Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 11th, '06

[JackSpratts]

"The illegal spying program should be a primary focus of congressional efforts to investigate this administration's abuse of power. Several of the new committee chairs have already expressed their intention to conduct a thorough inquiry into the unlawful actions of this administration." – Caroline Fredrickson


"Without Net Neutrality, the current experience that Internet users enjoy today is in jeopardy." – Sen. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA


"Clearly, we're going to have to address the question of network neutrality." – Rep. John Dingell, D-MI


"Either there is no evidence of any links between piracy and organised crime or it is simply beyond the capacity of rights holders to identify these links." – Alex Malik


"There's no way on this planet that she would have left that child. Nobody is ever going to tell me that woman walked away from Sophie." – Andy Ostroy


"I think of the entertainment industry and Detroit similarly." – Jerry Seinfeld


"It was kind, kind bud. Yummy stuff." – Lucia


"She was a strong woman with a lot of talent, I will miss her." – poisomike



























Musical Chairmen

When Representative Jack Murtha suggested last November that the troops come home it created a public furor among republicans, but privately they reacted with glee. Surely this will be the democrats’ downfall they gloated, so out of step are they they think pulling out of Iraq will resonate with patriotic Americans…

We know the result. After watching those democrats take over the House and all but seal the Senate, President George W. Bush did what he insisted last week he would never do: he fired Donald Rumsfeld. It may be he simply can’t afford having Rumsfeld subpoenaed by Nancy Pelosi, and if inconvenient truths emerge before his presidential term ends the next subpoena may well be his. He could be right, but firing Rummy isn’t going to help if he’s looking for a safety net. If there’s anything there something will come out somewhere that leads to more questions that cascade into inevitable torrents that end with a President in front of a shocked nation, under oath, disgraced and finished. His dad is doing all he can to prevent the scenario, bringing in the old guard to form a defensive circle around his boy, but it remains to be seen whether this unprecedented familial Whitehouse takeover will ultimately protect the President or just delay the unavoidable, but that’s a story for another day.

Here at Napsterites the story for today is the opportunity this mid term election upset presents to us as internet users and file-sharers, so the reasons it has occurred are somewhat less pressing. We have for six long years dealt with a hostile Washington group determined to suppress our constitutionally guaranteed rights of free speech, assembly and the ability to access and distribute information. Whatever minor gains we may occasionally receive from a grudging judiciary we lose to an increasingly fanatical Justice Department, and with the exception of a handful of progressives in Washington, we have not been able to get a fair hearing anywhere near that town. All the levers of power are held by our enemies and the legislators they have bought off in the House and Senate. These powerful old men are so arrogant and hostile they haven’t even attempted an illusion of fairness, they simply treated us with open contempt, secure in the belief their rich friends in international media would insulate them from our anger. When Orrin Hatch proposes to destroy your computer without due process because it contains legal, non-criminal content that might be in violation of minor civil ordinances, we don’t need a crystal ball to judge his motives, they are sitting plainly in front of us.

Until now.

Because the democrats have regained control of congress, Orrin will no longer reprise his performance as a sometime Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee so this part time composer won’t be conducting any more hearings on that or any other stage. This will be repeated at every committee that affects us, as republican chairmen leave from Copyrights, Commerce and countless others, all the way up to and including the powerful FCC itself. There is even the possibility we will be able to revisit the disastrous CARP ruling that imposed fees so onerous onto internet radio it silenced innumerable voices and some 40,000 unique stations overnight.

We don’t have much time. Already lobbyists at major media concerns are calling in markers for the most expensive election in US history so we’ll have to move fast, but with democrats in power there is at least a presumption the public will receive better reception than it got from shielded republicans.

Might I suggest something as simple as a telephone call to start? Perhaps one of a congratulatory nature to your new and returning representatives and senators, and to those freshly minted chairmen of the committees that sound our future with every gavel’s bang. They will be approachable only for as long as the fundamentals remain foremost in their minds: that their time may yet be brief, that to achieve a more substantial future they must listen to their true constituents; the ones who call from modest homes, not those jetting in this week from glass encased corporate castles.















Enjoy,

Jack
















November 11th, '06






Blogs Take Lead in Reporting Polling Problems, With Supporting Evidence on YouTube
Tom Zeller Jr.

Blogs of all political stripes spent most of yesterday detailing reports of voting machine malfunctions and ballot shortages, effectively becoming an online national clearinghouse of the polling problems that still face the election system.

And in a new twist this year, many bloggers buttressed their accounts of electoral shenanigans with links to videos posted on the video Web site YouTube.

RedState.com, the conservative journal, heralded a “massive meltdown in Pennsylvania” early in the day, citing “widespread reports of an electoral nightmare shaping up in Pennsylvania with certain types of electronic voting machines.”

Erick Erickson, RedState’s chief blogger, also included a report of poll watcher intimidation in Philadelphia, along with a link to a video on YouTube that appeared to show a certified poll observer (armed with a video camera) being blocked from a polling station.www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-HK_VT81Pk&e

Brad Friedman, perhaps the most dogged critic of electronic voting machine technology in the blogosphere, said he saw his site traffic spike at left-leaning Bradblog.com, as reports of machine malfunctions began pouring in from around the country.

“Folks understand by now that I’ll get these stories out so that they’ll get confirmed,” Mr. Friedman said.

That the blog now has a firm place in the choreography of national events — and in elections perhaps more so than in any other cultural exercise — is a boon to the democratic process, said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance at Oxford University and a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

“In a lot of ways they’re helping to set the agenda for the mainstream media in fast-moving events like this,” Mr. Zittrain said. “They just need to be able to produce enough that’s credible quickly to give a lead.”

Alluding to some of the voter intimidation reports that unfolded on Election Day, he added, “There’s also a real difference between hearing about a call that tells someone they’re not allowed to vote and actually hearing the call as if you are receiving it.”

Some bloggers placed what were said to be digital recordings of such calls online for the world to hear.

Elsewhere online, voting machine problems also filled many posts on Talking Points Memo, a liberal site that seemed to take the initiative in tracking complaints, malfunctions and alleged malfeasance by Republicans.

Among the litany of issues cited at Talking Points: computer problems that caused long lines in Denver; polling stations that stayed open later in Indiana after voting problems and delays; votes for Claire C. McCaskill in the Missouri Senate race that somehow registered for her opponent, Jim Talent; complaints that crashed an Ohio county phone system.

It was impossible to gauge the veracity of every report cited. Some blogs linked to reports in local or national news media. Others copied e-mail messages or cited phone calls with local polling officials, while still others merely created open threads for readers to contribute their personal accounts of voting problems.

Not every site thought chaos was at hand, however. Ed Morrissey of the conservative Captain’s Quarters blog said traffic to his site yesterday was about two or three times normal. But Mr. Morrissey added that though he had heard some talk of voting woes, he thought on the whole they were “pretty minor” and would not have any effect on the overall outcome.

One of the biggest controversies of the last national election cycle — the discrepancy between the exit polls that showed John Kerry with a lead and the final results — continued to animate discussions on many liberal blogs. With the 2004 discrepancy in mind, major news organizations were embargoed yesterday from releasing poll data for most of the day, and had generally agreed to refrain from releasing detailed numbers until most polls had closed.

The big question mark, however, was whether the numbers would leak in the blogs, and by 6 p.m. that had already begun to happen. Chris Bowers of MyDD.com, a liberal blog, posted “unconfirmed Senate numbers” at 5:47 p.m. — though he added a caveat.

“Double super caution: these numbers are both unconfirmed, and they are exit polls,” Mr. Bowers wrote. “I am going to keep looking into this.”

Even so, many of the biggest names in political blogging — including John Aravosis of Americblog, John Amato of Crooks and Liars, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and Mr. Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters — had been corralled by a member of the mainstream news media, CNN, at Tryst, a trendy Washington coffeehouse, last night.

Constantine Stavropoulos, the owner of the cafe, said he had closed its doors for the “blog party,” which the network periodically broadcast and streamed online. He said he expected the bloggers — an attractive bunch, he said — to linger long after the votes were in.

“Bloggers look a lot better than I thought they would,” Mr. Stavropoulos said.

Michael McElroy contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/us...s/08blogs.html





A Conversation with Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann

Does Technology Help or Hinder Election Integrity?

Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann have long been active participants in promoting integrity in the election process, with special emphasis on the dependable use of information technology, as well as on the weak-link nature of the entire process, from beginning to end.

Elections form the fundamental basis of all democracies. In light of many past problems with the integrity of election processes around the world, ongoing efforts have sought to increase the use of computers and communications in elections to help automate the process. Unfortunately, many existing computer-related processes are poorly conceived and implemented, introducing new problems related to such issues as voter confidentiality and privacy, computer system integrity, accountability and resolution of irregularities, ease of administration by election officials, and ease of use by voters—with many special problems for those with various handicaps. Overall, the issues relating to computer security provide a representative cross-section of the difficulties inherent in attempting to develop and operate trustworthy systems for other applications. These issues, of course, have relevance internationally and are increasingly timely.

This interview attempts to capture some of the most basic problems and potential solutions. We explicitly recognize the end-to-end nature of the election process—from voter registration to voter authentication to ballot casting to vote counting and results distribution—in which each step has potential vulnerabilities. Here, however, we focus primarily on the issues related to the use of computer systems, although we begin with some questions that put the technological problems in the context of the overall election process.

PETER G. NEUMANN To what extent is election integrity a technological problem, in contrast with a socio-economical, political, or other kind of problem?

DOUGLAS W. JONES It is certainly all of those. Even pure hand-counted paper ballots raise technical questions. Whatever the technology, any attempt to scientifically investigate elections has unavoidable political implications. I have described this as “very political science”; work in this area is as politically loaded as work on evolution or stem cells. Merely claiming that research into election integrity is needed is seen by many politicians as challenging the legitimacy of their elections.

PGN Let’s start with the big picture. What are the most important technological issues that we need to consider?

DWJ Much of the difficulty stems from the fundamental requirement that the election system be transparent. To borrow a phrase from Dan Wallach, associate director of ACCURATE (A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections), the system must convince the losers that they lost. Those who lost an election and their partisans typically have no required technical qualifications, so the entire system must be sufficiently open and comprehensible that nontechnical observers can believe the results. Furthermore, the losers in an election have no reason to believe any assertions made by a government that is run by the winners.

Generally, systems become more trustworthy when redundancy is used to protect against internal errors, accidents, and attacks, but the mere presence of redundancy offers no guarantees unless the placement and transmission of the copies are carefully planned and there are clear procedures for identifying and resolving discrepancies between the copies.

Vote counting is an accounting function, and as such, the accounting standards for voting ought to be comparable to those for money. We ought to design auditability into our voting systems. So long as we are forced to trust the software of voting systems, we need a tightly controlled software development process, so that all code is attributable both to the specifications it fulfills and to the programmers who wrote it. We also need secure authentication of hardware, software, configuration files, and results to defend against both fraud and accident. In addition to self-authentication, we need trustworthy paths for transport of all system components.

Finally, we need to learn how to evaluate whether our systems actually meet design requirements. Certification by anonymous bureaucrats or government contractors operating behind closed doors cannot be expected to convince the loser in an election. Can you imagine what would happen if the NSA (National Security Agency) certified the security of voting systems? The conspiracy theorists would have a field day. Even so, NSA certification would be far stronger than the current approach to voting-system certification.

PGN What about other issues, such as preventing insider misuse?

DWJ One of the problems in public discussions of voting-system integrity is that the different participants tend to point to different threats. Election-system vendors and election officials generally focus on effective defense against outside attackers, usually characterized as hackers. Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results.

Over the past two centuries of American history, we have seen ample evidence of attacks from both directions, but it appears that the vast majority of election fraud has involved corrupt jurisdictions protecting their positions. This pattern has appeared repeatedly in big-city political machines, as well as in rural areas.

PGN What can be done to address all of the seemingly nontechnological problems? Might technological approaches such as registration databases help or hinder?

DWJ Both, of course. It is clear that technology can be used as fairy dust. Crypto fairy dust has a long record in the world of elections. The most famous case involves the voting machines made by Global Election Systems (later Diebold), where all the machines had the same DES encryption key hard-coded into their software. Use of cryptographic authentication of object code falls into the same category if you expect the voting machine to self-authenticate by printing out the authentication code of the software it’s running. You advance beyond the fairy-dust-stage only if you allow an external observer to examine the contents of memory and independently compute the authentication code.

At the same time, it is clear that the technology exists to overcome many of the defects of current electronic voting systems. The pyramid-of-trust model used to authenticate casino game firmware is very well tested (and patented, see U.S. Patent 6,149,522). We know how to use both symmetric-key and public-key cryptosystems to authenticate all data flow both to and from the voting machine. We know how to automate the key-management problem for a flock of voting machines so that the cryptographic keys are reset to new random values for each machine for each election without placing a huge burden on election administrators.

The problem is, there are other things we cannot do. The proof that there is no effective software to detect all malware has a structure very similar to that of Turing’s proof that the halting problem cannot be solved. Assume you have a malware detector that never misidentifies well-behaved code as malware and never identifies malware as being well behaved. Create an application that incorporates your malware detector. If that application detects malware, it behaves entirely honestly. If it does not detect malware, it becomes malware itself. Now, submit your application to itself. The malware detector is obviously wrong, so our initial assumption that it worked was wrong.

We cannot reliably inspect a program to determine that it does not contain hidden functionality, and it is impossible to guarantee detection of all hidden functionality by black-box testing. The prevalence of “Easter eggs” in commercial software demonstrates this. Whereas some Easter eggs may be intentional tools used to detect illegal copying, others are clearly examples of unauthorized functionality that has slipped through the quality-control tests at the vendor.

Finally, of course, no highly technical measure is going to be entirely convincing to a naive observer. We therefore need to emphasize understandable measures. In the area of cryptography, for example, the work being done by people like David Chaum to develop cryptographic election protocols that can be explained to those of us without Ph.D.s is promising, but it seems to me that they have a long way to go. I see no hope of reducing software correctness proofs for paperless voting machines to a form that average voters should trust.

PGN By the way, it was Doug Jones who in 1997 discovered the DES key hard-coded into the software and reported it. Ironically, despite many changes since then in the software, that very same key is reportedly still in the software. (Only recently was the election administrator given the option to change the key manually!)

Moving on, what issues have we not yet addressed?

DWJ The centralization of voter registration records provides interesting opportunities. The anarchic system of voter registration record keeping, which until this year was common nationally, was awful. In many jurisdictions, a large fraction of the records were long out of date, and no two counties seemed to keep their records in the same format. Now, HAVA (Help America Vote Act of 2002) has forced migration to statewide registration databases. This promises to improve things, but it also means that mismanagement, when it occurs, will have statewide consequences. One common problem is already appearing in many states—namely, that of matching driver’s license records with voter records. As it turns out, many of us haven’t been entirely careful to spell our names identically in our different official government records, and some states have opted to go with very bad name-matching software in an effort to clean up the new statewide registration databases that are mandated by HAVA.

One lesson has struck home repeatedly. The consequences of human error and fraud are frequently indistinguishable. An investigation of voting-machine event logs in Miami-Dade County in a minor municipal election in 2003 showed that some vote records came from machines that had not been deployed at the polling place. When I was asked to investigate this, my first hypothesis was that someone had fraudulently used a machine in the county warehouse to record the votes that should have come from the precinct. The problem with this hypothesis was that the election was so minor and the outcome so expected that fraud didn’t make any sense. Occam’s Razor was wrong: Working with the vendor and the county, we eventually determined that the misrecorded serial numbers were the result of an unlikely sounding coincidence involving a fairly common administrative error (failing to plug in the machine) combined with a programming error (i++ instead of ++i during the recording of the low-battery message in the event log) combined with a software design error (failing to use the redundant memory format properly).

PGN What about operational risks?

DWJ Voting-system administrators walk a tightrope, balancing the cost of obtaining in-house expertise with dependence on vendor technical support. In-house expertise is expensive, sufficiently so that many small jurisdictions will never be able to afford to operate without outside support. Over the past century, it is clear that voting-system vendors have generally made more money selling election support services than selling the machines themselves. Service contracts may involve as little as preventive maintenance or as much as complete election support—relieving the county of the need for any local technical expertise.

The intermittent nature of election work makes it almost impossible for anyone to dedicate full-time positions for all of the different technical jobs involved in elections. Much of the election workforce must, therefore, be made up of temporary employees. Voting-system vendors transfer large numbers of workers from other roles in the company into the field as election consultants for the duration of each election season; in jurisdictions that rely on local expertise, it is common to draft computer programmers and technicians from other government departments. In addition, both the vendors and the voting jurisdictions depend on hiring and training temps.

Whether dealing with temporary employees or contractors, it is clear that election officials face some serious problems. At what point do you draw the line between functions that are performed only by trusted permanent employees of the jurisdiction and functions that you allow contractors or temporary employees to perform? Do you allow them to handle ballots? Do you allow them to do on-site preventive maintenance? If something breaks, what repairs do you permit them to perform?

PGN You mention making the process more open. What procedural steps might help to that end, particularly those that could overcome potential insider attacks?

DWJ One of the biggest problems with the current regulatory framework is that it contains poor provisions for feedback. When failures occur in our election systems, they are reported in an ad hoc way, and it is not at all clear that those who are involved with formulating or applying our voting-system standards have ready access to information about system failures. We need to close the loop, so that voting-system failures are routinely investigated and the results of those investigations are made available to the public, to certifying agencies, and to those in charge of further development of the voting-system standards.

The definitions we use have some startling effects on openness. For example, consider the definitions of the words programming and software. We in computer science take the meanings of these words for granted, but they have come to have different meanings in the context of elections. Voting-system software is generally the proprietary intellectual property of the voting-system vendor and not subject to public inspection. This may itself be a problem, but the creeping definition of the word software has led some jurisdictions to object to public disclosure of the contents of election configuration files. These files do not contain (or at least ought not to contain) anything proprietary to the vendor; in theory, their only content is descriptions of the ballots and voting rules for the jurisdiction. Unfortunately, creating the configuration files to set up a voting system for an election has come to be described as programming the election, and these files have come, therefore, to be described as software.

Another problem revolves around the interpretation of public records. All of the records of an election are generally public, but many of these records are stored in proprietary data formats. Even the ink-on-paper records printed by election-management systems are frequently loaded with cryptic abbreviations. Unfortunately, the documentation necessary to interpret these records is generally considered confidential. This is absurd. It is as if the public records were being made available only in encrypted form. As far as I am concerned, the documentation necessary to interpret any public records must itself be public.

PGN The computer science community seems almost unanimously wary of attempts to enable elections via the Internet—for example, the SERVE (Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment) report. To what extent could better computer-system security and sound uses of cryptography satisfy the necessary requirements?

DWJ A good part of the problem is that most Internet voting proposals involve absentee voting systems that happen to use the Internet instead of postal ballots. Absentee voting, where voters fill out their ballots outside the controlled context of polling places, allows voters to easily prove, to a crook, that they filled out their ballots as required. This is why I have long recommended increased use of satellite polling places for early voting instead of unrestricted postal voting.

Internet voting from the home has many additional problems. Browser neutrality is one. Several current schemes operate correctly only under Microsoft Internet Explorer. I don’t believe that such limits are appropriate for any official government use of the Internet.

With Internet voting from the home, we have no control over what spyware may be present on the voter’s machine. Even if the voting application is distributed as a bootable system image, we cannot prevent it from being run under an emulator. Emulators that accurately simulate the realtime behavior of the emulated system are entirely possible—I’ve written one!

On the other hand, I see no reason that the Internet cannot be used for any functions that currently use wireless systems or other public networks such as the switched telephone network. Use of the Internet for reporting unofficial results from the precinct to the central election headquarters would seem to be no less safe than the wireless schemes used in some jurisdictions today. We know how to authenticate such transmissions, although I am unaware of vendors that are doing this correctly, and we know how to assure that they do not corrupt the official results: Just print the official results to paper and extract machine-readable media from the voting machine before inserting the communications card or cable in the machine. Many jurisdictions already get this right.

PGN “No less safe than the wireless schemes?” Wow, that is damning with faint praise. How unsafe are the wireless schemes used today, which are typically remotely spoof-able and certainly misusable by insiders?

DWJ I have no great confidence in wireless transmission, but it has been used for several years in some jurisdictions. In urban areas, for example, it is popular to set up polling places in building lobbies. It turns out that the lobby of a typical high-rise building is the one place in the building that frequently has no phone lines, so if the election administrators want a fast electronic report of the results from each polling place, the obvious way to do it is using wireless technology.

There are security advantages to both hand-delivering results from the polling place and electronic delivery, even wireless electronic delivery. Copies delivered by hand are necessarily delivered slowly, allowing an attacker the time needed to construct a counterfeit. This applies equally to paper and electronic media. Immediate electronic delivery over a public wired or wireless network denies the attacker the time to carry out an elaborate attack, assuming that the keys needed to authenticate the data have not been compromised.

PGN In many countries, voters still vote with a single piece of paper and have thus far resisted the use of high-tech approaches. Other countries seem to be pursuing various levels of computerized voting. Do you see any trends around the world for or against the potential “technologization” of elections?

DWJ It is important to understand that the U.S. system of elections places more contests on a single ballot than any other country in the world. In Clay County, Iowa, a relatively small rural county, the November 2000 ballot held 20 distinct contests, ranging from President of the United States to County Agricultural Extension Council, as well as 11 judicial retention questions and one referendum. Hand-counting ballots of this complexity is far more difficult than hand-counting ballots in a parliamentary democracy where there is only one race on the ballot, for member of parliament. This complexity is why the United States began applying machinery to vote counting a century ago.

Electronic voting technology has been used in some countries to deal with other complexities. For example, Belgium uses a hybrid party list scheme, where voters may vote for either a party list or for individual candidates. The complexity of Belgian rules for voting and ballot counting, even when there is only one race on the ballot, invites the use of computers; as a result, electronic voting has been used extensively in Belgium.

The canton of Geneva, Switzerland, has allowed Internet voting for several years in order to allow the large number of Geneva citizens who work overseas to cast ballots. As in the United States, the Swiss typically hold as many as four elections a year, and they routinely place multiple issues on the ballot for some of their elections (although rarely as many as 10).

India has what must be the world’s simplest paperless electronic voting machines, used nationwide. Of all the electronic systems in use today, it comes the closest to being simple enough that it might actually be possible to prove its integrity.

Brazil also uses a paperless electronic voting system nationwide, one that is far more complex than the Indian system, in part because the ballot access rules used in Brazil routinely allow for hundreds of candidates running for a single office.

Russia, in contrast, has opted to use optical mark-sense voting, although apparently, its rules forbid hand-counting of the ballots, making the system as potentially dangerous as a purely electronic system.

In November 2005, I participated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe election-observing mission in Kazakhstan. The e-voting system developed in Kazakhstan includes some very interesting innovations involving stateless voting machines and use of smartcard technology. Unfortunately, these innovations were balanced by some severe defects. The one that concerns me the most is that the voting-system standards themselves were a state secret. As in the United States, Kazakh voting machines must be approved by an independent testing authority, and the detailed reports by the authority on the system are delivered only to the voting-system developers, with no intention that these ever become public documents.

PGN Would you care to close with some personal comments on your experiences in tilting at this particular set of windmills?

DWJ When the Iowa Secretary of State called for computer scientists to volunteer to serve on the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems, I was afraid that nobody would volunteer, so I did. As it turned out, I was right. Nobody else from Iowa’s high-technology sector volunteered. When I resigned after a decade on the board, it was very difficult to find anyone from the high-tech sector willing to serve as my replacement.

I had served as a voting examiner for only a short time when I began finding serious problems in the voting systems that were being brought forward for certification in Iowa. Through the end of the 1990s, I remained quiet about these problems, simply voting against certification of defective systems and quietly telling the vendors about the defects they needed to fix.

Aside from a few postings in the ACM Risks Forum, I said little in public until spring 2000, after I had read the California Internet Voting Task Force Report of January 2000. At that time, I was chair of the board of examiners, and as of the 2000 general election, I was the only state election official making critical comments about voting technology.

This changed my life. Before the election, most of my time was spent on realtime embedded systems. In the years that followed that election, I have had little time for anything other than voting technology. Since then, I’ve learned to laugh when someone calls me a Luddite or a conspiracy theorist. The word activist is more troublesome. As a computer professional, I feel an obligation to advocate responsible computer use and to oppose irresponsible computer use. At the same time, being seen as an advocate endangers my credibility as an academic.
http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?...owpage&pid=432





Music Industry Responds to Spanish Ruling

IFPI criticises media coverage of the case. Specifically, the inference that the ruling affected the status of p2p file sharing.
Alun Williams

The recording industry body International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has responded to the ruling of a Spanish judge in a music sharing case. It has expressed its disappointment at the judge defining the distribution of music CD-Rs as 'private copying', on the grounds there was no profit involved.

It has also criticised media coverage of the case. Specifically, the inference that the ruling affected the status of p2p file sharing within Spain.

'Swapping copyright-infringing music through peer-to-peer networks remains illegal in Spain as it is throughout Europe and virtually everywhere else,' said an IFPI spokesperson. 'The Spanish Justice Minister has confirmed in a clear statement that file-sharing copyrighted music without permission is illegal.'

The IFPI insists the case did not involve p2p file-sharing, but rather the physical distribution of CDs that were advertised on the Internet.

The case was brought by Promusicae, Spain's record industry association, which said that it has appealed the decision.

But, as we reported, all is not lost for the record companies anyway. The Spanish government plans to introduce new laws that would outlaw private copying.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/97352/mu...sh-ruling.html





Judge OK's Challenge to RIAA's $750-Per-Song Claim
Posted by Zonk

"In UMG v. Lindor, in Brooklyn federal court, the presiding judge has held that Marie Lindor can try to prove that the RIAA's claim of $750-per-song statutory damages is a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Constitution, since she has evidence that the actual wholesale price of the downloads is only 70 cents. This decision activates an earlier ruling by the Magistrate in the case that the record labels must now turn over 'all relevant documents' regarding the prices at which they sell legal downloads to online retailers, and produce a witness to give a deposition by telephone on the subject. Judge Trager rejected the RIAA's claim that the defense was frivolous, pointing out that the RIAA had cited no authorities contradicting the defense, but Ms. Lindor's attorneys had cited cases and law review articles indicating that it was a valid defense. See the Decision at pp. 6-7."
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/11/10/1319224.shtml





Don't Want to Get Sued by the RIAA? Just Disable Wi-Fi Security!
Jeff Goldman

At Broadband Reports, Karl picks up on an OUT-LAW.COM report noting that Tammie Marson of Palm Desert, California responded to a file-sharing lawsuit from the RIAA by stating that her wireless network was not secure, and that therefore the file sharing seen on her network could have been from any passerby.

"The defense worked, and the RIAA dropped the case," Karl writes.

As an El Reg article points out, "If this becomes a popular defense, it could seriously hamper a huge number of file-sharing lawsuits taken in the US against individuals. It also looks to be a trend in defense against movie file-sharing lawsuits."

And back at Broadband Reports, PoloDude observes, "I think it's a great defense. But who says you have to turn off your security? Let them try and prove the state of your Wi-Fi security..."
http://www.wireless-weblog.com/50226...security .php





Do Not Try the Cheerleader Defence
OUT-LAW News

EDITORIAL: The message boards are alive with misguided advice about wireless networks. Switch off your security, they say: you’ll get away with murder.

It follows the news that the music industry has dropped a lawsuit against Tammie Marson of Palm Desert, California. Marson argued that the fact that her computer contained illegal music files downloaded over her internet connection was not proof of a crime. As a cheerleader teacher, she said, hundreds of girls passed through her house, any one of whom could have used her PC. She also ran a wireless network without security – so anyone outside her house could have used her net connection.

Observers in homes without cheerleader traffic were fascinated by the wireless defence. “I’m going to open my network to the neighbourhood,” was a typical comment. “Screw the RIAA [Recording Industry Association of America]!” But think this through: suppose someone outside your house uses your connection to download child porn to a laptop, hack into a bank or launch a denial of service attack. Unless you change your router’s default settings, you’ll never know. But the police might. So they’ll impound your computer and, if they find no incriminating files, they might give it back; or suspect that you knew how to cover your tracks. It’s your word against theirs. So keep your home network secure. For criminals, accessing an insecure network is as easy as putting on a balaclava.

Your office wireless network is more likely to have good security – but perhaps you should check. A quarter of business networks are unsecured, according to a recent wireless survey by RSA Security. Its tests in London this year found that 22% of access points still had default settings that put networks at risk. RSA points out that these offices are at risk of data theft and virus infection. It follows that they could also face difficult questions from police tracing terrible crimes. They might not prove anything against your company; but nor is it an investigation your business wants.

We don’t hear of such investigations today, but that could change. While the percentage of vulnerable networks is falling, it is falling slowly – and the total number of networks is rising fast. RSA reports a 73% year-on-year rise in the number of wireless hotspots in London.

The police don’t like anonymity breaking evidential chains. Will they push for new laws that make unsecured networks illegal, or grounds for a claim that the operator is aiding and abetting the commission of a crime? After all, our Data Protection Act already has certain expectations of office networks that hold personal data. While the police don’t care about extending these expectations to protect movies and music, they do care about hacking and child porn; and right now they probably care even more about terrorist communications. At a time when air travellers can’t carry toothpaste, it doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched to foresee the banning of safe havens for criminal communications.

That may or may not happen. But for now, if nothing else, fix your wireless security. Otherwise you could find yourself reported in the press as helping the police with their enquiries in connection with a terrible crime. Nobody wants that.
http://www.out-law.com/page-7448





Google Video Sued For Copyright Infringement
Wendy Davis

Google Video Is Facing A copyright infringement lawsuit, the company revealed this week in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The lawsuit, filed in France, seeks $192,465 (150,000 Euros) in damages; it's based on allegations related to a documentary that surfaced on the site. Google said it removed the video as soon as it learned that owners hadn't authorized its release. "This is a small lawsuit over a single video that appeared briefly. We have procedures in place that allow copyright owners to tell us if their content is placed on Google Video without authorization. When we receive appropriate notice, we quickly remove the content from Google Video," the company said in a statement.

The lawsuit is believed to stem from Google's hosting of video clips. While this particular lawsuit doesn't appear to be related to Google's recent agreement to purchase video-sharing site YouTube for $1.65 billion, the case potentially foreshadows how Google will defend itself in any suits that arise out of the YouTube merger.

Some legal observers hold that Google will have solid legal ground to fight suits--at least in the United States--as long as the company removes copyrighted clips once the owner complains. But others hold that the law governing online copyright is ambiguous about whether Web sites are liable if companies sue without first giving the sites notice and an opportunity to remove copyrighted content.
http://publications.mediapost.com/in...rt_aid=50 957





Malaysia Cracks Down on Phone Dealers

Malaysian authorities have detained three mobile phone dealers who illegally downloaded songs from the Internet and sold them as ring tones, a report said Friday.

Officers detained the men during a raid on a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur and seized laptops containing thousands of such songs, which were sold as ring tones to mobile phone users for up to five ringgit (US$1.36, euro1.10) each, the New Straits Times said.

Initial investigations showed the men earned at least 600 ringgit (US$163; euro136) a day, it said. They could be jailed five years and fined up to 20,000 ringgit (US$5,450; euro4,541) a song if charged with copyright infringement, it added.

Othman Nawang, a state director for the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry, was quoted as saying that at least one-third of some 300 mobile phone outlets in the city were involved in this illegal practice and vowed to crack down on them.

"We had warned them that it was illegal. We gave them a long time to clean up their act but during recent checks, we found that more dealers were downloading songs and selling them as ring tones," he said in the report.

"We have to act now before the situation gets out of control. We have our targets and we will be visiting their outlets soon."

Othman and other ministry officials could not be reached for comments.

Malaysia is one of 36 countries on a U.S. watch list of serious copyright violators, and music and movie industry officials have expressed concern over the prevalence of piracy here.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4307276.html





Elderly Harmonica Player Arrested for Performing Copyrighted Songs at Bar

A 73-year-old bar manager who illegally performed copyrighted tunes by the Beatles and other artists on the harmonica was arrested Thursday on suspicion of violating the Copyright Law, police said.

Arrested was Masami Toyoda, of Tokyo's Nerima-ku. He has reportedly admitted to the allegations against him.

Investigators accuse Toyoda of illegally performing 33 songs such as the Beatles' songs "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Yesterday," whose copyrights are managed by the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers. He allegedly performed the songs on the harmonica with a female pianist at the bar he operated between August and September this year.

Officials said the society sought a provisional injunction against Toyoda in 2001 because he had repeatedly performed copyrighted songs in the past without permission, and the Tokyo District Court granted the injunction.

The society filed a criminal complaint against him in September this year because he later kept playing copyrighted songs. (Mainichi)
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/nation...na018000c.html





Peer-to-Peer Gets Personal

Companies such as AllPeers, Pando, and Zapr aren't waving the pirate flag - but they're using Napster-like technology to help you send photos to Grandma.
Erick Schonfeld

Sending Grandma a video of baby's first steps via e-mail is a bit like taking a horse and sleigh over the river and through the woods to her house: tediously slow and prone to freezing.

In the YouTube era, our hard drives are stuffed with bandwidth-hogging home movies, music, and photos that we share with friends and family using technology built to transmit short text messages. Now a slew of companies are stepping in with a solution to the broadband bottleneck: personal peer-to-peer file sharing.

But companies such as AllPeers, Pando, and Zapr aren't waving the pirate flag. Unlike the original Napster and Kazaa file-swapping services, which were targeted by the music industry for allowing massive copyright infringement, this new breed of file sharing is largely a private affair, designed to let people trade files one-to-one or among a selected group.

Some services, such as MediaMax and Myfabrik, avoid file-sharing technology altogether by allowing subscribers to store their digital goodies on a central server. The advantages over e-mail: fewer limits on how big files can be, and it's all just a click away for you and your friends.
Lots of funding; little revenue

The demand for such services is growing. Every day YouSendIt, for instance, transfers more than 30 terabytes of files among its members - the equivalent of the contents of about 1,000 laptop computers. MediaMax, which is operated by a San Diego company called Streamload, sends 3 million files among its members daily and stores 650 terabytes of their data.

Venture capitalists, meanwhile, are pouring money into personal file-sharing startups. In the past two years, Fabrik has raised $12 million in funding, Pando has scored $11 million, and YouSendIt has pocketed $5 million.

Most of the newer services have little revenue to speak of yet. The exceptions are Streamload, which claims $3 million in revenue for 2005; TransMedia's Glide, which is on track to bring in at least $3.5 million in subscription fees this year; and YouSendIt, which should hit $1 million. Only TransMedia claims to be profitable.
It's all private

Each service has its own twist. The website-based ones let you upload files and then send links to your friends to view or download them. MediaMax, for instance, lets you store 25 gigabytes for free and then collects $5 to $30 a month, depending on how much you upload. Fabrik's recently launched Myfabrik offers 1 gigabyte for free and then charges a monthly fee of 49 cents per gigabyte thereafter. It encourages people to use the service for all the pictures and music they want to share on social-networking sites like MySpace.

On the peer-to-peer side, it's all about file transfers. AllPeers's software is an extension to Firefox that turns the browser into a file-sharing service complete with a buddy list showing who's online and what they have to trade. AllPeers, based in London and Prague, is backed by the same venture capitalists who invested in Skype (now owned by eBay (Charts)).

Meanwhile, when you send a file using Pando, the recipient gets a regular e-mail with a small attachment. By opening the attachment, that person connects with every other Pando user who is online and also has that file, along with a central backup server.
As for Singapore-based Zapr, you simply drag files to a list of people you want to share with, and Zapr sends each of them an e-mail with a Web link. When they click on the link, they can download the files from your computer as long as you're online.

"The link is our currency," explains Zapr chief marketing officer Michael Liubinskas, a former executive at Kazaa operator Sharman Networks. "Since it's private," he adds, "this is about personal file sharing for family and friends. We wanted to build something legally safe."
Finding YouTubes in the rough

So how do these companies plan to make money?

Some are trying to sell subscriptions to heavy users, such as graphic designers or photographers who need to send large files to clients. Others are dabbling in advertising, which is none too surprising given that the typical customer at this point is a tech-savvy 18- to 34-year-old male - in other words, marketing nirvana. YouSendIt CEO Ivan Koon, a former Adobe executive, wants to build his company into a Web-based document management service for small businesses.

Other file sharers plan to license their services. Streamload sells a white-label version of its product to companies like Sprint (Charts) spinoff Embarq, which in turn will make it available to their DSL customers. And Intel (Charts) will be offering TransMedia's Glide with future ultramobile PCs.

Pando CEO Robert Levitan thinks his startup can make money as a low-cost delivery network for high-definition movie trailers and other digital content. Most of these services can also be integrated into MySpace pages, blogs, and RSS feeds. AllPeers wants to let people sell as well as share media.

With so many players out there, a shakeout is inevitable. "It will be really tough for smaller, no-brand companies to survive," notes Michael Cai, a broadband analyst with Parks Associates. Then again, in the public file-sharing realm, YouTube was a no-brand company - until suddenly it wasn't.

Sharing Made Simple

Several new services hope to profit from letting people exchange big digital files.

SERVICE HOW IT WORKS COST BUSINESS MODEL

AllPeers Transfers files to your buddies through a BitTorrent-based add-on to Firefox. Free Content delivery fees, peer-produced media sales

Glide Stores and shares digital media via browser-based "desktop" or smartphone 300MB free; $5/month for 1GB; $10/month for 4GB Subscription fees, software licensing

MediaMax Stores digital photos, movies, and other files on the Web 25GB free; $5-$30/month for 100-1,000GB Subscription fees; software licensing; advertising

Myfabrik Sends links to shared files stored on the Web or a Maxtor Fusion hard drive 1GB free; 49 cents/month for each additional GB Subscription fees, software licensing

Pando E-mail attachments initiates BitTorrent-based P2P transfer backed by server Free Content delivery fees, advertising

YouSendIt Sends links to uploaded files good for 14 days; designed for business use 100MB free; $5-$30/month for more Subscription fees

Zapr Turns any file or folder on your PC into a shareable Web link Free Advertising

http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/31/maga...ion=2006110109





Next-Gen Graphics Connector Picks up DRM Skills
Jacqui Cheng

Exactly six months after the tech world was introduced to DisplayPort, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has proposed DisplayPort Version 1.1, which would bring high bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) support to the standard. Previously, DisplayPort 1.0's copy protection support was described as "optional," but if the VESA DisplayPort Task Group has its way, it will become mandatory.

The members of the task group proposing the 1.1 update consist of companies such as AMD, Dell, Genesis Microchip, HP, Intel, Lenovo, NVIDIA, and Samsung Electronics. Support for HDCP is something that we expected when news broke that DisplayPort 1.0 supported "optional robust copy protection." HDCP support built into the standard would mean that any DRM restrictions on the content being viewed would be enforced on both the transmitting and receiving ends. DisplayPort 1.1 will be compatible with HDCP 1.3, allowing products using both DisplayPort and DVI or HDMI to share a common encryption key.

Movie studios would much prefer to be able to control how we view their content on both ends rather than just one, because they know that if we can see it, it can still be pirated. As Ken mentioned previously, their solution to this conundrum is that content providers can choose to simply not display HD content at all on a non-HDCP monitor. It is more likely that they would degrade unprotected content to something like 540p, however Hollywood has reportedly agreed to delay these forced quality downgrades until as late as 2012. Whether they stick to that plan remains to be seen.

DisplayPort is being touted as the "HDMI for computers" as it can carry high-definition audio signal over the same connection as video. Its "micro-packetized" system carries 10.8Gbps of bandwidth unidirectionally, making it the expected successor to DVI as the next standard for computer display connectivity. DisplayPort's low-latency, high-bandwidth connection made it rather appealing as the up-and-coming standard for display connections, but some users may be put off by the imposing addition of HDCP support, marking one step closer to full content protection instead of just copy protection. However, when faced with the possibility of not being able to view HDCP-protected content at full resolution, consumers may give in and opt for HDCP-supported displays, which would be good news for manufacturers and the studios.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061106-8160.html





German ISP Forced To Delete IP Logs
ScuttleMonkey

"A German federal court decided today that T-Online, one of the largest ISPs in Germany, was obligated to delete all IP logs of a customer upon request to guarantee their privacy. From the article: 'The decision (German) does not mean that T-Online is now obliged to delete all their IP-logs, the customers first need to complain. But, if they ask T-Online to delete their IP-logs, the ISP has no other choice than to comply. A lawyer from Frankfurt already sketched a sample letter (German) to make this process easier.'"
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/11/06/2313251.shtml





'Enemies of the Internet' Named

A list of 13 "enemies of the internet" has been released by human rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

For the first time, Egypt has been added to the list while Nepal, Libya and the Maldives have all been removed.

The list consists of countries that RSF believes are suppressing freedom of expression on the internet.

The civil liberties pressure group has organised a 24-hour protest, inviting web users to vote for the worst offending countries.

Visitors to the RSF website are also invited to leave a voice message for Yahoo's co-founder Jerry Yang, expressing their views on the firm's involvement in China.

RSF has been outspoken in its condemnation of Yahoo. The search engine has been criticised along with other companies for helping the Chinese authorities block access to some online material.

The 13 Countries Blacklisted

Belarus
Burma
China
Cuba
Egypt
Iran
North Korea
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Tunisia
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Vietnam


Improvements

The blacklist is published annually but it is the first time RSF has organised an online protest to accompany the list.

"We wanted to mobilise net users so that when we lobby certain countries we can say that the concerns are not just ours but those of thousands of internet users around the world," said a spokesman for RSF.

Many of those on the internet blacklist are countries that are regularly criticised by human rights groups, such as China and Burma.

Egypt is a new entrant and has been shortlisted for its attitude to bloggers rather than specific web censorship, said RSF.

"Three bloggers have been arrested and detained this year for speaking out in favour of democratic reform. This is an appeal to the Egyptian government to change its position," said the RSF spokesman.

"The fact that this year we have removed three countries from the list is encouraging. It shows that the situation can change for the better," he added.

On a visit to Libya, Reporters Without Borders found that the Libyan internet was no longer censored although it still considers President Maummar Gaddafi to be a "predator of press freedom".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/6124420.stm





The War is Over and Linux Won
Dana Blankenhorn

A new IBM-sponsored study on Linux sent me by Joe McKendrick, our SOA expert, goes a long way toward explaining the big Oracle and Microsoft moves regarding Linux.

The war is over and Linux won. (The original Linux penguin was created by Larry Ewing. This particular bird lives at the LWN Penguin Gallery.)

The truth of the assertion is in a chart near the back of the report. It shows that 83% of companies expect to support new workloads on Linux next year, against 23% for Windows. The move is slower for larger enterprises, but the direction is clear.

At least in the server world, Linux has won.

Web servers and database servers remain the dominant applications, but development environments are now among the most popular systems in production, meaning the trend toward Linux and open source applications should accelerate.

Over two-thirds of the respondents said they will increase their use of Linux in the next year, and almost no one said the opposite.

So if Microsoft is doing a slow take-over of Novell, and Oracle is bringing out its own stack, these are understandable defensive moves, a re-arrangement of forces if you will. Because the war is over and Linux won. And in business that means it's on to the next war.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=837





Microsoft Finishes Work on Windows Vista
Allison Linn

Microsoft Corp. finished work Wednesday on its long-delayed Windows Vista operating system, and said the software would be broadly available Jan. 30.

The announcement means Microsoft will meet - just barely - its revised goal of putting Vista in consumers' hands in the first month of 2007.

Windows Vista's code was released midmorning Wednesday to manufacturing - a step that allows the company to begin making the copies that will be distributed with PCs and sold at stores, said Jim Allchin, co-president of the Microsoft division that includes Windows, in a conference.

"This is a good day," Allchin said.

Microsoft had previously said it would release Vista to big business clients at an event at the Nasdaq Stock Market on Nov. 30, and Allchin reiterated Wednesday that corporations who buy Windows licenses in bulk will get the new system this month. That's also in keeping with the company's revised release schedule.

The release will be the first major upgrade in more than five years to the operating system that powers most of the world's personal computers. Vista boasts improved graphics, more effective tools for finding documents, pictures and other items on personal computers, and a new Internet browser, among other changes.

The software has been plagued by delays, the most recent of which was blamed in part on efforts to improve security. Microsoft products are a near-constant target of Internet attackers, and the company is often in the uncomfortable position of having to plug holes in its products.

Allchin cautioned that Vista will still face some security threats because attackers are growing more sophisticated. But he said a rigorous testing process and changes that make it harder for attacks to jump from one Vista-powered computer to the next should reduce those problems.

In its quest to get Vista out the door, Redmond-based Microsoft also has had to scale back some of its original goals, including scrapping a more sophisticated method for sorting and organizing data. Analysts have said that scaling back the system could hurt the company if people don't see enough reason to upgrade.

The most recent delays also forced Microsoft to miss the holiday season, potentially dealing a blow to computer makers and retailers who may have been hoping for the new system to boost gift sales.

Microsoft and computer manufacturers are offering holiday shoppers coupons good for a free or discounted Vista upgrade.

It's not clear how quickly big businesses will start using Vista. It can often take months if not years for companies to test a new operating system and make sure it will work well with the other programs they rely on.

Allchin said Microsoft is providing tools that allow companies to test for compatibility problems more quickly than with past Windows releases. He also said he hopes the security improvements would drive companies to upgrade faster.

Microsoft shares rose 3 cents to close at $28.98 Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...11-08-20-26-27





Allchin Suggests Vista Won't Need Antivirus
Scott M. Fulton, III

During a telephone conference with reporters yesterday, outgoing Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, while touting the new security features of Windows Vista, which was released to manufacturing yesterday, told a reporter that the system's new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed.

Allchin's statement came in response to a question about his relative level of confidence that Vista would be more secure than Windows XP SP2. In response, he noted there were key security features added to Vista which could not be added to Windows XP SP2 even though, he said, his people apparently tried to do so.

Two such features -- namely Vista's new parental controls, and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), which renders the object code of the system kernel in memory differently each time to thwart the designs of malicious code -- render his son's Vista machine comfortable enough for him to use, even though production-quality anti-virus software for the unit has yet to be completed.

"I would say that Windows XP SP2 did an amazing job, and I'm proud of what we did there. But you have to understand, we learned a lot during Windows XP SP2, and there were things that we couldn't put in that product," explained Allchin.

"I'll give you an example: It's my favorite feature within Windows Vista, it's called ASLR (Address Space [Layout] Randomization). What it does is, each Windows Vista machine is slightly different than every other Windows Vista machine. So even if there is a remote exploit on one machine, and a worm tries to jump from one machine to another, the probability of that actually succeeding is very small. And I wanted to do this in Windows XP SP2, but we couldn't figure out how to do it. So then a smart guy here came up with a solution, so we put it in Windows Vista."

After summarizing that past statement, Allchin continued, "Please don't misunderstand me: This is an escalating situation. The hackers are getting smarter, there's more at stake, and so there's just no way for us to say that some perfection has been achieved. But I can say, knowing what I know now, I feel very confident."

"I'll give you an example: My son, seven years old, runs Windows Vista, and, honestly, he doesn't have an antivirus system on his machine. His machine is locked down with parental controls, he can't download things unless it's to the places that I've said that he could do, and I'm feeling totally confident about that," he added. "That is quite a statement. I couldn't say that in Windows XP SP2."

Allchin led up to that comment after having recalled the company's Defense-in-Depth program, which emerged in 2004 as a way to assist software in defending specifically against viruses, but which evolved into a comprehensive anti-malware campaign.

As a result of Defense-in-Depth, Allchin told the reporter, Service Pack 2 of Windows XP made it substantially more difficult for malware to get to the kernel.

"So we've just put up one barrier after another," he said, "so that the end result is, in the percentages, when I look at the number of bulletins that we've produced over a period of time for Windows XP SP2, and I look at what I would expect to take place in terms of, not just the number, but probably more important, the severity for Windows Vista, we have been doing measurements of that all along, and it's my opinion that the severity of the bulletins will be less, as well as the number will be less.

"That's to be proven, so we will see about that. But I need to say the following: Windows Vista is something that will have issues in security, because the bar is being raised over time," Allchin continued. "But in my opinion, it is the most secure system that's available, and it's certainly the most secure system that we've shipped. So I feel very confident that customers are far better off by using Windows Vista than they are with anything that we've released before."

ASLR would apparently have been a component of Defense-in-Depth, based on Allchin's comments, had it been compatible with the existing architecture of Windows XP. In fact, ASLR may help substantiate the need for such features as PatchGuard, which is designed to draw a kind of "moat" around the kernel of the operating system, rendering it inaccessible accept through authenticated communications.

But the evolution of the Defense-in-Depth program, he implied, may have evolved its implementation in Vista beyond the need for the generation of antivirus protection that was its original impetus.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Allc...rus/1163104965





Microsoft and Universal Make Zune Deal
Alex Veiga

Microsoft and Universal Music Group say they have struck a licensing deal for the software company's new Zune portable music player and digital music store that calls for the recording company to get paid a cut of the sales of the device.

Executives at both companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal, which is expected to be officially announced early Thursday.

Redmond-based Microsoft Corp. is pursuing similar agreements with other major record labels, Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for Microsoft Entertainment, said late Wednesday.

Zune, which is scheduled to be released Nov. 14, is Microsoft's attempt to compete with Apple Computer Inc.'s market-leading iPod player and iTunes music service. The device, which will sell for $249.99, lets people share songs, playlists or pictures over a wireless connection with nearby Zune users.

By paying record labels a portion of Zune player sales, Microsoft hopes to have more freedom to allow song-sharing or other promotions, Stephenson said.

"There's certain marketing elements that we're looking at going forward, all based around the sharing and wireless scenarios," he said. He declined to provide specifics.

But in an interview late Wednesday, Universal Music Group Chairman and CEO Doug Morris told The Associated Press that the wireless song-sharing feature of the Zune was not a major factor behind the company seeking a revenue sharing deal on the player.

"The only factor was that we feel that there's a great deal of music that's (stored) on these devices that was never legitimately obtained, and we wanted to get some sort of compensation for what we thought we're losing," Morris said. "I want our artists to be paid for the music that makes these devices popular."

While sales of digital tracks have increased in recent years amid lagging sales of CDs, record labels lament that much of the music that winds up on iPods and other digital players comes from either CDs fans already own or tracks culled from online file-sharing services.

Earlier this year, Universal and other major recording companies settled a dispute with Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. over its Sirius S50 portable music player by reaching a deal that called for Sirius to pay the record companies a fee for every S50 it sells.

Universal sought a similar approach when Microsoft came calling Universal to hash out a licensing deal for its Zune online music store.

Absent a deal with Universal, Microsoft faced the prospect of unveiling Zune without content from the world's biggest recording company, home to artists such as U2, Eminem and Shania Twain.

Morris said the agreement with Microsoft marks a turning point in how the company will approach similar deals in the future.

"I don't want any business built on our music without getting paid a part of the business," he said.

Morris declined to say what percentage of each Zune sold will be paid to Universal Music, but said "it's good."

Under the terms of the deal, Universal will split the money it gets from Zune player sales with its artists. Morris declined to say how much artists will be paid.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...11-09-01-44-47





The Dress Code Is Relaxed, but the Courting Is Intense
Andrew Ross Sorkin

Dozens of the world’s biggest media moguls and investment bankers, dressed in perfectly pressed suits, mingled in the lobby of the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan yesterday at the annual FourSquare conference.

And then there was Mark Zuckerberg, the 22-year-old chief executive of the social networking site Facebook, wearing Adidas flip-flops — sans socks — with a blazer and jeans.

Welcome to Web 2.0, Wall Street style.

The FourSquare conference has become the East Coast incarnation of Allen & Company’s annual summer gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho, which has been the hatching place for all kinds of major and minor deals.

And if Chad Hurley, the chief executive of YouTube, was the belle of the ball at Sun Valley this summer, then Mr. Zuckerberg was the “it” boy of FourSquare.

Mr. Hurley was also in attendance yesterday, still basking in the glow of his company’s sale to Google for $1.65 billion — and also wearing a blazer and jeans, though he had shoes on.

YouTube’s sale may be only a month old, but Wall Street had already appeared to move on to the next big deal with all eyes on Mr. Zuckerberg, who has been in on-and-off negotiations with Yahoo. At the conference yesterday, Mr. Zuckerberg could be seen standing amid a throng of high-powered would-be suitors. Analysts have estimated that Facebook could have a value of as much as $1 billion.

Mr. Zuckerberg demurred when asked whether he would sell to Yahoo. (Terry S. Semel, Yahoo’s chief executive, was also in attendance, though he was not seen talking to Mr. Zuckerberg.)

Many speakers and attendees at the conference, including Barry Diller of IAC/InterActiveCorp, Shari E. Redstone of National Amusements, David J. Stern of the National Basketball Association, Martin Sorell of WPP and Harvey Weinstein of the Weinstein Company, among others, attended a dinner the night before, where much of the conversation was about the YouTube deal and its astronomical price tag. Several people questioned whether Internet valuations had once again gotten out of control.

“We’ve seen how this movie ends,” said one executive at a traditional media company who nonetheless was still looking at a bevy of new media acquisitions. “But we all believe we can change the ending.”

Among the companies being whispered about as takeover targets were sites with user-generated content like Digg and del.icio.us and other video sites like Brightcove.

The two-day FourSquare conference, now in its fifth year, has become a hot spot for executives to see and be seen and also attracts much of Wall Street’s banker elite. The conference is run by the Quadrangle Group, a private equity firm that specializes in media and technology. The firm was founded in 2000 by Steven Rattner, Peter R. Ezersky and Joshua L Steiner.

Much of the conference also focused on how user-generated content was upsetting the traditional media model and whether it was a fad or here to stay.

During a luncheon panel, Howard Stringer, chief of Sony, joked that in 10 years, “I will be on my MySpace page entirely alone.”

Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian, lamented the quality of the comedy on user-generated YouTube clips. “It’s terrible,” he said. Mr. Stringer retorted, “It’s funny to them.”

The discussion turned to how the erosion of the economics of television had forced networks like NBC to decide to show only lower-budget reality and game show fare during part of evening prime time.

“I think of the entertainment industry and Detroit similarly,” Mr. Seinfeld said as he dressed down the television executives in the room for not being bolder in their programming. “They don’t have confidence in their instincts. Maybe they don’t have instincts to be confident in?”

For all the technological shifts going on in media, Mr. Stringer described an article from Time magazine in 1960 that lamented the dearth of new programming on television. “Nothing changes,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/te...l?ref=business





The continuing saga of TVU…continues

TVU Chief Grapples With Copyright Questions
Greg Sandoval

Paul Shen, the CEO of controversial TVU Networks, said he doesn't understand why anyone in television would consider his company a threat. In fact, he said he comes to the TV industry bearing gifts.

Shen is the creator of the TVUPlayer, which enables people to stream live TV broadcasts to one another via the Internet. The blogging community in recent months has showered praise on the technology for aggregating TV channels such as ESPN, the Disney Channel, Fox and NBC in one place, and for creating a Web TV experience that more closely resembles traditional viewing.

But almost everyone who writes about TVU Networks' growing popularity has plenty of questions about the start-up. Who is behind the nifty technology? How does the company make money? Is the service legal?

In an interview with CNET News.com, Shen said the TVUPlayer is nothing more than a way to demonstrate his technology, which he claims can help broadcasters mine a rich new distribution platform and advertise to new customers. He acknowledged that much of the content on the TVUPlayer belongs to others but denied being a video pirate. Users of his technology are responsible for any copyright violations, Shen said, and they are the ones who stream the TV broadcasts--though he conceded that they are able do this only through the use of his technology.

Is he right? Arguing that a technology company isn't responsible for the actions of its users is not a new idea and has met with mixed results, said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which often defends tech entrepreneurs in copyright infringement cases.

"We've seen this business model before," von Lohmann said. "First there was Napster and then other companies who told themselves, 'Hey, if I attract enough users, the (entertainment companies) will have to deal with me.' When they tried that trick in 1999, it led to a downpour of attorneys."

At a time when YouTube and other video-sharing sites are under pressure to cleanse their sites of unauthorized videos, some worry that copyright issues could thwart the ability of online video to reach its potential as a means to distribute entertainment. YouTube recently was asked by a Japanese copyright group to purge its site of 30,000 clips, and Viacom made a similar request regarding videos on the site from "Comedy Central." Representatives for YouTube declined to comment.

In such a climate, it's easy to see why TV networks and cable stations are leery of companies like TVU Networks. The company's peer-to-peer software enables people to stream live TV broadcasts on to the Web without any authorization and involves file sharing--a word that always gives entertainment executives pause.

In some ways, TVU Networks resembles some of the file-sharing start-ups that plagued the music industry for years. There's very little information about the company on its Web site and what is there is a bit confusing. Until recently, the site prominently announced that the company is based in Shanghai. The site's contact page still lists a Shanghai address, but Shen lives and works in Northern California. He declined to say which city. TVU Networks, like many companies, is incorporated in Delaware.

Nonetheless, Shen maintains that broadcasters have nothing to fear from him.

"I really was not intending to catch so much attention," said Shen, who saw the popularity of his service mushroom during the World Cup soccer championship games over summer. "Our goal is to create a new transmission medium."

He said his service was created to do nothing more than to demonstrate his peer-to-peer technology, which he argued can help TV stations save boatloads of money.

Here's how it works: Broadcasts are separated into information packets and distributed among users' PCs. The PCs then exchange the information automatically among them. Nothing has to be uploaded to any server.

This limits the bandwidth costs because broadcasters don't have to continuously transmit content to each individual viewer, Shen said.

He said TVU Networks can embed advertisements into video so that broadcasters can target specific regions and demographic groups, and the company is also working on encryption technology to secure signals.

"For broadcasters, this is a better way to reach audiences online," Shen said.

As for the possible copyright issues his company faces, he said they are not unlike the ones that YouTube is wrestling with.

Copyright attorneys and technology analysts disagree. While many legal experts argue that YouTube qualifies for legal protection under the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, they said TVU Networks appears to have a far more questionable claim.

The most important difference between the two companies is that among the more than 50,000 videos uploaded to YouTube every day, there is plenty of material on the site that doesn't violate copyright. Because of this, YouTube can more successfully make the argument that it doesn't know about specific acts of copyright infringement, said John Stickevers, a copyright attorney with the Boston law firm of Bromberg & Sunstein.

"The safe harbor provision doesn't apply if the service provider has actual knowledge of the infringing activity on the system," Stickevers said.

By comparison, there is rarely ever more than 50 broadcast streams found at any one time on the TVUPlayer, and every cable or broadcast station found on the service and contacted by CNET News.com said TVU Networks is using their content without authorization.

Of course, TVU Networks is not the only company going down this path. One highly anticipated entry that is due to launch in the coming weeks was developed by the makers of Kazaa and Skype. What remains to be seen is how they handle the copyright issue.

Shen might have reason for hope if he's truly just interested in showcasing his technology and if it can really help the industry, von Lohmann said. He said he has noticed a willingness by entertainment companies recently to work with creators of bleeding edge technologies, and Shen may have already taught broadcasters that people want to watch TV without having to jump between Web sites.

"If you'd had asked me about this company a few years ago I would have told you that they would be sued within a week," von Lohmann said. "Now, I think there are lots of people at big media companies that have a wait-and-see approach. They understand that many in the tech sector are saying, 'We want to innovate and at the same time we'll help you guys make more money.'"
http://news.com.com/TVU+chief+grappl...3-6132672.html





Interview: RawFlow on Why Peer-to-Peer Technologies Will Revolutionise Webcasting As We Know It
Posted by Stuart Dredge

Peer-to-Peer technology isn't just about cheerfully downloading the new Justin Timberlake album from some bloke in Greenland. Really. In fact, P2P could be the gateway to watching legal, full-screen webcasts from big broadcasters and media companies.

At least this is the view of RawFlow, a provider of, you guessed it, live P2P streaming technology. So why are the concepts that powered Napster, Kazaa, BitTorrent and co now being taken up by Big Media? Tech Digest talked to RawFlow's Mikkel Dissing and Ian Keeling to find out.

The problem with current video streaming technologies is that they're costly for the content providers, says Keeling. “Right now, when you broadcast over the Internet, there’s a success penalty. Every new audience member incurs a cost for the broadcaster in terms of bandwidth and server capacity."

His view is that this is why webcasting hasn't taken off properly yet. In a layman's nutshell, RawFlow's P2P technology harnesses the unused bandwidth of internet users to provide more efficient streaming, and lower the costs for broadcasters.

The firm is ultra-keen to make a couple of things clear, however. Firstly, this is a live streaming service, it’s not about downloading stuff. And secondly, this isn’t piracy – a stigma that Keeling says has been attached to P2P technology since Napster was in its heyday.

“It’s live, and it’s not possible for an end user to capture the content,” says Keeling. “You consume the content, and it’s gone. It doesn’t download onto your computer, so you can’t pass it on or share it in any way.”

Rawflow’s technology also supports full copy protection technologies as well as ‘geo-locking’ – where webcasts can only be viewed by users with an IP address in a specific country or territory. That’s great news for Big Media, but what's the benefit to us consumers sitting in front of our PCs?

“The bottom line is that now, if you’re an end user who wants to watch video on the Internet, chances are you’re watching it in a small window not much bigger than a business card, and if lots of people log on, you get buffering and jittering,” says Keeling.

“P2P is a more efficient way of using bandwidth, so if a broadcaster invests £100,000 in webcasting a music concert, rather than watching this little window, you could be watching it full-screen. And because P2P is more cost efficient, they don’t have to roll the costs of the webcast onto you, the consumer.”

Keeling says there’s a big surge in the number of large broadcasters and media firms who want to use P2P technology for live streaming, naming the BBC, Disney and Warner Brothers as examples. However, CEO Mikkel Dissing says that P2P streaming also suits smaller companies who want to broadcast online, but haven’t been able to afford the bandwidth before.

“Say you were Swindon football club, there’s no way you’d be interesting enough for Rupert Murdoch to put you on the Sky platform,” he says. “But that’s the beautiful thing about the Internet, as you can do it yourself. But it’s not been affordable for a lot of these smaller broadcasters and companies before.”

With that in mind, RawFlow has just announced a new tool called QuickStart, aimed at small-to-medium sized broadcasters, media companies and presumably home counties football clubs. The results will hopefully be an explosion in niche webcasting.

But back to Big Media. In its dealings with broadcasters, Keeling says he has seen a number of them loosen up when it comes to their attitude towards copy protection and digital rights management.

“We’re seeing content owners be a lot more relaxed about how content is being used,” says Keeling. “The biggest earner is advertising, so the more people you can get in front of your content, the better.”

To take the example of a music concert, this might mean that you could live stream a gig, which when it finishes downloads to your computer, although you'll have to pay to watch it again. Or you might be able to share it with friends, although again, they'll have to pay to watch the whole thing. There's still plenty of work to be done though in convincing the Hollywood studios and record labels to make full use of P2P.

“We see ourselves as spokespeople for P2P,” says Dissing. “We want to convince people that it’s not bad, it’s good. And in my opinion, it’s the only way the Internet can become a broadcast medium. There’s no way you can build proper business models around a model where every single new viewer costs more money than you can demand.”
http://techdigest.tv/2006/08/monday_intervie_3.html





Vivendi’s Talks With Kohlberg Suggest Even the Biggest Are Fair Game
Eric Pfanner and Andrew Ross Sorkin

Is Vivendi in play?

That was the question being whispered among the world’s media moguls over the weekend after it emerged that Vivendi had held talks with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company over a potential $50 billion takeover bid, which would have been the largest leveraged buyout offer in history.

Vivendi, an ungainly conglomerate whose businesses include the Universal Music Group, the French pay-TV company Canal Plus, video games and telecommunications providers in France, Morocco and elsewhere, has long been considered a ripe target for a takeover or a breakup.

“There are linkages between the telecoms and media strands, but not of such a scale as to justify the business being retained as a single group,” Patrick Wellington, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said in a recent note to investors.

Up until the talks with K.K.R., executives at Vivendi had seemed to be against any sale or breakup of the company. But people involved in the recent talks said it was Vivendi that invited K.K.R. to make a friendly offer, opening the possibility that the company could welcome discussions with other suitors.

It is unclear why the talks between Vivendi and K.K.R. collapsed. Some people involved in the discussions suggested it was Vivendi that eventually called them off while others pointed to cooling interest from K.K.R. after it learned of tax penalties and media license requirements in France that could make a deal difficult.

With big media and telecommunications companies seeking acquisitions again and private equity firms, with more than $2 trillion in buying power, gobbling up businesses around the world, even a company as large as Vivendi is not off limits. Indeed, it could be especially attractive for certain rivals who want to pick off its pieces, or for private equity firms that may be attracted to its relatively steady cash flow and the possibility of breaking it up. Private equity has been looking for supersize deals in recent months; HCA was acquired for $33 billion, Freescale Semiconductor was bought for $17.6 billion and Univision was sold for $12 billion, among others.

A spokesman for Vivendi declined to comment beyond a statement the company made on Saturday confirming reports in The New York Times and The Financial Times about the collapsed talks. In the statement, Vivendi said it “confirms having received and reviewed a friendly expression of interest from K.K.R.,” but that the preliminary bid “did not result in any proposition and has now ended.” A spokeswoman for K.K.R. also declined to comment.

Vivendi’s chief executive, Jean-Bernard Lévy, appears to want to keep the company intact, analysts said, noting that he has described Vivendi as having “different and complementary” businesses. Mr. Lévy’s strategy has included a merger of Canal Plus with a rival satellite operator, TPS. He has also returned Vivendi to the role of acquirer, striking a recent deal to buy the music publishing business of Bertelsmann, the German media company, for 1.6 billion euros.

The Vivendi statement also said the review of the approach from K.K.R. concluded in favor of “maintaining the current Vivendi assets within the group in order to create value.”

Vivendi has been remaking itself since 2002, when Jean-Marie Messier, who transformed the company from a staid water utility into a Hollywood player, was ousted as chief executive. Mr. Messier had championed a series of acquisitions that turned the company into one of the world’s biggest media groups but also loaded it with a debilitating debt burden. Much of the United States media business was later sold, in a deal that created NBC Universal.

In the wake of Mr. Messier’s departure, Vivendi has been wrestling with questions about its future. At least one shareholder has proposed a breakup of the company’s diverse assets, and there has been speculation that the company’s board is divided on the best way forward.

A Norwegian investor named Alexander Vik, who heads a firm, Sebastian Holdings, that owns Vivendi shares, has been calling for a breakup of the company; Vivendi rejected an informal approach from the firm last spring.

At the time, reports in the French press suggested that several Vivendi board members, including Claude Bébéar, who is also chairman of the French insurer Axa, and Jean-René Fourtou, the Vivendi chairman, also favored a breakup. They later joined Mr. Lévy at a news conference to deny these reports.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has had links to Vivendi via Marie-Josée Kravis, wife of Henry Kravis, founding partner of the buyout firm. She was a member of Vivendi’s supervisory board, though she stepped down last March.

Private equity firms often see the sum of a company’s parts as worth more than the whole: they sometimes break companies apart, cut costs and then resell the units at a profit. But analysts say it is not clear that such a feat could easily be performed with Vivendi.

The Universal Music Group, for instance, has been gaining market share from rivals like the Warner Music Group and Sony BMG, making it difficult to justify cost-cutting moves that might undermine the business at a time when the music industry is struggling to deal with the effects of digital piracy.

Selling the company as a whole might be difficult, too, analysts say, particularly if the acquirer were an American buyout firm like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. French regulations prevent foreign concerns from owning majority stakes in broadcasters like Canal Plus.

Questions have long swirled around the future of one Vivendi holding: its 56 percent stake in the French mobile operator SFR. The other 44 percent stake in SFR is owned by Vodafone, the British mobile operator, which has recently moved to extract itself from investments in markets like Belgium, where it has also held a minority stake in a wireless operator.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/bu...06vivendi.html





Verizon's Big TV Bet Goes Small-Town
Dan Frommer

It could be the setting for a sitcom. Or perhaps a dramedy. Some 70 residents of Smithtown, N.Y., have jammed themselves into the boardroom of the town hall. They are accompanied by several gray-suited lawyer types, who conspire in hushed tones. There is also a guy in a chicken costume.

Unfortunately for Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ - news - people ), this is a reality show, and one it seems doomed to watch over and over again: Verizon has spent many years and billions of dollars gearing up to enter the cable television business. But before it can do that in Smithtown, it will need approval from the town's 115,000 residents. And it will have to go through the same process every time it wants to set up shop in another municipality.

Verizon Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg will spend some $18 billion burying fiber-optic pipes that can bring consumers super-fast Internet access. The company can also use those pipes to offer digital TV signals. That ability is a key to Seidenberg’s plans to fend off cable and satellite businesses that are now moving into broadband and phone services themselves. Verizon says it will have 6 million homes in 16 states ready for fiber optic service, which it has branded "FiOS," by the end of the year.

Verizon has built much of the infrastructure it needs to deliver the service, and it continues to negotiate with television networks for the rights to show the same kind of programming that cable networks already offer. But the town-by-town franchise licensing process remains the company’s last, and most cumbersome, obstacle.

Some states are making it easier for Verizon and AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ), which is embarking on a similar push, by passing statewide franchise laws, setting up a boilerplate franchise agreement. But even then, the telcos still have to go town to town to negotiate fees and right of way permits. A pending bill in Congress would do the same thing nationwide, though its fate is likely to get enmeshed with other telco issues, like net neutrality.

On Long Island, Verizon has spent more than two years negotiating with local boards, a few towns at a time, and has secured 19 local franchises. Five more franchises, including Smithtown’s, could be sealed this week. But just to cover Long Island in Verizon TV service, there's a lot of work left: Cable competitor Cablevision (nyse: CVC - news - people ) has 110 separate franchises on Long Island, according to company spokesman Jim Maiella.

Last summer, Verizon approached Smithtown, a town about 50 miles outside of New York City, to discuss its plans to offer TV. Verizon's legal negotiations with Smithtown's government started in July after the company had built a "significant amount" of its fiber network.

At Smithtown's first public hearing on Sept. 26, more than 75 people flooded the town's tiny boardroom with election night fervor to comment on the 30-page franchise agreement. While most of the group wore jeans and casual, late summer clothes, two groups in dark suits huddled in front: Attorneys for Verizon and Cablevision, which stands to lose business once Verizon's TV trucks roll in.

Many residents who signed up to comment had to wait downstairs or outside to uphold the room's fire code capacity; about half the crowd wore large Verizon buttons: "FiOS TV YES. It's just better." Verizon officials touted the quality and features of the service. Others, including Verizon-contracted attorney Scott Parr, who negotiated the Smithtown contract, touted the benefits of competition and choice, including lower prices and better customer service--though for the time being, Cablevision advertises a "triple play" package of Internet, telephone and cable TV service for $89.85 per month, while Verizon charges $94.85 per month for a similar package.

Cablevision can't block new competitors outright, but it can slow them down. With marked-up copies of Verizon's agreement, Cablevision attorneys pointed out areas they found weak: Verizon's schedule to build out service in the entire town, its obligation to restore damaged municipal property and clauses excusing Verizon from penalties in case of unusual events. The idea that Cablevision is resisting its competition is nonsense, attorney Peter Bee tells residents. "We're ready to meet and beat Verizon."

All of this, Cablevision insists, is to maintain a level competitive playing field. "Our efforts are intended to make sure the phone company, or any competitor, is subject to the same regulations, standards and costs that we face in providing video service in a community," says spokesman Maiella.

If Cablevision officials could speak candidly, they might express some sympathy for their soon-to-be competitors--the cable industry went through the same process 20 and 30 years ago, when it first secured franchise agreements, offering towns incentives like community access channels in return for the right to pipe TV into their homes. Those agreements now serve as Verizon’s benchmarks.

Now many Smithtown residents want their town council to get more out of Verizon. For instance, Cablevision has built a public access studio in Smithtown, but rather than build a second one, Verizon proposes giving the town $325,000 to build their own. This draws some jeers from residents and officials who said the city government isn't supposed to be in the TV studio business.

A second public meeting on Oct. 10 drew a smaller crowd but generated the same animated atmosphere. Some residents again asked for a second public access studio--one claimed she was "sick to her stomach" and "couldn't sleep" after hearing Verizon wouldn't be building a local studio. One eccentric showed up in a chicken suit, carrying a sign saying the "town board has chickened out." No two towns are alike, says Monica Azare, senior vice president of public policy and external affairs for Verizon's New York and Connecticut regions. "We can never gauge or predict the drama that can unfold at the hearing."

At the coaxing of Cablevision attorneys and town board members, Verizon agreed to amend its terms to extend service to adjacent, unincorporated Commack, N.Y., by the end of 2007 and to set it up so that the city could record video at both its town hall and its senior citizen center, where some board meetings take place. After an hour-long debate, the town signed off.

Assuming New York's state public service commission approves the Smithtown franchise this week, residents will soon be able to order Verizon television service, and the company will be close to its 200th local agreement nationwide, covering more than 3.5 million households. But then it needs to convince people to actually switch services: In its most recent quarterly earnings call, the company said it only had 118,000 television customers. By 2010, the company hopes to have 3 million to 4 million.

Meanwhile, competitors are rapidly going after Verizon's plain vanilla phone business. Cablevision, serving the New York area, scored 122,000 voice customers in the second quarter. Comcast (nasdaq: CMCSA - news - people ), with 23 million cable customers in 36 states, added 483,000 digital voice customers in its third quarter. And the cable operators aren’t required to get local phone franchise agreements themselves.

For now, it's back to the town-by-town lobbying dance--an expensive one, at that. A veteran telecom industry lawyer estimates that Verizon will pay for somewhere between 50 to 100 attorney hours per franchise. And while Verizon's Azare won’t comment about her company’s legal bills, she does note that it has even more costs: Engineers who advise about each town's geography and fiber-build schedule, media relations and external affairs.

But Wall Street seems upbeat about Verizon's chances. After Verizon's fiber-focused investor presentation in late September, Sanford C. Bernstein telecom analyst Jeffrey Halpern declared FiOS a "likely growth engine for the next decade.” Even if that engine has to stop and start at each new town.
http://www.forbes.com/home/intellige...06verizon.html





No Robots, No Aliens and No Safety Net
Sharon Waxman

A HOMELESS man? Is Will Smith kidding? He’s been rich, famous, handsome and beloved for close to two decades and the man isn’t yet 40. One look at the guy and you just want to break out in a smile: hey, it’s Will Smith, things are looking up.

He lounges on a pale suede settee in his five-story town house on the East River, with the sun streaming through the plate glass. At 38, Mr. Smith barely looks different from the young man in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” still playing somewhere on cable reruns: the jug ears; the wide-set, dancing brown eyes; the ready smile and familiar belly laugh.

He is lanky and muscular under a black dress shirt and artfully distressed blue jeans, and barely shows the strain of having shut down traffic in Midtown Manhattan the previous day for the shoot of his next big-budget effort, “I Am Legend.”

As a movie star Mr. Smith has found a steady audience as a can-do, good-natured winner, a hero battling on the side of good. He has been believable as a robot-battling cop (“I, Robot”), as an alien-battling agent (“Men in Black”) and as a really-big-alien-battling pilot (“Independence Day”).

So it seems like a stretch, and not a small one, to believe he might be a homeless man on the streets of San Francisco. But that’s the real-life character that he plays in “The Pursuit of Happyness,” a small, heart-wrenching drama about the kind of failure that Will Smith has never known, and isn’t likely to know.

Today Chris Gardner, the person on whom the movie is based, is a successful stockbroker. But for a year in the 1980s he found himself faced with a curious set of circumstances: single father to a young boy, a barely paid intern-trainee at the brokerage firm Dean Witter, and — suddenly — homeless.

Mr. Gardner spent night after night trudging the streets of the crime-ridden Tenderloin district of San Francisco, with all his earthly possessions on his back, diapers shoved under one arm, pushing the stroller with his toddler toward a homeless shelter. When the shelter was full, they slept in the park. Or under Mr. Gardner’s desk. Or sometimes in the public bathroom of a subway station.

This period was the subject of a “20/20” segment in 2004 and became the basis of Mr. Gardner’s autobiography, which shares the film’s title and was published earlier this year.

“The movie, fabulous as it is, focuses on one very tough, dark, frightening year of my life,” Mr. Gardner said in a phone interview from Chicago, where he now lives. As a smart striver in his 20s, he was determined to live out the American dream and achieve material success. But at the same time, he said, “I was determined to break the cycle of fathers who were not there for their sons.”

For Mr. Smith playing someone on the losing end of fortune’s whim was not nearly as formidable as portraying someone who was actually there on the set nearly every day of the shoot.

To play the role he had to be willing to strip away his movie stardom and put on someone else’s skin. Not all movie stars can do this successfully. Plenty of them — Harrison Ford, say, or Bruce Willis — don’t want to. It can be a painful process. Or, as Mr. Smith said, a “terrifying” one.

“It’s very scary to adapt someone’s life, and do it in two hours, and the person is there,” he said. “In the first period, you say: ‘I can’t do this. No way.’ Then the story starts to eat at you, and you say, ‘Oh, I have to.’ Then you meet the person, and it becomes clear how daunting the task is. It’s someone’s life. On top of my being a perfectionist — and trying to shoot for the idea of perfection in an imperfect science — it’s a gut-wrenching task.”

To help get there Mr. Smith lost 25 pounds, grew his hair and donned glasses. (The authenticity was helped by the fact that his own son Jaden Smith played Mr. Gardner’s son in the film.) But the harder work was on the inside. He had to drop a lot of his habits and tricks. His obsessive preparation. His tendency to make methodical lists: do the first take, angry; do the second take, frustrated. Peering through his lens, the director, Gabriele Muccino, made Mr. Smith give up the gloss and go deeper.

“ ‘You’re posing,’ ” Mr. Muccino would complain, Mr. Smith said. “ ‘Don’t you pose for my camera.’ He’d say: ‘You can’t trick me. You’re making faces as if you’re hurt. I need you to take some time. And come back. And be hurt.’ ”

Now, months distant from those private moments, Mr. Smith folded his hands carefully. “Acting is generally humbling. But it’s much more humbling when someone can see you like that.”

For the last several years Mr. Smith, having achieved every other goal he had set in his life, has been, as he put it, “struggling to hit my stride as an artist.” How hard that is to accomplish is difficult to imagine in a world where Will Smith the Movie Star is an overwhelming reality, hovering over every business conversation, clinging to him in every public encounter.

And unlike other goals, he found this one was not so easily achieved with elbow grease and his fabled charm. With “Ali” in 2001 Mr. Smith struggled to transform himself into Muhammad Ali, sculpturing his body into fighting form, giving up his soul to the director, Michael Mann. The performance earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor, though the film itself failed to ignite great excitement, and Mr. Smith was not considered a front-runner for the prize.

But of course the star persona persisted. When Mr. Gardner took the actor on an unannounced, nighttime walkabout among the panhandlers, prostitutes and drug users of the still-shabby Tenderloin — trying to shake him up — he asked if Mr. Smith was scared. He didn’t want to admit it.

“I said: ‘I’m Will Smith. People got love for me,’ ” Mr. Smith recalled. Mr. Gardner was not impressed. “He said: ‘Imagine you’re not Will Smith. And you’re sleeping out here, with your son.’ ”

James Lassiter, Mr. Smith’s friend and for two decades his business partner in Overbrook Entertainment, their production company, has seen Mr. Smith deepen and mature as he has sought to join the ranks of the most respected actors of his generation.

“Will has always been the guy who wanted people to love him, and he works hard at that,” Mr. Lassiter said. “I think he’s starting to understand that he doesn’t have to work as hard at that. That happens naturally.”

Part of letting the wish go was putting himself in the hands of Mr. Muccino, an unknown in America who had previously directed Italian films. “We only get to the next level by taking a chance,” Mr. Lassiter said. “In the past, safe made more sense for us. But Will is now comfortable enough to say: ‘I relate to this guy’s passion. I want to go with that.’ ”

With Mr. Muccino goading him on, Mr. Smith worked at relinquishing some of his self-control, on the set and off. “You want to trick yourself, you want to slip,” he said. “It’s a weird kind of temporary insanity. It’s like a sneeze: you feel it’s coming, it’s coming, and when you sneeze, you lose control, you close your eyes, your heart stops.

“That’s analogous to what I was searching for. That moment when you believe you’re actually Ali. Or Chris Gardner. Every take you try to get there.”

He felt it several times during the making of “Ali,” when he was on location in Mozambique. On “Pursuit,” the moments were more numerous, and quieter. Like the time Mr. Gardner took Mr. Smith to see the bathroom at the Oakland commuter train station, a place where he and his son had slept on many nights. Mr. Smith asked to be left alone in the bathroom for a few minutes. He came out five minutes later. “He was not the same guy,” Mr. Gardner recalled. “It was like a ghost jumped into his body.”

The scene was shot later, on a set. In the film Mr. Smith — exhausted, hungry, dirty, rejected from every shelter he has tried, and with his son in tow — pretends that they have landed in a prehistoric wonderland, and must crawl into a cave (the bathroom) to hide from dinosaurs. His son willingly beds down on cardboard and a coat. Slumped against the tile wall, his son’s head in his lap, Mr. Smith locks the door and — as someone outside starts banging to be allowed in — a tear slowly crawls down his cheek.

“That’s acting nirvana,” Mr. Smith said. “You’re not acting. You’re slipping into the moment. I was there.”

MR. GARDNER and Mr. Smith do not nominally have much in common, certainly not in their family histories. Mr. Smith, as many of his fans know, comes from a two-parent, middle-class family in Philadelphia, his mother a school board employee, his father the owner of a refrigeration company. He is happily married to Jada Pinkett Smith, with two young children, and an older son from a first marriage.

Still single today, Mr. Gardner was born in Milwaukee and did not know his father until adulthood. As a child he shuttled among foster homes, relatives and his mother, after she married a violent, alcoholic man who, Mr. Gardner says in his book, constantly beat her and her children.

His stepfather, he says, took special pleasure in demeaning him as worthless. Much of Mr. Gardner’s life became dedicated to proving his stepfather wrong and, just as important, not to become him, or his own father, who abandoned him.

What Mr. Gardner and Mr. Smith do share is optimism and an unquenchable drive to succeed. In Mr. Smith’s case that success came early; he turned to music as the Fresh Prince, then to television, then to movies. Mr. Gardner had a more torturous run. He had some initial good luck, with a series of mentors that led from the Navy to the Veterans Administration in San Francisco, where he conducted medical research.

But his job there did not pay well. And after unsuccessfully selling medical equipment, he decided to try for the brass ring and be a stockbroker. He even managed to land the traineeship at Dean Witter without a college degree. But life got complicated: His wife left. Soon he and his new girlfriend had a child. Then she left too, returning after several months to deposit their son, when she found she couldn’t make it on her own.

Mr. Gardner chose to keep the boy, whatever the cost, while he continued to aim for the greatest possible success. This wasn’t exactly practical, but Mr. Smith understands the decision perfectly.

“I can so relate to that,” Mr. Smith said. “I am that guy. I have to be the best I can be. I have to achieve everything I can possibly achieve. I feel like I owe it to every single person I came into contact with, who knows my life, I owe it to them. It’s a call from God, or Allah, or Jehovah. I don’t even necessarily know why.

“The beauty of America is that we’re not realistic. The idea that anything is possible, that idea is being kept alive here. This story is why America worked — as an idea. The idea is that this is the only country in the world where Chris Gardner is possible. The pursuit is what makes America great.”

Then Will Smith did something surprising. He recited the Declaration of Independence. The whole first segment, including the “pursuit of happiness,” rapid-fire. When he finished, and noted the surprise of an observer, he said: “I believe it.” Pause. “I don’t believe we do it well.” And he recalled a moment from when he was walking through the Tenderloin with Mr. Gardner.

“We were just standing out there in this place of broken dreams. Of extreme poverty. And it washed over me that the greatest poverty is the poverty of ideas. Chris was equally impoverished as these people, but he never had the poverty of ideas. He was rich with belief. Rich with faith.” He smiled, that sunny It’s-Will-Smith-Things-Are-Looking-Up smile. “And I’ve always felt like that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/mo...al/05waxm.html





Hollywood Puts the Squeeze on Talent
Laura M. Holson

On a recent trip to New York City, Russell Crowe was asked by reporters why he had dropped out of negotiations to star in a new movie being directed by Baz Luhrmann and produced by 20th Century Fox.

The Academy Award winner, never one to mince words, suggested it was, in part, the money. “I do charity work, but I don’t do charity work for major studios,” Mr. Crowe said.

It seems the needy are not the only ones in Hollywood with their hands out. Movie and television studios, facing escalating budgets, rampant piracy and the uncertain future of new media, are demanding concessions from talent. But as actors, directors and writers feel the squeeze, many are not happy about it.

Worse, the tension is not likely to ease soon. As studios are set to begin contract negotiations with talent in January, all sides are girding for battle.

Hollywood is in the midst of a strategic shift. The average cost to make and market a movie has skyrocketed — to $96.2 million last year, from $54.1 million in 1995 — while lucrative DVD sales have flattened. Major film studios are fending off illegal piracy, which industry executives say accounted for $1.3 billion in lost revenue in the United States last year.

The growth of new media threatens to undermine traditional businesses, while studios are flummoxed about how to take advantage of the new opportunities they represent. And movies and TV also face tough new competition from video games and online social networking sites. Even cellphones have become a favorite diversion among the young.

As in so many other show business debates, money and control are at the heart of the matter. And without solutions to these problems in sight, relations between talent and the studios are more strained than ever.

“No matter how successful you are, you are not invincible,” said Brett Ratner, who directed the blockbuster “X-Men: The Last Stand” and is an executive producer of the television show “Prison Break.” “The studio is writing the checks. It’s all about leverage and who has the power. The goal is to get the biggest deal you can, because you are going to have to give something back to the studios anyway.”

With guild contracts set to expire within the next two years, the animosity is palpable. This summer, 12 writers for the reality show “America’s Next Top Model” went on strike, complaining that the producers would not let their work be recognized by the Writers Guild of America, which would have guaranteed the writers pension and medical benefits. And movie studios are aggressively demanding that actors and directors lower their fees or risk having their movies dropped.

Two weeks ago, 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures walked away from “Halo,” a movie based on the popular video game, after the executive producer, Peter Jackson, and others refused to reduce their fees. It is one of several productions recently that have either been halted or delayed; others include the comedy “Used Guys,” an adaptation of the television show “Dallas” and “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”

But it is the growing area of new media and technology that has made the relationship between studios and talent most fragile. Mr. Ratner, who also directs music videos, said he wanted to share in the profits from music videos when they were downloaded over services like the Apple iTunes Store. And actors, writers and directors are pressing to be paid fees for shows they worked on that are streamed or sold on the Internet, as well as for new programming on cellphones.

Talent and studios, of course, have clashed before. In 2001, a Hollywood shutdown was narrowly averted. In 1988 writers walked out for nearly half a year, delaying the fall television season. And in 1980, actors took to picket lines to establish fees for films made for pay television channels, like HBO.

But there seems to be a greater urgency now, because there do not appear to be clear answers to the industry’s woes. And entertainment executives seem more determined this time to hold the line. Film studios got burned in the 1990s when popular film actors and directors brokered lucrative paydays for themselves while, in some cases, studios took a loss on their films. Now even bankable stars, like Tom Cruise, are being cut less slack. His 14-year producing deal with Paramount Pictures was severed this summer, although he rebounded last week to become a partner at United Artists.

“It works on an artist’s psyche, ourselves included,” said Brian Grazer, an Academy Award winner who produced the blockbuster “The Da Vinci Code.” “You are faced with a new reality. Do you want to stick to your price and be forced to stand in the parking lot instead of playing on the field? That is cause for conflict between talent and studios.”

Brad Grey, a former talent manager and currently chairman at Paramount, said he did not think relationships with actors were more contentious than in the past. But, he said, leverage had shifted in favor of the studios. The studios will pay top dollar for certain actors, writers or directors, but only if they need them, he said. The rest have to settle for less.

“If indeed you are an actor and you believe you will guarantee box office, then you have the privilege and freedom of arrogance,” Mr. Grey said. “It’s when there is a margin for error that emotion runs high.”

Even Mr. Grazer said a new discipline imposed on talent could be beneficial. But not surprisingly, the industry’s guilds — particularly the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America — are defiant.

On Sept. 20, nearly 700 protestors gathered at Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles at a Writers Guild unity rally. Among them was Sara Jane Sluke, one of 12 writers for “America’s Next Top Model” who went on strike in July because of a lack of union representation for writers on that show. Many jobs in reality television are not covered under union contracts; guild representation is negotiated separately for each show.

“This is trying to grab a little security in an uncertain business,” said Ms. Sluke, who added that she and her colleagues wanted pension and health benefits like those negotiated by the show’s editors.

A spokesman for the CW network, which broadcast the show, said neither the CW nor the producers would comment.

J. Nicholas Counter, who for 25 years has been president and chief negotiator of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, said the striking writers might have been more successful if the Writers Guild had been less hostile.

“If the guilds are flexible, these deals could be negotiated,” said Mr. Counter, who was not involved with “Top Model.” “There are more tensions, more pressures on both sides. This is worse than it’s ever been.”

Indeed, it is not the only scuffle involving the Writers Guild. NBC Universal recently filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against the Writers Guild after writers for television shows, including “The Office,” refused to work for Web shows too.

“The posture and rhetoric studios are blaming us for having is that we are being too aggressive and militant,” said Patric M. Verrone, president of the Writers Guild. “But there is a mentality out there that this is a buyer’s market, that we’ll do more for much less.”

Whatever the tensions, many in the industry still prefer to avoid a strike. Said Mr. Grey of the coming negotiations: “From our perspective, tough is fine as long as you get to a reasonable place. Rhetoric is one thing; reality is another.”

Last year, Alan Rosenberg, who starred in the television show “L.A. Law,” was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild, pledging that studios should pay fees for content delivered by new media. It was a particularly appealing platform because guild infighting had left many actors worried the dissension among their ranks made them vulnerable.

So far Mr. Rosenberg has had some success in negotiating terms. Last year, for instance, he said, nonguild actors were being asked to perform in short programs for cellphones based on the ABC series “Lost.” The Screen Actors Guild objected. “They have to come to us first and talk about it,” said Mr. Rosenberg, referring to the show’s producers.

That led to negotiations with Touchstone Television, a division of the Walt Disney Company, which produced the show. Now actors who work on the cellphone program based on “Lost” will get a minimum wage of $425 for their work, as well as other fees if a short program was streamed on the Internet or sold on DVD, according to the guild. (The writers and directors negotiated separate deals.)

“It is possible to work things out and not just react to vitriolic letters,” said Mr. Rosenberg, referring to correspondence from lawyers sent in such disputes.

That said, the Screen Actors Guild is clashing with Disney and other studios over how much talent will be paid for television shows offered for sale by services like iTunes. Recently studios agreed to pay actors a fee similar to those negotiated for DVD sales. The actor’s guild balked, saying it should have been consulted first about the decision to offer shows online. The dispute between the actors and the studios is in arbitration, with actors hoping for a higher fee.

“We don’t consult the guilds on major business decisions,” said Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks, which was first to offer shows for sale on iTunes. Either way, she added, it was more important that media companies move ahead with online offerings, even if it meant conflict. “There is a far greater risk in doing nothing, than doing this,” she said.

Recently Mr. Ratner, the director, was driving down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood when he noticed a going-out-of-business sign at Tower Records, the music retailer that once thrived on selling the music of superstars like Prince, Elton John and Madonna. Many here, like him, fear that the problems that plagued the music business are heading their way.

“What happens if the film business is not ahead of the curve?” he asked. “What is going to happen to me? To all of us?”

Mr. Ratner said he had been well compensated as a director. Still, he has urged the Directors Guild of America to look at several issues facing directors, including the fact that they are not paid when music videos they direct are sold on the Internet.

But he is not waiting around to see what the guilds will do or studios will offer either. Mr. Ratner said he was close to announcing a deal with an Internet company to create his own “Saturday Night Live”-style program that he would own outright and distribute online. Then he can bypass studio bosses altogether.

“I could make a lucrative deal for myself,” he said. “This is just the beginning.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/bu...rtner=homepage





Disney's Risks Made Fairy Tales Come True
Gregg Kilday

Entertainment and media companies are in an embattled mode, and retrenchment is the order of the day. This summer, even as it fielded the season's top two hits -- "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" and "Cars" -- the Walt Disney Co. ordered 650 layoffs worldwide. All across town, studios have been cutting back on production deals and big-budget movies.

But one of the many lessons from Neil Gabler's newly published and richly detailed biography "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" (Knopf) is that it takes money to make money. If there was a pattern to Disney's career, it is that, in pursuit of creative risks, he repeatedly overextended his company. He was often in hock to creditors, especially Bank of America. But the risks generally paid off.

Disney, with the support of his brother Roy, was certainly a shrewd businessman. His Walt Disney Enterprises virtually invented modern-day licensing: In 1934, with Mickey Mouse products popping up everywhere, Disney was involved in the sale of $35 million of merchandise domestically. In the '50s, he redefined promotion and branding with his ABC-TV show, which premiered in 1954, and later drove audiences to the newly opened Disneyland.

Gabler's account of the creation of the ground-breaking animation feature "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" illustrates just how painstakingly far Disney was willing to go to pursue his vision. For all its period detail, it's also a chronicle that strikes a number of modern-day parallels.

In 1933, when Disney began contemplating "Snow White," it was by no means clear that a full-length animated film was financially feasible -- or that moviegoers were ready to embrace a feature-length cartoon. In the wake of the enormous success of that year's eight-minute short "The Three Little Pigs," his contemporaries began urging him to take the leap: James Thurber suggested he tackle Homer's "Iliad" or "Odyssey." Publisher M. Lincoln Schuster suggested he take a look at a book called "Bambi." Mary Pickford offered to underwrite production costs on an animated/live-action "Alice in Wonderland."

Disney, though, opted for the fairy tale "Snow White," initially budgeted at an entirely unrealistic $250,000. Disney envisioned a production schedule of 12-18 months. Instead, he spent more than a year just developing the story and another year training animators and overseeing preliminary sketches. Animation didn't begin until February 1936, and the rush to meet the movie's December 21, 1937, premiere led to round-the-clock work sessions.

Along the way, Disney had to virtually invent this particular wheel. A muted, pastel color palette required developing new paint formulas. A multiplane camera was constructed to add dimensionality and perspective. In a sort of primitive attempt at motion capture, animators and actors filmed live-action scenes to study how the dwarves should move.

Ultimately, the movie cost more than $1 million, most of which came from bank loans. But by May 1939, it had become the highest-grossing film to date, pulling in $6.7 million. The studio retired its debt. Its distributor RKO offered to set up a revolving fund of $1 million for Disney's next two features. (Disney had shrewdly moved his distribution deal from UA to RKO in part to guarantee his control of TV rights.) And Disney himself saw to it that the animators were paid $750,000 in bonuses.

As Gabler observes, "Money was just instrumental for Walt, a way for him to make his films." It's a lesson that Hollywood ignores when it treats films as nothing more than quarterly accounting items.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...1_%5BFeed%5D-7





Disney Sells Nearly a Half Million Films Through iTunes
AppleInsider Staff

Walt Disney Co. said Thursday it has sold nearly a half million films through Apple Computer's iTunes store since announcing the distribution deal a little less than two months ago.

The sales figure, which amounts to approximately $4 million in revenue, was announced during the entertainment conglomerate's fiscal fourth quarter conference call with analysts and members of the media.

Disney said it expects movie downloads to generate $50 million in added revenue during the first year of the program.

It started by making 75 movies available on iTunes service in Sept. and recently announced plans to add the No. 1 animated film of the year, Cars, and the No. 1 film of the year, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

With half a million sales in just under eight weeks, customers are purchasing approximately 62,500 movies from Apple's iTunes store each week, or just shy of 9,000 each day.

Thus far, Disney is the only major motion picture studio who has agreed to sell its films through the ubiquitous iTunes service. However, News Corp's. Fox Entertainment Group and independent Lions Gates are reported to be in ongoing negotiations with Apple about making their catalog of films available to iTunes customers.

In beating Wall Street's expectations, Disney said earnings per share for the fourth quarter increased 89 percent to $0.36, compared to $0.19 in the year-ago quarter. Profits doubled from $379 million to $782 million.

"Disney had a spectacular year, posting record revenues, record net income, and record cash flow," said president and chief executive Robert Iger. "It is a result of the incredible creativity at our company."

Iger added that the company is close to wrapping up a digital distribution deal with Comcast that would likely result in the delivery of new shows to both the provider's cable and online customers.
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2222





Disney Will Open a Video Game Studio

The Walt Disney Co.'s Buena Vista Game unit on Tuesday announced a new video game studio that will focus on creating new and Disney-inspired titles for Nintendo Co. Ltd's hand-held DS player and upcoming Wii console.

Scott Novis, who headed the Rainbow Studios team that developed the popular video game based on the Disney Pixar film "Cars," was tapped to be vice president and general manager for Disney's new Fall Line Studio, based in Salt Lake City.

Nintendo's Wii console, which features a novel motion-sensitive controller, has captivated gaming enthusiasts and is set to make its U.S. debut on November 19.

The Japanese game company has also made a splash with its DS players, which has two screens, opens like a book and allows players to control play with a stylus.

Innovative titles like "Nintendogs" and "Brain Age," which respectively let players pet and train dogs and exercise their mental skills, have helped propel sales of the DS. Nintendo in late October forecast that it will sell 20 million DS units during the fiscal year ending march.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...-NextArticle-1





For France, Video Games Are as Artful as Cinema
Thomas Crampton

France is proud of its contribution to culture in such forms as existentialism, Impressionism and auteur films. Now the French culture minister wants to add Donkey Kong to his country’s pantheon of high art.

“Call me the minister of video games if you want — I am proud of this,” the minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, said in an interview last month. “People have looked down on video games for far too long, overlooking their great creativity and cultural value.”

Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres is seeking to have video games recognized as a cultural industry eligible for tax breaks, similar to French cinema.

In March, he pinned medals from the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres — a prize awarded to acknowledge cultural accomplishments — on three prominent video game designers, including Shigeru Miyamoto, the Japanese creator of Donkey Kong. The game, popularized in the 1980s, stars an Italian plumber called Mario.

Video game creators should receive a tax break of 20 percent, up to a ceiling of 500,000 euros, Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres says.

“Video games are not a mere commercial product,” he insisted. “They are a form of artistic expression involving creation from script writers, designers and directors.”

An increase in game players and game sales relative to other cultural goods underscores the need for video games to be recognized as a part of the broader culture, he said.

For instance, the best-selling video game for 2005 in France, Pro Evolution Soccer 5, had better sales than the Harry Potter books or the DVD of “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” according to the market research firm GfK France.

But economic interests may also play a role in pushing the tax break. France is home to Vivendi Games, Ubisoft Entertainment and Infogrames Entertainment, which owns Atari. All three companies were among the top 10 video game companies in the world by revenue in 2005.

With a total of roughly 100 video game companies, France, along with Britain, has long produced more video games than the rest of Europe combined, according to the market research firm Idate, of Montpellier, France.

Of late, however, the French companies have been facing tough times. Infogrames has been struggling against high debt, and an American rival, Electronic Arts, bought 19 percent of Ubisoft’s shares in 2004. And Vivendi Games earns most of its revenue from one best-selling game, World of Warcraft, said Laurent Michaud, head of the video games division at Idate.

“It is true that the French video game sector is fragile,” Mr. Michaud said. “But this is true for companies in all markets due to the quick-changing nature of industry.”

The minister’s push to have video games characterized as cultural goods faces challenges from the European Union and the video game industry itself.

Since a tax break could constitute state aid to an industry, Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres went to Brussels in mid-October to argue his case with the European Union competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes. He said that the tax break would protect cultural goods and did not go against the European Union’s subsidy reduction policies.

The Interactive Software Federation of Europe, a group of international video game companies, however, is opposed to enshrining video games as a part of cultural heritage for fear of government interference, and has resisted the tax breaks.

“The French concept of culture is that the government knows better than consumers,” said Patrice Chazerand, secretary general of the group, based in Brussels. “It is unhealthy to have the French government using discriminatory subsidies to influence video games.”

Those producing video games outside of France warn that financial assistance would make French game producers lose touch with their audience.

“Similar to what happened with the French film industry, these plans will prove bad for the industry and for consumers,” said Gerhard Florin, the executive vice president in Switzerland for international publishing at Electronic Arts, which would not directly benefit from French government support. “French cinema’s financial assistance supports only a few well-connected producers who no longer need to pay attention to consumers.”

In 2004, French cinema received support equivalent to 523 million euros, or $665 million, according to a study released in May by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

To Yves Guillemot, chief executive of the French video game giant Ubisoft, tax breaks are necessary to keep French salaries internationally competitive. Partly because of high French salaries, only 600 of the 3,500 employees at Ubisoft are in France, Guillemot said. About 1,500 employees work in Canada, where most production occurs, with the rest spread among China, the United States, Romania and Spain.

“Without production in France, we lose the creativity and diversity that this country offers,” Mr. Guillemot said. “When we create games in a country — if it is China or France — we put our way of life into that game.”

Arguments for cultural diversity echo strongly with Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres, who wants to ensure France’s continued role in the video game industry. “We need a public policy to help stop this sector from outsourcing,” he said. “Just like music and the cinema, video games should be supported by the state.”

But not all video games would receive support. Funds would go only to those that have creative input from France and are deemed to have artistic merit.

“Video game characters will not be required to wear a beret and carry a liter of wine under their arm,” Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres said. “But we do need to protect what is different in video games produced by each nation.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/bu...ss/06game.html





Hands On: Apple iPod Shuffle

Redesigned Apple music player offers style and sound at a tiny size.
Narasu Rebbapragada

No question about it: Apple's new iPod Shuffle is minuscule: It's smaller than a matchbook, slimmer than a microcassette, and light enough that you could clip it on your shirt and not even stretch the fabric. In my first hands-on experience with the updated Shuffle, I found it a worthy player for the price--provided that you'll be happy with limited controls and capacity.

Big Package, Tiny Player

I bought the 1GB iPod Shuffle for $79 this morning at the San Francisco Apple Store. This is the only price and capacity Apple is selling, and it's a better deal than the original iPod Shuffle, which cost $149 for 1GB and $99 for 512MB.

The new Shuffle comes in a clear, hard-shell plastic package, about the size of a blackboard eraser; the package opens to reveal the player, its headphones, and a dock. Unlike its white, gum-pack-size, plasticized predecessor, the new Shuffle has a matte-anodized aluminum finish, which my grimy fingers didn't smudge during use. The spring clip on the back attaches firmly to clothing and makes up half the thickness.

The USB 2.0 dock included in the box is a nice addition. However, unlike the original Shuffle, which had a USB 2.0 connector integrated into the player, the new iPod Shuffle requires this USB 2.0 dock for charging and syncing the player. The dock is tiny, but its weight and the grippy nonslip pad underneath will help it stay in place on your desk.

The player fits into the dock snugly, attaching at both the dock connector and the headphone jack. I found the 3-foot, 3.25-inch cable long enough to reach around to the USB ports on the back of my PC while the dock was balanced on the computer. You can buy a $29 USB adapter to charge the Shuffle without the dock, which makes charging easier when you're not near your computer. Currently, the Apple Store doesn't offer the option to buy a second USB dock.
Minimalist Controls

Like the original version, the new Shuffle lacks a display. A switch on the bottom for playing songs toggles between sequential and random order. In addition to the four-way navigation dial, the new Shuffle has an extremely small (think pinhole) LED that lights green, orange, or red to indicate battery status (Apple claims up to 12 hours of battery life), and green or orange to indicate play and volume status. The bundled quick-start card and booklet explain what all the blinking means, but I found in practice that the LED was too small and too subtle to be useful.

Plugging the Shuffle into my monitor's low-powered USB port launched iTunes and a message that I needed iTunes 7.0.2 or later. Once I updated my software, iTunes automatically recognized the device and chose 164 songs (964MB) from my iTunes music library to upload to the player, since my library was bigger than the 1GB capacity of the device. (Apple says the device holds up to 240 songs.) The algorithm the software uses seemed to upload my recently played and top-rated songs, but strangely, it didn't upload the last album that I had purchased from the iTunes Music Store. If you have a large iTunes library, you may want to manually pick the songs you upload.

Audio quality through the included earbuds was loud and full. No complaints there.

The bottom line: I like Apple's new iPod Shuffle. Given that 1GB of capacity is no big shakes these days, the lack of a screen seems less deplorable than during our last Shuffle review. If you're on a budget and you want a good, albeit minimalist, audio player, get the Shuffle.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,12...S/article.html





Companies Track Gridlock Via Cell Phones
Greg Bluestein

Tracking traffic can be an expensive business. In some places, costly cameras and radar systems are mounted high above highways to watch traffic at strategic points. Transportation agencies also dig up roads to install sensors that monitor the flow. And helicopters roam the skies of the busiest cities, relaying information on the choked roadways to media outlets.

Atlanta's horrendous traffic has inspired two companies that are looking to monitor many more roads and highways than is done today and at a much lower cost. Their approach: Track the signals of cell phones that happen to be inside cars.

By using anonymous data from wireless providers to mark how fast cell-phone handsets are moving - and overlaying that information with location data and maps - IntelliOne and AirSage hope to offer more detailed information and pragmatic advice than other firms that monitor traffic through radar, helicopters or cameras. But some critics aren't so sure the benefits outweigh the potential privacy risks.

Both systems rely on wireless companies allowing them to process the data from their towers that calculate the position of each phone about twice a second when it's being used and once every 30 seconds when it's not.

IntelliOne, in business since 1999, uses technology that can track vehicles to within 330 feet without using Global Positioning System satellites. Its software is designed to weed out the difference between pedestrians and drivers, then crunch it into detailed color-coded maps that show average speeds along roadways. Light-traffic stretches are in green, slowdowns in yellow and logjams in red.

It rolled out a pilot program in Tampa, and plans to dive into its first market in March, in Ontario, Canada. Forty more markets, including Atlanta, could be covered by November 2007.

The service would be marketed free to wireless providers, who would share profits with IntelliOne. Media outlets could buy access to broad snapshots of a city's traffic situation.

Individual customers would be able to buy a single use or pay a monthly fee for personalized information and a service that sends alternate routes when traffic takes a turn for the worse. No prices have been set yet.

AirSage has a similar strategy and has partnered with Sprint Nextel Corp. to offer government customers real-time traffic data. The company already has four contracts with state transit departments and recently announced a plan with the Georgia Department of Transportation to extend traffic coverage between Atlanta and Macon.

Cy Smith, AirSage's president and CEO, said more than $1 billion is spent each year by government agencies to track traffic, but the expense doesn't even cover 1 percent of the nation's roads. He said his company can increase coverage tenfold at the same expense.

The success of both systems will hinge on whether wireless companies are willing to extend the service to a mass market. Lewis Ward, a telecom analyst with IDC, said wireless carriers have long been reluctant to use the locations of their users for profit and that's unlikely to change.

"Location is one of the unique attributes of a cell phone," Ward said. "There is a lot of value there and a lot of potential for abuse. From my sense, the carriers have invested quite a lot of money to develop these systems and they're very unlikely to let those streams back out."

It remains to be seen whether wireless providers will be swayed. Cingular, for instance, said it doesn't plan to immediately provide traffic-tracking services.

"We're not going to speculate on future plans," said Dawn Benton, a company spokeswoman. "But should we participate in projects like this in the future, we would only do so with strong privacy protections in place."

Kristin Wallace, a Sprint spokeswoman, confirmed the partnership with AirSage but said she wouldn't comment more due to "competitive reasons."

Privacy advocates are already raising a red flag.

"This is your personal information. Shouldn't you have the right to control whether people know where you are?" asked Melissa Ngo of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. "When I signed up for a cell phone, I did not sign up to be tracked."

Beyond privacy concerns, the cell phone-based tracking system has other potential flaws, one being that there's no way to determine exactly what is backing up traffic.

Ron Herman, IntelliOne's CEO, illustrated that as he sat in his Atlanta office monitoring an abrupt slowdown in Tampa traffic. It could have been a police car parked on the shoulder of the road or a more disruptive fender-bender, but there's no way to know. "I'd guess someone lost a mattress," he reckoned.

And tracking data will likely be sparse late at night or early in the morning, when few drivers are navigating the roads.

But the odds are, where cell phones are sparse, so is traffic.

As Smith said, "There are times when the absence of data tells as much a story as the presence of data."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...11-05-17-16-05





Helio Launches Buddy Tracking Service
Bruce Meyerson

With instant messaging programs, it's easy to tell whether a friend is at the computer, ready to chat. Despite its immense popularity, the concept of the buddy list hasn't made a smooth transition to the mobile world.

Now a small cell phone provider named Helio LLC is introducing a service for its youthful target audience that not only lets you know whether a friend's phone is turned on, but tells you where that person is.

The new "Buddy Beacon" feature uses GPS satellite technology to track up to 25 fellow Helio subscribers. Their locations are plotted on a map displayed on the screen of a pricey new handset that's also being launched on Thursday.

The user can see the nearest address for each buddy's location. If one user notices that a friend is nearby, a call can be placed directly from the application. As you might expect, a person has to consent to being tracked on someone else's list of Beacon buddies.

The telecommunications bubble of the late 1990s included countless unfulfilled promises about the impending arrival of cell phones with robust location-tracking capabilities.

A service similar to Helio's was once available through the former AT&T Wireless, but disappeared with that company's acquisition by Cingular Wireless two years ago. Rather than GPS, the "Find Friends" service relied on triangulation to locate a subscriber, measuring the distances a signal was traveling between the person's phone and the closest network antennas.

More recently, companies including Sprint Nextel Corp. and Disney Mobile have introduced phones that enable parents to track the location of a child. Likewise, a growing number of cell providers are offering tracking services for businesses, particularly those with fleets of vehicles.

As with other Helio non-voice features, there's no extra charge for using the Beacon application beyond the premium price tag for the company's calling plans, ranging from $65 to $135 per month. Likewise, as with Helio's other high-end handsets, the new "Drift" phone featuring the Beacon service is priced at $225.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...11-09-00-30-26





Online Player in the Game of Politics
David Carr

KEN AVIDOR would not seem to constitute much of a threat to the Republican Party. A Minnesota graphic artist with no official political role, he is a self-described Luddite and a bit of a wonk with an interest in arcane transportation issues.

But last month, Mr. Avidor, a Democrat, managed to capture some video in which Michele Bachmann, a Republican candidate running for election to the United States House of Representatives from Minnesota’s Sixth District, suggested that, after some fasting and praying, not only had God told her to become a tax attorney, he had called her to run for Congress. And now that the election was near, God was “focused like a laser beam, in his reasoning, on this race.”

In the parlance of politics, Ms. Bachmann was “speaking to the room,” in this case, a group at the Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Center, Minn. The speech was Webcast live by the church group, allowing Mr. Avidor to use a video camera he borrowed from his 17-year-old daughter to capture the shaky but discernible video off his computer monitor. He then used a three-year-old Mac to edit the piece and then forward it to, well, the world at large.

The video on YouTube and Mr. Avidor’s video blog (michelebachmannmovies.blogspot.com), was picked up by other bloggers and eventually, The Star Tribune, the daily newspaper in Minneapolis. Ms. Bachmann’s opponents did everything they could to circulate the video and put her in a position of explaining God’s unpaid consulting role in her campaign.

People in the elections business often say that the most powerful form of endorsement, next to meeting and being actually impressed by a candidate, is the recommendation of a trusted friend.

IN this election, YouTube, with its extant social networks and the ability to forward a video clip and a comment with a flick of the mouse, has become a source of viral work-of-mouth. As a result, a disruptive technology that was supposed to upend a half-century-old distribution model of television is having a fairly disruptive effect on politics as well.

“In politics, there is a very high signal-to-noise ratio,” said Mr. Avidor, who runs his blog in his spare time. “It gives you a megaphone and allows you to break through the clutter, and maybe capture the attention of major media. If you get the right message, it can go viral in a hurry and have a big impact.”

Campaign video material, once restricted to expensive television commercials that were endlessly focus-grouped and tweaked, has performed a jailbreak.

And a growing tendency on the part of people to run to the Web for current information — an Associated Press/America Online poll found that 43 percent of likely voters get political news from the Internet — means a universe of new opportunities and hazards for candidates.

By now, everyone with a keyboard knows who Senator George Allen, Republican of Virginia, is and has at least a vague notion what macaca means. In some other instances, candidates have been fighting back — literally — creating yet more fodder for digital video. One of Mr. Allen’s supporters is shown in a clip putting an impertinent questioner in a headlock, and in Colorado, United States Representative Marilyn Musgrave’s supporters can be seen manhandling a video crew. It is vaguely comical, and of course, eminently forwardable.

“There have always been people from the other side shooting video,” said Chuck DeFeo, manager of President Bush’s online campaign in 2004 and now general manager of Townhall.com, a conservative site that features a number of radio talkers. “When television came along, it was an era of one message for many. Now because YouTube functions as a network, you are seeing many messages handed from one person to another. In a way, it is a return to the past, to the grass roots, and can be a great touch point for campaigns.”

The free video discourse has yet to eat into paid political advertising on television — according to Nielsen Media Research, spending on this year’s midterm election is up 32 percent over 2002 — but there is immense potential for a more intimate relationship with potential voters who can now program their own diet of political news.

“It is especially critical at the end of the campaign when you are looking for the marginal voter,” said Jonah Seiger, managing partner at Connections Media, an Internet strategy firm. “Instead of the 500th commercial or the 15th robocall, I can get a video link from a friend. There is nothing more powerful in the sort of last-mile delivery of information than a contact with a so-called influential.”

Candidates are doing extensive video outreach, from the undersheriff of Las Vegas, who is running for the sheriff’s job and is showing video of himself taking down perps, to United States Senate incumbents trumpeting their records. But the phenomenon does not end there — much of the more interesting video has nothing to do with individual candidates. Instead, a growing genre of self-produced commentary is being made using cheap digital tools to create engagement of another sort.

A currently popular political spot on YouTube uses a parody of the Mac versus PC television ads to deft political effect. Written by John P. Kramer, a nighttime bartender at the Second City comedy club in Chicago, the spots are charming, a rare quality in political propaganda.

In the spot, two friendly men introduce themselves as a Republican and Democrat and suggest that they have much in common, with a few critical differences.

“You should see this guy cut taxes. It’s insane!” says the Democrat in a voice filled with marvel, “And he knows I am better at things like Medicare, civil rights and Social Security.”

The suite of six Web-only spots gently but powerfully suggests that Democrats generally have more on the ball.

“The reason I liked the Mac/PC ads is that the two guys are obviously friends and stay that way,” said Mr. Kramer, who cast a few buddies from work to play the two sides of the political coin. “I’m a Democrat and my brother is a Republican, but I don’t think that we want to involved in some Shermanesque march to the sea, the concept of total war. We have to live together when it’s all over.

“I just wanted to get people laughing and calm them down a bit,” he added.

Another YouTube classic hits on the same topic to very different effect. A swell of music plays as a title unfolds: “The Difference between Democrats and Republicans.” It is followed by five seconds of the blank screen and then the words, “The end.” Silly, but like JibJab.com’s Kerry-Bush mashup during the last presidential campaign, the point is surely made.

“People don’t want a big, long explanation of political issues,” said Mr. Avidor, who is spending the homestretch of the campaign continuing to use video to document Ms. Bachmann’s every wiggle and wobble. “They want the sound bite, or even better, they want to see it. Seeing is believing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/bu...ia/06carr.html





Do the Rights of the Disabled Extend to the Blind on the Web?
Bob Tedeschi

ACCORDING to an advocacy group, Target declined last year to make its Web site fully accessible to blind people with specialized screen-reading technology last year. If true — and Target has denied the accusation in court — it was a public relations blunder, and it may have been illegal as well.

The National Federation of the Blind sued Target, contending that the company’s inaction violated the Americans with Disabilities Act because the Web site is essentially an extension of its other public accommodations, and as such, should be easily accessible to people with disabilities.

A Target spokeswoman would not comment on those assertions, but in court the company offered testimony from three blind users rebutting the federation’s arguments.

On Sept. 6, a federal judge in California held, in a preliminary ruling on the suit, that in some instances, Web sites must cater to disabled people.

Legal scholars say the full reach of that ruling will not be clear until the case is decided, if it reaches that point.

But in the meantime, the dispute shows that although commercial Web sites have made considerable strides in serving this small fraction of their customer base, there are still substantial difficulties on both sides of the screen.

“Web sites are more useful than they used to be, but there are still a few more hurdles than you’d like to have to go through,” said James Gashel, an executive director of the federation, based in Baltimore.

Mr. Gashel said that most sites accommodate screen-reading technology, which tells blind users the layout of a Web page and describes images, search prompts and other fields into which users can type information to find a product or complete a purchase. (The most popular screen-reading software, Jaws for Windows from Freedom Scientific, sells for around $900.)

When sites do not accommodate screen-reading software, the online shopping or browsing experience breaks down for the 200,000 or so of the nation’s 1.3 million people with vision disabilities who are online, according to Mr. Gashel.

Most online stores go to great lengths to make sure that their sites are accessible to people with disabilities, simply because it is good business to allow as many people as possible to shop. And online-shopping technology specialists say it is not so difficult or costly a task.

“It’s very straightforward to make a site accessible,” said Dayna Bateman, senior information architect at Fry Inc., which operates e-commerce Web sites on behalf of large retailers including Brookstone, Eddie Bauer and Spiegel.

Ms. Bateman said that the more software coding a Web site could offer to help screen readers and other technologies navigate a site, the more likely it was that the Web site would show up on search engine results, because Google, Yahoo and others looked to the same coding for clues about the Web page’s content.

“So it’s actually an advantage in the marketplace,” she said. “I just don’t think a lot of folks are schooled enough in accessibility to know that.”

For advocates of people with disabilities, the most effective tool for ensuring a smooth online experience has been the Americans with Disabilities Act. But because the law was signed in 1990, before the Web was in common use, its language offers little guidance on how to approach questions of online accessibility.

A variety of lawsuits based on Disabilities Act provisions have been brought against online companies, notably one brought by Mr. Gashel’s organization against AOL in 1999, but the suits were settled before judges could offer clear guidance on how, or whether, the law applied to Web sites.

In denying Target’s motion to dismiss the suit two months ago, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of United States District Court in San Francisco held that the law’s accessibility requirements applied to all services offered by a place of public accommodation. Since Target’s physical stores are places of public accommodation, the ruling said, its online store must also be accessible or the company must offer equally effective alternatives.

So what about online-only Web merchants like Amazon.com, BlueNile, Drugstore.com and RedEnvelope as well as fast-growing young online companies like YouTube and MySpace?

“That issue is still up for grabs,” said Michael R. Masinter, a law professor who specializes in Disabilities Act and civil rights issues for Nova Southeastern University, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Mr. Masinter said the Target suit, since it involved an offline merchant’s online operations, would not address that issue.

The case, though, is important to Amazon, because it runs Target’s online store as it does those of a handful of other big offline merchants.

An Amazon spokeswoman, Patricia Smith, said that “as a matter of course we work cooperatively with all of our retail partners to develop and implement the tools and features they want incorporated onto their Web sites.” Amazon, she added, “is already generally usable for people with screen readers.” It has offered a text-only, streamlined site designed for such devices (amazon.com/access).

Mr. Masinter said one potentially thorny issue in the Target suit was whether phone services offered by online merchants were suitable substitutions for the Web site when the site did not work well for technologies like screen-reading software. Given the high cost of maintaining phone-based customer service operations, the question would be of particular interest to retailers and disabled people.

Companies in one emerging category of Internet commerce, online education, have the most ground to make up in adapting their offerings for the disabled, according to Jane Jarrow, president of Disability Access Information and Support, an education industry consultancy.

Most online-only schools, Ms. Jarrow said, “are oblivious to the fact that they have a significant issue here.” Many online-only schools rely on chat rooms, for instance, for class discussions, and screen-reading software does not function properly with chat rooms — nor can learning-disabled students often keep pace with the discussions.

The issue has become critical because many online-only schools became eligible this summer to receive federal student aid. But to get such funds, organizations must adhere to regulations in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which has been updated to say that all Web sites of groups receiving federal money must be accessible to people with disabilities.

Capella University, a Minneapolis-based institution known for online courses, employs a full-time disabilities specialist, who, among other things, has guided the school to avoid using online chat rooms for its courses. Some online schools follow similar approaches, but most do not, said Richard Allegra, director of professional development for the Association on Higher Education and Disability, an industry group.

“I think people are starting to understand their obligations to make their services accessible,” he said. “The question they have is, how to do that?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/te...gy/06ecom.html





The CMJ Big Break? Not Such a Big Deal
Jon Pareles

Bands aren’t waiting for their big break anymore. Or if they are, they’re keeping mighty busy in the meantime. That was the gist of this year’s CMJ Music Marathon, the showcase for independent music that expanded to five days this year, presenting music day and night from last Tuesday through Saturday.

Since 1981 CMJ’s gatherings have been offering a dual message. (CMJ originally stood for College Media Journal; it’s still a trade magazine that monitors college radio.) The marathons encourage the small-scale, do-it-yourself approach that has been enshrined and maintained by punk and indie rock. At the same time they tease with the prospect that being chosen to perform on a club bill assembled by CMJ — which winnowed 1,000 bands from 4,500 applicants — and being heard by the people who come to New York for the convention could lead to anything from a shared tour to a recording contract. This year the mass market seemed further away, while the indie circuit was bustling.

The lineup, as always, was overwhelming. There weren’t many large shows with bands that have escaped the club circuit, although the thoroughly independent Swedish electronica duo the Knife chose CMJ to make its North American debut with a moody, high-tech production. The dance-rock band the Rapture played CMJ’s opening-night party with a set of pure funk that showed how years of touring can make a band trade arty indulgences for muscle. And the Fall, which was formed in 1976 by Mark E. Smith and has influenced countless indie-rock bands, played a perverse half-hour set on Saturday night. Although the band riffed clean and hard, with two bass players, half of the brief set was other bands’ songs.

Recording contracts aren’t as glamorous as they used to be, not with major labels floundering. MTV and commercial broadcast radio haven’t helped by narrowing their offerings to a few nearly incompatible genres: self-pitying emo rock, bump-and-grind rhythm-and-blues and catchphrase hip-hop. At the CMJ showcases, some bands were still aiming for careers in current mass-market rock. They were the ones slavishly imitating Fall Out Boy’s punk-pop hooks and making music-video rock-star faces.

Of course hardly a band at CMJ would turn down a Top 10 single or a gold album on principle. Nor will any rule out other possibilities: a spot on a video-game soundtrack, in a commercial or on television, all of which can be hyperlinked back to the band. Most of the performers I heard — which were of course only a small fraction of the showcases — were making their way without Top 40 expectations.

The do-it-yourself circuit was once a patchwork of live shows and sporadic college-radio exposure, but the Internet has changed that. Now, the most obscure band can put up a page on myspace.com and have its music streamed on any Internet connection, any time. So a showcase at CMJ or its springtime counterpart, South by Southwest, is no longer such a make-or-break moment.

But a live performance, something more tangible, hi-fi and sloppy than a faceless MP3 file, can still make a band vivid. Born Ruffians, a band from Toronto, writes crisp, staccato songs about awkward feelings, harking back to the early Talking Heads. The songs can easily stand on their own. But onstage the band’s lead singer, Luke LaLonde, brought an extra dollop of endearing, unabashed nerdiness to the music.

Monsters Are Waiting plays stubbornly midtempo, neatly constructed pop songs featuring Annalee Fery’s breathy, girlish voice; onstage her gawky art-girl cool was counteracted as the band started with terse little riffs and stirred them into postpunk jitters. And it takes a live performance, pulsating in a room full of head-bobbing listeners, to appreciate 120 Days, a Norwegian band that takes the throbbing repetition of rave music and German synthesizer rock and adds some fervent vocals.

As big-time commercial pop rushes headlong into just a few niches, that leaves just about everything else for independents. They can try revivalism or avant-gardism, hugely ambitious concepts or cagey shtick, painstaking sincerity or elaborate artifice, verse-chorus-verse pop or amorphous noise. Styles discarded by the pop mainstream survive in the indie sphere. Underground hip-hop, which has pretty much settled for the college crowd while complaining (in rhyme) about how “the real hip-hop” has been abandoned, maintains the ambitious wordplay and political intentions rarely heard from hitmakers. Performers like Cadence Weapon — from Canada, which he proudly rhymed with “janitor” — and Darc Mind made the syllables fly. Commercial hip-hop hooks were exploited in meta-style by Girl Talk, the one-man laptop band, who mashed up samples from hits — dispensing a new hook every 10 seconds — for a knowing but still dancing crowd.

There are times at CMJ when it seems that just one band is playing set after set: a band with four guys in T-shirts, two of them strumming a slow-building guitar drone. Not that drones are so bad. The Archie Bronson Outfit, an English power trio, turns bluesy one-chord riffs and reedy, yelpy vocals into ominous, violent visions. Chin Up Chin Up stacked minimalist guitar lines and matter-of-fact vocals into intricately driving songs; Silversun Pickups merged swelling, droning psychedelia with grungy resentment.

But indie rock knows better than to settle into its own stereotypes. Across CMJ were bands sprouting extra instruments — cellos, accordions, trombones, glockenspiels — and coming up with songs that weren’t content to stay within one style or half a dozen.

In a short set on Saturday afternoon, for example, the Annuals, from North Carolina, encompassed the rippling introspection of the Beach Boys, the anthemic power of U2, the busy arpeggios of Yes and the lurching momentum of the Replacements — and topped one song with a slide whistle. Quirky, heartfelt and a little messy, it was indie rock with boundless ambitions, few of them commercial.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/arts/music/06cmj.html





FBI Tightens Net Around Identity Theft Operations
Brian Krebs

The FBI is cracking down on an international identity theft operation that involves the trading of social security numbers; the sale of stolen credit card account information; and phishing, the practice of using e-mail to trick consumers into handing over personal information, authorities said yesterday.

Called Operation Cardkeeper, the investigation has brought about the arrests of more than a dozen people in the United States and other countries who are members of online communities that specialize in "carding," the trafficking of stolen identities and credit card and bank account information.

"We are sharing evidence and using sophisticated techniques like never before," said James E. Finch, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division. "Cyber criminals will no longer be able to hide behind borders to conduct their illicit business."

Investigators said some members of the criminal rings purchased data that was electronically copied from the magnetic strip on the back of credit or debit cards and used the information to create counterfeit cards for cash withdrawals and retail purchases. Others sold Social Security numbers and other personal data through online carder forums. That data was later used to obtain credit cards in the victims' names, investigators said.

Facing charges in the United States are Frederick T. Hale, 27, and Zanadu Lyons, 24, both of Columbus, Ohio, and Dana Carlotta Warren, 29, of Ellenwood, Ga. Authorities have also served search warrants in Albany, N.Y.; Atlanta; Dallas; Knoxville, Tenn.; Memphis; and Omaha.

Working with international authorities, the FBI also assisted in the arrests of 11 people in Poland believed to be connected to a network of online fraud forums. The FBI said it had traced a series of phishing attacks from late 2004 back to members of the Polish ring.

Phishing involves the use of e-mail messages that impersonate those from a financial institution and urge recipients to update their account information. Recipients who comply typically are directed to bogus look-alike bank sites designed to steal customer information.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry consortium, said more than 10,000 phishing Web sites were active on the Internet in August, about double the number of sites in January.

In 2004, the FBI and U.S. Secret Service infiltrated and dismantled the Shadowcrew and Carderplanet fraud forums, arresting 28 individuals who collectively traded more than 1.7 million stolen credit card numbers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...201579_pf.html





The Proposal to Control Net Access
Real-Time Clock

Senator Eduardo Azeredo (PSDB-MG) is the responsible for a bill that will end with Internet privacy and anonymity altogether. This bill, if passed into law, will require every ISP to store each connection performed by a user for at least 3 years.

If approved, it will be a crime, punishable with up to 4 years of jail time, to disseminate virus or trojans, unauthorizedly access data banks or networks and send e-mail, join chat, write a blog or download content anonymously. The bill states that every user must fully identify herself before using the Net, with full name, current address, phone number and the equivalent of the Social Security Number. To access the Net without providing this information, or to give false information, will also be a crime.

Senator Eduardo Azeredo wants to legally recommend every Internet user to buy the government approved certificate, and use it on every connection to the Net.

Now that's what you call a democracy.

The Senator can argue as much as he want on how this measure is going to stop cybercrime. But what does it look like to people that want to blog against the government? That's censorship by fear.

What about our right to privacy? I don't want my ISP spying on me and linking the data I access with my personal information. They already have this ability, but it's a much reduced one because they don't have all of my personal information. And some ISP's employees may be stalkers and murderers that now will have FULL INFORMATION on how to reach me.

Also it won't stop cybercrime. It'll just make it evolve. Most hardcore cybercriminals already employ different anonymization techniques.

There are some critics against this bill, mostly from ISPs and lawyers, that argue that it's going to put too much burden on the user, slow Internet adoption and ruin privacy for the regular user, while bringing only small benefit on the war against cybercrime.

Hopefully they will be able to lobby some sense into Senator Eduardo Azeredo. If this unfortunate bill gets the green light, please start learning how to surf anonymously using TOR or similar tool.
http://realtimesociety.blogspot.com/...et-access.html





Gwan, click the Eula. Y’know ya wanna.

Man Sacked for Porn to be Re-Hired: IRC

A technology company has expressed disappointment at being ordered to reinstate an employee it sacked for viewing and storing pornography on his work laptop.

In May, NSW Industrial Relations Commissioner John Murphy rejected an appeal by Richard Budlong, 56, for unfair dismissal by NCR Australia, over his breach of the company's code of conduct.

Mr Budlong, who had worked at NCR for 31 years, was sacked for storing 175 pornographic images, some portraying acts of bestiality, in a folder marked "amusements" on his work laptop.

He claimed there was a prevailing culture of tolerance towards such images, which had been circulated to him by a range of senior colleagues, including a director and general manager.

The full bench of the NSW IRC set aside Commissioner Murphy's decision on Friday and ordered NCR to reinstate Mr Budlong, finding his dismissal was harsh, unreasonable and unjust.

In its judgment, the IRC said there was an "air of automaticity" about the annual signing off of employees on NCR's code of conduct, "a degree of mechanical, unthinking routine in employees making a commitment to abide by the code".

The commission also rejected NCR's contention that it had a "zero tolerance policy" to accessing pornography, finding there was "no such policy in existence".

NCR said it was surprised and disappointed by the decision.

"Mr Budlong's employment with NCR was terminated on 7 June 2005, following the discovery of excessive and explicit pornographic materials on his work computer that were accessed, received, stored and viewed over a number of years," spokesman Graham White said.

"NCR profoundly disagrees with the NSW IRC's conclusion that this amounted to a one-off breach, albeit one that the NSW IRC concedes is a serious breach."

Mr White said NCR would comply with the commission's orders, although it was unsure whether Mr Budlong intended to return to the company.

"NCR will comply with the NSW IRC's decision, as it must, but strongly refutes the comments made by them," he said.

"NCR believes that the NSW IRC's suggestion that employees engage in mechanical, unthinking routine is demeaning to the employees who review and sign their undertakings."

The commission also said it expected NCR would take steps to better position itself in such a situation in the future, including installation of a firewall and better communication of its policies.

"NCR believes that the code and the consequences for breach are clear, comprehensive and fully understood by all employees, and it will continue in its communication and enforcement efforts," Mr White said.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=159213





Media 2.Uh-Oh: Intro
Andy Kessler

There is always hidden meaning to deals - the Google-YouTube deal is no exception. Why YouTube sold is pretty easy - $1.65 billion ain't bad for 20 months work and it would have taken at least $50-100 million from Sequoia Capital, their venture backers, to build the infrastructure and salesforce to build a real company. That's real money.

But what about Google? Why do it?

Google is an amazing beast. Massive growth AND huge 64% EBITDA profit margins from basically one service: serving ads on pages with search results. A $10 billion run rate and $130 billion market capitalization. As Darth Vader might say: impressive.

So why bother buying YouTube? Is this a sign of strength ("we bought them because we can turn anything into gold") or weakness (like, say, Ebay buying Skype as their auction franchise weakens) or desparation (Excite merging with AtHome). It makes a difference. On the surface, this looks like a deal from strength - video is the next frontier on the Internet, blah, blah. But really, did Google want to do it or have to do it?

Despite continued growth, Google has hinted at a few signs of weakness. One is their huge capital spending to build datacenters and servers and bandwidth capacity, dinging their cash flow. I thought the search business scaled with much less investment. Maybe not.

And second, Google actually paid for traffic - $1 billion to Dell over 3 years for a crummy toolbar on Dell PCs. The numbers may work, but it's kind of like Hugh Grant paying for something he would get anyway. There may still be someone in Sheboygen who doesn't know about Google. Is search now such a commodity that Google needs to pay money to keep growing?

Perhaps that is what this deal is foreshadowing. YouTube is a company whose amazing growth from zero to 100 million videos served per day is based on copyright infringement, amateurish video (I get it, don't drink Diet Coke after eating Mentos), their stomach to lose money on each video shown and a hobbled together business model to charge record labels to show music videos (we now know Paris Hilton can't sing).

If Google needed an easy to use technology to upload and then view videos (which they kinda , sorta have with Google Video), they could have paid the same $65 million that Sony paid for Grouper. Nope, we don't need your stinkin' technology, Google is paying $1.65 billion (with a "b") or 1.3% of Google's current value, for a media property. Plain and simple. But what does that even mean?

Maybe it will just be an expensive sandbox to play in. Keep it separate from Google (which they should have done with Google China), and give Chad Hurley enough rope to either keep growing and get a decent shave or hang himself. If the legal battles get ugly (and I agree with Mark Cuban, they will), they can just shut it down one Friday afternoon. But maybe losses over the next three years from YouTube, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, will be less than the $1 billion they are pissing away paying Dell for traffic. But despite all the attempts and Yahoo's Terry Semels strategizing, real media on the Web is still just a concept.

Who are the next media moguls and to whom do they have to sell their souls for the priviledge? The $165 billion question left unanswered by this deal is: What is media anymore? Can you just slap videos up on the Web and become a younger and more vibrant Rupert Murdoch or Sumner Redstone?

(Fade to Carry Bradshaw typing on her laptop in every dopey episode of Sex and the City.)

Is it Media 2.0 or Media Two Point Uh-oh?

Over the next couple of days, I will churn out some thoughts - channels, layer cakes, slivers, political entrepreneurs, virtual pipes and other gimmicks to try and explain all this - with hand-drawn illustrations to boot. Come back for the next parts, program your Tivos, set your RSS - same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.
http://www.andykessler.com/andy_kess...dia_2uhoh.html





Saving Democracy With Web 2.0
Jennifer Granick

Hey, Web 2.0! Election Day is Nov. 7, and your country needs you.

At BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse, NetSquared and other hacker get-togethers, scores of entrepreneurs and engineers arrive eager to collaborate, make information easier to share and use, and mobilize groups for effective action.

Though it may not be obvious, the road marks in this amorphous thing called Web 2.0 are political: grassroots participation, forging new connections, and empowering from the ground up. The ideal democratic process is participatory and the Web 2.0 phenomenon is about democratizing digital technology.

There's never been a better time to tap that technological ethic to re-democratize our democracy.

Many Americans believe that our political system is broken, and that money is to blame. Legislators are beholden to donations from special interest groups. Regulators pass through a revolving door to take jobs in the very industries they used to regulate. Big campaign donors somehow land big government contracts, despite arcane public bidding processes.

New data-sharing technology can enable citizens to follow the money in comprehensive and compelling ways, and vote accordingly.

Today, you can already access online data on which companies donate to which political parties and candidates, and make some good guesses about what they get in return. Opensecrets.org, run by the Center for Responsive Politics, provides a startling amount of information on campaign donations, members of Congress and special interest groups. MAPLight.org provides a detailed service for tracing California state legislation, including who supported and who killed various bills.

A new, publicly accessible government website mandated by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 will soon list the federal government's grants and contracts, tracing exactly how tax money is being spent.

Knowing how much money is spent for which programs, and where, is a great start. Knowing what good, if any, spending that money accomplishes would be even better. Web 2.0 technology can help citizens process and understand political donations, government contracts and programs, and performance metrics in all sorts of important and novel ways.

For example, tagging information about federal expenditures, unpaved highways or toxic waste sites with GeoRSS would let citizens easily cross-reference the data with other information, including campaign donations. Data feeds that use Ajax, JSON and OpenGIS Web Map Service can incorporate externally hosted geospatial capabilities into mashups that weave data together into a single, multifeatured map.

These capabilities would make publicly accessible information publicly comprehensible, for a multitude of uses and applications, incorporating a variety of data.

Major internet players are beginning to understand the power of mapping political data. This past Monday, Google announced that it would overlay 2006 campaign data from the Federal Election Commission and Opensecrets.org on top of Google Earth. Users can see stars on the U.S. map wherever there are races for congressional seats and state governorships. Clicking on a star opens up a bubble with information about races in that area.

I'd like to see applications that go further, mashing up statistics about government procurement contracts with databases of campaign finance donations -- visually tracing the path of a dollar as it travels from campaign contributor to contract procurement.

Similarly, citizens should be able to see which districts receive infrastructure improvement and which are left out in the cold; which have true public health, and which only have subsidies for health plans that their residents and businesses can't afford.

Cross-link Environmental Protection Agency permits for particle emissions with census information and campaign contributions, and you might find out if polluted air is the result of racism, cronyism or both. Are asthma cases in inner cities or breast cancer cases in suburbs a byproduct of human or political genomes? Do campaign contributions from real estate developers result in urban decay and indoor pollutants (stoking more asthma cases) in poor neighborhoods?

Better-synthesized information can reveal the dynamics of cause and effect, chart the money trail and lay bare the profit motive.

Pioneers in this field, like Bruce Cahan (bcahan@urbanlogic.org), president of the nonprofit Urban Logic, envision the end of business as usual in politics. Voters and officeholders will be able to connect the dots in previously impossible ways. Social finance markets and technology will change the way budgeting and regulation happens.

Cahan proposes using new data-sharing technology to blend various performance metrics for cities into a spatially weighted measure called "sustainable resiliency." People can then use the measure as ratings for capital markets, insurance and even politicians.

"We read of billion-dollar national infrastructure repair cost studies on the eve of highway legislation, or scary medical risks on the eve of public health or environmental budget hearings," Cahan told me. "Special interests with special knowledge compete to out-shock us because we've made their funding depend on public fear.

"But with a common performance benchmark, we can model urban risks so that both voters and markets can hold government accountable for creating multidimensional solutions to complex problems."

Cahan is using the market to encourage data tagging of performance benchmarks by creating new financing schemes that offer cities, businesses and nongovernmental organizations cheaper interest and insurance rates as a reward for building sustainable resiliency into their regions.

Like Web 2.0, ideas like sustainable resiliency are completely nonpartisan, totally political and fundamentally democratic.

Some Americans have given up on politics, but not on making the world a happier, healthier and more sustainable place. I'd like to see entrepreneurs focused on building the next billion-dollar YouTube clone carve some time out of the day to take the cool new Web 2.0 tools for sharing and collaboration, and apply them to make publicly available data sets. Make them manageable, interoperable and visually compelling.

Do that, and you've created new ways to make government responsive to the public, and to magnify the individual power of each educated and informed voter.
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,72001-0.html





Long-Term Wikipedia Self-Promotion Exposed
Daveydweeb

Wikipedia, as everyone knows, can be vulnerable to certain types of activity that compromise its integrity. As a collaboration between tens of thousands of ordinary people, without a rigorous credential policy like the current pilot of Citizendium. While on the one hand that has enabled Wikipedia to grow to its amazing size today, and the combined forces of AntiVandalBot and the Recent Change Patrollers generally keep vandalism to a minimum (although not entirely without issue), there are some kinds of vandalism that people simply aren’t prepared for.

The article on “NPA personality theory”, a theory developed by retired physician Anthony M. Benis, was recently proposed for deletion. The move came as something as a surprise, since the article had previous been listed as a Good Article, one of the best 0.2% of all articles, and one of just six in the field of psychology. Now, it was accused of being an example of long-standing and accepted self-promotion at the website, having been largely written by a user called “ABenis” — Anthony M. Benis himself.

Self-promotion

The article was originally listed as a Good Article some months ago, thanks to an extremely effective campaign of astroturfing and deception. Not only was the article written almost entirely by Benis himself (and an associated user, named “D-katana”), but it took advantage of the fact that Good Article and peer reviewers aren’t really supposed to ensure that the articles they are asked to look at aren’t vandalism. The assumption is that, if they make it as far as GA review, they’re probably quite good.

Unfortunately, the problems run deeper than simply taking advantage of the system. At several points during the course of the article’s creation at Wikipedia, users expressed worrying attitudes towards NPA personality theory and its article. To quote from the AfD discussion:

One editor in particular expressed rather directly that his or her intention was to use Wikipedia to promote the theory, as evidenced by this statement: “And, in turn, Wikipedia has the honor of the recognition for championing the theory before any other group of scholars took it on for further development and propagation.” –Cswrye

The article, and the one on its author (both still kept in Google’s cache, if you’re interested) remained in Wikipedia and even rose to great heights entirely on the work of a single editor — who happened to be creator of the theory.

And they remained there for months, and months, and months:

This is precisely one of the things that troubles me about Wikipedia even more than reg’lar spam — bogus knowledge slipped in between the cracks and woven into the article matrix. Yikes. –Dhartung

I’m not sure what there can be done with this. The fault is not with any of the users who were asked to review the article, since their work does not involve checking for notability, verifiability or hoaxes; they make good-faith efforts to improve the article as requested. The fault doesn’t lie with any of the newpage patrollers, who had just one chance to catch the article upon creation and were not in a position to make a snap decision on its accuracy.

That said, the blame doesn’t even entirely fall with Benis: while he certainly violated Wikipedia’s vanity guideline (and common sense) and the GNU FDL under which Wikipedia content is licensed (reproducing the article without reference or the terms of the license at npatheory.com), he wasn’t even the only editor involved, nor was he — apparently — the one that instigated the article’s “improvement.” These things happen, and it’s certainly not possible to find a single point of failure.

The fault here lies partially with the structure of Wikipedia, too. The website’s openness both allows an enormous amount of vandalism to filter through every day, not all of which can be removed within minutes, and relies on ordinary people to catch hoaxes like this and remove them.

In this case, the articles were caught by a professional scientist after one of them had been a Good Article since 29 May 2006 — and while it’s comforting to think that this is now gone, it’s a little unsettling to know that we might have missed more.
http://daveydweeb.com/2006/11/05/lon...alism-exposed/





Surf 'n' Ride: Access the Net in the Car
Sarah Karush

When Stephen Devine drove with his family from their home in Massachusetts to New York City, he spent two frustrating hours trying to find a place to park his 9-foot-high camper van, which won't fit in most garages. In the end, his 17-year-old daughter found a place to park online - and she didn't even have to leave the van to do it.

Devine's van is equipped with TracNet, a system that allows passengers to access the Internet on a vehicle's video screens. Launched in September by Middletown, R.I.-based KVH Industries Inc., TracNet brings the Internet to the installed screens in a car, truck, RV or boat. It also turns the entire vehicle into a wireless hot spot, so passengers can use their laptops to go online.

Devine - who also purchased KVH's satellite TV system, called TracVision, when he bought his camper a month ago - said the value of in-vehicle Internet became obvious at that moment in New York.

"For me, that just paid for itself, because I was five minutes away from going home," said Devine, of Hanover, Mass.

KVH also makes TracVision, which provides satellite TV service in vehicles and boats; TracPhone, a satellite communications service for boats; and precision navigation and guidance systems for the military. The company had 2005 revenue of $71.3 million, including $49 million in mobile satellite sales.

While TracNet is still very new, KVH spokesman Chris Watson said there has been interest from owners of recreational vehicles and boats. He also predicted the service would be a hit with car services, which see it as a way to provide a new convenience for customers.

But KVH believes the demand has the potential to be much wider. Watson cited research by J.D. Power and Associates which found that more than half of full-size sport utility vehicles, 40 percent of luxury SUVs and 40 percent of minivans now come with video screens.

"Once a video screen shows up, people have a preference for live content," Watson said.

Art Spinella, president of Bandon, Ore.-based CNW Marketing Research, which specializes in the auto sector, agreed.

"A large percentage of folks under 40 would like to have in-car access to the Internet, rather than just on their cell phone or BlackBerry," he said. "If it's priced right, there's a market."

The current price is $1,995 for the automotive version of TracNet. The system operates on Verizon Wireless' high-speed network, which costs another $60 to $80 a month. There is also a $10 monthly charge for MSN TV, the service from Microsoft Corp. that brings the Internet to TV screens. The consumer provides the screens.

An MSN TV portal provides access to e-mail, instant messaging, weather maps, chat rooms, news and other features. While Web sites outside of the portal are fully accessible, most are not formatted correctly for TV screens and may not look quite right, even though the content is all there. Another limitation is the system's dependance on the Verizon network: Where there is no cell phone service, there won't be any Internet access either.

As with TracVision, TracNet can be used on a screen visible to the driver only when the car is in park. When the vehicle is in motion, that screen automatically switches to navigation.

Devine, 48, purchased TracNet for his camper van with both personal and business uses in mind. He heads an architecture and construction management firm and plans to put the camper at a job site for a contractor to live out of.

"If he wanted to go online and e-mail us or look up some information," the contractor would be able to use the TracNet system to do it, Devine said.

Robert Ramsden, of Key Largo, Fla., said he purchased TracNet for his boat as a way to let him cruise more and still manage his business. The 67-year-old and his wife own four Intelligent Office franchises, which provide "virtual office" services to businesses.

Previously, if the couple wanted Internet access on their boat, they would have to pull into a marina and hope it had wireless access. TracNet has made that unnecessary.

"It works really well," Ramsden said. "My wife and I both could be on the boat with our laptops, and just log in, and use the wireless capabilities of it."

But Ramsden said the idea of mobile Internet in a car wouldn't hold much appeal for him.

"Our car is what we go back and forth to work in," he said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...11-09-00-44-46





A Wi-Fi Express Lane
John R. Quain

IT’S axiomatic in the computer world that nothing is ever fast enough. And so it goes with popular wireless Wi-Fi networks, which already seem overcrowded and slow. The growing interest in video sites like YouTube and streaming TV programs online has served to underscore the problem. Naturally, the wireless manufacturers are happy to step into the breach with a new, faster Wi-Fi standard. Well, almost.

Under the technical rubric 802.11n, the new Wi-Fi routers and adapters for desktops and laptops are based not on a completed specification but on a draft version of the specification that is before the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers standards body. The institute standard is not expected to be ratified until early in 2008.

So products bearing the “Draft N” designation started trickling out last spring and built to a virtual flood of new products this fall. Driven by impatient companies — and consumers no longer satisfied by older 802.11b and 802.11g networks — the Draft N devices look to become a de facto standard. But should you make the move without a final specification in place?

If you’re looking for faster response when sharing files on a home network or better wireless coverage throughout the house, or are using an Internet phone, the Draft N devices do offer advantages. The fastest commonly used Wi-Fi standard today is 802.11g, which yields a theoretical top speed of 54 megabits per second (Mbps). The N standard is capable of a top end of 300 Mbps, and may reach a whopping 540 Mbps in the future (more on that later).

In addition, under ideal conditions — clear skies, no walls and no other wireless devices — an 802.11g network can stretch only about 300 feet before losing a signal. N networks can reach up to 1,400 feet under similar circumstances.

Practically speaking, though, wireless networks never perform at their theoretical limits. Speeds drop off significantly as you get farther from a wireless router, for example, and concrete floors, steel reinforced walls and — worst of all — other networks seriously impede the reach of most Wi-Fi networks. Draft N is an effort to overcome these obstacles by combining wireless channels and employing up to three transmitters and three receivers in a configuration known as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). MIMO technology uses reflected signals to improve the reliability and strength of a wireless signal.

Consequently, the new Draft N routers have additional antennas, and are often advertised as delivering “4 times the range and 12 times the speed” of 802.11g networks. Of course, to get these results you need a Draft N wireless router and corresponding adapter for all your devices on the network. Draft N routers will work with older 802.11b and 802.11g Wi-Fi adapters, however, without reducing the performance of other N-capable computers on the network.

Because my wife often gently tells me to move because I’m blocking her network signal — an apocryphal accusation, I’m convinced — the opportunity to extend the range and reliability of a home wireless network was appealing to me even within the narrow confines of a Manhattan apartment. To gauge the capabilities and reliability of the new Wi-Fi offerings, I tried five Draft N wireless routers ranging in price from $150 to $200 and a half-dozen adapters, which generally cost $120 each.

The easiest product to set up was Belkin’s N1 wireless router, but even it presented challenges. With its large, obvious icons on the front of the router to indicate what’s connected (and what isn’t), the N1 is designed for networking neophytes. Handy quick reference cards are included, and once you’re online, the software even suggests checking for updates to the router’s software.

Companies are still working on programs to optimize the reliability, speed and compatibility of Draft N products. Moreover, all the manufacturers I interviewed said that they expected their current Draft N products to be upgradable with software to comply with the final 802.11n standard (although none would make any guarantees). So regular free updates are necessary.

Generally, updating involves downloading software, logging into the router, instructing it to upload the new program and then restarting the network. Unfortunately, this proved to be an annoying process with all of the routers — so buyers should realize that keeping a Draft N network running smoothly represents an added investment in time.

Routers from D-Link, Linksys and Netgear also did a reasonable job helping with installation. These models relied on a CD-based program to walk users through the setup process. The program for Netgear’s RangeMax Next Wireless Router Gigabit Edition even takes the extra step of offering experienced users the option of skipping the guided installation.

Where the programs failed to improve was in terms of making security settings. Choosing between encryption methods (WEP or WPA?) and tracking password keys is still a brain-numbing process. And all of the products, including Belkin’s, automatically broadcast the network’s name for all to see — an invitation to hackers and free riders that I suggest you turn off.

After rerouting cables and copying down and re-entering lengthy pass keys, the good news was that all the routers I tested worked with older 802.11b and 802.11g adapters, as well as attached storage devices, network cameras and each other’s Draft N adapters.

In general, the performance of the Draft N products also was much better than older 802.11g devices. Several of the N networks reached speeds in excess of 100 Mbps. The Linksys Wireless-N Broadband Router in particular worked well with all of the wireless adapters I tested it with. More important, my wife no longer accused me of blocking her Internet access when I stood in her office doorway. But as the manufacturers warn, your results may vary.

One reason is that most of the Draft N products will downshift to a 20-megahertz channel (versus a wider 40-megahertz path) if they detect another Wi-Fi network in the vicinity. This is done as part of a “good neighbor” policy, because using the wider channel could hurt the performance of neighboring networks.

Perceptive readers will note that because the impressive top speed of the Draft N products far exceeds that of most Internet connections, it will not, for example, improve your download time on Web pages. The benefits relate to the traffic within your own network, like sending videos back and forth or letting the children play games between connected machines without making it impossible for you to pay the bills online.

To encourage buyers to make the switch to Draft N, the Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry consortium that certifies Wi-Fi devices, recently decided that since manufacturers were not waiting for the final Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers specification, it wouldn’t either. Early next year it will begin issuing Wi-Fi Draft N certification logos to products that pass compatibility tests.

All the Draft N products I tested transmit and receive information in the 2.4-gigahertz band. But the next wave of N products will add a 5-gigahertz band, essentially doubling the speed of Wi-Fi networks — to as much as 540 Mbps — and allowing users to separate tasks. To reduce interference, for example, you will be able to assign voice calls over the Internet to the 5-gigahertz band while restricting regular Web surfing to the 2.4-gigahertz band.

The question, then, is why you should buy something that is probably going to be obsolete in a year or less. Of course, if you followed that logic, you would never buy another piece of computer equipment again.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/te.../09basics.html





HPNA Gets Speed Boost to 320Mbps
Eric Bangeman

The HomePNA Alliance, backers of a networking spec that works over coaxial or twisted pair wiring, has announced the release of the HPNA 3.1 specification. The big news comes in the form of a speed jump from 128Mbps to 320Mbps, which pushes it above competing networking standards HomePlug AV and MoCA (Multimedia over Coax) for the title of fastest networking tech outside of gigabit Ethernet and makes it a more attractive option for triple-play providers. (For an overview of all the competing technologies, check out our recent report "Propagating the triple play through the house.")

The technologically savvy among us may prefer the likes of gigabit Ethernet or are looking forward to the final approval of the 802.11n WiFi spec and its 600Mbps speeds, but for many US users HPNA 3.1 and MoCA may be the best way to move content around the house. Both HPNA and MoCA can run over coaxial cable which gives them a leg up in newer homes where coaxial and twisted-pair copper wire are run to nearly every room in the house.

With its 320Mbps of bandwidth and ability to use either coaxial cable or phone wires, HPNA 3.1 can easily handle VDSL, ADSL, POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), and television simultaneously. Since it is capable of multispectrum operation, HPNA can also handle multiple networks over the same wiring, with up to 50 devices spread up to 1,000 feet apart on a single network.

HPNA is the technology of choice for AT&T in its U-Verse fiber-to-the-node installations and is finding favor with other IPTV providers. Verizon, which is in the midst of rolling out its FiOS fiber-to-the-premises network, is sticking with MoCA and its 135Mbps of throughput for the time being. MoCA is currently limited to coax and can handle voice, video, and data packets without any quality of service issues.

When you go to your local big-box electronics retailer or computer store, you'll see little, if any, MoCA or HPNA networking equipment on the shelves. ABI Research director Michael Wolf told Ars that service providers are snapping up almost all of the equipment at this point. "We won't see much in the way of retail products for MoCA or HPNA 3.0 during the next 12 to 24 months," remarked Wolf.

If you are looking for an alternative to running gigabit Ethernet through your house and don't want to mess around with Draft N equipment that may or may not be compatible with the final 802.11n spec, your best bet is HomePlug AV. HomePlug AV products should be appearing on store shelves soon. Manufacturers Netgear and D-Link have recently begun shipping powerline networking products that use the competing DS2 powerline networking technology, which also offers speeds of up to 200Mbps. Our testing of a pre-HomePlug AV Netgear unit that had a maximum throughput of 85Mbps resulted in max speeds of only 18Mbps, but HomePlug AV gear may perform better.

With an estimated 45 million connections using either HPNA, MoCA, or HomePlug AV (which runs over electrical wiring) by 2011, the progress of these competing standards bears watching. If the 802.11n spec is ratified and comes to market in a timely matter, its 600Mbps bandwidth cap along with its ease of installation and use may change the story.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061108-8176.html





FCC Endorses Broadband over Powerline
W. David Gardner

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday gave a big boost to Broadband over Powerline (BPL), classifying the technology as an "information service."

The declaration places BPL-enabled access services on equal footing with cable modem and DSL Internet access services. The FCC has campaigned for BPL approval for years, although ham radio operators have long complained that BPL would interfere with its service.

By ruling BPL service's transmission component is "telecommunications," and an "information service," BPL will find it easier to deploy beyond the handful of networks that are currently scattered around the country, mostly in the Northeast.

"The Commission's broadband statistics show that subscribers to BPL Internet access services, although few in number overall, increased by nearly 200 percent in 2005," said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who has been a supporter of the technology. "By finding that BPL Internet access services are information services, the Commission provides the regulatory certainty necessary to foster competition between different broadband platform providers."
http://www.techweb.com/wire/mobile/1...RCKH0CJUNN2JVN





US is a Broadband Laggard, According to FCC Commissioner
Eric Bangeman

One of the commissioners on the board of the Federal Communications Commission is taking shots at the state of broadband in the US. In an op-ed piece in yesterday's Washington Post, Democrat commissioner Michael J. Copps criticized the state of broadband in the US and called for changes in how the FCC handles broadband.

The problem

Part of the problem comes from how the FCC defines broadband penetration. Under the Commission's guidelines, a zip code is said to be served by broadband if there is a single person within its boundaries with a 200kbps connection. Not only is that a metric that sets the broadband bar incredibly low—less than four times faster than dial-up—but it does nothing to assess how deeply broadband service has penetrated into a given area.

Copps also cites a sad litany of metrics. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the US sits in 15th place worldwide when it comes to broadband penetration. The US does even worse with another ITU metric, the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The DOI measures 11 different variables, including Internet access price, proportion of users online, and proportion of homes with Internet access, and it slots the US in at the number 21 position, right between Estonia and Slovenia (South Korea, Japan, and Denmark top the DOI).

Most US residents stuck with a subpar broadband connections will agree that the biggest problem is competition. We have talked about the cable/DSL duopoly before on Ars, and as Copps points out, duopolies are best-case scenarios at the moment. Many broadband users are stuck with only one option when it comes to broadband.

The solution

According to Copps, "the FCC needs to start working to lower prices and introduce competition." Unfortunately, Copps' vision of competition doesn't appear to address what is arguably the biggest problem of all: the FCC's policy of classifying broadband as an information service, deregulating it, and counting upon competition between modes of delivery (e.g., cable vs. DSL) to save the day. Copps ignores that issue altogether, calling on to FCC to speed up the process of making unlicensed spectrum available and encourage "third pipe" broadband technologies such as BPL (broadband over power lines) and wireless.

Those proposals are a start, but by themselves are not enough to effect significant change in the near term. BPL, despite the periodic attention it gets, has less than 6,000 customers in the US. By and large, utilities have not shown themselves to be interested in getting into the ISP business. Opening up spectrum is no panacea, either. WiMAX deployments are just beginning and will not come cheaply.

Here are a couple of other suggestions. First, cities and towns should be allowed—if not encouraged—to build and deploy broadband networks. This goes beyond rolling out city-wide WiFi networks and into the area of fiber optics. Currently, a handful of states bar municipal governments from rolling their own fiber optic networks. The massive rewrite of telecom legislation that emerged from the Senate Commerce Committee last summer would override such state-level restrictions, allowing any city to get into the game. That bill has been stalled, however, and is unlikely to see the light of day in light of the election results this week.

Another option the FCC should seriously consider is turning back the clock on deregulation. Up until the FCC classified DSL as an information service, ILECs (incumbent local exchange carriers—phone companies) were required to lease their lines to DSL providers at competitive rates. That left consumers with a number of choices for DSL: your local phone company, EarthLink, and Speakeasy to name three. In the wake of deregulation, that is no longer the case. Sure, the ILEC will still lease its lines to other companies, but it will cost them. Cole Reinward, EarthLink's VP for municipal product strategy and marketing, told Ars Technica earlier this week that the DSL wholesale rates offered to EarthLink by ILECs "weren't particularly attractive and close to what they are offering retail to subscribers, making it difficult to compete on price."

Copps calls for the kind of "public-private initiatives like those that built the railroad, highway, and telephone systems." That's an excellent start—just look at the increasing number of municipal WiFi networks being developed via city-company partnerships. But when the private sector drops the ball, the public sector needs to have free rein to step in. Witness Qwest in Seattle: the telecom has refused to deploy fiber in Seattle while at the same time lobbying against the city's developing its own network.

Let's also get our metrics straight. Although 200kbps might look good to someone whose only alternative is dial-up, it's a joke when it comes to broadband. Revise it to something realistic, like 768kbps, which has become the lowest-tiered DSL offering available in most geographies and arguably marks the lower limit of "true" broadband. And make sure we rely on a representative sampling of an area to determine broadband penetration instead of the current single-person-in-a-zip-code model.

It seems like everybody agrees on an essential point: access to "quality," reasonably priced broadband is crucial in this day and age. Unfortunately, we're not even close in the US. Yes, the nation's two largest telecoms are at this moment rolling out new fiber optic networks. Better yet, consumers in areas served by Verizon's new FiOS network are seeing the benefits of increased competition: some cable providers in those areas are bumping speeds up to 15Mbps/1.5Mbps. However, fiber deployments are slow and selective, leaving most Americans out in the cold.

We may be looking at a radically different landscape in five years, with WiMAX, BPL, cable, DSL, and municipal WiFi networks offering consumers a host of equally-good choices. That rosy outcome is by no means guaranteed—there's much that has to be done in the interim to make it a reality.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061109-8185.html





High-Speed Wireless Dreams

HSDPA may finally deliver a small piece of wireless utopia. We tear down a PC card that can help make it happen
Arik Hesseldahl

Just when it seemed that the overused wireless catchphrase "3G" might finally fade from memory, new technologies are starting to emerge and stake their own claim to the post-3G zeitgeist. For years 3G, or "third generation," denoted some future wireless utopia where voice, data, and video would all merge into a wondrous amalgam, marked by snazzy phones that do everything perfectly—and fast.

But there's a new wireless utopia, and again, it's about merging voice, data, and all the other stuff at even faster speeds. One of them is known as High-Speed Downlink Packet Access, or HSDPA, and it has started appearing on wireless networks operated by companies such as Vodaphone (VOD) in Europe and Cingular Wireless (a joint venture of AT&T (T) and BellSouth (BLS)) in the U.S. Meanwhile, South Korea's Samsung has started building HSDPA-ready phones.
PC Cards

The technology promises wireless speeds as high as 3.6 Mbps but in practice will be much slower than that—fast enough, though, to make wirelessly surfing the Web and downloading music and video worth the effort. That will make it ideal for wireless Internet access on a PC, and manufacturers have started to release PC cards for just that purpose. There are already scores on the market.

Market research firm iSuppli recently took apart one of those cards, the E620, manufactured by Chinese electronics giant Huawei and found that in addition to running fast, it doesn't cost all that much to make. Vodaphone sells the E620 card in Britain for a price equivalent to about $272. The components inside the card cost about $73, while manufacturing costs amount to about $6 per unit, says iSuppli analyst Andrew Rassweiler.
Chips Ahoy

And while Huawei is certainly making a decent profit given its costs, the big winner in the HSDPA business appears to be wireless chipmaker Qualcomm (QCOM). Of the $73 in component costs inside the card, more than $40 worth of chips come from Qualcomm, Rassweiler says. "We've been looking inside other cards and some handsets that are HSDPA-ready from LG Electronics and Samsung, and we're seeing the very same Qualcomm chips every time," he says. The same set of Qualcomm chips appear in Samsung's SGH-Z520 and LG's Chocolate KU-800, the second version of LG's music-playing phone (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/5/06, "Easy Listening on LG's Chocolate").

"Qualcomm for years has had the CDMA side of the wireless business sewn up for itself," Rassweiler says. "Now it's looking like with HSDPA, its influence on the wireless industry could increase." Other companies building HSDPA chips include Texas Instruments (TXN) and Broadcom (BRCM). Motorola (MOT), Siemens (SI), and Sierra Wireless (SWIR) are all building HSDPA cards.

Other chips inside the card include Flash memory from Samsung, a USB controller from NEC (NIPNY), and power controller chips from Anadigics (ANAD) and AVX (AVX).

ISuppli has forecast shipments of 917,000 HSDPA devices this year, and expects shipments to increase to 87 million units a year by 2010.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo....g3a.rssf1106k





Samsung Unveils 3-Way WiMax Gadget
Kelly Olsen

Samsung Electronics Co. on Tuesday showed off a three-way gadget that's a phone, personal computer and music player tailored for an emerging wireless broadband technology.

The Mobile Intelligent Terminal was unveiled at a Samsung-sponsored industry conference on Mobile WiMax, which is just coming into use and promises fast broadband connections over long distances.

The device weighs about a pound and contains a fold-out keyboard, 5-inch screen and 30 gigabyte hard drive. It runs the full version of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system and also supports the CDMA mobile phone communications standard, which is used in South Korea and other countries including the United States.

Kim Hun-bae, Samsung vice president for mobile research and development, told reporters that the gadget is the world's first WiMax device that also works as a mobile phone. It also can access the Internet, make video phone calls and display television as well as other video.

The Suwon, South Korea-based company said it plans to launch the device in South Korea during the first half of 2007. Samsung didn't mention any plans for marketing the device in the U.S. and other markets. It also didn't provide a price.

WiMax has been strongly backed by Samsung, which is cooperating with U.S. companies Intel Corp., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Motorola Inc. to commercialize it in the United States.

South Korea is the first country to commercialize WiMax, which promises fast wireless broadband connections and mobile roaming. Limited trials of Mobile WiMax are under way in South Korea, with plans to cover the capital, Seoul, by early next year.

Sprint Nextel has said it aims to launch WiMax networks in some U.S. markets by late 2007, working with Samsung, Motorola and Intel.

Samsung is confident WiMax technology will soon become a global standard, a top executive said Tuesday.

"We have established a standard in (South) Korea, but it won't take long to spread throughout the world," Lee Ki-tae, president of Samsung's telecommunication network business, told reporters.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...11-07-16-55-16





File Sharing Affects Job Applicants
Stephen Fashoro

In a recent nationwide survey conducted by the Business Week Research Services, 86 percent of the managers and supervisors involved considered job applicants’ downloading and file-sharing activity when making hiring decisions. In fact, just over 60 percent of hiring managers and supervisors say the employee would be fired (18 percent). 14 percent of hiring managers and 16 of supervisors report the person would be put on probation.

“Higher education students should take note of these findings,” Diane Smiroldo, vice president of public affairs for Business Software Alliance, said. “In preparing to enter the workforce, they need to know that illegal and unethical behaviors relating to illegal downloading and file-sharing pirated software can mean they may not get the job they want.” The online survey was conducted within the United States between Feb. 16 and March 10, 2006, among a nationwide selection of 954 corporate managers who hire or supervise recent college graduates and 523 people who graduated from college within the past five years.

With all the other concerns that students have to worry about when looking for a job after graduation such as location and pay, it is very frustrating that we now as a society have to worry about how downloading will affect our job opportunities. We all know by now that downloading copyrighted material is illegal, and I am pretty sure most students or job applicants would not go to an employer publicizing their use of p2p (peer-to-peer) file sharing. What should be important to the employer when in the hiring process are the applicant’s qualifications for the job. You know, what used to be the most important factor in the hiring process. Well now we can throw out the importance of internships and prior job experiences. Employers today are basically looking out for themselves when they consider downloading as a hiring factor.

The concern of employers is that if they were to hire applicants who download, the employees would continue to download content on the company computers which in turn could cause their company financial problems if they get a computer virus or get sued by the music or movie industry. In Arizona, a technology and business consulting firm Integration Information Systems paid one million to settle a lawsuit with the Recording Industry Association of America over downloaded music files. The associations said the company allowed workers to access and share thousands of copyrighted MP3 music files over its network.

Recently, worried employers have been disciplining workers and barring them for downloading copyrighted entertainment. As a student with high-speed internet, I know why employees would be tempted to download while on the job it’s very simple, downloading something at the office can take 15 seconds, compared with 20 minutes at home depending if you have 56k or even cable modem. It’s just faster and efficient. This is not an excuse to download on the job, but it’s definitely something people think about when they are online.

To control the use of company computers in the workplace, companies have started to implement new measures to protect themselves from lawsuits. Some of these measures deal with creating a written policy that explains the companies views about downloading, adding filtering software that would prevent employees from accessing music websites, monitoring software which would let the employers know who is downloading content and using firewall programs on the computers which would prevent employees from downloading anything.

At universities, there are policies that students must follow in order to avoid getting in trouble with the law. Here at SFA, some of my friends have gotten in trouble for downloading music and movies online. They told me that they received a letter from the school telling them that they have out all the movies and music that was in their computers. The school also banned them from having access to the internet for 30 days. This whole process is what students are starting to call “net jail.”

As more companies implement a policy or rules, students and applicants will be more aware of how companies feels about online downloading. Students just have to watch out for this question when they go to a job interview because this could put their future careers in jeopardy.
http://www.thepinelog.com/vnews/disp.../45526f1b7b8bc





How to: Avoid Back Pain While at the Computer
Nicola Tann

Most hacks spend a good chunk of their working life hunched over the computer pounding away at the keyboard trying to beat those ever-pressing deadlines.

For them, as for a good proportion of the working world, back pain caused by poor working conditions can be a real problem.

Here Nicola Tann - formerly a body-conditioning instructor and professional dancer and now a freelance journalist - sets out some simple but effective tips on how stay pain-free at the desk.

Set up

Having a comfortable place to work makes a huge difference. If you are squashed into the corner of a bedroom, your desk is cluttered, or your lighting is insufficient, you will respond physically - by hunching up or leaning forward to peer at your screen.
Make sure:

• Your chair is comfortable and at a height where you can rest both feet flat on the floor.
• Your keyboard is far enough forward on your work surface so that you can rest your forearms, from elbow to wrist, on the desk. This relaxes the shoulders, helping to prevent tension and possible nerve irritation.
• Your chair, desk and monitor are all at the correct height to work comfortably and you have adequate light.
• You use a separate keyboard if you work on a laptop.

Sit up

Many of us, when we imagine we are sitting up straight, can in fact over-compensate for our normal postural problems. If, for example, we usually have rounded shoulders, when told to sit up straight we may pull them too far back. In many cases this will throw the lower spine out of alignment too. Here are a few tips to help you to find a straight spine. (If you start to tense up during the following steps, take a few moments to breathe into the tense area and relax - the spine should feel able to move, not set in concrete.)

• Sitting with both feet flat on the floor, feel the two 'sitting bones' in the buttocks taking equal weight.
• Now start to feel the back of your skull becoming buoyant and gently pulling up away from your 'sitting bones'. (The top of the head is actually close to the crown, far further back than you might imagine, so the chin will drop down slightly as the back of the neck lengthens.)
• As the two ends of the spine lengthen away from each other, gently pull the belly button in toward the spine for support, keeping the ribs relaxed. (If you find this hard to feel, use an out-breath to pull in.)
• Finally, let your shoulders slide down away from your ears. To help broaden the shoulders imagine someone gently pulling them away from each other. Tip: Shoulders should feel broad across the front and the back at the same time.

Counter attack

The simplest rule to follow is: 'do the opposite movement to the one that is causing the problem'. If your screen is to your right, move it to the left. Swap your mouse to the other hand - you will get used to it much quicker than you think. This can be applied beyond just working practice - sleep on your other side, carry your bag on the other shoulder, hold your phone in the other hand. Here are some gentle stretches on this premise that can be done either at or by your desk. Repeat each a few times. Sit up straight and:

• Circle the shoulders up, back, down then forward. There are three shoulder circles - one with the arms hanging down, one circling the elbows with each hand on its own shoulder, and the third circling the whole extended arm - that work every muscle in and around the shoulder joint.
• Sitting with your hands in your lap, pull your shoulders up to your ears and hold for a few seconds before letting them relax down.
• Gently move your head, making sure you return to upright between each stretch. Drop your ear toward your shoulder on each side. Look left and right, and up and down - when looking up be careful not to 'crunch' into the vertebrae, but to extend, keeping some length in the back of the neck.

Move it

Walking is, after lying horizontal, the activity that puts the least pressure on the spine, (with standing coming third and sitting the worst of the four), but any gentle movement is good if it's raining or your flat/office is too small for a good walk.

Try every hour or 90 minutes to get up from your desk and move around - even if it's only for a few minutes. Here are some suggestions:

• Go round the block/ to the park/ for a paper if it's a nice day. As you walk let your shoulders drop away from your ears and your arms swing naturally by your side - this will relax the shoulders, helping prevent possible nerve irritation, and naturally stimulate lymph drainage - a process that can become sluggish if inactive for long periods.
• If you work in an office, go to talk to a colleague rather than emailing them or picking up the phone - and try to leave the office for some fresh air daily.
• If you work at home there is a lot you can do. Wander round the garden, or put on your favourite song and dance and sing/shout-along. It may sound silly, but singing engages the diaphragm and this in turn encourages deeper breathing, naturally dispelling tension.

Relax

Neck and shoulders - lie on the floor with your arms out to the side, palms facing up, feet propped on the floor, hip width apart with knees pointing up to the ceiling. Breathe naturally into your belly, feeling your whole body relax into the floor.

As you breathe allow the shoulders to relax, feeling the front of the armpit opening up. Then feel the weight of the head sinking down into the floor. Gently roll the head from side to side over the back of the skull, (keeping your chin slightly tucked down), as if your head were full of sand, and you were pouring it from each ear. Continue to breathe steadily and deeply.

Lower back - kneel, sitting back on your feet, with the knees slightly apart. Lean forward to rest over your thighs and rest your arms along the floor either out in front of you or back by your legs - whichever is more comfortable. Let your head relax forward and rest here for as long as you need, breathing deeply and, again, allowing the whole body to relax toward the floor. Tip - let the 'crease' in the front of the hip deepen and get softer as you relax.

Treatment

Physiotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractics, massage and acupuncture can all provide relief, and should be viewed as a business expense. When you find the right treatment and practitioner, you will wonder how you ever did without them. Getting timely treatment can not only relieve pain, but also prevent future problems.

Try getting a recommendation for a practitioner from someone you know or, if this fails, check how long a therapist has been practicing and if they have any experience in dealing with your particular problem. Most practitioners will be happy to have a chat before you book in with them, even if it is only over the phone, and if they're not willing then they may not be worth seeing.

Instruction

If you feel any pain or discomfort during any of the above exercises, stop immediately. Going to a pilates or body conditioning class will give you the benefit of advice from the instructor, who is trained to correct you on observation. Always arrive a little early to let the instructor know about any problems or pain you may have and they will be able to tailor their instructions to your needs.
http://www.journalism.co.uk/features/story3016.shtml





On Sepia
Happy

Thank you all so much.
Her second greatest fear was that no one would miss her or care that she was gone. She loved this site and everyone in it. Even you multi.

Multi:
You added a bit of challenge to her life on the site. She loved a challenge.

RB, Lion, Rasta, and Vern:
You were her best friends here. You all knew her best and could roll with her punches. You guys were the ones who got her to listen when she just didn't want to hear it.

Thank you all so, so much.

In case you’re wondering her first greatest fear was dieing in the Midwest. She was always afraid she would never get out........I guess that fear wasn't unfounded.
http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.p...ic=11312&st=20