Clips April 23, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips April 23, 2002

ARTICLES

Technology Helps States Sniff Out Missing Taxes 
U.S. Sues for Return of JFK Papers 
NOAA and National Weather Service gain CIOs 
Ridge Pushes Fast-Track 'Trusted Fliers' Screening 
U.S. is all over the map on homeland defense 
National laboratories accelerate counterterrorism efforts 
Greenspan Credits Tech for Recovery 
Sri Lanka President Launches Her Own Web Site 
Demand for Broadband Growing Slowly, Survey Shows 
Applicants overwhelm virtual IT job fair site
IT Security: Risks and Problem-Solving Tactics 
Electrifying Broadband
Washington Post Tech Briefs
Chip companies show signs of rebounding
Future of e-mail encryption uncertain
AT&T adds protest to DREN deal
IRS adds call center services
Bureau's new name says security
Software to help EPA track data
Treasury CIO restructuring for results
Chuck D takes on the record industry
Telewest offers super-fast broadband
Juniper volleys in router war 
New in New Jersey: the chief technology officer 
Labor launches the first of OMB?s 24 e-gov projects 
Paths to a diverse workforce
Canceling your Internet service: The hassle of cutting the cord 
Maui to get next-generation wireless 
Next Frontiers
I?ll Help Myself 
Debate over ICANN reform rages on
U.S. Army to centralize network security scanning
Technology: Data transmission market suffering from 'hyper-deflation,' study
says 
Mideast strife echoed online
ATM hackers sentenced in Russia
Firms plan to create Japanese Web alliance

















*****************
Reuters
Technology Helps States Sniff Out Missing Taxes 
Mon Apr 22,12:31 PM ET 
By Chris Sanders 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Delinquent taxpayers beware -- if your local tax collector
doesn't get you, a new computer system will. 

  
U.S. states are using computers and information technology to increase revenue
and fee collection, showing the traditional tax man how to do a better job. 

After hiring a firm that uses advanced computer software to make revenue
collecting more efficient, four U.S. states already have dug up an extra $912
million overlooked by human staffers. 

States, facing a collective $27 billion budget gap this year and an even bigger
shortfall in 2003, need the money now more than ever. 

"For the states, this is a way of raising revenue without raising taxes,"
American Management Systems Chairman and chief executive Alfred Mockett told
Reuters in a telephone interview. 

His firm collected the $912 million for California, Virginia, Kansas and Hawaii
and hopes to push that number past $1 billion before summer's end. 

Since 1992, Fairfax, Virginia-based AMS has been sniffing out fresh cash for
states by streamlining accounts receivable collections, making audits more
effective and mining state databases to increase the number of taxpayers. 

Starting in California, which is facing a $17 billion budget shortfall through
mid-2003, AMS helped state officials re-engineer the way the Golden State
collects its debts, coming up with an extra $300 million so far. 

"More effective administration of accounts receivable is the largest resource
of potential revenues for states," Mockett said, pushing the unglamorous
departments to the forefront in the hunt for revenues. 

But state revenue units are not always the easiest department to work with,
especially since some are still completely paper-based. 

Even if they use computers, software is sometimes incompatible, making it
nearly impossible to prioritize which accounts to pursue first in order to
maximize collections. 

Furthermore, departments are understaffed with few prospects of adding more
workers. "It's just not the sexiest thing in the world to add staff to a
revenue agency," according to AMS Vice President John LaFaver, and former
secretary of revenue for Kansas. 

SOFTWARE TO THE RESCUE 

To deal with the lack of staff and inefficient technology, AMS begins by
installing software "decision engines" and easy-to-use Web-based software that
makes the best use of staff time by pointing them toward the most promising
uncollected bills. 

AMS also uses software to make the most of state auditing by pointing staff
toward the most lucrative examination prospects. 

Aside from audits and accounts receivable, AMS mines state databases to find
people and companies that are not filing tax returns. 

But while it may make financial sense to let AMS into the state, it's not easy.


Mockett said states need to pass legislation allowing the company to begin its
work -- a process that can take up to two years. 

Once hired, AMS is not paid until the state brings in new revenues generated by
the company's work. 

Mockett said his firm is currently in talks with five other states considering
signing up for his services, but he declined to identify them. 

While AMS claims to be the only company offering these services that actually
has customers, other firms are looking to break into the market. 
*******************
Reuters Internet Report
U.S. Sues for Return of JFK Papers 
Mon Apr 22, 4:50 PM ET 
By Gail Appleson, Law Correspondent 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Monday sued the operator of a
collectibles Web site seeking the return of John F. Kennedy papers from 1962,
alleging the late president's secretary may have wrongfully sold or given away
the documents. 

  
The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, is trying to stop the sale of a
1962 Cuban missile crisis map with Kennedy's notations. 

It is also seeking the return of papers concerning Kennedy's involvement in
events following efforts by James Meredith, an African American, to enroll in
the University of Mississippi. National Guard troops were sent to stop the
violence that had broken out after Meredith tried to enroll at the segregated
school. 

The lawsuit was brought against Gary Zimet, who is selling the documents
through his Internet company "Moments in Time." The company describes itself as
one of the nation's leading dealers of premium-quality autographs and that it
maintains a selection of original letters, historical documents and vintage
signed photographs. 

Government papers filed along with the lawsuit allege that it appears likely
that Kennedy's longtime personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln may have removed the
materials from files in her custody. The papers allege that she might have
given or sold them to others. Lincoln died in 1995. 

Prosecutors said that after the suit was filed, a federal judge signed a
temporary restraining order stopping Zimet from selling or transferring the
materials until a hearing is held next week. 

KEY KENNEDY MANUSCRIPT 

Zimet's Web site, www.momentsintime.com, advertises "JFK's Cuban missile crisis
map with Kennedy's handwritten annotations" for sale at $750,000. It states
that the map had been prepared by the CIA (news - web sites) and contains
Kennedy's markings showing locations of newly discovered Russian missile sites.


"This is the most important Kennedy manuscript extant in private hands," the
site alleges. It shows a sample section of the map, described as 12 inches by
40 inches (30 cm by 100 cm) in color. 

Zimet's site states that the map was originally acquired from Kennedy collector
Robert White, who received it from Lincoln. 

Prosecutors allege that the map and the Meredith documents, along with
Kennedy's other official papers, were donated to the United States for deposit
in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. 

After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, the papers were given to the library by
Jacqueline Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who have since died, and Sen.
Edward Kennedy. 

According to the suit, the National Archives and Records Administration first
learned that Zimet was trying to sell the documents in late February and early
March. The agency is entrusted with the care and preservation of the
government's Presidential archival deposits. The suit alleges that Zimet has
refused to return the papers or say where they are located. 

Zimet, who lives in Washingtonville, New York, could not immediately be reached
for comment. 
******************
Reuters Internet Report
Etch-A-Sketch Site Fined, 50 Others Warned 
Mon Apr 22,12:25 PM ET 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal regulators on Monday fined the Web site operator
for the Etch-A-Sketch toy and sent warning letters to more than 50 other
Internet operators regarding children's privacy online. 

  
The Ohio Art Company , which makes the children's doodling toy, has agreed to
pay $35,000 to settle charges it violated the Children's Online Privacy (news -
web sites) Protection Rule, the Federal Trade Commission said. 

The site was collecting information from children before obtaining parental or
guardian consent, the FTC said in a statement. 

The agency also said it sent letters to more than 50 other operators of
children's Web sites to warn them they must make their privacy policies
compliant with the law. 

A 2001 FTC survey showed that almost 90 percent of children's Web sites had
privacy policies, compared with 24 percent in 1998. But many sites are not in
full compliance with children's online privacy rules, the same study showed. 
********************
Government Computer News
NOAA and National Weather Service gain CIOs 
By Wilson Dizard III 

Barry C. West is the new CIO of the National Weather Service, succeeding Carl
Staton, who has taken over the CIO mantle at the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration. 

Commerce Department CIO Tom Pyke had been serving as the administration?s CIO
during the search for a new NWS systems chief. Pyke earlier told GCN he had
planned to move Staton to the NOAA job when a candidate for the NWS post had
been selected. 

West will begin his new duties May 6. He is now deputy director for
e-government in the General Services Administration?s Governmentwide Policy
Office. He previously worked at Commerce, the National Technical Information
Service and the Census Bureau.
******************
Washington Post
Ridge Pushes Fast-Track 'Trusted Fliers' Screening 
Lawmakers, Airline Groups Express Doubts 
By Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 23, 2002; Page A04 

Random checks of passengers in airport lines do little to bolster security,
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said yesterday, maintaining that the
government and the airline industry must do a better job of identifying
travelers who pose the greatest risk.

Making one of his strongest pushes yet for creation of a "trusted fliers"
program, Ridge predicted that many passengers would voluntarily pay a fee and
agree to background checks in return for a special card designed to speed them
through checkpoints.

In a meeting with reporters, Ridge provided new details for an idea he has
pursued in recent months. The program, he said, could be run by the airline
industry, possibly using commercial databases, to help sort out people deemed
"low or no risk" of committing terrorist acts.

"I have paid, when I was a frequent traveler, an annual fee to an airline to
get access to coffee and a stale Danish as I waited for a connection," Ridge
said. "I think people would submit and pay [for convenience], share that
information about themselves. You can double-check it. And you can make the
rational, responsible assessment as to the likelihood of these people being
terrorists." 

But so far, Ridge has not achieved a consensus on the trusted-flier idea. John
W. Magaw, chief of the Transportation Security Administration, has said he is
wary of any proposal that would allow someone to get through airport
checkpoints without a full security inspection. In testimony on Capitol Hill,
Magaw said that a patient terrorist could spend years building up a legitimate
background to circumvent security.

The Air Transport Association of America, the nation's leading airline trade
group, has endorsed the program, but wants the government to manage it and
issue the cards. The government has better databases and expertise, officials
said. "We're not law enforcement. We're not intelligence agencies," said ATA
Vice President Michael D. Wascom.

Despite recurring complaints about long, unpredictable lines at security
checkpoints, some in Congress are skeptical of Ridge's plan, too. Rep. Jane
Harman (D-Calif.) said she agreed with Ridge that "we need a smarter system,"
but questioned the airlines' ability to administer it.

Harman, who recently had to take her shoes off twice before boarding a flight
at New York's LaGuardia Airport, took issue with Ridge's contention that the
random checks are of little use, saying they add another layer of security.

"I think people are trying very hard to get it right," Harman said. 

Ridge has advocated a similar fast-track approach to other homeland security
efforts. Last week, he helped unveil a Customs Service project for companies
that agree to meet tighter cargo security standards. Firms that sign up are
given the opportunity to import their goods and equipment faster across border
checkpoints.

Some commuters who travel across the U.S. border with Canada also can avoid
delays by agreeing to undergo background checks.

Ridge said a trusted-fliers program, still in the early stages of development,
would complement the Transportation Security Administration's efforts to
tighten security in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Congress has set a Dec. 31 deadline for putting federal baggage screeners and
bomb detection machines into 429 U.S. airports. By pre-screening trusted
fliers, Ridge said, the government could focus that technology -- as well as
extra security checks at airline gates -- on the rest of the passengers.

Ridge has repeatedly questioned the way that people are selected for more
thorough security procedures, expressing empathy recently for a 67-year-old
grandmother who was singled out. He said the checks should be used for those
who pose the greatest risk.

"As I take a look at the challenge we have, just about everywhere, whether
you're at a border or you're at an airport, it's really about risk management,"
Ridge said. 

"You have 285 million Americans and we're going through a process now at
airports of random checks," he added. "I've got to tell you . . . I don't think
random checks enhance security very much at airports. As part of an overall
mix, they may not be a bad idea. But I think we have to bring the same kind of
attention to people at our airports as we do to try identifying weapons."

According to Ridge, a trusted-fliers program does exactly that. 

"You've got people who fly constantly," Ridge said, citing statistics that show
20 percent of the airlines' passengers account for half the miles traveled. "If
we gave the consumer the opportunity to share information with the airline so
that they could make an assessment as to whether or not this individual was a
high-risk, low-risk, or no-risk threat of being a terrorist, that would
substantially enhance security at the airports."
******************
USA Today
U.S. is all over the map on homeland defense 
By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

OKLAHOMA CITY  During the first big test of Oklahoma's new homeland defense
plan, Gov. Frank Keating and other top state officials huddled in a Capitol
"war room" here to confront a horrific terrorism scenario: a smallpox outbreak
in Tulsa.

The mock crisis was barely underway this month when the officials hit a
roadblock. Before considering how to examine the spread of the highly
contagious virus or whether to order a massive quarantine, officials spent 40
minutes debating colors. The Oklahomans weren't sure whether they should, or
even could, have the U.S. government change the status of its new color-coded
security alert system from yellow (which indicates there is a significant
threat of a terrorist strike) to orange (which means there is a higher risk of
attack).

"It seems pretty basic, but they didn't know where to go with it," says Michael
Forgy, a manager in the Justice Department's Office of Domestic Preparedness.
He says the officials should have dealt with life and death issues more
quickly.

Besides highlighting the widespread confusion over the federal alert system,
the Oklahoma drill symbolizes some of the problems that are frustrating state
officials as they tackle a formidable task: Piecing together homeland defense
programs in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Across the USA, state officials involved in such efforts are concerned about
what they view as a lack of guidance from Washington. Typically, they also have
little money, small staffs and widely varying views about what should be done
first.

Seven months after President Bush tapped former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge
to head the new national Office of Homeland Security and encouraged states to
follow the federal government's lead, every U.S. state and territory has
appointed its own security chief. But beyond that, the nation's new homeland
defense programs are mostly talk. And many state officials say privately that
Ridge's office hasn't moved quickly enough to help them set priorities.

Among the complications cited most often by state officials:

With a sluggish economy forcing most states to slash programs to balance their
budgets, there isn't much money available for significant homeland security
initiatives, or even to pay for office staff and equipment. 
In many cases, states have decided not to commit any of their own money until
the U.S. government begins distributing the $3.5 billion it has promised to
state and local security programs. The federal dollars won't start flowing
until at least October.

There are no guarantees that the federal money will address some of the states'
most pressing needs. This month, Keating says, Oklahoma officials were shocked
to learn that Congress had not allocated any money for a radio communications
system they say is critical to their plans to link local, state and federal
authorities during crises. Much of the federal money is aimed at training those
who would respond to biological, chemical or nuclear attacks.

Several states are hesitant to create new layers of bureaucracy for homeland
defense because of the tight budgets, while others are uncertain about what
authority such departments should be given. 
In Texas, officials' resistance to form a new agency has put security planning
in the hands of state Land Commissioner David Dewhurst, who doubles as the
state's homeland security director. Dewhurst says he is running Texas' effort
with five staff members he "borrowed" from the land office.

The state has provided about $50,000 this year for the start-up effort.
Dewhurst says that should be just enough to cover travel expenses for his staff
to inspect a huge state that is rich in potential terrorism targets. High on
the list of his concerns are the state's two nuclear power plants and the
world's second-largest petro-chemical plant.

Dewhurst says that protecting such critical resources in Texas will cost at
least "several hundred million" dollars. He says he's counting on the U.S.
government to pay most, if not all, of the tab.

'No budget, no staff'

In Oklahoma, the Legislature has been debating whether to form a new homeland
security agency. The state's experience in dealing with the Oklahoma City
bombing in 1995 put it ahead of most others in learning how to respond to major
crises, but officials acknowledge that long-term planning is difficult without
an established security office.

"I have no budget, no staff, no authority and complete responsibility," says
Department of Public Safety Commissioner Bob Ricks, who also is the state's
interim homeland security director. "The Legislature hasn't given me anything."

Ricks adds that he isn't certain whether state lawmakers will allow him to keep
the security director's post permanently or whether they will appoint someone
else.

"There is a lot of confusion out there about what kind of experience is
suitable for this job," says state Sen. Dick Wilkerson, a Democrat from Atwood.
"It's just such a huge job. I don't believe any state or political apparatus
has recognized how important this effort is."

Wilkerson acknowledges that the state has provided Ricks "with barely a penny
to work with."

"We're cutting budgets at every level," Wilkerson says. "It's going to be real
hard to find several million dollars to make this work. In the end, do you take
money from schools or roads?"

Although Ridge has promised to release a federal homeland security strategy
this summer, some state officials and security analysts fear that public
support for expensive security initiatives could wane unless governments move
more quickly to establish such plans. 
"The mission of this national effort and how it will integrate the states isn't
entirely clear to me at all," says Dennis Reimer, director of the Memorial
Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a non-profit organization in
Oklahoma City.

"I don't think we've come nearly as far as we need to," he says. "There is a
danger of losing the momentum to pull together a plan to protect our people. We
need to get on with it."

Forgy at the Justice Department agrees. "There is a sense that (the states are)
stepping off in different directions," he says. "There is no standardization.
Washington doesn't seem to have the best grip on it yet."

Ridge opens a two-day meeting today in Washington with all state security
directors as part of his continuing effort to form a national strategy. Ridge
spokeswoman Susan Neely says it is premature for states to express "anxiety"
over a lack of progress by the U.S. government.

"Time is against us to a certain degree," Neely says. "But we have a long way
to go. Every state has been asked to formulate plans of their own. Every state
has different needs. There is no way for us to sit in Washington and know what
is best in every state."

State models vary widely

For now, homeland security planning among the states is a patchwork process in
which a few states seem to be marching toward a comprehensive anti-terrorism
strategy, and many others appear to be marking time.

The models vary widely.

North Carolina has not created a homeland security office but has assigned
anti-terrorism duties to various law enforcement agencies, set aside $30
million from a "rainy day" fund so that agencies can improve security and
created a state registry for companies that deal in biological agents that
could be used in attacks.

In Louisiana, however, there is no new state money to support the start-up of a
homeland security office. Training and emergency response planning is being
done "in-house and out of hide," says Michael Brown, assistant director of the
state's Office of Emergency Preparedness.

Brown says Louisiana officials delayed their security planning because "we
waited on the federal government to provide some direction. When we didn't get
it, we pressed our own concept forward" to form a statewide emergency response
plan.

What authorities have found since is that the need for manpower, equipment and
money vastly outstrips the available resources. Asked how prepared Louisiana is
to deal with a local crisis, Brown says, "I won't even hazard a guess."

In Georgia, which security officials say is one of the better-organized states,
Gov. Roy Barnes has authorized $1 million to launch a new
intelligence-gathering and analysis operation. But the state can't afford the
centerpiece of its security plan: Recruiting and training regional crisis
response teams to cover the state's 159 counties.

State officials still are examining how much the program would cost.

"It all can be done," said Maj. Tommy Brown, executive officer to Georgia
Homeland Security Director Richard Hightower, who also is the state's public
safety commissioner. "The biggest problem is getting some direction on when the
money is going to come and what it will cover."

There is little question that federal support will determine whether local
homeland initiatives succeed. Less clear is whether the U.S. government's
system for funding security efforts will be an improvement from similar
initiatives that bogged down before federal money could reach the states.

This month, several funding problems were highlighted in an internal Justice
Department audit of domestic preparedness grants totaling $243 million.

The audit found that the Justice grants program, separate from the Office of
Homeland Defense, had failed to disburse more than half of its available money
since 1998.

In most cases, Justice officials said, states did not submit the correct
applications for the funds. The money had been set aside to buy protective
clothing for emergency workers, decontamination kits and equipment to detect
materials used in biological assaults.

'Frankenstein' syndrome

Eileen Preisser, a professor of homeland and national security at the New
Mexico Institute of Mines and Technology, warns that the varied progress among
the states in establishing security plans has created a "Frankenstein monster
syndrome."

"The states are grabbing what they can and sewing it all together," she says.
"What happens, though, when you need it to work and it all collapses or spins
out of control?"

Preisser, on loan to the U.S. government as an adviser on homeland security and
technology matters, says federal authorities have provided states with few
guidelines to ensure that officials are at least giving emergency workers
similar levels of training.

"I have a lot of respect for Tom Ridge," Preisser says. "But until his office
blesses some kind of national strategy, we're going to have people going off in
all different directions."

As for the nation's overall preparedness to deal with a major terrorist
incident, Preisser estimates a 50% chance of a successful response if the
incident took place near where medical and emergency response teams are
plentiful.

Beyond "those centers of excellence," Preisser says, the chances of overall
success drop to about 10% in the event of a bioterrorist attack. "I hate to say
it," she says, "but we're not prepared like we should be."
*********************
Government Executive
April 22, 2002 
National laboratories accelerate counterterrorism efforts 

By Kerry Boyd, Global Security Newswire 


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. U.S. national laboratory researchers have accelerated their
work on developing technologies to counter weapons of mass destruction since
Sept. 11, laboratory officials told Global Security Newswire.


?Sept. 11 had an enormous impact on our laboratory,? said Sandia National
Laboratories Director C. Paul Robinson, at the Twelfth Annual Sandia National
Laboratories International Arms Control Conference.


Everyone wants to contribute to domestic security and the war on terrorism, and
researchers are working hard, Robinson said. ?I?ve never seen so many cars in
the parking lot at night,? he said of Sandia.


Sandia?s current $1.8 billion budget is hundreds of millions of dollars higher
than in previous years, Robinson said. The growth is mostly due to
counterterrorism efforts, he said.


Before Sept. 11, both Sandia and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories had
developed devices related to materials used in weapons of mass destruction, but
after the attacks, laboratory workers were called in for several activities,
including:


Assessing damage at the World Trade Center site. Lawrence Livermore workers
used detection devices to monitor toxic material in the atmosphere, such as
freon and asbestos, Cochran said.


Assisting the Postal Service with its anthrax detection and treatment
activities, Robinson said.


Checking congressional buildings after an anthrax-laced letter arrived at
Senator Tom Daschle?s office in Washington, said Laboratory Executive Officer
Ron Cochran.


Taking atmospheric measurements near Salt Lake City during the Olympics to
detect any possible toxic agents, Cochran said.

The laboratories, which traditionally have focused on research and technology
related to nuclear weapons, are being called on to deal with fresh concerns
about chemical and biological attacks, Cochran said.


The threat of chemical and biological attacks presents a more complex problem
than traditional nuclear issues, Cochran said, but U.S. researchers are
accumulating expertise and many devices and methods developed to detect or
protect nuclear material are equally applicable to biological and chemical
material.


For example, Lawrence Livermore laboratory has already developed monitors to
detect radiation in containers, such as luggage. That same technology can be
used to identify chemical weapons, said Jeffrey Richardson, principal deputy
program leader at Lawrence Livermore. Such work was underway before Sept. 11,
but now it has been accelerated, he said.


Lawrence Livermore also has one of the world?s largest computers, and such
computing power allows researchers to build complex models of events, such as
how potentially contaminated air flows through buildings and cities, said
Cochran. Originally designed to help predict nuclear fallout patterns, the
computer modeling can also be used to study the spread of chemical weapons
released in a building, Richardson said.


The atmospheric modeling program can even take into account actual weather
changes. First responders in the field could link to the supercomputer and on
laptops trace the flow of toxic materials in relation to actual weather
changes.
*****************
Associated Press
Greenspan Credits Tech for Recovery 
Tue Apr 23, 3:59 AM ET 
By JEANNINE AVERSA, Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The country is emerging from what may be the mildest
recession on record, and Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan
Greenspan (news - web sites) said Monday that a lot of the credit goes to
technology that allows businesses to adjust quickly to changing economic
conditions.

Greenspan said American economy, jolted by the Sept. 11 terror attacks, has
shown an "impressive ability" to withstand some hard knocks, including a drop
in the stock market and a sharp cutback in capital spending by businesses, a
key reason the economy fell into a slump.

Such resilience likely reflected U.S. companies' use of computer and other
technology providing them with real-time information, Greenspan said.

That information was used to help companies better respond to a changing
business climate, he said. For instance, moving to whittle stockpiles of unsold
goods at early signs of a slowdown, rather than adding to them.

"Doubtless, the substantial improvement in the access of business
decision-makers to real-time information has played a key role," Greenspan said
in a speech delivered via satellite to the Institute of International Finance
in New York. A copy of his remarks was distributed in advance in Washington.

"Thirty years ago, the timeliness of available information varied across
companies and industries, often resulting in differences in the speed and
magnitude of their responses to changing business conditions," the Fed chief
said.

Against such a backdrop, the process of fixing business problems  namely
getting inventories back in line with sales  was more drawn out and pronounced,
often leading to deep and prolonged recessions, Greenspan said.

"Today, businesses have large quantities of data available virtually in real
time. As a consequence, although their ability to anticipate changes in demand
seems little improved, they nonetheless address and resolve economic imbalances
far more rapidly than in the past," Greenspan said.

He made no mention in his speech or in a question-and-answer period afterward
about the future course of interest rate policy.

To rescue the economy from a recession, the Fed slashed interest rates 11 times
last year. Fed policy-makers held short-term rates  now at 40-year lows  steady
in January and March. Given the fledging economic recovery, most economists
believe the Fed will continue to leave rates unchanged when its meets next on
May 7.

After shrinking in the third quarter of 2001, the economy bounced back in the
following quarter, growing at a rate of 1.7 percent, a stronger but still
below-par performance.

Many economists believe the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product,
grew at a sizzling 5 percent rate in the first quarter of this year, boosted in
large part by a slowdown in inventory liquidation by businesses. The government
releases the GDP (news - web sites) report Friday.

Greenspan, during the question-and-answer period, indicated there has been some
improvement in capital spending, a key ingredient for the economy's health.
"We're seeing the early signs of a recovery in capital investment," he said.

On other matters, Greenspan renewed his concerns about lower-cost financing and
other government subsidies enjoyed by "government-sponsored enterprises," such
as giant mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"Subsidies, by intent, distort the normal balance of markets," Greenspan said.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are owned by stockholders but were created by
Congress to buy home loans from lenders to supply ready cash to the mortgage
market.

Critics contend that they have become so big that they pose potential risks to
taxpayers, who might be asked to bail them out if they become financially
troubled.

Addressing the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history, Greenspan repeated
his belief that although Enron Corp. was a major player in the sophisticated
derivatives market, the reason behind the energy giant's downfall was more
basic: "an old-fashioned excess of debt."
********************
Reuters Internet Reports
President Fox Key Speaker at Online University 
Mon Apr 22,10:25 AM ET 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - What do Mexico President Vicente Fox (news - web sites)
and environmentalist Erin Brockovich have in common? The delivery of a college
commencement speech to an online university. 

  
President Fox will be the keynote speaker at Englewood, Colorado-based Jones
International University commencement ceremony on May 13 -- the same honor
accorded Brockovich last year -- as students receive business, communication
and administration degrees, according to JIU, the first fully online U.S.
accredited university, 

Fox was chosen due to his e-México online teaching initiative, which seeks to
make Internet connectivity available to more Mexicans, including taking online
teaching to all 130,000 of the country's schools. 

The president "is actively working to make e-learning more widely available in
his country," JIU said in a release this week. "No audience could better
appreciate his advocacy of online education that the students graduating" from
JIU. 

It wasn't clear whether Fox's speech would be prerecorded and JIU officials
were not immediately available for comment. 
****************
Reuters Internet Report
Sri Lanka President Launches Her Own Web Site 
Mon Apr 22,10:21 AM ET 

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, often at odds
with the government that now controls the state media, will launch a Web site
on Tuesday to give her version of events, her office said. 

  
The (www.presidentsl.org) Web site will give details on "key policy initiatives
and programs spearheaded by the president and the president's views with regard
to the current peace process," said a statement from Presidential Secretariat. 

After Kumaratunga's People's Alliance lost last December's parliamentary
elections, the party has had trouble getting its message across through the
state media. 

Kumaratunga, who wields sweeping powers under the constitution and will remain
in office until 2005, backs plans for peace with the island's Tamil Tiger
separatists but disagrees on the methods the government is using to reach a
deal. 

On Monday, the president began a week-long visit to India.
******************
Reuters
Demand for Broadband Growing Slowly, Survey Shows 
Mon Apr 22, 9:08 PM ET 

PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Internet users are showing more willingness to
pay for a high-speed broadband Internet connection, although large numbers
remain happy with dial-up, a survey being released on Tuesday said. 

  
Jupiter Media Metrix, which calculates just 16 percent of U.S. households
currently have a broadband Internet connection, said that 8.6 percent of the
country's dial-up subscribers say they are highly likely to sign up for such a
service in the next year. 

The survey found that an additional 15.4 percent of households were "somewhat
interested" in getting broadband within the next year. 

The remaining 76 percent of households were either neutral to the notion of
paying for a higher speed Internet connection, or were decidedly uninterested. 

Another finding was that even among those people most likely to switch to
broadband, interest in some of the flashiest broadband entertainment features
was limited. 

Many more of those surveyed said the appeal was simply a fast and "always on"
connection to the Internet. Just 26 percent of those surveyed said they would
get broadband to view quality video and 15 percent said they would get it to
listen to audio. On the other hand, 59 percent said the "always on" connection
would be the main motivator for them switching from dial-up. 

"A lot of these things that come with a fast connection, they are nice to have,
but they are not really what is driving broadband demand," said Jupiter analyst
Joe Laszlo. 
******************
Reuters Internet Report
China Is World's Second in Home Internet Access 
Mon Apr 22,12:21 PM ET 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - China trails only the United States in the number of
people with Internet access at home, with more than 56 million people able to
connect from their residences, according to a report released on Monday. 

  
A rapidly developing nation, China manages to lead the rest of the world in
home Internet access even as more than half of its population lives on less
than $2 a day. 

A study by Nielsen//NetRatings showed that just over 5 percent of China's more
than one billion people can reach the Internet from home. 

A far higher percentage of people in many developed nations can reach the
Internet at home, but China's massive population pushed it above Japan,
Germany, and Britain in terms of overall at-home Internet access. The United
States leads the world, with 166 million Americans able to reach the Internet
at home, the study showed. 

With Internet subscription rates in China growing at 5 percent to 6 percent
monthly, 25 percent of China's population, or more than 250 million people, may
have online access in only three or four years, said Hugh Bloch, managing
director of Nielsen//NetRatings in North Asia. 

"The potential is staggering, and it's a not-too-distant reality," he said. 

Key limits on China's growth remain, however. Only 35.6 percent of China's
homes have telephone lines, restricting the availability of dial-up Internet
access to a minority of homes, according to the report. 

The study was conducted through interviews with 1,000 randomly selected
households with fixed telephone lines across mainland China. 
***************
Government Executive
Applicants overwhelm virtual IT job fair site 
By Brian Friel 
bfriel@xxxxxxxxxxx 

The Office of Personnel Management is adding computing power to its online IT
job fair Web site because an overwhelming number of people are trying to apply
for technology jobs. 


OPM on Monday night devoted two additional computers to the first-of-its-kind
job fair, through which 23 federal agencies are trying to fill about 230
computer specialist jobs. 


Applicants submit resumes and answer 150-question skills assessments on the job
fair site, which was launched Monday and runs through Friday.


An OPM spokesman didn?t know how many computers had been processing
applications during the day on Monday, but applicants reported being frozen out
of the system as they tried to complete the skills assessments. ?The server was
so busy, it would take over a half hour to get from one screen to the next,?
one applicant reported. ?I could get no further than Question 30.? 


Some applicants received the following message when they tried to reach the job
fair: ?Due to the unusually high volume for the IT Virtual Job Fair, all
servers are busy at this time. Please try again later.?


Despite the overwhelming number of applicants, 3,000 people successfully
submitted their resumes and 2,000 completed the skills assessments, an OPM
spokesman said.


The virtual job fair is serving as an experiment for future hiring efforts.
Rarely do federal agencies work together to hire employees, and substantial
online hiring has taken a hold at only a few agencies. Federal agencies often
take three to nine months to hire people. Officials hope candidates will be
hired through the virtual IT job fair within 45 days.


Job openings include computer specialist positions throughout the country and
around the world, with salaries ranging from $43,230 to $84,990 (GS-7 through
GS-13 on the federal pay scale). One hundred of the positions are with the
State Department, a department announcement said. Between 30 and 40 positions
are with the Agriculture Department, said Ira Hobbs, acting chief information
officer at the Department and co-chairman of the federal CIO Council's
workforce subcommittee.


OPM and the CIO Council are co-sponsoring the virtual IT job fair. 
******************
Washington Post
IT Security Resources
Monday, April 22, 2002; 4:02 PM

http://www.cert.org/
Run by the federally funded Software Engineering Institute operated at Carnegie
Mellon University, the CERT Coordination Center provides various resources on
Internet security, including advisories on vulnerabilities and computer
security incidents. 

http://csrc.ncsl.nist.gov
Under the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Computer
Security Resource Center Web site has a number of resources to help with IT
risks, vulnerabilities and protection requirements. Once on the home page,
there is a section with helpful links to other IT resources from various
academic, governmental and professional outlets. For a full list of CSRC's list
of outside resources on the Web: http://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/links.html 

http://icat.nist.gov/icat.cfm
Also part of NIST, this Web site contains a searchable index of information on
computer vulnerabilities and information for obtaining patches for problems. 

http://www.nist.gov
The main National Institute of Standards and Technology Web site. NIST is a
non-regulatory federal agency under the U.S. Commerce Department's Technology
Administration. 

http://www.sans.org/newlook/home.php
The SANS (System Administration, Networking and Security) Institute is a
research and education organization designed for the information security
community to share information. The Web site provides free information on
research summaries, news digests and security alerts, among other resources. 

http://www.nipc.gov
The National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) Web site. The NIPC
operates out of the FBI's headquarters in Washington. The group -- along with
state, local and private partnerships -- provides threat assessment, warning,
investigation, and response to threats or attacks against telecommunications,
energy, emergency services and other infrastructures for the U.S. government.
The site has information on various alerts and cyberthreats. 

http://www.cybercrime.gov/
U.S. Department of Justice site that provides a wide-range of information on
cyberthreats and cybercrime policy issues. 

http://iase.disa.mil
Information Assurance Support Environment Web site, sponsored by the Defense
Information Systems Agency. The site is billed as an information assurance
clearinghouse. 

http://www.ciac.org/ciac/
The Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability Web site
includes information on up-to-date vulnerabilities and articles and information
on addressing particular security issues. 

http://www.fedcirc.gov
The Federal Computer Incident Response Center is a central facility that
handles computer security-related issues affecting the U.S. federal
government's civilian agencies and departments. 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/
The U.S. Government's Homeland Security Office main Web site with various links
to government news, information and alerts. 

Some links to IT security-related associations and other organizations: 

http://www.issa-intl.org
Information Systems Security Association, a nonprofit international group of
information security professionals. The group provides educational forums among
other services. 

http://www.commoncriteria.org/
The Common Criteria was formed to develop criteria to evaluate IT security,
with a focus on the international community. 

http://www.mitre.org
A nonprofit organization that provides systems engineering, research and
development and information technology support to the government. The group's
common vulnerabilities and exposures Web site, http://cve.mitre.org/, provides a
list of standardized names for vulnerabilities and information security
exposures. 

http://cisecurity.org
The Center for Internet Security group was formed to help organizations manage
risks related to information security. The center provides tools for
individuals and businesses to monitor and compare the security level of
Internet-connected systems. 

http://www.isalliance.org
Internet Security Alliance is a group effort involving Carnegie Mellon
University's Software Engineering Institute, the CERT Coordination Center and
the Electronic Industries Alliance. The group lobbies legislators and
regulators and works to identify and standardize "best practices" in Internet
security. 

http://www.fsisac.com
Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, touted on its site
as an industry-wide database for its membership of e-security threats,
vulnerabilities and solutions to IT security problems. 

http://www.infosecuritymag.com/
A publication covering the information security industry. 

Compiled by Washtech.com Staff Writer Cynthia L. Webb. Selected Web links
suggested by Lee Zeichner, president of LegalNet Works Inc. of Falls Church.
LegalNet Works develops information security laws and regulations. Additional
Web links suggested by Patricia Hammar, vice president for corporate
development and advanced technology programs at National Security Research
Inc., a Washington company that conducts technical and policy research for
federal government agencies. National Institute of Standards and Technology
spokesman Phil Bulman suggested additional links.
********************
Washington Post
IT Security: Risks and Problem-Solving Tactics 
With National Security Research's Patricia Hammar 
Tuesday, Apr. 23, 2002; 1 p.m. EDT 

Since Sept. 11, the public and private sectors alike have put an increased
premium on security for their information technology systems. The heightened
interest in bolstering homeland security has also put an additional spotlight
on the importance of solid IT security systems both within and outside of
companies. The challenge, however, is that many firms and entrepreneurs don't
know where to start to make sure they are following best-practices for their
organization's IT security needs. 

Patricia Hammar, vice president of corporate development and advanced
technology programs at Washington-based National Security Research Inc., will
be online to take questions and comments on how-tos for IT security concerns as
well as address common pitfalls faced by companies and small businesses.
National Security Research Inc. conducts technical and policy research for
various federal government agencies. 

Submit your questions and comments: Join Hammar for a one-hour live online
discussion starting at 1 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, Apr. 23, 2002. The discussion will
be moderated by Washtech.com reporter Cynthia L. Webb, author of a recent
series on government IT contracting.

Hammar has expertise on various IT-security related issues, including
infrastructure protection, counter-terrorism, risk-management and
transportation and information system security. Hammar has previous work
experience with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Office of Civil
Aviation Security. 

Hammar has a bachelor's of science in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and a masters in public administration and a Juris Doctorate from
the University of Baltimore. She also received a Certificat Semestrial de le
Langue Francais from the Sorbonne, University of Paris. 

Written questions can be submitted to
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/zforum/02/submit_washtech_hammar0423.htm
Article on discussion can be found at
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/02/washtech_hammar0423.htm
*****************
Washington Post
Electrifying Broadband
Making gains with power lines as a high-speed data conduit

Traditional broadband service providers could be in for a real shock. Within
two years, sellers of digital subscriber lines, cable-modem and satellite
services will face a new heavyweight contender: electric utilities. 

If the rosiest predictions hold true. 

After years of research and development, a handful of technology companies
report what one study calls "significant advances" in systems and software to
move data, voice and video across existing electricity lines and transformers
and into homes and small businesses at high speeds. 

Power line telecommunications, known as PLT or PLC, "is in many ways the Holy
Grail in telecom for utilities," says Beth Griffiths, director of research at
the United Telecom Council, a Washington trade group. 

Power lines reach virtually every building in the United States, an estimated
125 million customers. But meshing electrons and filtering "noise" on
neighborhood power distribution networks has proved an engineering challenge,
despite success stories in Europe and Asia, where there are differences in
electric grids. 

"Because of the cost of the technology and the complexity of the technology ...
it has been very difficult to cost-justify," Griffiths says. 

That's changing. Five companies have conducted technical trials or signed
agreements with about a dozen U.S. utilities for partnerships or other tests,
according to a United Telecom Council report published last month, industry
analysts and public records. 

Small-scale tests have been promising, although results and investments are
closely guarded, executives and analysts note. Speeds rival or exceed those of
cable modem and DSL. 

"It is an excellent small- and medium-sized business solution because it is a
cheaper technology. ... It is in the same realm as DSL or the cable modem,"
Griffiths says. 

The conservative culture of utilities, coupled with the highly visible collapse
of telecommunications and broadband companies in recent years, has tempered
enthusiasm, analysts and executives say. 

"The lesson that [power line communications] providers learned is, 'Don't go to
market with anything, unless you are able to provide it,'" says Seth Libby,
senior analyst in the wholesale communications group of researcher Yankee
Group. 

"I believe the ability to deliver on this technology does not meet their
pronouncements - to date," Libby cautions. "The potential of this technology is
just amazing. Just the potential alone has been enough to keep money coming
into the game." 

In January, a $10 million venture investment flowed to Current Technologies of
Germantown from two Pennsylvania funds, EnerTech Capital and Liberty Associated
Partners, a unit of the giant Liberty Media. 

A month later, Ambient Corp. of Brookline, Mass., announced it is expanding its
18-month-old research agreement with Consolidated Edison of New York to build a
"fully functioning power line communication demonstration" on ConEd's network
and will get a $325,000 advance from the utility. Privately held Current has
spent nearly two years developing a core technology that allows broadband
transmissions to safely bypass transformers, which distort signals. The company
plans to continue field tests on its system, refine its products and expand
talks with power companies. "Working with utilities is a slow process because
it is a regulated industry," says Chris Ladas, Current's vice president of
business development. 

"The biggest stumbling block had been the transformer," says Jay Birnbaum,
Current's vice president and general counsel. He says Current's tests also have
shown "we do not cause interference to other systems," such as wireless or
cable signals, a worry with early generations of some systems. The utility
serving Washington and its Maryland suburbs, Pepco, is testing Current's
system, according to industry reports. Current and Pepco won't confirm or
comment on specifics, citing confidentiality agreements. 

In addition to offering a range of broadband services, from telephone to video,
utilities could use the technology to monitor the performance of their power
grids, directly to the individual meter, and make it easier to adopt
time-of-use rates for electricity sales. 

"If this technology does become commercialized, it would help us utilize our
assets," says Mark S. Gray, manager of telecommunications for Pepco. "It
certainly would help us in a cost-effective manner to provide communications
deeper into our network." 

Larger utility companies have been telecommunications wholesalers for years,
selling unused capacity on their fiber optic networks that monitor and control
power systems. 

So embryonic is the PLT field that the latest Federal Communications Commission
report on "deployment of advanced telecommunications capability," published two
months ago, makes no mention of it in its emerging trends section. But the FCC
report contains updated statistics showing the promise of broadband - and of
markets untapped. From the end of 1999 to June 2001, the penetration rate of
what the FCC defines as "advanced services" nearly quadrupled. The report also
noted only 7 percent of U.S. households subscribe to high-speed services, which
include DSL, satellite and cable modem. 

"Penetration rates of all of those is extremely low," Pepco's Gray said of
broadband services. Current hopes to have a "broader deployment" of its system
later this year, Ladas says. "We'll probably be seeking more money before the
year ends," Birnbaum adds. 

"Overall, PLT is a technically feasible and economically attractive means for
utilities to enter the broadband market," the United Telecom Council report
concludes. "That said, as is true in any business model, the PLT business is a
challenging one that requires smart rollout, careful operation and controlled
spending."
******************
Washington Post
Tech Briefs

Convera says the Swedish National Criminal Intelligence Service is using the
firm's digital content search technology in child pornography investigations.
Convera is headquartered in Vienna. [Convera]
****************
USA Today
Chip companies show signs of rebounding

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)  Semiconductor companies, battered by declining revenue
and shrinking profits in the past year, are starting to forecast the return of
modest growth, suggesting that some sectors of the beleaguered industry are
rebounding.

Chip companies that reported quarterly results in the past week met Wall Street
expectations. More importantly, analysts and executives said, many forecast
sales growth of as much as 20% for the current quarter from the prior one.

But while last year's recession flattened every segment of the semiconductor
industry and knocked some $83 billion out of global sales, the recovery is
emerging a patch at a time, and more slowly for those that depend on the PC
industry, like leader Intel, analysts said.

"It's sectors of the semiconductor business that are coming back now, not the
industry as a whole," said Arun Veerappan, an analyst at Robertson Stephens.

One example of strength, Veerappan said, is the market for analog and mixed
signal chips, used in everything from cell phones to battery chargers to
industrial gauges. "It's a space that doesn't grow out of proportion when times
are good and doesn't decline too much when times are bad," he said.

Specialty communications chip makers have also reported signs of a recovery,
and perhaps as a result, delivered a more upbeat view of the state of the $139
billion industry.

"The semiconductor industry overall clearly is in a recovery mode," Dwight
Decker, chief executive of Conexant Systems, said last week in an interview.

Newport Beach, California-based Conexant, which makes chips for cellular
phones, high-speed Internet modems, video game consoles and television set-top
boxes, reported Wednesday a narrower-than-expected loss in its fiscal second
quarter on higher growth in all of its business.

Conexant, which is spinning off three divisions, also said it expects revenue
in the current quarter to rise 3% to 5% over the $241 million reported in its
second quarter.

Communications and networking semiconductor designer Broadcom also forecast
sequential revenue growth for the next two quarters as customers resume
ordering chips that they had overstocked throughout much of last year and said
its ability to gauge future revenue levels has improved.

"We have a reasonable level of visibility on our businesses," Bill Ruehle,
Broadcom's chief financial officer said in an interview.

Similarly, PMC-Sierra, a leader in specialty chips for metro area networks used
to link nearby offices to long-haul data links, forecast a 10% to 20% rise in
networking revenue in the second quarter from $42.4 million in the first.

"Strong sequential growth, strong off of a modest base, is what we can expect,"
John Sullivan, PMC-Sierra's chief financial officer said in an interview.

For all of last year, the semiconductor business, had been in a free fall,
tumbling more than 30% in its biggest-ever revenue decline  year over year.

Slowing global economies, weak corporate investment in technology and a glut of
chips, most notably in telecommunications, ripped through the industry, causing
hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and tens of thousands of layoffs.

But for this year, the Semiconductor Industry Association is calling for a
modest recovery, with global chip sales set to rise about 6%. The trade group
sees things taking off in 2003, with growth of more than 20%.

Even so, some of the bigger names won't be arriving at the
return-of-revenue-growth party until later this year, if at all.

Intel, the world's biggest semiconductor manufacturer that derives about 80% of
its revenue from the personal computer business, played it safe when it issued
guidance for its second quarter.

The No. 1 chipmaker forecast second-quarter revenue of $6.4 billion to $7
billion, implying a decrease of almost 6% or an increase of a bit more than 3%
from first-quarter revenue of $6.78 billion.

Advanced Micro Devices, Intel's principal competitor in the market for
microprocessors, noted that it expects a decline in second-quarter revenue of
5% to 10% from the $902.1 million it had in the first period.

But those forecasts are in line with historical patterns in the notoriously
cyclical PC industry; industry revenues typically decline in the second quarter
from the first.

Still, Intel's guidance offers optimists the hope that revenue will rise, at
least a little bit. In the past five years, Intel's second-quarter revenue has
declined by an average of 3% from the first quarter.

"Intel's visibility for an economic recovery is still limited but is still
expecting a normal seasonal (second half), wrote Dan Niles, an analyst at
Lehman Brothers. "We continue to believe the recovery will be stretched toward
the late part of 2002."
****************
USA Today
Future of e-mail encryption uncertain

NEW YORK (AP)  Phil Zimmermann knows a thing or two about adversity.

His invention for encrypting e-mail, Pretty Good Privacy, was so good that the
government considered it munitions subject to tough export controls.
Prosecutors threatened him with criminal charges when others leaked it
overseas.

The government ultimately backed off. But now, the company that makes the most
popular version of PGP is the one pulling the plug.

It's yet another setback, but Zimmermann isn't rattled.

"PGP has been around for 10 years and has endured incredible obstacles and
hardships," Zimmermann said. "Powerful forces have been arrayed to stop PGP and
yet those obstacles were overcome."

PGP's future now lies with a handful of voluntary and entrepreneurial efforts
that follow Zimmermann's designs. None carry the PGP name, though, as Network
Associates retains trademark rights.

"People are very concerned about this development and would like to do
something about it," Zimmermann said. "A way will be found."

Network Associates, which bought PGP from Zimmermann in 1997, sought a buyer
last year for its e-mail and file encryption products. The company said it
didn't get an attractive offer, so it dropped the products earlier this year.

Though some longtime PGP users insist Network Associates could have marketed
the product better, others say the demand simply wasn't there.

"People aren't spending for encrypted e-mail," said Austin Hill, chief strategy
officer at Zero-Knowledge Systems.

He ought to know. His company dropped plans for PGP as well.

Encryption is difficult for average users to grasp, products aren't all that
easy to use and the threats of not protecting e-mail from prying eyes aren't
all that easy to explain, Hill said.

Internet users won't worry about using regular e-mail for credit card numbers,
medical discussions and other sensitive information until they are directly
harmed or see a well-publicized breach, security experts say.

Only then would they understand or care that using unencrypted e-mail is as
private as sending a postcard. Without encryption, network administrators at
Internet service providers, employers, intelligence agencies and hackers can
snoop on e-mail in transit.

Network Associates will fix programming bugs for a year and honor existing
service contracts, but it will no longer sell PGP or renew contracts. Though a
free version remains available elsewhere, the company won't update it or make
it compatible with newer operating systems, like Windows XP.

Having Network Associates step aside will encourage others  particularly
volunteers  to increase development efforts, said Yair Frankel, a cryptography
consultant in Westfield, N.J.

"Many people believe that PGP from (Network Associates) was the only thing that
existed," said Fabian Rodriguez, associate director of business development at
Toxik Technologies, a PGP vendor. "Now that it's not there, it sets the ground
level equal for everybody."

PGP alternatives include the Gnu Privacy Guard, developed by volunteers under a
license that permits anyone to freely use, modify and further distribute the
product.

Lok Technology offers Web-based e-mail accounts that use PGP, while Authora
makes PGP work with Outlook e-mail software and any Web-based e-mail system.
Toxik handles data sent through online forms.

Other encryption methods exist, but none has PGP's popularity.

The alternatives still need work.

Authora, for instance, lacks compatibility with non-Microsoft e-mail software
such as Eudora and Lotus Notes.

Gnu is only a command-line program and needs a graphical interface to be
attractive to the vast majority of users. A few interfaces, including Windows
Privacy Tray, have been developed but none are as versatile or simple as
Network Associates' program.

The Gnu project "is the thing that comes close to what PGP from (Network
Associates) was, and it's really not there yet," said David Del Torto,
executive director of the CryptoRights Foundation, which promotes encryption
for human rights workers.

Zimmermann, who chairs the OpenPGP Alliance and works with some commercial
distributors, thinks any viable alternative will also need extensive marketing.
And if the PGP user base is to expand, he said, tools must be easier to use.

John Miller, Lok's chief operating officer, described the Network Associates
move as "a double-edge sword" for alternatives.

"They are leaving a hole in the marketplace, but when you're out there trying
to get venture capital, backers and clients, they say, 'If a big company like
(Network Associates) couldn't pull it off, what makes you think a smaller
company could?"' Miller said.

Even if a viable PGP alternative comes along, whether e-mail encryption will
ever grow in usage is another matter.

PGP developers believe there is growing interest in privacy, given new federal
regulations governing financial and medical data.

But so far, PGP is limited primarily to niche markets, like human rights and
organized crime  authorities say mob suspect Nicodemo S. Scarfo Jr. used it to
encode gambling records.

"I don't think it's going to die," said Bruce Schneier, chief technology
officer for Counterpane Internet Security. "It will just be what it is, a niche
security product. (Network Associates) apparently felt the niche wasn't large
enough."
*******************
Federal Computer Week
AT&T adds protest to DREN deal

In a bit of a dèjà vu scenario, one more unsuccessful bidder for the $450
million Defense Research and Engineering Network contract has protested the
award.

With its announcement April 22, incumbent vendor AT&T became the third of the
four unsuccessful vendors to file a protest over the Defense Information
Systems Agency's contract award to WorldCom Inc.

"We don't believe that our proposal was evaluated fairly and reasonably," AT&T
spokesman Jim Byrnes said.

DISA already had put work under the contract on hold after protests by Global
Crossing Ltd. and Sprint. Only Qwest Communications International Inc. has not
yet filed a protest of the much-watched contract.

The story seems familiar. Last year, DISA awarded the DREN contract to Global
Crossing and then withdrew the offer after the competing vendors filed
protests.

This time around, Sprint filed a protest April 12 and Global Crossing followed
suit on April 15.

DREN is designed to offer enhanced connectivity to all DOD research
communities, providing wide-area network services to support DOD's High
Performance Computing Modernization Program.

AT&T's existing contract had been set to expire last year. DOD and AT&T
negotiated a short-term contract to continue providing services until the new
contract takes effect.
*******************
Federal Computer Week
IRS adds call center services

The Internal Revenue Service awarded a $150 million follow-on contract last
week to Aspect Communications Corp., a software company that provides voice
recognition and other customer service technologies.

The one-year contract with five one-year options covers maintenance, services
and training to support the Aspect-built contact center infrastructure that is
in standard use at 40 IRS contact centers across the country. The last contract
was a 10-year, $71 million deal for hardware.

The Aspect solutions include voice recognition technology, which helps
taxpayers get answers over the telephone, and eWorkforce Management, which
helps managers forecast call volume and schedule personnel accordingly.

"This technology is really a tuned environment to make sure we're getting the
right connections and to make it more efficient," said Larry Sells, vice
president of Aspect's Government Solutions unit.

The San Jose, Calif., company provides business communications services
including mission-critical software, e-mail, voice mail and wireless business
communications. In 2000, more than 110 million taxpayers called the IRS with
questions.
*****************
Federal Computer Week
Bureau's new name says security

The Commerce Department last week renamed its Bureau of Export Administration
(BXA) to better reflect the bureau's role in homeland and cybersecurity policy.

The newly named Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) still handles all of the
export control issues that were the basis of BXA, including those dealing with
high-performance computers and encryption. 

The bureau's priorities or activities have not changed in any way, Commerce
officials said. However, the new name provides better understanding of the
bureau's role as the home for the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office
(CIAO) and as the liaison for working with the private sector on security
matters.

"The new name better reflects the breadth of the bureau's activities in the
spheres of national, homeland, economic and cybersecurity," Kenneth Juster, the
Commerce undersecretary leading BIS, said in a statement.

The CIAO is the lead organization within the administration working with
industry on critical infrastructure protection matters. The Clinton
administration created the office in 1998, and the Bush administration kept the
CIAO as part of its critical infrastructure protection and homeland security
strategies. 

The office continues to support Richard Clarke, the president's cyberspace
security adviser, who also works under Tom Ridge, director of the Office of
Homeland Security.
******************
Federal Computer Week
Software to help EPA track data

The Environmental Protection Agency recently awarded Signal Corp. a five-year,
$6 million contract to develop software that manages data collected by response
teams dealing with hazardous materials and spills control.

EPA's Edison, N.J.-based Emergency Response Team Center will use the technology
to share and manage information. The center supports the Office of Emergency
and Remedial Response and its project managers, on-site coordinators and other
agency groups in the field.

The software developed under the contract will enable teams to capture, store
and analyze data. Furthermore, users will able to enter and access information
via PCs, local-area networks, the World Wide Web and wireless devices.

"These are tools to actually store the data and track the data," said Robert
Danziger, Signal's director of business operation for the mid-Atlantic region.

The contract follows a previous five-year task order Signal had with the EPA.
Under that contract, it began providing applications, support, training and a
hot line for users in the field. It also developed the response team center's
Web site.

"It's an ongoing thing because the requirements are continually changing,"
Danziger said. Project work on the new order began April 1 in Edison.
*******************
Federal Computer Week
Treasury CIO restructuring for results

The new acting chief information officer at the Treasury Department said she is
going to "totally restructure the headquarters operation functions" in an
effort to focus on performance and results.

The initiative is part of the Bush administration's plan to open to competition
15 percent of the federal jobs considered commercial viable by the end of
fiscal 2003. Mayi Canales, Treasury's acting CIO, said that the department is
meeting the fiscal 2002 requirement to open 5 percent of its jobs to
competition through its desktop outsourcing initiative using the General
Services Administration's Seat Management contract.

But future initiatives will have a broader focus, Canales said at a conference
about competitive sourcing and performance-based contracting in Washington,
D.C., April 18.

With the focus on the 2003 goals, the department is going to conduct a business
re-engineering study, she said. That study will include a look at what the core
functions of Treasury's CIO shop should be. "Not what do I haveÖbut what they
should be," she said. "It will evaluate what the core staffing of those core
functions should be," she said.

The study will take about 30 days, and the department will review the results
this summer in preparation for a business re-engineering process, she said.

One of the goals of the process is to retain information technology workers,
she said. But the work of federal IT workers has changed in recent years. "We
no longer need IT workers who do programming," she said.

The department's goal is to seek IT workers who have project management skills,
who are business- and results-oriented, and who can assess what is related to
Treasury's mission and develop creative ways to streamline operations.

The department is about halfway to that goal in the CIO's office, she said.

"I have a mix of some project managers and techies who are trying to fill in as
project managers and are not coming in very happy to work every day. So I need
to restructure and realign a little bit," she said.

Canales told the group that she hopes to speak at the conference next year and
describe how her organization is different and better and what she did to
accomplish that improvement.

The conference was co-sponsored by Potomac Forum Ltd. and Federal Sources Inc.,
a McLean, Va.-based market research firm.
******************
Computerworld
South Korean carriers plan 25k public access wireless nodes in '02
By BOB BREWIN 
(April 19, 2002) 

South Korea has outdistanced the rest of the world in deployment of public
access wireless LANs (WLAN), with a total of 25,000 nodes expected to be in
operation by the end of the year, according to analysts and reports in the
South Korean press.

The country's public access WLAN deployments far exceed any other announced
system, according to C. Brian Grimm, a spokesman for the Mountain View,
Calif.-based Wireless Internet Compatibility Alliance (WECA). Grimm pointed out
that the South Korea public access WLAN system would dwarf even the 4,000-node
system in the United Kingdom announced by BT Group PLC last week (see story). 

There are roughly 1,200 to 1,500 public access WLAN nodes in the U.S. today,
and Gartner Inc. has forecast that the total number of WLAN access points in
North America will reach about 22,000 by 2005. 

Korea Telecom Corp. (KT) in Seoul, the state-owned nationwide
telecommunications company, plans to install 15,000 WLAN access points by the
end of the year, while Hanaro Telecom Inc. plans to install 10,000 in that
time, according to Korea Now magazine. Both South Korean WLAN systems will use
the 802.11b wireless LAN standard in the 2.4-GHz frequency band and will
provide users with access at speeds up to 11M bit/sec. vs. 50K to 144K bit/sec.
speeds on most mobile networks. Charges for WLAN access will range from $30 to
$50 a month. 

The 25,000 public access WLAN points slated for installation in South Korea
this year are just the start of an even more ambitious effort, according to Ken
Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner in Stamford, Conn. According to Dulaney, KT has
a contract with Hyundai Information Technology and Samsung Electric Mechanics
to supply slightly more than 28,000 access points (electronics, antennas and a
connection to a fiber backbone) for the first stage of KT's planned public
access service. 

Gartner research shows that Dacom Corp., a wireline carrier, and SK Telecom,
South Korea's largest mobile phone carrier, also plan to roll out wireless LAN
networks, Dulaney said. 

Craig Mathias, an analyst at Farpoint Group in Ashland, Mass., said the South
Korean public access WLAN networks are just another sign of a "global
phenomenon" that will eventually result in a dual-mode cell phone of the
future, capable of easily switching from mobile, wide-area service to WLAN
service when in range of an access point. 

Low cost is driving the proliferation of WLAN public access networks, Mathias
said. Mobile carriers around the world have spent billions of dollars on new
spectrum to support high-speed data services, and they will have to spend
billions more on equipment to support those services. WLAN public access
networks operate on unlicensed frequencies, and economies of scale keep driving
down the costs of hardware, Mathias said. Gartner estimated that KT will pay
just $105 or less per access point. 

Ray Martino, vice president for network products at Symbol Technologies Inc. in
Holtsville, N.Y., which manufactures wireless LAN systems used by companies
such as FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. , said South Korean
companies involved in transportation and logistics would want to take advantage
of the wide-scale public access network. He said public access systems would
provide such users with a higher bandwidth at lower cost than third-generation
mobile wireless systems planned by carriers such as SK Telecom. 

In a related development, the British government has invited interested parties
to make comments by May 10 on a spectrum utilization report that would allow
commercial use of the unlicensed 2.4-GHz frequency band. BT Group and any other
companies planning to start up a public access WLAN service in the U.K. need
current restrictions on commercial use reversed in order to proceed with their
plans. 
*********************
BBC
Chuck D takes on the record industry

A handful of leading musicians are embracing the possibilities offered by
digital music, among them Chuck D, co-founder of rap group Public Enemy. 
He was one of the first high-profile musicians to adopt online distribution,
becoming somewhat of a standard bearer for the MP3 movement. 

"Digital music has had a great impact if only because the public has gotten it
first, before the industry, and that's a major accomplishment," Chuck D told
the BBC programme, Go Digital. 

"It has shifted power in a lot of different areas, enabling people to become
participants in the music business." 

Nation of fans 

His seminal band, Public Enemy, was the first to offer an entire full album as
a digital download before it was available in stores. 

The online exposure, via the now-defunct online record label Atomic Pop
Records, helped the group sell 300,000 copies of There's A Poison Going On in
1999. 

These days, Chuck D is heavily involved in several online projects, including
his online radio station, Bringthenoise.com, and the hip hop site,
RapStation.com. 

The legendary rapper sees the internet as a key way to reach out to fans. 

"It's a fantastic exposure area," he said. "It is a fantastic opportunity for
artists to be participants and also active in the new music world that's
forming right now." 

Fear of a MP3 planet 

Chuck D's views have put him at odds with the big record labels, which see MP3
music files as a virus that is destroying the music industry. 

Downloading songs from illegal internet sites and making copies of CDs have
been blamed for a global slump in music sales. 

Trade body the Recording Industry Association of America has estimated that
about 3.6 billion songs are illegally downloaded per month. 

Chuck D is critical of the music industry's attempts to stop shut down services
like Napster that enabled music to be shared over the net. 

"One government's legislation is not going to stop the world embracing new
technology to get information as well as entertainment. There will have to be
give and take on these issues in the future," he said. 

Making a dollar 

He believes that digital music can work for an artist, allowing them to take
control of their work and get closer to their fans. 

"If artists really work on their stuff and get in front of the public on a
face-to-face basis, they'll have a fan for life," he says. 

As far as he is concerned, record labels should be investing money in
developing their musicians, rather than in lawyers. 

"The labels have come up with so many artists to make them disposable, here
today and gone tomorrow," he said. 

"They have to look into not only artist development but fan development. That's
what going to make a dollar and be a strong dollar."
*********************
BBC
3D images in your hand

Tiny sensors used to improve car safety could soon be helping people get more
out of handheld computers. 
Researchers at Microsoft's Cambridge campus in the UK are putting sensing
devices used to trigger airbags into handheld computers to help create virtual
3-D images on the device's screen. 

When a handheld fitted with the sensor is angled, its screen shows different
parts of an image giving a pseudo-3D effect. 

It also allows the palmtop computer to display pictures and documents far
larger than would otherwise fit on the small screen. 

Angle finder 

Handheld computers are convenient for many reasons. But their small screen,
often only 240 by 320 pixels in size, can detract from their usefulness if they
are used to look at a large document such as a spreadsheet or a web page. 

But Microsoft researcher Lyndsay Williams might have found a way to help
handhelds and PDAs display larger images and documents, but without increasing
the size of the device's screen. 

Ms Williams has fitted tilt sensors on a handheld computer so it can work out
at which angle to the horizontal they are being held. 

The micro-machined tilt sensors, which cost about £1.50, are typically used to
trigger airbags in cars by measuring sudden changes in acceleration or
deceleration. 

On a PDA the sensor triggers the device to show a different part of an image
depending on how it is being held. 

The sensor makes the screen act like a square hole in a piece of paper being
slid over a larger document or image underneath. 

Distorted perspective 

Ms Williams said that moving the device around would give users a view of an
image or document far larger than one that could fit on the screen. 

Some work had to be done to prepare pictures of real world objects to be
displayed this way, she said. 

Pictures are given the pseudo-3D look by having their perspective distorted so
that the elements at the rear of the image look smaller. 

Antonio Criminisi from Microsoft's lab in Redmond, Washington prepared a 3D
version of Masaccio's La Trinita, the original is in the church of Santa Maria
Novella in Florence, to test out the 3D system. 

Building up the 3D images from distorted layers makes them larger than the more
regular "flat" images. 

But Ms Williams said the advantage was that it might made PDAs less of a chore
to use.
*******************
BBC
Telewest offers super-fast broadband

Cable operator Telewest has stepped up the battle for broadband this week, with
the trial of a super-fast service. 
It intends to offers its blueyonder service at double the speed of current
broadband offerings and 20 times faster than traditional dial-up services. 

Initially the service will be tested among 1,500 householders in Scotland with
the aim to roll it out nationwide by mid-summer. 

The price is as yet undecided.

"We intend to ask the triallists how much they are willing to pay," said a
spokesperson for Telewest. 

"NTL's one megabit service is £49 a month and we would like to see ours quite a
bit lower to be aimed at a mainstream consumer audience," said a spokesperson
for Telewest. 

According to Telewest's Managing Director Philip Jansen the service will set
another benchmark for internet services in the UK. 

"The trial will help us deliver a service that leads ADSL providers dead in
their copper tracks," he said. 

How fast is fast? 

But Ovum analyst Tim Johnson is sceptical that people will actually get the
blueyonder service at the optimum one megabit speed. 

"If you get a large number of users then the speed will drop and there will be
bottlenecks higher up in the network," he said. 

"Before I got the service I would ask Telewest if I can get one megabit for
downloading streaming media say from the BBC site and I have a feeling Telewest
can't guarantee that. You might be better off with just half a megabit." 

Around half a million UK homes and businesses currently have a broadband
connection. 

Cable operators Telewest and NTL have around 280,000 customers. with ADSL
providers trailing with 190,000 connections.
*****************
San Francisco Chronicle
Juniper volleys in router war 
Firm aims to take Cisco market share with new device

Juniper Networks will introduce a new device today for routing Internet traffic
-- a high-powered piece of equipment the company hopes can steal business from
giant rival Cisco Systems. 

Its arrival has been the subject of rumor and gossip for months. And for
Juniper, it could hold the key to winning new customers in a brutal market. 

Cisco and Juniper dominate the market for routers. For years, they have engaged
in a back-and-forth battle for technical supremacy, using each new advance to
gain market share. 

The new T640 Internet Routing Node promises to handle far more simultaneous
traffic than its competitors -- more than twice as much in its simplest
configuration, according to Juniper. And that, the company hopes, will cement
in customers' minds Juniper's reputation for innovation and reliability. 

"It becomes powerful for them to see that repeated commitment," said Scott
Kriens, Juniper's chief executive officer. 

The announcement's timing could pose a problem. The Internet service providers
for whom the new router is designed are suffering through a prolonged financial
slump that has left most loath to buy new gear. Kriens acknowledged yesterday
the daunting environment waiting for his latest product, 

which will be priced starting at $400,000 to $500,000. 

"All by itself, it's not going to change the market dynamics or the economy, "
he said. 

Some analysts, however, said that by introducing the router now, Juniper may be
able to position itself to make sales once the service providers begin to
recover. Most providers now want to test new equipment for at least six months
before placing substantial orders, meaning companies that try Juniper's new
product now may be in better financial shape when their testing periods end. 

"No one's rolling a lot of gear into the long-haul network right now," said
Nancee Ruzicka, program manager for the Yankee Group research firm. "But
there's such a delay in the process that now is the time." 

Juniper could use the boost. After peaking at the start of 2001, the Sunnyvale
company's sales have slid, from a high of $332.1 million to $122.2 million in
the first quarter of this year. It commands 31 percent of the market for
high-end routers, compared with Cisco's 64 percent share, according to the
Dell'Oro Group research firm. 

Several analysts given advance peeks at the new router system -- known for
months by its rumored code-name, Gibson -- praised its features yesterday. Its
configuration allows eight of the devices to be linked to operate virtually as
one huge router. It runs on the same operating system as Juniper's existing
routers, meaning current customers won't need to learn a different system. 

The company has been testing the router in the field with clients since the
fourth quarter of last year, and today will announce several customers,
including France Telecom. 

Even with the spending drought, Juniper's product may be able to win customers,
said Ray Mota with the Synergy Research Group. This, even though his company
expects service providers to spend 27 percent less on equipment this year
compared with 2001. 

"If you're a provider of this equipment, that's a depressing number to look
at," said Mota, chief research officer for Synergy. "But in spite of that,
there's still money being spent. They'll look for more next-generation devices.
" 
***************
Government Computer News
New in New Jersey: the chief technology officer 
By Trudy Walsh 

New Jersey?s CIO Judy Teller yesterday appointed Charles S. Dawson the chief
technology officer for the state. 

As CTO, Dawson directs the Office of Information Technology, which supports IT
for New Jersey agencies. 

Teller described Dawson as ?an ideal fit for this job.? 

Dawson most recently was a vice president of Science Applications International
Corp. of San Diego. Prior to working for SAIC, Dawson had been a senior
executive of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Newark, N.J. 

Earlier in his career, Dawson worked for New Jersey as executive director of
the state lottery. He also held jobs with the state?s Human Services and
Education departments. 

Dawson is a graduate of Princeton University and has a master?s degree in
education from Rutgers University.
***************
Government Computer News
Labor launches the first of OMB?s 24 e-gov projects 
By Jason Miller 

A government benefits portal is the first Office of Management and Budget
e-government initiative to get off the ground. 

The portal, up and running at www.govbenefits.gov, is connected to the FirstGov
portal and consolidates 55 benefits programs through one Web address. The Labor
Department, the project?s managing partner, plans to officially launch the
revved-up site on Monday. 

Users can answer some general questions and a screening tool points them to a
list of benefits programs that likely will meet their needs. 

Labor has included information about the most popular programs in this first
version of the site, such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and student
loan programs. 

?If you tried to look up each of these programs and understand the rules, it
would be like reading the IRS tax code, very dense and complex,? said Ed
Hugler, deputy assistant secretary of Labor for operations and its e-government
project manager. ?The staff that created this Web site reduced the volumes of
complex rules.? 

Hugler said the questions, which were approved by the agencies running the
programs, achieved an 80 percent accuracy rating during testing. 

Labor plans to add more than 200 other programs in 60- to 90-day cycles, he
said.
*****************
Mercury News
Paths to a diverse workforce
TECH FIRMS LOOK BEYOND TRADITIONAL RECRUITING
By Sam Diaz
Mercury News

Silicon Valley tech companies that say they're serious about diversity in the
workforce have followed traditional methods of recruiting minority college
students and creating scholarship and mentoring programs to help draw students
of color to technology careers.

But despite these efforts, companies have had trouble attracting Latinos,
African-Americans and Native-Americans into engineering or leadership
positions.

And while they continue to recruit quality talent from college campuses,
Silicon Valley companies are realizing that they've got to look beyond Stanford
University, the University of California-Berkeley or San Jose State University
for potential employees.

If they really want their campuses to mirror the population of the Santa Clara
Valley, and the world, they'll have to reach deeper: to children just starting
to learn their multiplication tables and to non-tech employees who may be
qualified to take on a entry-level tech position.

Beginning in the science classrooms at districts such as San Jose's Alum Rock
Unified, companies like Hewlett-Packard are working with school officials to
reform grade-school curriculums and create a hands-on approach to mathematics
and sciences, the foundation of engineering careers.

Starting early

``We're looking at strategies so these students can go on to college and
graduate well-prepared,'' said Cathy Lipe, manager of education programs at HP.

And it continues into the middle schools and high schools, where students will
need to be encouraged to take calculus, physics and computer science classes so
they can better compete when they get to college.

``Many times, when these kids go off to college, they have to take a few steps
back because they're not computer literate,'' said Adolfo Reyes, principal of
Academia Clamecac, a tech-oriented charter high school housed at the MACSA
Youth Center in San Jose. ``We are in the heart of the technology industry here
and these kids can be the next group of people to work at Cisco. Their parents
work there now but they're working as janitors, the manual labor in the
computer industry. We've got to get these kids thinking about engineering,
about software design.''

Silicon Valley's efforts are a noble first step but they need some fine-tuning
before the tech industry can enjoy a job candidate pool that's both diverse and
qualified, said Ross Fernandes, Silicon Valley manager for Aquent, a high-tech
job placement service.

Lack of follow-through

The efforts by tech companies, school districts and even government agencies
aren't connecting -- or following through -- in a way that encourages minority
students to take an interest in technology, he said.

``Whose responsibility is it?'' Fernandes said. ``If a company initiates a
program, that's great. But if no one does anything with it, it just gets left
behind.''

And the potential for programs to whither usually increases during a down
economy, when mentors might find themselves in the unemployment line or the
company is forced to slash diversity outreach programs from its budget.

Elizabeth Peregrino, compliance and diversity manager for 3Com, said the fact
that her position has survived cutbacks at the Santa Clara campus is a sign
that 3Com is committed to its diversity efforts.

``Certainly we have all reduced or reconsidered our budgets,'' she said.
``We're actually doing more. We're taking this time to get ready for when it's
not slow. When we ramp up again we don't want to have 2,000 positions and
suddenly find ourselves needing a diversity program.''

Commitment remains

John McSorley, vice president of human resources for graphics card maker
Nvidia, said his company is also committed to diversity, despite the slowdown
in hiring.

``There's good evidence that a diverse workforce results in a better
environmental culture and ultimately a better product,'' he said. ``We don't
believe in quotas but we do believe that we learn from one another.''

And that goes beyond fellow engineers or other techies.

Katherine Tobin, senior research director for Catalyst, a non-profit agency
that studies the advancement of women in leadership positions, said companies
may not know that some of the brightest people -- women and minorities with
entrepreneurial ambitions -- already may be on payroll.

``People box themselves in and they're not taking a risk,'' Tobin said. ``And
companies are just as bad at seeing what other employees could do. They may be
capable of hopping from one profession to another. We need to get women and
people of color to look at different types of assignments. Just because they
work in HR or public relations doesn't mean they can't do something else.''
**********************
MSNBC
Canceling your Internet service:
The hassle of cutting the cord 
By Mylene Mangalindan
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 
 
April 23  With free diskettes and discounts everywhere, Internet providers like
America Online and Juno make it a snap to sign up. But just try canceling.

       IN AN EFFORT TO TEST one of the more frustrating aspects of the online
experience, we set up five new Internet accounts, just so we could turn around
and cancel them. Signing up took as little as seven minutes, but cutting the
cord took up to a half-hour. EarthLink put us on hold for nearly 10 minutes
(listening to a recorded loop of EarthLink ads) before kicking off the actual
cancellation process
      Others make it tough even to figure out how to cancel in the first place.
In industry-speak, it?s called a ?save?  bombarding would-be dropouts with
information, discounts and various other obstacles to try to persuade you to
stay on board. Internet services are doing a lot of that these days, as it gets
tougher to keep customers. Their problem is simple: People are bailing out as
high-speed Internet access (think cable modems) starts getting almost as cheap
as old-fashioned dial-up access that uses a phone line. Indeed, AOL Time
Warner?s president is urging employees to talk customers into keeping their AOL
accounts active even if they switch to faster services from rival cable
companies  in other words, to shell out for two services instead of just one.
       While it?s always nice to feel wanted, in AOL?s case that translated
into a cancellation process that was by far the longest of the five. The
country?s biggest online service has a menu for everything from ?is my billing
information secure? to ?why I can?t cancel my membership online?  but notably,
that particular page doesn?t tell you how to cancel. In fact, we opened nearly
a dozen windows before finally spotting the information on a ?contact AOL toll
free? page.
      Then, on the phone, AOL?s gregarious customer rep wouldn?t let us go
without telling him why we wanted to quit. We said there are too many pop-up
ads; he described how to eliminate them. Then we said AOL?s main screen is too
colorful; so he agreed, calling it ?cartoony.? He argued AOL?s search tools are
better than other search engines  then he told us how to print out coupons.
Ultimately, it took 32 minutes to cancel.
       An AOL spokesman said there are at least five ways to access
customer-service information in ?minutes or less.? He added that
representatives are trained to point out features that subscribers might not be
aware of, because often callers are ?looking for help more than anything else.?
       An executive at EarthLink (where we were on hold for 10 minutes) said
the average wait for service is under three minutes.
       By contrast, AT&T WorldNet and Microsoft?s MSN put the information in
relatively easy-to-find spots. MSN took 16 minutes from start to finish. Its
nicely organized Web site zeroes in on the right information, though we ran
into a small snafu on the phone: The line got cut as the rep was pulling up our
account. We dialed again and rejoined the queue. (MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC
joint venture.)
       But AT&T takes the prize. It and Juno are the only two we tested that
let you cancel online, and AT&T?s is more graceful: A two-screen procedure asks
you why you?re departing, then says: ?We value your opinion and hope to win
back your business some day,? a classy touch. Juno?s online process resembles
AT&T?s except it confronts you with five screens (mostly just entering
passwords and answering questions about why you?re quitting).
      Since AT&T and Juno offer cancellation by phone and online, we decided to
cancel them not once, but twice, to look for the differences. Particularly in
Juno?s case, it was a study in opposites.
       Juno?s online cancellation was quick (12 minutes) and made no effort
whatsoever to keep us in the fold. By contrast, when calling, the whole process
took 21 minutes, including five minutes on hold. But there was a payoff: The
phone rep offered us the best deal of the five to avoid cancellation  two
months of free service.
*******************
MSNBC
Maui to get next-generation wireless 
Maui Sky Fiber plans to target Maui?s 12,000
ISP customers

April 22   It?s fast, portable, affordable  and it?s coming to Maui this
summer: a palm-sized, go-anywhere wireless modem that will give Maui residents
access to one of the nation?s first 3G  or ?third-generation?  broadband
Internet services.

    MAUI SKY FIBRE LLC, a startup based at the Maui Research and Technology
Park, plans to launch its 3G network and begin selling portable modems in June,
said Managing Director Steve Berkoff. The company has six investors that will
put up a total of $3 million by the end of the year, Berkoff said.
       Maui will be first in the nation to deploy 3G broadband technology in
the commercial market, Berkoff said. The service and accompanying wireless
modem will give users Internet speeds comparable to those offered by
AOL/TimeWarner?s Road Runner or through digital-subscriber lines  at
near-dial-up prices, Berkoff said.
       The modem is the size of a Palm Pilot and plugs into a desktop computer,
laptop, office or home network and provides an instant high-speed Internet
connection, Berkoff said.
       ?You buy the modem, go online to register and activate it and have
instant high-speed connection to the Internet,? he said. ?There?s no need to
schedule an installation and wait for somebody to show up.?
       Maui Sky Fibre plans to offer packages to residents and businesses.
       ?Our basic high-speed package for residential users will start around
$30 per month,? Berkoff said.
       The modem should cost less than $200, he said, depending on contract
length. ?We are still working out these numbers and will have promotional
specials in the beginning,? he said.
       The technology doesn?t require line-of-sight, like point-to-point
wireless systems, Berkoff explained, but works on licensed frequencies in the
multipoint, multichannel distribution system  MMDS  band.
      Berkoff isn?t worried about competition.
       ?We control the licenses in Maui on the MMDS band,? Berkoff said. ?No
one can compete with us. Our service will blow away Road Runner and DSL. We
have a tremendous amount of bandwidth. It will run all the way up to T-1
service and beyond.?
Oceanic TimeWarner Cable welcomes the competition, said Kiman Wong, general
manager of Internet service for the company.
       ?We?ll see if they can provide services that are competitive with our
products,? Wong said. ?We are always concerned about providing the best service
we can at an affordable price. We charge $44.95 for residential ISP service.
Customers can choose from RoadRunner, AOL or EarthLink.?
BANKING ON MOBILE BROADBAND?S APPEAL
       Maui Sky Fiber plans to target Maui?s 12,000-plus ISP customers,
currently serviced by Maui Net Inc., Maui Gateway LLC and Hawaii Online.
       ?The person we are going to be very attractive to is the guy who has a
$20-a-month dial-up account, plus another $25 for a phone line,? Berkoff said.
?A lot of people have second phone lines just to support their dial-up service.
Those are the guys we want to go after because we will increase their speed and
save them money. And their account will be portable. They can take it with them
wherever they go on Maui.?
       As more 3G networks are built across the country, users will be able to
roam with the service, as people now do with cell phones, Berkoff said.
       ?The service is mobile and always on,? said Jon Hambidge, senior
director of marketing for California-based IPWireless Inc., which developed the
modems Maui Sky Fiber will use. ?You could be on a boat between Kihei and
Lahaina going 80 miles per hour downloading a movie and it would be just like
having a DSL line.?
       Berkoff formerly was CEO of Oahu Wireless Cable, which owned several of
the MMDS band licenses on Oahu but sold them along with its wireless cable
business to GTE in 1997, he said. GTE, which later became Verizon, sold the
business and licenses to Canada-based Craig Broadcast Systems Inc. last year.
      ?Controlling the licenses on Maui made it an easy decision as to where to
deploy the service, because it requires a licensed spectrum from the Federal
Communications Commission,? Berkoff said.
       The FCC hasn?t yet designated a specific frequency for 3G products, said
Derek Sakaguchi, general manager of Craig Wireless, which offers wireless cable
television service.
       ?Because the FCC has not designated a 3G frequency, companies [in the
United States] that have lots of money will begin to develop and deploy 3G
technologies on frequencies they control or own,? Sakaguchi said, which is what
Maui Sky Fiber has done.
       ?We are using 3G technology in the MMDS-spectrum band,? said Hambidge.
?There are two splits in the 3G standard. One is CDMA 2000 and the other UMTS.
On an international basis, UMTS is where 80 percent of the world is going. Maui
Sky Fiber uses UMTS 3G technology in the MMDS-spectrum band.?
       There are 33 frequencies in the MMDS band, Sakaguchi added.
       ?Each county has its own licensing scheme, which includes these 33
frequencies that are broken into letter groups,? Sakaguchi said. ?Who owns them
is another story.?
       On Oahu, Craig Wireless owns five of the 33 frequencies. The others are
owned by an assortment of educational institutions, the Roman Catholic Church
and Molokai Network, Sakaguchi said.
       Maui Sky Fiber?s wireless modem measures 4.5 by 3.5 by .075 inches,
according to Hambidge.
       ?You can take it to a home, an office, the beach, anywhere,? Berkoff
said. ?If a businessperson has multiple stores, he or she can travel to them
and maintain their connectivity with a single account.?
       The company also plans to target vacationers and business travelers.
       ?We are going to be offering the modem to guests at hotels when they
check in,? Berkoff said. ?They?ll be able to rent it on a daily basis and use
it anywhere on the island we can provide coverage, which will definitely
include the resort areas and the coast, as well as Kahului, Wailuku and
Upcountry. We?ll also expand to Molokai and Lanai as the system grows.?
       Maui Sky Fibre currently is building a cellular antenna network to
support its 3G service.
       ?We hope to build eight of these sites by June,? Berkoff said.
?Eventually, we plan to have 12 to 14 cell sites. We will be demonstrating our
first cell site here in Kihei on the top of the incubator on April 22.?
       Though the network can also be used for cellular phone service, Maui Sky
Fiber has no plans to offer it at this time, Berkoff said.
       ?It?s not in our business model,? he said. ?We are open to anything in
the future, if the demand is there.?
******************
MSNBC
Next Frontiers

April 29 issue   Glitzy tech firms in Silicon Valley tend to get all the
attention. But away from that spotlight, all sorts of companiesfrom a winery in
Oregon to a car-seat maker in Detroit to a start-up airline in New Yorkare
using technology to push ahead in business, transform their industries and
change our lives.

JETBLUE AIRWAYS 
        Wired for Takeoff, All the Way to Salt Lake 
        Millions of people work at home each day, but few have a better view
from their office window than Jill Smith. In the distance are the snow-topped
peaks of Utah?s Wasatch Front. But Smith is more taken by beauty of a different
kind: the sight of her four kids playing in the cul-de-sac out front. It?s just
one of the many perks she enjoys as a home-based reservation agent for JetBlue
Airways. ?You don?t have to buy lunch, pay for day care or buy new work
clothes,? says Smith, 37. ?It?s perfect.?
     In the global, wired economy, it?s hardly unusual for companies to set up
reservation offices or telephone help desks in far-flung cities, even foreign
countries. But JetBlue, based at New York?s Kennedy airport, is unusual in its
commitment: its entire force of 550 reservation agents work from the comfort of
their own homes, all around Salt Lake City. Why there? David Neeleman,
JetBlue?s founder, had previously run Morris Air from the area until it was
sold to Southwest Airlines in 1993. Neeleman promised his agents jobs if he
ever started a new airline. JetBlue, which started flying in February 2000,
gives its home workers a computer, but requires them to pay about $45 a month
for two phone lines to handle calls and dial into the booking system. ?It?s a
small price,? says Smith, who makes reservations 25 hours a week in her
slippers. (She makes about $9 an hour; starting pay is $7.75.) JetBlue doesn?t
fuss about a dress code, but insists that callers not be treated to the sounds
of domestic bliss, like crying kids. Supervisors monitor calls occasionally to
make sure that all a customer hears is a friendly voice and a clicking
keyboard.
       The savings from running a home-based reservation center helped the
airline report its first profit a mere six months after its first flight. A low
cost structure is key to its goal of replicating the runaway success of
Southwest. Among smaller, low-fare carriersincluding Frontier, Spirit and
AirTranJetBlue wins the low-cost derby. Investors like its chances. The airline
went public two weeks ago in the year?s hottest initial stock offering, with
shares rising from $27 to $45. Neeleman says that JetBlue saves 20 percent per
flight booked by using home agents instead of a call center (another bonus:
happy workers mean a low turnover rate of about 10 percent). ?It?s so
valuable,? Neeleman says. Adds aviation consultant Stuart Klaskin: ?The home
reservation system is an integral example of Neeleman?s out-of-the-box
thinking.?
        Another example of that thinking: Neeleman gives all JetBlue pilots and
technicians a laptop computer so they can get procedure changes online from the
FAA. That way, there?s no chance they?ll miss a memo the first step to making
sure the airline is never fined for an infraction or grounded altogether.
Neeleman expects more, of course. He?s banking on steady and strong growth from
his fledgling airlinethe same kind of growth that JetBlue?s reservation agents
in Salt Lake expect to see every day from their kids.
       Bret Begun 
        
WILLAKENZIE ESTATE 
       A Big Step Forward For an Ancient Art 
        Bernie Lacroute knows a thing or two about technology. At Digital
Equipment, he helped develop the Ethernet and VAX. At Sun Microsystems, he was
second in command during its growth spurt. But after he made his fortune and
semiretired more than 10 years ago, the native of Burgundy decided to pursue
his love of the pinot family of grapes, and opened the WillaKenzie Estate
winery in Yamhill, Ore.
       Wine making is an ancient art, but Lacroute didn?t cork up his
innovative impulses. He trained his eye on the way wineries mix the juice of
grapes in tanks during fermentation with the ?cap? of skins and seeds on the
surface. The cap, which can be as thick as 12 inches, contains the tannins that
give wine its color and flavor. The most gentle method of extracting tannins is
the foot stomp (think ?I Love Lucy? reruns), but most wineries use handheld
?jackhammer? devices. Lacroute worried that the machines were much too rough on
his grapes, and longed for a kinder, gentler way. ?I knew we could do one
better,? says Lacroute.
        His solution: Big Foot, a 1,000-pound, pneumatically controlled,
microprocessor-driven grape stomper. Big Foot and its three stainless feet move
on a rail system above a dozen tanks, stomping each tank for about 20 minutes,
two to three times a day, for about two weeks. ?It?s so perfect because these
plunges are gentle and replicable, whether it?s 7 in the morning or 10 at
night,? says Laurent Montalieu, the head wine maker. Lacroute won?t patent Big
Foot, preferring to give the specs away. The device is used in wineries in
Washington, California and New Zealand.
        The real payoff of Big Foot?s work is in the bottle, and WillaKenzie
has won many accolades from wine connoisseurs as it?s quadrupled in size over
the past six years to 15,000 cases of wine annually. So Lacroute says it?s now
time to kick back. ?I?m from Burgundy and I don?t play golf,? he says. ?What I
do is drink wine.? That is, until the spirit moves him to invent something
else.
       Joan Raymond 
        
MEN?S WEARHOUSE 
        Thank You, We?re Done, Please Come Back Soon 
        The Men?s Wearhouse recognizes that most men hate to shop. So the
company has done everything it can to make buying clothes as quick as a
commercial break during ?Monday Night Football.?
        It?s a huge bet. The company recently spent almost $10 million on
tailor-made software for touch-screen registers to shave minutes off the time
it takes to help customers. If one store is out of stock of a particular jacket
size, for example, there?s no need to call aroundthe system provides instant
access to the inventory of every one of the chain?s 600 stores. If a customer
needs directions to another store, an employee can immediately link to Mapquest
on the Internet. Questions about Jones of New York suits? Employees can simply
visit its Web site to find answers to any question customers might throw their
way. ?We wanted to make their experience as painless and informative as
possible,? says Jeff Marshall, the company?s chief information officer and
architect of the system.
      The most unusual time-saving feature of the new registers is a
fingerprint scanner that lets managers make returns and exchanges more swiftly
because the computer instantly recognizes them. With the old system, employees
had to go through several screens and passwords to handle returns. The
fingerprint scanners also help the chain cut down on losses from theft. ?I know
who is in the register, when they were in it and what transactions took place
when they were in it,? says Marshall.
        Industry experts say Men?s Wearhouse?s homegrown approach to technology
is unusual. ?Most retailers are users, not creators,? says Cathy Hotka, vice
president for information technology at the National Retail Federation. ?They
saw a different reality and they went out and created the technology to support
it.?
        Because the system is only six months old, it?s hard for the company to
measure whether it?s translating directly to more sales. Besides, guys
generally aren?t known for communicating their feelings about a shopping
experience, other than saying ?Are we done yet?? But if the answer to that
question is a quicker ?yes,? that could buy Men?s Wearhouse a lot of loyal
customers.
       Suzanne Smalley 
       
GREENPOINT MORTGAGE FUNDING, LLC 
        Appraise This: A Faster Way to Buy a Home 
        You know the drill. You?re in the middle of buying or selling a home,
and it?s time to schedule the appraisal. Suddenly, your stress meter, already
humming, starts peaking. Appraisers, after all, can undermine a deal by scaring
away lenders if they decide that the home you so desperately want to buy or
sell is overpriced. It?s a privilege for which you can pay $300 or more. In a
busy market, even getting an appraiser to show up can take weeks, adding to the
anxiety.
        Now a new computer tool is quickly gaining popularity in the
real-estate business that lets you worry less about appraisals and more about
ripping down that ugly wallpaper. It?s called automated valuation modeling
(AVM), and it basically does for homes what credit scoring has done for people:
it reduces them to a number that lenders can use to make snap judgments. Banks
have spent years building databases of old appraisals and comparable sale
prices in different neighborhoods and regions, and can now apply complex
formulas to all that data to determine in minutes whether a property is priced
right. No appraisers needed. Time saved. Money saved.
        Greenpoint Mortgage is among the early adopters of AVM. It loaned out a
record $26 billion in mortgages last year, and has raised its share of the
mortgage market in two years from 0.8 percent to 1.3 percent, thanks in part to
the appeal of computer tools like AVM, which lowers the cost of an appraisal to
$50 and can be done in a day. ?This is a really competitive market, and it
makes a huge difference to be able to process more loans quickly,? says company
president S. A. Ibrahim. He expects that in two to five years his company will
be able to give near-instant answers on mortgages to some borrowers.
        Mortgage heavyweights Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae started using AVM a
few years ago with tentative steps. They?ve been using it to approve less risky
loans, such as refinancings, small second mortgages and loans to borrowers who
boast enviable credit ratings and are planning to plunk down hefty down
payments. ?The models have gotten better and better,? says Peter Maselli, a
senior vice president at Freddie Mac. Now if only somebody could invent a
computer program that will help pack and unpack all those moving boxes.
       Linda Stern 
       
VIRGIN ENTERTAINMENT, NORTH AMERICA 
        Road Test: Taking the Music for a Quick Spin 
        It?s not easy for brick-and-mortar music retailers these days. More
people are downloading free music from the Internet. Online music sellers are
slashing prices, eating into profits. Business is particularly difficult for
enormous music outlets like the Virgin Megastores that devote tons of floor
space to obscure recordings by world musicians. How can Virgin hope to sell
enough of these eclectic tunes to turn a decent profit?
        Virgin may have found an answer. Jan de Jong, the company?s vice
president for information technology, persuaded his bosses to try out
electronic kiosks in Virgin?s stores that allow customers to sample 30-second
snippets from a database of approximately 250,000 CDs. The experiment began
last year in two of the chain?s outlets and was considered a huge success.
Virgin executives found that when customers come into a store with a specific
album in mind, they?re three times as likely to actually purchase the product
if they give it a test drive. ?The biggest problem we have as a music retailer
is that we sell a product that is shrink-wrapped,? says de Jong. ?You can look
at it, smell it and see it, but not hear it.? The company now has about 15 of
the $5,000 kiosks in each of four stores, and plans to install them in every
one of its 22 outlets in the United States and Canada by next year.
        The kiosks also help customers help themselves, a big advantage
considering the enormous size of Virgin?s music stores, which average about
60,000 square feet. ?Retailers can no longer hire enough people to keep the
store open, much less to understand all of the different styles, from Celtic to
rap,? says Dan Hopping, one of the IBM retail specialists who helped design the
technology. ?The kiosk is always on and is always an expert.? In addition to
track sampling, the kiosks provide reviews from industry magazines like Spin,
Vibe, Mix Mag and Rolling Stone, as well as pictures of the artists, track
listings and album credits.
       The music is streamed into the kiosks via the Internet by a database
company called Muze. Some Internet companies allow customers to download songs,
but few offer the depth of selection that Virgin boasts. At Amazon.com, for
example, you can sample only 15,000 songs, just 6 percent of the total
available at a Virgin store kiosk. The process is simple, too. Customers scan a
CD?s bar code and tap the touch screen to choose the song snippets they want to
hear. Susie Phillips, 31, was wearing out the kiosks recently at the Virgin
Megastore in New York?s Times Square. ?I was like, ?Woo-hoo!? when I saw it.
These are artists that I know, but albums that I?m not familiar with, and I
don?t want to spend 80 bucks without hearing it,? said Phillips, waving the
four CDs she was thinking of buying. ?It?s instant gratification.? For Virgin
executives, the instant gratification comes when customers like Phillips head
to the checkout line.
       Suzanne Smalley 
       
RIVERDALE MILLS 
        Good Lobster Traps Make Good Fences 
        Riverdale Mills made its name by building a better lobster trap. But
since September 11, the small Massachusetts company has become better known for
its security fences. Using the same plastic-coated wire mesh found on its
lobster traps, Riverdale came up with a fence with such tiny openings that it
is virtually impossible to scale or cut. Its WireWall already rings many
American prisons and protects Kuwait?s border with Iraq. After the terrorist
attacks, governments and companies around the world clamored to protect
themselves with Riverdale?s fence, driving up sales roughly tenfold. ?Nobody
uses wooden lobster traps anymore,? brags Jim Knott, Riverdale?s salty
72-year-old founder. ?And nobody?s going to be using chain-link fences for
security anymore, either.?
        Trapping seafood and making fences are hardly the type of businesses
typically associated with cutting-edge technology. But for 24 years, Knott has
outfitted his old paper mill with high-tech machinery that can spit out 400,000
lobster traps and miles of fencing a year. Knott?s lobster traps now control 90
percent of the market. And his business employs more than 100 workers and does
over $20 million in annual sales. ?What we?ve done has never been very flashy,?
he says. ?But it?s always worked and we?ve always found a way to make it
better.?
        Before Knott came along, fishermen caught lobsters the same way they
had for centurieswith wooden traps. But while toiling at a New England company
making plastic stethoscope tubes in the 1950s, Knott came up with an idea for a
new way to make lobster traps, based on the same method stethoscope tubes were
formedby dipping metal wires into plastic. Knott, who caught lobsters as a
child growing up in Gloucester, Mass., figured that plastic-coated wire mesh
would make a more durable lobster trap than wood, which rots in salt water. But
for the next two decades, Knott was unable to persuade a company to back his
idea. So in 1978, he borrowed money, bought a dilapidated mill and invested in
new machinery to crank out lobster traps.
        At first Knott couldn?t even give away his newfangled traps. ?Lobster
fishermen aren?t real quick to change,? he says. Finally Knott?s traps caught
on after he persuaded the best fishermen in the area, known as the highliners,
to give them a try. To make new-age lobster traps, Knott designed the
production line to use automatic welders to make the wire mesh and galvanize
and coat the trap with plastic. Now that WireWall has become his hottest
product, Knott?s spending big to boost production. In December, he installed a
$2 million welder that churns out 10-foot-wide ribbons of fencing. And now he?s
putting a 126,000-square-foot addition on his old mill. Knott isn?t worried
about expanding in an uncertain economy. These days, security and seafood are
growth businesses.
       Patrick Crowley 
        
PIXAR ANIMATION STUDIOS 
        Enough Pixels. Time For Comedy Class 
        Exactly 2,320,413 computer-animated hairs make up the purple and blue
fur covering Sully, the oversized star of the hit comedy ?Monsters, Inc.? Pixar
Animation Studios has developed software, called Fizt, that can make each
strand curl on command. But before a single lock was attached to Sully?s skin,
Pixar?s filmmakers spent more than two years combing through the movie?s
script, making sure no story strand was out of place. Only then was the new
software launched, and Sully brought to life. ?Here, the art challenges the
technology, and the technology inspires the art,? says John Lasseter, the
executive vice president who oversees Pixar?s creative efforts.
        Pixar, the maker of ?A Bug?s Life? and the ?Toy Story? films, is
undoubtedly Hollywood?s highest-tech storyteller. It?s also one of its most
reliable hit machines, as Pixar?s four films have generated an average gross of
$216 million. But what really separates Pixar from the pack is that even with
so many cutting-edge tools at its disposal, it moves at an Amish pace, working
as many as five years on a single film, releasing a new movie only every 18
months. Distressed by early story problems on both ?Toy Story 2? and ?Monsters,
Inc.,? for example, Pixar rebooted with new scripts.
        Hitching 21st-century technology to old-fashioned storytelling has
often been a messy marriage: more pixels than plot leaves you with ?Final
Fantasy,? a computer-generated sci-fi dud released last year. To make sure
technology is not Pixar?s driving force, Pixar is pushing programmers harder
than ever, and also encouraging them to abandon their workstations to study
sculpting, figure drawing, screenwriting and improvisational comedy. Pixar?s
light-filled offices were designed to force employees to mingle, even on their
way to the restroom. It?s part of a strategy aimed at breaking down walls, even
within job duties. ?No one is saying ?Just shut up and do your job?,? says Pete
Docter, the director of ?Monsters.? The design of one of Docter?s ?Monsters?
creatures, for instance, was hatched by software developers writing new
computer language to animate fur.
        With such success, you might think all the competing studios would have
plundered Pixar like an unguarded vaultwhich, technically, it is, since unlike
at every other studio nobody besides Lasseter works under contract. So far
everyone is staying put. ?A piece of paper won?t keep them here,? Lasseter
says. ?You want their heart here. So you make them creatively satisfied.? As is
Pixar?s audience.
       John Horn 
       
LEAR CORP. 
       Testing Data by the Seat of Your Pants 
        The test lab of car-seat maker Lear Corp. is like something from a
Woody Allen science-fiction movie. Giant robotic arms with plastic attachments
representing human buttocks repeatedly swivel on and off seats, testing their
durability. In another area of the lab, college kids, housewives and senior
citizens rest their rumps on car seats covered with sensors, as nearby Lear
researchers scrutinize computer images of the testers? cheeks that look like
Doppler weather maps. For their expert opinions on Lear?s designs, the testers
get $25 per car and the pride in knowing they?ve left a lasting imprint on the
world?s car seats. ?Comfort in a seat is a high priority for me,? boasts Tracy
Merlo, a 43-year-old homemaker from Livonia, Mich., who?s been testing Lear?s
seats for four years.
   In the highly technical, and yet still subjective, business of designing car
seats, this is the ultimate seat-of-the-pants test. Automakers and their
suppliers like to brag that they can design and test cars entirely on computer,
without ever touching pen to paper or building a running prototype. But Lear?s
human seat testers underscore the need for interaction between computers and
human beings. The opinions of real people are the ?reality check? for the
data-driven design process. If people can?t feel the difference, there?s no
point in changing a seat design just because a computer measures a difference.
    Lear credits the human touch with helping it design seats that J.D. Power
has deemed among the best in the auto industry. With nearly $14 billion in
annual sales, Detroit-based Lear is the world?s largest car-seat maker. But as
auto sales have slowed, Lear has slashed production. Still, it isn?t cutting
back on human research. Four days a week, testers file into Lear?s lab in the
Detroit suburb of Southfield. They settle into seats covered with two thin
matsone for the bottom and one for the back. Different colors on the computer
screen signify degrees of pressure. Designers use that data to sculpt seats
that fit like a glove.
    Bonny Thomas, who oversees Lear?s consumer research, has even taken Lear?s
research on the road. She has mapped bottoms in Europe and Asia. And besides
gathering important data to build better seats, Thomas has discovered an
interesting physiological difference among seat sitters around the world.
Americans, she says, have the largest rear ends in the world.
   Tanya Irwin 
   
TARGET STORES 
    Taking a Swipe at the Problem of Coupons 
    So, when was the last time you sat down and painstakingly went through all
the fliers in your newspaper and cut out coupons? Can?t remember, right?
Executives at Target know firsthand that very few people actually clip coupons.
To this discount retailer, paper coupons are a waste of money because they?re
expensive to produce and even more expensive to distribute.
    Enter the paperless coupon, which Target claims will revolutionize the way
it does business. Here?s how it?s supposed to work. Customers will use their
home computer to download offers onto a Target credit card embedded with a
computer chip, using a card reader that the chain will provide free of charge.
Shoppers can then redeem the electronic discount at their local Target store.
    The goal is to personalize promotions. If you buy thousands of dollars?
worth of electronics from Target, executives will then reward you with a
reduced price on the latest tech gadget as an incentive to spend even more. Buy
enough Target clothing and get frequent-flier points. Purchase a phone and earn
free cellular minutes. Customers can also let the technology do all the
bookkeeping as they rack up points on various reward programs.
    These kinds of promotions will help give Target executives insights into
buying patterns. ?It?s not just ?get 30 cents off?,? says Jerry Storch,
Target?s vice chairman. ?If we give a bunch of people an offer and they use it
once and never use the product again, then that?s not a smart offer. The whole
point of couponing is to get trial.? Storch adds that the money Target will
save by tossing out the old system of paper coupons (98 percent of which are
thrown out) can be used to attract partners for special promotions. The savings
will also help Target lower prices to survive and thrive in the cutthroat price
wars with other discount retailers. ?It?s an effort to be constantly lowering
prices,? he says.
    Target has already issued more than 2.5 million of the chip-embedded cards,
making it the largest issuer of smart Visas in the country. And while retailers
have generally struggled to find a killer app for smart-card technology, Target
expects it will be the exception. ?Target is the first major retailer that has
taken smart cards? potential and tied it into promoting their products,? says
Andy Vanderhoof, the president of the Smart Card Alliance, an industry trade
group. ?What they are doing is trailblazing.? If Target can really make this
new system work, it will earn the familiar bull?s-eye it uses for a logo.
   Suzanne Smalley 
   
LO-Q PLC
   Step Aside: A New Line on ?Civilized Waiting?
   A decade ago Leonard Sim, a British engineer, stood in line with his wife and
two sons for two hot, miserable, sweaty hours for the Little Mermaid ride at
Universal?s theme park in Orlando. When they finally made it to the front, they
learned that the ride would be out of order for the rest of the day. Fed up,
Sim?s wife challenged him to come up with a better way.
   It took a little more sweat, but Sim finally came up with a solutiona
pagerlike device, dubbed the Q-bot, that lets people reserve a place in line
and then roam around a park until it?s their turn to board. Sim now has theme
parks lining up to use it. Six Flags officials say they started last season
with 60 Q-bots at their Atlanta test siteand ended up ordering 740 more because
the system was so successful. This year Six Flags is rolling out Q-bots at
eight more of its theme parks. ?The No. 1 complaint at the park is, ?Gosh, it?s
a great park, but if we just didn?t have to wait for the rides?,? says John
Odum, general manager of Six Flags Over Georgia. ?Now they don?t have to wait.?
   Virtual queuing, as Sim calls it, starts with visitors to a theme park
renting a Q-bot for the day ($10 for the device, plus $10 for each member of
the family that shares it). They can then set their place in line by pointing
the device at a special box by the entrances to the most popular rides. Now
they?re free to wander the park until the Q-bot chirps and vibrates to alert
them to a screen message that says it?s time to head toward, say, the Batman
ride at Six Flags Over Georgia. Robert Ulrich and his 14-year-old son, Sam, are
among the 80,000 visitors who?ve tried the Q-bot. ?It?s civilized waiting,?
says Ulrich. To keep fisticuffs at busy theme parks to a minimum, the system
won?t let Q-bot users ?jump? the queue and cut ahead of people who are waiting
the old-fashioned way.
   The Q-bot system knows where each visitor is at all times, which makes
?proximity marketing? easy. The Q-bot signals when it knows a family is near a
certain restaurant, for example, and offers a discount to get them to chow
down. ?It?s immediate advertising,? says Sim, whose two-year-old British
company employs 23 people. And this year Six Flags Over Georgia is testing the
tracking feature to help parents find lost children (kids would wear a special
wristband).
   Sim expects that theme parks in Europe will soon catch on to his technology.
But for now he?s focused on the United States, home to half the world?s theme
parks, not to mention people who are generally ?a bit more entrepreneurial and
open to new things,? he says. Sim?s wife, by the way, has said she would like
her husband to turn his energies to finding a way to make shopping more
pleasurable. He?s working on it.
   Karen Springen
   
BETH ISRAEL DEACONESS MEDICAL CENTER 
    A Tech Transplant for the Emergency Room 
    It might be a great prop for the set of ?ER.? But as an organizational
tool, the dry-erase board that helps emergency doctors and nurses keep track of
patients is as outdated as using leeches as a cure-all. The big, white boards
aren?t very user-friendly either: patient anonymity is sacrificed; they?re
prone to human error and they?re tough to update when juggling a lot of sick
people.
    Who better to figure out a solution than some techies with medical degrees?
That?s what happened at Boston?s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center when
three doctors put their heads together to devise a new system. The result: an
?electronic dashboard,? a four-foot-wide, color-coded, wireless plasma display
to replace the Jurassic white board in Beth Israel?s emergency department. It?s
a study in primary colors: red, blue and green (with shades of pink and blue
thrown in for patient gender). The colors are geared to the severity of the
complaint: red for the most serious, green for less-urgent cases.
    The doctors didn?t stop there. They completely rewired Beth Israel?s new
emergency department, which opened last July. ?That was a perfect opportunity
to get in there and do some things right,? says Dr. Larry Nathanson, a
full-time emergency doctor who led the team that developed the system, at a
cost of roughly $200,000. ?So we jumped on it.?
    A patient is first met by clerks who load his registration data into a
laptop. That information is immediately transferred to the dashboard. As
doctors examine patients (whose names appear on the board as initials only),
they enter their orders and diagnoses into wireless laptopsagain automatically
updating the dashboard. For example, ?XR? indicates X-rays. That bar will turn
green when a patient?s X-rays are complete. ?CC? stands for chief complaint.
These terminals talk to the hospital?s Legacy systemits central databaseso
personnel have immediate access to medical histories, too. And each doctor is
equipped with a wireless phone that receives office callseliminating the need
for overhead paging.
    Nathanson, who did fellowships in medicine at Harvard and medical
informatics at Beth Israel, plans to extend the use of the dashboard to
disaster-response teams. They currently keep their records on paper, he says.
Instead, data could be recorded via satellite-networked laptops, providing
real-time situation updates to a ?dashboard? at a central command post. Such a
system could even provide immediate data analysis during and after a disaster
to help spot patterns that might suggest the presence of biological or chemical
agents.
    For now, Nathanson, whose many hats include handling clinical research and
development for Beth Israel?s parent company, CareGroup Health System, is still
refining the new technology to help reduce overcrowding in emergency
departments. With too many patients, too few nurses and not enough beds,
hospitals like Beth Israel are often forced to close their doors for several
hours, and ?divert? patients to other hospitals.  
     According to Nathanson, the dashboard has already reduced the number of
hours during which Beth Israel had to divert patientsit dropped to 40 hours
during a recent six-month stretch, compared with an average of more than 450
hours at other nearby facilities over the same period. And Nathanson estimates
staff has cut out 30 minutes of wasted time per shift searching for all the
information that?s needed to treat or release patients. For the 60,000 patients
who come to Beth Israel?s emergency department every year, it can also save a
few hours of waiting time. ?I can actually spend more time with my patients
now,? says Nathanson. ?That?s good medicine.? And that?s just what the doctor
programmed.
**********************
MSNBC
I?ll Help Myself 
 
Companies are always looking just over the horizon for the next great
innovation. But often the best ideas come from a smart new spin on devices that
are right under our noseslike checkout scanners and magnetic-card readers 
 
By Daniel McGinn
NEWSWEEK 
 
April 29 issue  It?s fun to gee-whiz over new technology, to ?Wow!? at the
latest gizmos and to dream of devices that never were and ask, ?Why not??

        OUR AFFECTION FOR FUTURIST GEAR fuels our love of science fiction
(think we?ll ever have a transporter room like Kirk and Spock?) and can shower
wealth on inventors and investors. But in a world where that $400 Palm you
bought last fall is so five minutes ago, let?s take a breath and celebrate
something that feels terribly unsexy: older technology. It?s not as cool as
Wi-Fi or Java, but spend time in stores and on factory floors, and it?s clear
that many of the machines that are transforming the way companies do business
owe much to technology that debuted during the Reagan era, not the Internet
Age.
       Just step into the Big Kmart in Braintree, Mass. During peak times,
cashiers used to work all the store?s 18 checkout aisles. But since September,
customers have been able to check themselves out in four lanes that use
scan-it-yourself machines. Manager Daniel Ferrie says 44 percent of his store?s
sales are now handled without a cashier. Kmart hopes the quicker service will
help its 1,000 stores using the technology steal sales from convenience stores
like the nearby 7-Eleven. ?The whole point is convenience for the customer, to
push more merchandise through,? Ferrie says. Although he hasn?t cut back on
cashiers, it?s no secret where the trend line is heading. Higher sales, lower
labor costs: listen closely, and you may hear the U.S. productivity rate
ratchet a notch higher.
        Self-checkout machineswhich after a few years of testing, made their
biggest leap into supermarkets, Wal-Marts and Home Depots in the past yearare
often disorienting the first time a shopper encounters one. But beneath the
nifty facade lies a bunch of technologies that are decidedly old-school. Its
main componentsa scanner, a scale, a touch screen, a cash accepter/dispenser
and a credit-card readerhave been around for at least a decade. Mike Webster,
general manager of the NCR division that sells the FastLane self-scanner,
admits there was no silver bullet that allowed NCR and its competitors to pull
these elements together into a single unit. Instead, the big breakthrough came
in a creative ideacan?t any schmo scan a loaf of bread?followed by small
refinements to make these disparate elements work together faster, more
seamlessly, and without taking up too much floor space. Webster sees his
product as an elegant solution to a simple problem. ?As customers we?re all so
frustrated when we see 30 checkout lanes and only six are open,? he says. He
hopes his $20,000 to $30,000 machines will render that feeling obsolete.
        That it takes managers a long time to fully utilize new technology
shouldn?t be surprising. Economists have been studying this ineptness among
businesses for decades. They dubbed it the ?productivity paradox,? and it?s
often summarized by a quote from Nobel laureate Robert Solow: ?We see computers
everywhere except in productivity statistics.? He?s describing how, even as
companies spent billions on technology during the 1970s and 1980s, researchers
were unable to find any link between those investments and higher revenues,
more productive employees or a higher stock price. It appeared IT was a black
hole, and it wasn?t clear whether these investments would ever pay a return.
        By the mid-1990s researchers began to find the first evidence that
companies were finally seeing a payoff, says Harvard Business School professor
Andrew McAfee. Managers had rethought their businesses to make better use of
the increasingly pervasive technology. It?s a slow process: research showed
that it often took seven years from the time a company began installing a
high-tech innovationlike a fancy database that disburses customer information
throughout a companyto the time it began to pay dividends. And it?s not just
computers or software, says McAfee, who notes there was a 20-year lag from the
invention of the steam engine to the real start of the Industrial Revolution.
?These things take time,? he says.
        One example of this circuitous route is every shopper?s favorite
device: the automated teller machine. When the first ATMs rolled out in the
early 1970s, they were a technological breakthrough; the magnetic-card reader
had been invented only a few years earlier. But despite heady talk of a
soon-to-come tellerless era, it took many years for banks to turn ATMs into a
competitive advantage, says consultant George Albright of Speer & Associates.
Banks placed the first ATMs inside branches, eliminating their best feature
(24/7 access); once inside, customers went straight to tellers. By the late
1980s banks had begun placing ATMs in off-site locationsin supermarkets or
mallsand charging fees for their usage, turning them into profit centers. But
labor-cost reductions have proved elusive, partly because even today, 15
percent of customers still don?t use ATMs, Albright figures. Why did it take
banks so long to make this device work to their advantage? Don?t blame the
technology. ?From a marketing perspective, bankers just didn?t see the
possibilities,? Albright says.
       The same slow cycle has played out at gas stations. There?s nothing
terribly challenging about pumping gas; that?s why a few gas stations began
experimenting with self-service refueling in the late 1940s. Despite the huge
potential in labor savings, it proved slow going. ?For years this industry
never believed that women would get out of their car and pump gas,? says Roger
Dreyer, president of the Ohio Petroleum Marketers Association. It took more
than 20 years for self-service gas to catch on, and by the 1980s the gasoline
companies had another potential breakthrough: computerized ?pay at the pump?
systems that would let folks use credit cards to buy gasoline without ever
entering the gas station?s office. That technology worked just fine, but gas
companies proceeded very slowly. After all, if people could avoid going inside,
they wouldn?t buy the coffee, cigarettes and gum that are key to many stations?
profits. Even so, Mobilnow Exxon-Mobilplunged ahead, and sales inside its
stores actually increased as shorter lines made more people willing to shop.
?It drove more business into the storewho knew?? says ExxonMobil executive Mike
Goldberg. But the slow rollout meant the devices didn?t fully catch on until
the mid-?90s.
        Emboldened by that success, Mobil moved more quickly on its next
low-tech/high-tech gambit. Since World War II, planes have used a technology
called radio-frequency identification devices so radar could recognize them. In
the mid-1990s Mobil tried putting a small RFID tag on a key chain, hooking the
tag into its central billing computer and letting customers wave their keys in
front of pumps to pay, instead of fumbling in purses or wallets for a credit
card. Launched nationally in 1997, the Speedpass system cut the average
3.5-minute transaction by 30 seconds. Speedpass customers, driven by the
convenience, began spending 20 percent more at Mobil; today 5.5 million people
use Speedpass, and it accounts for nearly 20 percent of the company?s gas
sales. ?The technology itself had probably been around a decade or a couple of
decades,? says Joe Giordano, who invented the system. But harnessing it in a
new way helped spur sales, and ExxonMobil is cutting deals with McDonald?s,
supermarkets and pharmacies to let customers pay with a key chain in their
stores (debiting a checking account or credit card), too. The goal, says
Goldberg: ?To make it ubiquitous.?
        None of these examples suggests that more cutting-edge
innovationswireless PDAs, Web-browsing mobile phones, ?data mining?
softwarewon?t play a role in helping 21st-century businesses squeeze more sales
out of fewer resources. Instead, they demonstrate why managers should think of
many of yesterday?s innovations like a cream-puff used car: an underappreciated
asset with a lot of miles left in it.
********************
Government Executive
Interior resurfaces from the pre-Internet Dark Ages 

By Brian Friel 
bfriel@xxxxxxxxxxx 


Throughout the summer of 2001, a secret crew of computer experts made its way
through the back doors and passages of the Interior Department?s computer
network. The crew?s discovery in the depths of the computer network would shock
a judge, embarrass top Interior officials and knock the department?s workers
into the pre-Internet dark ages. 


Not suspecting the secret crew lurking amid the bits and bytes coursing through
Interior?s computer systems, thousands of Interior workers and millions of
citizens busily tapped out e-mails to each other and clicked through thousands
of pages of department Web sites throughout the summer and into the fall. The
department had more than 100,000 computers on its network, through which
employees submitted their time and attendance sheets, job applicants entered
their resumes, contractors supplied proprietary information to their Interior
customers and officials managed millions of dollars in special trust funds for
American Indians.


A few careful readers at the department probably noticed a disturbing quote in
Government Executive?s April 2001 Federal Performance Report. Then-Bureau of
Indian Affairs Chief Information Officer Dom Nessi told the magazine, ?For all
practical purposes, we have no security; we have no infrastructure. Our entire
network has no firewalls on it. I don?t like running a network that can be
breached by a high school kid.? 


The plaintiffs in a long-running legal battle over Interior?s handling of
Indian trust funds certainly noticed the quote. On May 17, 2001, the plaintiffs
filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,
seeking court action against Interior for its poor online security. The
plaintiffs, some of the 40,000-plus individual Indians whose land is managed in
trust by the federal government, filed an initial suit in 1996 alleging that
the government has let the Indian trust fund accounts languish in disarray for
decades. In 2000, Judge Royce C. Lamberth held former Interior Secretary Bruce
Babbitt and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Gover in contempt for
failing to provide documents to the court. Current Interior Secretary Gale
Norton faces contempt charges as well. 

Following the plaintiffs? May 17 complaint, Lamberth asked court-appointed
Special Master Alan Balaran to investigate computer security at the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. Balaran hired New York-based Predictive Systems, a
network-consulting firm, to handle the investigation.

Using the company?s own secret methods, well-known hacker tricks and free
software, in June and July, Predictive Systems employees probed two central BIA
computer systems. The systems house information about Indian trust fund
accounts and are used each month to make millions of dollars in payments to
Indians for the use of their land and resources. Balaran?s hackers not only
were able to break into the systems, they could nose around gathering account
holders? private information and even create new accounts. Balaran asked
Predictive to try breaking in again in August, this time using only hacking
software publicly available on the Internet. Predictive succeeded and created a
false account in Balaran?s name.

On Dec. 5, Judge Lamberth ordered the Interior Department to disconnect from
the Internet all computers that could provide access to the Indian trust data. 

Interior officials were unsure which computers could provide access to the
data, since the department?s information systems are so interwoven.

Working late that night, Glenda Owens, deputy director of the Office of Surface
Mining, got an 8 p.m. call from James Cason, the Interior Department?s
associate deputy secretary. Cason delivered the bad news: To meet the court?s
order, all Interior computer systems must be disconnected immediately from the
Internet. The next morning, Owens passed the order on to the department?s
information technology specialists.


Deep Impact

Seventy-one thousand employees in Interior?s 14 bureaus arrived at work on Dec.
6 to find their online connection to the outside world broken. Most could send
e-mail to colleagues in the same bureau, but not elsewhere in the department or
outside. Employees could access some of their own bureaus? Web pages, but no
others. No one outside the bureaus could connect to any Interior Web pages.
?The Internet has become so crucial to not only the Department of Interior, but
to the country at large,? Owens says. ?I don?t think we fathomed what the
impact would be initially or how long we would be off.?
Employees? work lives had changed completely. But citizens, too, were affected,
particularly as the shutdown wore on into days, weeks and months. Two
offices--the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Interagency Fire
Center--regained their Internet connections on Dec. 8. Most Interior agencies
were slow to gain Special Master Balaran?s approval and didn?t start trickling
back onto the Internet until February 2002. Balaran had to certify that Indian
trust data was not at risk before systems could go back online. The Bureau of
Indian Affairs, Interior headquarters and a few systems scattered among other
agencies still were offline in early April. 

?The thing that struck me was how impacted our employees were,? says National
Park Service Webmaster Steve Pittleman. ?I have been with the Park Service 23
years this June. The impact of IT upon the federal government has made e-mail a
critical component of how everyone does their jobs. It was quite a surprise.?

Once over the initial shock of losing Internet access, Interior employees began
adjusting their routines. For starters, they needed to revert to old ways of
communicating with the public.

Each month, more than 1 million people download more than 10 million pages of
information from the National Park Service?s Web site. When the Park Service?s
online reservation system, through which people can reserve tours or campsites
at 34 sites across the country, went down, citizens reverted to making long
distance phone calls or sending faxes. Park Service employees, freed by the
Internet from fulfilling basic information requests, found themselves forced
back into unwelcome administrative duty.

The public?s ability to comment on agency proposals suffered. Many
environmental groups have replaced letter-writing campaigns with e-mail
?blasts.? Commenting is as easy as a few quick clicks, as people sign and
e-mail form letters posted on organizations? Web sites. The World Wildlife
Fund?s online Conservation Action Network makes it easy for environmental
activists to send e-mails to Interior Secretary Norton. During Interior?s
Internet shutdown, WWF ran two campaigns that normally would have funneled
thousands of e-mails to Norton. The fund?s Web site operator charges 1 cent for
each e-mail sent. During the shutdown, the contractor sent faxes at a cost of
25 cents apiece and WWF had to absorb the extra cost. 

At the Fish and Wildlife Service, law enforcement officers suspended
investigations involving illegal wildlife trafficking on the Internet, says
Sandy Cleva, a spokeswoman for the FWS law enforcement division. Agents who fly
over Alaskan wildlife refuges rely on Internet-connected cameras for real-time
weather data. They, too, had to do without. Law enforcement officers throughout
the department lost online access to the FBI?s National Criminal Information
Center databases.

For many workers, the Internet problem was compounded by other communications
breakdowns.

Megan Durham, chief of public affairs for the Fish and Wildlife Service,
distributes most of the agency?s news releases electronically. When the
Internet connection went down, she switched to fax. Then a crew installing new
carpet in her office cut the line to the fax machine, so she had to turn to a
private fax service. 

Anthrax contamination of mail in October 2001 meant Interior employees couldn?t
fully rely on the Postal Service either. Mail failed to arrive or was slowed by
irradiation. 

Most Interior agencies reported increased phone and fax volume during the
Internet shutdown. But many other citizens undoubtedly gave up on contacting
the department. 

The worst hit, though, were American Indians who had to wait months to receive
royalty payments for the use of their lands. Through most of the shutdown,
Interior officials said they could not make payments to Indian trust fund
account holders while the department?s computer systems were offline. Some
40,000 Indians usually receive checks from the government ranging from a few
cents to thousands of dollars per month. As part of its long-standing trust
responsibilities to Indians, the government passes on the money from citizens
and companies who use Indian lands for such purposes as agriculture, grazing,
and oil, gas and mineral extraction. Many Indians who rely on the checks as a
primary source of income found themselves in dire straits. 


Getting By

The Internet shutdown saga was a big hassle for workers, but not a disaster.
They made do with a variety of alternative communications methodsface-to-face
conversation, telephones, cell phones, handheld computers, fax machines and
mail. 
?We had to revert back to 1980s technology,? says Richard Brown, Webmaster at
the Bureau of Land Management?s Nevada office. ?People still remember how to
use the fax machine and pick up the phone. But it was surprising; at first, you
think, ?How am I going to get my job done???

The shutdown could have short-circuited an online auction for wild horses
caught on federal lands. Instead, Bureau of Land Management employee Karen
Malloy directed the 50 bidders for the horses to a non-Interior Web site, where
they were able to complete the auction in time for Christmas, rather than wait
for BLM to return to the Internet in late February. The Minerals Management
Service?s Gulf of Mexico Region set up a temporary Web site on a non-Interior
computer as well.

State officials who would normally have gone online to consult mining
companies? records at the Office of Surface Mining faxed their requests to the
office, where employees found the records and faxed them back.

The shutdown meant that neither Michael Schwartz, group manager for regulatory
affairs at BLM, nor his staff could easily communicate within the government.
Staffers couldn?t go online to read the Federal Register, the government?s
daily compilation of regulatory actions, nor could they look up laws affecting
BLM regulations. ?We had to do it the old-fashioned way,? Schwartz says. ?We
went down to the library.? When the library wouldn?t do, Schwartz? staffers
took cabs or hopped on the subway to the Office of the Federal Register, part
of the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington. 

Before Dec. 5, when officials from other agencies, such as the Environmental
Protection Agency, or from Capitol Hill wanted copies of proposed rules or
related information, Schwartz and his staff would just zip them off by e-mail.
During the shutdown, they fed documents through fax machines page by page.
After BLM went back online in February, Schwartz still couldn?t e-mail
documents to Interior headquarters employees a half mile away. Instead, he
e-mailed documents to non-Interior employees working in the same building with
Interior?s headquarters staff. 

Interior contracting offices were prevented from announcing business
opportunities on FedBizOpps.gov, the government?s new online-only contract
announcement site. So procurement officers submitted announcements
electronically from home. Others sent disksor hand-carried their documents.
Telecommuting was a common workaround for interagency communication. People who
relied heavily on the Internet used it from their homes at night, according to
the Fish and Wildlife Service?s Durham. 

Contractors and other agencies also lent computers and space to Interior
staffers in need of Internet access. QuickHire, an Alexandria, Va., firm that
provides an online hiring service, let Interior officials use its facilities to
post job announcements and review applications. The Office of Personnel
Management did the same for Interior?s human resources specialists. Interior
employees got their paychecks on time during the shutdown, but only because
payroll clerks put in long hours. The clerks normally submit payroll records
over the Internet. During the shutdown, they entered data on computers
connected directly to the payroll system. Some clerks spent parts of their
weekends typing in time and attendance information. 

Interior employees eventually found workarounds for most of their online
processes, but not for the Minerals Management Service system that manages the
data required for oil and gas payments to Indian trust fund account holders.
The system was disconnected from the Internet until the end of March. MMS
collects about $8 billion a year from mineral leases on government and Indian
lands. Oil, gas and mining companies submit to MMS monthly records on their use
of Indian lands. MMS then calculates payments for 10,000 Indian landowners. A
month before the court-ordered shutdown, the Minerals Management Service had
jumped into the era of electronic government, putting the oil and gas payment
system completely online. On Nov. 1, the agency stopped taking paper
submissions. ?We had spent several years planning and executing the
reengineering effort,? says Milt Dial, acting associate director for minerals
revenue management. The new system worked smoothly during its first month in
operation. Companies submitted their records; Indians got their checks. Then
the Internet went down. MMS couldn?t take in the mineral companies? records nor
calculate how much to pay Indian trust account holders. Dial says the agency no
longer had enough employees to process the records manually.

So MMS officials asked companies to hold onto their records and wait for
Internet service to resume. They also couldn?t forward to the Bureau of Indian
Affairs the data necessary to write checks to trust account holders. December
passed, then January. Finally, in mid-February, MMS officials decided to
manually estimate the payments and reconcile the amounts later. Checks started
going out at the end of February. 

On March 22, Special Master Balaran agreed to let MMS back online, and the
agency asked companies to start submitting their records again and began
working through a backlog of about 100,000 records containing 1 million pieces
of information. ?Whenever you?re dealing with backlogs associated with
information processing systems, it?s not a quick recovery. It doesn?t happen in
a week or two. It?s going to be a number of months,? Dial says.

The delay in payments during the shutdown severely hurt the poorest Indians,
according to tribal representatives. The Navajo Nation was so hard-hit that the
tribal government provided $500,000 in temporary financial assistance until
Interior?s systems came back online.


Painful Lessons

The shutdown was costly in several ways. In addition to the problems Indians
faced surviving the winter months without royalty payments, there?s no telling
how much other citizens spent on long-distance phone calls or the cost to
vendors of delayed projects for Interior customers. What?s more, taxpayers will
foot the bill for interest Indians will receive on their late payments as well
as the costs of lost productivity and communications workarounds.
The shutdown likely will serve as a wake-up call for officials at Interior and
other agencies to pay better attention to the downsides of the Internet. 

Special Master Balaran?s investigations reveal one moral of Interior?s story:
Don?t neglect computer security. Balaran?s Nov. 14 report to the court,
detailing a ?pattern of neglect? at Interior, cited audit after audit in recent
years warning officials to fill blatant computer security holes. The warnings
went unheeded.

Dennis Gingold, an attorney for Indian trust fund account holders, says the lax
security that led to the shutdown and the length of time Interior agencies were
offline are measures of the department?s incompetence. ?We?re dealing with a
group of people who don?t have the knowledge and expertise [to carry out their
duties],? Gingold says. ?It?s the blind leading the blind.? 

Not only do agencies need computer security experts who are on the ball, they
also need good maps of their technology systems showing all the connectionsand
potential back doorsamong them. ?Effectively and efficiently designing and
erecting a modern building requires construction blueprints,? the General
Accounting Office points out in a recent report (GAO-02-6). ?Effectively and
efficiently transforming an entity?s operational and technology environments
also requires a blueprint.? GAO has found that most agencies, including
Interior, have inadequate information technology blueprints.

Sharon Dawes, director of the Center for Technology in Government at the
University of Albany, says a lesson of Interior?s Internet shutdownas well as
the postal disruptions during last fall?s anthrax incidentsis that government
officials cannot expect to rely on any one communications system. Agencies must
have business continuity plans for carrying on after disaster strikes.

Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a Bethesda, Md.-based
technology research and education group, sees a deeper problem across
government, and indeed, throughout the computer industry. ?Software companies
such as Oracle and Microsoft and Sun and Red Hat are actually delivering
systems to federal agencies completely unlocked and with the keys still in
them,? Paller says. Computer companies deliver their products in insecure modes
because consumers want products that don?t require a lot of tinkering. The more
open holes a system has, the less tinkering a user has to do. ?They build in
user-friendliness,? Paller says. Paller argues that federal agencies need to
demand more secure products. ?The cause of the problem at Interior isn?t
Interior not knowing something. They trusted the vendors,? Paller says.
?Federal agencies have a right to say, ?Enough. I?m not going to take it any
more.??

For government employees, the shutdown?s lessons are concrete: Think about how
you would get your work done if you had no Internet access at work. Could you
work from home? From a telecommuting center? Make sure you have an offline
backup of essential records and contact information. Keep backups on disks and
on paper. ?If you can plug it in, it can break,? says Beverly Gorny, a BLM
public affairs specialist in Wyoming.

If your agency does find itself offline for an extended period, you may learn
to appreciate the Internet as much as Interior employees do. As with life, so
with the Internet: You don?t know what you have until it?s gone. ?The Internet
is really like most every other technology,? says Dawes. ?The degree to which
it becomes embedded in your workremember PCs used to just stand in the cornerit
starts to seem less special.?
****************
CNN
Debate over ICANN reform rages on

(IDG) -- Nearly two months after the president of the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers called for fundamental reform of the beleaguered
organization, ICANN watchers at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference
in San Francisco Thursday continued their high-volume debate over exactly what
those reforms should be.

"There's broad consensus that ICANN hasn't worked. We need to ask: Do we need
this beast?" said Jerry Berman, executive director of the Center for Democracy
and Technology. 

Although no one on CFP's ICANN panel suggested scrapping ICANN altogether, all
agreed that radical reform is needed. The nonprofit group, which oversees
technical issues related to the Internet's addressing system, has been under
fire almost since its inception for ineffectiveness and failing to take broad
public input into account when making decisions.

Complete overhaul?
ICANN President Stuart Lynn directly addressed concerns about the organization
last February when he called for a complete overhaul of the body. However,
Lynn's proposal to bring more government participation and funding to ICANN and
eliminate public representation on the board of directors has met with few
supporters, leaving the question of how to effectively reform the organization
up in the air. 

"I think ICANN has been hijacked from within ... from its staff," said Susan
Crawford, a partner with the Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering law firm, who has
represented registries in the ICANN process. 

Crawford suggested that ICANN subcontract some of its responsibilities and
become a leaner organization, therefore cutting out the need for heavy reliance
on government funding. 

"I am hopeful that a humbler, [chastened] ICANN will show up," Crawford said.

Simpler reforms
ICANN board member Karl Auerbach was not as optimistic. 

"We have too much of a shell game going on at ICANN today," said Auerbach, who
suggested a reform by which ICANN would be divided into six independent parts
-- three with governing policy duties and three with governing administrative
duties -- in order to provide more transparency. 

But while all the panelists, and most of the audience, agreed that ICANN is
long overdue for reform, there have been no complete proposals put on the table
to counter Lynn's, noted Peter G. Neumann, principal scientist with SRI
International Computer Science Laboratory. 

"What we desperately need is some fleshed-out proposals," Neumann said.
*****************
CNN
U.S. Army to centralize network security scanning

(IDG) -- The U.S. Army last week announced a major new initiative designed to
help the service get its arms around vulnerability analysis and automated patch
management for more than 1.5 million workstations around the world.

Through a multimillion-dollar contract with Melbourne, Florida-based Harris
Corp., the Army will deploy the company's Security Threat Avoidance Technology
(STAT) Scanner vulnerability assessment tool worldwide, including in all post,
camp and station networks, tactical networks, mobile subscriber networks and
the Army Tactical Internet. 

The Harris tool is the latest addition to a group of scanning tools that the
Army uses, said Patrick Swan, a spokesman for the Army's CIO office. 

Defense in depth
"Our goal is to automate as much as we can to allow systems administrators to
concentrate on the many other things that they are required to do," said Swan.
He added that part of the goal of the Harris deployment is to centralize global
monitoring at the Pentagon to provide an overall view of the Army's global
network risk posture. "Our approach is a defense in depth using many different
tools," he said. 

Word of the Army program comes as the SANS Institute, a Bethesda,
Maryland-based research organization for systems administrators and security
managers, is close to completing a "consensus list" of the highest-priority
vulnerabilities detected by the most popular automated scanning systems. The
tools include those offered by Internet Security Systems Inc. (ISS) in Atlanta;
Symantec Corp. in Cupertino, California; and the National Institute of
Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, as well as Nessus
shareware. Harris' STAT Scanner hasn't been added yet but likely will be in the
near future, said Alan Paller, director of SANS. 

"The shortcut to improved security [is] universal, repeatable monitoring," said
Paller, adding that NASA uses ISS Scanner to keep tabs on vulnerabilities. "The
Army is now trying Harris STAT. The big difference is that NASA picked the most
critical vulnerabilities rather than looking at all 2,000. The latter always
leads to overload and lack of action. NASA's approach works." 

SANS is also working on a site certification program based on the consensus
vulnerability list, Paller said. Weekly updates will make the service
"enormously useful" to administrators who are increasingly becoming buried
under the large volume of scan reports, "not knowing which of the problems...
are actually important," he said. 

A potential difference between the Army's program and one appropriate for a
business lies in the level of risk that individual systems face, said Richard
Hunter, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut. 

"It's unclear what level of analysis is being done beforehand to determine
appropriate levels of security for particular systems," said Hunter, referring
to the Army's rollout of STAT Scanner. "In most businesses, it's a waste of
resources to protect every system to the maximum extent possible. Some systems
just aren't that mission-critical."
******************
Nando Times
Technology: Data transmission market suffering from 'hyper-deflation,' study
says 

By JIM KRANE, AP Technology Writer 


NEW YORK (April 23, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT) - A continuing bandwidth glut on
long-haul telecommunications networks continues to erode revenues at large
telecoms, pushing down prices by 70 percent a year for the past three years,
according to research released this week.

According to research firm TeleGeography, the data transmission market remains
unstable.

Prices change so quickly and vary so widely across routes and carriers that
telecommunications companies have little conception of a market price, said
Stephan Beckert, TeleGeography's research director.

"Bandwidth prices are no longer driven by supply and demand," he added.

Low prices have been good news for Internet service providers who buy the
bandwidth and resell it to their customers, but price fluctuations have left
them wondering whether to lock in long contracts or buy for the short term.

TeleGeography said the price collapse could be nearing an end because many
large carriers are selling bandwidth at below their cost of providing it - a
phenomenon that helps explain the solvency problems of such major industry
participants as Global Crossing.

"The carriers and customers are trying to do business in a hyper-deflationary
environment. Some carriers have absolutely reached the lowest price they can
go," said Beckert.

Two years ago, a high-capacity circuit between New York and Los Angeles cost
$1.8 million per year. In the first quarter of 2002, the same lease could be
had for less than $150,000, the survey found.

TeleGeography believes further price cuts would only come as a result of other
market forces, not the continuing capacity glut.

The study found that more than 6.5 terabits of lit capacity crosses fiber-optic
networks in London - four times more than the combined bandwidth requirements
of the forty largest cities in Europe. 
****************
Nando Times
Mideast strife echoed online

By LISA HOFFMAN, Scripps Howard News Service 


(April 22, 2002 3:36 p.m. EDT) - In Israel, it's known as the "Inter-fada."

A 2-year-old cyber-war continues between Israel and its Arab and Muslim
opponents, where the Internet is the battlefield.

Though it is not yet as pitched as when the current Palestinian intifada, or
uprising, began in September 2000, the sides apparently still are trading
attacks, according to Internet security monitors.

Since a March 29 suicide bombing at an Israeli resort hotel and Israel's
subsequent military onslaught in the West Bank, Israel has been the victim of
10 significant computer hacking incidents. In all the Middle East during that
period, just 15 such attacks were recorded.

"The tense situation in the Middle East is reflected in both covert and overt
hack attacks," said D.K. Matai, chairman of the London-based cyber-software and
security firm mi2g.

The electronic assaults have come in the form of Web site defacements, virus
attacks and e-mail floodings. Politically motivated attacks also have been
reported in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

So far, though, the intensity of the attacks has fallen far below that
witnessed in the closing months of 2000. That spate of cyber-incidents began
when Israeli hackers penetrated the Web site of the anti-Israel guerrilla group
Hezbollah and inserted an Israeli flag and strains of its national anthem
designed to greet all visitors to the Web site.

In response, Palestinians and their supporters in other countries launched
their own bombardment of more than 90 Israeli government and business computer
networks, at one point knocking Israel's foreign ministry and parliament
off-line.

Then each side blasted the other with "e-mail bombs" designed to bollix up
computer systems. One newspaper in Beirut, Lebanon, called the anti-Israeli
attacks "cyber-Katyushas," referring to the rockets the Syrian-backed Hezbollah
lobs at northern Israeli targets.

Security analysts say Israel has been the target of nearly half the 1,300
cyber-attacks detected in the Middle East in the past three years. Part of the
reason it has been victimized so much is that Israel has 2.4 million Internet
connections - more than any of the 22 Arab nations in the region.

During that time, Turkey, with 13 percent, had the next-highest proportion of
Web attacks, while Morocco and Egypt suffered 12 percent each. 
***************
Nando Times
ATM hackers sentenced in Russia
The Associated Press 

MOSCOW (April 22, 2002 7:34 p.m. EDT) - Two leaders of a hackers' group that
manipulated cash machines in Moscow to make off with nearly $1 million from
foreign bank accounts were sentenced to five years in prison, a newspaper
reported Monday.

A wave of ATM fraud in Moscow in 1999 and 2000 caused panic among foreigners
living in Moscow and caused many banks to shut down their cash machines.
According to the Kommersant newspaper, more than 6,000 people had money stolen
from their accounts.

Kommersant reported that two of the ringleaders, Zviadi Beria and Vladimir
Medvedov, were sentenced Friday to five years in prison. The swindle's main
organizer, Yuri Levashov, was given three years and immediately freed under an
amnesty for petty offenders. Levashov cooperated with authorities during the
investigation, while Beria and Medvedov staunchly denied their guilt.

Four other defendants were given three-year suspended sentences, the newspaper
said.
**************
Nando Times
Firms plan to create Japanese Web alliance
By SHINO YUASA, Agence France-Presse 

TOKYO (April 22, 2002 9:19 a.m. EDT) - Japanese high-tech leaders NEC Corp. and
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and telecommunication firms KDDI Corp.
and Japan Telecom Co. Ltd. said Monday they would form the nation's biggest Web
alliance with about 10 million Internet subscribers.

The four companies plan to createa consortium later in May to provide Internet
content services and to develop new Web-based products that allow users to
communicate via Internet protocol telephones, they said in a statement.

The alliance was prompted by cutthroat competition from other Internet
providers and high investment costs, it said.

"To provide a variety of services and optical networks, we need a lot of
investments," Kenji Yoshiyama, senior vice president for NEC Solutions, NEC's
in-house company specializing in Internet system integration, told a news
conference. "We simply cannot push through these services on our own."

The business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun said the alliance was inevitable
because it takes more than 100 million yen ($760,000) to buy the rights to
distribute a popular Hollywood film on the Internet.

The four-way Web consortium is scheduled to start operations in June. The
companies said the alliance is open for new partners. "This is not a closed
consortium," Yoshiyama said.

Asked whether the four had asked Japan's top telecommunications firm Nippon
Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) to join the consortium, Yoshiyama declined
to elaborate, but said they were calling on other providers to step aboard.

"We have called on many other Internet providers," he said.

NTT alone has 5.76 million subscribers.

The Nihon Keizai newspaper said the four would consider sharing the cost of
developing a next-generation Internet service and aimed to have personal
computers, cell phones and personal digital assistants work in tandem.

Shares in all four firms enjoyed solid gains Monday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
as investors grew optimistic about their future prospects ahead of the release
of earnings results for the year to March, due out later in the week.

NEC rose 32 yen or 3.2 percent to 1,032 yen, while Matsushita - known better
through its Panasonic and National brands - gained 72 yen or 4.4 percent.

KDDI rose 5,000 yen or 1.4 percent to 358,000 yen and Japan Telecom, owned by
British counterpart Vodafone, gained 9,000 yen or 2.2 percent at 427,000 yen.
The Nikkei-225 average ended the day up 1.8 percent at 11,721.64 points. 
**************

Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
Suite 507
1100 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20036-4632
202-659-9711