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Peer to Peer The 3rd millenium technology! |
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Join Date: May 2001
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![]() ![]() "I think it is wrong for them to sue me. I'm hoping I can win and don't have to pay anything." – Whitney Harper "My iPhone runs better software than a typical switch. It is just mind-boggling that the cheapest consumer product has more robust software than what the Internet runs on." – Andreas von Bechtolsheim "This is not about technology that anybody needs to learn, but about going to a musical place that’s readily accessible. You’ve got to stop the chatter and just listen." – Karl Berger "The research company found P2P currently makes up 44 per cent of all consumer internet traffic, with music accounting for the most files transferred." – Jo Best "The growth in legitimate P2P will far outstrip that of its illegitimate counterpart - with legal activity growing at 10 times the rate of illegal P2P traffic over the next five years." – Jo Best "We decided that it would only be worse if we went out and told the fans they were absolutely not allowed to throw dildos on the ice." – Mats Hedenström October 25th, 2008 ![]() Record Label ‘Infringes’ Own Copyright, Site Pulled enigmax The website of a record label which offers completely free music downloads has been taken down by its host for copyright infringement, even though it only offers its own music. Quote Unquote Records calls itself “The First Ever Donation Based Record Label”, but is currently homeless after its host pulled the plug. Quote Unquote Records is an Internet based record label, run by Bomb the Music Industry! and ‘The Arrogant Sons of Bitches’ frontman Jeff Rosenstock. A forward looking outfit, all artists on the label give their music away for free on the label’s website. Well, they would, if the webhost hadn’t have taken down the site for alleged copyright infringement. In a MySpace blog entry, Jeff Rosenstock explained that the Quote Unquote Records site is non-operational, and other sites connected to the label, including the Bomb the Music Industry! and Arrogant Sons of Bitches sites, have all been taken down too. So what happened? Around a week ago, the label was notified by its webhost that it had some copyright music files on its server, which was no surprise to them since they were tracks by Arrogant Sons of Bitches, one of the label’s bands. The tracks the webhost referred to were actually written by Jeff himself. Jeff spoke with someone at the host on the telephone, explained that they were his own tracks and was informed this wasn’t a problem. Three days later the labels site went down completely, due to Jeff hosting his own copyright files on his own site - a claimed violation of the hosting company’s Terms of Service. In order to solve the problem, Jeff would have to send his copyright registration forms to the host by mail, to prove he held the copyright, a problem in itself, explains Jeff: “I called the company to explain that a lot of this material was NOT in fact registered with the US copyright office, instead we did the ol’ poor man’s copyright. The music that was copyrighted was done so under a Creative Commons License, which is a digital copyright that cannot be viewed if the website where the files are posted is down.” It seems amazing that a host should be proactive like this, especially since it has clearly made a huge mistake. However, a week later and Jeff’s site is still down and he’s quite rightly upset: “I guess the scary thing for me is that it seems that my hosting server employs a guilty before proven innocent policy, which is terrifying for anyone who does not physically mail forms for every small idea they’ve ever had in their bedroom to the US copyright office. What a great new digital age, stuck in the trappings of wasteful forms and red tape.” If losing your site to a bogus copyright claim isn’t enough, there is a more immediate problem. Jeff is being denied access to his data by the host and he says that since he had a crash on his local hard drive, he no longer has copies of any of the content that was on the Quote Unquote Records server. “So, long story short, I’m looking for any artwork or mp3s that were put on Quote Unquote Records,” he said. If you can find any of the material Jeff is looking for on P2P networks, please post comments on his blog. http://torrentfreak.com/record-label...pulled-081019/ ![]() RIAA Now Wants to Avoid Trial in Innocent Infringement Case Eric Bangeman The RIAA has apparently had a change of heart towards a Texas woman accused of sharing music over KaZaA when she was 16 years old. In Maverick v. Harper, the industry group has backed off its demand for a jury trial and has instead opted to accept a judge's $7,400 damage award: $200 for each of 37 songs downloaded in whole or in part by the RIAA's hired investigative gun, MediaSentry. Whitney Harper admits to using KaZaA, but said that she had no idea that it was illegal to download and share music over P2P. She cited a lack of warnings from the KaZaA software that the music contained on the popular network was "stolen or abused copyrighted material" and a general lack of understanding of copyright infringement, P2P applications, and P2P networks. Judge Xavier Rodriguez ruled in September that, while Harper was guilty of copyright infringement, she was an "innocent infringer." So instead of having to pay up to $30,000 in damages for each of the 37 songs, Harper was directed to pay $200—below the usual $750 lower limit for violations of the Copyright Act. Initially, the RIAA resisted the judge's ruling, opting instead for a trial on the amount of damages. The RIAA has since altered its stance, filing a motion for entry of judgment and fighting Harper's request that the trial go forward. Harper makes "no cogent argument to demonstrate why Plaintiff's Motion should not be granted," argue the record labels. "Instead, Defendant attempts to resurrect an issue that has no bearing on Plaintiffs' motion and that has already been decided by the Court, twice." The issue referred to by the RIAA is whether simply making a file available over a P2P network is sufficient to constitute copyright infringement. Judge Rodriguez had ruled previously in Maverick v. Harper that making available constituted infringement, notes the RIAA, and Harper's attempts to get him to reconsider are "vexatious." What the RIAA fails to note is that the landscape has changed, not only since Maverick v. Harper was originally filed in 2007, but in the weeks since the judge's $200-per-song award was made. Just days after the RIAA rejected that award, a federal judge in Minnesota overturned the $222,000 verdict against Jammie Thomas, citing an incorrect jury instruction on the "making available" issue. Harper's attorneys included that opinion in their motion asking that the trial go ahead as planned. While it would be appropriate in a "normal lawsuit" to stick with the $7,400 judgment, argue her attorneys, this case is anything but normal. "[i]in this case we have this single case, one of tens of thousands of lawsuits filed as a part of a massive campaign to preserve a business model currently dominant in the music," reads the motion. "This Court is aware that this case is not about the actions of Whitney Harper, a young lady who was 14 to 16 years old at the time of alleged infringement. It is instead about an 18 billion dollar industry that was once on a rising trend, now facing its comeuppance by rapidly evolving technology and eroding morals." An RIAA spokesperson declined to comment on why the group has reversed course and decided to accept the $7,400 judgment mere weeks after angling for a much higher number. We suspect there are a couple of factors. First is the making-available issue mentioned above. It's a bedrock of the group's legal campaign against P2P users, and the RIAA is anxious to avoid having that eroded by yet another adverse ruling. Another reason is bad PR. That's right—despite appearances, the RIAA does have concerns about its public image. RIAA and record label executives are on record that the lawsuits are not meant to make money; rather, they are meant to educate users and act as a deterrent. We noted in our previous coverage of this case that rejecting the court's award and pushing for what could be a six-figure damage award made the RIAA look hypocritical. Should the judge deny the RIAA's motion for entry of judgment, the trial would take place in mid-November. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ment-case.html ![]() Former Teen Cheerleader Defies RIAA Over $7,400 File Sharing Tab David Kravets The recording industry wants $7,400 from Whitney Harper for infringing 37 songs on the Kazaa file sharing network. Harper was a juvenile at the time of the unlawful downloading. She is now a college junior fighting the case. Former cheerleader Whitney Harper admits downloading pirated music from her San Antonio, Texas family's computer years ago, when she was barely in high school. She just doesn't think think she should pay $7,400 for it today. "I would do homework on that computer and listen to music. I didn't know I was stealing or distributing it. I thought I was like listening to MTV on the internet," Harper said in a telephone interview. Harper is now 20, a Texas Tech public relations junior, and represents yet another statistic in the Recording Industry Association of America's litigation campaign -- with some 30,000 copyright file sharing lawsuits filed and counting. It's not known how many of the RIAA targets are juveniles, but Harper is being pursued for acts she says she committed when she was 14, 15, or 16 years of age. Now the Recording Industry Association of America wants $7,400 to settle a file sharing lawsuit stemming from her piracy of 37 tracks, including music by Eminem, the Police, Mariah Carey and others. "I had no idea I was doing anything wrong. I knew I was listening to music. I didn't have an understanding of file sharing," Harper said. For years, those tracks languished on the family's computer with the file share folder open, even after Harper moved to college two years ago. "I don't even remember what the password is," she said of her Kazaa account. "I think it is morally wrong to sue me for something I did that long ago. That it was being distributed to all of cyberspace, I didn't have an understanding of that at all." Harper, who says file sharing is "morally wrong," is now a junior at Texas Tech. Last year, the RIAA originally sued her father, Steven, but redirected its case months later to his daughter after she admitted she was the downloader. "They contacted my dad, who doesn't know much about computers except for e-mail," she said. "He said he didn't know what they were talking about." RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth said via an e-mail: "As in every case, we strive to be fair and reasonable. However, it's disappointing that the defendant is apparently choosing to drag this out." The woman's lawyer, Scott Mackenzie of Dallas, said RIAA lawyers told him, "'Come on, she knew better than this,'" he said. For her part, Harper said downloading "is morally wrong for people that know what they are doing. I would not do it now. I would never do it. I don't steal from people. I'm not a bad person." She is demanding a trial, and the RIAA in court documents last week called her "vexatious" for refusing to settle for $200 a song, the amount the Copyright Act allows for so-called "innocent infringement." "I think it is wrong for them to sue me. I'm hoping I can win and don't have to pay anything," she said. While most of the RIAA file sharing cases settle out of court for a few thousand dollars, one lawsuit has gone to trial. It resulted in a $222,000 verdict against a Minnesota woman last year for infringing 24 songs on Kazaa. But a mistrial was declared last month after the trial judge ruled that merely making available songs on the internet for others to download does not amount to copyright infringement, a decision the RIAA is appealing. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...eeks-7400.html ![]() The Costs of Policing Campus Networks Andy Guess Colleges have been asserting for months — in an effort to persuade Congress not to impose new requirements on them to fight illegal file sharing — that they’re spending big bucks to monitor, prevent and discipline online behavior that could run afoul of copyright law. But lawmakers ignored their pleas and added several new mandates to the Higher Education Act in August. Now that it’s been a few months, and the dust has settled, it seems fair to ask: What does it cost to comply with the provisions of the law that require colleges to police their students’ peer-to-peer activity? With budgets responding to the economic slowdown — not to mention the uniquely open nature of campus networks — the question is hardly academic. Beginning in July, the Campus Computing Project, the largest ongoing study of colleges’ use of information technology, conducted a special survey focusing on peer-to-peer issues. The results, developed from the responses of senior IT officials at 321 two- and four-year private and public institutions, provide a snapshot of the costs, both in terms of dollars and manpower, of the P2P-related mandates that by that time were evidently going to be included in the final bill. “We’re talking lots of money here when you aggregate it out,” said Kenneth C. Green, founding director of the survey and a longtime critic of the entertainment industry’s tactics against campus Internet providers. The resources that large research universities may now be required to expend for P2P-related mandates, he added, could amount to an “enforcement subsidy” of $350,000 to $500,000 a year. As a result of heavy lobbying by the recording and film industries, the Higher Education Act now contains specific provisions aimed at curbing illegal file sharing at colleges. For example, colleges are “required to consider the use of technology-based deterrents” in developing plans to counter illegal peer-to-peer activity, such as traffic monitoring and bandwidth shaping — technologies that even some proponents have described as limited in their scope and susceptible to an ongoing “arms race” of tactics by downloaders. Colleges are also required to disclose to their students the legal implications of sharing copyrighted works and to provide legal alternatives to illegal file sharing networks. But in the report, released today, Green notes that even that requirement is not an absolute mandate. In a separate interview, he also said that campuses could sign up for free, ad-supported music services such as Ruckus to stay within the bounds of the law without expending any resources. (Three out of the 59 responding institutions who use such services said they pay fees, and all three signed up with Napster.) “The good news out of this is to say that there’s a way to be compliant with the mandate for an alternative music service,” he said. “Campuses have found a way to do that ... and it seems to work.” For the 2008-9 academic year, the report says, 42.6 percent of public universities who responded to the survey and 32.3 percent of private colleges have a licensing agreement in place with a legal music downloading service. The numbers are even lower for other types of institutions, with 2 percent of community colleges, for example, reporting that they use such services. Far more common, according to the report, is spending on software “intended to stem illegal or inappropriate P2P activity on campus networks,” ranging from 83.3 percent of public four-year colleges to 34.6 percent of community colleges. The costs of these measures is hardly negligible, as the report continues: “The survey reveals that many private universities spend significant sums to license software intended to stem illegal/inappropriate P2P activity on campus networks (over $100,000 annually, on average, for campuses with software license agreements). While the software licensing fees paid by public universities are significantly less (over $20,000 annually), these payments still reflect a major allocation from campus IT budgets.” The report also focuses on the amount of time college employees spend on enforcement, with the bulk resting on IT personnel. At the same time, legal counsel at both private and public institutions spend more of their time — about 44 hours each year — on peer-to-peer issues than do legal advisers in other industries and sectors. It illustrates that “this burden falls primarily on front line managers, ‘back room’ technical staff, and campus help desk personnel. And the burden is significant.” For example, at public doctoral universities, “IT personnel spent, on average, 779 hours (approximately 19 person-weeks or roughly two-fifths of a person-year) on P2P issues.” http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/20/p2p ![]() 2 Held Over Music Download Web Site The Yomiuri Shimbun Two Hyogo Prefecture men were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of breaching copyright by enabling mobile phone users to obtain free downloads of entire songs, police said. Keishi Fujimoto, 28, unemployed, of Himeji, and Takashi Matsuoka, 53, a company worker of Kawanishi, were arrested on suspicion of violating the Copyright Law. It is the first arrest made under the law in connection with an Internet site offering downloads of entire songs. The Kyoto prefectural police will seek to clarify the details of how the site, one of the largest-scale illegal music download sites in the nation, operated. Operated and managed by Fujimoto, the site--named Dai 3 Sekai--has more than 1 million members, and is popular among middle and high school students. According to the police, Fujimoto made it possible for an unspecified number of people in May and June to download three songs for free via the site, including "Hope or Pain," a popular song by pop singer Ayumi Hamasaki. In October 2006, Fujimoto also offered "Jonetsu Tairiku with Komatsu Ryota," an instrumental piece composed by violinist Taro Hakase, for download, with Matsuoka acting as his accomplice. Fujimoto told the police that he opened the site to profit from advertising fees. The police believe he has obtained about 120 million yen in such fees from the site. The Web site was launched around 2006, with about 20,000 songs that the suspects had downloaded from other sites and uploaded to their own. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national...22TDY02313.htm ![]() L.A. Man Pleads Innocent in Guns N' Roses Piracy A man accused of placing songs on the Internet from an unreleased album by the rock band Guns N' Roses pleaded innocent on Monday in federal court. Kevin Cogill, 27, is charged with violating federal copyright law. Cogill pleaded innocent to the charge on Monday and no date has been set for the trial, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office. The FBI says that Cogill posted nine tracks from Guns N' Roses' upcoming album "Chinese Democracy" on a website called antiquiet.com (http://www.antiquiet.com). Cogill was arrested in August at his Los Angeles home and released on bail the same day. He faces three years in federal prison if convicted, and five years if the court finds he posted the songs for commercial gain. Guns N' Roses said in a statement at the time of the arrest that while it did not condone Coghill's actions, "our interest is in the original source" of the material. Mrozek declined to comment on whether there would be any additional arrests. One of the biggest bands to emerge from the American metal scene in the late 1980s, Guns N' Roses has not released an album of new material in more than 17 years. "Chinese Democracy" will reportedly come out later next month, but the project has been delayed multiple times over the years as singer Axl Rose shed all his original bandmates. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Dean Goodman) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102100639.html ![]() Sweden One Step Closer to Anti-Filesharing Law Sweden’s Council on Legislation (Lagrådet) has indicated it has no significant reservations over a law which would make it easier to hunt individuals suspected of illegal filesharing over the internet. The government wants to give copyright holders, such as film and music companies, the ability to request information from internet service providers about individual users tied to IP addresses through which copyrighted material has been downloaded. Although the proposed law is based on an EU directive, the Council on Legislation says in its consultation statement that Sweden's draft regulation goes further than required by the directive. According to Sweden’s proposal, copyright holders would be allowed to get a court order requesting the release of information about certain IP addresses if there is probable cause that someone has broken copyright laws. This information could then be used to launch legal proceedings in which copyright holders could seek damages or simply point out that person has broken the law. The EU directive, however, only says that people should have the right to access information in connection with a trial. http://www.thelocal.se/15156/20081023/ ![]() PopTech: Learn to Profit from Piracy Chris Snyder Piracy is a new type of business model, says journalist and best-selling author Matt Mason. An expert in cheating the system, Mason advocates piracy as a way to force old laws to catch up with the new ways information is being used. Mason was a former pirate radio DJ and founding editor of the British counter-culture magazine site RWD, which was launched to bridge the gap between music pirates and the mainstream market. He admits to downloading all sorts of pirated material and describes BitTorrent as one of the easiest ways to get music. But his biggest critics aren’t the music industry or Hollywood. “I’m seen by some people in the downloading community as the bad guy,” he said, adding that he’s different from those who think of piracy as a “smash-the-system, anarchic movement” where everything is free. Mason will be presenting his ideas this week in Camden, Maine, at the annual PopTech conference that explores the impact of technology on people. In his book released last year, The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism, Mason discusses ways in which businesses can actually learn from pirates' ways. “The whole point of the book is that piracy is often highlighting some kind of market failure. When the market’s not doing something that most people want to see happening, that’s when you see piracy on a massive scale,” he said. For example, he thinks record labels need to work on a free market, collective license solution, and that e-books will soon pose a similar threat to the publishing world. “I’m convinced that Steve Jobs is currently working on a double-sided touchscreen laptop, which has a great screen density so you can hold it on its side and you can touch it and turn pages. When something like that comes along, then the e-book’s going to be a real threat. And I think the publishing industry is going to collectively crap its pants.” His ideas are also seeping into Hollywood. He says he is currently working with Heroes executive producer Jesse Alexander on a TV version of the book called Pirate TV. Each episode of the show will focus on piracy in various industries around the world, many of which are not often associated with the term — like fashion, nuclear technology and automobile parts. “It’s going to be two parts Anthony Bourdain, one part Mythbusters,” he says. He’s already planned out one season, but says there are enough different cases to fill five or six. And Mason isn’t hypocritical by any means, as his own book is also up for grabs on his website, following the Radiohead, tip-jar business model of pay what you want. But he says around 15 percent of people actually pay for it, and that downloads not only don’t cannibalize print sales, they have opened up the door to speaking events all over the world where it isn’t being sold and people are reading it online. At PopTech, he’ll be reinforcing his message of if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. “A lot of the time it’s because the pirates are actually doing something better, and that doesn’t mean it’s always right or its morally good in any way at all,” he says. http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/...ch-matt-m.html ![]() Dell PCs Get Preloaded with DRM-Free UMG Music Erica Ogg In a bid to help novice downloaders jump-start their digital-music collections, Universal Music Group is offering "curated" playlists to Dell PC buyers. Starting at $25, selected bundles 50 or 100 DRM-free songs can be added while building a custom PC on Dell's Web site. The songs will come preloaded on the computer, ready to play as soon as it's booted up. The music option is available only on the Inspiron 1525, Studio 15, and XPS 1535 laptops and Inspiron 530, 530s, Studio Desktop, and XPS 420 desktops. The XPS One and Dell Mini 9 netbook are excluded from the offering. The songs, all by Universal artists, are then playable on any device. You can see what bundles are available on Dell.com/musicandmovies. Track bundles include thematic playlists such as "Rock Titans," "The Classics," "Blues Masters," and so on. The lists will be "refreshed" on a regular basis in the future, and available for purchase on Dell's site. Dell already does this with downloaded movies, but it's the first time a major label has struck a similar distribution deal with a PC company. Universal's tracks are already offered through a similar service on phones with Nokia and its Comes with Music program. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10074001-1.html ![]() LaLa: How Does 10 Cents a Song Strike You? Eliot Van Buskirk Steve Jobs decreed that digital music would cost 99 cents a download more than five years ago. But competing with free has been difficult for Apple and others that followed. Jobs himself admitted that only 3 percent of the music on iPods was purchased from the iTunes music store. Could the price of digital music be simply too high? LaLa hopes so. On Tuesday, the company launched a new pricing plan that lets music fans buy songs from all four major labels plus 170,000 indie labels for a mere 10 cents a song, delivering on their promise to do just that. The catch? For that 10-cent investment, you only get to stream songs from the LaLa website, or through their online player with an iTunes-like interface and fast response time over a broadband connection. Oh yeah, and there are no ads anywhere on the entire site. Aside from the dramatically different price point and striking lack of advertising, LaLa's special sauce is its ability to suck your entire music collection into that online player for free so you can play it "from the cloud," as the saying goes. The site says it's the only one in the world with the labels' blessing to do this. By reading the metadata of the music files on your computer, it generates a mirror collection on its servers. But never fear, rare music aficionado: if LaLa can't find your music in its database, it'll upload your songs the old-fashioned way. This hybrid approach allows LaLa to create an online music player that contains all the music on your computer in minutes, yet avoid the pitfalls of stream-from-home services like Orb that require you to leave your computer on all the time. After creating a free account, you can listen to any song on the entire site -- once -- for free. (If you stop within 30 seconds it doesn't count as a listen.) If you want to hear the same song again on LaLa, you have two options: pay 10 cents to stream that song as many times as you want from the site in the future or pay 89 cents for a downloadable MP3 that can be played on any digital audio player that also comes with the streaming option. If you've already paid 10 cents for streaming rights to a song (or $1 or so for an album), the price of the corresponding MP3 download drops to 79 cents. In order to buy these songs, you prepay into an account so LaLa doesn't have to pay credit card charges each time you spend a dime. But you can try the stream-buying service without paying a cent -- to get you started, the first 50 streams are free. As you explore the site, any music you have queued up in the player continues to play. Everything you buy as a stream or download joins the music that LaLa uploaded from your hard drive into that online iTunes-like interface, so all your music can be accessed from any computer with a web connection. MP3s stream at 128 Kbps. If you pay for the download, the audio quality jumps to 256 Kbps or higher. Geoff Ralston, CEO of Lala and former head of Yahoo Mail, told us that other music sites put too many blockades between users and music as they monetize through advertising. Forcing users into extra clicks for free tunes wastes their time. LaLa is free at its most basic level (one listen per song) and does not include advertising. Ralston told us this means the site can offer users the smoothest possible experience. The site simply has no incentive to put anything in listeners' way. Previous eras of digital music revolved around software and hardware, but LaLa founder Bill Nguyen says the future of music, e-mail and many other activities will happen in the browser as applications migrate online. "Our iPhone, our iPod, our magic super device is the browser," Nguyen told Wired.com. "We think the future of everything is in a browser -- forget about devices, forget about everything else." However, the problem with other free music websites that can be accessed through browsers, says Nguyen, is that they clutter everything up with advertising. "Right now, if you're a consumer, you can get free music. The problem is, the free music comes at the cost of advertising. It doesn't work right, because for someone like MySpace or Imeem, they pay for every single play and then they have the burden of getting advertising to pay for it. So their goal is to create as many ads in front of you as they possibly can before they play the song.... The concept was, we can create a great service with your music and new music all in a web page -- no ads." As one would expect from a media website announcing something in late 2008, LaLa also includes a bevy of social features like the ability to follow what other users are listening to, block people from following you or check out what some prominent music blogs recommend, among other things. LaLa's MP3 catalog already includes about 6 million songs and that number will likely grow. Indie bands and labels can enter their music into the database using TuneCore or CDBaby. (Bands and labels can choose whether to have their music included in the 10-cents-per-stream option.) Now for the big potential problem with a service likes this: What happens if they go under? In an era when not even our nation's largest banks can be trusted to stay in business, what if LaLa disappears after you've added $100 worth of music (1,000 songs) to your streaming account? Ralston was frank: "It's a really fair question. What we need to put in front of customers is that we're very well financed, and even in this time we have enough cash flow to last us for years with no revenue. We're a very well financed company and we're going to be successful. Still, the future of the internet is companies offering you services over the net, even if it be Lehman Brothers. Sometimes companies go out of business, and the services they've offered you and the investment you've made, be it time or cash, can end with that company. But in the end, what you do is work with models that you believe in and that are successful. And we fully intend to be successful." I think they stand a good chance. For years, digital music insiders have argued that music should be sold the way video is: at several different price points (as free and ad-supported television, monthly cable/satellite subscriptions, pay-per-view, DVD rental, DVD sales and so on). LaLa's model encompasses two familiar price points -- free and nearly a dollar per song -- while introducing a new 10 cent price that could incent people to consume massive amounts of music as their worlds become increasingly connected. And as advertising becomes more prominent, some might choose to store their online music experience in an ad-free part of the cloud. http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/10/...ow-does-1.html ![]() Searchme Tries Music Streaming to Attract Users Don Reisinger Searchme, a visual search engine, on Monday launched a free music streaming service that allows visitors to search for their favorite songs and listen to an unlimited number of tracks. Each song on Searchme provides a link to buy it on Amazon.com, eBay, or iTunes and can be added to a "search stack" or playlist, which can be accessed at any time. The Searchme Music page also features cover art, which users can flip through to choose songs. According to TechCrunch, Searchme's Music selection uses Imeem's catalog of licensed songs by employing its widget, which can be embedded anywhere on the Web. Searchme grabs an Imeem widget for each song in the search results page and displays them in a Cover Flow-like layout to help users pick songs. Unlike some services, like Yahoo's music search, which will only allow users to play 25 streams each month, Searchme's music streaming is unlimited and generally provides a better design for music searching. But with a slew of competitors that offer streaming, like MySpace Music, Grooveshark, and Imeem itself, it won't be easy for the visual search engine to cement itself in the market, given its relatively small audience. But by offering free streaming, the company is doing all it can to capitalize on a growing trend in the marketplace, which could help it funnel more users into its Web search. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10070614-2.html ![]() A Ferment of World Jazz Yields a Trove of Tapes Ben Ratliff The Creative Music Studio here remains underdocumented and little understood. But a definitive history of jazz in the 1970s — a book yet to be written — ought to give it central importance. During the dawning years of jazz education the studio, run out of various repurposed settings — a barn, a Lutheran youth camp, a motel — was the unmusic school, roughly analogous to Black Mountain College, the progressive school in North Carolina that brought together avant-garde writers, dancers and painters in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. The constant musical activity at the studio, in workshops and concerts, yielded about 400 hours of tapes: startling performances by Don Cherry, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Lee Konitz, Frederic Rzewski, Jimmy Giuffre, Roscoe Mitchell, Steve Lacy, Abdullah Ibrahim, Carla Bley, Ed Blackwell and many others. If the studio is to get its historical due, the tapes will lead the way. Karl Berger and Ingrid Sertso, the husband and wife who founded the school, have recently started restoring and remastering the recordings, a task expected to cost about $120,000. A benefit concert on Friday at Symphony Space will raise money toward that end, gathering friends, supporters and former associates of the school, including Mr. Braxton, John Zorn and Steven Bernstein. (Information and tickets are at symphonyspace.org.) When the tapes are fully digitized, Mr. Berger and Ms. Sertso plan to give them back to the individual artists to use as they like. “It’s their property,” Mr. Berger said during an interview at his home in Woodstock on Monday. “It’s what they brought here. We only created the environment for it.” During the eight-week terms at the studio, students were not called students; they were “participants” who sometimes ran the classes. Mr. Berger emphasized a rhythmic training exercise called gamala taki to connect jazz to other musical languages around the world. There were meditative group-singing exercises in the morning, and visiting teachers from around the world sometimes played and danced with students around bonfires. “In the history of contemporary improvised music it was a very, very big thing,” the pianist Marilyn Crispell said of the studio, where she studied and taught from 1977 to 1982. “It was a totally unique place in the world, totally nonbureaucratic — a hands-on experience, free and creative.” Ms. Crispell made many contacts there who helped guide her through the next decades of her life, including Mr. Braxton, who met her there and brought her into his quartet for a decade. Its instructors were active performers and bandleaders, and they used the school as laboratory and playground. Student groups gave concerts every Friday night, and visiting teachers performed every Saturday. During most of the school’s existence — from 1972 to 1984, when the decline of financial support for the arts hastened its downfall — the concerts were recorded, and the Saturday-night tapes include performances by major jazz figures of the time. The couple plan to release sampler CDs of selections from the material as further fund-raising efforts, and will donate the entire Creative Music Studio audio collection to the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. Mr. Berger explained that C.M.S., as the place is commonly called, was not an ordinary school. “It wasn’t set up like a school,” he said. “There was one guiding artist for each week, and the idea was not about the instruments. It wasn’t, for example, about Dave Holland coming to teach bass. It was about Dave coming to teach his own ensemble work. He’d find 15 or 20 players here, create music for them, and play with them all day long, five hours each day.” The isolated-utopia feeling of Woodstock was crucial to the school’s identity. Mr. Berger and Ms. Sertso arrived there with two children and $700 at a point when jazz musicians had just started to settle in and around the town, about a two-hour drive from New York City. Mr. Holland, who had played bass with Miles Davis’s group and with a quartet called Circle, settled there; so did the drummer Jack DeJohnette, Ms. Bley and Mr. Braxton. Certainly the discoveries of the students — there were never more than 30 a term — were matched by the discoveries of the teachers. The studio did not promote one style because its teachers were too stylistically diverse. But a handful of important bands or records would not have happened without the studio as a spur, where the players were introduced to one another and the ideas were hatched. They include Mr. Holland’s “Conference of the Birds,” from 1973; many of Mr. Braxton’s albums from the ’70s and ’80s, including “Creative Orchestra Music”; the String Trio of New York, founded in 1977; the early-’80s jazz-rock band Curlew; and Codona, the trio of the multi-instrumentalist Collin Walcott, the percussionist Naná Vasconcelos and the trumpeter Don Cherry. Cherry, who died in 1995, was as important to the school as anyone. In the late 1950s and early ’60s Mr. Berger, a vibraphonist and pianist with an academic background in philosophy, and Ms. Sertso, a singer, were performing in clubs in Germany, their native country. Part of their education came from the presence of American jazz musicians stationed at a military base near clubs where they performed in Heidelberg. These included the pianist Cedar Walton and the drummer Lex Humphries, who mingled with the German musicians. On a trip to Paris in 1965 Mr. Berger befriended Cherry, who hired him for his quintet. The quintet was an international band with no common tongue. But Cherry thought across language lines anyway. “Don was the first person I knew who actively used world-music material in the 1960s,” Mr. Berger said. “He had a shortwave radio on all day. Even in a movie theater.” Having relocated with Cherry’s band to New York in 1966 — to perform at the Five Spot and to record Cherry’s album “Symphony for Improvisers” — Mr. Berger taught improvisation classes to sixth graders in public school. The students, he said, taught him to see all musical forms as naturally interconnected. “Once, in Harlem, a girl sang a melody to me that didn’t make any sense,” he said. “Melodically it was all over the place, like a 12-tone piece. I said O.K. and played it on the vibraphone. She said no, no! Because she knew every note she had been singing.” He talks in similar ways about teacher-student exchanges at the studio, like one when the Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista arrived at the school as a student. The first day he was encouraged to play a complicated odd-meter rhythm, never having encountered such a thing before. “It was the shock of his life,” Mr. Berger said. “He entered into a whole new world.” “The kind of information that people got at C.M.S. really influenced both their listening and playing habits from then on,” he added. The Buddhist practice of calming the mind — both for players and for listeners — is central to the Creative Music Studio experience. “This is not about technology that anybody needs to learn, but about going to a musical place that’s readily accessible,” Mr. Berger said. “You’ve got to stop the chatter and just listen.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/ar.../22berger.html ![]() Karmazin: Merged Technology Years Away FMQB Speaking at Monday's Convergence 2008 conference hosted by Chrysler in Detroit, Sirius XM Radio CEO Mel Karmazin said that in-car technology merging Sirus & XM could be up to 15 years away. According to Autoweek, Karmazin presided over a Q&A session, in which he said that while the companies have merged, their technology has yet to. Combining the technology for both companies and installing it in new cars could take up to 15 years, due to the creation of new chips and lead time for automakers. However, Orbitcast notes that on Sirius' Q2 conference call, Karmazin gave a much shorter time frame. When asked about interoperable radios in vehicles, he said that the automakers "control the dashboard, so they can decide if they want it or they don't want it, and if they do want it, you should assume it will probably take about three years for them to integrate it, since that's the lead time that most of these options take before the car companies are willing to put it into production." At the conference, Karmazin also discussed the merging of both companies' services and relationships with automakers. "Building on the success of our audio entertainment and technology infrastructure, we can bring the relationship to a strategic level by partnering with OEMs to position new-vehicle launches with differentiating Sirius XM features, such as Sirius Traffic with Chrysler, XM Traffic and real-time weather with Honda, Sirius Backseat TV with Chrysler and Sirius Travel Link with Ford," Karmazin said, according to Autoweek. "There’s all kind of content out there. At the end of the day, I think that the consumer is in a great position because people are going to listen to what it is that interests them," he added. "We are laserlike-focused on making sure that there is nobody out there that’s going to come close to having the content that we do." http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=945063 ![]() P2P Explodes by 400 Per Cent - and it's Not All Illegal 'It's for work, honest' Jo Best Peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic is set to skyrocket over the next five years - and the activity won't just be confined to music pirates and file sharers. According to research by market research company MultiMedia Intelligence, P2P traffic will rise by 400 per cent over the coming years - from its 2007 level of 1.6 petabytes of traffic to 8 petabytes by 2012. While the increase in P2P traffic as a whole may come as no surprise, interestingly the growth in legitimate P2P will far outstrip that of its illegitimate counterpart - with legal activity growing at 10 times the rate of illegal P2P traffic over the next five years. MultiMedia Intelligence puts the predicted expansion in legitimate traffic down to a rise in the number of entertainment companies using P2P to distribute content. The research company found P2P currently makes up 44 per cent of all consumer internet traffic, with music accounting for the most files transferred. http://networks.silicon.com/telecoms...9321004,00.htm ![]() CRTC Delays Ruling on Bell's Throttling Peter Nowak Bell Canada Inc. will continue throttling the internet speeds of its smaller competitors for at least another few weeks as the CRTC has again delayed its decision on whether the company has broken the law by doing so. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which in August said it would make its ruling by the end of October, on Friday said that wouldn't happen until sometime in November. The CRTC needs more time to consider the matter. "It's a complex issue," said spokesman Denis Carmel. "It's taking longer than we anticipated." The delay is the second by the CRTC. The regulator was originally scheduled to make a decision in September, but pushed it back to October after extending the period of time for key parties to the dispute to make comments. At the heart of the issue is a complaint lodged with the CRTC in April by the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, a group of more than 50 small companies that rent portions of Bell's network in order to sell their own broadband services. Bell began slowing, or throttling, the speeds of its own customers using peer-to-peer software such as BitTorrent last November. The company extended that practice to its CAIP wholesale customers in March, who were in turn forced to slow their own customers, which prompted the complaint to the CRTC. The CRTC refused CAIP's request for an immediate cease-and-desist order in May but launched a public inquiry into Bell's practice. CAIP said Bell had broken the Telecommunications Act by changing the terms of its wholesale service without giving its members notice. Bell countered by saying the throttling is necessary to prevent congestion, which is within its network management rights. The dispute has become the focal point in the battle over net neutrality, or keeping the internet free from discrimination by access providers. CAIP has attracted support from a wide range of net neutrality advocates, including consumers groups and internet companies such as Skype and Google Inc. "From consumer, competition and innovation perspectives, throttling applications that consumers choose is inconsistent with a content and application-neutral internet, and a violation of Canadian telecommunications law, which forbids unfair discrimination and undue or unreasonable preferences and requires that regulation be technologically and competitively neutral," Google said in a submission to the CRTC in July. CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein in June stressed that the regulator's eventual decision will be limited to whether or not Bell has violated its obligations to wholesale customers, and will not apply to the issue of throttling in general. The CRTC will likely launch a larger investigation, which would look into the throttling practices of Bell and other large service providers including Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc., after the CAIP dispute is dealt with, he said. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...tech-bell.html ![]() High-Speed Internet a Human Rights Issue, Tory Candidate Says Stephen Llewellyn Jack Carr has filed a complaint with the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission over the lack of high-speed Internet service in rural parts of the province. But a Liberal cabinet minister is calling the move a political stunt. "It is not fair that thousands of households in New Brunswick are going without," said Carr on Thursday. "People's only option is to pay hundreds of dollars for satellite Internet, which is not fair when in some cases the family down the street can pay the basic fee through Aliant and Rogers." Carr filed the complaint Thursday against the provincial government, Aliant and Rogers. He cited the portion of the province's human rights law that denies discrimination because of a person's place of origin. He said people who live in rural areas are being discriminated against and it puts rural areas at a competitive disadvantage. Carr, the Tory candidate in the Nov. 3 byelection in New Maryland-Sunbury West, denied the filing is a political stunt. "It is a perfect time to raise issues," he said about the byelection. Carr said he isn't aware of similar precedents in other jurisdictions. "I will leave that question to the human rights commission," he said when asked if the application was appropriate. The commission declined to comment on Carr's application. "We don't comment on complaints, whether we receive them or not," said human rights officer Francis Young. Business New Brunswick Minister Greg Byrne didn't hesitate to call Carr's move a political stunt. "It is very crass politics," he said. "It is so much a political stunt that it is very transparent." He also accused Carr of hypocrisy since the Tories held the riding since 1999 and could have done something about the issue. "Now all of a sudden, in the midst of a byelection, Jack Carr ... tried to portray himself as the champion of high-speed Internet," he said. In 2006, the provincial government completed a three-year project to install fibre optic cable so that 90 per cent of New Brunswick residences and 95 per cent of businesses had access to high-speed Internet. The project cost $44 million. Byrne said the Liberals promised during the 2006 election campaign to extend high-speed Internet to all parts of rural New Brunswick by the end of their first mandate. "We weren't satisfied with 90 per cent coverage," he said. Debbie McCann, the Liberal candidate in New Maryland-Sunbury West, refused to call Carr's actions a political stunt. "I am glad that he is listening and looking at my platform because that is exactly what is in my platform," she said. McCann said she lives near Hoyt and has no high-speed Internet or cellphone service. "Rural New Brunswickers needs this," she said. "It is a real issue with me." "I am very, very passionate about that." But the human right commission is not the right way to attack the problem, said McCann. "I really feel that it is something that can worked on co-operatively," she said. http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/c...article/451420 ![]() Nine Out of Ten People Confused by Broadband Limits MarkJ The latest study from uSwitch has revealed that 86% of UK broadband users still don’t understand the usage limits on their service and nearly one million have reached or exceeded their ISPs limit in the last year alone. This is particularly important because 56% of major providers are prepared to disconnect those that abuse the service. However it also shows how damaging bad marketing can be, with 6.2m people believing they have an "unlimited" service with no restrictions: Quote:
However, consumers are none the wiser with over 10 million broadband customers never reading their FUP and a further 1.8m do not know if they have read it or not. Unsurprisingly 7.5m do not even know their download limit, which is understandable when so few providers clarify it: Quote:
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkkuZyVuAkvTdljRtm.html ![]() Sun Loses Co-Founder to Start-Up Thor Swift Andreas von Bechtolsheim invented Sun’s first product, a desktop workstation. He will now be chairman at Arista Networks. Ashlee Vance Andreas von Bechtolsheim, a brilliant billionaire who has created some of the best-selling computer systems in the industry, is resigning as chief architect of Sun Microsystems to focus on a start-up that is challenging another industry giant, Cisco Systems. Mr. Bechtolsheim’s new company, Arista Networks, has built an ultra-fast network switch that costs one-tenth the price of similar products from Cisco. The hardware, which has already been purchased in small quantities by government labs, universities and Internet start-ups, is aimed squarely at data-oriented organizations like Google that need to wring as much speed as possible from their computing centers. While a number of companies sell competing gear, the pedigree of Arista’s management and its modular, easy-to-update software have given the four-year-old firm instant credibility in Silicon Valley. Mr. Bechtolsheim, who will serve as chairman and chief development officer of Arista, co-founded Sun and invented its first product, a high-powered desktop computer known as a workstation. He went on to start two other companies before returning to Sun four years ago and overhauling its product line. Arista — known as Arastra until it changed its name this week — is expected to announce on Thursday that it has recruited Jayshree Ullal as chief executive. Ms. Ullal left Cisco in May after leading the company’s $10 billion corporate switch business. In addition, the company will name a Stanford University professor, David R. Cheriton, as its chief scientist. Mr. Bechtolsheim and Mr. Cheriton are the sole investors in Arista, and they are known in Silicon Valley as men with a golden touch. In 1996, Cisco acquired a company they started, Granite Systems, for $220 million, and they helped Cisco turn the technology into top-selling products. They formed another start-up, Kealia, to make computer servers, and sold that company to Sun in 2004. Mr. Bechtolsheim remained with Sun and worked on some of its switching products while developing Arista as a side project. Mr. Bechtolsheim and Mr. Cheriton were also early investors in Google and VMware and became billionaires when those companies turned into big successes. With Arista, the pair sought to develop products that took advantage of some of the sophisticated software concepts Mr. Cheriton has explored as an academic. They decided to focus on switches that shuttle Internet traffic using the 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard, which is many times faster than the Gigabit Ethernet standard that dominates data centers today. Switches are the most common hardware used to funnel information between computing systems in a network. The key to Arista’s switches is the structure of the software that manages them. A typical switch from Cisco is rich in features, but has up to 20 million lines of software code and may run on relatively slow processors. Arista breaks all of the major and minor tasks into their own modules that can be updated individually and uses more powerful chips to run it all. Mr. Bechtolsheim said the design would let Arista make quick changes to products — even while they were running — and would also open an interface for customers to more easily add their own features. “My iPhone runs better software than a typical switch,” Mr. Bechtolsheim said. "It is just mind-boggling that the cheapest consumer product has more robust software than what the Internet runs on." In addition, Arista packages its equipment in compact cases that allow more connections at a much cheaper price than Cisco’s bulkier machines. Lean staffing also helps Arista keep its costs down. The Menlo Park, Calif., company has fewer than 50 employees and started shipping systems a few months ago even though it had no formal chief executive. “One mistake a lot of start-ups make with the encouragement of venture capitalists is to hire the whole management team upfront,” said Mr. Bechtolsheim. “You have a lot of people twiddling their thumbs and spending money.” The knocks on Cisco’s expensive gear are nothing new. “Cisco doesn’t price based on cost,” said Joe Skorupa, an analyst at Gartner, a research firm. “They price based on a willingness to pay.” In Cisco’s defense, Inbar Lasser-Raab, a marketing director at the company, said that Cisco had been working on this technology since 2003 and believed it could “provide great value” for customers. Established switch makers like Juniper Networks and Force10 Networks, along with start-ups like Woven Systems, have also charged after the 10 Gigabit Ethernet market for years. Mr. Bechtolsheim said these companies’ products were too expensive or too early in the market. Arista argues that its products are well positioned to provide fast connections to laboratories with large numbers of servers or companies with heavy Web traffic. Ms. Ullal said she expected the market for 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, less than $1 billion today, to grow to as much as $5 billion within three years. Despite higher costs, Cisco remains a dominant force in networking because of its solid reputation. Few companies will risk what amounts to the central nervous system of their networks to an unproven player. But Arista said that labs and Web-centric companies that did custom work would try something new. Early customers include Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Northwestern University and start-ups like BitGravity, an online video delivery company. “In cases where someone comes to market with something compelling, we’re willing to take the risk,” said Perry Wu, BitGravity’s chief executive. If it is successful, Arista would be a prime acquisition target for Cisco or another hardware player like Hewlett-Packard, which has bulked up its networking business. Ms. Ullal and Mr. Bechtolsheim said that was not their goal. “If Andy wanted to sell this company to someone else, he didn’t need me,” Ms. Ullal said. “We are here to build a company.” Mr. Bechtolsheim added that he was willing to finance the venture through to an initial public offering. Mr. Bechtolsheim’s departure will certainly be a big blow to Sun, which is wrestling with declining sales and profits and a plunging stock price. But he said he would retain a part-time advisory role at the company. “It’s my baby,” Mr. Bechtolsheim said. “I will always be associated with Sun.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/te.../23switch.html ![]() Broadcasters Seek to Slow Efforts to Open Vacant TV Airwaves Amy Schatz Broadcasters filed an emergency objection to a plan introduced by the Federal Communications Commission chairman this week, asking the agency to slow down efforts to open up vacant TV airwaves for unlicensed use. Station owners and the four television networks filed an emergency request Friday afternoon, asking the FCC to hold off on its plan to vote on rules to allow the use of those unused TV airwaves – also known as "white spaces" – until everyone has a chance to comment on the findings of a recent report. That FCC engineering report found, according to the agency, that there were not enough significant concerns about interference issues with TV sets and wireless microphones to stop moving ahead with plans to open up the airwaves and set rules for the future gadgets. Broadcasters disagree, however, and said the executive summary tacked on to the front of the engineering report did not match the findings buried deep within the 149-page document. "It would appear that the FCC is misinterpreting the actual data collected by their own engineers," said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, in a statement Thursday. "Any reasonable analysis of the (engineering) report would conclude that unlicensed devices that rely solely on spectrum sensing threaten the viability of clear television reception. Basing public policy on an imprecise Cliffs Notes version of a 149-page report raises troubling questions." On Wednesday, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin released the engineering report and announced plans to vote on rules for the airwaves, which would give guidelines for manufacturers on power limits for future gadgets. The FCC is scheduled to vote on the matter Nov. 4. Broadcasters and the networks want to delay that vote until after they have a chance to rebut the FCC's engineering report. "We just received the request and we're reviewing it," said Robert Kenney, an FCC spokesman, who said it was not consistent with the agency's policy to put out its engineering reports for public comment. "This proceeding has been open for several years and included multiple rounds of testing in the field, which was open to the public and we solicited comment." High tech companies including Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. want the FCC to open up for unlicensed use TV airwaves that will become available next February when the U.S. switches to digital-only TV broadcasts. The companies say that would unleash a whole new generation of wireless gadgets and make it easier and cheaper to provide wireless Internet. Broadcasters, cable companies and wireless microphone users worry that the gadgets will cause interference and have been fighting the plan. The filing Friday came on behalf of the broadcasters association, the Association of Maximum Service Television, which handles technical issues for broadcasters, and the four broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. Fox is owned by News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. "While the below-signed parties have only begun to review the report, it is already clear that the OET report's conclusions are not supported and are in fact contradicted by the underlying data," the emergency petition states. The broadcasters are asking for 45 days to respond to the report, along with 25 days for replies to those comments, which would delay the decision until a new FCC chairman takes over. Under FCC tradition, Mr. Martin is expected to step down when a new president takes over the White House. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122428892359946643.html ![]() FCC Reluctantly Considers Delaying White-Spaces Vote Marguerite Reardon The Federal Communications Commission is considering delaying its November 4 vote on using unlicensed white-space spectrum after broadcasters filed an emergency petition, according to Web site Ars Technica. The article quotes FCC spokesman Rob Kenny as saying the agency is reviewing the broadcasters' request. But the article also made it sound like the FCC wasn't crazy about the idea of delaying the vote. Kenny notes in his comments that the white-space proceeding has been open for several years and there have already been several rounds of testing, which were open to the public for comment. Big technology companies, such as Motorola, Microsoft, and Google, have been lobbying the FCC for more than a year to open up these channels known as white spaces. These slivers of spectrum have been used as buffers between TV stations. But if used, they could provide between 300MHz and 400MHz of unlicensed spectral capacity throughout the country that could be used by anyone. The National Association of Broadcasters has opposed using the buffer spectrum, saying that the use of white spaces will interfere with licensed broadcast channels. Last week, the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology released a report in which it concluded that detection technology along with geo-location technology worked well enough in proof-of-concept devices to avoid interference issues. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin also announced his support in favor of opening up white spaces for unlicensed use and said the issue will be voted on at the November 4 FCC meeting. But the NAB and the nation's three major TV broadcasters argue that the report's findings indicate there are interference issues. On Friday, they filed an emergency petition asking the FCC to launch a 70-day public comment cycle on the report. "The widespread WSD (white-space device) sensing failures, all documented in the report, rebut the report's conclusion that there has been a 'proof of concept'," the NAB said in its filing. "There is no basis for concluding that devices that rely on spectrum sensing only, without geo-location, are feasible." The NAB also argues that the FCC has sought comment after other technical reports were issued in the past. For example, the group noted that the agency asked for public comment about a study on 3G, or third-generation, wireless use in the 2,500MHz to 2,690MHz band in 2001. It also asked for comment after issuing studies on media ownership in 2007. Of course, it should come as little surprise that the broadcasters are unhappy with the FCC's support for white spaces. They have been fighting the proceeding tooth and nail from the beginning. While broadcasters say they oppose the use of white spaces because of interference issues, I wonder if they are also afraid that opening up this spectrum might hurt their business models years into the future. The companies pushing hardest for white spaces are companies like Microsoft and Google. Today these companies don't compete directly with broadcasters. But as more video is distributed via the Internet, there's a chance that they could become competitors in the future. Google already competes in a minor way with its YouTube site. The white-space spectrum, which penetrates easily through walls and provides high capacity, could be used to extend broadband services wirelessly. Perhaps a bigger threat to broadcasters are the companies that haven't been created yet. Opening up the white-space spectrum for free use could help spur the creation of new companies that could eventually compete with them. In many ways this is exactly what Chairman Martin hopes will happen. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10070373-94.html ![]() Study: No Change In Indie Radio Airplay FMQB The American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) and the Future of Music Coalition (FMC) have released the results of a study they conducted regarding the progress toward compliance with the 2007 FCC Consent Decree and Rules of Engagement. Stemming from Elliot Spitzer’s high-profile payola investigation, the FCC in 2007 signed agreements with four major commercial radio broadcasters (CBS Radio, Clear Channel, Entercom and Citadel) that was designed to increase the representation of independent music on commercial radio. Around the same time, the independent music community, led by A2IM and the FMC, signed a separate "Rules Of Engagement" agreement with the radio chains promising to play more local and independent artists. According to A2IM and FMC, not much has changed since 2007. Their study shows that 92 percent of independent labels report no change in their relationship with commercial radio since the settlement, and nearly half of respondents reported that payola remains a determining factor in commercial radio airplay. Roughly 1 in 4 respondents said they have been approached, either directly or indirectly, with requests for payola since the FCC settlement. "To paint 100 percent negative picture is wrong," comments Daniel Glass, the chair of A2IM’s Radio Committee and owner of Glassnote Entertainment Group. "There are success stories. But we are disappointed to see independents are still reporting lack of access and cooperation, despite the new agreements." "Radio is still a vital medium with a good deal of untapped promise," added FMC Executive Director Ann Chaitovitz. "This report represents important groundwork to ensure that radio is accessible to local and independent artists and serves its local communities. By documenting the historic and ongoing barriers between commercial radio and independent music, we help ensure accountability and hopefully create more favorable conditions for independent artists and labels." Meanwhile, independent labels remain optimistic about the situation, pointing to the success of independent music on Internet and satellite radio as an example of a bright spot. "Rebranding radio as cool and creating a stronger bond with their local listeners is vital to the health of radio," said A2IM President Rich Bengloff. "We invite radio programmers to read this report and open their minds – and playlists – to the opportunities presented by playing more independent music." You can examine the full study here. http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=945407 ![]() Black and White TV Generation have Monochrome Dreams Richard Alleyne Do you dream in black and white? If so, the chances are you are over 55 and were brought up watching a monochrome television set. New research suggests that the type of television you watched as a child has a profound effect on the colour of your dreams. While almost all under 25s dream in colour, thousands of over 55s, all of whom were brought up with black and white sets, often dream in monchrome - even now. The findings suggest that the moment when Dorothy passes out of monochrome Kansas and awakes in Technicolor Oz may have had more significance for our subconscious than we literally ever dreamed of. Eva Murzyn, a psychology student at Dundee University who carried out the study, said: "It is a fascinating hypothesis. "It suggests there could be a critical period in our childhood when watching films has a big impact on the way dreams are formed. "What is even more interesting is that before the advent of black and white television all the evidence suggests we were dreaming in colour." Research from 1915 through to the 1950s suggested that the vast majority of dreams are in black and white but the tide turned in the sixties, and later results suggested that up to 83 per cent of dreams contain some colour. Since this period also marked the transition between black-and-white film and TV and widespread Technicolor, an obvious explanation was that the media had been priming the subjects' dreams. However it was always controversial and differences between the studies prevented the researchers from drawing any firm conclusions. But now Miss Murzyn believes she has proved the link. She re-looked at the old studies and combined them with a survey of her own of more 60 people, half of which were over 55 and half of which were under 25. She asked the volunteers to answer a questionnaire on the colour of their dreams and their childhood exposure to film and TV. The subjects then recorded different aspects of their dreams in a diary every morning. Miss Murzyn found there was no significant difference between results drawn from the questionnaires and the dream diaries - thus proving that the previous studies were comparable. She then analysed her own data to find out whether an early exposure to black-and-white TV could still have a lasting effect on her subjects' dreams, 40 years later. Only 4.4 per cent of the under-25s' dreams were black and white. The over-55s who had had access to colour TV and film during their childhood also reported a very low proportion of just 7.3 per cent. But the over-55s who had only had access to black-and-white media reported dreaming in black and white roughly a quarter of the time. Even though they would have spent only a few hours a day watching TV or films, their attention and emotional engagement would have been heightened during this time, leaving a deeper imprint on their mind, Miss Murzyn told the New Scientist. "The crucial time is between three and 10 when we all begin to have the ability to dream," she said. "Television and films which by their very nature are interesting and emotionally engaging and even dreamlike. So when you dream you may copy what you have seen on the screen. "I have even had a computer game player who dreams as if he is in front of a computer screen." Miss Murzyn concedes it's still impossible to verify whether the dreams are actually in black-and-white, or whether media exposure somehow alters the way the mind reconstructs the dreams once we wake. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...cidream117.xml ![]() In Hollywood, the Wall St. Plots Will Thicken Brooks Barnes Just a few months ago, Lifetime Television started adapting the Candace Bushnell novel “Trading Up” into a movie, figuring an aspirational story about the entitled rich and their limousine culture nailed the cultural moment. The setting would be New York, of course — or, as it is described by Ms. Bushnell, a city where “the streets seemed to sparkle with the gold dust filtered down from a billion trades in a boomtown economy.” Time for a rewrite. Suddenly, across Hollywood, the stock market is not such a sexy subject anymore — at least not in a yearning sense. “Overnight, it was like the script had been written two years ago,” said Arturo Interian, Lifetime’s vice president for original movies. Mr. Interian is still keen on the movie, with one major revision: fewer discussions about stock, more about playing it safe with bonds. And how about throwing in a pariah chief executive? As they have watched their 401(k)’s shrivel in recent weeks, entertainment executives have started to grapple with how best to reflect the global economic crisis in movie and television story lines, or whether to bring the topic up at all. The last time Wall Street stumbled badly — when the high-tech bubble burst — Hollywood delivered movies like “Antitrust,” featuring a Bill Gates-styled villain who literally kills for profits, and small-budget efforts like “Boiler Room,” about soul-destroying stock hustlers. Not long after the 1987 crash, Wall Street villains were so plentiful that no one blinked an eye when the reason given for Patrick Swayze’s murder in “Ghost” was that an office mate simply wanted his computer password. This time around, some television outlets like Lifetime — and the “ripped from the headlines” television series “Law & Order” — are trying to remain as topical as possible by tweaking their programming and marketing on the fly. Martha Stewart has already incorporated a new money-saving segment into her daily how-to program. Ms. Stewart said in an e-mail message that she had directed her company to develop content that would “get viewers through these tough economic times.” At 20th Century Fox, a blue-collar television comedy called “Two-Dollar Beer” is suddenly prominent, while the movie division just escalated production of a previously announced sequel to “Wall Street,” Oliver Stone’s 1987 portrait of out-of-control corporate raiders. A new writer will reshape the sequel’s story line to reflect the recent turmoil of the financial markets. Other pockets of Hollywood are going in the opposite direction, looking for scripts that offer pure escapism. Film studios in particular are saying that they want more silly comedies and even musicals. Ideas set in fantasy worlds are “all some studios want to hear about,” said Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning screenwriter whose next film is a James Bond picture, “Quantum of Solace.” The modern movie and television factory works much farther in advance than it did in decades past, limiting the ability for studios and networks to quickly reflect the economic chaos on screen. Studio movies often take up to three years to move from conception to release because of the increasingly complicated financing required by soaring production and marketing costs. Films about the 2003 Iraq invasion, executives note, did not start arriving in force until 2007. A typical television series is prepared about seven episodes in advance, which is not a big change from years past, but the allotment of those episodes has shifted drastically. Networks broadcast so many reruns between fresh episodes — a cost-saving strategy — that anything produced now has almost no chance of being shown until February or March. “If we put in references to the economy now, it could be totally outdated by the time those episodes air,” said Mark Pedowitz, president of ABC Studios, which produces the drama “Dirty Sexy Money.” Mr. Pedowitz said he envisioned no tweaks to the format of that show, which revolves around a fabulously wealthy New York family. (It may be a moot point anyway; the series is struggling in the ratings and faces cancellation soon if its audience continues to decline.) CW, which runs “Gossip Girl,” about Upper East Side private school students, says the show’s plot will continue to be as soaked with Wall Street money as ever. The businessman villain has been a film archetype since before the talkies. Indeed, in 1917, the Triangle Distributing Corporation released a silent picture called “Greed,” part of its “Seven Deadly Sins” series, in which a stock market schemer leads a young couple astray. Hollywood has often had trouble coming up with true bad guys, but diabolical business people dot the American Film Institute’s list of the top 50 movie heroes and villains of all time. (Gordon Gekko from “Wall Street” is No. 24.) Still, most Hollywood veterans advise against rushing too many businessman bad guys into production — at least for now. “In bad times especially, people do not want to see on the screen what they’re living through,” said Nicole Clemens, a longtime agent who runs International Creative Management’s motion picture literary department. Many people in the movie business hopped on the escapism bandwagon two weekends ago when the Walt Disney Studios picture about talking dogs, “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” trampled two of the industry’s biggest stars. Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, starring in the terrorism-themed “Body of Lies,” came in a distant third behind the goofy family movie and “Quarantine,” a teenage horror movie. Last weekend, the talking dogs were in second place behind “Max Payne,” an action movie based on a video game. Ms. Clemens said that she saw one exception to the warning against using too many business villains: the revenge picture. “When people feel powerless in their own lives they want to see movies where protagonists are taking back the power,” she said. “But I still see no new trend for big business to be some new type of villain. It’s been a villain for a long time.” Movie historians note that the Great Depression led to a flood of carefree pictures. Shirley Temple tried to tap dance the nation’s troubles away. The 1930s featured gangster films, lavish musicals (“The Wizard of Oz”) and screwball comedies in which the rich were portrayed as lovable fools. Jeanine Basinger, chairwoman of the film studies department at Wesleyan University, said that studios had the best luck dealing with economic issues when they did so with subtlety. For instance, “It Happened One Night,” the 1934 Frank Capra movie about a spoiled heiress running away from her family, is a romantic comedy that hints at the social turmoil of the Great Depression: a wandering thief desperate for money; a passing train populated with hobos. “Subtlety has always been the key,” she said. “Let’s look on the bright side,” said Bruce Berman, chairman and chief executive of Village Roadshow Pictures Entertainment. “Bad times have spawned some really great movies in the past.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/bu...hollywood.html ![]() A Tour of the Bay Area’s Immigrant Demimonde, Available on YouTube A. O. SCOTT Beautifully shot and awkwardly acted, “The Princess of Nebraska” follows a young Chinese woman who calls herself Sasha through an intense few days in San Francisco. To anyone who asks, Sasha, played by Ling Li, says she wants “to see the city,” and Wayne Wang’s camera takes in its neighborhoods with unshowy affection. But there is a lot more going on than tourism. Sasha, who has spent the previous months as an exchange student in Omaha, is pregnant from an encounter back home in Beijing. She has come to California to figure out what to do and to find Boshen (Brian Danforth), an American activist who had also, in China, been in love with Yang, the mysterious opera student who is the father of Sasha’s child. This, along with Sasha’s night tour of the immigrant demimonde in the Bay Area, where she befriends prostitutes and thinks about joining their ranks, is the stuff of Dreiserian melodrama. Mr. Wang, a highly adaptable filmmaker whose movies swerve from the low-budget “Chan Is Missing” to the Jennifer Lopez vehicle “Maid in Manhattan,” prefers the stripped-down naturalism that has become a kind of default style for socially conscious international art cinema. Themes of globalization and political transformation are embedded in this anecdotal, individual story, occasionally popping to the surface in stilted, unconvincing conversations. These moments of obviousness are balanced with an overall feeling of gritty lyricism, and the result — interesting if not especially revelatory — is a film that would not seem out of place at a festival somewhere. But it is showing on YouTube ( http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=rKgbIz6CM_E ), having had its premiere there on Friday night. It may seem, at first glance, that bypassing theaters shows a lack of faith in the quality of the movie. But as of Sunday afternoon, the film had attracted more than 140,000 views, which is a larger audience than it would have found in a limited art-house release in New York and Los Angeles. (And the film is not notably worse than what you might see in those theaters.) Whether all those views reflect people watching until the end is hard to know, but some of their reactions are collected in comments on the site, ranging from thoughtful analyses to “THIS HAS NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH NEBRASKA.” Is the YouTube release of a feature film by a well-known director a gimmick or a harbinger of things to come? A little of both, probably. It’s not clear how a film given away free can make money, but for viewers, the experience is not bad. Mr. Wang employed a wide-aspect ratio, and if you blow the image up to full screen and select the high-quality-video option, you can appreciate the cinematic qualities of his work, which are emphasized by his incorporation of images captured on Sasha’s cellphone. Even with a big desktop monitor and a good pair of speakers or earphones, it isn’t quite like going to the movies, but the movie itself may benefit from the comparison since it would be easier to skip if you had to buy a ticket. http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/movies/20wang.html ![]() Timelapse Vid Turns Oz into Tilt-Shift Toy Town ![]() Stoners, Vegans and a Junky Elephant Conquer BitTorrent enigmax An animated Norwegian movie featuring sex, violence, stoners, a junkie elephant and even vegans, has been panned by UK critics. However, much to the dismay of the distributor, file-sharers don’t agree with this assessment and have downloaded it 500,000 times, which the movie’s producer thinks is ‘Great!’ A reviewer at The Times called it a “misanthropic and foul-mouthed movie” containing “the first graphic depiction of sexual intercourse between two CGI cartoon characters”. Hmmm, maybe not the first, but nevertheless the reviewer concludes “Like everything else in the film, a British-Norwegian co-production, it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.” And that was one of the kind reviews. It’s fair to say that “Free Jimmy” hasn’t been well received by the British press reviewers, even though it features voice-overs from the likes of Woody Harrelson and Simon Pegg. So, does this mean that the movie has to fade away into obscurity? Not at all. ‘Free Jimmy’ was released previously in Norwegian language and features four stoners, five vegans, three mobsters and four hunters competing to free a malnourished and circus-enslaved Russian junkie elephant. Which element the British press objected to most is debatable but what is clear, though, is that even if Fleet Street’s finest think the movie is dire, not everyone does. Time Out called it “undeniably touching, poignant” and Internet pirates seems to like the prospect of animated sex, drugs and violence too. Quite a bit in fact. The producer of the movie, Lars Hellebust, told Dagbladet that the UK distributor, in contrast to his own feelings, was pretty upset that the movie was being heartily pirated on the Internet: “The distributor in England called and was despairing over the fact that thousands of people had downloaded it, but I just said ‘Great!’” It seems that Lars appreciates that, even though the critics have been a bit sniffy, there are other avenues to be explored when trying to get exposure. Lars says that the more people discuss the movie, the greater its potential audience and in this case, file-sharing really can be a useful promotional tool. So just how much exposure is this movie getting on BitTorrent? Although ‘Free Jimmy’ only came out officially in the UK on October 17th 2008, it has been available on the trackers in DVDRIP form for roughly 500 days (16 months) already, clocking up very nearly 500,000 downloads. Clearly the presence of stoners, four letter words or even vegans in a movie isn’t enough to put pirates off. Hell no. The most popular pirate version of the movie came from the one and only aXXo, and those releases are always hot, no matter what the critics say. However, Lars is still optimistic that people will dig deep. “If they really like it they won’t be satisfied just owning a computer file, they will also buy the DVD,” he said with his fingers crossed, hoping that any of the early downloaders can remember the movie from more than 16 months ago. An official DVD will be released in time for Christmas. Just don’t send one to the kids. http://torrentfreak.com/stoners-vega...orrent-081024/ ![]() Rudy Ray Moore, 81, a Precursor of Rap, Dies Douglas Martin Rudy Ray Moore, whose standup comedy, records and movies related earthy rhyming tales of a vivid gaggle of characters as they lurched from sexual escapade to sexual escapade in a boisterous tradition, born in Africa, that helped shape today’s hip-hop, died Sunday in Akron, Ohio. He was 81. The cause was complications of diabetes, his Web site said. Mr. Moore called himself the Godfather of Rap because of the number of hip-hop artists who used snippets of his recordings in theirs, performed with him or imitated him. These included Dr. Dre, Big Daddy Kane and 2 Live Crew. Snoop Dogg thanked Mr. Moore in liner notes to the 2006 release of the soundtrack to Mr. Moore’s 1975 film, “Dolemite,” saying, “Without Rudy Ray Moore, there would be no Snoop Dogg, and that’s for real.” Most critics refrained from overpraising “Dolemite,” with the possible exception of John Leland, who wrote in The New York Times in 2002 that it “remains the ‘Citizen Kane’ of kung fu pimping movies.” The film, made for $100,000, nonetheless became a cult classic among aficionados of so-called blaxploitation movies — films that so exaggerate black stereotypes that they might plausibly be said to transcend those stereotypes. Very little of Mr. Moore’s work in any medium reached mainstream audiences, largely because his rapid-fire rhyming salaciousness exceeded the wildest excesses of even Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor. His comedy records in the 1960s and ’70s — most featuring nude photographs of him and more than one woman in suggestive poses — were kept behind record store counters in plain brown wrappers and had to be explicitly requested. But Mr. Moore could be said to represent a profound strand of African-American folk art. One of his standard stories concerns a monkey who uses his wiles and an accommodating elephant to fool a lion. The tale, which originated in West Africa, became a basis for an influential study by the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., “The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism.” In one of his few brushes with a national audience, Mr. Moore, in a startlingly cleaned-up version, told the story on “The Arsenio Hall Show” in the early 1990s. Other characters he described were new, almost always dirtier renderings in the tradition of trickster stories represented by Brer Rabbit and the cunning slave John, who outwitted his master to win freedom. Mr. Moore updated the story of an old minstrel show favorite, Peetie (which he changed to “Petey”) Wheatstraw, a k a the Devil’s Son-in-Law and the High Sheriff of Hell. Others in his cast were Pimpin’ Sam and Hurricane Annie. Mr. Moore became a master at “toasting,” a tradition of black rhymed storytelling over a beat in which the tallest tale — or most outlandish insult — wins. Rudolph Frank Moore was born on March 17, 1927, in Fort Smith, Ark., where he was soon singing in church. He moved to Cleveland at 15, found work peeling potatoes and washing dishes and won a talent contest. He was drafted in 1950 and performed for his fellow soldiers as the Harlem Hillbilly, singing country songs in R&B style. After his discharge, he resumed his pre-Army act as the turbaned dancer Prince Dumarr. He made some records as a singer under the name Rudy Moore, doing songs like “Hully Gully Papa,” who liked to “coffee grind real slow.” His life changed in 1970 when he found himself listening to the stories of Rico, a regular at the record store in Hollywood, Calif., where Mr. Moore worked. He was particularly captivated by Rico’s rude, rollicking stories of Dolemite, a name derived from dolomite, a mineral used in some cements. Mr. Moore perfected the Dolemite stories in comedy routines, most of which he recorded, then spent all his record earnings to make the movie “Dolemite.” A sequel, “The Human Tornado,” followed. A second sequel, “The Dolemite Explosion,” also starring Mr. Moore, may be released later this year. Fallout Entertainment bought the rights last year to remake the original movie. Bill Fishman of Fallout said some of Mr. Moore’s famous lines would be used. Mr. Moore is survived by four siblings; his daughter, Yvette Wesson, known as Rusty; and his 98-year-old mother, Lucille. Violent scenes in Mr. Moore’s movies included a man’s guts being ripped out by another character’s bare hands in “Dolemite.” Almost none of the dialogue in any of his movies can be printed in a family newspaper, not to mention the language of his more than 16 comedy albums — or even many of their titles. But what is probably his most famous line is also his most typical: Dolemite is my name And rappin’ and tappin’ That’s my game I’m young and free And just as bad as I wanna be. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/movies/22moore.html ![]() All the Celebrities You Want, on Your Cellphone Laura M. Holson When Kim Kardashian, famous for being famous, sliced her foot on a piece of glass in a New York hotel room in August, the gossip Web site TMZ.com alerted fans over their cellphones. Traffic to the site jumped 10 percent within minutes. Ms. Kardashian also outranked her friend-turned-rival, Paris Hilton, as the most-searched celebrity in August on Yahoo’s mobile service (traffic surged after she danced with the Pussycat Dolls in Las Vegas). Best known for a sex tape made with her boyfriend, Ms. Kardashian has achieved something on the smallest screen that has eluded her in her television career: an adoring audience. Can other would-be celebrities be far behind? Celebrity gossip has long been a profitable staple of print, radio and television. More recently, it has made Web sites like Popsugar.com and PerezHilton.com some of the more popular destinations. But in recent months, as consumers started snapping up Web-enabled smartphones like the iPhone, the cellphone has become the latest medium to feed the appetite for up-to-the-second celebrity gossip. TMZ.com started a mobile offering last April and watched traffic soar there to 1.1 million visitors in July, eclipsing the mobile audience of People.com, the Web site of the pop culture magazine, according to Nielsen Mobile, which tracks mobile sites. People.com, which charges $3.99 to access fashion photos and celebrity videos through various wireless carriers, recognized the shift in behavior and is changing its approach. It is building a free, ad-supported service to be introduced in November. E!, the entertainment news cable channel and Web site, also offers celebrity news for cellphone users. This year, it began offering text and alerts and has already signed up 30,000 subscribers, sending them as many as three alerts a day. And, in a new twist, E! broadcast live to mobile phones from the red carpet at the prime-time Emmy Awards in September. Celebrity news everywhere and all the time is a natural evolution as technology makes it easier and cheaper to access media on smartphones. But at the same time, with even politics taking on the air of a reality television show — Sarah Palin came in No. 9 among Yahoo’s mobile celebrity searches soon after she was named the Republican vice presidential candidate, according to Yahoo — executives in the industry expect that smartphones will become fundamental in the proliferation of celebrity gossip. “We are all going to be walking television stations,” said Jeff Sellinger, the general manager for CBS Mobile, which sends out three daily reports on celebrity parties and red carpet premieres in and around Los Angeles. “In the next wave, the not-too-distant future, we are going to be able to broadcast anything live from the street.” One of the most popular mobile sites for celebrity news is Yahoo Entertainment, which recently had 2.9 million visitors, according to Nielsen. Lee Ott, global director of Yahoo’s mobile search strategy and services, said that 4 out of every 10 people used oneSearch, Yahoo’s mobile service, to find entertainment and celebrity news. By contrast, Yahoo Sports had 2 million visitors and Yahoo Finance had 1.5 million, Nielsen reported. Such services are at the intersection of two powerful demographic trends: the young are entertainment obsessed, and they are addicted to their mobile phones. But the audience is already starting to tend closer to middle age. Verizon Wireless estimates that two years ago, mobile content was consumed mostly by cellphone users older than 25 years old. Today that figure is more like 34 years old. “People are getting more adept at using their phones, which too are getting better,” said John Harrobin, senior vice president for Verizon’s digital media marketing at Verizon Wireless. The increasing proliferation of smartphones is what encouraged executives at People.com to amend their approach to celebrity news. For years, consumers have been paying $3.99 to download People’s mobile application through Verizon Wireless and other carriers, which was available only on conventional mobile phones. But as smartphones, with their faster connections and improved graphics, became more popular, particularly among women, People.com explored the idea this year of retooling its Web site to make it more user friendly for owners of BlackBerrys and iPhones. People, like several news organizations, including its rival E!, is creating a specific application for the iPhone dedicated to celebrity news. “What we hear from women is that they go online for news and they are very interested in celebrities. We want to tap into that,” said Fran Hauser, president of People Digital. Studies conducted by researchers for People found that 30 percent of magazine readers now use their mobile phone to access People.com. (Headlines and celebrity photographs are the most popular items.) Most important, though, accessing the new mobile site is free, which People executives hope will mean more traffic for People.com, allowing it to charge more for ads. When it retools the Web site for a mobile audience, People will add a function that places banner ads at the top and bottom of the cellphone screen when pages are accessed on a palm-size device. People.com’s mobile site had 771,000 visitors recently, said Nielsen, lower than rivals like E! Online whose mobile site attracted 1.2 million visitors. “We are getting past the early adopters and attracting a more mainstream audience,” said John Najarian, executive vice president for digital media and business development for the Comcast Entertainment Group, the division of Comcast that owns E! Despite the focus now on young, rich and outrageous personalities, everyone will be fair game in the future. Celebrities like Tom Hanks and Bono have successfully guarded their private lives. But protecting quiet moments will be harder going forward, say talent agents, as the growing number of high-quality cameras makes everyone a potential paparazzo. “The talent who tries to keep their lives private will have to do it more so,” said Lewis Henderson, a senior vice president for digital media at William Morris. “You can go live right now,” he added, referring to video-enabled phones which make it easy to upload fresh clips to the Internet. “It’s the world we live in and it brings new challenges,” he said. “You can’t tell clients to stay inside.” It could get even worse for them, thanks to new services for the cellphone. Seesmic, a video blogging company based in San Francisco, is planning to begin a service where cellphone users can record a video of a celebrity at dinner or in a conversation, then send it to the Internet so that it can be discussed among friends in Seesmic’s network. As more mobile phones have location-tracking abilities, spreading the news of celebrity sightings, supplemented with a photo or video upload, cannot be far off. “I think we will have to be very careful,” said Loïc Le Meur, chief executive of Seesmic. “Some people will love following celebrities around.” But then some, like Ms. Kardashian, might not mind so much. (In a worlds-colliding moment, she discussed her wounded foot days later on the red carpet at a party in Los Angeles for the pink BlackBerry Curve.) Said Mr. Henderson, the William Morris executive, “For those clients who want to exploit themselves, it gives them so much more opportunity.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/bu...a/20celeb.html ![]() Swedish Hockey Fans Delay Match With Dildo Downpour Supporters of the Stockholm-based AIK ice hockey team scored an unusual hat trick of heckling on Tuesday night featuring dildos, profane banners, and a giant inflatable penis. Ahead of Tuesday’s match against Leksand, the website for AIK’s unofficial supporter group had instructed fans to bring dildos to the match to remind Huokko of the sex scandal which plagued him earlier in the year, according to the Expressen newspaper. As one of Leksand’s top-scoring defencemen and a former member of Sweden's national team, Huokko is known for putting the biscuit in the basket. But back in June, Huokko’s reputation for “scoring” took on a different twist when a sexually-charged video clip featuring the 34-year-old blueliner and his girlfriend ended up on the internet. Huokko had recorded the clip on his mobile phone, and wasn’t surprised to find it spreading like wildfire on the internet after the phone was stolen. “It was a private thing between me and my girl,” he said at the time. “That’s what people do when it comes to sex.” Before Tuesday’s match even started, AIK fans had already littered the ice with dozens of dildos, causing a slight delay as crews worked to clear the sex toys from the playing surface. AIK fans also unfurled a banner reading “Bend over bitch!”, which was accompanied by a giant inflatable penis. Vulgar chants directed at Huokko continued throughout the match, which Leksand ended up losing 3-2. AIK club management was aware of their fans’ plans for knocking Huokko off his game, but elected not to intervene. “We’d also heard mention of it, but we decided that it would only be worse if we went out and told the fans they were absolutely not allowed to throw dildos on the ice,” said AIK club head Mats Hedenström to the newspaper. Lars G. Karlsson, an official from Sweden’s ice hockey association, called the sex-toy storm “a non-issue”. “It didn’t affect play at all. People barely noticed it,” he said. And despite the AIK supporters’ best efforts, Huokko took the mocking in stride. “For me it was just a regular hockey game. It was no problem,” he said following the match. “I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.” http://www.thelocal.se/15138/20081022/ ![]() The Day the Queen Got a Google Doodle Two worlds collided when HM visited the web company's exotic HQ, says Bryony Gordon They call it the Google 16 - the number of pounds that you put on when you start working at Google. This is possibly because the canteen food at the world's most famous web company is quite unlike the canteen food anywhere I have worked. Come to think of it, canteen is entirely the wrong word for it. At the search engine's London headquarters, the place where staff eat is more of a restaurant. A gourmet one. For breakfast, Googlers - as the company's 10,000 staff worldwide call themselves - can dine on smoked salmon or sushi. There are pastries, cereals, fruit, and obviously you can have a fry-up. At lunch and dinner a selection of roasts, wraps, salads and cold meats is on offer. There are two huge fridges stocked full of beer, which Googlers can enjoy out on the palm-tree lined roof terrace overlooking Victoria station. And it is all free. It is unlikely that the Queen asked for a beer when she visited on Thursday, but there would have been a huge selection of other drinks to choose from. Should the vast expanse of the restaurant have intimidated her, she could have visited one of the many delis situated over the company's three floors. There she could make herself some popcorn, eat some Ben and Jerry's ice cream and try to keep herself away from the Kettle Chips and Green & Black's chocolate and marshmallow dispenser. Oh, and the cheeseboard. Every deli has a cheeseboard. It is a sign of Google's importance that Her Majesty chose to pay the company a visit. Since it was started in an American garage 10 years ago by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two university friends, it has turned from a simple search engine into a verb that has invaded our everyday lexicon. The company recently catalogued its trillionth web page and has branched out into Google Earth, Google Maps and now the Google phone, among other things. Two years ago, it acquired YouTube for $1 billion. The company's annual revenue is almost $17 billion. Her Majesty, who was honoured with a Google Doodle, or customised logo featuring her image, is following in the footsteps of Barack Obama and John McCain, though they visited the "Googleplex" in California. There, staff can swim in two pools, play on the volleyball court, get their laundry done, have their hair cut and eat in 11 cafeterias. They can skateboard around the New York office. The London office is pretty impressive, too. It is on Buckingham Palace Road, a short walk from the Queen's home, yet they may as well be on different planets. Her Majesty arrived in a smart turquoise suit, matching hat and black patent court shoes. Had she truly wanted to be part of Generation Google (she is a YouTube fan and emails her grandchildren) then jeans, T-shirt and edgy trainers would have been more appropriate. Certainly, none of the Googlers dressed up for her visit. Still, they probably refrained from sprawling on the bean-bags and hammocks as she and the Duke of Edinburgh were shown a YouTube clip of a baby with an infectious laugh. Every Googler has a laptop, so they can work wherever they want in the office. There are big red phone boxes for employees to have private conversations with friends. Whether the Queen had a free massage I don't know. Nor can I see why the Googlers should have one either - frankly, it is hard to see why anybody working there would ever end up with stress-related problems. They don't have a gym, though the company did give everybody bicycles last year, and £25 a month towards a gym membership. But who would want to go to the gym when there is a games room where you can play ping-pong, pool and table football? A projector beams Guitar Hero on to the wall. Arcade games are on offer for all. A webcam is fitted in the room - not to monitor how long you are in it but so that staff can see if it is free. It is not surprising that Forbes has named Google the best place to work in the world for several years running. Employees are happy there - how on Google Earth could they not be? But for those of us seething with jealousy, we should perhaps heed the words of one Googler. "We work as hard as we play. They give us all these things so that they can keep us in the office. Then again, I do look around some days and think: why would I ever want to leave here? That's a pretty good place to be in, work-wise." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected...dlqueen117.xml ![]() Britain's Freedoms Under Threat from 'Big Brother Security State', Warns Director of Public Prosecutions Steve Doughty The chief prosecutor has warned the surveillance society is threatening to 'break the back of freedom'. Sir Ken Macdonald, Director of Public Prosecutions, said the state was poised to take powers to keep information on everyone and 'we might end up living with something we can't bear.' His message - delivered ten days before he steps down as head of the Crown Prosecution Service - was a parting shot at ministers who aim to make every phone call, email, test message and internet visit available to police and security services. Sir Ken said: 'We need to take very great care not to fall into a way of life in which freedom's back is broken by the relentless pressure of a security state.' We're watching you: An East German Stasi officer listens in on a couple in a scene from the Oscar-winning film The Lives Of Others The warning comes amid growing public concern over state snooping. Some 4.4million people - many of them non-criminals - are on a DNA database, CCTV cameras routinely film pedestrians and motorists and the Government continues to plan an ID card system. Last week Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was accused of planning surveillance on a Big Brother scale when she announced moves to give police and security services access to all private electronic communications. Sir Ken attacked the spread of surveillance in a CPS lecture. He said: 'Let me in my final public speech as DPP repeat my call for levelheadedness and for legislative restraint in an age of dangerous movements.' While technology had brought immeasurable benefits, Sir Ken added, it 'also gives the state enormous powers of access to knowledge and information about each one of us and the ability to collect and store it at will. Every second of every day in everything we do.' The DPP said: 'Of course modern technology is of critical importance to the struggle against serious crime. Used wisely, it can protect us. 'But we need to understand that decisions taken in the next few months and years about how the state may use these powers, and to what extent, are likely to be irreversible. 'We should take very great care to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we can't bear.' Sir Ken said the best way to face down terrorist threats was to strengthen democratic institutions and the rule of law. His period as DPP had seen a relentless struggle against terrorism and a conviction rate 'unmatched in the fair trial world.' It had been done 'with full respect for our historical norms and our liberal constitution'. He added: 'It is difficult to see who will maintain a cool head if governments do not. Or who will protect our constitution if governments unwittingly disarm it.' Tories praised the speech. Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'Sir Ken has been at the forefront of our counterterrorism effort for several years, so he knows the security challenges we face. 'This Government's approach has all too often proved cavalier - unjustified powers, sprawling databases and excessive use of surveillance powers risk undermining both our security and our way of life.' The Home Office said last night: 'The Government agrees with the DPP that technology and communications data is critically important in tackling all forms of serious crime as well as in the fight against terrorism. 'The Government also agrees that care is needed to agree what safeguards are needed, in addition to the many we have in place already, to provide a solid legal framework which protects civil liberties. 'The Home Secretary made it very clear last week that the Government will consult widely with the public and all interested parties to set out emerging problems with technology, the important capability gaps that we need to address in collecting data and to look at the possible solutions.' Sir Ken will be succeeded next month by human rights lawyer Keir Starmer. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti....html?ITO=1490 ![]() Passports Will be Needed to Buy Mobile Phones David Leppard Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society. A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say. The move is targeted at monitoring the owners of Britain’s estimated 40m prepaid mobile phones. They can be purchased with cash by customers who do not wish to give their names, addresses or credit card details. The pay-as-you-go phones are popular with criminals and terrorists because their anonymity shields their activities from the authorities. But they are also used by thousands of law-abiding citizens who wish to communicate in private. The move aims to close a loophole in plans being drawn up by GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, to create a huge database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain. The “Big Brother” database would have limited value to police and MI5 if it did not store details of the ownership of more than half the mobile phones in the country. Contingency planning for such a move is already thought to be under way at Vodafone, where 72% of its 18.5m UK customers use pay-as-you-go. The office of Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, said it anticipated that a compulsory mobile phone register would be unveiled as part of a law which ministers would announce next year. “With regards to the database that would contain details of all mobile users, including pay-as-you-go, we would expect that this information would be included in the database proposed in the draft Communications Data Bill,” a spokeswoman said. Simon Davies, of Privacy International, said he understood that several mobile phone firms had discussed the proposed database in talks with government officials. As The Sunday Times revealed earlier this month, GCHQ has already been provided with up to £1 billion to work on the pilot stage of the Big Brother database, which will see thousands of “black boxes” installed on communications lines provided by Vodafone and BT as part of a pilot interception programme. The proposals have sparked a fierce backlash inside Whitehall. Senior officials in the Home Office have privately warned that the database scheme is impractical, disproportionate and potentially unlawful. The revolt last week forced Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, to delay announcing plans for the database until next year. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4969312.ece ![]() Labor's Web Gag 'Worse Than Iran' Asher Moses The Federal Government is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the internet, which experts say will break the internet while doing little to stop people from accessing illegal material such as child pornography. Internet providers and the government's own tests have found that presently available filters are not capable of adequately distinguishing between legal and illegal content and can degrade internet speeds by up to 86 per cent. Documents obtained by Fairfax Media show the office of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, tried to bully ISP staff into suppressing their criticisms of the plan. Senator Conroy has since last year's election victory remained tight-lipped on the specifics of his $44.2 million policy but, grilled by a Senate Estimates committee this week, he said the Government was looking at forcing ISPs to implement a two-tiered filtering system. The first tier, which internet users would not be able to opt out of, would block all "illegal material". Senator Conroy has previously said Australians would be able to opt out of any filters to obtain "uncensored access to the internet". The second tier, which is optional, would filter out content deemed inappropriate for children, such as pornography. But neither filter tier will be capable of censoring content obtained over peer-to-peer file sharing networks, which account for an estimated 60 per cent of internet traffic. Senator Conroy said Britain, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand had all implemented similar filtering systems. However, in all cases, participation by ISPs was optional and the filtering was limited in scope to predominantly child pornography. Colin Jacobs, chair of the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia said: "I'm not exaggerating when I say that this model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world." Critics of the ISP-level filtering plan say software filters installed by the user on their PC, which are already provided by the government for free at netalert.gov.au, are more than adequate. Mark Newton, an engineer at Internode, has heavily criticised the Government and its filtering policy on the Whirlpool broadband community forum, going as far as saying it would enable child abuse. He said the plan would inevitably result in significant false positives and degrade internet speeds tremendously. Those views were subsequently widely reported by technology media and blogs. Although Newton identified himself as an employee of Internode - as Whirlpool's rules stipulate - he always maintained his views were personal opinions and not necessarily shared by the company. On Tuesday, a policy advisor for Senator Conroy, Belinda Dennett, wrote an email to Internet Industry Association (IIA) board member Carolyn Dalton in an attempt to pressure Newton into reining in his dissent. "In your capacity as a board member of the IIA I would like to express my serious concern that a IIA member would be sending out this sort of message. I have also advised [IIA chief executive] Peter Coroneos of my disappointment in this sort of irresponsible behaviour ," the email, read. It is understood the email was accompanied by a phone call demanding that the message be passed on to senior Internode management. Newton said he found the bullying "outrageous" and Senator Conroy was "misusing his influence as a Commonwealth Minister to intimidate a private dissenting citizen into silencing his political views". A spokesman for Senator Conroy said Newton's accusation that the Government was promoting child abuse was "disappointing and irresponsible". He said the purpose of the email was "to establish whether Mr Newton's views were consistent with the IIA position". Ironically, Senator Conroy has himself accused critics of his filtering policy of supporting child pornography - including Greens Senator Scott Ludlam in Senate Estimates this week. ACMA released a report in July detailing the results of laboratory tests of six unnamed ISP-level filters. Only one of the filters tested resulted in an acceptable speed reduction of 2 per cent or less. The others caused drops in speed between 21 per cent and 86 per cent. The tests showed the more accurate the filtering, the bigger the impact on network performance. However, none of the filters were completely accurate. They allowed access to between 2 per cent and 13 per cent of material that should have been blocked, and wrongly blocked between 1.3 per cent and 7.8 per cent of websites that should have been allowed. "Why would you want to damage the performance and utility of the internet and not actually keep the bad stuff out anyway," said John Lindsay, carrier relations manager at Internode. In Senate Estimates, Senator Ludlam expressed concern that all sorts of politically-sensitive material could be added to the block list and otherwise legitimate sites - for example, YouTube - could be rendered inaccessible based on content published by users. "The black list ... can become very grey depending on how expansive the list becomes - euthanasia material, politically related material, material about anorexia. There is a lot of distasteful stuff on the internet," he said. Despite this, the Government - which distanced itself from the tests by saying they were initiated by the previous government - is pressing ahead with live trials of the filtering system and will shortly seek expressions of interest from ISPs keen to participate. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news...351491889.html ![]() Aussie Govt: Don't Criticize Our (Terrible) 'Net Filters John Timmer Australia's plan to subject every Internet user in the country to mandatory content filtering just keeps getting stranger. Although the current government says it simply inherited the program from its predecessor and that the filtering will be voluntary, it seems intent on continuing the rollout plans even as it has become apparent that some level of filtering will be mandatory. Now, an Australian newspaper has uncovered documents showing that the government minister responsible for the program has ignored performance and accuracy problems with the filters, then tried to suppress criticism of the plan by private citizens. The filtering plan as it now appears consists of two tiers. One would apply to all Australian Internet access and would block access to content deemed illegal (though how that term will be defined hasn't yet been disclosed). A second tier would be switched on by default, but users would be allowed to opt-out; this tier would target content inappropriate for children. Back in June, however, the government's own Communications and Media Authority issued a report on tests on some of the equipment that might be used to implement the filters. Although the report puts a positive spin on the results—"Hey, the tech has gotten better since we last looked, in 2005!"—it's hard to get around the fact that the filters simply aren't that great. Five of the six filters degraded network performance by over 20 percent, and two simply hammered the network, dropping throughput by more than 75 percent. That poor performance came without stellar filtering performance, either. Half the devices let more than five percent of the blacklist sites through anyway, and all devices had measurable percentages of false positives. And all of these problems came simply while trying to filter web traffic; FTP, P2P, and other protocols would all flow through the filters unimpeded. If you read our earlier coverage on this matter, you'd see that one of the primary sources of information on the filtering program is a very unhappy ISP employee named Mark Newton, who is speaking on his own behalf, rather than that of his employer, Internode. Now, Australian newspaper The Age is reporting that the ministry responsible for the program has contacted a trade group that includes Internode to request that the company keep a tighter leash on Newton. The Age has also obtained an e-mail that a staffer in the office of Stephen Conroy, the government's Communications Minister, sent to the Internet Industry Association, of which Internode is also a member. "In your capacity as a board member of the IIA, I would like to express my serious concern that an IIA member would be sending out this sort of message," the e-mail said in part. It was apparently accompanied by a phone call in which it was made clear that this message should be passed on to Internode. Little of this makes sense, of course, if the program were only something inherited from the prior administration that the current government had no intention of implementing. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...t-filters.html ![]() Full-Body Airport Scanner "Nonsense?" Germany will not participate in EU proposals for airports to use full-body scanner security checks, which have raised privacy issues, its interior ministry said Friday. "I can tell you in all clarity that we will not take part in this nonsense," a spokeswoman for the interior ministry told a regular news conference. The executive European Commission proposed last month to add body scanners to a list of security measures that can be used at airports in the 27-country bloc. EU lawmakers criticized the scanners in a resolution on Thursday, saying they were equivalent to "a virtual strip search" and raised serious human rights concerns. The lawmakers called for a detailed study of the technology before it is used. The Commission says a number of EU states including the Netherlands already use body scanners and the EU executive wanted to harmonize conditions in which they can be operated. The scanners do not exist at German airports and have sparked vivid criticism by politicians across the political spectrum. http://www.reuters.com/article/oddly...49N5SW20081024 ![]() Publisher Hit by New German Data Leak Scandal The personal details of thousands of people who placed classified advertisements in newspapers owned by Axel Springer made their way onto the Internet in the latest data leak scandal to hit Germany. A company spokeswoman confirmed a report in the magazine Der Spiegel that the names, addresses, mobile phone numbers and bank account details for customers of the free weekly papers could be viewed online before the leak was plugged last month. The Springer spokeswoman called the incident -- caused by an outside programing contractor -- regrettable but added the company's larger newspapers were not affected. Deutsche Telekom had acknowledged this month that thieves hijacked sensitive data on millions of mobile phone customers in the company's second major security scandal this year. (Reporting by Kathrin Schich; Editing by Jon Boyle) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102001024.html ![]() Bank Hackers Steal from Sarkozy Lizzy Davies The French government was forced to admit that no one was safe from internet fraud yesterday after it emerged that thieves had managed to hack into President Nicolas Sarkozy's personal bank account and siphon off cash. The unknown hackers removed several small sums of money from the account after obtaining Sarkozy's online access codes. An inquiry was launched after the president noticed the transactions and complained to the police, said a government spokesman. "The swindlers will be punished," Luc Chatel, secretary of state for consumer affairs, told French radio. He said more work needed to be done to tighten internet banking security in France, which, according to the national crime agency, has seen a 9% rise in offences this year. "[This] proves the system of internet checking [of bank accounts] is not infallible," Chatel said. "These cases are sufficiently rare that we haven't had to really organise ourselves, but [they are] sufficiently serious for us to reflect on how to improve the system." Breaking the news of the thefts yesterday, the Journal du Dimanche newspaper said the architects of the "presidential piracy" did not appear to be amateurs. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...arkozy-hacking ![]() SMB Vulnerablity Found - Emergency Patch Microsoft has announced that they will be releasing an emergency out of cycle patch for Windows users today. There are few details on why it is releasing the patch, but a little research shows that it is a flaw in SMB - Windows File Sharing. The update will be released at 10 A.M. Pacific time, as announced on the Microsoft Security blog. If you take a peek over at the National Vulnerability Database, we can see this article. Here is the overview: Buffer underflow in Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP2 and SP3, Server 2003 SP1 and SP2, Vista Gold and SP1, and Server 2008 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a Server Message Block (SMB) request that contains a filename with a crafted length, aka "SMB Buffer Underflow Vulnerability." This means this vulnerability could be exploited to create a worm. Further it means if one PC gets infected on your network, then quickly all of them will. After doing some more research it seems there is already an exploit in the wild - it is set to "go off" during the Thanksgiving holiday here in the states. This is a very serious vulnerability and I suggest making sure your computers are updated with the patch as soon as possible. http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/200...ncy-patch.html ![]() Can You Trust Anti-Virus Rankings? William Maher It seems no-one can agree on a universal set of tests for anti-virus software, with Eugene Kaspersky the latest to weigh-in on the topic, criticising the well-known Virus Bulletin 100. While major AV vendors promise solid protection for your PC, you might think twice if you read any of the major security bulletins, which regularly pan the big brands. Kaspersky is one of several big anti-virus brands to fall foul of the VB100 tests, reportedly failing to pass a recent test of security software on Windows Server 2008, along with F-Secure and Computer Associates. And if that doesn't make admins leap for the "uninstall" option, perhaps this one will. Security outfit Secunia tested 12 major Internet security suites against 300 exploits, and came up with the stunning conclusion that "major security vendors do not focus on vulnerabilities". Unsurprisingly, anti-virus vendors are irritated at statements like this, including Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky. "I don't want to say it's rubbish," Kaspersky told PC Authority. "But the security experts don’t pay attention to these tests. It doesn’t reflect the real level of protection." "The products which have a very poor level of protection, they have the certificate, while products which have a very high level of protection, they don’t have the certificate." It seems the industry still can't agree on the best way to rank AV vendors. Kaspersky criticised anti-virus tests that focus on static exploit scanning alone. "To have true test you have to put malicious file on the Web, then click it, or have an infected exploit which sends exploit to machine. These tests are really expensive and take a lot of time and hardware." The Secunia tests in particular seem to have generated disagreement over testing methodologies. Secunia's recent drubbing of most major brands brought the issue of PoC (Proof of Concept) testing to the forefront - a method that involves code that triggers a vulnerability, but doesn't actually carry a virus "payload". Real exploits were also part of the test. At Kaspersky, bloggers have pointed out that they don't focus on detecting PoCs, calling it a "dead end", and saying their antivirus database focuses on "real threats and exploits." Other have questioned the relevance of major anti-virus rankings altogether, with some criticizing signature-based detection as the problem (something anti-virus vendors are supplementing with behaviour-based detection). Kaspersky says behaviour based blocking, that stops applications once suspicious behaviour is detected, would be a good feature in Windows 7. "Application control is one of the most promising technologies which can bring the net a layer of security. Just to run apps with different rights. I call it application harassment." "The problem is that in the industry there’s no other complete tests," says Kaspersky. Many sites including PC Authority refer to VB100 results in their reviews, though we also refer to behaviour based blocking where relevant. Until anti-virus vendors figure out a way of replace signature-based scanning entirely, the best thing you can do, in addition to having full anti-virus protection, is to patch your PC. http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/1...-rankings.aspx ![]() Compromising Electromagnetic Emanations of Wired Keyboards Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini Computer keyboards are often used to transmit sensitive information such as username/password (e.g. to log into computers, to do e-banking money transfer, etc.). A vulnerability on these devices will definitely kill the security of any computer or ATM. Wired keyboards emit electromagnetic waves, because they contain eletronic components. These eletromagnetic radiation could reveal sensitive information such as keystrokes. Although Kuhn already tagged keyboards as risky, we did not find any experiment or evidence proving or refuting the practical feasibility to remotely eavesdrop keystrokes, especially on modern keyboards. To determine if wired keyboards generate compromising emanations, we measured the electromagnetic radiations emitted when keys are pressed. To analyze compromising radiations, we generally use a receiver tuned on a specific frequency. However, this method may not be optimal: the signal does not contain the maximal entropy since a significant amount of information is lost. Our approach was to acquire the signal directly from the antenna and to work on the whole captured electromagnetic spectrum. We found 4 different ways (including the Kuhn attack) to fully or partially recover keystrokes from wired keyboards at a distance up to 20 meters, even through walls. We tested 11 different wired keyboard models bought between 2001 and 2008 (PS/2, USB and laptop). They are all vulnerable to at least one of our 4 attacks. We conclude that wired computer keyboards sold in the stores generate compromising emanations (mainly because of the cost pressures in the design). Hence they are not safe to transmit sensitive information. No doubt that our attacks can be significantly improved, since we used relatively unexpensive equipments. More information on these attacks will be published soon, the paper is currently in a peer review process for a conference. http://lasecwww.epfl.ch/keyboard/ ![]() A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer John Markoff In a windowless room on Microsoft’s campus here, T. J. Campana, a cybercrime investigator, connects an unprotected computer running an early version of Windows XP to the Internet. In about 30 seconds the computer is “owned.” An automated program lurking on the Internet has remotely taken over the PC and turned it into a “zombie.” That computer and other zombie machines are then assembled into systems called “botnets” — home and business PCs that are hooked together into a vast chain of cyber-robots that do the bidding of automated programs to send the majority of e-mail spam, to illegally seek financial information and to install malicious software on still more PCs. Botnets remain an Internet scourge. Active zombie networks created by a growing criminal underground peaked last month at more than half a million computers, according to shadowserver.org, an organization that tracks botnets. Even though security experts have diminished the botnets to about 300,000 computers, that is still twice the number detected a year ago. The actual numbers may be far larger; Microsoft investigators, who say they are tracking about 1,000 botnets at any given time, say the largest network still controls several million PCs. “The mean time to infection is less than five minutes,” said Richie Lai, who is part of Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement Team, a group of about 20 researchers and investigators. The team is tackling a menace that in the last five years has grown from a computer hacker pastime to a dark business that is threatening the commercial viability of the Internet. Any computer connected to the Internet can be vulnerable. Computer security executives recommend that PC owners run a variety of commercial malware detection programs, like Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool, to find infections of their computers. They should also protect the PCs behind a firewall and install security patches for operating systems and applications. Even these steps are not a sure thing. Last week Secunia, a computer security firm, said it had tested a dozen leading PC security suites and found that the best one detected only 64 out of 300 software vulnerabilities that make it possible to install malware on a computer. Botnet attacks now come with their own antivirus software, permitting the programs to take over a computer and then effectively remove other malware competitors. Mr. Campana said the Microsoft investigators were amazed recently to find a botnet that turned on the Microsoft Windows Update feature after taking over a computer, to defend its host from an invasion of competing infections. Botnets have evolved quickly to make detection more difficult. During the last year botnets began using a technique called fast-flux, which involved generating a rapidly changing set of Internet addresses to make the botnet more difficult to locate and disrupt. Companies have realized that the only way to combat the menace of botnets and modern computer crime is to build a global alliance that crosses corporate and national boundaries. On Tuesday, Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, will convene a gathering of the International Botnet Taskforce in Arlington, Va. At the conference, which is held twice a year, more than 175 members of government and law enforcement agencies, computer security companies and academics will discuss the latest strategies, including legal efforts. Although the Microsoft team has filed more than 300 civil lawsuits against botnet operators, the company also relies on enforcement agencies like the F.B.I. and Interpol-related organizations for criminal prosecution. Last month the alliance received support from new federal legislation, which for the first time specifically criminalized the use of botnets. Many of the bots are based in other countries, however, and Mr. Campana said there were many nations with no similar laws. “It’s really a sort of cat-and-mouse situation with the underground,” said David Dittrich, a senior security engineer at the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory and a member of the International Botnet Taskforce. “Now there’s profit motive, and the people doing stuff for profit are doing unique and interesting things.” Microsoft’s botnet hunters, who have kept a low profile until now, are led by Richard Boscovich, who until six months ago served as a federal prosecutor in Miami. Mr. Boscovich, a federal prosecutor for 18 years, said he was optimistic that despite the growing number of botnets, progress was being made against computer crime. Recent successes have led to arrests. “Every time we have a story that says bot-herders get locked up, that helps,” said Mr. Boscovich, who in 2000 helped convict Jonathan James, a teenage computer hacker who had gained access to Defense Department and National Air and Space Administration computers. To aid in its investigations, the Microsoft team has built elaborate software tools including traps called “honeypots” that are used to detect malware and a system called the Botnet Monitoring and Analysis Tool. The software is installed in several refrigerated server rooms on the Microsoft campus that are directly connected to the open Internet, both to mask its location and to make it possible to deploy software sensors around the globe. The door to the room simply reads “the lab.” Inside are racks of hundreds of processors and terabytes of disk drives needed to capture the digital evidence that must be logged as carefully as evidence is maintained by crime scene investigators. Detecting and disrupting botnets is a particularly delicate challenge that Microsoft will talk about only in vague terms. Their challenge parallels the traditional one of law enforcement’s placing informers inside criminal gangs. Just as gangs will often force a recruit to commit a crime as a test of loyalty, in cyberspace, bot-herders will test recruits in an effort to weed out spies. Microsoft investigators would not discuss their solution to this problem, but said they avoided doing anything illegal with their software. One possible approach would be to create sensors that would fool the bot-herders by appearing to do malicious things, but in fact not perform the actions. In 2003 and 2004 Microsoft was deeply shaken by a succession of malicious software worm programs with names like “Blaster” and “Sasser,” that raced through the Internet, sowing chaos within corporations and among home computer users. Blaster was a personal affront to the software firm that has long prided itself on its technology prowess. The program contained a hidden message mocking Microsoft’s co-founder: “billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!” The company maintains that its current software is less vulnerable, but even as it fixed some problems, the threat to the world’s computers has become far greater. Mr. Campana said that there had been ups and downs in the fight against a new kind of criminal who could hide virtually anywhere in the world and strike with devilish cleverness. “I come in every morning, and I think we’re making progress,” he said. At the same time, he said, botnets are not going to go away any time soon. “There are a lot of very smart people doing very bad things,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/te.../21botnet.html ![]() And Now the Manchurian Microchip Robert Eringer The geniuses at Homeland Security who brought you hare-brained procedures at airports (which inconvenience travelers without snagging terrorists) have decreed that October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. This means The Investigator -- at the risk of compromising national insecurities -- would be remiss not to make you aware of the hottest topic in U.S. counterintelligence circles: rogue microchips. This threat emanates from China (PRC) -- and it is hugely significant. The myth: Chinese intelligence services have concealed a microchip in every computer everywhere, programmed to "call home" if and when activated. The reality: It may actually be true. All computers on the market today -- be they Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Apple or especially IBM -- are assembled with components manufactured inside the PRC. Each component produced by the Chinese, according to a reliable source within the intelligence community, is secretly equipped with a hidden microchip that can be activated any time by China's military intelligence services, the PLA. "It is there, deep inside your computer, if they decide to call it up," the security chief of a multinational corporation told The Investigator. "It is capable of providing Chinese intelligence with everything stored on your system -- on everyone's system -- from e-mail to documents. I call it Call Home Technology. It doesn't mean to say they're sucking data from everyone's computer today, it means the Chinese think ahead -- and they now have the potential to do it when it suits their purposes." Discussed theoretically in high-tech security circles as "Trojan Horse on a Chip" or "The Manchurian Chip," Call Home Technology came to light after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a security program in December 2007 called Trust in Integrated Circuits. DARPA awarded almost $25 million in contracts to six companies and university research labs to test foreign-made microchips for hardware Trojans, back doors and kill switches -- techie-speak for bugs and gremlins -- with a view toward microchip verification. Raytheon, a defense contractor, was granted almost half of these funds for hardware and software testing. Its findings, which are classified, have apparently sent shockwaves through the counterintelligence community. "It is the hottest topic concerning the FBI and the Pentagon," a retired intelligence official told The Investigator. "They don't know quite what to do about it. The Chinese have even been able to hack into the computer system that handles our Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system." Another senior intelligence source told The Investigator, "Our military is aware of this and has had to take some protective measures. The problem includes defective chips that don't reach military specs -- as well as probable Trojans." A little context: In 2005 the Lenovo Group in China paid $1.75 billion for IBM's PC unit, even though that unit had lost $965 million the previous four years. Three congressmen, including the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, tried to block this sale because of national security concerns, to no avail. (The PRC embassy in Washington, D.C., maintains a large lobbying presence to influence congressmen and their staffs through direct contact.) In June 2007, a Pentagon computer network utilized by the U.S. defense secretary's office was hacked into -- and traced directly back to the Chinese PLA. A report presented to Congress late last year characterized PRC espionage as "the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies." Almost simultaneously, Jonathan Evans, director-general of MI5, Britain's domestic security and counterintelligence service, sent a confidential letter to CEOs and security chiefs at 300 UK companies to warn that they were under attack by "Chinese state organizations" whose purpose, said Mr. Evans, was to defeat their computer security systems and steal confidential commercial information. The Chinese had specifically targeted Rolls-Royce and Shell Oil. The key to unlocking computer secrets through rogue microchips is uncovering (or stealing) source codes, without which such microchips would be useless. This is why Chinese espionage is so heavily focused upon the U.S. computer industry. Four main computer operating systems exist. Two of them, Unix and Linux, utilize open-source codes. Apple's operating system is Unix-based. Which leaves only Microsoft as the source code worth cracking. But in early 2004, Microsoft announced that its security had been breached and that its source code was "lost or stolen." "As technology evolves, each new program has a new source code," a computer forensics expert told The Investigator. "So the Chinese would need ongoing access to new Microsoft source codes for maintaining their ability to activate any microchips they may have installed, along with the expertise to utilize new hardware technology." No surprise then that the FBI expends much of its counterintelligence resources these days on Chinese high-tech espionage within the United States. Timothy Bereznay, while still serving as assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, told USA Today, "Foreign collectors don't wait until something is classified -- they're targeting it at the research and development stage." Mr. Bereznay now heads Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems division. The PRC's intelligence services use tourists, exchange students and trade show attendees to gather strategic data, mostly from open sources. They have also created over 3,500 front companies in the United States -- including several based in Palo Alto to focus on computer technology. Back in 2005, when the Chinese espionage problem was thought to be focused on military technology, then-FBI counterintelligence operations chief Dave Szady said, "I think the problem is huge, and it's something we're just getting our arms around." Little did he know just how huge, as it currently applies to computer network security. The FBI is reported to have arrested more than 25 Chinese nationals and Chinese-Americans on suspicion of conspiracy to commit espionage between 2004 and 2006. The Investigator endeavored to update this figure, but was told by FBI spokesman William Carter, "We do not track cases by ethnicity." Excuse us for asking. We may be losing secrets, but at least the dignity of our political correctness remains intact. Oh, and Homeland Security snagged comic icon Jerry Lewis, 82, trying to board a plane in Las Vegas with a gun -- no joke. http://cryptome.org/manchu-chip.htm ![]() Newly Discovered State Of Matter Could Extend Moore's Law Researchers believe the strange state of matter could help improve transistors as they approach the physical density limit imposed by the laws of physics. Thomas Claburn Scientists at McGill University in Montreal say they've discovered a new state of matter that could help extend Moore's Law and allow for the fabrication of more tightly packed transistors, or a new kind of transistor altogether. The researchers call the new state of matter "a quasi-three-dimensional electron crystal." It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth. Two-dimensional electron crystals were discovered in the 1990s, and were predicted in 1934 by Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner. They are thus known as Wigner crystals. Dr. Guillaume Gervais, director of McGill's Ultra-Low Temperature Condensed Matter Experiment Lab, describes them in terms of a ham sandwich, where the ham -- the two-dimensional crystal -- represents a flat plane that constrains the movement of the electrons in two dimensions. "We decided to tweak the two-dimensionality by applying a very large magnetic field, using the largest magnet in the world at the Magnet Lab in Florida," said Gervais in a statement. "You only have access to it for about five days a year, and on the third day, something totally unexpected popped." The "popping" was the creation inside the semiconductor material of a "quasi-three-dimensional system," something that had existed in theory but, until then, not in fact. Gervais believes the strange state of matter could help improve transistors as they approach the physical density limit imposed by the laws of physics in the coming decade or so. "This issue is academic, but it's not just academic," said Gervais in a statement. "The same semiconductor materials we're working with are currently used in cell phones and other electronic devices. We need to understand quantum effects so we can use them to our own advantage and perhaps reinvent the transistor altogether. That way, progress in electronics will keep happening." http://www.informationweek.com/news/...SSfeed_IWK_All ![]() Interpol Proposes World Face-Recognition Database Old skool mugshot files too slow, say globocops Lewis Page Interpol chiefs will propose the use of automated facial-recognition technology at borders to flag up internationally wanted suspects, according to reports. The UK already has airport gates equipped with such technology, intended to remove the need for a human border guard to check that a passenger's face matches the one recorded in his or her passport. According to the Guardian, Interpol database chief Mark Branchflower believes that his organisation should set up a database of facial-recognition records to operate alongside its existing photo, fingerprint and DNA files. Interpol member nations would have the option of uploading face records of wanted suspects in the same way they already do other biometrics data, and would be able to check an individual's headshot against the Interpol files as with the other metrics. The attraction of facial-recognition records, as opposed to conventional mugshots, is that automated searching is possible. A specially-equipped airport gate - or even, in some circumstances, a security camera - would be able to sound an alert every time a person on the Interpol watch list went past. Such detections are often made by border guards and ordinary policemen, recognising suspects from routine circulars and lists, but facial-recognition is seen as potentially more reliable. "Facial recognition is a step we could go to quite quickly," Branchflower told the Guardian ahead of his speech at the Biometrics 2008 conference tomorrow. The Graun is National Media Partner for the man-tracker expo. "It's increasingly of use to [all] countries," said Branchflower. "There's so much data we have but they are in records we can't search." According to Branchflower, automated document checks would also be handy in preventing people from travelling on passports or ID cards which don't belong to them. Interpol also runs a database of lost or stolen papers, but many countries' passports can't be checked atuomatically by machine. Thus such a passport can be used with little fear of detection, as it will normally only be checked against the Interpol database if a cop or border agent becomes suspicious of the bearer and runs a manual check. Branchflower says that 800 million people travel internationally every year without any check being made that their papers are in fact legit. He'd prefer it to become a rarity for a journey to occur without the passport being checked against his central database of lost and stolen ones. Libertarian campaign group NO2ID said that plans of this sort were a step too far. "Law enforcement agencies want the most efficient systems but there has to be a balance between security and privacy," NO2ID spokesman Michael Parker told the Graun. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10...ace_scan_plan/ ![]() DARPA Contract Description Hints at Advanced Video Spying A page from a DARPA document lists some of the activity being monitored. Walter Pincus Real-time streaming video of Iraqi and Afghan battle areas taken from thousands of feet in the air can follow actions of people on the ground as they dig, shake hands, exchange objects and kiss each other goodbye. The video is sent from unmanned and manned aircraft to intelligence analysts at ground stations in the United States and abroad. They watch video in real time of people getting in and out of cars, loading trunks, dropping things or picking them up. They can even see vehicles accelerate, slow down, move together or make U-turns. "The dynamics of an urban insurgency have resulted in a rapid increase in the number of activities visible in the video field of view," according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Although the exploits of the Predator, the Global Hawk and other airborne collectors of information have been widely publicized, there are few authoritative descriptions of what they can see on the ground. But some insights into the capabilities of the Predator and other aircraft can be drawn from a DARPA paper that describes the tasks of a contractor that will develop a method of indexing and rapidly finding video from archived aerial surveillance tapes collected over past years. "The U.S. military and intelligence communities have an ever increasing need to monitor live video feeds and search large volumes of archived video data for activities of interest due to the rapid growth in development and fielding of motion video systems," according to the DARPA paper, which was written in March but released last month. Last month, Kitware, a small software company with offices in New York and North Carolina, teamed up with 19 other companies and universities and won the $6.7 million first phase of the DARPA contract, which is not expected to be completed before 2011. During the Cold War, satellites and aircraft took still pictures that intelligence analysts reviewed one frame at a time to identify the locations of missile silos, airplane hangars, submarine pens and factories, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an expert in space and intelligence matters. "Now with new full-motion video intelligence techniques, we are looking at people and their behavior in public," he said. The resolution capability of the video systems ranges from four inches to a foot, depending on the collector and environmental conditions at the time, according to the DARPA paper. The video itself is also shaped by the angle to the ground from which it is shot, although there are 3-D capabilities that allow viewers on the ground to manipulate videos of objects so they can see them from different vantage points. Systems also exist that allow tracking, moving-target detection of objects under forest or other cover and determination of exact geographic location. Development is underway of systems that allow recognition of faces and gait -- in other words, human identification. Currently, because there are so many activities or objects to be watched for hints of suspicious behavior, "more analysts . . . watch the same, real-time video stream simultaneously," according to DARPA. "If any of the given activities or objects are spotted, the analyst issues an alert to the proper authorities." Future collection systems are expected to provide even more imagery, cover areas greater than 16 square miles and make it more difficult "for a limited number of analysts to effectively monitor and scrutinize all potential activities within the streaming field of view," DARPA wrote. Today's volume of intelligence data, beyond just streaming video, already "makes it very difficult to detect specific events in real time and too time intensive to search archived video," the DARPA paper said. The effort underway is designed to find a way to index similar activity, then search and retrieve it from archives. The proposed new system should be able to analyze real-time streaming video as it is received in a ground station and match it on command to archived video from more than one video library. One notion, described by DARPA, would be that an analyst with a standing alert to watch for U-turning cars could employ the new system to quickly match a real-time event with archived clips of cars making such turns before an attack. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101901572.html ![]() Researchers Find Problems with RFID Passport Cards RFID tags used in two new types of border-crossing documents in the U.S. are vulnerable to snooping and copying, a researcher said on Thursday. Stephen Lawson United States Passport Cards issued by the U.S. Department of State and EDLs (enhanced driver's licenses) from the state of Washington contain RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags that can be scanned at border crossings without being handed over to agents. Both were introduced earlier this year for border crossings by land and water only, and can't be used for air travel. New York is the only other U.S. state with an EDL, though others are in the works. The information in these tags could be copied on to another, off-the-shelf tag, which might be used to impersonate the legitimate holder of the card if a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents at the border didn't see the card itself, the researchers said. Another danger is that the tags can be read from as far as 150 feet away in some situations, so criminals could read them without being detected. Although the tags don't contain personal information, they could be used to track a person's movements through ongoing surveillance, they said. Another danger is that hackers could cause EDLs to self-destruct by sending out a certain number, they said. "It would be relatively easy for someone to read your passport card or EDL," said Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. Though there's no reason for panic, "Our hearts should start to beat a little faster," Kohno said. The risk to individual passengers is low, but the problems create systemic weaknesses in the border-crossing system, according to a summary of the report. Retail, shipping and other businesses are increasingly using RFID tags as wireless bar codes that can contain more information than traditional printed ones. The growth of the technology is making the tools of RFID hacking more easily available, Kohno said. In a cloning attack, a hacker could read the information off a card's RFID tag, either while the cardholder was passing by or as the official card reader was picking up the data. The attacker could then encode a generic RFID tag with that same data, Kohno said. With that newly encoded tag, someone could slip through the border by appearing to the RFID reader to have a legitimate identification card, as long as no one asked to look at the actual card. By themselves, the RFID vulnerabilities don't mean someone will get away with cloning or other attacks, Kohno pointed out. "In reality, the system involved in border crossings is much greater than just the technical aspect," Kohno said. For example, authorities are likely to interview drivers and passengers crossing the border and look at their identification cards, he said. They may also use other measures against card-cloning near border crossings. However, Kohno and three fellow researchers believe there are mechanisms available for the RFID tags that the U.S. and Washington governments aren't using. For example, each tag has two specialized numbers: an access PIN (personal identification number) and a kill PIN. (These are larger than bank-card PINs and aren't chosen by the cardholders.) The access PIN can be used to verify that a tag is legitimate and the kill PIN can be used to render the tag unreadable. The access PINs are used on both the passport cards and the EDLs, but there are additional security measures that the researchers don't think authorities are using. For example, they could test the access PIN using information from a database, Kohno said. In addition, the kill PIN is not set up on the Washington EDLs, which could make them vulnerable to an attack that would make all such cards at a certain site unreadable, he said. Such an attack could cause a nuisance or undermine travelers' confidence, the summary said. The researchers have given recommendations to both U.S. and Washington authorities, Kohno said. Full-size U.S. passports, which are booklets instead of cards, aren't affected by these vulnerabilities because their RFID tags have cryptographic protections and the booklets have metallic covers that protect against snooping, the researchers said. For self-protection, the researchers suggest consumers use the protective sleeves that come with both cards, which can help to prevent clandestine scanning. Travelers can also use the safer full-size U.S. passports instead. http://goodgearguide.com.au/index.php/id;438521249 ![]() U.S. Policymakers Mull Creation of Domestic Intelligence Agency The United Kingdom has MI-5, which roots out spies and terrorists in the British Isles. The RAND Corporation said one option would be for domestic intelligence to operate under the FBI. Canada has CSIS -- the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Now Congress is asking: Should the U.S. have its own domestic intelligence agency? On Monday, at the request of Congress, the RAND Corporation outlined the pros and cons of establishing a domestic intelligence agency. It also discussed different ways to organize a new entity, either as part of an existing department or as a new agency. But there's one thing you won't find in the report -- a recommendation on what to do. "We were not asked to make a recommendation, and this assessment does not do so," the report says. Instead, says RAND's Gregory Treverton, the report provides a "framework" for policymakers to use when deciding whether and how to reorganize counter-intelligence efforts at home. RAND is a nonprofit think tank seeking to help improve policy and decision making through objective research and analysis. Collecting intelligence domestically always has been a sensitive issue, at least partially because of episodic abuses by the government, notably against civil rights leaders, unions, antiwar organizations or even communists and hate groups. But the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks renewed calls for increased domestic intelligence to prevent future attacks. Critics said that in the lead-up to the attacks, the FBI devalued counterterrorism agents and failed to heed signs that an attack was imminent. "If you didn't carry a gun, you didn't count so much," Treverton said. After the attacks, the FBI moved to transform its primary mission from law enforcement to counterterrorism intelligence and prevention. It now focuses on terrorism through its National Security Branch and the National Counterterrorism Center. The RAND report focuses on two options to the current system. In one, a new agency would be created using intelligence agencies from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and intelligence community. A second option is to create an "agency within an agency" in the FBI or DHS. The first option would result in an organization with a clear, unambiguous mission, and might be able to draw on a more diverse recruitment pool, such as linguists and historians who are not normally attracted to law enforcement. On the flip side, such massive reorganizations typically involve political compromises that could affect its performance. The second option -- an "agency within an agency" -- could involve less short-term disruption, but could be hindered by a "lack of clarity of a single mission," the report says. RAND also suggests a range of actions short of reorganization that could improve domestic intelligence gathering, such as increasing resources, improving leadership and changing bureaucratic cultures. The report does not assess the FBI's performance since 9/11, Treverton said, but he believes Congress should seek an independent assessment. A panel of experts that RAND convened guessed that the probability of a terrorist attack had decreased about one-third since the September 11, 2001. But "they were not enthusiastic about alternatives" to current counterterrorism organizations. In a cautionary note, the report says that while public acceptance of domestic intelligence activities is imperative, public attitudes about what is considered acceptable "can both be fragile and shift significantly over time." "Public demand for domestic intelligence is driven by the perceived threat, and those perceptions can change much more rapidly than the threat itself," the report says. For instance, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, 49 percent of people surveyed were worried "a great deal" about more attacks. Two years later, that had dropped to 25 percent. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/...ncy/index.html ![]() ACLU Demands Information On Military Deployment Within U.S. Borders Deployment erodes longstanding separation between civilian and military government Press release The American Civil Liberties Union today demanded information from the government about reports that an active military unit has been deployed inside the U.S. to help with "civil unrest" and "crowd control" – matters traditionally handled by civilian authorities. This deployment jeopardizes the longstanding separation between civilian and military government, and the public has a right to know where and why the unit has been deployed, according to an ACLU Freedom of Information request filed today. "The military's deployment within U.S. borders raises critical questions that must be answered," said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "What is the unit's mission? What functions will it perform? And why was it necessary to deploy the unit rather than rely on civilian agencies and personnel and the National Guard? Given the magnitude of the issues at stake, it is imperative that the American people know the truth about this new and unprecedented intrusion of the military in domestic affairs." According to a report in the Army Times, the Army recently deployed an active military unit inside the United States under Northern Command, which was established in 2002 to assist federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. This deployment marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. Civilian authorities, not the military, have historically controlled and directed the internal affairs of the United States. This rule traces its origins to the nation's founding and has been reaffirmed in landmark statutes including the Posse Comitatus Act, which helps preserve the foundational principles of our Constitution and democracy. "This is a radical departure from separation of civilian law enforcement and military authority, and could, quite possibly, represent a violation of law," said Mike German, ACLU national security policy counsel and former FBI Agent. "Our Founding Fathers understood the threat that a standing army could pose to American liberty. While future generations recognized the need for a strong military to defend against increasingly capable foreign threats, they also passed statutory protections to ensure that the Army could not be turned against the American people. The erosion of these protections should concern every American." In order to assess the implications of the recent deployment, the ACLU requested the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense today to immediately make public all legal opinions, executive orders, presidential directives, memos, policy guidance, and other documents that authorize the deployment of military troops for domestic purposes. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Department of Defense has dramatically expanded its role in domestic law enforcement and intelligence operations, including the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping programs, the Department of Homeland Security's use of military spy satellites, and the participation of military personnel in state and local intelligence fusion centers. The ACLU has repeatedly expressed concern about these incremental encroachments of the military into domestic affairs, and the assignment of active duty troops to Northern Command only heightens these concerns. http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general...s20081021.html ![]() Are You Living In The Constitution Free Zone? ACLU Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders. The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This " Constitution-Free Zone" includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas. We urge you to call on Congress to hold hearings on and pass legislation to end these egregious violations of Americans' civil rights. http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/a...nfreezone.html ![]() Investigation Continues into Connecticut Cabin Fire ![]() Officials try to pinpoint cause Nanci G. Hutson New York Law School professor Nadine Strossen was on a business trip in Washington, D.C., Tuesday evening when she learned fire had destroyed the unfurnished, wood-shingled cabin close to her New Milford home. She and her husband, Eli Noam, also a professor in New York City, moved to property that includes an island in the Housatonic River, off Kent Road on the northern part of Route 7, over the summer. In addition to a main house, the island held the four-room cabin and a tool shed, which also burned. Strossen said her immediate fear was whether anyone was injured, or if the fire had spread to their house, which is about 150 feet away. The cabin was built in the early 1900s, prior to the large house, which was rebuilt 20 years ago after it was destroyed by fire. The house is elevated and has a picturesque view of the river near Boardman Bridge. "It's a spectacular house," Strossen said, noting it resembles a Frank Lloyd Wright design, with three large open rooms. "It's not a very practical house, but we adore it. It's fabulous." The couple's carpenter, Rocco DeLeo, had been in the cabin earlier in the afternoon to make repairs -- the couple intended to use it for a guest house -- but left before flames erupted. His tools in the building were destroyed. "I'm still in a bit of a state of shock, but I always see the glass half-full," said Strossen, who only a week ago finished her 17-year tenure as president of the American Civil Liberties Union. On Wednesday morning, she was at her New York City apartment preparing to teach an afternoon class. "I'm just so happy there was no injury to anybody, especially firefighters. "And secondly, there was no damage to the house we occupy or to the next-door neighbor's house. I'm happy it didn't spread.'' The couple stayed in the main house only a few days ago. Fire Marshal Karen Alward was sifting through the rubble Wednesday morning to determine the cause of the cabin fire. Two possibilities are accident or arson. Alward said she is reviewing what kind of power the cabin used and who might have been around when the fire began. The fire was reported about 5:15 p.m., and Water Witch Hose Co. firefighters arrived to find the cabin completely engulfed in flames. To reach it, firefighters stretched 700 yards of hose down the couple's driveway and over a wooden bridge to the island. Tankers from several other volunteer companies dumped water into a portable pond set up in the middle of Route 7. Complicating firefighters' efforts were sparking live electrical wires and a burning propane tank near the cabin. Strossen said she and Noam have not yet discussed whether they will rebuild, and she remained philosophical about the loss. "I'm old enough that if it's not a matter of life or health, I realize things could be much worse," she said. "I'm painfully aware of people who suffer much worse, and so I'm trying to keep it in perspective." http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_10785651 ![]() Internet Voting in Florida Raises Security Concerns: Geek the Vote Beginning this week, Internet voting is getting its first prime-time test, for overseas voters from Okaloosa County, Florida. Our Geek the Vote reporter investigates and finds that experts remain skeptical about the operation, and that we won't be voting from home any time soon. By Erik Sofge This Friday, Internet voting will become a reality. Between Oct. 24 and Nov. 2, an estimated 600 to 700 United States citizens will use hardened laptops—PCs with no hard drive, and various other components either turned off or removed in advance to reduce security risks—located at special kiosks in Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom to cast their votes for president. It will be no more difficult than ordering a candidate's autobiography on Amazon. The Okaloosa Distance Ballot Piloting (ODBP) test program could help dismantle the bureaucratic obstacle course that now affects roughly 6 million overseas residents who must register earlier than other voters, and whose mail-in absentee ballots could be mishandled. However, Internet voting is hard to get right. Computer scientists have repeatedly warned of the dangers of transferring even the most heavily encrypted data online. In 2004, a high-profile, Pentagon-funded pilot program called SERVE was publicly derided by the experts commissioned to analyze it and was scrapped before it even began. This latest attempt at Internet voting has been attacked by critics asking for more transparency, more testing and more information about the foreign vendor that built the system. It probably doesn't help ODBP's image that the electronic ballots will be counted in Florida, the state whose name has become shorthand for messy vote counting. "The whole country's just gone down this road," says Dan McCrea, president of the Florida Voters Coalition, a nonprofit voters' advocacy group that has been the ODBP's most vocal critic. "Touchscreen systems were sold to us as 'accessibility.' The technology came wrapped in this promise of voters with disabilities finally being enfranchised. It tugged on our heartstrings—the blind, voting with parity for the first time." The user interfaces lived up to the promises, says McCrea, but touchscreen voting machines, and particularly the models sold by Ohio-based Diebold, also had serious security vulnerabilities and malfunctioned during some close elections. A number of states, including Florida, have reverted to paper ballots. "They basically dispatched a fleet of fatally flawed Pintos, but with this great dashboard interface for the blind," McCrea says. Now, he argues, the proponents of Internet voting are making a similar promise—a high-tech solution that will enfranchise overseas voters, particularly military personnel, who often face the greatest logistical hurdles. "Now you have vapor ballets stretching around the globe, subject to interception. And this time it comes wrapped in the flag. Any dissent means you're unpatriotic." Technically speaking, the ODBP program has little in common with touchscreen voting machines, which are still widely used. The stripped-down laptops to be used by voters have less hardware to exploit than a standard touchscreen unit does. Voters are required to print out an anonymous record of their vote, and turn it in to kiosk workers. In case of a problem, whether it's a major software failure or a suspected intrusion, the paper records can be checked against the electronic ballots. To safeguard against underreporting (one of the biggest concerns with touchscreen voting machines), users are also allowed to print out an additional receipt, which can be used to verify that their vote made it into the final tally. For critics of this pilot, identifying its technical vulnerabilities is difficult. Aside from officials at the Florida Division of Elections, the only independent experts granted access to analyze the system were on a team headed by Alec Yasinsac, Dean of the School of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of South Alabama and co-director of the government-funded Security and Assurance in Information Technology (SAIT) Laboratory. "We looked at the software and the architecture," says Yasinsac. "We looked at who is responsible for the servers. Who does the builds? Who has access to the data center where the votes are stored?" In a report issued on Sept. 19, Yasinsac's panel found that the system did not appear to be vulnerable to online intrusions, whether by hackers or malicious software (malware). The system's biggest weakness, according to Yasinsac, is from insiders—multiple kiosk workers, for example, could pool their passwords to penetrate the system, or try to swap out the software on one or more hardened laptops. "If the kiosk happened to be corrupted, it would be very difficult to detect problems," says Yasinsac. On the other hand, he says, "this system is far more secure than what overseas voters have right now, passing ballots back and forth across foreign mail systems. Vote by mail is extremely unreliable and subject to manipulation." According to Yasinsac, about 85 percent of military voters are currently disenfranchised, mainly because of logistical difficulties. Despite the generally favorable results of Yasinsac's security analysis, the fact that the wider computer security community has not been invited to evaluate the ODBP program has resulted in a cacaphony of unanswered questions. If there's a conflict between the paper and electronic record, which gets primacy? Is it wise to challenge the world's hackers to a high-stakes duel over an American election? Okaloosa County chose as its vendor for the system a security systems firm based in Spain—why? And should we worry that the votes will actually be recorded overseas, in a data center in Barcelona? "We should not go ahead until full details of the system have been disclosed," says David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, who has testified before Congress about electronic voting. Dill praises Okaloosa County's program for attempting to create a secure, verifiable system that includes the use of paper Voter Choice Records (VCRs) to allow for a 100 percent audit against the electronic votes. Other locations have adopted less secure alternatives for overseas voters, allowing them to send ballots in by fax or e-mail. Still, he believes the pitfalls outnumber the benefits. "If not for the VCRs, this entire proposal would be completely unacceptable," Dill says. "But if the goal is to hand count every one of them, that seems like a lot of overhead for what amounts to a complicated way to fill out paper absentee ballots. The way I look at it, the entire Internet voting part of this scheme is confusing and possibly harmful." Carol Paquette, secretary of Operation Bravo, the nonprofit group that has pushed for the introduction of this pilot since 2007, maintains that some of the ODBP's critics misunderstand its basic architecture. Although the electronic votes will be collected and stored on Scityl's servers in Barcelona before being released to Okaloosa County on Nov. 2, "the vendor is not operating the system," says Paquette. "The staff of Okaloosa County will be operating it. They're the people with fingers on the keyboards. They're the ones at the overseas voting centers. They're getting the data on the other end of the servers. The vendor is just advising." As for the decision to go with a foreign vendor, Paquette claims that none of the systems in the United States was secure enough. "SERVE collapsed in such a public and flashy manner," says Paquette, "there's no market in this country for Internet voting vendors." Both Paquette and Yasinsac say critics may be mistaking their plan (specialized laptops used by a relatively small group of overseas voters), and the possibility of domestic voters picking their candidates from a home PC. "That's a security nightmare," says Yasinsac. "If we ever attempted an Internet voting system using private PCs, it would be devastating," he says. Although states around the country have expressed interest in adopting some version of Scityl's system, Paquette points out that not every county can afford the necessary hardware and training. Documents issued by the Florida Division of Elections say that Virtual Private Network connections, mixing servers and a data center with a limited number of hands-on technicians will be combined with impressive physical security to safeguard the voting process. Still, a successful pilot in Okaloosa County—and a program with some 700 participants isn't likely to suffer a meltdown—is almost certain to spawn Internet voting programs elsewhere in the United States. But Paquette's real focus is on the military. She predicts that similar projects could be tested for troops stationed in Afghanistan or Iraq. "It's easy to do," Paquette says. "The equipment is off-the-shelf. The voting assistance officers could be trained like our kiosk workers. That's how we see this scaling up." http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...y/4288327.html ![]() Peak Power Developing a Second Hump Because of Computers Because of big screen TVs and home computers, utilities are seeing another peak power problem evolve. Traditional peak power hours — the time during the day when power demand shoots up — run from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm, according to Andrew Tang, senior director, smart energy web, at Pacific Gas & Electric. Air conditioning begins to ramp up and people start heading for malls and home. On some unfortunate days, brownouts occur. But utilities are now seeing a second surge after the 7:00 pm drop in demand; it runs from about 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm, he said. That’s when people head toward the electronic entertainment devices. (See: Atomization of the American family.) “It is so much a peak as it is a plateau,” he said, adding that “8:00 pm is kind of a recent phenomenon.” The 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm plateau is also “reasonably close” to the 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm peak. This new geographical monument on the daily power consumption curve, of course, is becoming a problem that utilities will have to solve. Providing power during the peak hours is already a costly proposition. Approximately 10 percent of the existing generating capacity only gets used about 50 hours a year: Most of the time, that expensive capital equipment sits idle waiting for a crisis. Some of the efforts to fix this are already underway. Panasonic and other TV manufacturers are all working to reduce the power consumption in LCD and plasma TVs while Intel and the PC crew are cranking down computer power consumption. Sharp, in fact, showed off a 26-inch prototype LCD TV that consumes 40 watts of power and runs on solar panels at Ceatec in Tokyo recently. Utilities are also figuring out ways to deliver their own resources more effectively. In California, for instance, plug-in hybrid cars would allow PG&E to better deploy energy from wind farms. Wind blows at night here often. If demand doesn’t exist, it gets dumped. If thousands or even millions of drivers had their cars plugged in, they could refuel on cheap power in the wee hours. Plug-in cars, however, could also create problems with peak power, he added. Most people will try to plug-in as soon as they get home or at work. Thus, the utility is working with companies to regulate charging time. You might plug in at 6:30 pm, but actual charging might not begin until after midnight. Tang remains a bit of a skeptic of using plug-ins to provide power to the grid during peak times. The grid simply wasn’t designed to accommodate power delivery from millions of comparatively small batteries. To work effectively, parking structures will have to aggregate power from a number of car batteries and even then it will remain a challenge. And here’s another issue with plug-in cars. Consumers will have a natural tendency to plug-in wherever they go to top-off their batteries. Car makers, though, are worried that the large number of charges that will inflict on a battery — close to 1,000 times a year if you plug in at home and work — will prematurely age the battery. “Car makers hate the concept” of cars feeding the grid, he said. Tang will also speak at our Greentech Innovations End-to-End Electricity conference taking place November 17 and 18. http://greenlight.greentechmedia.com...computers-662/ ![]() Even AT&T Is Startled by Cost of iPhone Partnership Laura M. Holson AT&T’s successful relationship with Apple comes at a price: $900 million. That is the amount of money AT&T paid to Apple for the 2.4 million iPhones the phone company sold in the third quarter. It is a number that surprised even AT&T, which did not anticipate such huge demand for the smartphone. The company said Wednesday while announcing its financial results that it expected to make up the difference in iPhone-related revenue over the two-year contracts of the iPhone buyers. Users of smartphones, like the iPhone, are heavy users of the Internet and text messaging, which are more profitable for AT&T than voice calls. Those customers also tend to spend more than customers who use their telephones just to make calls. “We are winning share at the high end,” Ralph de la Vega, the executive overseeing AT&T’s wireless operations, said in a conference call with analysts. Same-store traffic to AT&T retail centers has increased 15 percent, largely because of interest in Apple’s phone, he said. With the iPhone, he said, “there is a significant halo effect.” AT&T announced net income of $3.23 billion, or 55 cents a share, up 5.5 percent from $3.06 billion, or 50 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue rose 4 percent, to $31.3 billion from $30.3 billion a year ago, largely because of wireless gains. The $900 million payment to Apple amounted to 10 cents a share. Investors, though, might be forgiven if they missed any halo after watching AT&T’s shares drop Wednesday by $1.95, or 7.6 percent, to close at $23.78. Analysts said the iPhone’s negative impact on earnings caught them and investors off guard. There is also uncertainty — if sales of the iPhone continue at this pace — about how much more AT&T will have to pay Apple next quarter. (AT&T also had costs related to Hurricane Ike, amounting to about 2 cents a share.) But Roger Entner, a senior vice president at IAG Research, which studies market trends, said iPhone sales made now would pay off in the long term because they provide AT&T with more predictable earnings. In the quarter, the company had 50.5 percent growth in wireless data revenue from Internet access, text messaging, e-mail and other services. Total wireless revenue was up 15.4 percent. “That is a short-sighted view,” Mr. Entner said of concerns about iPhone sales. “It is a nice problem to have.” The company said it added two million new customers, totaling 74.9 million subscribers over all. AT&T also said that 40 percent of the iPhone accounts were new customers. And fewer customers are leaving. Churn, or the percentage of customers switching to a rival carrier, dropped to 1.2 percent, compared with 1.3 percent in the previous quarter. AT&T plans to begin selling the new BlackBerry Bold, Research in Motion’s consumer-oriented smartphone, on Nov. 4., which it hopes will increase the flow of new customers. The company tries to play down any effects of the ailing economy, but some analysts are concerned about losses in the wired phone business, a trend that is affecting all telephone companies. AT&T is losing phone lines at the rate of 12 percent, on an annualized basis, said Craig E. Moffett, a research analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “Our worry has been that wireline telephony is increasingly viewed as a discretionary item,” he said. “The easy alternative of cutting the cord” or switching to a lower-price cable company, he added, “threatens to make an already bad situation worse.” In the conference call with securities analysts, Richard Lindner, AT&T’s chief financial officer, said the company was reorganizing to make it easier to sell customers data services across a number of devices, including phones, televisions and computers. He acknowledged that the company’s high-speed Internet service to the home was growing slowly, adding only 148,000 customers in the quarter, compared with 499,000 a year earlier. The service has been trumped by cable companies, which analysts said were offering more competitive deals. AT&T has also had limited growth in the fledgling U-Verse, its television service, which gained 232,000 new customers in the quarter — for a total of 781,000 — and is expected to exceed its goal of 1 million customers by year end. Mr. Lindner said AT&T was not immune to the economic crisis but added that “our business mix is more resilient than most.” He added that, “while the macro environment is not ideal, there are ways to improve.” He said the company planned to use free cash flow to reduce its $76.8 billion in debt. “I think that is a prudent way to operate in this environment,” he said, adding that the company was looking at other ways to cut costs. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/te...s/23phone.html ![]() Security Flaw Is Revealed in T-Mobile’s Google Phone John Markoff Just days after the T-Mobile G1 smartphone went on the market, a group of security researchers have found what they call a serious flaw in the Android software from Google that runs it. One of the researchers, Charles A. Miller, notified Google of the flaw this week and said he was publicizing it now because he believed that cellphone users were not generally aware that increasingly sophisticated smartphones faced the same threats that plague Internet-connected personal computers. Mr. Miller, a former National Security Agency computer security specialist, said the flaw could be exploited by an attacker who might trick a G1 user into visiting a booby-trapped Web site. The G1 — the so-called Google phone — went on sale at T-Mobile stores on Wednesday. Google executives acknowledged the issue but said that the security features of the phone would limit the extent of damage that could be done by an intruder, compared with today’s PCs and other cellphones. Unlike modern personal computers and other advanced smartphones like the iPhone, the Google phone creates a series of software compartments that limit the access of an intruder to a single application. “We wanted to sandbox every single application because you can’t trust any of them,” said Rich Cannings, a Google security engineer. He said that the company had already fixed an open-source version of the software and was working with its partners, T-Mobile and HTC, to offer fixes for its current customers. Typically, today’s computer operating systems try to limit access by creating a partition between a single user’s control of the machine and complete access to programs and data, which is referred to as superuser, root or administrative access. The risk in the Google design, according to Mr. Miller, who is a principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators in Baltimore, lies in the danger from within the Web browser partition in the phone. It would be possible, for example, for an intruder to install software that would capture keystrokes entered by the user when surfing to other Web sites. That would make it possible to steal identity information or passwords. Mr. Miller has previously gained attention for finding other vulnerabilities. In March, he received $10,000 and a Macintosh Air laptop in a contest at the CanSecWest security conference by reading the contents of a file stored on a Mac laptop by directing the machine to a Web site that was able to exploit a vulnerability in Apple’s Safari browser. Google executives said they believed that Mr. Miller had violated an unwritten code between companies and researchers that is intended to give companies time to fix problems before they are publicized. Mr. Miller said he was withholding technical details, but said he felt that consumers had a right to know that products had shortcomings. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/te...t/25phone.html ![]() Economy to Give Open-Source a Good Thumping Andrew Keen When we think of the Great Depression, we imagine long lines of gaunt men, caps in hand, waiting for soup handouts. The equivalent photos of today's economic hard times -- displayed for free, of course, on Flickr -- may be represented by images of unemployed people in front of their computers cheerfully donating their labor to Wikipedia. Unfortunately, there is no doubt that a lot of Americans are suddenly going to have a lot of extra time on their hands to donate their labor for free. Unemployment in America is already at a five-year high of 6.1 percent, with leading economists like 2008's Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman predicting that it will be "certain" to rise to 7 percent and "quite possibly" to 8 percent as the depressing economic implications of the Wall Street financial meltdown crawl up Main Street. As Krugman wrote, with unvarnished Hobbesian honesty, in The New York Times earlier this month, "All signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish -- and long." So much for the good news. Hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of newly redundant Americans will have nothing to do all day except contribute to wikis or become citizen journalists or "work" on their Facebook or MySpace pages. In an America where one in 10 adults are out of work, will Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's free economic model revolutionize the nature of work? Is $0.00 really the future of labor in an age of mass unemployment? Of course not. One of the very few positive consequences of the current financial miasma will be a sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor. Mass unemployment and a deep economic recession comprise the most effective antidote to the utopian ideals of open-source radicals. The altruistic ideal of giving away one's labor for free appeared credible in the fat summer of the Web 2.0 boom when social-media startups hung from trees, Facebook was valued at $15 billion, and VCs queued up to fund revenue-less "businesses" like Twitter. But as we contemplate the world post-bailout, when economic reality once again bites, only Silicon Valley’s wealthiest technologists can even consider the luxury of donating their labor to the latest fashionable, online, open-source project. In his best-selling book, Predictably Irrational, MIT behavorial economist Dan Ariely suggests that most of us are irrational when it comes to determining the value of our labor. I’m not sure. I may not have Ariely’s grasp of behavorial economics, but I’m pretty sure, if not certain, that the idea of free labor will suddenly become profoundly unpalatable to someone faced with their house being repossessed or their kids going hungry. Being paid to work is intuitive to the human condition; it represents our most elemental sense of justice. So how will today's brutal economic climate change the Web 2.0 "free" economy? It will result in the rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash; it will mean the success of Knol over Wikipedia, Mahalo over Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), TheAtlantic.com over the HuffingtonPost.com, iTunes over MySpace, Hulu over YouTube Inc. , Playboy.com over Voyeurweb.com, TechCrunch over the blogosphere, CNN’s professional journalism over CNN’s iReporter citizen-journalism... The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren’t going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some "back end" revenue. "Free" doesn’t fill anyone’s belly; it doesn’t warm anyone up. When, in 50 years time, the definitive histories of the Web 2.0 epoch are written, historians will look back at the open-source mania between 2000 and 2008 with a mixture of incredulity and amusement. How could tens of thousands of people have donated their knowledge to Wikipedia or the blogosphere for free? What was it about the Internet that made so many of us irrational about our economic value? It was a "mania," these mid-21st-century historians will explain, like the Dutch Tulip mania of the 1630s or South Sea Bubble of 1720 -- a mania that ended with the great crash of October 2008. http://www.internetevolution.com/aut...doc_id=166342& ![]() Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution Amanda McPherson, Brian Proffitt, and Ron Hale-Evans The Linux operating system is the most successful open source project in history, but just how much is the software in a Linux distribution “worth”? In 2002, David A. Wheeler published a well-regarded study that examined the Software Lines of Code present in a typical Linux distribution. His findings? The total development cost represented in a typical Linux distribution was $1.2 billion. We’ve used his tools and method to update these findings. Using the same tools, we estimate that it would take approximately $10.8 billion to build the Fedora 9 distribution in today’s dollars, with today’s software development costs. Additionally, it would take $1.4 billion to develop the Linux kernel alone. This paper outlines our technique and highlights the latest costs of developing Linux. The Linux operating system is the most popular open source operating system in computing today, representing a $25 billion ecosystem in 2008.1 Since its inception in 1991, it has grown to become a force in computing, powering everything from the New York Stock Exchange to mobile phones to supercomputers to consumer devices. As an open operating system, Linux is developed collaboratively, meaning no one company is solely responsible for its development or ongoing support. Companies participating in the Linux economy share research and development costs with their partners and competitors. This spreading of development burden amongst individuals and companies has resulted in a large and efficient ecosystem and unheralded software innovation. Over 1,000 developers, from at least 100 different companies, contribute to every kernel release. In the past two years alone, over 3,200 developers from 200 companies have contributed to the kernel.2 It’s important to note that the kernel is just one small piece of a Linux distribution. A distribution is actually made up of multiple components including the kernel, the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, the GNU components, the X window system, and many more. The total of individual developers contributing to these projects surely numbers in the thousands. Because Linux has been developed collectively, there is no single source for cost estimates of how much it has taken to develop the technology. In 2002, David A. Wheeler published a well-regarded study that examined the Software Lines of Code present in a typical Linux distribution (Red Hat Linux 7.1)3. He concluded—as we did—that Software Lines of Code is the most practical method to determine open source software value since it focuses on the end result and not on per-company or per-developer estimates.4 Using the industry standard tools he developed to count and analyze SLOC, he determined that it would cost over $1.2 billion to develop a Linux distribution by conventional proprietary means in the U.S. That was six years ago. Since Linux is innovating and growing at a high rate year over year, the $1.2 billion number needed to be updated to reflect the true value of development reflected in Linux today (and the rising cost of software development itself). For this paper, the Linux Foundation set out to determine the total development cost represented in a typical Linux distribution and to update that $1.2 billion number widely used since its publication in 2002. We analyzed the Fedora 9 distribution, which was released on May 13, 2008. It is a popular and well-used distribution and is the base for Red Hat Enterprise Linux which represents a large percentage of the Linux market. It is also a direct descendant of the Red Hat Linux 7.1 software analyzed by Wheeler in his original paper. For this study, we used David A. Wheeler’s well-known SLOC tool, SLOCCount. SLOCCount makes use of the industry standard COnstructive COst MOdel (COCOMO), an algorithmic Software Cost Estimation Model5 developed by Barry Boehm6. The model uses a basic regression7 formula, with parameters that are derived from historical project data and current project characteristics.8 We updated his study from 2002 to include the growing code base of the Linux kernel and other packages as well as the higher annual salary of a software developer. (More detail on this follows in the Approach section of the paper.) Using this approach, we estimate that it would take $10.8 billion to develop the Linux distribution Fedora 9 by traditional proprietary means in year 2008 dollars. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publi...atinglinux.php ![]() Linux Ecosystem Worth $25 Billion Sean Michael Kerner The Linux Foundation is set to release a report on Wednesday estimating that the Linux ecosystem is now worth $25 billion. The $25 billion figure is one that I'm surprised at because its lower than other forecasts I've seen over the years. Or is it? I'm not sure how the Linux Foundation has compiled their numbers as I have not seen their report. The only tidbit of info I have so far is that the LInux Foundation has valued Google's use of Linux for Android at $1.3 billion worth of R&D. I would assume that the forecast also includes direct revenues from Linux vendors as well as hardware revenue derived from Linux server sales. A really accurate forecast would also include revenues from routing hardware (from Cisco, Juniper, Nortel and others) that is all powered by a Linux OS. So why do I think the $25 billion figure is a bit low? In 2008, IDC forecast that the Linux ecosystem would be worth $49 billion by 2011. That report coincidentally was sponsored by the Linux Foundation as well. IDC pegged the value of the 2007 Linux ecosystem at $21 billion. At that point (2007) IDC noted that Linux only accounted for 4 percent of the $242 billion spent annually on all software. So yes I suppose that $25 billion is an accomplishment that needs to be recognized. But take it with a grain of salt. If IDC's 2008 projection was accurate 2009/2010 will see some massive growth - then again maybe IDC was just wrong. In the context of the overall software market it's also clear that Linux is a player but it certainly has alot of room to grow. http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner...-25-billi.html ![]() Kernel Log: More than 10 Million Lines of Linux Source Files After the release of Linux 2.6.27, kernel developers are currently busily integrating patches for the next kernel version into the main development branch of Linux. This usually involves discarding some old code and adding new code though on balance, there are usually more new lines than old ones, making the kernel grow continually. In this process, the kernel developers have now passed the 10 million line mark if blank lines, comments and text files are included in a current Git checkout of the Linux source code (find . -type f -not -regex '\./\.git.*' | xargs cat | wc -l). It is also worth noting that the lines of text in source code files as that number has recently passed 9 million (find . -name *.[hcS] -not -regex '\./\.git.*' | xargs cat | wc -l). Programs like SLOCCount can be used to inspect the Linux kernel's source code in more detail. According to this tool, the source code line count is not 9 million but exactly 6,399,191 (Source Lines of Code/SLOC), as the program doesn't count blank lines, comments and several other types of input. More than half of the lines are part of hardware drivers; the second largest chunk is the arch/ directory which contains the source code of the various architectures supported by Linux. SLOC Directory SLOC-by-Language (Sorted) 3301081 drivers ansic=3296641,yacc=1680,asm=1136,perl=829,lex=778, sh=17 1258638 arch ansic=1047549,asm=209655,sh=617,yacc=307,lex=300, awk=96,python=45,pascal=41,perl=28 544871 fs ansic=544871 376716 net ansic=376716 356180 sound ansic=355997,asm=183 320078 include ansic=318367,cpp=1511,asm=125,pascal=75 74503 kernel ansic=74198,perl=305 36312 mm ansic=36312 32729 crypto ansic=32729 25303 security ansic=25303 24111 scripts ansic=14424,perl=4653,cpp=1791,sh=1155,yacc=967, lex=742,python=379 17065 lib ansic=17065 10723 block ansic=10723 7616 Documentation ansic=5615,sh=926,perl=857,lisp=218 5227 ipc ansic=5227 2622 virt ansic=2622 2287 init ansic=2287 1803 firmware asm=1598,ansic=205 833 samples ansic=833 493 usr ansic=491,asm=2 0 top_dir (none) According to SLOCCount, 96.4 per cent of the code is written in C and 3.3 percent in Assembler. The other programming languages are only used marginally: Perl, for example, was used for some help scripts during kernel development and only accounts for a tiny 0.1 percent. In the Assembler-heavy architecture directory, SLOCCount also claims to have found 116 lines of Pascal code – but that could well be a misinterpretation by SLOCCount. Totals grouped by language (dominant language first): ansic: 6168175 (96.39%) asm: 212699 (3.32%) perl: 6672 (0.10%) cpp: 3302 (0.05%) yacc: 2954 (0.05%) sh: 2715 (0.04%) lex: 1820 (0.03%) python: 424 (0.01%) lisp: 218 (0.00%) pascal: 116 (0.00%) awk: 96 (0.00%) SLOCCount also tries to give a rough calculation of the source code's value; according to the program's estimates, it would take more than 200 developers about nine and a half years and cost $267 million to rewrite the code from scratch. Given that the program has not been updated for four years, the accuracy of this calculation is arguable; especially the cost per developer would now surely need to be increased. Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 6,399,191 Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years (Person-Months) = 1,983.63 (23,803.60) (Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4 * (KSLOC**1.05)) Schedule Estimate, Years (Months) = 9.59 (115.10) (Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5 * (person-months**0.38)) Estimated Average Number of Developers (Effort/Schedule) = 206.81 Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 267,961,839 (average salary = $56,286/year, overhead = 2.40). Generated using David A. Wheeler's 'SLOCCount' There is no end in sight for kernel growth which has been ongoing in the Linux 2.6 series for several years – with every new version, the kernel hackers extend the Linux kernel further to include new functions and drivers, improving the hardware support or making it more flexible, better or faster. A look at the figures pertaining to the latest kernel versions also shows that it is not only the number of lines of source code which is continually increasing, but also the number of changes per kernel version. http://www.heise-online.co.uk/open/K...--/news/111759 ![]() An Old OS Idea is New Again: Non-Installation Carl Sassenrath As an OS designer who prefers well-thought-out simplicity over ever-deeper-layers of complexity, I've been annoyed for the last couple decades as I've watched most OS designs pack more and more files into their system and library (including DLL) directories. Eventually, the entire system becomes a mangled wreck of software components that require complex installers, tools, and conventions in order to manage. Take a look at any "modern" operating system as an example, Windows or Linux for instance. What a mess. This concept of throwing shared libraries into OS global directories has long been thought of as a necessity to allow for greater sharing of common code and data. Back in the days when disks were small and RAM was only a few MB, that approach made a lot of sense. But, those days are long gone and every so many years you've got to re-examine your requirements relative to the advancements in hardware. Non-installation Since the late 1990's, I figured if I ever wrote another OS, I'd set it up differently. I never liked the concept of installation of anything (apps, devs, libs), with perhaps the OS kernel itself as the only exception. While it's useful to perform some kind of unpacking or decompression step as part of app setup (unzip), the idea of scattering application files into all sorts of mysterious places just makes things harder for everyone, developers and users included. And then, there's also the system registry, but don't even get me started on that. The nice thing about "non-installing" is that your entire app is in one place -- pretty much just a copy of the distribution itself sitting right there. And, wouldn't that be handy in itself, both in terms of backup and also for ease of app removal? So, you ask, if an app isn't installed, how does the OS know about it, it's icon, file types, boot options, related tools, and other such things? Well, I'm glad you asked. That's the concept of binding, and there's no reason it needs to be done during installation. You could quite easily perform that step during boot by inspecting application header files (preferably written in REBOL) that define those relationships, located in each application directory, of course. I would claim that step would take less boot time than that required these days to sort through the tangled mess of files in the system directories. In addition, you need a user-specific storage area for prefs and other special data. But, there are several ways to do that, even via user-specific symbolic links. Not a problem. New or old idea? Is this really a new concept? No, in fact it's a really old idea. You could setup apps this way on the Amiga back in 1985-86. You'd use an assign (essentially a symbolic link) to access the app's base dir. Pretty simple. Is it possible on modern OSes? Aren't they just too complex for such a simple approach. Well, it's nice to see someone put together a Linux distro called GoboLinux that does just that. And, they even kept it compatible, so check it out. Are there others? Quite possibly, and I know you'll post a list in the comment section. Anyway, I point this out because I really like to see rebellious developers working to make computing systems cleaner and simpler, rather than the usual case of making them insanely complex. Good work, keep it up. Now, if we can just get rid of the rest of the garbage that clutters up modern OSes, maybe I will find an OS (other than AmigaOS, of course) that I actually like using. http://www.rebol.com/article/0375.html ![]() In Age of Impatience, Cutting Computer Start Time Matt Richtel and Ashlee Vance It is the black hole of the digital age — the three minutes it can take for your computer to boot up, when there is nothing to do but wait, and wait, and wait some more before you can log on and begin multitasking at hyper-speed. Some people stare at their screen and fidget. Others pace or grab a cup of coffee. “Half the time, I go brush my teeth,” said Monica Loos, 40, who is starting a business selling stationery online from her home in San Francisco. Now the computer industry says it wants to give back some of those precious seconds. In coming months, the world’s major PC makers plan to introduce a new generation of quick-start computers, spotting a marketing opportunity in society’s short attention span. “It’s ridiculous to ask people to wait a couple of minutes,” said Sergei Krupenin, executive director of marketing of DeviceVM, a company that makes a quick-boot program for PC makers. “People want instant-on.” Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo are rolling out machines that give people access to basic functions like e-mail and a Web browser in 30 seconds or less. Asus, a Taiwanese company that is the world’s largest maker of the circuit boards at the center of every PC, has begun building faster-booting software into its entire product line. Even Microsoft, whose bloated Windows software is often blamed for sluggish start times, has pledged to do its part in the next version of the operating system, saying on a company blog that “a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds.” Today only 35 percent of machines running the latest version of Windows, called Vista, boot in 30 seconds or less, the blog notes. (Apple Macintoshes tend to boot more quickly than comparable Windows machines but still feel glacially slow to most users.) There is nothing new about frustration with start-up times, which can be many minutes. But the agitation seems more intense than in the pre-Internet days. Back then, people felt less urgency to log on to their solitary, unconnected machines. Now the destination is the vast world of the Web, and the computer industry says the fast-boot systems cater to an information-addicted society that is agitated by even a moment of downtime. Yet it is a condition that the technology industry — with smartphones and other always-on gadgets — helped create, said Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Our brains have become impatient with the boot-up process,” Dr. Small said. “We have been spoiled by the hand-held devices.” PC makers are not merely out to ease our data anxieties with the new machines. They want to help themselves, too. The industry has grown so competitive, and profit margins so thin, that each company is looking for any advantage it can trumpet. Computer makers say the battle for boot-up bragging rights could resemble the auto industry’s race to shave tenths of a second from the time it takes a car to go from 0 to 60 miles an hour. Hewlett-Packard research shows that when boot times exceed more than a few minutes, users have an exaggerated sense of the time it takes. Four or five minutes can feel like an eternity. In June, H.P. introduced a new kind of fast-booting laptop, for $1,200, and the company says the technology is destined to spread quickly. Right now, H.P.’s goal is to offer PCs that boot in 30 to 45 seconds, said Philip McKinney, chief technology officer for the company’s personal systems group. “In 18 months, you’ve got to be 20 to 30 seconds.” Until Microsoft comes up with a way to greatly shorten the time it takes to load Windows, PC makers are speeding up boot times using programs that bypass Windows. The systems vary technically, but they all rely on a version of an operating system called Linux that gives users quick access to Web browsing and other basic functions of their computer. In some cases, Windows never boots, while in others, Windows starts in the background. DeviceVM, the maker of a fast-boot program called Splashtop, says it charges PC makers $1 to $2 a machine for its software. The company hopes to make more revenue over the long term by charging other software providers that want to include their applications in the menu of programs accessible without a full boot. Of course, some computer users try to avoid slow boot times by never turning off their machines; they simply leave them in standby mode. But PCs sometimes have a hard time waking up from standby and tend to crash the longer they run without rebooting. Leaving a machine on also wastes electricity and, for laptops, can drain the battery. Victor Dailey, 54, a computer engineer from San Diego who works at NASA, has an alternative prescription for boot-up anxiety: “I’ll do the cigarettes and a cup of coffee while I wait.” But he would much rather skip the caffeine and nicotine and get his fix from his computer. “If you could just open it up immediately, just like you do with your cellphone, and text somebody or whatever and close it back up, that would be ideal,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/te...26boot.html?hp ![]() Review: Firefox 3.1 Beta Leaves IE in Ashes Samara Lynn Fans of Firefox get ready, because this version is simply an amazing feat of browser design. But you expected no less, right? The Test Center's reviewers loaded Firefox 3.1 beta on a Vista desktop outfitted with 2 GB RAM and Pentium dual-core at 1.80 GHz. Take a look at these benchmark numbers from a side-by-side comparison of IE7 and Firefox 3.1 running on the same box: -- 3D Java rendering test : IE: 2.85 seconds, Firefox: 0.857 seconds -- SunSpider java benchmark tests: IE: 107159.4ms, Firefox: 3894.6ms -- Acid 3 : IE: 12/100, Firefox: 89/100 Using Scanit, an online security browser that tests for issues with Quick time, memory corruption and overflows, Firefox passed all seventeen tests. Firefox 3.1 is the fastest version yet. One of our favorite sites to use for testing is papervision3d.org because it is so graphics heavy. Firefox 3.1 took 25 seconds to fully load. Compare this to our last Firefox 3 review on the same machine, Firefox 3 took 45 seconds to load the site's 3D image. The browser is unquestionably fast. It also comes with some new features, many of them under-the-hood and dealing with advanced CSS capabilities, but there are some new interface features as well. For instance, Cntrl-tab has been added as a shortcut to quickly switch between tabs. Also, tabs can be dragged and dropped between Mozilla windows, a feature that works well and smoothly. There is also the ability to now do restricted searches in the Awesome bar. The character "^" can be used to restrict searching to history, "*" restricts to bookmarks, and "+" to tagged pages. Mozilla has cited known issues with the beta, (there aren't many, yet) that include failure to install certain client certificates when downloaded from a CA (Certificate Authority), an issue with OS X PPC Macs hanging when viewing an Ogg video, and the migration dialog box not appearing after installing on Windows, which was not an issue during out test. Also, Mozilla cautions that extensions added in Firefox 3 should not be expected to work properly in this beta. The performance in this version is superb. It will be interesting to keep an eye out to see if any security exploits are discovered. http://www.crn.com/software/211201754 ![]() 15 Linux Music Players - Download Your Favorite Posted by MoiN There are a lot of great music players out there for Windows and Mac operating systems but so does Linux. Some of these players support almost anything, some don’t. Some are heavy on the system, some aren’t. I’ve compiled a list of most used Linux based music/media/audio players. The list is not in a particular order, whatever you think is your favorite, mention it in the comments ![]() Cont’d… ![]() *All* Russian Schools to Use Free Software Glyn Moody I've often lamented how few schools in the UK use free software, and how difficult it is to break the lock that Microsoft has on the entire educational system. The pathetic state here is highlighted by contrast with Russia, which is making amazing strides in rolling out open source to schools. It began with a few pilot projects, and apparently these have been so successful that the Russian government has now decided to make it the standard for *all* schools: До конца 2009 г. на всех школьных компьютерах будет установлен пакет свободного программного обеспечения (ПСПО). Об этом, как передает «Прайм ТАСС», сегодня сообщил министр связи и массовых коммуникаций РФ Игорь Щеголев на пленарном заседании «Информационное общество и современные технологии доставки информации» в рамках международной выставки «ИнфоКом-2008». [Via Google Translate: By the end of 2009, all school computers will be installed package of free software (PSPO). This is how transfers «Prime-TASS», today announced Minister of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Igor Shchyogolev at the plenary session «Information Society and the modern technologies of information» in the international exhibition «InfoCom-2008».] This isn't just an option for those brave souls who might want to try something different: this is now the official approach. If schools want to use proprietary software, they have to pay for it themselves: Министр также отметил, что к 2010 г., как ожидается, число используемых в школах компьютеров достигнет миллиона. По словам Щеголева, по истечении трех лет школы смогут сделать выбор: использовать платные лицензионные программные продукты, приобретая их за свой счет, или перейти на отечественное свободное ПО. [Via Google Translate: The Minister also noted that by 2010 it is expected that the number of computers in schools will reach a million. According to Schegoleva, after three years of school will be able to make a choice: pay royalties to use software products, buying them at their own expense, or go to the domestic free software.] http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolb...1423&blogid=14 ![]() The World Is My Office Mike Elgan IMOVIO launched today a smaller alternative to a subnotebook -- much smaller. The new iKIT is about the size of a PDA from ten years ago, but has a QWERTY keyboard and connects to the Internet at 3G speeds via your cell phone or Wi-Fi. The $175 Linux-based system has a Webcam built in, as well as a range of applications, including Web browsing, e-mail and IM. It can connect to the Internet using a standard Wi-Fi connection, or it can use your cell phone's mobile broadband connection via Bluetooth. The company is currently pitching it to mobile network operators and retail stores. It's being compared to the ill-fated Palm Foleo. But the comparison doesn't work because the Foleo was Palm-phone only, didn't fit in a pocket and cost well over three times the price of the iKIT. http://blogs.computerworld.com/call_...s_a_cell_phone ![]() Open-Source DRM Ready to Take on Apple and Microsoft An open-source digital rights management (DRM) scheme says it's ready to supplant Apple and Microsoft as the world's leading copy protection solution. Marlin, which is backed by companies such as Sony and Samsung, has just announced a new partner program that aims to drive the DRM system into more consumer devices. The co-chairman of the Marlin Developer Community claims the open-source system is far less oppressive than those from rivals such as Apple and Microsoft, allowing users to share content between any Marlin-enabled device in the home rather than on specific machines. "It works in a way that doesn't hold consumers hostage," Talal Shamoon told PC Pro. "It allows you to protect and share content in the home, in a way that people own the content, not the devices." Shamoon claims the chief benefit of Marlin is that dozens of different device and content makers can run the DRM without restriction. "With Marlin, any device that runs Marlin can run content on the home domain," he adds. "It's a level playing field [for manufacturers] - they don't have to go up to Redmond with a begging bowl or suck up to Steve Jobs." But with Microsoft's closed-source DRM falling prey to hackers, isn't an open-source solution more susceptible to cracking by its very nature? Not so, according to Shamoon, who says the "security is separate from the technology", allowing keys to be reissued if they are breached. That still doesn't address the major bugbear with DRM: consumers hate it. "The biggest problem with DRM is people have implemented it badly," argues Shamoon. "Make DRM invisible and people will use it." http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/232383/o...microsoft.html ![]() If No One Sees It, Is It an Invention? Leslie Berlin IN December, Johnny Chung Lee, then a Ph.D. candidate, posted a five-minute video on YouTube that became an Internet sensation. The video showed how, in a few easy steps, the Nintendo Wii remote controller — or “Wiimote” — could transform a normal video screen into a virtual reality display, with graphics that seemed to pop through the screen and into the living room. So far, the video has been seen more than six million times. That video, together with others that Mr. Lee, now 28, posted on YouTube, have drawn people to the innovator as well as his innovations. Video game companies have contacted him and, in September, M.I.T.’s Technology Review named him as one of its top innovators under 35. When he completed his degree this year at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute of Carnegie Mellon, he received “lots of offers from all the big places,” according to Paul Dietz, who convinced Mr. Lee to join him in the applied sciences group of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division. “When we told Bill Gates we were trying to recruit Johnny, he already knew about his work and was anxious to bring him to Microsoft,” adds Mr. Dietz, a research and development program manager. Contrast this with what might have followed from other options Mr. Lee considered for communicating his ideas. He might have published a paper that only a few dozen specialists would have read. A talk at a conference would have brought a slightly larger audience. In either case, it would have taken months for his ideas to reach others. Small wonder, then, that he maintains that posting to YouTube has been an essential part of his success as an inventor. “Sharing an idea the right way is just as important as doing the work itself,” he says. “If you create something but nobody knows, it’s as if it never happened.” Before posting his own ideas, Mr. Lee watched other people’s videos about the Wiimote. An online community of electronics hobbyists share ideas in video form not only on YouTube, but also at sites like instructables.com and makezine.com. Thirty years ago, pioneers of the personal computer industry swapped ideas and tried to outdo one another at meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club in an auditorium at Stanford. Today, these “meetings” happen virtually and globally, with people modifying, improving and otherwise riffing on one another’s ideas — then posting the results in video form. This wide-scale collaboration, Mr. Lee says, lets the hobbyists “take advantage of economies of scale of innovation.” In late 2002, Mr. Lee started a small company to build and sell an invention that helps filmmakers minimize camera-shaking. He sells this “Poor Man’s Steadycam” for $39.95 online — commercial versions start at five times that price — though he encourages people to download free instructions from his Web site and to build the device themselves for $14 in parts. Mr. Lee says that the company is profitable, with revenue of about $250,000 in its first five years, but he adds that he is not much of a businessman. He has been out of inventory for over a year. The steadycam company is his only foray into business. His decision to share, rather than sell, most of his ideas is linked to his definition of success, which he measures in terms of impact, not dollars. This, he says, is a reason he chose to join Microsoft: the company’s enormous customer base represents “real potential to help other people.” He chooses his personal projects based on what he calls their “work-to-wow” ratio. “I want to get the biggest wow for the smallest amount of work,” he explains, adding that for him, wow is synonymous with impact. The ratio of the Wiimote projects was fantastic: each idea that has reached millions of people took only three to four days to conceive, build, film and post. Mr. Lee encourages innovators to ask themselves, “Would providing 80 percent of the capability at 1 percent of the cost be valuable to someone?” If the answer is yes, he says, pay attention. Trading relatively little performance for substantial cost savings can generate what Mr. Lee calls “surprising and often powerful results both scientifically and socially.” As evidence, he might point to a do-it-yourself interactive whiteboard, another of his Wiimote innovations. Interactive whiteboards, which in commercial form generally sell for more than $1,000, make it possible to control a computer by tapping, writing or drawing on an image of the desktop that has been projected onto a screen. Mr. Lee’s version can be built with roughly $60 in parts and free open-source software downloadable from his Web site. Some 700,000 people, many of them teachers, have downloaded the software, Mr. Lee says. Much more expensive whiteboards may offer more features and better image resolution, but Mr. Lee’s version is adequate for most classroom applications. It is also easy to build. An after-school Lego robotics club for fifth graders at Clara Byrd Baker Elementary School in Williamsburg, Va., built a Wiimote whiteboard in four one-hour sessions. “Once it was done, the kids were so excited,” recalls Kofi Merritt, then the school’s computer resource specialist, who suggested and advised the project. “They recognized themselves as innovators and demonstrated the whiteboard in classroom after classroom.” MR. LEE’S ideas have acquired a momentum independent of Mr. Lee himself. At educational conferences, teachers have presented how-to tutorials for their colleagues. And at Microsoft, his appreciation for online video has rubbed off on others. The company recently gave Mr. Dietz permission to go public with a new invention of his own: a drinking glass that, when placed on the Microsoft Surface table — a table with an interactive, multitouch display built into the top — alerts a waiter to offer a refill. After writing a paper on his invention, Mr. Dietz wanted to test the concept in the market. His first step? He posted a video on YouTube. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/business/26proto.html ![]() You May Soon Know if You’re Hogging the Discussion Anne Eisenberg PEOPLE who want to improve their communication skills may one day have an unusual helper: software programs that analyze the tone, turn-taking behavior and other qualities of a conversation. The programs would then tell the speakers whether they tend to interrupt others, for example, or whether they dominate meetings with monologues, or appear inattentive when others are talking. The inventor of this technology is Alex Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has developed cellphone-like gadgets to listen to people as they chat, and computer programs that sift through these conversational cadences, studying communication signals that lie beneath the words. If commercialized, such tools could help users better handle many subtleties of face-to-face and group interactions — or at least stop hogging the show at committee meetings. With the help of his students, Dr. Pentland, a professor of media arts and sciences at M.I.T., has been equipping people in banks, universities and other places with customized smartphones or thin badges packed with sensors that they wear for days or even months. As these people talk with one another, the sensors collect data on the timing, energy and variability of their speech. Dr. Pentland, known as Sandy, calls his gleaning and processing of conversational and other data “reality mining — using data mining algorithms to parse the real life, analog world of social interactions.” The tools he has developed might help people change their communication tactics, including those that lead to unproductive workplace dynamics, said David Lazer, an associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Mr. Lazer praised “the richness of the data” captured by the process — the “minute-by-minute, fine-grained data on whether you are talking, whom you prefer to talk with, what your tone is, and if you interrupt, for instance.” That kind of tool is rare, Mr. Lazer said. “Our existing research tools for gathering this kind of data aren’t very good,” he said — for example, questionnaires in which people self-report on conversations. Reality mining may be more accurate, and has the potential to show “all sorts of interactive patterns that may not be obvious to individuals in an organization,” he said. Many of Dr. Pentland’s research studies with smartphones and badges with embedded sensors are discussed in his new book, “Honest Signals,” recently published by MIT Press. The badges use tools including infrared sensors to tell when people are facing one another, accelerometers to record gestures, and microphones and audio signal-processing to capture the tone of voice. With the array of sensors, the badges can detect what Dr. Pentland calls “honest signals, unconscious face-to-face signaling behavior” that suggest, for example, when people are active, energetic followers of what other people are saying, and when they are not. He argues that these underlying signals are often as important in communication as words and logic. For example, the badges register when listeners respond with regular nods or short acknowledgments like, “Right.” Such responses, he argues, are a kind of mirroring behavior that may help build empathy between speaker and listener. He also examines patterns of turn-taking in conversations, as well as gestures and other, often unconscious signals. Future smartphones that take advantage of his technology may act as friendly personal assistants, automatically putting through calls from friends and family, but sending all others straight through to voice mail. “The phone can be like a butler who really gets to know you,” he said, by deciding to ring brightly for an urgent call when its owner has forgotten to turn on the ringer. In the research, many steps are taken to make sure the identities of participants remain anonymous, said Anmol Madan, a graduate student of Dr. Pentland. For instance, when microphone audio data is collected, the microphone picks up tone and the length of speaking time but does not record any of the actual words spoken. So far, Mr. Madan has found that the data gathered by mobile phones is far more accurate than accounts of the same information reported by participants. “Humans have a lot of bias when they recall their behavior,” he said. Tanzeem Choudhury, a former student and collaborator of Dr. Pentland and now an assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth, continues to do reality mining with smartphones. “We spend a lot of time talking about how to improve communication skills,” she said. “This work lets us pin down what makes conversations effective by analyzing people’s actual conversation in their social networks.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/bu...novelties.html ![]() At Pundit School, Learning to Smile and Interrupt Ashley Parker J. PETER FREIRE is at school, learning to be a better pundit. He is being trained to carve his conservative philosophy into bite-size nuggets — preferably ones that end with a zinger — and to avoid questions he doesn’t like. He is discovering the right way to attack opponents (with a smile) and to steer a conversation in his direction (by interrupting). Journalists once had to achieve a certain gravitas before appearing on television as a political expert, but not anymore. Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, a riveting presidential election and the proliferation of cable channels, people like Mr. Freire, who is 26 and has been managing editor of The American Spectator, a conservative magazine, since January, are finding themselves in hot demand. Tucker Carlson may have paved the way, becoming a host of “Crossfire” when barely over age 30. More-recent role models include Luke Russert, the 23-year-old son of the late Tim Russert, who was hired by NBC this summer to cover the youth vote, and Rachel Maddow, who is 35 and rose from nowhere to become a top-rated headliner on MSNBC. But the transition from dorm-room debates to prime-time TV isn’t always easy, and that’s where pundit school comes in. Mr. Freire, whose résumé since graduating from Cornell includes a string of internships and short-term jobs, started making the television rounds — Fox News, MSNBC, C-Span, you name it — after he got his current job. Then came the embarrassing on-air moment when, by his account, a Fox News host baited him into calling for a boycott of The New York Times, where he had once been an editorial clerk. Mr. Freire, who had known for some time that he had room for improvement in his TV appearances, decided to seek professional media training. This led him to the Leadership Institute, a conservative policy group in Arlington, Va., that has given courses in punditry to nearly 600 people this year, up from 461 in 2005. The institute offers various courses, from a $75 basic lecture to a $1,500 three-hour one-on-one session. The American Spectator paid to send Mr. Freire to the most advanced class. And so he found himself on a recent Monday in a mock studio, watching a tape of a practice interview he had just done on privatizing Social Security, with several coaches critiquing his performance. “That was great when J. P. said, ‘The question is, can you trust government?’ ” said Ian Ivey, the communications director at the Leadership Institute. “But then you need to follow up with a sound bite that you can expect to hear on ‘Hannity’ later.” (The reference was to “Hannity & Colmes,” the popular conservative talk show on Fox.) Before the three-hour training session was over, Mr. Freire would learn what color jacket looks good on TV (charcoal gray), that the no-tie look popularized by Barack Obama is O.K. (“Conservatives are stuck in a white shirt, red tie, navy blue suit style,” one of his coaches observed), and how to get his message across no matter what he’s asked. (“You can transition by saying, ‘Look, I think the real issue is ...’ ”) But his advisers also emphasized that most good pundits are born, not made. “The purpose of television really comes down to whether the person is likable or not,” explained Beverly Hallberg, who worked with Mr. Freire at the institute. Training, of course, doesn’t hurt. For whatever reason, some television bookers say that Republicans are way ahead of Democrats when it comes to grooming their young for political talk shows. Historically, Republicans “considered it a primary part of the campaign to have people on television to advocate for their cause,” said Tammy Haddad, a former executive producer for “Hardball” on MSNBC. She called the Leadership Institute part of the Republican “farm system.” Democrats may be starting to catch up. One liberal organization, the Center for American Progress, started what it calls a “pundit project” in 2006, offering on-camera training at the annual convention of the Daily Kos, a left-leaning blog, and elsewhere. While the conventional stereotype of a TV pundit is a middle-aged white guy with years of experience (John McLaughlin or Pat Buchanan might come to mind), the image has begun to change. Mr. Carlson, now a veteran pundit, is still under 40. Ms. Maddow, who started in local radio, has been creeping up on Larry King in the ratings. Chris Cillizza, a 32-year-old Washington Post political reporter, has become a fixture on cable news. Mr. Carlson, now with MSNBC, says that media training is unnecessary. “It’s pretty simple,” he said of what he does. “Don’t wear white, show up sober and try to speak in complete sentences.” This election cycle has been particularly good to new political reporters: The youth vote is a hot topic, one of the candidates is under 50 and the Internet has given newcomers, particularly bloggers, a powerful forum. Cable news has always lusted after young viewers and on-air talent, but this year bookers are looking for talking heads who are positively baby-faced. Trevor Butterworth, a senior fellow at the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, coined the term “premature pundits” to refer to the young journalists now appearing on television. “The combination of ambition and naïveté allows them to say things that with slightly more age and wisdom you’d be embarrassed to say,” he said. But youth alone is not a natural advantage for journalists, said Bill Wolff, executive producer of “The Rachel Maddow Show” and a vice president at MSNBC. The biggest recent change, he said, is that it is easier to gain national attention by appearing on television. “You’re not speaking into an abyss,” Mr. Wolff said. “If just one of the people watching happens to have a blog, it’s not just your audience of 100,000 people anymore, it’s 100 million people.” There is a certain symbiosis at work. At the same time that networks like MSNBC and Fox (which declined to comment for this article) are trying to drum up telegenic guests, Web and print outlets are trying to snag air time for their writers. The Politico, for example, a Web site founded in January 2007, employs three full-time bookers to get its cadre of reporters on radio and TV. While the goal for a newbie is to come off as a seasoned pro, sometimes young journalists just try to hold their own. Consider the plight of Christopher Beam, a 23-year-old political reporter for the Web site Slate, who won a coveted slot on “The Colbert Report” on the night of the New Hampshire primary. Although he put in an earnest performance, the most memorable moment was when the host, Stephen Colbert, superimposed an image of Mr. Beam’s hipster-ish beard on a photo of John Edwards. Mark Hemingway, a 32-year-old reporter for the National Review Online, said that TV and radio stations started approaching him as soon as he began writing about the election. While he has not tried media training, he did express the view that up-and-coming journalists need to know more than just the basics of their craft. “I recognize where things are headed,” Mr. Hemingway said. “When I’m asked to do TV and my schedule is free, I make a point of trying to do it.” Mr. Freire says he does the same. Nowadays, his responsibilities can include bantering with Neil Cavuto on Fox News or appearing as a guest on C-Span’s “Washington Journal.” Sometimes he has trouble with eye contact. Ms. Hallberg counseled him to look down (“That looks contemplative”) instead of gazing up, which makes him look as if he is searching for an answer. She also told him to smile as much as possible. “Smiling works if you’re attacking somebody, if you can throw a smile around something negative you’re saying,” Ms. Hallberg said. After briefing her student, she led him into a small studio with a half-moon anchor desk for some practice. The first mock interview went fairly well: Mr. Freire smiled at the right times, but Ms. Hallberg said he should have used more slogans and short phrases (“flip-flop” is one that works well) and been more aggressive in directing the flow of conversation. On the second try, he launched right into a set of talking points about John McCain. It was Ms. Hallberg’s turn to smile. “I thought you did much better,” she said. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/fa...ml?ref=fashion ![]() Popularity or Income? Two Sites Fight It Out Claire Cain Miller In the aftermath of the dot-com bust, many chastened venture capitalists pledged never again to finance an idea scribbled on a cocktail napkin with no viable business model. Too many poorly conceived companies like Pets.com and Webvan had flamed out. The new breed of Internet start-ups needed to have a clear path to profitability. The discipline did not last. Successes like YouTube, the online video site sold to Google for $1.65 billion in 2006, convinced some venture investors that building a Web site with a large number of users could still be more valuable than making money from paying customers. Now, as the global economy enters a severe downturn, the relative merits of these two philosophies will be tested again. The two poles of the debate are apparent in the world of microblogging, where people use the Web or their cellphones to blast short updates on their activities to a group of virtual followers. Twitter, a start-up company in San Francisco that has become a household name, is the leading microblogging outfit. At least three million people have tried its free service, according to TwitDir, a directory service. But Twitter has absolutely no revenue — not even ads. Yammer, a new and much smaller copycat aimed at corporate customers, has a mere 60,000 users. Unlike Twitter, its founders set out from the beginning to charge for its service. Just six weeks after its public debut, Yammer is already bringing in a modest amount of cash. Twitter has drawn much attention in the tech world since the service began in 2006. When a user is logged in through the Web or a cellphone, it asks one simple question, “What are you doing?” Users answer in 140 characters or less. While some of these “tweets” have the profundity of haiku, most are mundane, like “Sure is pretty out tonight” or “My eyes itch. I am very aggravated.” Yammer tweaks the question, asking, “What are you working on?” The goal, said its chief executive, David Sacks, is to make offices more productive. People on Yammer update colleagues on company events or ask work-related questions without clogging e-mail boxes with mass mailings. Mr. Sacks said finding a way to make money was a priority for Yammer and a lesson he learned as operations chief at the online payment company PayPal after the dot-com bubble burst and the company had to make money fast. His focus on profits helped Yammer, which is based in West Hollywood, Calif., win the TechCrunch50 prize for start-ups in September. TechCrunch, a leading technology news blog that sponsored the contest, called the company “Twitter with a business model.” Yammer’s business model is compelling, Mr. Sacks said, because it spreads virally like a consumer service, but earns revenue like a business service. Anyone with a company e-mail address can use Yammer free. When that company officially joins — which gives the administrator more control over security and how employees use the service — it pays $1 a month for each user. In Yammer’s first six weeks, 10,000 companies with 60,000 users signed up, though only 200 companies with 4,000 users are paying so far. The founders and backers of Twitter, which has reportedly raised $20 million from venture capitalists, are just as adamant about their decision to grow first and monetize second. Like the value of the telephone network or the Internet itself, the value of Twitter increases with the number of users. So growth is its top priority, said Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive. “If we spent time monetizing early on, it would have meant we weren’t doing other things that made the product better for users,” he said. Registrations have grown 600 percent over the last year. However, as venture investors tell start-ups to lay off workers and become profitable to survive the economic downturn, the revenue question has taken on new urgency for Twitter. On Thursday, Twitter’s board pushed aside Jack Dorsey — the engineer who created Twitter and its former founding chief executive — and gave the job to Mr. Williams, Twitter’s chairman and a more experienced executive. “We all think Ev is a better fit to lead the company from a product perspective, an operations perspective and a business standpoint,” said Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures and a Twitter board member. Early next year, Twitter plans to introduce several ways to bring in revenue. One idea is to charge companies that want to use Twitter as an official channel to talk with their customers and monitor what they are saying. Although Twitter will focus on building revenue next year, Mr. Williams argues that Twitter’s growth-first approach has a proved track record. Mr. Williams helped found Pyra Labs, an early blog company that grew rapidly but struggled to build a healthy business before it was sold to Google for an undisclosed amount in 2003. He noted that Google itself began as a search engine with no revenue before finding the lucrative advertising model that has turned it into a business titan. “It was the classic story of not worrying about monetization yet and getting their product right,” Mr. Williams said. But Joseph A. Grundfest, a former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission who now teaches venture capital at Stanford, said that most companies could not expect Google-like success. “In my view, you at least want a theory about how you might be able to be cash-flow positive,” he said. In any case, the economic crisis might leave growth-oriented companies like Twitter with little choice but to start focusing on the bottom line. “Now it doesn’t matter if you want scale first because you just can’t have it,” said Paul Kedrosky, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. “You have the luxury of being able to decide between small and focused on revenues or large when you have capital. When there isn’t money, there’s no choice.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/te...21twitter.html ![]() S&P Slashes New York Times Rating to Junk Standard & Poor's on Thursday slashed its ratings on the New York Times Co (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) into junk territory and cited concerns about the newspaper publisher's revenue outlook, after it posted a third-quarter loss. Moody's Investors Service also said it may follow the move, adding the publisher faces risks in refinancing its debt. The New York Times posted a quarterly loss from continuing operations on Thursday and said advertising revenue at its news media group dropped 16 percent for the quarter. S&P said a likely U.S. recession will exacerbate declining advertising revenues and prolong the time until the declines will be made more manageable, possibly until 2010. Until advertising declines are moderated the publisher will not be able to execute revenue strategies and cost cutting measures that are key to stabilizing its earnings, the rating agency added. "It is our estimate that the company's total revenue will decline in the mid-teens percentage area in 2008 year over year, and that earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (after buyout expenditures) will decline by more than 30 percent in 2008 and by about an additional 30 percent well into 2009," S&P said. It cut the Times' rating three notches to "BB-minus," three levels below investment grade, from "BBB-minus." The outlook is negative, indicating an additional cut may be likely over the next one-to-two years. Moody's said it may cut the company from "Baa," the lowest investment grade. Rating downgrades into junk territory can substantially increase a company's borrowing costs. Newspaper advertising market conditions are likely to remain challenging in 2009 and continuing revenue declines will make it difficult for the company to bring its credit metrics in line with its investment-grade rating, Moody's said in a statement. It will also make it hard for the publisher to execute its plans to improve liquidity, Moody's added. Risks from refinancing maturing debt also prompted the review for downgrade, the rating agency said. The Times said it is looking for ways to reduce its debt, but said it is a difficult time to make asset sales. The cost to insure the company's debt with credit default swaps rose to 501.5 basis points on Thursday, or $501,500 per year for five years to insure $10 million in debt, from 460 basis points on Wednesday, according to Markit Intraday. (Reporting by Karen Brettell; Editing by Diane Craft) http://www.reuters.com/article/bonds...53585920081023 ![]() Changing That Home Page? Take Baby Steps Miguel Helft A FEW weeks ago, Yahoo began what may be its biggest overhaul of its home page. But if you are among the roughly 100 million Americans who stop by Yahoo.com every month, the odds are that you haven’t noticed any changes. That’s because the job of revamping the Web’s most visited portal page is fraught with risk. If even a small fraction of Yahoo’s audience doesn’t like the changes, the company could lose millions of users and millions of dollars in advertising. So Yahoo is introducing changes in small stages and to small segments of its audience at a time, all while soliciting feedback from its users. You could call it stealth innovation. The company’s goal is to end up several months from now with a completely different, and presumably better, front page — with its audience intact. The effort is as much art as science and seeks to balance the company’s desire to innovate with its fear of alienating users. And it offers an example of how online services are designed and improved in a world where a rival’s offering is just a click away. The challenges are not unique to Yahoo. All kinds of Web sites, big and small, face similar issues as they leap from version 1.0 to version 2.0 and beyond. But the largest, most successful sites have the most to lose by springing sudden changes on their users, so they often exercise particular caution. Google, for instance, has said it tries to make changes to its search engine that, on their own, are imperceptible, but that taken together result in a better product over time. With the same goal in mind, eBay once took 30 days to gradually change the background color of its home page from gray to white. Those who don’t exercise caution do so at their own peril. AOL, for example, set off a user revolt in 2006 when it suddenly transformed the Netscape.com portal into a “social” news service, where users’ votes determined which articles received top billing. By the time AOL reversed course the next year, the Netscape portal had lost half its audience. “People become attached to the way things are done and don’t like changes,” said Dan Clifford, founder and managing partner of AnswerLab, a company that conducts usability tests for clients like eBay, Intuit and Yahoo. “At the same time, users are pretty vocal about what they like.” Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s chief executive, has often spoken about its goal to transform itself from an Internet portal to a “starting point” for millions of Web users. To some pundits, it sounded like a distinction without a difference. But to Tapan Bhat, the Yahoo executive charged with transforming the home page, the differences are vast. Users will be able to customize the new home page, which eventually will include more content from other popular Web sites; applications allowing people to track their activities on places like eBay, Netflix or Facebook; and social networking features. “We are fundamentally changing the front page into a dashboard for the Web,” said Mr. Bhat, a senior vice president. In mid-September, after months of research and testing of early prototypes, Mr. Bhat’s team began introducing a redesign of the home page to randomly selected fractions of Yahoo’s audience in the United States, Britain, France and India. Feedback poured in quickly. Comments like “I hate it” were not uncommon. Users also had more specific complaints, like “You made this more cluttered” and “There are fewer stories.” Each of the more than 10,000 comments that Yahoo has already received has been read by someone on Mr. Bhat’s team. “You can dismiss it, which is stupid, or you can try to understand what it is that users are telegraphing,” Mr. Bhat said. There were actually more stories on the new page, he said, but because it was less cluttered, some users perceived fewer. In the new design, Yahoo created an applications module on the left side of the page that included a tab called MyMailboxes and gave users access not only to their Yahoo e-mail but also to accounts they may have on other services. But what Yahoo thought was an enhancement felt like a detriment to some users. Before the redesign, the e-mail icon was in a module on the right side of the page, and many users complained that they could no longer access their e-mail easily. Yahoo tried many solutions, including putting an icon for mail back on the right side but keeping the MyMailboxes tab in its place. That seemed to work. As users returned to the page, they rediscovered MyMailboxes and said they liked having access to their other e-mail. “We were able to turn a negative into a positive,” Mr. Bhat said. “Six months from now, we may be able to remove the mail icon from the right.” Testing of each feature is proceeding in stages. Each group of users, typically less than 1 percent of Yahoo’s audience, is selected for one design change. Other groups of users are picked for other changes. When the new features have been tested and fine-tuned, they are combined into a new page, which becomes the “baseline design” and may be introduced to another, larger group. Then the process begins anew, with more changes. THIS approach requires flexibility, Mr. Bhat said. “You have to have a very clear understanding of where you want to go,” he said. “But users will help you figure out how to adjust your course. If you end up going in a completely different direction, you did something wrong” in the design process, he added. Does the process slow innovation? Not necessarily, Mr. Bhat says. He compares it to lighting a room gradually with a dimmer switch. “If you go from light to dark by flipping a switch, your eyes may hurt for a minute or two,” he says. “You may end up being able to see faster if you use the dimmer.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19ping.html ![]() Dutch Youths Convicted of Virtual Theft A Dutch court has convicted two youths of theft for stealing virtual items in a computer game and sentenced them to community service. Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions about the legal status of "virtual goods." The Leeuwarden District Court says the culprits, 15 and 14 years old, coerced a 13-year-old boy into transferring a "virtual amulet and a virtual mask" from the online adventure game RuneScape to their game accounts. "These virtual goods are goods (under Dutch law), so this is theft," the court said Tuesday in a summary of its ruling. Identities of the minors were not released. The 15-year-old was sentenced to 200 hours service, and the 14-year-old to 160 hours. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102101209.html ![]() Online Divorcee Jailed after Killing Virtual Hubby Mari Yamaguchi A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday. The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May, a police official in northern Sapporo said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy. "I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry," the official quoted her as telling investigators and admitting the allegations. The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said. She has not yet been formally charged, but if convicted could face a prison term of up to five years or a fine up to $5,000. Players in "Maple Story" raise and manipulate digital images called "avatars" that represent themselves, while engaging in relationships, social activities and fighting against monsters and other obstacles. The woman used login information she got from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married, and killed the character. The man complained to police when he discovered that his beloved online avatar was dead. The woman was arrested Wednesday and was taken across the country, traveling 620 miles from her home in southern Miyazaki to be detained in Sappporo, where the man lives, the official said. The police official said he did not know if she was married in the real world. In recent years, virtual lives have had consequences in the real world. In August, a woman was charged in Delaware with plotting the real-life abduction of a boyfriend she met through "Second Life," another virtual interactive world. In Tokyo, police arrested a 16-year-old boy on charges of swindling virtual currency worth $360,000 in an interactive role playing game by manipulating another player's portfolio using a stolen ID and password. Virtual games are popular in Japan, and "Second Life" has drawn a fair number of Japanese participants. They rank third by nationality among users, after Americans and Brazilians. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102301184.html ![]() Interview: PCGA President Randy Stude Wesley Yin-Poole One of the hottest debates pulsing across the internet right now is the state of PC gaming. More and more publishers and developers are blaming piracy for the lack of support for the platform. More and more publishers are suffering criticism for the digital rights management they put in place on their new PC titles. One man standing up for the PC gaming hardcore is Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance. Here, in an outspoken interview with VideoGamer.com, Stude tells us why publishers only have themselves to blame when their games are pirated, and why PC games are better than console games. VideoGamer.com: Tell me a bit about yourself. Randy Stude: My background, 14 years with Intel. I'm an avid gamer, father of four with four PC gamer kits in the house. I guess everyone in the house has an absolute passion for gaming. We've got every console there is. But for the most part they sit and gather dust while everyone plays World of Warcraft, Webkinz, Spore and all the other immersive PC gaming titles. VideoGamer.com: How did the PC Gaming Alliance come to be? RS: A few years ago several of the founding companies sat down and decided that the PC needed a voice when it came to gaming. The consoles have their voice, the PC was getting beat up a little bit in the press. We on the inside of PC gaming knew the story was much different than what was being represented by those who wanted to take shots at the PC gaming industry. So we decided to stand up and make a little noise. The rest is history. VideoGamer.com: From your website's members area I can see some fairly high profile companies that are on board. How did you get them on board? RS: A few of us sat down around the table and said, 'who would be critical to be a part of this organisation?'. We approached them and the rest is history. I don't want to get into a situation where I say, 'hey it was me and this guy', it isn't about that. It was everyone sitting down at a table with a clean sheet of paper, yeah there's a few issues that maybe the industry can deal with rather than anyone of us by ourselves and we all decided to do it. VideoGamer.com: We ran an interview with Peter Molyneux recently, who said he thought the PC gaming industry was "in tatters", which prompted a statement from yourself in response to that. There seems to be a quite a few developers who say this kind of thing to the press when they're answering questions about why they're not doing PC versions of console games. They always cite a lack of sales or piracy. Do you simply think they're wrong? Are they misguided? Do they not understand the full picture? Why are they saying this if the reality is, as you say, quite different? RS: There's a $10.7bn industry here and the easy answer I can give you is there are a lot of people making a lot of money on PC gaming and perhaps Peter, with his recent PC titles, The Movies and Black & White 2, is under the belief that the PC for him isn't the right place to invest his time. And when you look at Fable which has become a console title pretty much now, if you're releasing that product, or any product today, on multiple platforms, and there's no differentiated experience for the PC, and the game is technically designed really to be played on console, because there's a lot of business to be garnered by releasing your game on the consoles, especially if you're not focussed on a long term immersive revenue and ongoing affair with the gamers who would choose your title, then perhaps consoles are the right place for you. What I'm basically saying there is there are hundreds of millions of PC gamers out there in the world playing games, and if they're not playing Fable, or if they don't want to play Fable II then Peter shouldn't publish it. VideoGamer.com: Playing devils advocate, I think he's referring very much to the core PC gamer market rather than the PC gaming market overall, that the more high end titles struggle to sell on PC. But that's something you would reject? RS: Is Fable II a high end game and Warhammer and Age of Conan aren't? Is Spore a high end game? Those titles are selling really well. I think he made a judgement call for his title, that he should probably focus on why he made that call, and if he didn't see an opportunity to differentiate on PC he should just leave it at that and not submit an opinion on the health of hundreds of millions of gamers who are generating almost $11bn in revenue. VideoGamer.com: Is it more to do with piracy at the end of the day and that publishers don't want to release a game on the PC because they feel that it's just going to be pirated, especially if it's targeted at core gamers who, let's be honest, know about torrent sites and how they work? RS: Piracy is an issue for some publishers, but if you sat down and you talk to Blizzard or Funcom or the guys at EA about Warhammer, about all the noise that was made about Spore and the reaction to the DRM, but they're still selling games and they're selling them well. The guys at Valve have a framework in place, that a lot of PC gamers, they claim over 15 million of them, are quite pleased with, and they're selling games through Steam to people all over the world and would say that they've got a problem solved with their approach to how to deal with piracy. VideoGamer.com: So where do we go from here regarding the piracy issue? The developer of EndWar said recently it was holding the PC version back until after the console version was out because they feared people would pirate the PC version rather than buy the console version. How is this attitude from the publishing and development community going to change? RS: If you're taking a release date mentality, OK I'm putting anti-piracy protections that are pretty strong on console, pretty strong but not fool proof, and I'm waiting till the day I ship this thing off to the post-production house to put anti-piracy on say like a Fallout 3 or last year Hellgate London had an infamous piracy issue, if your product is not protected all of the way through production, you're going to be faced with the scenario where some guy sitting at the duplicator house, this is where all the piracy starts, the guy sitting at the duplicator house, back doors the code to a buddy or flat out sells it to make money off a torrent rip of the game, that's where the problem is. It's not a unique situation to PC gaming. Movies are suffering the same thing right now. Until you spin anti-piracy all the way through your production, which can be challenging but can be done, then you've got a scenario where your game can be stolen from you. There will always be people who will pirate but there are great solutions out there that can be utilised. I think the PC Gaming Alliance believes it needs to jump in and submit some industry voice behind this and some opinion about what approaches should or shouldn't be taken, but I think for anyone waiting for an answer, the best answer I can give them is, be smart about the way you deal with your IP, don't leave anything to chance and keep it protected all the way through the production pipeline. VideoGamer.com: Would you suggest that for some publishers piracy is their own fault? RS: Yeah. Any publisher today who's making any game that's going out on any platform and isn't thinking about the potential of piracy with the widespread availability of broadband and the patience that people have to kick-off a download that may take a day or more, if they're not thinking that's a real problem for them or a potential problem for them, then they're going to have challenges and they're going to act like it's a big surprise. It's like anything else in business. If you're not aware of the guy who's trying to steal your product then it's going to get stolen. You don't see the guards of banks walk around with money sacks on the street without proper precaution right? Those days have been gone since the 1700s. If people are getting attacked in the streets and getting their money stolen from them you should probably not take your $20m-$50m investment in any game and leave it to chance. VideoGamer.com: It doesn't sound like rocket science to me. I don't understand why publishers don't shore up the production line. RS: Yeah. And that doesn't even mean that at the end of the day someone's not going to hack the game and put it up on a torrent network. There have to be better encryption technologies for the PC. We in the PCGA believe than an industry group such as ours and others out there should be the ones that tackle it from a standards perspective, provide guidance to say, 'probably the best way to do it is something like this...'. We don't have the answer yet today but we would invite anyone who believes piracy is a problem to join our organisation, step up and we'll help you solve the problem from the hardware side and the software side. VideoGamer.com: What's your feeling on the DRM outcry following the release of Spore. Is three authentications per user unreasonable? RS: I have a household, there are six of us, we have seven PCs, my son has two machines of his own, a gaming notebook and a gaming desktop. Certainly it would be nice not to have to buy multiple copies of the game for my household. But on the other hand even free games, like the Nexon games and others, they don't allow you to take a single log in and log in simultaneously on multiple machines. The music services on the internet require unique log ins, iTunes has a limit to the number of PCs that can access the content. You have to set a limit somewhere. I'm not saying EA picked the right number. Personally for my household I wish it was five. I bought two copies of the game because I knew going in that it was three. I think a bigger issue is the backlash against the actual company who's DRM solution was used. When I read the Amazon posts and the complaints that people lobbied to make their point, what I read was people are fed up with SecuROM and its potential to wreak a little havoc on a system. That's probably a bigger issue in my mind. I think people can tolerate the limitations within reason. Steam makes it easy. You can authorise and de-authorise machines. iTunes makes it easy to de-authorise and authorise machines. Perhaps the approach that EA took where you have to actually get on the phone and talk to someone about that machine you tried to install it on. Here's my example: On my youngest daughter's machine it installed all the way through, went to play and she didn't have the right graphics. The next thing I'm doing is taking a look at her entire system and saying, 'OK this machine has a Pentium 4, has a four-year-old graphics card, let's reconsider whether this is the right machine for her to be playing this on anyway'. And I went ahead and built her a new one, a new hard drive and everything. So now I'm looking at it going, 'OK how many did I install it on? OK it looks like I installed it on five machines already, this is my sixth one. If I go to a seventh machine, God forbid I want to put it on one of my computers or something, then we're out of luck and I've got to get on the phone'. That's an inconvenience and that's something that EA probably should have had some background on from a consumer experience perspective before they made that decision. VideoGamer.com: What do you think of LucasArts right now given that they're not doing PC versions of a lot of their games, like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Fracture? RS: LucasArts hasn't made a good PC game in a long time. That's my opinion. They make some pretty good games for the Wii, you know those little sticks you wave in the air, that seems like a natural fit for a lightsaber game, sure. But I think the last good PC game they made was probably Jedi Knight 2, and even their strategy games weren't that great. So I can understand why they would make that call. They're not really creating product within LucasArts themselves. They're going at it job shopping their IP. That may be a little controversial for me to say that, but that's what I see happening. There's no development team necessarily within LucasArts any more, they've basically turned into an intellectual property machine and supporting the PC, why should they? It really doesn't fit their property. VideoGamer.com: We ran an interview with Cameron Suey, the producer of the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Force Unleashed, and he said they weren't doing a PC version because of scalability issues, that the game would require a high end PC and not enough people own one to justify the release. What do you think about his explanation? RS: That's not an educated answer. In the last several years there have been at least 100 million PCs sold that have the capabilities or better of an Xbox 360. It's ridiculous to say that there's not enough audience for that game potentially and that it falls into this enthusiast extreme category when ported over to the PC. That's an uneducated response. And the PCGA has research available to members to show that if you're making a decision on a game and you have that belief that there's just not a large enough audience, let us show you that there's a huge audience that has the capabilities that are being described there. You can make a run at that audience without having to sacrifice anything on your game at all. VideoGamer.com: Is it such an uneducated answer to be perhaps not the actual true reason? RS: I think you probably got plenty of feedback and opinions from your readers and my personal opinion is if they're making games for the Wii, Xbox and PS3 they're scaling their experience to meet all three of those platforms. They're good on the Wii, better on the Xbox 360 and the best on the PS3. There's no argument that they could give not to be able to support good better and best on the PC. VideoGamer.com: Has Vista hindered or helped PC gaming? RS: My opinion isn't as important as probably what the majority of the gaming audience might say. I think there are some great things about Vista but I think there are some things about Vista that cause problems for gamers in particular, and I think those need to get dealt with. I think Microsoft is aware of them. PCGA policy is not to comment on other members' products when doing interviews like this but on the whole I'm going to give you a squishy answer here. My answer is there are some great things about it and there are some not so great things about it. The better answer is what do consumers think than what does Randy Stude the president of the PCGA think of it. VideoGamer.com: I'll phrase it differently. What would the PCGA like to see from the next Microsoft operating system in terms of gaming? RS: Personally I'd love to see it where I can take a disc, put it in the drive and be playing in a matter of a few minutes rather than having laborious multi tens of minutes install and potentially having to deal with patching drivers what have you. That experience to me is something that irritates PC gamers and really tries the patience of anyone with any operating system. That's certainly not all Microsoft's issue. There are challenges from the game developers and publishers perspective. But if I spend the time to download a game from a game service or if I take the effort to go to the retail store to buy a disc, I shouldn't be looking at a from start to finish a multiple hour endeavour just to get that game to start running on my machine. I download a game, why can't I download and play the game? Why do I have to download, install, update and then play the game? I think those are things that Microsoft as an important leader in gaming on its operating system and in the overall PC gaming development advocacy role that they play, should really be pushing the industry forward on to deliver an experience that's more real time than what we get with the typical PC game title. VideoGamer.com: How do you see the PC gaming market in five or ten years? RS: The first thing that every potential developer needs to be aware of when they're making games, this is a huge audience, way larger by orders of magnitude than the console audience. PC gamers have proven if you release a point in time product that is a very satisfactory gaming experience, they'll buy it, they'll play it, and they'll play it, and they'll play it... what I'm basically saying is that PC gaming is alive and well. What happens is people develop these love affairs within PC gaming that they don't within consoles, and it's because the title quality is so solid. My son is playing more Warcraft 3 than anything else right now. He's given up playing World of Warcraft because he's waiting for the Wrath update. He jumps in and out of Team Fortress 2, but Warcraft 3 I see him playing for hours and hours. And I ask him, 'are other people playing that or is it just you, are you just geeking out?'. And he says, 'no Dad, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people playing on thousands of servers all over the world'. Just last week a new map came out and everyone's all hyped and excited about it. Here's a game that sold to my son once and he's been playing it for years. And that's a habit you have with PC gaming that console does not enjoy. You look at even the best console games, their gameplay doesn't last beyond a release window. There's a release window mentality with console gaming that's only rivalled by the movie industry. When is the next DVD coming out? When is the next console game coming out? You play it for 30 days and then you stop because the experience is pretty much worn out. With PC gaming they play and play. There's still people playing the original Fallout and Fallout 2. And if Fallout 3 doesn't deliver on a good experience, they'll keep playing those titles because they'll reject the new version. Just ask people who waited for Unreal Tournament 3. There's more people playing Unreal Tournament 2004 right now than Unreal Tournament 3. Go look at the servers. It's not because of piracy, it's not because the game doesn't look great, it's not because systems can't play the game, it's because the experience with the 2004 version, gamers just like it. And if you're not monetising that experience, if you're not in it for the long run when you launch a title on PC you're probably missing the opportunity. Blizzard gets it. Funcom gets it. The guys at Sony Online get it. You build relationships with PC gamers, not titles to sell to them. You asked me a question on what do I see coming. I see more transportability in the PC gaming experience. I see handhelds, I see notebooks, I see the trend across the globe shifting to mobility. This year it's a fact that more notebooks will ship than desktops. That needs to be factored into the gameplay experience. What is coming that is going to take advantage of all of these folks running around with notebooks and wanting to play games on these notebooks. VideoGamer.com: Many thanks Randy. http://www.videogamer.com/features/a...-2008-536.html ![]() The Gonzo Scientist Flunking Spore John Bohannon When I first heard about the computer game Spore, I couldn't think of a cooler way to celebrate Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. "Begin your odyssey at the dawn of life as a simple microbe just trying to survive," reads a Spore marketing blurb, embarking on "an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization." Not only was Spore to be packed with evolutionary biology, but the game's science promised to be solid right down to the molecular level. Last month in an hour-long show on the National Geographic channel, the game's creator, Will Wright, spoke with biologists about "the breakthrough science that's revealing the secret genetic machinery that shapes all life in the game Spore." A DVD of this show is even included in the "galactic edition" of the game. Wow! In an $11 billion game industry dominated by dull and bloody "first-person shooters"--not to mention a country where five out of 10 people do not accept evolution--a blockbuster game like Spore that communicates science to the public is sorely needed. So over the past month, I've been playing Spore with a team of scientists, grading the game on each of its scientific themes. When it comes to biology, and particularly evolution, Spore failed miserably. According to the scientists, the problem isn't just that Spore dumbs down the science or gets a few things wrong--it's meant to be a game, after all--but rather, it gets most of biology badly, needlessly, and often bizarrely wrong. I also tracked down the scientists who appeared on television in what seemed like an endorsement of Spore's scientific content on the National Geographic channel. They said they had been led to believe that the interviews were for a straight documentary about "developmental evolutionary" science rather than a video promoting a computer game (see the news story in Science's 24 October issue). "It's an outrage," says Neil Shubin, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, who worries that science has been "hijacked" to promote a product. How did things go so wrong for a game that seemed so good? Pimp My Organism In the game's opening video sequence, a meteor streaks past a sunlike star and crashes into the sea of a barren planet. A fragment of the space rock splits open underwater, revealing ... you, a fully formed single-celled organism! (Fans of the theory of panspermia will recognize this artful dodge of the question of how life evolved in the first place.) Thus begins the Cell stage. With the help of a wiggling flagellum and a variable number of googly eyes, you dart forth into the primordial soup. Spore is actually five games in one--a series of stages called Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space. The team of scientists grading Spore's science divvied up these stages based on their respective backgrounds. Focusing on the first two stages were T. Ryan Gregory and Niles Eldredge, evolutionary biologists at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, respectively. William Bainbridge, a sociologist and co-director of Human-Centered Computing at the U.S. National Science Foundation, took on stages three and four, Tribe and Civilization. The last stage, Space, went to Miles Smith, an astrophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. However, because each stage must be mastered to proceed to the next, the entire team had to slog through the early stages of the game. "They've done a nice job with the look of the Cell stage," said Gregory, who was clearly enjoying it. But Bainbridge was having the opposite experience. "I hate it so far," he groaned. This surprised me because, of all of the scientists on the team, I expected Bainbridge to be the most tolerant of a computer game with science education pretenses. He spends vast amounts of time exploring the science of games, as I learned while co-organizing a conference that took place inside a game with him earlier this year. But for Bainbridge, Spore is too simplistic. "It seems like a cutesy children's game." Eldredge had a similar reaction: "Just from the graphics, I hate it." Many reviewers agree with Bainbridge and Eldredge, dismissing Spore's Cell stage as a clone of the 1980s arcade game Pac-Man. It's true that your movements are limited to a two-dimensional plane--in spite of supposedly being submerged in three-dimensional water--and your goal here is also to gobble up food and avoid predators. But like Gregory, I was impressed by it. One aspect that lifts the Cell stage above Pac-Man inanity is how it represents microscopic life. "I quite like the way it changes scale when you grow," said Gregory. There you are, swimming desperately away from enormous organisms that are trying to eat you, when you gobble up a stray piece of food just in the nick of time to trigger a growth spurt. The transition looks just like under a microscope, smoothly zooming up to a larger field of view. Larger shapes loom just out of focus. (I generously imagined the two-dimensionality as the result of the microbes being squashed between a microscope slide and a cover slip.) "Now all the organisms that had previously been your size and preying upon you are suddenly smaller, so you turn around and eat them," Gregory said. "I like that." Those other organisms are another aspect that sets Spore apart from simple video games. When we created our species--my first was the Omninibble, created with the username DarwinRoolz--we found ourselves in tide pools teeming with other single-celled creatures, all of them created by other players. In contrast to "massively multi-user" games such as World of Warcraft, Spore bills itself as the first "massively single-user" game. Whenever you create a new species in Spore, it automatically uploads to the Sporepedia, an online server maintained by the game's manufacturer, Electronic Arts. By default, a random sample of species from the Sporepedia seeds your planet. If you want, you can custom build a planet inhabited only by species created by you and your friends. So although you're never pitted against any of the millions of other Spore players, you do encounter their creations under your computer's control. Plus, your own creation evolves over time. Eating food not only repairs damage to your health but also generates "DNA points" that you can use to upgrade body parts. (Think of Pimp My Ride with organisms instead of cars.) Depending on whether you choose carnivory or herbivory at the start of the game, your cell comes equipped with either a parrotlike beak or filter-feeding fronds. But changing lifestyles is as easy as cashing in DNA for a new mouth--or if you prefer, multiple mouths--along with extra flagella, defensive spikes, poison-spewing vesicles, and other organismic add-ons. We all finished the Cell stage in about an hour. "It's a pity that it was done just as I was getting into it," says Gregory. Once you've accumulated enough DNA points, the game tells you that you're ready for the next stage of evolution. With a click of the "evolve" button, you attach a pair of legs to your organism and off you go, waddling out onto land and into the Creature stage. Playing (a) God If the game had stopped at the Cell stage, it would have fared better. But once Spore hits the Creature stage, it takes a nosedive in both science and game quality. Using a woefully clunky interface, you steer your creature across an unremarkable (and unmistakably Earthlike) landscape in search of other species. Once you find them, you have two options. You either attack them, in which case the goal is to drive them to extinction (at least on that planet), or try to befriend them. The latter consists of an even more mindless mini-game within the mini-game: Imitating the other species' social behaviors by choosing one of four options--singing, dancing, posing, or "charming"--in the correct sequence. The game's makers are clearly aiming for the highly lucrative family and education markets. "Since the game's release we've received a lot of interest from various schools and universities around the world," a Spore spokesperson wrote me in an e-mail. "So that's a good sign that there's a lot of interest in [the] academic/education community." To earn an E (for Everyone) by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, all of Spore's potentially sharp edges have been sanded down and buffered with child-safe fluff. Rather than nature red in tooth and claw, you get goofy dance-offs and bloodless cartoon battles. Rather than looking realistic, Spore's creatures look ready-made for the plush toy industry. And then there's the sex. All species reproduce sexually in Spore. That must have posed quite a challenge for the development team's kiddy police. I can't fault them on this count because the compromise solution made me laugh out loud. Once you return to the nest and hit the "call mate" button, another of your species approaches with a flurry of Valentine hearts. What follows is a soft-porn vision of how cartoon characters come to be. Easy-listening lounge music pipes in as the pair coo and gyrate in slow circles, never touching, before one of them suddenly squats on the nest and--from no apparent orifice--pops out an egg. This brings you to the Creature Creator, a biological toolshed in which you can squeeze and stretch your creature's skeleton into nearly any shape, as well as choose upgrades from a menu of body parts. The Creature Creator really does make you feel like a god, shaping your creation as you see fit. (You're not a special god, though, because all the other creatures that you encounter in the game have been lovingly crafted by millions of other gods.) Bainbridge, already way ahead of the rest of the team with several creatures under his belt, was fed up. "I loathe Spore," he announced. But Gregory and Eldredge remained upbeat. "Niles's and my creation is Punky Quillibra, and it is a fierce predator," Gregory reported. (The name comes from the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which Eldredge developed with Stephen J. Gould.) "If you must know, yes, those are antlers on its back," he added. "They look dumb, but they give him level-5 charge--so say that to his face!" But in spite of getting a kick out of the Creature stage, Gregory and Eldredge saw it as the final nail in the coffin for Spore's claim of having anything to do with evolution. "The problem is that the game features virtually none of the key ingredients of evolution as we understand it," says Gregory. "There's no shared common descent between species, since every single creature in Spore can trace its lineage back to a different single-celled organism that arrives from space." Spore also lacks biological variation. "When you run into other members of your species, they are always identical clones of you." Nor does it have natural selection. "There are no consequences for dying, since you just reappear at your nest." Your organism does evolve, says Gregory, "in the sense that it changes over time, but it really has no bearing on how things evolve in the real world." To make his point, Gregory transformed Punky Quillibra into a species that he calls the Saltator, after the concept of saltation. Using the Creature Creator, he changed every feature of the beast--swapping its two reptilian limbs for six insectoid ones, hands for a pair of spiked balls, and even the tail for a pair of butt-mounted antlers--all in a single generation. "Clearly, the only thing that determines an organism's morphology in Spore is what the player thinks looks cool," he said. (Before Electronic Arts began filtering it, the Sporepedia was filled with creatures designed to resemble human genitalia.) "And even that doesn't matter because you're ultimately forced to evolve into a terrestrial vertebrate with sentience, which is completely teleological. That's not real science," says Gregory. The "goal" of evolution is not to produce walking, talking vertebrates, because the process is undirected and unintelligent. You might think that Spore's fatal flaw would be that it supports intelligent design rather than Darwinian evolution. (That's what I initially thought.) But it turns out to be not even that interesting. "Spore is essentially a very impressive, entertaining, and elaborate Mr. Potato Head that uses the language of evolution but none of the major principles," conclude Gregory and Eldredge. In the spirit of fairness, I had a copy of Spore sent to Michael Behe, an intelligent design advocate based at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. After playing Spore, he concluded that it "has nothing to do with real science or real evolution--neither Darwinian nor intelligent design." As Gregory and Eldredge argue, if Spore's biology is based on any theory, then--surely, by coincidence rather than scholarly effort--it is Lamarckian evolution. According to that early 19th century notion, organisms gain traits through effort during their lifetimes. As Behe points out, this makes Spore strikingly similar to the cartoon Pokémon. "Weird creatures are stored in colorful balls and released when the human Pokémon masters want them to fight. If the Pokémon beat enough other creatures and gain strength, they 'evolve' in a puff of smoke into a more powerful creature, sort of resembling the original but with more abilities." This seems to have been Spore's biological model rather than anything from science. From Tribes to Space If the Creature stage is merely boring, I agree with Bainbridge that the next two stages, Tribe and Civilization, are cringe-worthy. In the Tribe stage, your species gains sentience and culture. That sounds promising, but all it amounts to is the very same game structure as before but killing and befriending tribes rather than species. From this point onward, your species' biological evolution is frozen in whatever random Picasso portrait of limbs and eyes you last produced. Instead of the Creature Creator, you get to dress up your tribal species with items from a kind of minstrel anthropology wardrobe. It was too hard to decide between the American Indian-style feathered satchel and the North African fez hat, so I stuck both onto my newly "tribal" Omninibble. The fourth stage of Spore is a watered-down knock-off of Civilization, the brilliantly addictive game that has consumed hundreds of hours of my life. The pieces on the game board are now buildings and vehicles rather than organisms, and the goal--stop me if you've heard this before--is to destroy or befriend the other civilizations on your planet. (On the plus side, the Building Editor allowed me to create cities composed entirely of egg-shaped towers that resemble alien Easter egg baskets.) You'll breathe a weary sigh of relief when you finally reach what Spore's creators clearly cared about the most: the Space stage. It's not that this final game within the game offers anything new in terms of structure. You now control a spaceship--which I designed to look like a submarine golf ball--and the goal is to extend your empire of planetary colonies across the galaxy. (Yes, attacking or befriending other spacefaring species along the way.) While grading this final chapter of the game, Smith was most impressed. "If Spore has one great message," he concluded, "it is that our own existence is connected to that of the universe and to the forces that have shaped it." You start by launching into space from the surface of your home planet. That brings you to a view of your ship in orbit within a solar system. With a roll of your mouse's scroll wheel, you zoom out to see your star system in the context of dozens of other star systems. Zoom your perspective farther out and the spiral galaxy itself looms into view, with many other distant galaxies visible all around. That's 20 orders of magnitude with the flick of a finger! I spent hours just whizzing around to new star systems, zooming down to various planets, and using my Abduction Beam to fill the ship's cargo hold with terrified aliens. But I'm easily amused. Spore's Report Card The team's ground rules for grading Spore's science provided plenty of wiggle room. To make the mark, Spore had only to reflect science intelligently, not fully simulate it. There's plenty of educational science-simulating software out there but nothing that you'd want to play with your children. According to its own marketing, Spore promises a scientifically sophisticated adventure, an "epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space." Spore only had to show a good-faith effort to engage players with real science. I created an online Spore Science Grading Page where you can read the team's full critique. Spore's biology grades rolled in like a slow-motion train wreck. For organismic biology--genetics, cell biology, reproduction, and development--Gregory and Eldredge smacked Spore with a D-. The game flunked evolutionary biology outright with an F. According to Gregory and Eldredge, "Spore has very little to do with real biology." Although Bainbridge hated Spore as a game more than any of the other reviewers, he gave better marks for its science. For the cultural anthropology in the Tribe stage, Spore scraped by with a C-. "There really are no tribes here, because tribes are an outgrowth of kinship, and there is no real kinship," he concludes. "Had Spore lived up to the publicity that it was a game based on evolution, then there would have been biological reproduction, families, and the basis for much of what cultural anthropology studies. The grade would be lower, except that there is a cultural-anthropological basis for the exchange of gifts which Spore illustrates." Bainbridge gave Spore's sociology a B+. "Given how brief the Civilization phase is, it includes much of relevance to real sociology, such as the division of labor, public opinion, and the fact that religious movements exploit unresolved human dissatisfactions. ... One of the ways a player may conquer another city is through religious conversion, and attempts are more likely to succeed if the inhabitants of the city are unhappy." It's not clear what religious players of Spore will make of that. Smith gave Spore's Space stage its highest scientific marks. "I was never expecting a computer game to be rigorously formulated based on the laws of physics," said Smith. But because it takes many of the typical science fiction shortcuts, such as faster-than-light travel, he gave Spore a C on the laws of physics. Spore earned a C on astrobiology as well, because intelligent life is so common that you trip over it in nearly every star system. Spore's rendering of the galaxy's structure earned it the one and only A. The bottom line: In spite of its marketing, Spore clearly has little in common with science, especially evolution. That's a pity, because with very minor tweaks, the game could live up to its promise. Gregory and Eldredge's critique provides several good ideas, such as incurring a developmental cost for making radical body-plan changes. Another easy improvement would be to weave relevant science into the fabric of the existing game. In the game Civilization, for example, you learn a great deal about the history of ancient cultures through a series of pop-up mini-articles. When you stick a limb on your creature, wouldn't it be nice to have an optional pop-up window that explains the real (and fascinating) science behind limb evolution? Spore flunks, but there's still hope for its future. Once released, games often improve over several generations through downloaded software patches and new editions. Let's hope that noncomplacent families and science educators provide some selective pressure. Then Spore itself might evolve. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten.../322/5901/531b ![]() Study Squashes Myth of Gamer as Antisocial Comic Book Guy Frank Caron Gaming has long been the domain of nerds and geeks. For many years, gamers were painted as ostracized, antisocial, self-loathing recluses who were incapable of making meaningful human contact, instead delving deep into imaginary digital worlds to escape reality. But that stereotype is quickly changing as more and more people start to game, and a new study goes as far as claiming that gamers are "more social, more active, and more valuable as consumers" than non-gamers. Together with IGN Entertainment, Ipsos MediaCT published the study entitled "Are You Game?". The work draws results from a two-phase study which began with a quantitative overview of gaming earlier this year in US households and then more intimate, qualitative, person-by-person research through means such as focus groups and in-home interviews in the Los Angeles area. To tackle the study, the research team first had to define what a gamer was. The team broke gamers apart into a number of different labelled groups, including the likes of "Traditional Core" and "Weekend Warriors" to more modern collectives such as "Family 3.0," which embodies the connected families that game casually together, and "Social Troopers," which covers those who game for social stimulus and seek out others to play with in all circumstances. Here are some of noteworthy findings of the study: • 55 percent of gamers polled were married, 48 percent have kids, and new gamers – those who have started playing videogames in the past two years—are 32 years old on average • More than 75 percent of videogamers play games with other people either online or in person • More than 47 percent of people living in gaming households saying that videogames were a fun way to interact with other family members • 37 percent of gamers said friends and family relied upon them to stay up-to-date about movies, TV shows and the latest entertainment news, compared to only 22 percent for nongamers • 39 percent of gamers said that friends and family rely upon them to stay up-to-date about the latest technology • In terms of hard dollars, the average gaming household income ($79,000) is notably higher than that of nongaming households ($54,000), but the value of the gamer as a marketing target can be seen in a variety of ways • Gamers are 13 percent more likely to go out to a movie, 11 percent more likely to play sports, and 9 percent more likely to go out with friends than nongamers • Gamers are twice as likely as nongamers to buy a product featuring new technology even if they are aware that there are still bugs • Gamers are also twice as likely as nongamers to pay a premium for the newest technology on the market • Gamers also consume media in different ways than nongamers, with hardcore gamers spending five more hours on the Internet, two more hours watching television and two more hours listening to music than nongamers per week And the counterintuitive kicker: • Gamers are twice as likely to go out on dates as nongamers in a given month "Based on the research, it's obvious that the gaming market has outgrown many commonly held stereotypes about the relative homogeneity of video gamers," said Adam Wright, Director of Research for Ipsos MediaCT. "Today's gamers represent a wide variety of demographic groups: men and women, kids, parents and grandparents, younger and older consumers. All this underscores the fact that gaming has become a mainstream medium in this country that appeals to people from all walks of life." Many would contend that the stereotype that gamers are shut-ins has become archaic these days and Ipsos' study demonstrates admirably that the times are changing (well, except for MMO players. We kid.) While the survey was of course paid for by a company that primarily prospers from video games in IGN, and a few of the stats (particularly those with regard to income) are questionable, there's no question that gaming has very much become more a social activity than a solitary one. The majority of games today ship with some form of multiplayer, and games without a multiplayer element often sell poorly—even when the game is extremely good otherwise. With cooperative gaming and online multiplayer on the rise, this is a trend that doesn't seem to be wavering, either. That said, when chatting someone up at the club, it's probably best to save boasts about your epic mount for later. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-book-guy.html ![]() Drunk, and Dangerous, at the Keyboard Alex Williams ANYONE who has spent more than a few minutes over the last couple of weeks trolling tech blogs or cocktail lounges has probably heard about Mail Goggles, a new feature on Google’s Gmail program that is intended to help stamp out a scourge that few knew existed: late-night drunken e-mailing. The experimental program requires any user who enables the function to perform five simple math problems in 60 seconds before sending e-mails between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. on weekends. That time frame apparently corresponds to the gap between cocktail No. 1 and cocktail No. 4, when tapping out an e-mail message to an ex or a co-worker can seem like the equivalent of bungee jumping without a cord. Mail Goggles is not the first case of a technology developed to keep people from endangering themselves or others with the machinery of daily life after they have had a few. For years, judges have ordered drunken-driving offenders to install computerized breath-analyzers linked to their car’s ignition system to prevent them from starting their vehicles when intoxicated. But as the first sobriety checkpoint on what used to be called the information superhighway, the Mail Goggles program also raises a larger question: In an age when so much of our routine communication is accomplished with our fingertips, are we becoming so tethered to our keyboards that we really need the technological equivalent of trigger locks on firearms? In interviews with people who confessed to imbibing and typing at the same time — sometimes with regrettable consequences — the answer seems to be yes. Jim David, a comedian who lives in Manhattan, said he wished he had Mail Goggles one night when he was “looped” and sent an e-mail message to a religious organization, “saying something like, ‘you people are directly responsible for gays everywhere getting beaten,’ ” he recalled in an e-mail message. “I received a response from their legal department that wanted to know specific information as to exactly how I knew they were responsible, that these were very serious charges, and that I should receive a phone call from the F.B.I. soon,” Mr. David said. “I hit ‘delete’ faster than lightning and took an Ambien.” Kate Allen Stukenberg, a magazine editor in Houston, said that “the thing that is disappointing about Mail Goggles is that it’s only on Gmail,” because many people need cellphone protection, given the widespread practice of drunk text-messaging. Last month, after Hurricane Ike ripped through her hometown, Ms. Stukenberg, 29, said, she found herself consoling a friend who had used the tragedy as an excuse to send a drunken text-message to reconnect with an ex-boyfriend — a move she later regretted. “She said that Ike had messed up her apartment so she had no place to stay, so could she stay at his house,” Ms. Stukenberg recalled. “It was total liquid courage.” Indeed, the Mail Goggles program itself was born of embarrassment. A Gmail engineer named Jon Perlow wrote the program after sending his share of regrettable late-night missives, including a plea to rekindle a relationship with an old girlfriend, he wrote on the company’s Gmail blog. “We’ve all been there before, unfortunately,” said Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. So-called drunk dialing may be as old as the telephone itself, but now, he said, the edge of the abyss is much closer in an era when so many people carry personal digital assistants containing hundreds of contact numbers — including clients, work adversaries and bosses — everywhere, including bars and parties. And e-mail messages can be particularly potent because they constitute what social scientists call “asynchronous” communication, meaning that exchanges between people do not happen in real time, unlike face-to-face or telephone conversations. People can respond to work-related messages hours after they leave the office — a risky proposition if they happen to log on after stumbling home from happy hour. The delay in response time means that people have lots of time to shape a response to achieve maximum impact, he said. “If you have eight hours of bar time to think of all the bad things you can come up with, this becomes uniquely damaging,” Dr. Bailenson said. “If you’ve completely lost all motor skills, Mail Goggles probably isn’t necessary,” Ryan Dodge, a dating blogger who lives in Brooklyn, said in an e-mail message. “But there’s a dangerous point of intoxication where you’re lucid enough to operate a keyboard, but drunk enough to think that professing your love via Facebook to that girl in your 11th grade homeroom is a stellar idea.” Mr. Dodge, 26, said he had not tried Google’s new program, but he had learned to filter drunken excess from his own late-night e-mails by adopting “ridiculously proper” Jeeves-like grammar. For example, one late-night e-mail he sent to a woman he was flirting with read: “Good evening. The number I have listed for you doesn’t seem to respond. Quite curious. I would be most grateful to receive your updated number. ... Seasons greetings.” Text-based communication and alcohol are a potent mix in part because people already tend to be more candid online than they are in person, even before they loosen their inhibitions with a drink, said Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Research suggests that for some people, the use of computers or other gadgets creates some emotional distancing from the person they are addressing,” Mr. Rainie said in an e-mail message. The distance, in other words, makes them feel safe — flirting becomes more flirtatious; insults become more insulting. The latter was the case with one 23-year-old record producer in Manhattan who recalled a drunken text-message mishap on a recent trip to his alma mater, Syracuse University. The producer, who declined to be identified, said he had picked up an undergraduate woman while intoxicated and had accompanied her back to her apartment. But sitting in her kitchen at 4 a.m., he said, he started to have second thoughts. So while she was in the room, he tapped out a message to a friend’s iPhone: “Eww Saratoga, what am I thinking? I can def. do better then this ... can you drive my car and get me out of here?” Seconds later, her telephone buzzed. He had accidentally sent the message to her, not his friend, the producer said. Months later, after a few more romantic misadventures with her, “We had a long talk and I apologized,” he said. “I now write songs about getting my life together.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/fashion/19drunk.html ![]() Porn-Surfing Clergyman Downs Church Network A church minister from Strängnäs in central Sweden has resigned from his post after his porn-surfing habits led to the spread of a virus that knocked out the local church network, Metro reports. But his habits might have gone undiscovered had not the sites he visited given rise to a lethal computer virus. "He recently decided to resign," Charlotta Novosel, a legal spokeswoman for the church, told Metro. The church authorities have not yet decided whether the minister should be formally defrocked. The number of sex-related cases involving men of the cloth has skyrocketed in recent years, according to Metro. "Priests are people too," Archbishop Anders Wejryd told the paper. "But I have no understanding at all for someone sitting and surfing for porn on the parish computers," he added. A pastor in Gothenburg recently came under scrutiny for moistening post-it notes with his penis and sticking them up in an office. After an official review, the authorities decided to allow the minister to remain in his job. http://www.thelocal.se/15076/20081020/ ![]() McCain Seeks Special 'Fair Use' Copyright Rules for VIPs Chris Soghoian John McCain's presidential campaign has discovered the remix-unfriendly aspects of American copyright law, after several of the candidate's campaign videos were pulled from YouTube. McCain has now discovered the rights holder friendly nature of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forces remixers to fight an uphill battle to prove that their work is a "fair use." However, instead of calling for an overhaul of the much hated law, McCain is calling for VIP treatment for the remixes made by political campaigns. McCain's proposal: complaints about videos uploaded by a political campaign would be manually reviewed by a human YouTube employee before any possible removal of the remix. The process for complaints against videos uploaded by millions of other Americans would stay the same: instant removal by a computer program, and then possible reinstatement a week or two later after the video sharing site has received and manually processed a formal counter-notice. With 11 homes and 13 cars, it's not terribly surprising that McCain is calling for special treatment for the YouTube videos of politicians. As for the "fair use" claims of the poor starving masses: Let them eat cake. On Tuesday, the McCain campaign sent a formal letter to YouTube asking for this two-tier system for "fair use" complaints. Copyright-guru Larry Lessig called it a "fantastic letter", adding "bravo to the campaign" in a post to his blog. Since then, the technology press has been pretty supportive, although the focus of the coverage seems to mainly be along the lines of "McCain realizes that fair use claims are uphill battle." This is the wrong message to send, and as much as I respect Professor Lessig, I have to call him out here. He is wrong. McCain should be criticized for his attempt to get special treatment, and Google/YouTube need to treat all users the same way. All claims of fair use are equal--yet some claims are more equal than others. The only way we will get an effective overhaul of copyright laws will be by forcing politicians to suffer along with the masses. The minute a special set of rules are made for those in Congress, the incentive to fix the system will disappear. To drive this point home, consider the following: During the confirmation hearings for Judge Robert Bork, the Washington City Paper obtained a copy of the Republican nominee's video rental records. Alarmed at the possibility that their own rental histories would be revealed by the press, members of Congress jumped to pass comprehensive privacy legislation for the video rental records of all Americans. Up until the Bork fiasco, there had been no real incentive to fix anything, but once the risk to their own records was made clear, Congress acted. As a result, we are now all protected by the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act. Compare this to the horrible situation at airports. Americans are routinely harassed, prodded, poked and humiliated by employees of the Transportation Security Administration. While we stand in line like sheep, congressmen get to skip through the security lines, avoiding the entire process. Given the fact that they don't have to suffer at the hands of TSA, it's not terribly surprising that they have little incentive to fix the problems faced by the rest of us. These two examples should make it clear--we cannot allow politicians to receive special treatment in copyright and fair use disputes. If anything, campaign videos should receive substandard treatment. McCain's videos deserve to rot in purgatory at the back of the DMCA queue, behind videos of toddlers, skateboarding dogs, Starwars Kid remixes, and the hundreds of clips of the dramatic chipmunk. Perhaps then, the senator will throw his weight behind comprehensive copyright reform that'll result in real benefits for the rest of the remix-population. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10066570-46.html ![]() Microsoft Announces Global Anti Piracy Day Initiates legal proceedings and education schemes in 49 countries, spanning six continents Ben Hardwidge In what could be seen as the antithesis of ‘speak like a pirate' day, Microsoft has announced that today is Global Anti Piracy Day. Launching several global initiatives, the aim is to raise awareness of the damage to software innovation that Microsoft says is caused by piracy. As well as educating people about piracy, Microsoft has also initiated a huge list of legal proceedings that it’s taking out against pirates. Microsoft isn’t messing about when it says ‘global’ either. The list of 49 countries that Microsoft is targeting spans six continents, and ranges from the UK and the US all the way through to Chile, Egypt, Kuwait, Indonesia and China. In the UK, Microsoft has this month brought two civil cases against alleged software pirates, who are accused of ‘hard disk loading Windows Vista Ultimate, Office Enterprise 2007 and Office 2003. Microsoft has also compiled a list of all the illegal traders in the UK that Microsoft has identified as software pirates, which you can find here. Meanwhile, in the US, Microsoft has announced that it’s taking legal action against 20 software resellers in nine states, which it says ‘allegedly sold pirated copies of Microsoft Windows XP Professional and multiple versions of Office.’ Microsoft’s attorney, Sharon Cates, explained that ‘it is important to take the economic advantage out of pirating and counterfeiting in order to protect partners and customers.’ She also added that ‘Microsoft will continue to work to protect the channel, through resources and initiatives, from businesses that operate dishonestly.’ Microsoft says that ‘the collective impact of piracy in the U.S. is serious,’ and cites the findings of the Fifth Annual BSA/IDC Global Software Piracy Study, claiming that ‘software piracy and counterfeiting cost the U.S. economy more than $8 billion US in 2007 — roughly the equivalent of paying for the entire National School Lunch Program.’ As well as all the legal proceedings, Microsoft is also hoping to educate kids in some countries about the impact of piracy. One such initiative is a blog scheme it’s launched with the American Chamber of Commerce for Brazil, which Microsoft says ‘to raise awareness among Brazilian educators about the importance of teaching young students about innovation and the high costs of piracy.’ Microsoft has also launched a video to explain today’s announcement, which you can see below. Are you worried about the impact of piracy on innovation in the software industry, or do you have no sympathy for Microsoft at all? Let us know your thoughts. http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/60505...iracy-day.html ![]() A Business Relationship Built At The End Of A Pointy Stick Isn't Much Of A Relationship Mike Masnick Last week, Microsoft was kind enough to invite me to sit down, one-on-one with Horacio Gutierrez, the company's VP and Deputy General Counsel in charge of intellectual property and licensing. As you might imagine, given my views on the patent system in general, and Microsoft's gradual embrace of the patent system specifically, he and I disagreed on a fair amount. We agreed that the patent system should be focused on encouraging innovation. We agreed that there were abuses of the system. From there, our views pretty much diverged, though the conversation was fun and lively. Gutierrez began the conversation by focusing on all of the "benefits" that Microsoft sees to the patent system, which focused on all of the licensing deals that the company has done. He positioned it by noting that the patent portfolio allows the Microsoft to get into deeper business relationships with other entities. Specifically, he noted that in many cases what began as a patent licensing discussion eventually leads to a much more complete business relationship that increases interoperability. He cited deals with both Sun and Novell as examples of this. The problem, of course, is that this ignores how these deals actually began. Rather than approaching each other over mutually beneficial relationships, they really involve an implicit threat. That is, Microsoft shows up with its big patent portfolio (or, let's say, a big pointy stick) and says "hey, let's make a deal, or I'll jab you with the pointy stick." Yes, that can obviously lead to further business deals, but it's not about two companies entering into a relationship willingly for mutual benefit. It's all based on a rather clear threat. The fallacy that Gutierrez laid out is that these sorts of relationships and interoperability are impossible to come by without the use of that pointy stick. That's difficult to believe. If the relationships really are mutually beneficial, then they are likely to come about in a much more friendly manner anyway. When I pointed out (literally) that Microsoft coming to companies with a big stick didn't seem like the friendliest of business negotiations, Gutierrez suggested that you "need" the stick to make the conversations work. On that we disagree, and there's a pretty long history of companies entering into mutually beneficial relationships that don't necessarily involve the threat of a lawsuit or government granted monopolies on processes. Gutierrez also pointed out that any complex product these days, by its very nature, will violate numerous patents from numerous other companies and individuals. Thus, his argument is that we really should focus on mechanisms to avoid lawsuits to allow those products to move forward. Thus, licensing is preferable to lawsuits. That's true, but misses the point. The fact that no complex product can be brought to market without violating numerous patents should be seen as the problem, rather than a truism that is solved through licensing. Let's fix the problem that makes it so difficult for products to get to market without paying a "tax" to other companies, and figure out ways to let companies innovate freely and compete in the marketplace. I was somewhat surprised to also hear Gutierrez claim that because of this "patent thicket" situation these days, you couldn't innovate without patents. I interrupted him to point out that this was ridiculous on its face, as Microsoft's own history showed. His response was that the situation had changed as the interpretation of both copyright and patent law over the past couple of decades had changed, such that protections that the company had thought it had in the early years didn't really exist, and additional rulings made it clear that other protections would be useful. Needless to say, I find that unconvincing. There's plenty of evidence that a ton of innovation occurred when software companies focused on the market, rather than on ownership of ideas. Gutierrez also insisted on pointing out that Microsoft's rather massive patent portfolio had been voted by some third party to be one of, if not the, best patent portfolios in terms of quality. He suggested that other firms, such as IBM, were more likely to file very questionable patents, but Microsoft was much more focused on quality. Perhaps that's a subjective measure, but given how many questionable Microsoft patents we see around here all the time, some may beg to differ -- or at least point out that some questionable patents are getting through. In discussing all of this with Gutierrez, I brought up the company's continual FUD campaign, where it goes to the press to wave that pointy stick around, in announcing that Linux violates over 200 Microsoft patents. Gutierrez noted that he was among the Microsoft execs who had made those statements, and he stood by them, claiming that Richard Stallman agrees, and falling back on his earlier claim of all complex products violating some patents, which is why he says they just want Linux vendors to work out some sort of patent licensing agreement. That, of course, doesn't answer the question of why Microsoft keeps screaming about patent infringement, but never bothers to show what patents anyone infringes on. Finally, we did have a fun conversation on the historical and macro level impacts of patent systems throughout history, where he asserted that perhaps the reason so many countries have found faster innovation in eras of fewer patents was because it makes sense to ignore patents during developmental phases, but after that to put protections in place. I pointed out that it seemed difficult to believe that there was some fundamental shift in economics that meant patents made sense at one time, but not at another -- but by then we were running out of time to discuss things. On the whole, however, I'll say that we had a spirited discussion on the role of the patent system in encouraging innovation. More than once, we agreed that the conversation might have been more fun if we were having it around a couple of beers, rather than a Microsoft conference table. While I don't think either of us changed each other's minds, I did appreciate the chance to sit down and discuss these issues face to face on the record, and I hope to have a chance to continue the discussion in the future. I can understand where he is coming from and what Microsoft's position on the matter is, but you have to admit, as the holder of a bigger pointy stick than most other participants, Microsoft may be more inclined than others to be a big supporter of being allowed to use the big pointy stick. http://techdirt.com/articles/20081020/1938442601.shtml ![]() MPAA to EFF on RealDVD Lawsuit: You're Living in the Past Jacqui Cheng The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is firing back at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) over accusations that the organization is trying to limit innovation with its lawsuit over RealDVD. The MPAA said that the EFF's claims are "disingenuous and wrongheaded," and that Hollywood isn't "living in the past" like the EFF apparently is. "Forgive us if we take offense when the EFF and other activist organizations that continually take the side of those who profit from widespread copyright infringement attack our industry," wrote MPAA chief technology officer Jim Williams, according to a copy of the letter published by CNet. "It's a desperate throwback to the Napster days of old when (EFF would) pull out this tired and weathered playbook. It's not 2001 anymore. We've moved on. So should you." The war over RealDVD started last month, when RealNetworks announced its new DVD-ripping and archiving product that it claimed was 100 percent legit because it kept DVDs' copyright encryption intact after ripping. Even before RealDVD was released, however, the company found itself besieged by threats from the movie studios. Real preemptively filed a lawsuit in response, and the MPAA replied in kind. The MPAA claimed that Real violated DMCA anticircumvention rules with RealDVD. At issue is the fact that RealDVD doesn't require an actual disc to be in the drive when decrypting a movie for playback, therefore allowing users to rent, rip, and return movies if they wanted to. By not requiring the disc to be in the drive, Real supposedly makes "circumvention" of the purpose of the encryption possible, even though it doesn't appear to circumvent the CSS encryption itself. "RealNetworks' RealDVD should be called StealDVD," MPAA executive vice president and general counsel Greg Goeckner remarked about the product. The MPAA's lawsuit resulted in a temporary restraining order against Real earlier this month, forcing the company to stop distributing RealDVD until a more permanent decision is made. That restraining order has since been extended until a more complete hearing could be held. Real kept its spirits up, however, saying in a statement sent to Ars that the company is "confident that the Court will determine that RealDVD complies with the DVD CCA license agreement, and that it is not in violation of any copyright laws." That brings us to where we are today. Unsurprisingly, the EFF has been highly critical of the MPAA's actions thus far, saying that the lawsuit has "nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with controlling innovation." EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann pointed out that there are a number of free, widely available, and easy-to-use DVD ripping software packages, not to mention the ease of using P2P software to bypass ripping altogether, so the MPAA's acting as though a $30 piece of software was capable of taking down all of Hollywood is a bit melodramatic. In response, the MPAA accused the EFF of being nostalgic for the old "Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood" days. "Movie makers and the technology community are working together to deliver to consumers a variety of legal choices," Williams said in response to the EFF. "To the surprise of some skeptical Internet watchers, Hulu, the NewsCorp and NBC Universal-backed video streaming site, has been both a popular and critical success. And, beyond what you can get through cable and satellite on-demand services, thousands of movies are now available for instant rental, download or ad-supported streaming via sites such as Apple's iTunes, Amazon, and NetFlix. In fact, there are more than 275 legal web sites worldwide that provide high quality, digital content to consumers. " The MPAA does have a point—there are now quite a large number of places where consumers can go in order to find legal video options. But that's exactly why Hollywood should stop focusing on lawsuits that don't stop determined pirates. Instead, the MPAA should continue improving the legal options available to users and making those options more usable. The EFF doesn't believe that the MPAA's letter actually addresses any of its issues regarding innovation. "If you look at what Fred wrote and then read their response, they talk about EFF living in the past, but then they counter with arguments that address our concerns," EFF attorney Michael Kwun told Ars. "The theme of the letter is them partnering and working with specific groups—the innovation is limited to who they're willing to work with. You only get innovation that the MPAA likes, too, which sometimes prevents innovation that would do them great favors, like the VCR did many years ago." http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-the-past.html ![]() Wikipedia and the Meaning of Truth Why the online encyclopedia's epistemology should worry those who care about traditional notions of accuracy. Simson L. Garfinkel With little notice from the outside world, the community-written encyclopedia Wikipedia has redefined the commonly accepted use of the word "truth." Why should we care? Because Wikipedia's articles are the first- or second-ranked results for most Internet searches. Type "iron" into Google, and Wikipedia's article on the element is the top-ranked result; likewise, its article on the Iron Cross is first when the search words are "iron cross." Google's search algorithms rank a story in part by how many times it has been linked to; people are linking to Wikipedia articles a lot. This means that the content of these articles really matters. Wikipedia's standards of inclusion--what's in and what's not--affect the work of journalists, who routinely read Wikipedia articles and then repeat the wikiclaims as "background" without bothering to cite them. These standards affect students, whose research on many topics starts (and often ends) with Wikipedia. And since I used Wikipedia to research large parts of this article, these standards are affecting you, dear reader, at this very moment. Many people, especially academic experts, have argued that Wikipedia's articles can't be trusted, because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted. Nevertheless, studies have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. The reason is that Wikipedia's community of more than seven million registered users has organically evolved a set of policies and procedures for removing untruths. This also explains Wikipedia's explosive growth: if the stuff in Wikipedia didn't seem "true enough" to most readers, they wouldn't keep coming back to the website. These policies have become the social contract for Wikipedia's army of apparently insomniac volunteers. Thanks to them, incorrect information generally disappears quite quickly. So how do the Wikipedians decide what's true and what's not? On what is their epistemology based? Unlike the laws of mathematics or science, wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience. Wikipedia has evolved a radically different set of epistemological standards--standards that aren't especially surprising given that the site is rooted in a Web-based community, but that should concern those of us who are interested in traditional notions of truth and accuracy. On Wikipedia, objective truth isn't all that important, actually. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is that it appeared in some other publication--ideally, one that is in English and is available free online. "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth," states Wikipedia's official policy on the subject. Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's three core content policies; it was codified back in August 2003. The two others are "no original research" (December 2003) and "neutral point of view," which the Wikipedia project inherited from Nupedia, an earlier volunteer-written Web-based free encyclopedia that existed from March 2000 to September 2003 (Wikipedia's own NPOV policy was codified in December 2001). These policies have made Wikipedia a kind of academic agora where people on both sides of politically charged subjects can rationally discuss their positions, find common ground, and unemotionally document their differences. Wikipedia is successful because these policies have worked. Unlike Wikipedia's articles, Nupedia's were written and vetted by experts. But few experts were motivated to contribute. Well, some wanted to write about their own research, but Larry Sanger, Nupedia's editor in chief, immediately put an end to that practice. "I said, 'If it hasn't been vetted by the relevant experts, then basically we are setting ourselves up as a frontline source of new, original information, and we aren't set up to do that,'" Sanger (who is himself, ironically or not, a former philosophy instructor and by training an epistemologist) recalls telling his fellow Nupedians. With experts barred from writing about their own work and having no incentive to write about anything else, Nupedia struggled. Then Sanger and Jimmy Wales, Nupedia's founder, decided to try a different policy on a new site, which they launched on January 15, 2001. They adopted the newly invented "wiki" technology, allowing anybody to contribute to any article--or create a new one--on any topic, simply by clicking "Edit this page." Soon the promoters of oddball hypotheses and outlandish ideas were all over Wikipedia, causing the new site's volunteers to spend a good deal of time repairing damage--not all of it the innocent work of the misguided or deluded. (A study recently published in Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery found that 11 percent of Wikipedia articles have been vandalized at least once.) But how could Wikipedia's volunteer editors tell if something was true? The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. The solution was to add references and footnotes to the articles, "not in order to help the reader, but in order to establish a point to the satisfaction of the [other] contributors," says Sanger, who left Wikipedia before the verifiability policy was formally adopted. (Sanger and Wales, now the chairman emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, fell out about the scale of Sanger's role in the creation of Wikipedia. Today, Sanger is the creator and editor in chief of Citizendium, an alternative to Wikipedia that is intended to address the inadequacy of its "reliability and quality.") Verifiability is really an appeal to authority--not the authority of truth, but the authority of other publications. Any other publication, really. These days, information that's added to Wikipedia without an appropriate reference is likely to be slapped with a "citation needed" badge by one of Wikipedia's self-appointed editors. Remove the badge and somebody else will put it back. Keep it up and you might find yourself face to face with another kind of authority--one of the English-language Wikipedia's 1,500 administrators, who have the ability to place increasingly restrictive protections on contentious pages when the policies are ignored. To be fair, Wikipedia's verifiability policy states that "articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources" that themselves adhere to Wikipedia's NPOV policy. Self-published articles should generally be avoided, and non-English sources are discouraged if English articles are available, because many people who read, write, and edit En.Wikipedia (the English-language version) can read only English. Mob Rules In a May 2006 essay on the technology and culture website Edge.org, futurist Jaron Lanier called Wikipedia an example of "digital Maoism"--the closest humanity has come to a functioning mob rule. Lanier was moved to write about Wikipedia because someone kept editing his Wikipedia entry to say that he was a film director. Lanier describes himself as a "computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author." He is good at all those things, but he is no director. According to his essay, he made one short experimental film in the 1990s, and it was "awful." "I have attempted to retire from directing films in the alternative universe that is the Wikipedia a number of times, but somebody always overrules me," Lanier wrote. "Every time my Wikipedia entry is corrected, within a day I'm turned into a film director again." Since Lanier's attempted edits to his own Wikipedia entry were based on firsthand knowledge of his own career, he was in direct violation of Wikipedia's three core policies. He has a point of view; he was writing on the basis of his own original research; and what he wrote couldn't be verified by following a link to some kind of legitimate, authoritative, and verifiable publication. Wikipedia's standard for "truth" makes good technical and legal sense, given that anyone can edit its articles. There was no way for Wikipedia, as a community, to know whether the person revising the article about Jaron Lanier was really Jaron Lanier or a vandal. So it's safer not to take people at their word, and instead to require an appeal to the authority of another publication from everybody who contributes, expert or not. An interesting thing happens when you try to understand Wikipedia: the deeper you go, the more convoluted it becomes. Consider the verifiability policy. Wikipedia considers the "most reliable sources" to be "peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses," followed by "university-level textbooks," then magazines, journals, "books published by respected publishing houses," and finally "mainstream newspapers" (but not the opinion pages of newspapers). Once again, this makes sense, given Wikipedia's inability to vet the real-world identities of authors. Lanier's complaints when his Wikipedia page claimed that he was a film director couldn't be taken seriously by Wikipedia's "contributors" until Lanier persuaded the editors at Edge to print his article bemoaning the claim. This Edge article by Lanier was enough to convince the Wikipedians that the Wikipedia article about Lanier was incorrect--after all, there was a clickable link! Presumably the editors at Edge did their fact checking, so the wikiworld could now be corrected. As fate would have it, Lanier was subsequently criticized for engaging in the wikisin of editing his own wikientry. The same criticism was leveled against me when I corrected a number of obvious errors in my own Wikipedia entry. "Criticism" is actually a mild word for the kind of wikijustice meted out to people who are foolish enough to get caught editing their own Wikipedia entries: the entries get slapped with a banner headline that says "A major contributor to this article, or its creator, may have a conflict of interest regarding its subject matter." The banner is accompanied by a little picture showing the scales of justice tilted to the left. Wikipedia's "Autobiography" policy explains in great detail how drawing on your own knowledge to edit the Wikipedia entry about yourself violates all three of the site's cornerstone policies--and illustrates the point with yet another appeal to authority, a quotation from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But there is a problem with appealing to the authority of other people's written words: many publications don't do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right. For instance, Dun and Bradstreet gets the information for its small-business information reports in part by asking those very same small businesses to fill out questionnaires about themselves. "No Original Research" What all this means is hard to say. I am infrequently troubled by Wiki's unreliability. (The quality of the writing is a different subject.) As a computer scientist, I find myself using Wikipedia on a daily basis. Its discussions of algorithms, architectures, microprocessors, and other technical subjects are generally excellent. When they aren't excellent and I know better, I just fix them. And when they're wrong and I don't know better--well, I don't know any better, do I? I've also spent quite a bit of time reviewing Wikipedia's articles about such things as the "Singularity Scalpel," the "Treaty of Algeron," and "Number Six." Search for these terms and you'll be directed to Wikipedia articles with the titles "List of Torchwood items" and "List of treaties in Star Trek," and to one about a Cylon robot played by Canadian actress Tricia Helfer. These articles all hang their wikiexistence upon scholarly references to original episodes of Dr. Who, Torchwood, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica--popular television shows that the Wikipedia contributors dignify with the word "canon." I enjoy using these articles as sticks to poke at Wikipedia, but they represent a tiny percentage of Wikipedia's overall content. On the other hand, they've been an important part of Wikipedia culture from the beginning. Sanger says that early on, Wikipedia made a commitment to having a wide variety of articles: "There's plenty of disk space, and as long as there are people out there who are able to write a decent article about a subject, why not let them? ... I thought it was kind of funny and cool that people were writing articles about every character in The Lord of the Rings. I didn't regard it as a problem the way some people do now." What's wrong with the articles about fantastical worlds is that they are at odds with Wikipedia's "no original research" rule, since almost all of them draw their "references" from the fictions themselves and not from the allegedly more reliable secondary sources. I haven't nominated these articles for speedy deletion because Wikipedia makes an exception for fiction--and because, truth be told, I enjoy reading them. And these days, most such entries are labeled as referring to fictional universes. So what is Truth? According to Wikipedia's entry on the subject, "the term has no single definition about which the majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree." But in practice, Wikipedia's standard for inclusion has become its de facto standard for truth, and since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it's the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject. That standard is simple: something is true if it was published in a newspaper article, a magazine or journal, or a book published by a university press--or if it appeared on Dr. Who. http://www.technologyreview.com/web/21558/?a=f ![]() Murdoch Takes Issue With New Biography Tim Arango Last year, in the gleeful afterglow of his deal for The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch agreed to cooperate with Michael Wolff, a columnist at Vanity Fair and a longtime chronicler of the media scene, for a book about Mr. Murdoch’s career and family. Now, with about six weeks to go before publication, Mr. Murdoch has raised objections with Mr. Wolff and his publisher about portions of the book, titled “The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch,” that suggest that Mr. Murdoch is at times embarrassed by Fox News, which he owns, and its chief executive, Roger Ailes, and that he often shares “the general liberal apoplexy,” as Mr. Wolff writes in the book, toward Fox News and its perceived conservative slant. In early October Mr. Murdoch obtained an early draft of the book, despite a tight embargo on the manuscript, and has raised objections with Doubleday, a division of Random House, about what he said were inaccuracies in the way Mr. Wolff describes relations between Mr. Murdoch and two of his top executives — Mr. Ailes and Peter Chernin, the president of News Corporation. “I’m obviously annoyed that they’re looking at an early version of the book, and a purloined one at that,” Mr. Wolff said in an interview. “In essence News Corp. is holding stolen goods.” Mr. Wolff said he spent more than 50 hours, all of which were taped, interviewing Mr. Murdoch, beginning in September 2007, and spent time with Mr. Murdoch’s children and even his 99-year-old mother, who lives on a family estate in Australia. Mr. Wolff said he believed the objections raised by Mr. Murdoch had more to do with corporate politics than with any genuine feeling that these relationships were incorrectly described in the book. “I don’t think this is necessarily real objections,” he added. “It’s all from the horse’s mouth. And it’s all on tape.” “Ultimately, I actually think they will be happy with this book,” he continued. “I think everybody around Rupert will see this and say, ‘This is Rupert.’ ” Of course controversy has been known to spur book sales, and the episode is reminiscent of one involving a book in 2005 about Michael Eisner, the former chief executive of the Walt Disney Company. In that prepublication dust-up — which, not surprisingly, wound up in the newspapers — Disney executives finagled an unauthorized copy and sent a letter to Simon & Schuster threatening legal action if the book contained errors. A spokesman for the News Corporation, speaking on Mr. Murdoch’s behalf, said: “The book conveys Rupert, the family and the company in a flattering light. And certainly portrays Rupert as the risk-taking entrepreneur that he is.” David Drake, a publicist at Doubleday, said, “The factual basis of the book will stand up to scrutiny.” And the News Corporation has not threatened legal action, nor does it plan to — suggesting at least a morsel of validity to Mr. Wolff’s belief that Mr. Murdoch’s objections were mainly a way to soothe any executive egos that may be bruised by the book’s publication. The objections raised on behalf of Mr. Murdoch came after an article on Mr. Murdoch and the book was published in Vanity Fair in the October issue in which Mr. Wolff wrote that Mr. Murdoch was making friends with liberals and that he had soured on Fox News and Mr. Ailes. (A 10,000-word excerpt from the book will be published in the December issue, due out early next month.) “For a long time, he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch,” Mr. Wolff wrote in the October Vanity Fair piece. “And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed — he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it; he barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly.” Mr. Wolff and executives at Doubleday said Mr. Murdoch received an advance copy of the manuscript through his son-in-law, the high-profile London public relations executive Matthew Freud, who is married to Elisabeth Murdoch, Mr. Murdoch’s 40-year-old daughter. Mr. Wolff said he believed that Mr. Freud obtained it through an acquaintance at a London newspaper that had received a draft under a nondisclosure agreement for the purpose of negotiating serial rights. “At the point where the book was being presold for serialization rights,” Mr. Freud said in an interview, “there were clearly a number of copies going around, and someone kindly sent me a copy.” In an e-mail message from Mr. Freud to Mr. Wolff on Oct. 2, Mr. Freud praised the book. “This is a remarkable book you have written,” Mr. Freud wrote. “Brilliant on so many levels. Congratulations, seriously. There is a bit of fact-checking on the family stuff if you want notes. But I loved it.” However, four days later, on Oct. 6, Mr. Murdoch himself e-mailed Mr. Wolff and was less complimentary. “I have just read four or five chapters of your book,” Mr. Murdoch wrote. “It contains some extremely damaging misstatements of fact which I will be happy to point out to you if we could meet. Otherwise I will have no option other than to speak to Random House.” A few days later, one of Mr. Murdoch’s top lieutenants e-mailed Phyllis Grann, the editor of the book at Doubleday, raising numerous minor factual errors — which were corrected — as well as several broader complaints, including the characterization of the Ailes relationship and Mr. Chernin’s reading habits. (Mr. Wolff writes that Mr. Murdoch was exasperated because he thought Mr. Chernin did not read newspapers.) The question that has perplexed many in the media world is why Mr. Murdoch agreed to give such wide access to himself and his family. “It’s a big question,” said Mr. Drake, the book’s publicist. “It will always remain a mystery.” Mr. Wolff said that when he made the rounds to interview family members and other News Corporation executives, “everybody said, ‘Why did he do this?’ No one seems to know.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/books/23wolff.html ![]() The Internet Grows Up Social networking sites like Facebook are now more popular than porn sites, but does that mean we want real relationships? Mary Richert It's an old joke among web geeks that "the internet is for porn". OK, so it was invented by the department of defence for the sake of communications, but if there's one industry that can commodify a resource faster than the oil industry can waste it, it's porn. It makes sense, too, since sex is both a basic animal (and human) instinct and also something we frown on and obsess over to the extent that it's frightening. When the internet was young and users were still basically anonymous, there was no better way to indulge in a guilty pleasure than from behind the veil of your monitor. But the internet is maturing, or at least its users seem to be. Porn sites have now been overtaken in popularity by social networking sites like MySpace, Friendster and Facebook. At first blush, this seems like a distinction without a difference. After all, the voyeuristic aspect of being able to peek into other people's personal lives is part of the attraction of social networking sites. But the sites have evolved beyond poorly designed collections of profile pages where teenagers and college students trade photos and gossip. At times, these sites are little more than sophisticated time-wasting devices, but as communities of friends and professional contacts integrate these new resources, the sites become more functional. It seems we're finally starting to use the internet for its intended purpose: communication and information sharing. If you think of the internet as a model for the collective human brain, it's encouraging to know that slightly more than half of it is occupied by subjects other than sex, and that we are, in fact, still quite interested in forming meaningful connections to one another. Yep, that was the point all along, but at least initially, it was much easier to simply put smutty pictures on a website than facilitate real human interaction. That's not to say we've reached the pinnacle of communication. We still fail to communicate with the people next to us every day. Devices like mobile phones, PDAs and do-it-all units like the iPhone have tethered us to our bosses, co-workers and friends, but emails and text messages are no substitute for face-to-face contact. There's something similarly antisocial about social networking sites. An internet connection does not a relationship make. Part of the attraction of sites like Facebok is that we can be on friendly terms with people we don't particularly care to spend much time with. Even with good friends, though, being able to walk away from the keyboard can sometimes be a lifesaver. Maintaining close personal friendships can be exhausting. That long conversation about your friend's breakup of the century is much less of an imposition when you can take a break, grab a cup of coffee and mutter to yourself about how she's better off without that loser anyway. Facebook and other networking sites may be popular, not because of their potential as avenues for oversharing, but because they have struck upon ways to allow us to stay in touch while minimising the awkwardness of those drawn-out phone calls. All too often, we don't say what we mean, we don't choose the right words and we don't listen and make a sincere effort to understand each other. Unfortunately, the sincerity and compassion required for real communication isn't part of the programming. That's something we still have to develop ourselves. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...rking-facebook ![]() Facebook in a Crowd Hal Neidzviecki One day this past summer, I logged on to Facebook and realized that I was very close to having 700 online “friends.” Not bad, I thought to myself, absurdly proud of how many cyberpals, connections, acquaintances and even strangers I’d managed to sign up. But the number made me uneasy as well. I had just fallen out with a friend I’d spent a lot of time with. I’d disconnected with a few other ones for the usual reasons — jobs in other cities, family life limiting social time. I was as much to blame as they were. I had a 2-year-old kid of my own at home. Add to that my workaholic irritability, my love of being left alone and my lack of an office environment or mysterious association with the Masons from which to derive an instant network of cronies. I had fewer friends to hang out with than I’d ever had before. So I decided to have a Facebook party. I used Facebook to create an “event” and invite my digital chums. Some of them, of course, didn’t live in Toronto, but I figured, it’s summer and people travel. You never know who might be in town. If they lived in Buffalo or Vancouver, they could just click “not attending,” and that would be that. Facebook gives people the option of R.S.V.P.’ing in three categories — “attending,” “maybe attending” and “not attending.” After a week the responses stopped coming in and were ready to be tabulated. Fifteen people said they were attending, and 60 said maybe. A few hundred said not, and the rest just ignored the invitation altogether. I figured that about 20 people would show up. That sounded pretty good to me. Twenty potential new friends. On the evening in question I took a shower. I shaved. I splashed on my tingly man perfume. I put on new pants and a favorite shirt. Brimming with optimism, I headed over to the neighborhood watering hole and waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, one person showed up. I chatted with my new potential friend, Paula, doing my best to pretend I wasn’t dismayed and embarrassed. But I was too self-conscious to be genuine. I kept apologizing for the lack of attendance. I looked over my shoulder every time the door opened and someone new came in. Paula was nice about it, assuring me that people probably just felt shy about the idea of making a new friend. She said she herself had almost decided not to come. “And now you have me all to yourself,” I said, trying to sound beneficent and unworried. We smiled at each other awkwardly. We made small talk. I found out about her job, her boyfriend, her soccer team. Paula became my Facebook friend after noticing I was connected to a friend of hers. She thought it would be interesting to drop by and meet me. Eventually we ran out of things to say. Anyway, she had to work in the morning. I picked up the tab on her Tom Collins and watched as she strode out into the night, not entirely sure if our friendship would grow. After she left, I renewed my vigil, waiting for someone to show. It was getting on 11 o’clock and all my rationalizations — for example, that people needed time to get home from work, eat dinner, relax a bit — were wearing out. I would learn, when I asked some people who didn’t show up the next day, that “definitely attending” on Facebook means “maybe” and “maybe attending” means “likely not.” So I probably shouldn’t have taken it personally. But the combination of alcohol and solitude turned my thoughts to self-pity. Was I really that big of a loser? Or was it that no one wants to get together in real life anymore? It wasn’t Facebook’s fault; all those digital pals were better than nothing. For chipping away at past friendships and blocking honest new efforts, you really have to blame the entire modern world. People want to hang out with you, I assured myself. They just don’t have the time. By now it was nearing midnight. My head was clouded by drink, and it was finally starting to sink in: no one else was coming. I’d have to think up some other way to revitalize my social life. I ordered one more drink. The beer arrived, a British import: Young’s Double Chocolate Stout. I raised my glass in a solitary toast and promised myself I’d spend less time online. Then I took a gulp: the beer was delicious but bittersweet. Seven hundred friends, and I was drinking alone. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/ma...26lives-t.html ![]() California-Based Mongols Biker Gang Members Rounded Up Steve Gorman Federal agents and police in seven states arrested more than 60 members of the Mongols motorcycle gang on Tuesday in a sweep that also targeted for the first time an outlaw group's "intellectual property," prosecutors said. The arrests cap a three-year undercover investigation in which U.S. agents posed as gang members and their girlfriends to infiltrate the group, even submitting to polygraph tests administered by the bikers. Those arrested were charged in an 86-count federal racketeering indictment accusing the California-based gang of engaging in criminal acts ranging from murder and robbery to extortion, money laundering, gun trafficking and drug dealing. The Mongols are particularly associated with violent attacks on blacks and have engaged in an escalating battle with the rival Hells Angels gang since clashing in a 2002 casino riot in Laughlin, Nevada, prosecutors said. The gang also has been feuding with Mexican-based organized crime figures over the Mongols' drug trafficking in areas controlled by the Mexican mob, according to authorities. "In addition to pursuing the criminal charges set forth in the indictment, for the first time ever, we are seeking to forfeit the intellectual property of the gang," U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien said in a statement. He said the name "Mongols," which appears on the gang's arm patch insignia, was trademarked by the group. The indictment seeks a court order outlawing further use of the name, which would allow any police officer "who sees a Mongol wearing this patch ... to stop that gang member and literally take the jacket right off his back," O'Brien added. The 61 gang members and 10 other defendants arrested so far were rounded up in raids conducted in California, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon, Washington state, Florida and Ohio. Most were taken into custody in the Los Angeles area, prosecutors said. Those arrested include the reputed former Mongols national president, Ruben "Doc" Cavazo, several chapter presidents and various other high-ranking gang members. According to prosecutors, the Mongols were founded in the 1970s in Montebello, California, just east of Los Angeles, and its members now number 600 nationwide. (Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Cynthia Osterman) http://www.reuters.com/article/domes...49K8U120081021 Until next week, - js. ![]() Current Week In Review ![]() Recent WiRs - October 18th, October 11th, October 4th, September 27th Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved. "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 |
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