the FCC is being lobbied by companies selling location technology, including one based on "measuring broadcast signals."

Unanswered privacy questions
The FCC's proposal raises a number of questions: Who will have access to the location data stored by VoIP handsets? What rules will govern police monitoring of your moment-to-moment location? Should the federal government really be in the business of compiling a database of every wireless or wired access point in the country? And once such a database is created, what's to stop the Feds from saying that computer users also must have their locations registered?

I'm sure the FCC will claim that the location-identifying requirement is reasonable, pointing out with some justification that cellular providers are subject to similar regulations and some commercial Wi-Fi-location services are becoming available.

But the Internet is not the telephone network, and it isn't wise to copy regulations crafted for analog phone networks and apply them to a packet- switched universe.

For one thing, what if someone doesn't want 911 service on his or her VoIP phone? I already have a landline and a cell phone at home, and I might add a VoIP phone to the mix. I don't need 911 service and don't wish to pay higher prices for a GPS receiver or location-identifying hardware that would be included in it. Mandating 911 service would amount to a tax on VoIP customers.

A second option is for the FCC simply to do nothing. What would likely happen next is some VoIP providers would offer location-enabled 911 calling to customers who wanted it (for an additional fee), and others would not. That would permit the normal functions of a free market to work--and avoid zany proposals involving Uncle Sam registering all wired and wireless access points.

There's still time to let the FCC know what you think. The deadline for public comments is Monday, and they can be filed on the FCC's Web site. Just remember to fill in the spot labeled "proceeding 05-196."
http://news.com.com/The+FCCs+invite+...3-5830805.html





TSA Data Dump Leads to Lawsuit
Kim Zetter

Following accusations last month that the Transportation Security Administration violated the Privacy Act in testing its new airline passenger-screening program, four individuals sued the agency Thursday.

They want the TSA to dig deeper for commercial data records it may have collected on each of them to test the Secure Flight program, and to hand over those records. The individuals also filed a motion to prevent the agency from destroying records before the lawsuit is resolved.


"Until the court has determined that they conducted an adequate search for my clients' documents, I think the document destruction should cease," said attorney Jim Harrison, who represents the four plaintiffs. He was referring to a recent TSA announcement that it was already destroying Secure Flight records.

Harrison filed the lawsuit in a federal district court in Anchorage, Alaska, where his clients reside.

Under the federal Privacy Act, government agencies that collect data on individuals must let them access the data and correct errors found in the records.

Last year, the TSA ordered U.S. airlines to hand over passenger name records for all domestic flights completed in June 2004 to test Secure Flight. A contractor for the agency then collected more than 100 million commercial records on approximately 42,000 passenger names and 200,000 names created from variations of those names.

In May, Harrison filed a records request to determine what kind of data the TSA collected on his clients. Two of his clients flew several times in June 2004 on Alaska Airlines and other carriers; the other two are travel agents who believe their names were included in the records of passengers whose flights they booked during that period.

The TSA said it had no records on the four, and Harrison appealed, believing the agency didn't adequately search its records. A deadline for responding to Harrison's appeal passed Tuesday without an answer from the TSA.

Secure Flight program director Justin Oberman said last week that it was possible the agency never collected records on Harrison's clients since it collected only a fraction of flight records for June 2004. Harrison said one of his clients, John Davis, has a name so common it is hard to believe it wasn't on the airline lists or the expanded list created from variations of passenger names.

Harrison is concerned the TSA will destroy records before they're adequately searched.

A TSA spokeswoman told Wired News that the agency already destroyed 3 million of 15 million passenger records in April. The agency mentioned the destruction in a notice it posted in the Federal Register's website in June -- without saying when it occurred -- and said it would destroy all remaining records when Secure Flight testing was completed, without saying when that might happen.

The issue raises questions about what is adequate public notice about the destruction of records when the Privacy Act guarantees access to those records. Harrison said most people didn't read the Federal Register or know they had to request records now or lose the opportunity.

"I don't expect them to take out ads in The New York Times," Harrison said. "But I'd suggest that it includes some sort of notice other than in the Federal Register."
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,68560,00.html





Japan's Biometric Security Firms See Demand Booming
Mariko Katsumura

Firms providing the latest in biometric security, using systems that can identify an individual's face, hand or fingerprint, are enjoying a boom in Japan amid an increase in forgery and cybercrime.

The technology includes ways to combat credit card fraud and Internet offences such as identity theft by avoiding the need for PIN numbers, as well as doors that dispense with conventional locks and instead rely on face recognition.

Some analysts say technology vendors including Fujitsu-Frontech Ltd. have great potential in the biometrics security market which, although expected to grow sharply, is still in its infancy.

"It's certainly a growing market. The growth potential for the technology providers, especially specialized ones, is huge if their products are used by big clients," said Jun Morita, a fund manager at Chibagin Asset Management.

Private firm Yano Research Institute says Japan's biometrics market hit 8.76 billion yen in 2004, soaring 39 percent in two years.

It is expected to grow to 27.22 billion yen in 2010, as the technology is adopted for mobile phones, personal data assistants (PDAs) and ATMs.

Interest in biometrics technology for access control or personal identification is growing around the world, with the global biometrics market expected to top $4.6 billion in 2008 from $719 million in 2003, according to the International Biometric Group, an industry body.

In the United States and Europe, companies such as Alcatel, Nuance Communications and SAFLINK Corp. have been developing non-password biometrics security using fingerprints, face recognition or recognition of veins in the palm or fingers.

In Japan, demand for the technology has been spurred by the introduction in April of the Personal Information Protection Law, which calls for companies and organizations to establish and manage company-wide information security.

Japan's second-biggest bank, Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group, is receiving over 2,000 applications a day for a credit card launched last year that identifies users by the veins in their palm. It has installed an authentication system, developed by Fujitsu-Frontech, in half of its 3,000 ATMs.

Countering Card Skimming

Japan Post, which includes the world's biggest deposit-taking institution with more than $3 trillion in investment assets, plans to introduce a cash card next year that carries a finger vein authentication system to counter forgery and card skimming.

The number of credit or cash card forgery crimes in Japan rose nearly 6 percent in the first half of 2005 from the same period last year, government data shows.

Internet-related crimes including "phishing" -- scams that trick people into providing personal and financial information -- and illegal access to computer networks have more than doubled in Japan in the past five years, police data showed.

T.D.I. Co. Ltd., which plans to launch commercial sales of a facial recognition security system next month targeting such firms as makers of locks and doors, expects the product to help increase sales by 1 billion yen in the business year to next March.

"Each biometrics security measure has pros and cons, and has its most relevant uses. The market will certainly grow if technologies are used in the best and most efficient way," said T.D.I. spokesman Hideaki Hoshina.

Another vendor, Sylex Technology Inc., which sells finger print authentication for PC access, expects its sales to double next business year and again the following year.

T.D.I.'s shares have soared 58 percent so far this year and Sylex has jumped 17 percent -- against an 18 percent rise in the Nikkei Jasdaq average for startups.

Fujitsu Frontech is up 47 percent so far this year, compared with an 8.6 percent rise in the TOPIX index.

Heavyweights such as Hitachi Ltd., Omron Corp. and NEC Corp. are gearing up for the market.

Many agree on the bright outlook for the technology, saying it can also target non-security areas such as entertainment industries to provide personal and higher-quality services.

But some analysts are skeptical about whether biometrics security can grow into a wide-ranging market due to privacy and technical problems.

"It's a very interesting market but investors are still unable to gauge how fast and big the market will become," said Yasuo Ueki, an analyst at consultancy Poko Financial Office.

"There are also cost and accuracy issues that I think might prevent the technology from spreading widely for a while."
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...S-JAPAN-DC.XML





Game Players Say Blizzard Invades Privacy
Daniel Terdiman

A number of "World of Warcraft" players are up in arms over software being used by the game's publisher to scan users' computers for hacks prohibited under its terms of service.

Many publishers of MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) contend regularly with players crafting illegal software hacks that provide some form of gameplay advantage, such as increased speed, awareness of monsters or the like.

To that end, some publishers have deployed programs that can peer into players' computers in an attempt to detect the existence of such hacking software. Blizzard Entertainment, publisher of "World of Warcraft," is one of those companies.

Players sometimes cry foul about such practices, though, arguing that a game developer's need to keep out hackers doesn't outweigh customers' rights to privacy.

"It opens the ability for a company to do a whole list of things under the guise of security," said a frequent "World of Warcraft" player who asked to be referred to only by his first name, Dennis. "Once you give a company the right to scan your system, you've basically opened the door...Now you must fully trust that company with any data on your computer, because it's at their discretion that they download this data and do whatever they want to with it under the guise of stopping the hackers."

Another player, known as Malek, wrote in a forum on the official game Web site that users should be wary of Blizzard's motives.

"All of you people not concerned about this," Malek wrote, "are showing an awful lot of trust in Blizzard and its coders not to do anything malicious."

But Blizzard said that it isn't interested in anything other than whether users are trying to hack into the game.

"Our stance has always been that we really want to stop the hacker that actively attacks our game," said John Lagrave, senior producer on the "World of Warcraft" live operations team. "We have a system that looks for hacks into the actual game itself. We're not the police; we're not the Nazis. We have no interest in personal information because it has no direct bearing for our game."

Nevertheless, the history of MMORPGs suggests that sometimes game publishers underestimate players' desire for privacy. In one case, "Everquest" publisher Sony Online Entertainment quickly deactivated its own scanning software after players reacted angrily.

"We put a feature into 'Everquest' that was scanning background programs to find people who were hacking and cheating in the game," said Chris Kramer, director of public relations at Sony Online Entertainment. "We did it the wrong way. We put it into the game without alerting the player base first. We apologized to our user base and promised that in the future if we looked to use a scanning program, we'll let them know ahead of time."

Blizzard said that its own scanning of "World of Warcraft" players' computers is different from that of the "Everquest" situation, because Blizzard spells out in the game's end-user license agreement, or EULA, that the company maintains the right to perform such anti-hacking scans. Players like Dennis and others who have complained about the scanning on the game's official forums don't have much of a leg to stand on, Blizzard says.

"People should read contracts," Lagrave said. "Whenever we update our game, that EULA is always displayed so that people have to accept it every time. So it's been in their face many times."

Kramer agreed that players need to be more careful about reading what they agree to.

"People should read the EULA," Kramer said. If they don't, "that's like saying, 'I didn't read the contract before I signed it. Why does the devil own my soul now?'"
http://news.com.com/Game+players+say...3-5830718.html





Miss Manners Wouldn't Approve: Snoops Bug the High-Tech Car
Ivan Berger

DON'T be too sure your car is an island of privacy. Under certain circumstances, outsiders can eavesdrop on conversations among you and your passengers if your car has a built-in Bluetooth telephone link.

Bluetooth provides a low-power wireless connection between your cellphone and your car - it permits hands-free conversations through a speaker and microphone built into the vehicle, or with a headset - and it may be vulnerable to amateur eavesdroppers. At a recent computer security convention in the Netherlands, a group of European wireless-security experts called the Trifinite Group demonstrated a system that lets a laptop user listen to conversations in passing cars with Bluetooth setups.

The system, which Trifinite calls the Car Whisperer, also lets the user talk to people in these cars. While that could be used to deliver compliments to a fellow motorist ("Nice ride!"), it would also be possible to insult the driver or make a lewd proposition.

Using a laptop computer with a Bluetooth transmitter and a software program (available at www.trifinite.org) that runs under the Linux operating system, the Car Whisperer has a range of 300 feet, some 10 times that of Bluetooth hands-free systems. The range can be extended to nearly a mile by adding a directional antenna.

The system was developed not to create mischief but to head it off, said Martin Herfurt of Salzburg, Austria, a co-founder of Trifinite and inventor of the Car Whisperer, by showing manufacturers how vulnerable some of their products are. "Unless you can demonstrate the problem," Mr. Herfurt said in an e-mail message, "they may not recognize that it exists."

The security loophole exists only in setups that do not follow the recommendation of the industry consortium that sets Bluetooth standards. Bluetooth devices can talk to one another only if they share a secret passcode.

While this code can be up to 128 bits long, the equivalent of a 16-character string of letters and numbers, most are shorter. The Bluetooth consortium recommends eight- character passwords, allowing nearly three trillion potential codes. A computer could try them all, but by that time a moving car would be far out of range.

Many manufacturers' codes are just four digits long and consist solely of numerals. Such passcodes have only 10,000 potential values and can be cracked relatively quickly. Worse, some manufacturers use a single passcode, like 1234 or 0000, over and over.

If you are shopping for a hands-free Bluetooth speakerphone system, or a car equipped with one, you should look for one with a confirmation button that must be pressed to initiate a phone connection, Mr. Herfurt said, adding, "A button press cannot be performed by an external attacker."

Mr. Herfurt added that you should change your car's passcode from the factory default, if the system permits, and that you should keep the phone turned on and linked to Bluetooth. "The system can only communicate with one device at a time," he said.

A system that communicates with other cars could be used to pass useful traffic data to drivers behind you. When traffic slows, for instance, cars might automatically tell the vehicles behind them, giving drivers a chance to exit or slow down to avoid a crash.

This is not the first time privacy issues have arisen in cars with high-tech connections. It is possible to eavesdrop on people in a car that has a telematics service with a phone connection, like General Motors' OnStar (which is also offered on some non-G.M. models) or Mercedes-Benz's Tele Aid.

But listening in through such systems requires the cooperation of the companies providing the service, and they will not cooperate unless they receive a court order. Such orders have been issued at least once, in a 2001 F.B.I. investigation in Las Vegas, but were overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

What are Bluetooth's other vulnerabilities? Despite reports circulating a few months ago, it is not true that a Lexus picked up a virus through a wireless link. Though cellphones can catch viruses, they are rarely linked to a car's vital computers. But the concern behind such rumors is logical: any electronic device connected to the outside world is potentially vulnerable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/au...es/14BLUE.html





For an eye-opening look at how your cash gets to the media companies see "Hollywood's Profits, Demystified" in last weeks WiR – Jack.

The Wonder Of Hollywood

Theatrical runs are marquee attraction, but for how long?
Todd Leopold

Along with theatrical runs, DVD sales, television deals and merchandising tie-ins are big business for movies.

"You used to be big," screenwriter Joe Gillis tells reclusive silent film star Norma Desmond in the 1950 film "Sunset Boulevard."

"I AM big," Desmond retorts. "It's the PICTURES that got small."

Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson in the Billy Wilder classic, didn't know how right she was.

When "Sunset Boulevard" came out, the major Hollywood studios -- the behemoths that built an industry and an art form out of thin air -- were kings of the entertainment realm. Stars were signed to long-term contracts and obeyed studio dictates. The founders -- men like Columbia's Harry Cohn, Warner Bros.' Jack Warner and MGM's Louis B. Mayer -- were still in charge.

There was little competition. Television was in its infancy. Network radio was fading. The music business, years before rock 'n' roll revived it, was stagnant. The generic phrase "going to the movies" was appropriate; a night out at a theater often included a newsreel, a cartoon, and a double feature.

"The movie business was about movies," says Edward Jay Epstein, author of a fascinating analysis of how Hollywood works, "The Big Picture" (Random House) and Slate.com's "Hollywood Economist" columnist.

"In the old days, box office was everything. Until 1950, every penny a film made was from the box office."

Contrast that with today, Epstein observes.

Now the major Hollywood studios of the 20th century's first half -- Columbia, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Disney -- are owned by a "sexopoly" (Epstein's term) of six giant conglomerates: respectively, Sony, Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp., NBC- Universal and Disney. (MGM, another major, went through several buyouts and mergers in its lifetime and ceased to exist in 2004.)

Those six also own America's TV broadcast networks, the majority of its cable outlets, large shares in cable systems, sizable percentages of Internet partnerships and dominate its radio advertising. (Time Warner's holdings include, for example, the WB television network, the Time Warner cable system, DC Comics, America Online -- and CNN.)

And now the pictures literally ARE small. Instead of a film playing at a single-feature, 1,000-seat movie house, they play at 16-screen multiplexes. Instead of the money being in those theatrical runs, it's in the home -- home video, broadcast television, pay cable and syndication.

Theatrical movies -- what are called "current production" in studio parlance -- are simply a sliver of the overall entertainment business, and a money-losing one at that, Epstein says. Today, the profits are elsewhere, in the various ways a conglomerate can spin off a two-hour feature, from video sales to action-figure merchandising.

But what about the stars? The glamour? The attention paid to the weekly parade of movie openings, complete with celebrity interviews, breathless gossip and predictions of the weekend box office? What about the MOVIES?

Well, they're an illusion in more ways than one.

An illusion-based business

Movies are based on an illusion, of course -- the idea that individual images, played in a darkened theater on a large screen at 24 frames per second, can create a bigger-than-life experience.

The inherent excitement and immensity surrounding the movie experience extends to almost everything movies touch. Actors aren't just performers; they're "movie stars." Directors aren't just filmmakers; they're "auteurs" (French for "authors"). Even the old studio heads -- who were some of the best-paid executives of their time -- were called "movie moguls" (a term, notes Epstein, they adopted themselves).

And, of course, movie premieres are experiences worthy of royalty, with red carpets, expensive jewelry, stunning clothing, fleets of livery, dramatic lighting and hundreds of journalists and photographers in tow.

Still, it's always been a business, one that's been eminently adaptable to the economic and artistic needs of the time.

In the early days, movies were ways to fill empty theaters; later, the studios established their own theater chains, which were broken up in an antitrust decision in the late '40s. When television cut into movie attendance, the studios -- after initial resistance -- got into TV production, which is now more profitable than theatrical films.

The studios initially resisted home video (indeed, Universal, with other studios' support, sued Sony over the Betamax video recorder); now it's a huge profit center (and Sony is now a studio owner). They quickly caught on to audience trends: the summer blockbuster season dates from the '70s, the idea of targeting major films to teenagers (the most reliable moviegoing market) followed soon after, and when independent films started attracting audiences and awards, studios bought or established their own "independent" arms.

But so much is still wrapped up -- psychologically, if not necessarily economically -- in the idea of that big-budget, all-star Hollywood movie and its big-screen allure. Which is why studios still put so much energy into making a splash, from making sure their new releases get prominent play in magazines and on television (especially if they own the outlet) and shrewdly using the horse-race-like weekly top 10 list to keep interest high.

Box office slump?

And that's why the trend of declining theatrical attendance has many in the entertainment business concerned.

"Nothing says there has to be [theatrical] movies," says Epstein. "All the theater chains started as vaudeville, and they were all replaced by movie theaters. Opera was replaced by recorded music. ... As home theater [grows], you can lose movie theaters."

Indeed, North American theatrical grosses are down 9 percent this year from 2004, and ticket sales are down 11 percent from last year. Articles about the weekly weekend box office figures have focused on how they've paled compared to 2004.

However, says Brandon Gray, president and publisher of the box office-tracking Web site boxofficemojo.com, nobody should rush to judgment.

"Tales of a slump are premature," he says. "It's a down year, but Hollywood is coming off three boom years. 2002 was the most- attended year in nearly 40 years, and that's in the era of DVD and home video." 2002 attendance also spiked in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he adds, "so in many ways [that year] was unique."

Moreover, Gray says, last year featured "The Passion of the Christ" -- "a once-in-a- lifetime touchstone," he says -- that attracted people who seldom attend movies. And even with its down indicators, 2005 is still ahead of 2001's pace in ticket sales and "will be on a par with the late '90s."

What stands out about 2005, he says, is that "the product drives the industry and the product has been weak this year. It's been boring." There haven't been any water- cooler sleepers, films like "The Blair Witch Project," "The Sixth Sense" or "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

However, that's cold comfort to exhibitors, who stand to lose the most by declining attendance. Thirteen theater owners filed for bankruptcy between 1999 and 2004, according to an article in Shopping Centers Today.

That article was actually upbeat about prospects for exhibitors. Epstein isn't. He observes that the "window" -- the time separating a movie's theatrical release from its video release -- is getting smaller, and "the video people [in the media companies] are getting stronger."

As that happens -- and home theater systems improve -- more people will wait until a movie comes out on video, he says.

Hollywood executives are thinking along the same lines. "Ten years from now, we'll release a film and you'll be able to consume it however you want," Sony Pictures Digital Vice Chairman Yair Landau told Newsweek.

Where that leaves the theatrical film is anyone's guess.

"It's too early to say if this is the beginning of the end," Gray says.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movi...iew/index.html





TiVo Left Out Of Cable, Satellite Plans
Derek Caney

As cable, satellite and phone companies gear up for battle for control of home entertainment, the odd man out could be TiVo Inc., the pioneer of digital video recording.

No one disputes that digital video recording (DVR), the ability to pause live TV and record TV shows onto a hard drive, will be an integral part of pay television packages.

But most companies selling these services seem intent on building this technology themselves rather than licensing it from TiVo, said executives at the Reuters Telecommunications, Cable and Satellite Summit this week.

Shares fell as much as 8 percent in premarket trading on Thursday, a day after chief executive of DirecTV Group Inc., which accounts for two-thirds of TiVo's subscribers, told Reuters it plans to stop marketing TiVo recorders and replace them with News Corp.-created technology.

TiVo's growth strategy is based on its ability to license its DVR technology to cable, satellite and phone companies. But many industry heavyweights, including DirecTV, SBC and Verizon, told Reuters there is little in TiVo's technology portfolio that they can't build themselves.

"The DVR box is very much at the center of what will be developed as we go forward," Chief Executive Chase Carey said at the summit, held at Reuters U.S. headquarters in New York. "We will have something on our own."

His remarks were echoed by Verizon Vice Chairman Lawrence Babbio who said that while the vast majority of people who use TiVo like the interface, he felt that the company could build easy-to-use features on their own.

"Actually, I think I'm totally confident that our IT folks are on the same path," he said. Verizon's TV service is expected to be introduced this year.

Also, the latest generation of set-top boxes, made by Pace Micro Technology Plc, Scientific-Atlanta Inc., and Motorola Inc., will also have DVR functions.

"TiVo has some significant challenges going forward," said Hoefer & Arnett analyst April Horace, who noted that DirecTV accounts for 12.5 percent of TiVo's revenue. "And that's all high margin revenue, because they don't spend a lot on subscriber acquisition costs for DirecTV customers."

TiVo spokesman Elliot Sloane said: "We are currently embracing integration into other set-top boxes and engaged in discussions with a number of cable companies right now."

DirecTV, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is betting on an advanced set-top box, which will be introduced next year. Carey envisions the box will ultimately evolve into the hub of home entertainment with the capabilities for music and games, as well as video.

The box will be powered by technology made by NDS Group Plc., which is also controlled by News Corp.

"An ongoing relationship with TiVo would produce something that a segment of the market values but we're confident enough in what we're going to do that the majority of our customers will want the core product we're developing," he added.

SBC Communications Inc. is set to launch its television service by the end of the year. Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson said that his company was not in any discussions with TiVo about licensing its technology.

"We're trying to get a product launched with the kind of DVR technologies that are going to meet demand in the future," he said. "The (DVR) functionality we are going to have will be impressive," he said.

BellSouth Corp., which is planning a limited launch of a new TV service in 2006, envisions digital video recording (DVR) technology becoming combined in more advanced set- top boxes, Chief Technology Officer Bill Smith said.

While cable companies have deals with set-top box makers to integrate DVR technology, Smith said PCs from manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard Co., equipped with Microsoft's Media Center entertainment software could serve similar functions.

"Perhaps we would be better served if we offered a promotion subsidizing a customer buying a Media Center PC," Smith said. "In essence, you would have the highest end set-top box and then we could build on that."

To be sure, TiVo has some supporters in the industry. In March, TiVo licensed its technology to Comcast Corp. <CMCSA.O>, the largest U.S. cable company.

"TiVo is like the Apple Macintosh in the PC world," said Comcast Corp. chief executive Brian Roberts. "There have been many people who like our DVR interface better than TiVo. But to a TiVo user, it's the original. It's a bit of cult. We affiliated with TiVo because we wanted that innovation around our digital video recorders."

At the time the deal was announced, Comcast touted TiVo's advertising capabilities.

But Hoefer's Horace noted that much of Comcast's advertising focus is on its video-on-demand technology, not digital video recording.

"Comcast has 13 million subscribers today that can access VOD content," she said. "If you're an advertiser, wouldn't you rather have the opportunity to go to more eyeballs?"

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said that his company was talking to TiVo.

"There's nothing magical about this technology," he said. "My interest is that there are some consumers who really like the user interface.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...srch=Bellsouth





Jumpstarting The TV Web Race

A startup and a nonprofit compete over the emerging opportunity of publishing and viewing on-demand online videos.

Due to cheaper bandwidth, widespread broadband access, and affordable video creation tools, there’s a lot of video content on the Internet. But how do video makers and audiences find each other? And how do you make the computer screen a tolerable place to watch video?

It turns out these problems are central enough to attract two groups of developers from opposite sides of the spectrum—for profit and not for profit. Both groups think the answer is a stand-alone application that pulls online content by subscription. And they both released previews of their upcoming products in the past week.

Internet TiVo

Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF), a Worcester, Massachusetts-based nonprofit, last Tuesday rolled out the Mac beta of the video software it has been working on since the group’s creation in December.

On Wednesday, Veoh Networks, a venture-funded company based in San Diego, rolled out the uploading portion of its own video platform, which has also been in development since December.

Both groups compare their products to TiVo, offering on-demand access to any video content on the Internet. The two products are remarkably similar, each incorporating peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution protocols and syndication tools to speedily deliver content as soon as it is available.

Both attempt to be one-stop Internet video shops, from upload to feed- creation to content discovery to downloads and viewing. And both are set to be released within the next month.

However, PCF’s product, DTV, is ardently open-source and nonprofit, whereas “VeohNet” will sell ads to support free content. Both groups will offer monetization schemes for video publishers, with VeohNet taking a cut of the proceeds.

PCF is sustaining itself on funding from Mitch Kapor’s Open Source Applications Foundation and the Rappaport Family Foundation.

Veoh’s development team comes from Akonix, a company that specializes in controlling corporate access to P2P networks and instant messaging clients.

Veoh CEO Dmitry Shapiro said his team’s deep technical experience with the wide range of P2P protocols gives it the edge over products like DTV that are built on top of the open-source BitTorrent, which can be somewhat unreliable and are especially difficult for nontechnical users.

Choosing Sides

VeohNet will also use human editors to filter out illegal, mis-categorized, and improperly formatted content. PCF, on the other hand, is deeply committed to community filtering.

Director Tiffany Cheng said she is happy to let the public decide how to utilize her group’s open-source product after it is released into the wild.

“In the end, we don’t believe that proprietary and closed is going to advance independent filmmaking,” she said. PCF is a reincarnation, personnel-wise, of Downhill Battle, an activist group that was especially vocal about alternatives to entertainment industry rhetoric.

“Making sure the tool is open-source and free and easy to use… is very political in nature,” said Ms. Cheng.

But Mr. Shapiro maintained that he too is on the side of the little guy. “What we’re doing really fundamentally changes the world by opening up the media to everyone,” he said.

However, when pressed, Mr. Shapiro agreed that aspects of his product basically cater to the entertainment industry, while PCF is more attentive to do-it-yourself filmmakers.

While Mr. Shapiro contended that PCF has “shot [itself] in the foot” because of its attitude toward Hollywood, he said he’s a big fan. “I use it. I’m running it right now on my Mac as we speak,” he said.

Growing Sector

But it’s unfair to portray Internet video platform creators as a simple dichotomy. These two groups just happen to be the ones that are generating momentum by previewing their products.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Brightcove is a VC-backed startup like Veoh and plans to launch its own platform.

Sunnyvale, California-based Kontiki is experimenting with community applications of its business- oriented P2P system through its Open Media Network (see Open Media Network Launches).

In late June, Google’s video project won a lot of attention, but much of it turned negative after it was discovered that users had uploaded full versions of many copyrighted works.
http://www.redherring.com/Article.as...e+TV+Web+Race#





Canadian Community Sees Significant Decline in Proportion of Male Births

There has been a precipitous decline since 1994 in male births in the Chippewas of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation community near Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, according to a study accepted today for publication in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). The community studied lives on reserve land in the St. Clair River Area of Concern, immediately adjacent to several large petrochemical, polymer, and chemical industrial plants.

After the community expressed concerns about an apparent decrease in male births, researchers analyzed live birth records from 1984 to 2003. They discovered that from 1984 to 1993, the community’s sex ratio was stable and within expected parameters. But starting in 1994, the percentage of male births began to decline sharply, and the significant drop-off continued through 2003.

Sex ratio—the proportions of male and female births within a population—is a key indicator of the reproductive health of a population. Worldwide, between 50.4% and 51.9% of births are males, and this percentage is typically very stable. For Canada it is generally reported that 51.2% of births are male. In the 10-year period from 1994 to 2003, the proportion of male births in the Aamjiwnaang community steadily declined, accounting for only 41.2% of births. In the five years from 1999 to 2003, the decline was even more pronounced, totaling only 34.8% of births.

“Although normal variation in sex ratio can be expected in any population, especially with a small sample size, the extent of the sex ratio deviation appears to be outside the range of normal,” the study authors write.

Ongoing studies of the St. Clair River Area of Concern have found changes in the sex ratios and reproductive ability of fish, bird, and turtle populations, which are thought to be due to exposures to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs).

While the present study does not seek to determine the presence of chemicals such as EDCs and the extent to which those factors may have contributed to suddenly shifting sex ratios, a 1996 assessment of the soil and sediment conditions in the reserve land found “high concentrations of several contaminants.”

The authors suggest further study to analyze potential causes for the decline in male births.

“Although there are several potential factors that could be contributing to the observed decrease in sex ratio of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, the close proximity of this group to a large aggregation of industries and potential exposures to compounds that may influence sex ratios warrants further assessment into the types of chemical exposures for this population,” the authors write.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/513866/?sc=swtn

[JackSpratts]

The Blogs of War

On the 21st-century battlefield, the campfire glow comes from a laptop. It's a real-time window on life behind the lines - and suddenly the Pentagon is on the defensive.
John Hockenberry

The snapshots of Iraqi prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib were taken by soldiers and shared in the digital military netherworld of Iraq. Their release to the world in May last year detonated a media explosion that rocked a presidential campaign, cratered America's moral high ground, and demonstrated how even a superpower could be blitzkrieged by some homemade downloadable porn. In the middle of it all, a lone reservist sergeant stationed on the Iraqi border posed a simple question:

I cannot help but wonder upon reflection of the circumstances, how much longer we will be able to carry with us our digital cameras, or take photographs and document the experiences we have had.

The writer was 24-year-old Chris Missick, a soldier with the Army's 319th Signal Battalion and author of the blog A Line in the Sand. While balloon-faced cable pundits shrieked about the scandal, Missick was posting late at night in his Army-issue "blacks," with a mug of coffee and a small French press beside him, his laptop blasting Elliot Smith's "Cupid's Trick" into his headphones. He quickly seized on perhaps the most profound and crucial implication of Abu Ghraib:

Never before has a war been so immediately documented, never before have sentiments from the front scurried their way to the home front with such ease and precision. Here I sit, in the desert, staring daily at the electric fence, the deep trenches and the concertina wire that separates the border of Iraq and Kuwait, and write home and upload my daily reflections and opinions on the war and my circumstances here, as well as some of the pictures I have taken along the way. It is amazing, and empowering, and yet the question remains, should I as a lower enlisted soldier have such power to express my opinion and broadcast to the world a singular soldier's point of view? To those outside the uniform who have never lived the military life, the question may seem absurd, and yet, as an example of what exists even in the small following of readers I have here, the implications of thought expressed by soldiers daily could be explosive.

His sober assessments of the potential of free speech in a war zone began attracting a wider following, eventually logging somewhere north of 100,000 pageviews. No blogging record, but rivaling the wonkish audience for the Pentagon's daily briefing on C-Span or DOD press releases.

Missick is just one voice - and a very pro-Pentagon one at that - in an oddball online Greek chorus narrating the conflict in Iraq. It includes a core group of about 100 regulars and hundreds more loosely organized activists, angry contrarians, jolly testosterone fuckups, self-appointed pundits, and would-be poets who call themselves milbloggers, as in military bloggers. Whether posting from inside Iraq on active duty, from noncombat bases around the world, or even from their neighborhoods back home after being discharged - where they can still follow events closely and deliver their often blunt opinions - milbloggers offer an unprecedented real-time real-life window on war and the people who wage it. Their collective voice competes with and occasionally undermines the DOD's elaborate message machine and the much- loathed mainstream media, usually dismissed as MSM.

Milbloggers constitute a rich subculture with a refreshing candor about the war, expressing views ranging from far right to far left. They also offer helpful tips about tearing down an M16, recipes for beef stew (hint: lots of red wine), reviews of the latest episode of 24, extremely technical discussions of Humvee armor configurations, and exceptionally raw accounts of field hospital chaos, gore, and heroism.

For now, the Pentagon officially tolerates this free-form online journalism and in-house peanut gallery, even as the brass takes cautious steps to control it. A new policy instituted this spring requires all military bloggers inside Iraq to register with their units. It directs commanders to conduct quarterly reviews to make sure bloggers aren't giving out casualty information or violating operational security or privacy rules. Commanding officers shut down a blog that reported on the medical response to a suicide bombing late last year in Mosul. The Army has also created the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell to monitor compliance. And Wired has learned that a Pentagon review is under way to better understand the overall implications of blogging and other Internet communications in combat zones.

"It's a new world out there," says Christopher Conway, a lieutenant colonel and DOD spokesperson. "Before, you would have to shake down your soldiers for matches that might light up and betray a position. Today, every soldier has a cell phone, beeper, game device, or laptop, any one of which could pop off without warning. Blogging is just one piece of the puzzle."

Strong opinions throughout the military ranks in and out of wartime are nothing new. But online technology in the combat zone has suddenly given those opinions a mass audience and an instantaneous forum for the first time in the history of warfare. On the 21st-century battlefield, the campfire glow comes from a laptop computer, and it's visible around the world.

"In World War II, letters basically didn't arrive for months," says Michael Bautista, an Idaho National Guard corporal based in Kirkuk whose grandfather served in World War II and who blogs as Ma Deuce Gunner (named for the trusty M2 machine gun he calls Mama). "What I'm doing and what my fellow bloggers are doing is groundbreaking."

If you're stuck in southern Baghdad in the dusty gray fortress called Camp Falcon and find yourself in need of 50-caliber machine-gun ammo, chopper fuel, toilet paper, or M&M's, you call Danjel Bout, a 32-year-old captain and logistics officer from the California National Guard who blogs as Thunder 6. He's been stationed here with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division for most of 2005. When he's not chasing down requisitions of supplies or out on patrol hunting insurgents, Bout is posting about the details of Army life in language evocative of literary warbloggers of yore like Thucydides, Homer, Thomas Paine, and John Donne.

Sleep, blessed, blissful, wonderful sleep. Mother's milk. A full harvest in a time of famine. The storm that breaks the drought. It is the drug of choice here - assiduously avoided because of the never-ending chain of missions, but always craved. If rarity is the measure of a substance's worth, then here in Iraq, sleep carries a price beyond words. There is no more precious moment in my day than the sublime instant where my mind flickers between consciousness and the dreamworld. In that sliver of time the day seems to shimmer and melt like one of Dalí's paintings - leaving only honey sweet dreams of my other life far from Arabia.

Bout's blog, 365 and a Wakeup, is unlikely to put you to sleep. It's one of the most genuine accounts anywhere of what life is like for a soldier in Iraq. The captain can be spotted composing and editing his posts on his laptop from the roof of one of Camp Falcon's dusty buildings in the dark early-morning hours, or in a scarce patch of shade during a rare moment of daylight downtime. His posts are sharply rendered parables and small, often powerful scenes built on details of the violent world around him. "I just kind of bookmark the things I see during the day so I can reflect on them later. There's almost nothing about life here that isn't interesting in some way."

Thunder 6 is the oldest of eight siblings in a devout Catholic family. His dad is a computer technician, his mom a horticulture therapist. This former altar boy and longtime reservist left the touchy-feely psychology PhD program at UC Davis after September 11, grabbed an M16 rifle and a Beretta 9-mm sidearm and went all-infantry. Trained as an Army Ranger, he saw action in Kuwait and Bosnia and claims to have no yearning for his former scholarly life. "I was coasting through college," he says, "and the Army spoke to honor and camaraderie and things I really believed in."

While Bout's blog is all about his emotional connection to the Army and very little about the daily bang-bang of Iraq, there are lots of milbloggers who will take you straight to the front lines, posting first-person accounts of the fighting and beating some newspaper reports of the same battle filed by embedded journalists. By the crude light of a small bulb and the backlit screen of his Dell laptop, Neil Prakash, a first lieutenant, posted some of the best descriptions of the fighting in Fallujah and Baquba last fall:

Terrorists in headwraps stood anywhere from 30 to 400 meters in front of my tank. They stopped, squared their shoulders at us just like in an old-fashioned duel, and fired RPGs at our tanks. So far there hadn't been a single civilian in Task Force 2-2 sector. We had been free to light up the insurgents as we saw them. And because of that freedom, we were able to use the main gun with less restriction.

Prakash was awarded the Silver Star this year for saving his entire tank task force during an assault on insurgents in Iraq's harrowing Sunni Triangle. He goes by the handle Red 6 and is author of Armor Geddon. For him, the poetry of warfare is in the sounds of exploding weapons and the chaos of battle.

"It's mind-blowing what this stuff can do," Prakash tells me by phone from Germany, where his unit moved after rotating out of Iraq earlier this year. One of his favorite sounds is that of an F16 fighter on a strafing run. "It's like a cat in a blender ripping the sky open - if the sky was made out of a phone book." He is from India, the land of Gandhi, but he loves to talk about blowing things up. "It's just sick how badass a tank looks when it's killing."

Prakash is the son of two upstate New York dentists and has a degree in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins. He's a naturalized American citizen, born near Bangalore, and he describes growing up in the US and his decision to join the military as something like Bend It Like Beckham meets The Terminator. He says he admired the Army's discipline and loved the idea of driving a tank. He knew that if he didn't join the Army, he might end up in medical school or some windowless office in a high tech company. With a bit of bluster, Prakash claims that for him, the latter would be more of a nightmare scenario than ending up in the line of fire of insurgents. "It was a choice between commanding the best bunch of guys in the world and being in a cubicle at Dell Computer in Bangalore right now helping people from Bum-fuck USA format their hard drives."

It's taken some adjustment, but Prakash says his parents basically support his Army career, although his father can't conceal his anxiety about having a son in Iraq. Prakash says he blogs to assure the folks back home that he's safe, to let his friends all over the world know what's going on, and to juice up the morale in his unit. "The guys get really excited when I mention them."

By the time Prakash left Iraq early this year, the readers of Armor Geddon extended far beyond family and friends. He still posts from his base in Germany and is slowly trying to complete a blog memoir of his and his fellow soldiers' experiences in the battle for Fallujah.

The most widely read milbloggers engage in the 21st-century contact sport called punditry, and like their civilian counterparts, follow few rules of engagement. They mobilize sympathizers to ship body armor to reserve units in combat, raise funds for families of wounded soldiers, deliver shoes to barefoot Afghani kids, and even take aim at media big shots. It was milblogger pundits who helped bring down Eason Jordan, a senior executive at CNN who resigned earlier this year over remarks he made that US troops were targeting reporters in Iraq.

One important milblogger who weighed in on the Jordan affair is a secretive 20-year-career Army GI who goes by the handle Greyhawk. His blog, the Mudville Gazette, investigated the incident and concluded that Iraq-based reporters disputed Jordan's claim. He's unhappy that a more thorough news investigation wasn't conducted. Other bloggers call Greyhawk "the father of us all" and credit him with coining the term milblogger shortly after he started Mudville in March 2003. In an email interview - Greyhawk wouldn't agree to "voice-com" or a "face-to face" - he writes proudly of his lifetime pageviews, which recently exceeded 1.7 million (700,000 of those have come in 2005): "Mudville is far and away the largest, oldest, widest-read active-duty MilBlog in the World. It's all in how you make the words line up and dance."

Then there's Blackfive: "I'm just a guy with a blog and I know how to use it," says this modest former Army intelligence officer and paratrooper who gives his real name only as Matt. He prefers the nom de guerre of his popular site. His peers voted Blackfive the best military blog in the 2004 Weblog Awards, beating out such contenders as Froggy Ruminations, The Mudville Gazette, 2Slick, and My War. Blackfive is a popular forum for analysis of the war and strident, argumentative warnings about media bias. It's nearly as cluttered with ads as the Drudge Report, and the sales pitches mostly hawk "liberal-baiting merchandise." There are pictures of attractive women holding high-powered weapons, dozens of links to conservative books and films, and even the occasional big spender like Amazon.com. Blackfive also sells his own T-shirts to benefit military charities.

He says that milblogging is the result of an explosion of communications technology throughout the military and an increase in brainpower among the lower ranks. "The educational level of sergeants and below is out of control." Blackfive himself has degrees in archaeology and computer science and avidly follows the postings of fellow bloggers. He describes Neil Prakash as "borderline Einstein" and Danjel Bout as "a real rock star." In his last deployment, Blackfive's unit had two such brainiacs, a sergeant with an MBA and another with a master's in economics from the University of Chicago.

Blackfive is retired now, honorably discharged and working as an IT executive for a big civilian company. He blogs from Chicago and confidently claims he can mobilize thousands of people and their wallets, all from a wireless hot spot at his local Starbucks. He stays in the shadows because he believes that his company would not approve of his blog or of his unabashed support for the US war.

The site has become a destination for thousands of information junkies and influential opinion makers. According to TruthLaidBear, which tracks blog traffic for advertisers, Blackfive is regularly in the top 100 blogs and averages 5,000 unique visits a day. During the height of the war, traffic to Blackfive spiked when some high- profile conservatives linked to the site.

"My brother followed a link from National Review to me, and somebody, I think it was Jonah Goldberg" - a somebody who is only the editor of National Review - "told him that four or five of the biggest think tanks read my blog every day."

Goldberg confirms that at times he turns to military blogs to supplement and sometimes contradict information coming out of traditional media sources. "Blackfive was good, and in the blog world if you offer something unique, you make eyeballs sticky."

Since World War I, the military has opened the letters soldiers sent back home from the battlefield and sometimes censored the dispatches of war correspondents. Now mail leaves the battlefield already open to the world. Anyone can publicly post a dispatch, and if the Pentagon reads these accounts at all, it's at the same time as the rest of us. The new policy requiring milbloggers to register their sites does not apply to soldiers outside Iraq, but nearly all of the bloggers contacted for this article say that the current system of few restrictions can't possibly last. Blackfive and Greyhawk wonder what the landscape will look like after the Pentagon finishes its review of global digital security. So far, the DOD is giving no hints.

Michael Cohen, a major and doctor with the 67th Combat Support Hospital based in Mosul, touched a nerve at the Pentagon late last year with his blog, 67cshdocs. Before he began posting, Cohen turned himself into a local private broadband provider in order to set up his own network outside the one provided to the field hospital. "Some of the docs suggested that life would be really good if we could get Internet into our nice trailers."

Cohen bought his network setup online and had it shipped directly to him in Mosul. For the oversize satellite dish, he had to get creative. He ordered it from Bentley Walker, a satellite broadband service provider, and they sent it to his wife's house in Germany. On a medical escort flight to Germany for a wounded soldier, Cohen persuaded the Air Force to let him hand-carry the dish onto a transport for the return trip. After about six weeks of agonized troubleshooting on a hot rooftop, the network was up and running. "We had pretty decent bandwidth," he says, "2 meg downlink and 1 meg up. It was better than the hospital."

Cohen says the system supported webcams linking people back home, its own instant messaging system, live gaming, and, he theorizes, a robust trade in porn. "If you were to make the series M*A*S*H about today's Army, Radar would be an IT guy and he'd be more popular than Hawkeye."

Then Cohen started to blog on his homegrown network. Originally it was an attempt to stay in touch with family and friends, but when a suicide bomber killed 22 people last December in a mess tent, Cohen began detailing how doctors dealt with the carnage. His moving account drew attention from worldwide press as well as parents desperate to know the fate of their loved ones:

The lab was running tests and doing a blood drive to collect more blood. The pharmacy was preparing intravenous medications and drips like crazy. Radiology was shooting plain films and CT scans like nobody's business. We were washing out wounds, removing shrapnel, and casting fractures. We put in a bunch of chest tubes. Because of all the patients on suction machines and mechanical ventilators, the noise in the ICU was so loud everyone was screaming at each other just to communicate.

Here are some of our statistics. They are really quite amazing: 91 total patients arrived.

18 were dead on arrival.

4 patients died of wounds shortly after arrival - all of these patients had non-survivable wounds.

Of the 69 remaining patients, 20 were transferred to military hospitals in other locations in Iraq.

This left 49 patients for us to treat and disposition.

Cohen posted mesmerizing details about the medical hardware and surgical procedures used to save lives on that bloody day. And then, without warning, it was over.

"My doctor boss came to me and said, hey, we need to talk. There are some people in the chain of command who believe there are things in your blog that violate Army regulations." Cohen was shocked. He hadn't used names or talked about military operations. But his impression was that the information he provided about medical capability in the field worried senior officers at Central Command. At first the Army asked Cohen to shut down his entire satellite network, which at its peak was serving 42 families, but ultimately decided against it.

"I think they didn't want a hornet's nest," Cohen says. Instead, Cohen stopped blogging.

Back in Germany now, where he says he spends more time delivering the latest R&R babies than treating battlefield casualties, Cohen says that he was tempted to challenge the shutdown, but since he was close to going home anyway, he went along with the decision. The Pentagon will not comment specifically on Cohen's situation except to reiterate its policy that blogs should not reveal any casualty information that could upset next of kin or any details that might jeopardize operational security.

Army reservist Jason Hartley's popular and notoriously irreverent blog, Just Another Soldier, also provoked the higher-ups; last summer, his commanding officer ordered him to shut it down. Hartley wrote with a fuck-you swagger that may partly explain why he's not blogging anymore:

Being a soldier is to live in a world of shit. From the pogues who cook my food and do my laundry to the Apache pilots and the Green Berets who do all the Hollywood stuff, our lives are in a constant state of suck.

Hartley got a lot of mileage out of a post about a soldier who was assembling a rifle blindfolded. Another soldier in his unit, as a joke, handed the assembler a certain piece of his anatomy instead of the tool he asked for.

"I told the story and asked the question, Who is more gay, the guy who touches a dick, or someone who allows a soldier to touch his dick?" This pressing infantry-level controversy hit a chord with über-blogger and noted pundit-of-all-things-queer Andrew Sullivan. "Sullivan was kind and wrote that he liked my site," Hartley recalls.

The Pentagon won't say why, but it ordered Hartley to shut down his blog. He did for a while. Then he resumed blogging a few months later, without asking permission, and was busted for defying a direct order and demoted from sergeant to specialist. He chose not to file an appeal and has returned to civilian life, though he's still in the reserves. His memoir about his time in Iraq will be published next month by HarperCollins.

If you read A Line in the Sand, it's hard to imagine Chris Missick offending Pentagon brass. He is careful not to criticize his superiors and will tell you he has aspirations to run for Congress. While waiting for an early-morning plane to take him back home to southern California, Missick confesses that his biggest blog-related scandal is a romantic one. His stateside girlfriend when he left for Iraq was displaced by another woman, someone Missick says fell in love with him by reading his blog. "When I get home I kinda need to sort that out." (He kinda did and now has yet another girlfriend. Let's hope she likes Elliot Smith music.)

Prakash remains in Germany, awaiting orders to jump back into his beloved tank, which he calls Ol' Blinky. He says he has no plans to resume his study of neuroscience, although it wasn't completely useless in Iraq. "Neuroscience actually came in handy when I had to explain to my guys exactly why doing ecstasy in a tank when it's 140 degrees out on a road that's blowing up every day is a really bad idea."

Danjel Bout, aka Thunder 6, is looking to get home safely, keeping his head down on the streets of southern Baghdad and in his blog. He says the real value of milblogging may be that it brings to the US the reality of what is becoming a long war. "I don't purposely leave out the moments when our bodies hit the adrenal dump switch, I just don't focus exclusively on them." More typical are his vignettes of Iraqi civilians interacting with US soldiers, or the sad tale of the death of a guardsman who had the chance to go home and instead requested another tour of duty, only to be killed by an improvised explosive device.

"Americans are raised on a steady diet of action films and sound bites that slip from one supercharged scene to another," he says, "leaving out all the confusing decisions and subtle details where most people actually spend their lives. While that makes for a great story, it doesn't reveal anything of lasting value. For people to really understand our day-to-day experience here, they need more than the highlights reel. They need to see the world through our eyes for a few minutes."

Which suggests, at the very least, that this UC Davis psych-major dropout turned milblogger was perhaps paying more attention in class than he lets on.

John Hockenberry (hockoo@earthlink.net) is a Peabody Award-winning broadcast journalist who spent the last nine years at NBC News. He wrote about assistive technology in issue 9.08.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/milblogs.html





$150 Million Teragrid Award Heralds New Era for Scientific Computing

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has made a five-year, $150 million award to operate and enhance the Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF)--also called "TeraGrid." Researchers and educators around the country can now access a range of computing resources that will accelerate advances in science and engineering.

"Many new users from a range of scientific communities will now have access to sophisticated IT applications and computational tools. Over time, these applications will be customized to the needs of the individual or community," said NSF Director, Arden L. Bement, Jr.

TeraGrid--built over the past 4 years--is the world's largest, most comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research. Through high-performance network connections, TeraGrid integrates high-performance computers, data resources and tools, and high-end experimental facilities around the country.

"TeraGrid unites the science and engineering community so that larger, more complex scientific questions can be answered. Solving these larger challenges will, in turn, motivate the development of the next generation of cyberinfrastructure. This is a win-win situation consistent with NSF's mission to keep science and engineering at the frontier," continued Bement.

The scientists and engineers responsible for TeraGrid operations will work closely with researchers whose science requires powerful computing resources. For example, researchers using TeraGrid are exploring functions of decoded genomes, how the brain works, the constitution of the universe, disease diagnosis, and real-time weather forecasting to predict the exact locations of tornado and storm threats. TeraGrid will also help engineers design better aircraft via realistic simulations of new designs.

The new TeraGrid award includes $48 million to provide overall architecture, software integration, operations and coordination of user support. The University of Chicago will lead this effort under the guidance of Charlie Catlett, director of the TeraGrid project and former chair of Global Grid Forum. An additional $100 million will provide for operation, management and user support of TeraGrid resources at eight resource provider sites.

TeraGrid's creators and collaborators are developing a "science gateways" initiative to allow more researchers and educators access to TeraGrid capabilities, tailored to their own communities, through their own desktop computers. Science gateway projects are aimed at supporting access to TeraGrid via web portals, desktop applications or via other grids. An initial set of 10 gateways will address new scientific opportunities in fields from bioinformatics to nanotechnology as well as interoperation between TeraGrid and other grid infrastructures.

"In the past several years, the community has learned that reliable, sustainable cyberinfrastructure requires both close collaboration among organizations making their resources available to scientists and engineers through grid technologies, and a critical mass of people responsible for the overall enterprise," said Catlett. "A focused coordination team ensures that users experience a coherent system and provides a way to organize a large number of resource providers."

Such access will enable researchers to analyze terabytes--trillions of bytes--of data collected by scientific instruments, telescopes, satellites and remote sensors. TeraGrid will allow researchers to manipulate enormous data sets in novel ways to gain new insights into research questions and societal problems.

George Karniadakis, a professor of Applied Mathematics at Brown University, has long been a leader in applying NSF computing resources to a variety of fluid dynamics problems. Karniadakis now uses computational resources at four different TeraGrid sites simultaneously. "The TeraGrid is a distributed supercomputer, a system with potentially unlimited capability for us. For the first time, we can simulate cardiovascular processes in the entire arterial tree," he said.

Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at the University of Southern California, leads an effort to combine computational models from several disciplines to shed new light on the consequences of earthquakes. "TeraGrid is providing us with the computational resources to deploy an entirely new technology for seismic hazard analysis," Jordan said.

"We fully expect TeraGrid to catalyze the next generation of scientific discoveries," said Deborah Crawford, acting director of NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure. "Simply put, breakthrough science and engineering depends on a first-class cyberinfrastructure."

"TeraGrid is helping build a national infrastructure for computational research," according to Guy Almes, NSF program manager who oversees the project. "TeraGrid enables scientists and engineers to both be more productive in their research and education as well as enjoy doing this work with cutting-edge tools while working closely with peers around the world."

For more information about TeraGrid see: http://www.teragrid.org
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/513862/?sc=swtn





Morpheus Introduces Peer Response Distribution Platform for Authorized Content

Over one million legitimate video, music, game, and software titles to become available.
Tudor Raiciu

StreamCast Networks Inc., makers of the popular Morpheus P2P file-sharing software, today announced Peer Response, a platform designed to facilitate compensation for participating content creators and copyright holders.

Peer Response is a flexible distribution platform that provides multiple methods of compensation for authorized digital media files that are returned within a peer-to-peer user's search results. For the first time, content owners can get paid through sale or sponsorship of a single download in an open and decentralized P2P environment, or simply gain exposure by allowing consumers to discover and download their content for free.

"By connecting content creators with millions of interested users at the most powerful moments of the purchase cycle -- when consumers are declaring exactly what they want, Peer Response leverages existing file-searching behavior to convert downloaders into customers," stated StreamCast CEO, Michael Weiss.

Morpheus' Peer Response platform will launch with a full slate of legitimate music, game, and video downloadable titles to try and buy that include: Halo 2, From Russia with Love, Monopoly, Tha Outlawz "Celebrate," Ms. Cherry "It's Whatever," and thousands more. Over one million video, music, game, and software titles will be added in the coming months.

An integrated Morpheus-branded eWallet, which is a payment transaction solution for digital media developed exclusively for Morpheus by Media Global Infrastructure LLC, whose payment processing subsidiary, NewGenPay is a spin off of IBM, will provide seamless transactions for content purchases. Similarly, self- publishers will be provided with automated tools to distribute their content. Additional partners initially include industry leaders Softwrap, Intent Media Works, TryMedia, Weed and Gametrailers.com.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Morph...ent-6169.shtml





How a Puppet Master Brings Life to the Comically Dead
Charles Solomon

CASUAL viewers may find little to connect the egotistical lion and hip-hop zebra of the DreamWorks computer-animated "Madagascar" with the macabre stop-motion puppets of "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride," to be released next month by Warner Brothers. But animation aficionados will see in both the fine hand of Carlos Grangel, a Spanish artist whose designs are coming to define the cutting edge of big-studio animation.

Virtually unknown to the public, Mr. Grangel, 41, is a highly respected artist among animation professionals. While still a teenager, he worked on comic strips for Disney, and got a job at Steven Spielberg's Amblimation studio in London in 1989, working on "We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story" (1993) and "Balto" (1995). When Amblimation closed, Mr. Grangel (pronounced grahn-JELL) came to the newly established DreamWorks SKG as a designer for its animated features, beginning with "The Prince of Egypt" (1998).

"I've never met a designer who thought more like an animator than Carlos," said Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation. "He's always thinking not just 'how will this look,' but 'how will it move.' That may seem like the obvious aim of designing for animation, but very few people have that gift."

Mr. Grangel typically divides his time between the Glendale, Calif., campus of DreamWorks and the small studio he and his brother, Jordi, run in Barcelona. But he has devoted much of the last two and a half years to "Corpse Bride," Mr. Burton's mock-Victorian tale of a romantic misunderstanding between a fishmonger's son and the cadaver he accidentally jilts.

Mr. Burton first saw Mr. Grangel's work at the model-making studio Mackinnon & Saunders Ltd. in Manchester, England. He was working on his 1996 film "Mars Attacks!" and noticed drawings Mr. Grangel had done for the puppets in Steffen Schäffler's stop-motion short "The Periwig-Maker," which would be nominated for an Oscar in 2001.

"When I saw Carlos's drawings, they reminded me a little of the way I draw," Mr. Burton said in a telephone interview from London. "They showed that you could make appealing human characters."

"I felt quite connected with Carlos before I met him," Mr. Burton said.

Speaking by telephone from Spain, Mr. Grangel recalled a first meeting with Mr. Burton in London in 2003, at which he was handed a script for "Corpse Bride" and "a bunch of drawings that were loose, but lovely," he said.

" 'Here are my sketches,' " Mr. Grangel remembered Mr. Burton saying. " 'I want you to push them and explore every character.' 'Nightmare Before Christmas' is one of my favorite films; now Tim Burton was handing me sketches, and saying 'See what you can do!' I wanted to kill myself because I know it just doesn't get any better."

Mr. Grangel soon discovered that Mr. Burton's approach to design was radically different from the DreamWorks process. "At DreamWorks, each artist may present 20 or 25 versions of a character," he said. "We didn't design one lion for 'Madagascar'; we made hundreds of lions. We got used to that way of doing things, then one day Tim said, 'Why are you making so many drawings - which one do you like?' "

Once the designs were approved by Mr. Burton and his co-director, Mike Johnson, Mr. Grangel worked with crews at Mackinnon & Saunders, who built the puppets. The main characters are about 18 inches tall - half again the size of a Barbie doll. Stop-motion puppets are more than interesting-looking sculptures: they need armatures, jointed steel skeletons that enable the animators to adjust their positions in minute increments, and the "Corpse Bride" puppets had devices to adjust their expressions.

"The ones for 'Corpse Bride' represent a new generation of puppet that is so expressive," Mr. Grangel said, "they may change people's thinking about the possibilities of stop-motion animation." When asked why he chose stop motion over the currently popular computer animation, Mr. Burton replied: "The beauty of stop motion - and why I love the medium - is that it feels handmade. It's like 'Pinocchio' or 'Frankenstein'; it's breathing life into an inanimate object, and the joy for me is to see the artist's hand on the screen."

The designs for the puppets combine Mr. Burton's gothic personal style with elements from other illustrators, including Edward Gorey and Ronald Searle. There's a skeleton band that recalls the 19th-century Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada's Day of the Dead engravings, led by what could be the ghost of Bob Fosse: a singing, dancing skeleton in a bowler hat, voiced by the composer Danny Elfman.

The living characters look as bizarre as the specters. Victor, the reluctant groom, has the long, skinny legs of Jack Skellington in "Nightmare Before Christmas." But his expressive eyes and prominent chin resemble those of Johnny Depp, who supplies his voice. The character's physical appearance blends with the vocal performance to create a gentle, befuddled, yet curiously endearing young man. "The eyebrows and eyes, and the very shy mouth make the character sympathetic," Mr. Grangel said. "You care about him because he looks vulnerable."

Reflecting on his work for "Corpse Bride," Mr. Grangel said: "We created 82 characters, although some of them didn't make it to the final film because of story changes. They're all constructed of simple shapes: one thing I've learned over the years is that simple works best. A character's shape has to be recognizable, even when he's seen from far away."

Mr. Grangel said he and his fellow artists resisted the temptation to devote less care to the design of the minor characters. "We wanted every character to incorporate shapes that were interesting and would attract the eyes of the audience," he said. "I know there is an artist inside every member of the audience: if the designs are good, people will respond to them."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/movies/14solo.html





Lions Gate Is Expected to Support Blu-ray Discs
Ken Belson

Lions Gate Home Entertainment is expected to announce today that it plans to produce next-generation digital video discs using Blu-ray technology developed by Sony and others. The decision could give the supporters of the Blu-ray format an edge in its continuing battle against backers of HD-DVD technology, who are supporting a competing format for new high-definition discs.

Lions Gate, which controls about 4 percent of the DVD market, is the latest studio to declare its allegiance in the format contest. The Blu-ray technology is being developed by Sony, Panasonic and others, while the HD-DVD standard is backed by Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo.

Sony's movie studio, as well as Disney and Fox, have also said they will produce Blu-ray DVD's, which will include high-definition video, enhanced audio and stronger copyright protections. Lions Gate, Sony, Disney and Fox sell about 45 percent of the DVD's in the United States.

MGM, which was sold to an investment group led by Sony, controls another 4 percent of the DVD market. Many industry analysts say MGM's movies are likely to be produced in the Blu-ray format as well.

Paramount, a division of Viacom, and Warner Home Video and Universal Studios Home Video plan to release more than 80 titles in the HD-DVD format starting as early as the fourth quarter this year. Together, the companies control 45 percent of the market for the current generation of discs.

Lions Gate plans to release 10 movies in the Blu-ray format next spring.

Hollywood's largest studios have grown reliant on the billions of dollars that DVD sales produce and they have spent years weighing the benefits of the two formats.

HD-DVD, which is essentially an upgrade of existing disc technology, is considered cheaper to produce. Blu-ray supporters say that that Blu-ray discs store more data than HD-DVD discs, but they are more expensive to produce because of the newer technology.

Since studios sell tens of millions of DVDs every year, even a few pennies difference in the price of producing a disc can chew into profits. Cheaper production costs also allow the studios to sell discs at lower prices to consumers.

Though Lions Gate said that Blu-ray discs were likely to be expensive initially, it was convinced that the production cost would fall in the coming years.

"All along, our biggest concern was whether these discs could be mass-produced," said Steve Beeks, the president of Lions Gate Entertainment, which sells about 70 million discs a year. "Even though the first Blu-ray discs released will most likely carry a premium price, within three to four years the market is going to change."

Mr. Beeks said that the Lions Gate's agreement was not exclusive and his company could produce discs in the HD-DVD format if needed. However, he said the sooner the industry and consumers settled on a single format, the better.

Blu-ray is likely to become the dominant standard faster, Mr. Beeks said, partly because Sony plans to include the technology in its new PlayStation 3 game consoles that are expected to be in stores next spring. The game machines thus would double as Blu-ray disc players and could potentially increase Blu-ray disc sales.

Like the other studios, Lions Gate has had to balance the benefits of the competing formats against how quickly they could be marketed to consumers. Some industry executives say that growth in the sales of the current generation of DVD's is slowing and that introducing high-definition discs is needed to increase overall sales.

In recent weeks, stocks have declined at several studios, including Pixar Animation Studios, after they reported weaker-than-expected DVD sales of their movies.

Industry analysts expect DVD sales to grow in the high single digits this year, down from more than 20 percent in recent years.

However, some studio executives including Mr. Beeks argue that sales of current DVD's are still healthy enough that there is less need to rush new discs to market simply to stimulate revenue. Rather, they say, it is more important to develop discs that are significantly better technologically to entice consumers to upgrade their machines and disc collections.

Still, the cost of upgrading will be out of reach for average consumers for several years. Most high-definition TV's cost several thousand dollars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/bu...dia/17dvd.html





Universal Music Backs Sony's Blu-Ray

Universal Music Group, one of the world's largest music companies, on Tuesday said it planned to back Sony Corp.'s <6758.T> next generation DVDs, firing another salvo in the next generation media format wars.

Blu-ray, developed by Sony, is challenging rival HD DVD to be the main technology used in new DVDs that delivers sharper pictures and more features. HD DVD was developed by Toshiba.

The backing by Universal Music, whose talent roster includes Elton John, Mariah Carey and U2, is of little surprise. The company is listed as a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association on its Web site.

The battle between Sony and Toshiba draws comparisons to the videotape format wars of the 1970s and 1980s between Sony's Betamax and JVC and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.'s <6752.T> VHS, which curtailed consumer adoption.

Blu-ray is expected to be introduced by Sony in its next video game console, the PlayStation 3 by spring 2006. Devices that run Toshiba's HD DVD are expected to be in stores by this fall.

Universal Pictures, a division of General Electric's <GE.N> NBC Universal and unrelated to the music group, is backing HD DVD.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...IVERSAL-DC.XML





Blu-Ray Ups Ante on Data Storage
Bruce Gain

Universal Music Group is the latest company to get behind the Blu-ray optical disc, announcing its support for Sony's next-generation media format this week. Blu-ray discs will look like DVDs, but they'll hold substantially more data. Here's a rundown on key features of this emerging technology, and how it compares with the competing HD-DVD format.

How do Blu-ray discs differ from DVDs?

Storage capacity is the key difference between a Blu-ray optical disc and a DVD. Standard DVD capacities peak at around 4.7 GB for DVD-Rs. With up to 50 GB of available storage space, the capacity of commercially available Blu-ray discs is comparable to that of many external PC hard drives used for backing up data. While not yet commercially available, researchers say they have developed prototypes of double-layer Blu-ray discs in the lab that can hold up to 100 GB.

Will Blu-ray offer better video quality?

The Blu-ray optical disc format was, in part, developed to offer the requisite data-storage capacity needed to store high-definition video and television recordings in a DVD-like format. High-definition video files are, of course, significantly larger than standard video files, so don't expect to see more than two high-definition films on a double-layer Blu-ray disc. However, you can take advantage of a Blu-ray disc's capacity to store many lower-resolution television broadcast files. Instead of having to use many DVDs to hold a complete season of Law & Order or The Sopranos, for example, you may instead only need a single disc. According to the Blu-ray Disc Association's specifications, a single-layer Blu-ray disc can hold two hours of an HDTV recording or more than 13 hours of standard TV broadcasts.

What is blue laser ray technology?

A blue laser -- the technology upon which Blu-ray is based -- can read and write to significantly smaller pits on a disc in which data is more densely packed than on traditional red laser DVDs and CDs. The blue ray laser's wavelength is 450 nanometers (1 meter contains 1 billion nanometers) compared to the 659-nanometer wavelength of red lasers used for DVDs and CDs -- the shorter wavelength enables the blue laser to read and write to the smaller pits.

Will vendors offer a single recordable Blu-ray standard?

The recordable DVD-standard war confused many consumers, which probably impeded the adoption of recordable DVD media and players. Blu-ray proponents say only a single recordable Blu-ray standard will be available, so they hope Blu-ray recording will be less confusing than the alphabet soup of different recordable DVD formats (DVD±R, DVD±RW and DVD-RAM).

What about HD-DVD?

HD-DVD represents a competing storage standard. Like Blu-ray, HD-DVD relies on blue laser technology. However, a read-only, commercially available, double-sided HD-DVD disc can hold only about 30 GB of data, and a recordable HD-DVD, which is limited to only one side, has a capacity of 15 GB. The potential bad news is that a standards war may be brewing between industry proponents of the Blu-ray and HD-DVD standards. The success of either standard will, of course, have a lot to do with the films and content that become available. So far, Hollywood studios that support Blu-ray include 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures. In the HD-DVD camp, you will find Paramount, Universal and Warner Bros. The studios may back both standards or only one will eventually prevail.

When can I expect to buy Blu-ray recordable players and discs?

Sony unveiled its BDZ-S77 recorder and Panasonic its DMR-E700BD for Japanese consumers in 2003 and 2004, respectively. However, it will probably be next year before recordable Blu-ray players for TVs and drives for PCs become widely available in the United States. Sony said its PlayStation 3 would play Blu-ray discs. Hewlett-Packard, Pioneer and Philips are among the manufacturers that could produce Blu-ray PC drives by the end of the year. Panasonic said it began production of Blu-ray discs in May.

Will a Blu-ray player or PC drive be able to read DVDs and CDs?

The Blu-ray standard is designed to be compatible with existing DVDs and CDs. So far, according to the Blu-ray Disc Association, LG, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony have developed Blu-ray players that will work with DVDs and CDs.

How expensive will Blu-ray devices be?

Prepare to pay a lot for Blu-ray recorders and discs. In the beginning, Blu-ray TV recorders will likely retail for more than $1,500 and PC drives will probably be priced at more than $500. Blu-ray discs could cost more than $20 apiece. However, Blu-ray players and discs will likely follow the traditional price curve of consumer electronics. Prices should fall rapidly if the technology is widely adopted.
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,68539,00.html





Toshiba Ships First Perpendicular Drive
Nate Mook

While Seagate and Hitachi may have garnered all the attention surrounding new perpendicular recording technology, which enables hard drives to store more data by standing bits upright, Toshiba has reached the market first.

The company on Tuesday announced it is shipping a 1.8-inch drive that packs 40GB onto a single disk platter. Such a feat is a breakthrough for small drives, and could mean larger capacity music players. In fact, Toshiba's new drive is available now in the company's Gigabeat F41 MP3 player.

Seagate announced its own perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) drives in June, but in a 2.5-inch form factor for laptops. The Seagate Momentus 5400.3, a massive 160GB notebook drive, is expected to begin shipping later this year.

"PMR opens the door to products we haven't even begun to imagine, by removing the technical barriers inherent to packing more data on an HDD," said Scott Maccabe, vice president of Toshiba's Storage Device Division.

"Providing greater storage capacity on mobile disk drives allows Toshiba to give system OEMs the tools they need for next- generation digital information and entertainment devices."

Hitachi previously announced plans to build 1 terabyte disk drives and 20GB microdrives using PMR, but admitted such capacities were years away. The new technology means an almost two-fold increase in storage space without adding more disk platters.

Toshiba, meanwhile, is going after the smaller device market and says it will double capacity to 80GB in a 1.8-inch drive later this year. That could mean even larger iPods without a jump in cost.

The company also plans to apply PMR technology to 0.85-inch drives, which could lead to 8GB of storage per platter in ultra- small form factor drives.
http://www.betanews.com/article/prin...ive/1124219742





People Prefer To Buy CDs

MORE than two-thirds of music lovers prefer to own original CDs, despite the availability of pirated copies online, a survey shows.

A University of Western Sydney study, one of the first on people's online music habits, involved 100 baby boomers and 100 people aged between 29 and 14, known as Generation Y.

While 38 per cent of respondents admitted to illegally downloading music, most said they bought music through traditional means.

"Sixty-eight per cent of both generations surveyed continue to buy albums through traditional retailers because they prefer the original copy, like being able to look at other CDs while shopping, or like being able to listen to new CDs," researcher Geoffrey Lee says.

The study finds members of Generation Y are more likely than baby boomers to illegally download music, with 54 per cent indicating they visit music websites at least once a week to do so.

That compares with just 10 per cent of baby boomers.

Both generations understood that downloading music without paying for it was illegal, Lee said.

However, while baby boomers expressed concern, saying they knew they were stealing, the younger generation was less likely to care.

"The main reasons for downloading included: being able to listen to the song on their PC, being able to burn songs to a CD because it's cheaper than the original CD and being able to sample the song before purchasing," Lee says.

"No one from either group said they had paid to download music."

More people would be recruited to expand the study's findings, which is aimed at helping stop music piracy, Lee says.

Illegal downloading of music in Australia is estimated to reduce sales by 10 per cent.

"Internet piracy is becoming a huge issue for record companies globally, as it eats away at their profits," Lee says.

"It is one of the music industry's greatest hurdles if record companies are to remain viable.

"Traditional legislative and technological barriers have so far been unsuccessful in stopping offenders and it remains a difficult thing for record companies to police.

"We hope the study will shed some much-needed light on the problem, and that the results can be of practical use to the music industry."
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html





Recording Industry Says CD Burning Bigger Problem Than File-Sharing

Music copied onto blank CD's is becoming a bigger threat to the recording industry than online file-sharing.

The chief executive for the Recording Industry Association of America says "burned" CDs account for 29 percent of all recorded music obtained by fans in 2004.

About half of all recordings obtained in 2004 came from authorized CD sales and about four percent from paid music downloads. Nielsen SoundScan says album sales in North America are down about seven percent this year compared with a year ago.

Some industry executives favor releasing more albums in a copy-protected CD format, regardless of backlash from fans. The CDs typically allow users to burn no more than a handful of copies.
http://www.mymotherlode.com/News/art...vml/1123947632





Recording Industry's Slipped Disc
Robert MacMillan

I'm about halfway through transferring the music from my nearly 1,000 vinyl albums ... to compact disc. How's that for old-fashioned?

The setup is basic and sweet: I take the vinyl ("Whipped Cream & Other Delights " by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, for example) and run the sound through the amplifier and out to my CD burner. It's not a computer component; it's an actual piece of hardware that connects to the rest of my stereo system with RCA jacks. I've destroyed two of them so far in my quest to digitize Gustav Mahler and John Lennon not to mention Louis Armstrong & the All-Stars performing the hits of Fats Waller.

I've read many guides on the Internet and the nation's newspapers about how to skip this tedious process by transferring my tracks directly to the computer, but so far, none has proven sufficient to my non-geek needs. Not only that, I suspect that my computer doesn't have enough processing power to handle so much music, so I burn like " Fire in Cairo."

It turns out that I'm not the only music fan going nuts with the CDs. Mitch Bainwol, head of the Recording Industry Association of America, told the Associated Press that CD burning still beats file sharing on the list of top affronts to the major record labels:

"'Burned' CDs accounted for 29 percent of all recorded music obtained by fans in 2004, compared to 16 percent attributed to downloads from online file-sharing networks," the AP wrote. "The data, compiled by the market research firm NPD Group, suggested that about half of all recordings obtained by music fans in 2004 came from authorized CD sales and about 4 percent from paid music downloads. ... 'CD burning is a problem that is really undermining sales,' Bainwol said in a phone interview before addressing about 750 members of the National Association of Recording Merchandisers in San Diego on Friday. '(Copy protection technology) is an answer to the problem that clearly the marketplace is going to see more of,' he added."

I don't think the recording industry is feeling the sting from legions of people like me who want their Werner Mueller albums on a CD transfer. (I can't imagine those Phase 4 beauties are even on CD, let alone iTunes, but I've been wrong before.) While I might be a small part of the problem, the RIAA and record store retailers are feeling the heat from the thriving CD-to-CD burn.

"With all the attention the RIAA has placed on online file-sharing in recent years, the focus on CD burning Friday was welcomed by music retailers like Alayna Hill- Alderman, who said she's seen music CD sales slide in recent years while sales of blank recordable CDs have soared," the AP reported. "'We are feeling the decline in our store sales, especially with regard to R&B and the hip-hop world,' said Hill-Alderman, co-owner of Record Archive, a two-store company operating in Rochester, N.Y. 'It's all due to burning. We've lost tremendous amounts of those sales to flea markets and bodegas.'"

None of this means that file sharing isn't a problem for people trying to make a living in the music business. Instead, it shows that traditional methods of violating copyright law are -- if less futuristic and headline-grabbing -- very alive and very well. And the music industry's response is to work on a way to allow a limited number of times that you can burn a CD before it locks itself up.

Here's the AP on that angle: "The CDs typically allow users to burn no more than a handful of copies. Velvet Revolver's 'Contraband,' released last year, was equipped with such copy-protection technology and grabbed the top sales spot in its debut week. Some saw that as a sign music fans didn't mind CDs with copy restrictions. But other releases since, such as the latest Foo Fighters album, have sometimes spawned fan complaints that the restrictions go too far or create technology conflicts with portable audio devices."

I understand that CDs still account for so much of the music business's revenues, from the retailer in Rochester to the lawyers in Los Angeles, but this kind of action seems a tad on the late side. CDs are tangible, unlike the ethereal digital bytes of the Internet, but the content on those discs will continue to flow illegally unless the recording industry completely locks them up.

That seems unlikely to happen. Instead, the industry should take a cue from the success of iTunes and other legal music outlets: Give us something that we can't get from burning. For many, those are the accoutrements from album art to liner notes to all kinds of gussied-up editions of our favorite albums. To some extent this is happening -- from the Velvet Underground catalog to Marvin Gaye to Stevie Wonder . But I must add one small note: Ratcheting up the CD price is not a way to make that work.

P.S. to the RIAA: My vinyl-to-disc project is on long-term hiatus. Please don't sue me.

Shake That Moneymaker... for a Song

The music business is full of legends about artists who failed to get decent contracts out of the record labels, only to produce smash hits that filled everyone's pockets but their own. The New York Post today reported that a similar episode might have happened to one of the models whose body Apple uses to hawk the iPod: "Her silhouette has sold millions of iPods -- but the girl behind one of the most recognizable ads in the world says she can't even afford one of the pricey gizmos. This is the first time that Mandy Coulton, a 26-year-old dancer from Los Angeles, has been revealed as the body behind the hugely successful ad campaign for Apple's iPod music players. More than 20 million iPods have been sold since it was introduced in 2001. She was paid a flat fee of $1,500 for the shoot -- a tiny fraction of the billions Apple has reaped from the sale of its sleek portable player. But Coulton ... says it still wasn't enough to buy one of the must-have gadgets."

Coulton told the Post that she's "not bitter." I don't see how she could be, or even that she has trouble making the rent -- her husband is a venture capitalist.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...081500415.html





$50 Laptop Sale Sets Off Violent Stampede

People trampled, beaten with folding chair as 'total chaos' takes over
AP

A rush to purchase $50 used laptops turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far as to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.

“This is total, total chaos,” said Latoya Jones, 19, who lost one of her flip-flops in the ordeal and later limped around on the sizzling blacktop with one foot bare.

An estimated 5,500 people turned out at the Richmond International Raceway in hopes of getting their hands on one of the 4-year-old Apple iBooks. The Henrico County school system was selling 1,000 of the computers to county residents. New iBooks cost between $999 and $1,299.

Officials opened the gates at 7 a.m., but some already had been waiting since 1:30 a.m. When the gates opened, it became a terrifying mob scene.

People threw themselves forward, screaming and pushing each other. A little girl’s stroller was crushed in the stampede. Witnesses said an elderly man was thrown to the pavement, and someone in a car tried to drive his way through the crowd.

Seventeen people suffered minor injuries, with four requiring hospital treatment, Henrico County Battalion Chief Steve Wood said. There were no arrests and the iBooks sold out by 1 p.m.

"It's rather strange that we would have such a tremendous response for the purchase of a laptop computer — and laptop computers that probably have less-than- desirable attributes," said Paul Proto, director of general services for Henrico County. "But I think that people tend to get caught up in the excitement of the event — it almost has an entertainment value."

Blandine Alexander, 33, said one woman standing in front of her was so desperate to retain her place in line that she urinated on herself.

"I've never been in something like that before, and I never again will," said Alexander, who brought her 14-year-old twin boys to the complex at 4:30 a.m. to wait in line. "No matter what the kids want, I already told them I'm not doing that again."

Jesse Sandler said he was one of the people pushing forward, using a folding chair he had brought with him to beat back people who tried to cut in front of him.

"I took my chair here and I threw it over my shoulder and I went, 'Bam,'" the 20-year-old said nonchalantly, his eyes glued to the screen of his new iBook, as he tapped away on the keyboard at a testing station.

"They were getting in front of me and I was there a lot earlier than them, so I thought that it was just," he said.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8973616/





Codemasters Joins The Ranks Of Online Game Distributors

Not at a bad price, either
Mike Magee

IF IT'S not Microsoft Games, it’s somebody else in the rush to provide mainstream games over the internet.

Next up today is Codemasters which has partnered with the UK's first premium PC games on demand service Metaboli, who will be providing a raft of Codemasters titles over the interslice including Colin McRae Rally 2005, Second Sight, Toca Race Driver II, World Championship Snnoker and Perimeter.

The movement will spread further still, with plans to launch across key European territories throughout 2005 alongside the initial launch in the UK and France.

Codemasters swells the ranks of Metaboli's ever growing Games on Demand catalogue, which already includes PC games from publishers such as Atari, DreamCatcher, Eidos and UbiSoft.

Metaboli's Games on Demand service allows gamers to subscribe to one of two packages comprising the Ultimate Collection, offering unlimited access to 49 games, including all the latest releases, for £12.95 per month, or the Essential Collection, offering unlimited access to 32 games for only £6.95 per month. New games are currently being added at the rate of four per month, with a total of 70 games planned by the end of 2005.

Metaboli doesn't limit the number and frequency of downloads or how long games are played. Members can download the same game as many times as they like, even on different PCs.

Metaboli hopes that its service and pricing will help to encourage software pirates back to a state of legal consumption by offering advantages over existing Peer to Peer options, including ease of use, high speed downloads, multiplayer compatible games, automatic patching and high end security at a more reasonable price than you will find on the high street.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25447





The Skype's the Limit
Rick Aristotle Munarriz

Last week, News Corp. figured that it would be able to pull another new-economy rabbit out of Rupert Murdoch's hat. Just a month after announcing that it would be acquiring Intermix to land social networking site MySpace.com, it was revealed that Murdoch's company was talking to Skype about a buyout.

With a $3 billion price tag being batted about, it now seems as if Skype's most likely course is to test the market's open waters and go public. It is now in talks with Morgan Stanley to discuss its next move.

What is Skype? Why did Murdoch want in so badly? What will it all mean to you? If you don't know the answer to all three questions, look alive. That's where I'm going next.

What is Skype?

Voice over Internet Protocol -- or VoIP -- has been a busy buzzword lately. Providing telephone service through Web-enabled broadband accounts has proved to be a popular option for thrifty chatterboxes. You may be familiar with Vonage, offering unlimited phone calls to the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico for a mere $24.95 a month. The company has signed up 800,000 users and counting. Traditional dial-up telcos are also getting in on the act, and you can't really blame them. This is their potential obsolescence we're talking about.

Skype is different. It's free. Rather than relying on a network of regional data centers and local rate centers to route your calls to cell phones or landlines, Skype calls are absolutely gratis when they are placed from your Internet connection to another user online. Odds are that you won't have a shortage of people to talk to -- the free software has been downloaded 148 million times. That's not too shabby for a company that wasn't even around two years ago.

If you haven't heard of Skype, it's because the Luxembourg-based company has a more prolific life in Europe and other overseas markets. That will change. The company was founded by the same folks who brought you file-sharing giant KaZaA. Skype isn't going to get into the same legal tangles that its peer-to-peer MP3 swapping site did, but that doesn't mean that it's any less disruptive to an established, yet troubled industry.

Phone companies may see Vonage as a low-priced competitor, but Skype is an all-out threat.

To be fair, Skype has gone old school in one sense. It rolled out a SkypeOut service that charges users who want to call a conventional phone line. Users pay by the minute and the rates are attractive for calls placed to most countries.

Why did Murdoch want in so badly?

When people think Murdoch, they think about old media properties like Fox Network, The New York Post or The Times of London. However, News Corp. has always had a bit of a new technology streak. It's a heavy hitter in global satellite through BSkyB and its minority stake in DirecTV.

However, News Corp. has always felt like an incomplete entertainment conglomerate because it lacked the huge online presence of its media rivals. If folks continue to flock online and it comes at the expense of less time thumbing through the morning paper or watching television, News Corp. needs to matter in cyberspace.

It helped itself in grand fashion with MySpace.com. Social networking is huge as users exchange thoughts and media with folks who have similar interests. It's been hard for dot-com specialists to monetize the gargantuan number of page views that social networking has been generating, but it shouldn't be a problem for a broadcasting company like News Corp. to take advantage of hooking up its base of sponsors with the young audience that advertisers crave.

Skype would have been -- and may still prove to be -- a major coup for News Corp. It's a free software program that is now deriving some revenue through its landline connections. A company with wide advertising arms like News Corp. should be able to make the most of marketing to the Skype audience without turning them off along the way.

What will it all mean to you?
Skype isn't the only game when it comes to Internet telephony for freeloaders. Yahoo! and Microsoft offer free voice chat capabilities through their popular instant messaging programs.

However, as big as those two juggernauts may be, there is something to be said for specializing. You also can't discount Skype's mastery of viral marketing. KaZaA has been downloaded 370 million times, so Skype may just be scratching the surface at less than half that sum.

Obviously, all 148 million instances in which Skype's software was downloaded didn't translate into active users. However, when you consider that Vonage is leading the way with less than a million premium subscribers for its telephone service, Skype's installed reach is already much greater than that.

Skype, for all practical purposes, is what we like to call a Rule Breaker around here. That's the name of our ultimate growth investing newsletter service. You are welcome to check it out with a free trial subscription to learn more about promising disruptive technology stocks with Skype-like potential.

Whether Skype does go public or get acquired along the way, investors have good reason to follow a tantalizing company like this as it transforms into a publicly traded entity.

Murdoch would be blessed to land Skype before the rest of the world came calling (and thanks to Skype, those calls can be free, to boot). I can definitely see cash-rich companies like Google Yahoo!, and Microsoft all making a play for Skype.

Broadband's wide acceptance means that these companies aren't just counting eyeballs. Eardrums are starting to matter, too.

Digital audio? Global popularity? Oh, right. Add Apple Computer -- which also offers voice chat through its iChat software -- to the list of companies that may very well tempt Skype to elope before the bachelor auction takes place.

It's going to be good. Market cynics will argue that the company is overvalued, because it has produced such modest revenue in the past, but you know the score. Investing is all about the monetization potential of the future. If you've got the time, listen in.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz realizes that Skype rhymes with hype, but he thinks the company lives up to its billing. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.
http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/...ry05081603.htm





Freenet Releases Pre Alpha Version Of 'Anonymous' P2P
Steve Malone

Despite the recent court victories by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and others against Grokster and the targeting of users who distribute music files, it seems the peer-to-peer (p2p) business is not about to give up without a fight yet.

A group of developers say they are on target to produce a system of anonymous file sharing by the end of the year.

If true, this will severely limit the efforts of the authorities in their attempts to stamp out illegal file sharing by prosecuting offenders. Organisations like the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America's) and MPAA and our own BPI (British Phonographic Institution) rely on ISPs handing over the names of the file sharers.

The Freenet project aims to make p2p file sharing and communication more secure by making the parties involved in the communication totally anonymous. Freenet's stated aim is to allow two or more people who wish to share information, to do so.

The group says it wants to promote free speech throughout the world, particularly in those areas such as

China and the Middle East where Internet communications are regularly intercepted and monitored.

Of course, if successful, the technology will be leapt upon by a new generation of file sharing networks hoping to evade the authorities now that the US Supreme Court has deemed p2p file sharing illegal. While acknowledging that Freenet could be put to illegal use, the group maintains that 'you cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law'.

Freenet developed out of an anonymous publication system created by Ian Clarke while a student at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. The project already has a basic p2p system working although it is not yet searchable in the same way that traditional p2p files sharing networks usually are.

The developers are currently working on making a globally scalable peer-to-peer 'darknet'. Typically, a darknet is a private closed p2p network of no more than ten or so trusted individuals. The Freenet plan is to develop a global darknet of small networks linked together in much the same way that the Internet itself is linked.

The group has now announced it has a pre-alpha version ready to test although it warns that the software is not for the faint hearted as the routing algorithm 'is neither user-friendly nor secure at this point'.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/75899/fr...ymous-p2p.html





Nanny-App

Blocking Shares On The Scatterbrain Network

The following steps will allow you to mark a package as "Unauthorized to be traded on the network." Marking content as unauthorized starts a message propagating throughout the current virtual Scatterbrain network, instructing Scatterbrain clients connected to the network to stop supplying the unauthorized content.

Marking content as unauthorized involves making your IP address available for others to view; your IP address will be displayed when another user attempts to retrieve the marked content. For further information, please see the notices displayed throughout the process of marking content as unauthorized.

If you have evidence that content you find available on a virtual Scatterbrain network is unauthorized to be shared on that network, you may take the following steps:

1. Make sure that you are connected to the network, and that you are connected to at least one other Scatterbrain client.
2. To confirm that you are connected to other clients, click on the "Network" tab; a list of IP addresses should be displayed.
3. Locate the package that contains the unauthorized content using the "Search Network" tab.
2. Once you have located the package you wish to mark as unauthorized, select it by clicking its icon.
3. Click on the sub-tab "Options", located below the text of the "Search Network" tab.
4. If you have selected a valid package, you will see a button entitled, "I have evidence that this content is NOT AUTHORIZED to be traded on this network," in the left-hand options window pane. Click this button.
5. A window will pop up explaining the process and providing important information about marking content as unauthorized. Read the text and follow the instructions presented therein.
6. If you agree to the terms, press the "Mark this content as UNAUTHORIZED" button to proceed.
7. Your Scatterbrain client will send a message that slowly trickles throughout the network, marking the content as unauthorized.


When a large number of users connect to multiple peers, the emergent network organization makes it very difficult to trace which users are trading what data. While this emergent property of individual anonymity can be very useful and provide unique benefit for individuals, groups, and companies, BrainTech, LLC is also aware that the anonymous nature of the network may attract those who wish to misuse their anonymity.

BrainTech, LLC has implemented the following features into its ScatterBrain P2P client in order to encourage legitimate use of its software and discourage unauthorized data exchange, within the framework of an anonymous environment:

1. Before sharing data, users are reminded that shared data becomes available to all users of the network.
2. Before sharing data, users are required to confirm that they are personally authorized to publicly publish the selected content. The selected content will be shared only if the user responds with "Yes". An answer of "No" or indicated uncertainty aborts the sharing process.
3. If any user connected to the network recognizes unauthorized content, they may mark it as unauthorized. Peers connected to the network will see that the content has been unauthorized and their clients will no longer freely share (supply) any of the data that has been marked as unauthorized.

The ScatterBrain P2P client software takes the following steps to prevent abuse of this feature:

1. It is simple to set up networks and invite friends only. In this way, potential abuse of this feature is minimized.
2. Users who marks content as unauthorized temporarily sacrifice their anonymity; other clients connected to the network can view the IP address of the client that has marked the content as unauthorized. This helps prevent mischievous users from randomly blocking legitimate network content, who can be blocked from the network using firewall software or blocking programs like BlockPost or PeerGuardian.
3. If two other users refute the unauthorized status (if they have evidence that the content was incorrectly marked as unauthorized), the content will become fully reauthorized, for everybody. However, those two users who refute the unauthorized status will also temporarily sacrifice their anonymity; other clients connected to the network can view the IP address of the client that refuted the unauthorized status.

Example for use of these features:

1. User "A" appropriately requests that a copyrighted music album be marked as unauthorized. The album is marked, and the message spreads around the network, preventing further download of the material.
2. User "A" appropriately requests that a copyright music album be marked as unauthorized. Users "B" and "C" inappropriately refute the unauthorized status of the album. The album remains available. However, "A" receives a message that "B" and "C" refuted the unauthorized status, along with their internet addresses. So, while "B" and "C" were able to inappropriately keep an unauthorized album on the network, their anonymity was sacrificed in the process. User "A" now has the identity of "B" and "C", and may possibly choose to initiate legal action against users "B" and "C" (who inappropriately refuted marking of the copyright album as unauthorized).
3. User "A" inappropriately requests that a manuscript be marked as unauthorized because it expresses a viewpoint she does not like. Users "B" and "C" refute the blocking of the manuscript, and the manuscript remains available. In addition, "B" and "C" now know the internet address of "A". With this information, "B" and "C" might take steps to prevent future connection with client "A".

BrainTech, LLC has gone to great effort to reduce the likelihood that its ScatterBrain P2P client software might be used to trade unauthorized material. If you have additional ideas for preventing the trade of unauthorized content while maintaining an anonymous network environment (widely distributed data traveling via Proxy), please let us know.
http://www.scatterbrainp2p.com/MarkU...structions.htm http://www.scatterbrainp2p.com/MarkU...zedContent.htm





Johns Hopkins-Led Center Will Study Voting Technologies

A federally funded center dedicated to improving the reliability and trustworthiness of voting technology, drawing on experts in computer science, public policy and human behavior, will be based at The Johns Hopkins University, the National Science Foundation announced Monday. Researchers from five other institutions nationwide will participate in the project, which is aimed at addressing public concerns about the growing use of electronic voting machines in local, state and national elections.

The NSF said it would provide $7.5 million over five years to launch the new endeavor called ACCURATE, short for A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections. Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins and technical director of the university’s Information Security Institute, will direct the center.

Rubin has received international attention in recent years for identifying risks associated with computer-based voting technology that has been put into use with minimal scrutiny by independent security experts. He has testified before state and federal lawmakers and election supervisors regarding potential security flaws in these machines.

The center’s work will be important because of dramatic changes taking place in the way in which people cast ballots. Fueled by significant funding from the Help America Vote Act of 2002, municipal and county governments across the nation are in the midst of the largest conversion of U.S. voting technology in a century. With this move, the percentage of U.S. voters casting ballots on electronic voting machines is expected to rise from 13 percent in 2000 to a much higher percentage in 2008. This is occurring despite persistent questions from leading security experts, legal scholars and computer scientists about the integrity and trustworthiness of e-voting. In some states, technology glitches in recent elections have led to calls for mandatory paper trails and stricter standards for electronic systems.

“Our country moved to electronic voting in public elections before the technology was ready,” Rubin said. “This center will develop the fundamental science necessary for secure, accessible, trustworthy and transparent voting.”

The NSF grant is expected to provide approximately $1.2 million to Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins to fund Rubin’s research into voting technology and for administration of the new center. Also participating in ACCURATE will be prominent researchers from Rice University; Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Iowa and SRI International.

Some members of the multidisciplinary team will study electronic voting hardware and programming, including the cryptography used to ensure voters’ selections remain private and the methods used to verify that computers accurately compile all legitimate votes. These researchers will also look for ways to guard against a variety of election tampering threats.

“The basic question is how can we employ computer systems as trustworthy election systems when we know computers are not totally reliable, totally secure or bug-free,” said Dan Wallach, associate professor of computer science at Rice, who will serve as associate director of ACCURATE. “In voting, this is complicated by the fact that potential adversaries include everyone from the voting system designers, elections officials and voters to political operatives, hackers and foreign agents.”

Other team members will focus on legal and public policy issues that have received little attention in the rapid transition to electronic voting, as well as human behavior questions tied to the abrupt change in the way people are being required to cast their ballots. A key issue is how confident people will feel that their electronic vote was recorded accurately.

The multi-disciplinary team’s findings will be made public. The findings will be used to help develop technical standards and proposals for new e-voting systems that are easy to use and tamper-evident.

“There is no reason why computers cannot be used to improve election systems, but it has to be done right,” center director Rubin said. “Our research will focus on leveraging the best properties of different technologies to design the strongest overall system. ACCURATE has a unique opportunity to produce ground-breaking scientific research while at the same time helping to protect our democracy.”

Related links:
Avi Rubin’s Web Page: http://avirubin.com/
Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins: http://www.jhuisi.jhu.edu/
Johns Hopkins Department of Computer Science: http://www.cs.jhu.edu/
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/513803/?sc=swtn





HP Earnings Top Wall Street Target, Stock Rises
Duncan Martell

Hewlett-Packard Co. posted quarterly results that topped Wall Street forecasts on Tuesday as its personal and business computer units showed strong improvement, sending its shares up nearly 7 percent.

Net income fell 88 percent after tax payments for repatriating $14.5 billion in foreign earnings, but profit margins improved at the company, which is slashing jobs and restructuring under new Chief Executive Mark Hurd.

The No. 2 computer maker, which competes against International Business Machines Corp., Dell Inc. <DELL.O>, Lexmark and others, also issued a profit forecast for the current quarter that was ahead of average Wall Street expectations.

Fiscal third-quarter net income fell to $73 million, or 3 cents per share, from $586 million, or 19 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Operating profits rose strongly in the personal computer unit, and the business-computer unit returned to profit from a year-ago loss, but printing and services profits fell.

Total revenue rose to $20.8 billion from $18.9 billion.

Excluding $988 million in after-tax adjustments primarily relating to the repatriation, HP posted a profit of 36 cents per share, up from a year-ago profit before items of 24 cents per share.

Goldman Sachs analyst Laura Conigliaro, in a brief note to clients, estimated that interest income accounted for 5 cents per share in the third quarter.

Analysts, on average, had expected a profit of 31 cents per share on revenue of $20.5 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

Dell last week reported second-quarter revenue that lagged forecasts by $300 million, and set a lower-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter, raising concerns that a recent surge in the PC industry may be moderating.

"We heard a little bit from Lexmark and Dell about the pressures in the printing business. The fact that their revenues are a little down but Hewlett's earnings are up makes me feel very good that they're doing what they have to do to protect their bottom line," said Diane Jaffe, group managing director, Laudus Balanced MarketMasters Fund.

Hurd told reporters on a conference call that he viewed the PC market as "steady" and "stable," allaying some of the concerns about a slowing PC market. In a statement, he referred to "solid" profit margin improvements in key HP business segments.

Hurd also said that HP plans to use some of the repatriated cash to make acquisitions and repurchase its own stock.

Operating profit in the PC-dominated personal systems group rose to $163 million from $23 million a year ago, while printing group profit fell to $771 million from $836 million. The business-computing enterprise storage and servers group had a profit of $150 million, versus a year-ago loss of $211 million. Profit at the services group fell to $256 million from $314 million.

The company's operating profit margin, excluding one-time items, widened to 5.7 percent from 4.5 percent in the year-ago quarter. HP's PC business had an operating profit margin of 2.6 percent, the best performance since its $19 billion takeover of Compaq Computer Corp. in May 2002, Hurd said.

The results are also a notable improvement from the year-ago quarter, when the enterprise systems group stumbled badly, prompting then-CEO Carly Fiorina to fire several executives. Fiorina was ousted in February by the board after not delivering the financial results she had promised.

Hurd, known as a cost-cutter from his days as CEO of NCR Corp. <NCR.N>, joined HP in April. HP is in the midst of shedding 14,500 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force, in a restructuring announced in July to cut annual costs by $1.9 billion.

For the current, fourth, quarter, Palo Alto, California-based HP said it expects earnings per share, before items, of 44 cents to 47 cents on revenue of between $22.4 billion and $22.8 billion.

On that basis, analysts expect HP to earn 43 cents per share, on average, within a range of 39 cents to 47 cents, on revenue of $22.7 billion.

HP shares rose 6.5 percent, to $25.29 in extended trade on Inet, after closing down 39 cents at $23.70 on the New York Stock Exchange. (Additional reporting by Scott Malone in New York)
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...ewlett-Packard





Bellsouth, Napster Agree to Marketing Deal

Online music service Napster Inc. and telecommunications company BellSouth Corp. on Monday said they agreed to a marketing deal linking sales of high-speed Internet with a portable music giveaway.

Under the marketing deal, customers who sign up for BellSouth's FastAccess DSL can choose to receive a free three-month membership to Napster To Go, Napster's portable subscription music service, and a compatible MP3 player, the companies said in a statement.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...srch=Bellsouth





Polly wanna Anna?

Fighting The Final Digital Battle
Travis Kalanick

I vividly remember sitting in a movie theater half a decade ago and seeing the Universal Studios globe turning in full Technicolor just before the start of the feature presentation.
As the U-N-I-V-E-R-S-A-L lettering made its way to the foreground, my heart sped up and my hands began to sweat. My reaction was only natural, as my last company had only recently been sued by Universal, and 28 other media companies, for a quarter of a trillion dollars. My partners and I ultimately were forced to settle with Hollywood, sell the company, and start anew in the peer-to-peer space.

At the time, it was my opinion that these media companies did not know much about this chaotic, uncontrollable medium but definitely knew they didn't like what our search engine was finding. So instead of using the precise mechanisms that existing law already provided for their protection (known as take-down provisions in the Search Safe Harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), these companies were certain they needed to slow things down with a scary, overwhelming message to would-be entrepreneurs and their investors.

For almost an entire decade, innovators in digital media distribution were chilled by the aggressive tactics of the entertainment industry to protect their analog interests. For many years, we essentially saw a lockdown on Internet distribution of media. Practical licenses for legitimate Internet distribution were forbidden, while lawsuit after lawsuit was wielded as a blunt tool and a stern warning against those creators (aka innovators) who had their sights set on staking a claim in the wild west of online digital media.

This chilly pursuit's last salvo came with the Grokster decision by the Supreme Court last month. The court's principled yet vague decision remains a Pyrrhic victory for the entertainment industry in its fight against piracy. There will be no substantial abatement of peer-to-peer piracy as a result of the decision. Maybe the only lasting innovation resulting from these pursuits will be the advent of distributed, noncommercial, anonymous networks that make for difficult tracking by copyright owners, law enforcement and oppressive foreign governments alike.

Ironically enough, in the decade to come, we technologists should see a reversal of our collective fortune in our relationships with the media industry. The cold winter of media distribution innovation has already begun its thaw and will enter full spring bloom in the coming years.

That may sound a bit iconoclastic given everything we've heard from some of our techie leaders. But it is absolutely clear that technologists and technology companies are well-positioned to win the post-Grokster peace.

After the Grokster decision, there is nobody left for Hollywood to fight. The Kazaa-like "infringers" either lost in the Supreme Court along with Grokster, or the few remaining have basically gotten the message and are finding ways to go "legit" as we speak. Without anybody substantial left to fight (not counting those millions of consumers who might still be using peer-to-peer software to directly infringe), all that is left is to think about taking this huge groundswell in demand for digital distribution and making a big business out of it. The entertainment industry has "won." All that's left is to actually take their own prodigious creative talent, and innovate new business models around digital distribution. The VCR is a prime example--once the industry focused on positive innovation, it realized a bigger billion-dollar business than from traditional box-office receipts.

Second, the very entertainment execs who architected the fight against digital distribution are well on their way to overcoming their fears. Years of evangelism by dedicated entrepreneurs (myself included) of the legitimate uses of peer to peer have gone a long way. The development of technologies like Snocap and Audible Magic to identify, filter and "protect" online services closes the final gaps that will make the executives' transformation to innovation a reality. For example, utilizing Red Swoosh peer-to-peer distribution technology along with Snocap's identification and registration technology could make an infringing peer-to-peer service into a noninfringing one with the flip of a switch. As such, the entertainment industry not only publicly recognizes that digital distribution is an opportunity, it has even started to point out in the last six months that peer-to-peer technology is not all bad, singling out and even licensing to commercial peer-to-peer businesses.

Third, the market is ready. Broadband penetration has gone well past 50 percent in the U.S. Devices that play high-quality audio and video (in cars, living rooms and via mobile devices) are deploying in the tens of millions--soon to be hundreds of millions. The online-advertising market that will support online content is quickly becoming a substitute for the traditional broadcast media. And, most importantly, the demand is there. Early experiments in online music, television and movies have passed the test. After only 18 months on the PC, iTunes accounts for a few percent of the global music market and is a huge growth vehicle (more than a half billion dollars in sales expected this year; over $2 billion in sales expected next year), leading the way for many initiatives across music, television, movies and other services, with ultimate market sizes that will dwarf their analog equivalents.

Regardless of whether we agree with the entertainment industry's means to this end, it is inevitable that a huge wave of digital distribution is about to come ashore. Licenses are coming, and lawsuits against technology companies will recede--the quest for massive commerce will trump the use of unproductive wasteful lawsuits against technologies.

This huge wave means enormous opportunities to innovate with widely available licensing that enables massive commercial distribution. And with content distribution everywhere, we should keep our eyes on the prize--if iPod/iTunes tells us anything, it's that for every $100 million in content revenues, there is more than $1 billion in technology purchases.

There will be hiccups and hard work along the way. Some of the more extreme digital rights management technologies and other security mechanisms are not the most fun, but market forces could make some of these paranoia-induced features go away. And for those who cringe when they hear the term "filter," I have some advice: Integrate filtering into all of your search, peer-to-peer and consumer applications and make it optional for the user (users get a checkbox that turns on safe, legal, filtered file surfing; unchecked users are on their own).

Media companies have nowhere else to go but online. The consumers are there, the advertising is there, and the technologies are there. But after the Supreme Court case, the perceived corporate "bad actors" that scare entertainment companies are not.

Content won't be free, but our ability to innovate will be--at least more than it was during the last decade.
http://news.com.com/Fighting+the+fin...3-5825192.html





Lighter backpacks

Publishers Loosen Rules On E-Textbooks
John Borland

A group of major textbook publishers has agreed to loosen restrictions in an electronic-textbook experiment beginning this month at Princeton University and other schools, following some criticism of expiration dates.

The pilot project, which will see textbooks sold in downloadable form at 10 university bookstores this fall, went into operation earlier this week. Under the initial version of the program, the downloads were to be sold for 33 percent off the cost of a new, printed copy, but would only be usable for about five months.

On Friday, MBS Textbook Exchange--the textbook wholesaler that is organizing the program--said publishers had agreed to extend the expiration dates for the digital textbooks. The downloads will now last from 12 months to an unlimited time, depending on the publisher.

"All of us have always been committed to putting together a program that delivers a cost savings to the student through the traditional channel, which is the bookstore," MBS Direct Chief Executive Officer Dennis Flanagan, who is heading the project, said in a statement. "Adapting to student recommendations is what this test is all about."

The experiment, which is already ongoing at several schools including the University of Utah, is one of the most ambitious efforts offering students digital versions of textbooks instead of the heavy printed copies they're used to.

A handful of textbook publishers already offer downloadable versions of their works through their own Web sites or through partners. But the programs have been only lightly used--in part because most students tend to buy their books all at once either online or in the campus bookstore, rather than figuring out which publisher is responsible for which texts.

The new program will see little cards produced by MBS sold on the shelves next to used and new copies of textbooks, offering students the discount if they buy online instead. The generic cards--similar to phone cards--are associated with a specific book at the bookstore's check-out desk, and the student downloads the book later.

Formatted and copy-protected using Adobe technology, the books can be searched by keyword and read out loud by the software. But antipiracy protections will prevent them from being sold back to the bookstore or to other students once a class is finished.

MBS also said Friday that publishers have agreed to loosen restrictions on how much of a book could be printed and how often. That too will vary by publisher.

The digital books will be initially available at the University of Oregon, the University of Utah, Portland Community College, Bowling Green State University, Princeton University, Georgetown College, California State University-Fullerton, Morehead State University, and at privately owned stores serving West Virginia University and Louisiana State University.
http://news.com.com/Publishers+loose...3-5830640.html





ILN News Letter
Michael Geist

Chinese Net Portal Halts Music Search Service

Chinese Internet portal Netease.com Inc. suspended its online music search service because of concerns about violating copyrights amid a battle by music labels to combat infringement. According to music-industry executives, MP3 search services offered by Chinese portals and search sites allow users to link to other Web sites and download songs, cellphone ring tones and other unlicensed music content free. China this spring passed a law that imposes fines on Web sites that knowingly offer content illegally.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...115373,00.html


Company Files Suit Against Five Yahoo Posters

Small-appliance maker Applica wants to muzzle five anonymous people it says are divulging confidential company information over the Internet. The company has sued the "John Does" it presumes are current or former employees over postings to a Yahoo Finance message board devoted to discussion of Applica.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12391801.htm





Second thoughts on dot/xxx

Correspondence from GAC Chairman to ICANN Board regarding .XXX TLD
12 August 2005

From: Mohd Sharil Tarmizi
To: ICANN Board of Directors
Cc: Government Advisory Committee
Subject: Concerns about contract for approval of new top level domain
Date: Friday, August 12, 2005

Dear Colleagues,

As you know, the Board is scheduled to consider approval of a contract for a new top level domain intended to be used for adult content. I am omitting the specific TLD here because experience shows that some email systems filter out anything containing the three letters associated with the TLD.

You may recall that during the session between the GAC and the Board in Luxembourg that some countries had expressed strong positions to the Board on this issue. In other GAC sessions, a number of other governments also expressed some concern with the potential introduction of this TLD. The views are diverse and wide ranging. Although not necessarily well articulated in Luxembourg; as Chairman, I believe there remains a strong sense of discomfort in the GAC about the TLD, notwithstanding the explanations to date.

I have been approached by some of these governments and I have advised them that apart from the advice given in relation to the creation of new gTLDs in the Luxembourg Communique that implicitly refers to the proposed TLD, sovereign governments are also free to write directly to ICANN about their specific concerns.

In this regard, I would like to bring to the Board's attention the possibility that several governments will choose to take this course of action. I would like to request that in any further debate that we may have with regard to this TLD that we keep this background in mind.

Based on the foregoing, I believe the Board should allow time for additional governmental and public policy concerns to be expressed before reaching a final decision on this TLD.

Thanks and best regards,

Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi
Chairman, GAC
ICANN

http://www.icann.org/correspondence/...rd-12aug05.htm





Erotic Images Cause Temporary "Blindness"
David Zald

If your partner seems to be ignoring you after a flash of nudity on the television screen, it might not be his or her fault. New research indicates that people shown erotic or gory images frequently fail to process what they see immediately afterwards.

Portions of the research exploring this effect by Vanderbilt University psychologist David Zald and Yale University researchers Steven Most, Marvin Chun and David Widders will be published in the August issue of Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.

“We observed that people fail to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after neutral images,” Zald, assistant professor of psychology and member of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development, said.

Anyone who has ever slowed down to look at an accident as they are driving by—or has been stuck behind someone who has—is familiar with the “rubbernecking” effect. Even though we know we need to keep our eyes on the road, our emotions of concern, fear and curiosity cause us to stare out the window at the accident and slow to a crawl as we drive by.

Zald and his colleagues set out to determine if the rubbernecking effect carries over into more minute lapses of attention through two separate experiments.

In the first experiment, research subjects were shown hundreds of pictures that included a mix of disturbing images along with landscape or architectural photos. They were told to search the images for a particular target image. An irrelevant, emotionally negative or neutral picture preceded the target by two to eight items. The closer the negative pictures were to the target image, the more frequently the subject failed to spot the target. In a subsequent study, which has not yet been published, the researchers substituted erotic for negative images and found the same basic effect.

“We think that there is essentially a bottleneck for information processing and if a certain type of stimulus captures attention, it can basically jam up that bottleneck so subsequent information can’t get through,” Zald said. “It appears to happen involuntarily.”

Previous studies have demonstrated that there are limits to how much information we can hold in our visual short-term memory and that we often miss visual images that pass right before our eyes if we are paying attention to something else. The new research indicates that we can also miss what we are searching for if we are shown an unexpected image that impacts us emotionally, a situation the researchers call “emotion-induced blindness.”

This effect can explain some common human behaviors. “If you are simply driving down the road and you see something that is sexually explicit on a billboard, the odds are that it is going to capture your attention and for a fraction of a second afterwards, you are going to be less able to pay attention to the other information in your environment,” Zald said. “So you might not see that car coming at you or the person crossing the street because your bottleneck has been jammed.”

In the second experiment, the researchers sought to determine if individuals can override their emotion-induced blindness by focusing more deliberately on the target for which they are searching. In this experiment, the subjects undertook two different trials. In one they were told specifically to look for a rotated photo of a building; in the other they were told to look for a rotated photo of either a building or a landscape.

The research team hypothesized that the more specific instruction—to look for the building only—would help the research subjects override their emotion-induced blindness. After running the tests, the researchers discovered that they were partially right: specific instructions helped some subjects control their attention, but it didn’t help others.

Furthermore, the researchers determined that the subjects’ ability to control their attention was directly linked to the aspect of their personalities that involves their reaction to negative or frightening stimuli, assessed by using a scale that measured their levels of harm avoidance. Those who score high on this scale are more fearful, careful and cautious. Those who score low are more often carefree and more comfortable in dangerous or difficult situations. The researchers found that those with low harm avoidance scores were better able to stay focused on the targets than those with high harm avoidance scores.

Zald believes one explanation for the differences in performance during the experiment is that individuals that tend to be more harm avoidant have more trouble disengaging from emotional images than their more carefree counterparts, causing their attention to linger on an emotional image even though it is no longer visible.

“We increasingly are suspicious that people who are more neurotic or harm avoidant may not be detecting negative stimuli more than other people, but they have a greater difficulty suppressing that information,” Zald said.

A multimedia version of this story is available at http://www.exploration.vanderbilt.ed...rubberneck.htm.
http://www.newswise.com/p/articles/view/513735/

















Until next week,

- js.

















Current Week In Review





Recent WiRs -

August 13th, August 6th, July 30th, July 23rd, July 16th, July 9th

Jack Spratt's Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.


"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black

[napho]

We dug up lots of good stuff JS. I don't mind you taking all the credit even though I did at least 75% of the work.

[multi]

I hope you dont mind me stealing your quotes...

[JackSpratts]

Originally Posted by napho

I did at least 75% of the work.

since it seems your meds ran out before the month did i must be frank and say your vaunted canadian free healthcare system leaves much to be desired. on the other hand, pot is practically legal, so there is that avenue to self-medication.

- js.