Clips May 2, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips May 2, 2002

ARTICLES

Burns Predicts Swift Movement On Spam Legislation
Lawmakers Take Another Shot at 'Morphed' Kiddie Porn
Education Key To Keeping Kids Away From Net Porn - Report
Scientists trot out remote-control rats
Call made for homeland strategy
Davis: Streamline homeland tech
Virus Maker Sentenced
OpenOffice.org releases Version 1.0 of its free office suite
Grid helps science go sky-high
Lessons Learned at Dot-Com U.
Eminem CD could be 'pirate proof'
The Heavy Lifters of Computation
Virtually Rebuilt, a Ruin Yields Secrets
Hacker pleads guilty to accessing NASA system
Army lab will double its computing capacity
How some readers fight spam
Army will tweak its network and software practices
Philips finds way to 'paint' LCD screens
House lawmakers advocate biometrics-based licenses
IRS sets the standard for protecting privacy
Tech firms ally to push homeland security solutions
Technology: Senator blasts broadcasters for missing digital deadline
Technology: HDTV: a 'revolution' in search of couch potatoes
Zentropa says it has designed a revolution
Canada and broadband Internet access
Broadband the decade's boomer, says Budde
Canada vulnerable to cyber attacks
Like hackers to a honeypot
New Zealand slips in e-government stakes
Wireless TV technology may benefit rural areas
The Art of Misusing Technology
HP Unveils New Digital Photo Storage Scheme

*****************
Washington Post
Burns Predicts Swift Movement On Spam Legislation
By David McGuire
Washtech.com Staff Writer

Sen. Conrad Burns' (R-Mont.) bill designed to stem the rising tide of 
unsolicited commercial e-mail - or "spam" - should make its way to the full 
Senate before the end of May, Burns told reporters today.

"It looks like we're finally going to get some action on the spam bill," 
Burns said. "I really think we will pass this in the Senate."

The Senate Commerce Committee, of which Burns is a member, is set to vote 
on the spam bill May 16. Burns said he had polled many of his colleagues on 
the committee and is confident that he has the votes he needs to report the 
bill out of committee and send it to the Senate floor.

Burns said that he and cosponsor Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) should be able to 
make a convincing case to bring the legislation to a vote in the Senate 
before the end of the year.

His bill requires that commercial e-mail messages contain valid return 
addresses that recipients can use to opt out of receiving further 
unsolicited e-mail. Spammers who fake their e-mail or physical addresses 
would face stiff fines and criminal penalties under the bill.

The legislation also would allow state attorneys general to bring private 
action on behalf of residents who are continually besieged by unwanted 
spam. Spammers who willfully violate the provisions of the law could be 
fined as much as $1.5 million.

"If you click 'I don't want any more of this stuff' and they don't honor 
it, I think there ought to be penalties," Burns said today.

Although federal lawmakers already have some tools they can use to pursue 
deceptive spammers, Burns said that his bill would give those rules teeth.

Burns said Commerce Committee Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.) 
supports the spam legislation.

On the same day that it considers the spam legislation, the committee is 
also slated to vote on Hollings sweeping Internet privacy legislation, 
which would set federal ground rule for how companies can collect and use 
consumers' personal data online.
*****************
Washington Post
Lawmakers Take Another Shot at 'Morphed' Kiddie Porn

Just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court voided elements of a controversial 
child pornography law, a cadre of lawmakers has introduced new legislation 
aimed at banning pornographic images that have been digitally "morphed" to 
appear to depict children.

Led by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), more than a dozen lawmakers on Monday 
night introduced the legislation, which bans many of the same images that 
were unlawful under the now-defunct 1996 prohibition.

On April 16, the Supreme Court struck down portions of the Children's 
Internet Protection Act, which outlawed the possession or distribution of 
pornography containing computer-generated images showing children 
apparently engaged in sex acts.

In a 6-3 ruling written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the high court 
overturned the prohibition, calling it unconstitutional and overly broad.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) today called the Smith bill a necessary response 
to the Supreme Court ruling.

"The high court, in siding with pedophiles over children, forces us into 
action. Today, united, we begin to reverse the damage," Foley said. Foley, 
who cosponsored the Smith legislation, joined Smith and U.S. Attorney 
General John Ashcroft at a press conference today to unveil the proposal.

"The Supreme Court decision did grave injury to our ability to protect 
children from exploitation," Ashcroft said.

Smith said the new proposal represents a "substantially narrowed" version 
of the 1996 prohibition. He said the updated bill should pass 
constitutional muster.

Smith and other lawmakers worked with the Justice Department to develop the 
bill.

Under Smith's proposal, digitally generated pictures of prepubescent 
children would be banned outright.

While images depicting older children would also be banned, the bill 
creates a new legal safe harbor for pornographers who can prove that they 
did not use real children to create their images.

The Smith bill also would prohibit the sale or purchase of child porn 
images, even in cases where no such images exist. The bill also would make 
it illegal to show pornography to minors.

In addition, the legislation would compel the FBI to create a database of 
known images of child pornography that prosecutors could use in criminal 
cases against suspected child pornography traffickers.

Law enforcement officials say the high court ruling has caused 
investigators to drop or forgo prosecuting cases in which they cannot 
positively identify children in the images in question.

The Supreme Court decision upheld a similar 1999 ruling by the 9th U.S. 
Circuit Court of Appeals. Michael Heimbach, chief of the FBI's Crimes 
Against Children Unit, said since that decision, no prosecution has been 
brought in the 9th Circuit "except in the most clear-cut cases in which the 
government can specifically identify the child in the image."

Addressing a House Judiciary Subcommittee today, Heimbach said that trend 
would continue to worsen in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision.

"I fear that in many cases, this speculative technological debate will 
indeed result in a bitter end," he said.

Legal experts say the legislation could become entangled in the 
constitutional issues that led to the high court ruling on the original 
statute.

"One has to wonder whether this bill will cure the constitutional problems 
that came up in the Supreme Court decision," said Alan Davidson, associate 
director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Davidson said the measure treads on questionable legal grounds because it 
would put the burden on individuals to prove that their "speech" is not 
illegal. Such a burden smacks of "prior restraint," Davidson said, a 
restriction prohibited by the Constitution.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh also was skeptical about the bill's legal 
footing.

"The FBI says it has a hard time verifying that an actual child was 
involved in the making of child pornography, but this may make it even 
harder for the defendant to disprove that a real child is involved," he 
said. "In the end, I'm not sure this is going to avoid the constitutional 
problems that the court identified."
********************
Washington Post
Education Key To Keeping Kids Away From Net Porn - Report
David McGuire
Washtech.com Staff Writer
Thursday, May 2, 2002; 7:00 AM

Child welfare advocates attempting to protect children from harmful 
material online may be ignoring one of the most important tools in making 
the Internet safer for kids, according to the findings of a congressionally 
mandated study.

"Developing in children and youth an ethic of responsible choice and skills 
for appropriate behavior is foundational for all efforts to protect them 
... on the Internet and in the physical world," a panel of experts wrote in 
their final report on protecting kids online.

Published today by the nonprofit National Research Council, the report was 
ordered by Congress under a 1998 law.

While the report acknowledges a role for legislation and technology in 
protecting children from harmful material online, it says that educational 
efforts to instill good Internet habits represent one of the most promising 
approaches to shielding children from inappropriate material.

"Much of the debate about 'pornography on the Internet' focuses on the 
advantages and disadvantages of technical and public policy solutions," the 
report says. "In the committee's view, this focus is misguided: neither 
technology nor public policy alone can provide a complete - or even a 
nearly complete - solution."

The report says that over-relying on Internet filters and other 
technological solutions can instill parents with a false sense of security, 
tempting adults to believe that "the use of technology can drastically 
reduce or even eliminate the need for human supervision."

And while public policy approaches "promise to eliminate the sources of the 
problem," they can present thorny constitutional problems, the report says.

"For example, the committee believes that spam containing material that is 
obscene for minors should not be sent to children. But laws banning such 
e-mail to minors are potentially problematic in an online environment in 
which it is very difficult to differentiate between adults and minors," the 
report says.

Alan Davidson, the associate director of the Center for Democracy and 
Technology, applauded the report's overarching findings.

"We teach children to look both ways when they cross the street, we don't 
outlaw cars," Davidson said.

Chaired by former Pennsylvania Governor and U.S. Attorney General Dick 
Thornburgh, the panel that drafted the report included representatives from 
industry, academia and the child welfare community.
*****************
Chicago Sun-Times
Scientists trot out remote-control rats
BY RICK CALLAHAN

By implanting electrodes in rats' brains, scientists have created 
remote-controlled rodents they can command to turn left or right, climb 
trees and navigate piles of rubble. Someday, scientists said, rats carrying 
tiny video cameras might search for disaster survivors.

''If you have a collapsed building and there are people under the rubble, 
there's no robot that exists now that would be capable of going down into 
such a difficult terrain and finding those people, but a rat would be able 
to do that,'' said John Chapin, a professor of physiology and pharmacology 
at the State University of New York in Brooklyn.

The lab animals aren't exactly robot rats. They had to be trained to carry 
out the commands.


Chapin's team fitted five rats with electrodes and power-pack backpacks. 
When signaled by a laptop computer, the electrodes stimulated the rodents' 
brains and cued them to scurry in the desired direction, then rewarded them 
by stimulating a pleasure center in the brain.

The rats' movements could be controlled up to 1,640 feet away.

The findings appear in today's issue of the journal Nature.

The experiments used three implanted electrodes--one in the brain region 
that senses reward or pleasure, and one each in areas that process signals 
from the rat's left and right whisker bundles.

Chapin's team trained the rats in a maze by signaling the left and right 
whisker-sensing regions. When a rat turned in the correct direction, its 
reward-sensing region was stimulated. Activating only the reward region 
caused the rodents to move forward, the team found.
*****************
Federal Computer Week
Call made for homeland strategy

The Bush administration is headed in the right direction with its homeland 
security budget, but in the absence of a national strategy, the ways 
information technology can truly help have not been realized, according to 
a report released April 29 by the Brookings Institution.

The Bush administration plans to release its homeland security national 
strategy in July, and without that strategy there are too many 
opportunities for gaps in applying resources, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), 
ranking member on the House Permanent Select Committee's Terrorism and 
Homeland Security Subcommittee, said at the release of the report.

The report, "Protecting the American Homeland: A Preliminary Analysis," is 
the Brookings Institution's proposal for creating that comprehensive 
national strategy as soon as possible.

"We need a strategy, and we need it now," Harman said.

The report outlines four broad areas: border security, domestic prevention, 
site defense and contingency planning.

Information technology can and should be used in each area to take 
advantage of knowledge and information across the many organizations and 
agencies involved, said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in the Brookings 
Foreign Policy Studies group who worked on the report.

IT can be particularly helpful when it comes to information sharing 
efforts, but it also is a critical tool for streamlining every program and 
making each more efficient, O'Hanlon said. This includes efforts such as 
inspecting cargo ships, where IT can be used to provide a central system 
for dispersed ports and personnel, he said.

"We have to be more assertive in sharing information in real time," he said.

Technology can also play an important role when it comes to ensuring 
identity, especially smart cards and biometrics, but only if there is 
sufficient security in the application process to guarantee that the wrong 
people are not being authorized, Harman said.

And when considering the privacy and civil liberties concerns raised by the 
use of those technologies, officials should consider that the technology 
often can provide better protection through better control than the 
equivalent paper-based processes, said James Steinberg, vice president and 
director of the Foreign Policy Studies group.
******************
Federal Computer Week
Davis: Streamline homeland tech

The war on terrorism has generated a flood of suggestions from companies 
about ways the government could use technology to improve homeland 
security. But government agencies lack the technical expertise to evaluate 
the solutions quickly and the buying authority to purchase them promptly, 
said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.).

As a result, technology proposals for homeland defense "have been sitting 
unevaluated," Davis said April 30. To solve the problem, he wants to create 
an interagency team of experts that would "screen and evaluate innovative 
proposals from industry."

He also wants to prod agency procurement officials to make greater use of 
existing "streamlined acquisition procedures" so agencies can buy 
off-the-shelf homeland security-related technology more quickly.


Davis said he plans to introduce legislation this week to create the 
interagency team and launch an acquisition pilot program that encourages 
greater use of faster buying procedures.

In addition, Davis said he will propose monetary awards of $20,000 to 
encourage companies to propose innovative "terror-fighting solutions" to 
the federal government. A total of $500,000 would be available annually for 
awards.

Davis said his legislation was prompted by complaints he has received from 
companies that have been frustrated in their attempts to sell technology 
for homeland security to the federal government.

Government agencies in general and the Office of Homeland Security in 
particular "have been overwhelmed by a flood of industry proposals offering 
various solutions to our homeland security challenges," said Davis, whose 
Northern Virginia district has a heavy concentration of technology companies.

"A lot of the technology firms with the expertise to address our security 
needs have contacted my office to let me know that they are having a hard 
time getting a real audience for their products," Davis said during a press 
conference announcing his legislation.

During a February hearing before the Government Reform Committee's 
Technology and Procurement Policy Subcommittee, of which Davis is chairman, 
technology company officials complained about the lack of an organized 
process within the federal government to evaluate technology solutions for 
homeland security.

Witnesses -- including Tom Siebel, chairman and chief executive officer of 
Siebel Systems Inc. -- were especially frustrated that the newly created 
Office of Homeland Security apparently lacks "the authority to make 
anything happen." Siebel said the government should be able to evaluate and 
act on homeland security proposals from industry in "weeks, not months or 
years."

Davis said that in addition to helping agencies identify technology that 
would be useful in the war against terrorism, his technology team also is 
intended to prevent agencies from wasting money.

Spending on homeland security is increasing dramatically. "We are spending 
more money than at any time since the mid 1980s," when former President 
Reagan poured hundreds of billions of dollars into a military buildup.

It was a time when defense contractors like Lockheed Corp. billed the Air 
Force $640 apiece for aircraft toilet seats and $435 for hammers. "We don't 
want to have those same kind of problems" as spending is increased for 
homeland security, Davis said.
***************
New York Times
Virus Maker Sentenced

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- The creator of the ``Melissa'' computer virus was 
sentenced Wednesday to 20 months in federal prison for causing millions of 
dollars of damage by disrupting e-mail systems worldwide in 1999.

David L. Smith, 34, pleaded guilty in December 1999 to a state charge of 
computer theft and to a federal charge of sending a damaging computer 
program. In the federal plea, both sides agreed the damage was greater than 
$80 million.

Smith is believed to be among the first people ever prosecuted for creating 
a computer virus. In court Wednesday, he called the act a ``colossal mistake.''

The Melissa virus, which struck in March 1999, was disguised as an e-mail 
marked ``important message'' from a friend or colleague. It automatically 
spread like a chain letter by causing computers to send 50 additional 
infected messages. The volume of messages generated slowed some systems to 
a crawl.

Melissa was relatively benign compared with viruses that delete computer 
files or do other damage. Yet by clogging e-mail systems and causing some 
to crash, Melissa was the worst computer virus outbreak ever at the time.

Smith could have faced up to five years in prison, but prosecutors 
suggested a term of about two years, saying he had given authorities 
extensive assistance in thwarting other virus creators. He was also fined 
$5,000 by U.S. District Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr.

He is expected to get a similar prison term Friday when sentenced on a 
guilty plea to a state charge of computer theft.

Smith is among the first people ever prosecuted for creating a computer virus.

A federal judge in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1990 sentenced Robert T. Morris to 
three years probation for a worm virus that crashed 6,000 computers in 
1988. Morris was the first person convicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud 
and Abuse Act.

A British judge in 1995 sentenced Christopher Pile to 18 months in jail for 
creating computer viruses that destroyed files around that nation. Pile, 
who called himself the Black Baron, was the first person convicted under 
Britain's Computer Misuse Act of 1990.

But successful prosecutions are quite rare. Prosecutors in the Philippines 
had to dismiss all charges against a man accused of releasing the ``Love 
Bug'' virus in 2000 because of a lack of applicable laws. In other 
instances, the virus writer couldn't be found at all.

Smith has said he created the virus on computers in his Aberdeen apartment 
and used a stolen screen name and password to get into America Online.

Smith was arrested April 1, 1999, after investigators for America Online 
provided authorities with evidence that helped trace the virus to Smith's 
phone number.

``My curiosity got the better of me, as I soon began to write the `Melissa 
Virus,''' he wrote in a letter to Greenaway. ``It didn't take me too long 
as I borrowed a lot of the code from other viruses that I found on the 
Internet.''

While admitting his actions were ``immoral,'' Smith wrote that the virus 
did not delete or corrupt anyone's files or data, or harm any machines.

``It did result in clogged mail servers, which admittedly caused headaches 
and aggravation to many,'' he acknowledged.
*****************
Computerworld
OpenOffice.org releases Version 1.0 of its free office suite
By TODD R. WEISS

After 18 months of development, Version 1.0 of the open-source 
OpenOffice.org productivity suite was released today for free download.

In an announcement today, OpenOffice.org, the developer community that has 
been building the applications based on open-source code provided by Sun, 
said the new version is being touted for small businesses and other users 
who want full-featured software without high costs.


OpenOffice.org Version 1.0 shares much of its source code with Sun 
Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice 6.0, which is due to be released later this 
month for retail sale. StarOffice is Sun's entry into the highly prized 
office-suite market, which is dominated by Microsoft Corp.'s Office 
products. The OpenOffice.org project is Sun's separate open-source effort 
aimed at maintaining a free version of the suite. Sun announced in March 
that it would begin charging for StarOffice, while still making OpenOffice 
available free of charge (see story).


OpenOffice is available for Windows, Linux and Solaris machines and is 
being ported to other operating systems, including Apple Computer Inc.'s 
Macintosh operating system, according to Zaheda Bhorat, senior product 
manager for OpenOffice.org at Sun. The suite will also be available in more 
than 21 languages, including Spanish, French and Chinese.


For businesses and other users, the key features of OpenOffice include its 
ability to recognize and be compatible with Microsoft Office file formats, 
said Sam Hiser, an OpenOffice developer and co-leader of the product's 
marketing efforts. "We're going to try to make it easier for everyone 
without it mattering what the file formats must be," he said.


Analyst Bill Claybrook at Aberdeen Group Inc. in Boston said the 
availability of the OpenOffice suite is good news for users seeking a free, 
full-featured office suite. But it still faces tough competition from 
Microsoft Office.


"I think more people will try it," Claybrook said. But he's not sure how 
many will use it instead of Microsoft's suites. Most business users want 
applications that come complete with printed documentation and easy to 
access technical support when needed, even if they have to pay for it, he 
said.


Michael Silver, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn., said that 
while the OpenOffice.org effort claims high compatibility with existing 
Microsoft file formats, there will likely be problems in reading files that 
include macros and complicated fonts or formatting. "In terms of file 
formats, nothing except for Microsoft Office will let you open all 
Microsoft files properly," Silver said.


On the other hand, "there's a ton of backlash against Microsoft because of 
their licensing changes," and many users may be more likely to give 
OpenOffice and other alternatives a try, he said. "I think some people will 
do it just for spite."


The OpenOffice.org developer community includes Sun employees, volunteer 
developers, marketers and end users, according to the group.


OpenOffice users can go online for free help from other users and 
developers, or if they are interested in more full-featured support and 
documentation, they can buy the StarOffice suite from Sun, which is 
expected to be priced at under $100.


OpenOffice.org 1.0 includes applications for word processing, spreadsheets, 
presentations and drawing. StarOffice adds a database application and 
several proprietary multimedia programs.
******************
Computerworld
Netscape, Mozilla hole allows remote text viewing
By SAM COSTELLO, IDG NEWS SERVICE

A security hole in the Netscape Communications Corp. Navigator and Mozilla 
Web browsers could allow an attacker to view documents on a user's PC, 
according to an advisory released yesterday by an Israeli security group.

Netscape acknowledged the vulnerability today and said its engineers are 
working to fix the problem, according to Andrew Weinstein, a spokesman for 
Netscape.


"We expect to have a resolution in the near future," he said.


The vulnerability affects the XMLHttpRequest component of both Navigator 
and Mozilla, which is used primarily to retrieve XML documents from Web 
servers, according to the security group, GreyMagic Software. An attacker 
could exploit the vulnerability by sending the Web browsers to a Web site 
that included hostile code, which would then allow the attacker to view 
documents on a user's hard drive, the group said.


Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser was vulnerable to a less 
serious version of the same attack, which Microsoft patched in February.


The Navigator and Mozilla vulnerability affects Version 6.1 and higher of 
Navigator and versions 0.9.7 to 0.9.9 of Mozilla.


The scope of the vulnerability will likely be limited by the number of 
users who run either Netscape or Mozilla. Netscape holds about 7% of the 
worldwide market for Web browsers, according to San Diego-based research 
firm WebSideStory Inc. Mozilla, an open-source Web browser whose first 
final version has yet to be released, commands a smaller market share.


Mozilla was created after Netscape made its source code available to 
developers in 1998. New York-based AOL Time Warner Inc. uses in Navigator 
much of the same code that powers Mozilla.


GreyMagic's advisory also came peppered with harsh words for Netscape, 
which GreyMagic said reneged on a pledge to give $1,000 for every serious 
bug discovered by researchers. GreyMagic said Netscape ignored e-mail sent 
by the group detailing this vulnerability, adding that in the future, 
GreyMagic would release any bugs it finds in Netscape without contacting 
the company and would recommend against the use of its browser.


Weinstein said Netscape acknowledged GreyMagic's e-mail, but the group 
submitted its report last Wednesday and waited only until Monday to release 
the report publicly.


"Our bug bounty program remains robust, and we encourage anyone who 
discovers [a bug] to bring it to our attention," he said.
*******************
BBC
Grid helps science go sky-high

Astronomers could be among the first to reap the rewards of plans to turn 
the internet into a vast pool of computer processing power.
The three-year Astrogrid project is attempting to give astronomers a common 
way of accessing and manipulating diverse data archives.

The project will also help scientists cope with the wave of data that novel 
telescopes and instruments are expected to generate.

The researchers behind the initiative believe astronomers will only be able 
to do meaningful science with this wealth of new data by tapping the net's 
huge information processing potential.

Day-to-day data delay

Astrogrid is a ?5m project that attempts to put a single, friendly 
interface on the huge number of astronomical archives and data sets 
currently held online.

It is one of many projects inspired by research on ways of using the 
computers attached to the net as a coupled supercomputer or a storage 
system with almost limitless capacity.

Nicholas Walton, project scientist for Astrogrid, said many astronomers 
currently spent a lot of their time hunting for data or turning what they 
needed into a form they could use.

"Data sets are archived but not always in the same format or in a way 
that's accessible to all," said Dr Walton.

Astrogrid will create a standard way of querying almost any astronomical 
database and remove any need to understand the technical quirks of an 
instrument to get the most out of the information.

To make this happen, the Astrogrid project is defining a "metadata" format 
that can be used to interpret sets of data so they can be queried through 
one interface similar to a web browser.

"We want to make it easier for everyone to have access to the same data but 
ensure they're presented in the same uniform way," said Dr Walton.

"We'll have been successful when they are using it but don't know they are 
using it," he said.

The ability to combine datasets from different sources was becoming much 
more important to astronomers, said Dr Walton.

Only by combining X-ray, radio, magnetic, infra-red and optical information 
about astronomical objects such as supernova remnants would scientists get 
a thorough understanding of the Universe, he said.

Instrument explosion

Astrogrid will also help astronomers cope with the enormous amounts of data 
that new instruments, such as the Visible & Infrared Survey Telescope for 
Astronomy (Vista), are expected to produce.

Dr Walton said that before now total surveys of the sky were typically done 
once every few decades.

By contrast, Vista will survey the sky every few days and produce 100Gb of 
data per night.

Other planned instruments such as Europe's Very Large Telescope Array and 
the American space agency's Living With a Star project will produce similar 
reams of data.

The only way that astronomers were going to be able to archive and analyse 
such enormous amounts of data was by using the net as a storage system and 
a vast supercomputer, said Dr Walton.

Without the help of the internet, scientists would have no chance of 
finding the tens of objects that interest them out of the billions that 
instruments are recording information about.

"We want to enable astronomers to do more effective and economic science," 
he said.

"We want them to do the things they do now faster and to do things they 
cannot contemplate now."
******************
New York Times
Lessons Learned at Dot-Com U.
By KATIE HAFNER

GO to Fathom.com and you will encounter a veritable trove of online courses 
about Shakespeare. You can enroll in "Modern Film Adaptations of 
Shakespeare," offered by the American Film Institute, or "Shakespeare and 
Management," taught by a member of the Columbia Business School faculty.

The site is by no means confined to courses on Shakespeare. You can also 
treat yourself to a seminar called "Bioacoustics: Cetaceans and Seeing 
Sounds," taught by a scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Or if yours is a more public-policy-minded intellect, you can sign up for 
"Capital Punishment in the United States," a seminar with experts from 
Cambridge University Press, Columbia University and the University of Chicago.

What's more, all are free.

That part was not always the plan. Fathom, a start-up financed by Columbia, 
was founded two years ago with the goal of making a profit by offering 
online courses over the Internet. But after spending more than $25 million 
on the venture, Columbia has found decidedly little interest among 
prospective students in paying for the semester-length courses.

Now Fathom is taking a new approach, one that its chief executive likens to 
giving away free samples to entice customers.

Call it the Morning After phenomenon. In the last few years, prestigious 
universities rushed to start profit-seeking spinoffs, independent divisions 
that were going to develop online courses. The idea, fueled by the belief 
that students need not be physically present to receive a high-quality 
education, went beyond the mere introduction of online tools into 
traditional classes.

The notion was that there were prospective students out there, far beyond 
the university's walls, for whom distance education was the answer. Whether 
they were 18-year-olds seeking college degrees or 50-year-olds longing to 
sound smart at cocktail parties, students would flock to the Web by the 
tens of thousands, paying tuitions comparable to those charged in the 
bricks-and-mortarboard world ? or so the thinking went.

"University presidents got dollars in their eyes and figured the way the 
university was going to ride the dot-com wave was through distance 
learning," said Lev S. Gonick, vice president for information services and 
chief information officer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. 
"They got swept up."

American universities have spent at least $100 million on Web-based course 
offerings, according to Eduventures, an education research firm in Boston.
Now the groves of academe are littered with the detritus of failed 
e-learning start-ups as those same universities struggle with the question 
of how to embrace online education but not hemorrhage money in the process.

New York University recently closed its Internet-based learning venture, 
NYUonline. The University of Maryland University College closed its 
profit-based online arm last October and folded it into the college. Temple 
University's company, Virtual Temple, closed last summer. Others have 
reinvented themselves.

In the process, the universities have come to understand that there is more 
to online learning than simply transferring courses to the Web.

"The truth is that e-learning technology itself, and those of us who 
represent the institutional and corporate agents of change in the 
e-learning environment, have thus far failed," Dr. Gonick said. "Across 
U.S. campuses today, e-learning technology investments are at risk, and 
many technology champions are in retreat." Since the mid-1990's, most of 
the purely virtual universities that sprang up ? from Hungry Minds to 
California Virtual University ? have been sold or scaled back or have 
disappeared altogether. The same is true for the lavish venture-capital 
financing for start-ups that designed online courses for colleges or put 
the technology for such courses in place, for a high fee.

In 2000, some $482 million in venture capital was spent on companies 
building online tools aimed at the higher education market. So far this 
year, that amount has dropped to $17 million, according to Eduventures.

Kenneth Green, founder of the Campus Computing Project, a research effort 
based in Los Angeles that studies information technology in American higher 
education, pointed to a combination of reasons that universities have 
stumbled in distance education.

Mr. Green said that college campuses and dot-coms had looked at the numbers 
and anticipated a rising tide of enrollment based on baby boomers and their 
children as both traditional students and those seeking continuing 
education. In short, the colleges essentially assumed that if they built 
it, students would come.

One conspicuous example is Fathom. Last week, Columbia's senate issued a 
report saying that the university should cut spending on the venture 
because it had little return to show for its investment. The report urges 
better coordination among the university's digital efforts, notably 
Columbia Interactive, a site aimed at scholars seeking academic content.

Fathom started in 2000 by offering elaborate online courses replicating the 
Ivy League experience. The company has an impressive roster of a dozen 
partners, including the London School of Economics and Political Science, 
Cambridge University Press, the British Library, the University of Chicago 
and the New York Public Library. Many of Fathom's courses are provided by 
its member institutions, and many offer credit toward a degree.

Although Fathom's courses were impressive from the start ? for example, 
"Introduction to Macroeconomics," taught by a University of Washington 
professor for $670 ? the idea that many students would pay $500 or more for 
them proved a miscalculation.

"If you listened to some of the conversations going around on campuses, it 
was, `Gee, this looks to be easy, inexpensive to develop and highly 
profitable ? throw it up on the Web and people will pay us,' " Mr. Green said.

But business models were flawed, he said, and university administrators did 
not fully understand the cost of entering the market. "It's really, really 
expensive to do this stuff," he said. "It costs hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to build a course well."

There are substantial costs in designing the course, Mr. Green said, like 
creating video, securing content rights and paying the faculty member who 
teaches it. "This doesn't migrate painlessly from classroom onto the Web," 
he said. "It's more like making a Hollywood movie."

Michael Crow, executive vice provost at Columbia, said that Fathom had yet 
to generate significant revenue, let alone turn a profit.

"Right now we're trying to figure out how to make it work intellectually," 
he said, "and we have to figure out later how to make it work financially. 
If anyone had asked us how anyone was going to make the university work 
financially as the first question asked, it would never have been built."

Now Fathom has decided that instead of students seeking degrees, it will 
focus on those looking for courses in professional development and 
continuing education. Fathom is also offering courses that are less 
expensive to produce and cost less for students, as well as several dozen 
others that are free.

"We've broadened the kinds of courses in recognition of the fact that most 
people aren't familiar yet with online learning, so they need different 
price points," said Ann Kirschner, Fathom's president and chief executive. 
"We need to introduce learners to the concept before they will commit money."

Part of the problem, distance learning experts say, has been an emphasis on 
technology ? streaming video, for example ? at the expense of more careful 
thinking about how remote learning might best be conducted. Some critics 
say that university administrators confused tools with education.

"We figured a quick wave of the magic wand and we'd reinvent how people 
learned after 900 years of a traditional university mode of instruction," 
Dr. Gonick said.

New York University has had a conspicuously difficult experience with 
distance education. The university started NYUonline in late 1998 to focus 
on corporate education and training, not degree programs. The company sold 
the courses as packages to corporate customers.

By the time it opened its virtual doors to students in 2000, NYUonline 
employed 45 people and offered online courses with titles like "Train the 
Trainer," for human resource managers, and "Management Techniques," aimed 
at young managers.

The NYUonline courses were not cheap. "Train the Trainer," which included 
live Webcasts as well as self-paced online courseware, cost around $1,600. 
The tuition for the management techniques course was close to $600.

In two and a half years of operation, NYUonline received nearly $25 million 
from the university, but enrollment remained anemic at best: just 500 
students at its peak.

After closing NYUonline, the university moved some of the company's 
activities into its School of Continuing and Professional Studies, which 
was probably where it belonged in the first place, said Gordon Macomber, 
the former chief executive of NYUonline, who is now a consultant on 
electronic learning in New Canaan, Conn.

"Along the way it became apparent that a major university that wants to get 
into online education can do it without forming a separate for-profit 
online company," Mr. Macomber said. "If you're going to invest money in 
anything, the university might as well invest it within the university 
instead of supporting a for-profit company."

There are a few success stories. The technically oriented University of 
Phoenix has an online enrollment of more than 37,000, with four-year and 
post-graduate degree programs aimed at older students. The university's 
success, Mr. Green suggested, comes from its expertise in branding, 
marketing and infrastructure.

That could be the combination for success in distance education.
The trick now is finding a way for universities like Columbia, steeped in 
academic tradition, to make it work.

"In a way, that is the crux of the matter," said Ms. Kirschner of Fathom. 
"Are universities going to grow smaller and marginalized in a world teeming 
with sources of information, or are they more important than ever, as 
people seek to separate fact from fiction, knowledge from data?" Ms. 
Kirschner said she hoped the answer would be the latter.

In the meantime, you can brush up your Shakespeare. And they'll all kowtow.
*******************
BBC
Eminem CD could be 'pirate proof'

The controversial rapper and his Universal label are in talks to release 
the forthcoming The Eminem Show with technology that would prevent 
widespread copying.

The record label is also being extremely cautious about where promotional 
copies of the album's first single, Without Me, are going, fearing leaks on 
to the internet will affect sales.

If Universal go ahead with the plan, it would mark the company's biggest 
attempt to protect its artists from piracy.

There has been a strong push from the major labels towards copy-proof 
material but until now it has tended to be on a limited basis.

Sales slump

Albums from Celine Dion, *N Sync and Natalie Imbruglia have all had 
technology added to prevent them being copied.

The widespread leak on to the internet of the Oasis comeback album Heathen 
Chemistry will further add fuel to the industry's concerns about piracy.

Eminem's third album is due for release on 3 June, so any decision on 
copyright protection will need to be taken swiftly.

Piracy has recently been blamed for a 5% drop in the world's music sales.

The music industry took quick action to try and halt the illegal 
downloading of music from the internet which can easily be copied on to CDs.

Consumer complaints


Sites such as Napster were shut down by legal wrangles because unlicensed 
music was being swapped on its service.

But some consumers have complained that albums with anti-piracy equipment 
attached have hindered their ability to play them on their computers or 
in-car stereos.

Because it has not been used on such an eagerly awaited album before, it 
has been difficult to gauge reaction.

"Clearly, we will have a better sense of how the market feels about 
copy-protection when a release of Eminem's stature, should we decide to do 
it, comes with copy-protection on it," said Universal Music spokesman Adam 
White.

"Mass-copying has gotten to such a level that we had better take a stand to 
protect the artists," he added.
**************************
New York Times
The Heavy Lifters of Computation

By J.D. BIERSDORFER

Is a mainframe computer the same thing as a supercomputer?

A. Unlike personal desktop computers designed for use by one person at a 
time, a mainframe computer can handle thousands of users at a time and is 
often used in a corporate or financial environment.

Although mainframes can usually run several programs at the same time, they 
are not as powerful as supercomputers in terms of raw processing speed. 
Because supercomputers can run programs much faster, they are often used at 
academic and research institutions to handle complex calculations for 
engineering, chemistry and other science projects, for example, climate 
models.

Mainframes have been part of the computing world for decades, and early 
models took up entire rooms that had to be kept cool for the computer to 
work properly. Although mainframes have shrunk in size, they are still very 
much in use and can now run modern operating systems like Linux. Often they 
are referred to as enterprise servers.

Q. Why can't you simply copy files onto a CD the way you can onto a floppy 
disk? With Windows XP, I can copy files to the CD, but then must go through 
a process to "Write these files to CD."

A. When you drag files to the CD burner icon in Windows XP or use the Send 
To command from the File menu, you are sending those files to a staging 
area on the hard drive. The actual recording process starts when you select 
"Write these files to CD" from the task pane. The gathered files are then 
copied into a single file that is then recorded onto the CD.

CD recording in general is often confusing for new users because of the 
abundance of options within the recording software and because of conflicts 
between software and hardware that can result in a ruined disc. (There are 
many brands of CD recorders and several software programs.) To simplify the 
process, both Windows XP and Mac OS X include basic CD-recording functions.

A movement is under way, however, to make the process of copying files onto 
a CD as easy, standardized and straightforward as copying files onto floppy 
disks. One solution is being developed by a group called the Mount Rainier 
project with support from Philips Electronics, Compaq Computer, Sony 
Electronics and Microsoft with the goal of integrating it into future 
operating systems.

Users of computers with Mount Rainier technology would be able simply to 
drag and drop their files onto a CD to record them. Disc formatting and 
other setup tasks would be automatic.

The technology is still probably about a year away: you can read more about 
the technology at www.mt-rainier.org.

Q. Every time I boot up my computer, I get a message informing me that "the 
shortcut to PREMEND.LNK is not available." What is this shortcut and how 
can I can get rid of this error message?

A. Premend is a small program used by computer manufacturers to help 
automatically set up new machines running Windows Millennium Edition, or 
Me. After you use Windows the first time, Premend is supposed to remove 
itself from both the hard drive and from the list of programs that start up 
automatically whenever the PC does.

According to a note in Gateway's technical database, that does not always 
happen as planned. Sometimes the program removes itself from the hard drive 
but leaves the broken shortcut to the program behind in the StartUp folder, 
which is what Windows is referring to when you boot up your PC.

To get rid of the broken shortcut and the error message, go to the Start 
menu, click on Settings and select the Taskbar & Start Menu. Click on the 
Advanced tab and then on Remove.

In the Remove Shortcuts/Folders box, double-click on Startup and then 
select Premend. Click on Remove.

Circuits invites questions about computer-based technology, by e-mail to 
QandA@xxxxxxxxxxxx This column will answer questions of general interest, 
but letters cannot be answered individually.
******************
New York Times
Virtually Rebuilt, a Ruin Yields Secrets
By SAM LUBELL

VERYONE knows that the Roman Colosseum is an architectural marvel. Built so 
that thousands of people could be ushered in and out in minutes, it is a 
testament to the genius of Roman engineering. Or is it?

By reconstructing the building with three-dimensional computer modeling and 
then virtually "walking through" it, researchers have discovered that in 
some sections the building may have had all the efficiency of a 
railroad-style apartment on the Bowery. The model reveals dark, narrow 
upper hallways that probably hemmed in spectators, slowing their movement 
to a crawl.

Such three-dimensional modeling is turning some of archaeology's 
once-established truths on their heads. Because 3-D software can take into 
account the building materials and the laws of physics, it enables scholars 
to address construction techniques in ways sometimes overlooked when they 
are working with two-dimensional drawings.

"Now we have a tool that will really test assumptions," said Dean 
Abernathy, a doctoral student who helped reconstruct the Colosseum at the 
Cultural Virtual Reality Lab at the University of California at Los 
Angeles. "It creates a lot of excitement in the field."

The U.C.L.A. lab (www.cvrlab.org) creates models of architectural sites 
around the world. Since 1996 it has been working on a project called Rome 
Reborn, which seeks to rebuild much of the ancient metropolis.

Researchers at the lab recreated the Colosseum using a program called 
MultiGen Creator, which allows users to pan, zoom, walk or even fly through 
a simulation of a site. Graphics software like 3D Studio MAX and 
Lightscape, the same kind of programs used by digital movie studios, helps 
make the replicas particularly lifelike, with sharp colors and intricate 
stonework.

The Colosseum, a vast four-story oval arena, was built from around A.D. 70 
to 80 under the rule of the Emperor Vespasian and then Titus. It once held 
as many as 50,000 spectators. Earthquakes and the ravages of time have 
destroyed much of the building, but an impressive amount, including most of 
its facade, still stands.

Mr. Abernathy confronted the issue of the third-level hallways when he was 
working on the reconstruction. His model drew on the findings of a team of 
experts on Roman architecture assembled by U.C.L.A. who had studied similar 
amphitheaters, drawings of the Colosseum and records of the building's 
construction and expansion. The team also examined what was left of the 
upper hallways, an area that had previously been all but closed to 
researchers.

Bernard Frischer, a classics professor at U.C.L.A. and director of the 
Cultural Virtual Reality Lab, said that researchers have generally held 
that the entire Colosseum was a masterpiece of circulation, with people 
able to enter and leave in as little as 10 minutes. After touring the 
virtual Colosseum, now he is not so sure.

"Most scholars just never focused on the problem of circulation throughout 
the building," he said. "They assumed that each of the floors was going to 
look like the bottom," which is spacious and well lighted. "Only once we 
had to reconstruct the building did an idea like that pop into our heads."

Such reconstructions have challenged traditional thinking about other sites 
as well.

Analysis of U.C.L.A. models suggests that the Roman Senate may have been 
poorly ventilated and lighted and had inferior acoustics. The models also 
raised some new questions about the Temple of Saturn, whose design may have 
been altered centuries after its construction.

Colleges have developed sophisticated devices to enhance the experience of 
touring the models. At U.C.L.A., researchers view models at the 
university's visualization portal, a screen 24 feet wide by 9 feet high 
that offers 160-degree views, with special goggles producing a 
three-dimensional effect.

At Brown University, archaeologists can view the results of their digs in a 
room called the CAVE, for Computer-Automated Virtual Environment. 
Surrounded by three-dimensional images on screens on the walls and the 
floor, scholars navigate by wearing shuttered goggles and sensors that 
exchange data with a computer system. A "wand" with an internal track ball 
like that of a mouse moves them wherever they direct it.

Other virtual-reality projects allow users to move around the room 
physically, with their movements tracked by overhead 3-D magnetic or 
infrared devices.

Samuel Paley, a classics professor at the State University at Buffalo, and 
members of the virtual reality lab there have worked with Learning Sites 
(www.learningsites .com), a design company based in Williamstown, Mass., 
that specializes in archaeological visualizations, to produce virtual 
models of several Assyrian palaces. The simulations can be viewed on a 
supercomputer at the university's center for computational research.

Moving through a simulation of the northwest palace of Ashur-Nasir-Pal II 
of Assyria, an ancient site in modern-day Iraq, he caught a glimpse of 
three leaf bas-relief sculptures in a row. The sculptures, which depicted a 
ritual involving the king, courtiers and protective gods, could be viewed 
as a single, isolated tableau only from his position on the threshold of 
the throne room  as was evidently the intention of the palace's designers.

When Professor Paley described his finding at a lecture, "the room went 
absolutely silent," he said. "I think people realized right then that this 
is a useful technology that helps them see things in a different way."

Donald Sanders, president of Learning Sites, said that more than 70 
university programs across the country were now using computer-generated 
virtual reality models, compared with only a handful five years ago.

"This is the future," Professor Paley said.

But the future is not cheap. More than $25,000 has gone into the Colosseum 
project so far, researchers at U.C.L.A. said. Microsoft, which incorporated 
the Colosseum graphics into its Encarta 2002 interactive learning software, 
helped cover some of the project's costs through a licensing agreement with 
the university. The Andrew Mellon Foundation supplied $127,000 to cover the 
Roman Forum project.

Some experts hesitate to rely on such modeling, saying that it can gloss 
over the realities of the past.

Kenneth Kolson, deputy director of the division of research programs for 
the National Endowment for the Humanities, said that virtual images 
conveyed a "false sense of integrity and purity."

"Those images, especially the stunningly seductive ones," he added, "convey 
as much or more about our own values and cultural aspirations as about the 
ancients."

Even Professor Frischer and other scholars who have embraced interactive 
3-D modeling caution that their reconstructions can never be accepted as 
fact, partly because new information is always surfacing.

"We're working the stuff out," said Mark Wilson Jones, a member of the 
U.C.L.A. committee of Roman architecture experts and a lecturer in 
architecture at the University of Bath in England. "Nothing's ever final." 
One advantage of using digital models, scholars say, is that they can 
easily be updated with new findings.

Fikret Yegul, a professor of architectural history at the University of 
California at Santa Barbara, acknowledges that computer modeling can shed 
new light on the past. "It just brings greater depth to our understanding," 
he said.

Still, he questions some of the theories of the team of experts assembled 
by U.C.L.A. "V.R. models can never be seen as the last word," he said. 
"They are only another perspective."

Some researchers reject the technique because they are wary of changing the 
way they work or of ceding control to computer programmers. And some are 
unconvinced that the technique accomplishes anything beyond creating pretty 
computer models. "There are a lot of archaeologists who look at this as 
glorified coloring book stuff," said Dr. Sanders of Learning Sites.

"There are always people hesitant to move from their own set ways of doing 
things," he said. He offered a historical example.

"It wasn't so long ago that there was a technology coming into popular 
use," Dr. Sanders said. "The equipment used to create it was very 
expensive, yet the images you got were something that you could never get 
without it. Within a generation it became indispensable to archaeology.

"That's exactly how photography got started."
*************************
Government Computer News
Hacker pleads guilty to accessing NASA system
By Wilson P. Dizard III

A hacker charged last year with breaking into a NASA server has pleaded 
guilty in the U.S. District Court in San Antonio to one count of 
intentionally accessing a federal computer without authorization, NASA said 
Monday. He faces a possible one-year jail term and a $100,000 fine.

Ruben Candelario, who entered his plea April 18, is scheduled to be 
sentenced June 20.

He was indicted a year ago on charges of hacking into the Web and e-mail 
server of NASA's Virginia Consortium of Engineering and Science at Langley 
Research Center in Hampton, Va. He also was charged with possessing and 
trafficking in computer passwords.


Candelario, who used the nickname "skrilla," was the subject of an 
investigation by the NASA Inspector General's Computer and Technology 
Crimes Office and investigators of the Guadalupe, Texas, Sheriff's Department.
***************
Government Computer News
Army lab will double its computing capacity
By Dawn S. Onley

High-performance computing capacity at the Army Research Laboratory in 
Aberdeen, Md., will double as a result of a $14 million contract awarded 
yesterday to Raytheon Co. by the Defense Department's High Performance 
Computing Modernization Office.

Under the contract, Raytheon will install and test what will be the largest 
supercomputer at ARL, the company said. The supercomputer will consist of 
800 1.3-GHz IBM Power4 processors and will operate three to four times 
faster than the two IBM Power3 systems it will supersede.

The new system will double the overall computational capability of the 
laboratory's high-performance supercomputers to more than 7.1 trillion 
floating-point operations per second.
*****************
Mercury News
How some readers fight spam

Last week we published tips on dealing with spam and asked readers for 
their ideas. Here are some:

1. Avoid Hotmail.com, MSN.com and Passport.com. All the Microsoft-hosted 
free Web-based e-mail providers save a cookie with the user's e-mail 
address all spelled out. Any later site visited can read the cookie and be 
guaranteed that the e-mail address is valid. There is no way to prevent 
this, since the e-mail service will not allow you to log in without 
enabling cookies.

The best alternative is to use Yahoo or Juno Web e-mail or POP e-mail. 
Although Yahoo requires cookies be enabled and it saves a cookie, the 
cookie does NOT contain the user's e-mail address, so when other sites read 
the cookie they gain nothing. I use Yahoo Web e-mail, and in two years, I 
have received only two or three spam messages, whereas my little-used 
Hotmail account gets around 15 spam messages per day.

2. Use the utility CookiePal (www.kburra.com/order .html), available for 
$15. This program is indispensable for controlling which cookies are saved 
and which are not.

Ted Hadley
Sunnyvale

Read my series

There's a lot you can do about spam, and the subject is a big part of my 
``Overcome Email Overload'' book series.

While you were correct that blocking e-mail addresses doesn't really work, 
you can use your e-mail program's built-in filters to do much more. Just my 
top three anti-spam filters block about three-fourths of my spam 
automatically, while catching very few legitimate messages.

Note that to use the anti-spam filters, it's essential to ``white list'' 
messages -- a list that explicitly keeps all messages from people whose 
messages you're sure you want.

Here's how to make my top three anti-spam filters:

1. Make a filter to move messages whose body contains the characters 
``IMG.'' IMG is the HTML code for an embedded image -- which spam 
frequently contains and that legitimate messages rarely have.

2. Make a filter to move messages with seven spaces in the Subject. Spam 
frequently has a tracking ID, such as ``2s829487q,'' way off to the right 
of the Subject line, separated from the main subject by a lot of spaces.

3. Make a filter to move messages with no space character in the ``From:'' 
line. Almost all legitimate messages have a ``real name'' (e.g., ``Mabel 
Garcia''), while a lot of spam has ``From'' lines with only an e-mail 
address (e.g., s92834@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx). Note, however, that messages 
from America Online users never have a ``real name,'' so your filter must 
make an exception for AOL users.

I've posted more information on my Web site (www. OvercomeEmailOverload 
.com/top3.html).

Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
Palo Alto

Unsubscribing works

You said never to click unsubscribe in the spam messages. I've become a fan 
of clicking it every time.

I have four different message accounts forwarding to a Yahoo inbox, which 
sounds like a spam disaster waiting to happen.

But my strategy is, whenever I get spam, click the unsubscribe at the 
bottom and fill it out, or if it doesn't offer that, reply with the 
``REMOVE'' and sometimes ``UNSUBSCRIBE'' tags in the e-mails. Then I block 
the e-mail address and delete the offending e-mail. If it comes from an 
address that ends with yahoo.com, I forward it to abuse@xxxxxxxxx, which 
deletes offending accounts.

It's worked quite well. I probably average about one spam message every two 
weeks. Plus, it certainly isn't a private address, it's all over my Web 
site, and it's the only one I use to sign up for stuff on forms offline and 
online.

Davy Fields
Mountain View

. . . it really does

I have contrary experience to the advice never to unsubscribe. I had been 
merely deleting spam until several months ago. Then the volume reached a 
point where I decided to use every unsubscribe option given. Within a week, 
the volume sunk to almost zero. True, it has slowly climbed back, but has 
not yet reached the level I had before.

Ron Gutman
San Jose

Two inboxes

In Outlook, I set up a separate inbox called Inbox-Personal.

I turned off sound notification when e-mail arrives.

I set up a rule for filtering e-mail that arrives in Inbox that moves any 
e-mail sent by someone in my address book into Inbox-Personal and sounds a 
notification.

That way, all of the spam ends up in Inbox, and almost all of my personal 
mail ends up in Inbox-Personal, and I don't hear the ``e-mail has arrived'' 
sound unless something ends up in Inbox-Personal. I do have to check Inbox 
regularly, but most of the time I end up deleting everything that lands 
there. And if I get an e-mail from someone or from a list that I want to 
end up in Inbox-Personal, I simply add a new address book entry.

Gary Hillerson
Aptos Grass-roots movement I own my own domain address and all mail that 
comes to it is ultimately routed to me. When I am asked to provide an 
e-mail address, I always use the name of the company at mydomain.com and 
thus all the e-mail sent to me clearly states where it came from. If ever I 
receive spam from that company unsolicited, I let them know they better 
cease immediately or I will report them to the Better Business Bureau, and 
that I am ceasing to do business with them.

All in all, it really doesn't help cut down on spam, but it sure tells me 
who to do business with and who I shouldn't trust.

I think the solution is a grass-roots movement of people who will NOT buy 
products from spammers and after some time this marketing vehicle will be 
rendered ineffective and thus will no longer be an option, at least in my 
utopian mindset.

K.C. Teis
Livermore

MailWasher

I discovered an anti-spam tool that you didn't mention that works well, 
combines offline and online filtering, and is shareware. It's called 
MailWasher (www.mailwasher

.net), and it works very well, although it won't work with Hotmail or other 
Web mail services until later this year.

In a nutshell, MailWasher downloads message headers from your mail accounts 
-- multiple accounts are supported -- and checks the headers against the 
spam DNS Blacklist servers from a number of different sources -- currently 
ORDB, Visi and SpamCop, and you can add additional ones -- to alert you to 
potential spam, as well as potential virus carriers, chain letters and 
other nuisances.

You can create your own filters, as well as blacklist addresses ``on the 
fly.'' You can even read the text of messages without downloading the 
entire message. MailWasher also allows you to delete messages at the server 
before you download them. This is very useful for large messages, potential 
viruses, and when you're traveling and must use slow dial-up connections.

For $20 with lifetime support and upgrades and no spyware, MailWasher is a 
major bargain.

Leonard Feldman
Redwood City

Delete efficiently

Tip to save time: When deleting spam in Microsoft Outlook, press Shift + 
Delete, then Enter at the prompt to bypass Outlook's Deleted Items and 
delete from hard drive entirely.

This works for any deletions you are sure of and saves the added step of 
clearing the Deleted Items box. You also avoid seeing the dreaded spam twice.

Just don't be sloppy in highlighting items to delete and trash something 
you want to have a second chance to save.

Marsha Hayes
San Francisco

Kudos to Cruzio

I run a programming/consulting service and Web site in Santa Cruz, which 
after 5 years has attracted plenty of spam. Thanks to the efforts of Cruzio 
(www.cruzio.com), our local Internet service provider, I am now effectively 
free of junk e-mail.

Their first-generation anti-spam option has been available for a few years, 
catching about 90 percent of my spam. It examines e-mail headers, diverting 
wrong-address and ``blind carbon copy'' e-mail to a separate box. I can 
examine it, make exceptions for desired ``To'' and ``From'' addresses, or 
just ignore it. They send me a list each week, then delete the oldest spam 
after another week.

Cruzio's second-generation filter just became available. Of 60 unsolicited 
spams last week, I received one lonely mortgage ad. The new filter checks 
for known spammers and bulk e-mailing software, and looks for spam-profile 
content, text and viruses. Again, I can make exceptions to the rules.

If such strong filters were an option for everyone, spam would die out 
naturally.

Robert Patton
Santa Cruz

Postini worth fee

South Valley Internet in San Martin (www.garlic.com) uses a very good 
filter system from Postini (www.

postini.com). It costs me $1.25 a month and it's worth every penny.

The suspect messages are held by Postini and at a certain volume level -- 
about 60 messages -- I am notified. I then log in and look at the subject 
matter. I choose ``delete'' and all the messages are flagged with a check 
mark. Then I uncheck any that I want to save, usually only one or two. When 
a user starts out with Postini, he or she plugs in legitimate (e-mail 
addresses) and these are not filtered by the service.

Before Postini, it was a daily nightmare with volume going up and up.

Walt Keeshen Jr.
Morgan Hill
*******************
Government Computer News
Army will tweak its network and software practices
By Thomas R. Temin

SALT LAKE CITYThe Army will launch two initiatives Oct. 1 to help 
standardize its software and networks.

To bring enterprise management to its many networks, the service's Signal 
Command at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., will become the Network Enterprise and 
Technology Command, said Lt. Gen. Peter Cuviello, the Army's CIO, at the 
Software Technology Conference. The new command, known as Netcom, will have 
technical control over the information management directors at all Army 
installations.

The current Signal Command director, Maj. Gen. James Hylton, will head 
Netcom, Cuviello said.

Also, to make sure all Army programs run the same versions of software, the 
service will set what it calls a software-blocking policy. The policy will 
force program managers to get approval for upgrades. Software 
specifications will be locked down for 18 months, and the Army will deploy 
only one version of a package to all installations within that 18-month 
period, Cuviello said.

"So when a program manager says 'I've got Version 5.0,' fielding will take 
place within a set time, and we'll have the entire Army with it," he said.
*****************
USA Today
Philips finds way to 'paint' LCD screens

NEW YORK (AP)  Today, liquid crystal displays, or LCDs are found in 
laptops, watches and cell phones  sandwiched between two rigid pieces of glass.

But soon, LCD screens may be daubed onto walls or clothing, say researchers 
at Royal Philips Electronics, who devised a way of painting a computer 
screen onto a surface.

The new technique, discovered by five Philips researchers working at the 
company's research laboratory in The Netherlands, could allow flexible, 
lightweight LCDs to be mounted on plastic sheets that can be rolled up or 
folded.

The innovation could sustain LCD technology's viability versus competing 
display techniques such as organic light-emitting diode systems, said Bob 
O'Donnell, a display technology analyst with IDC.

If the technology catches on, cheap, paintable LCDs could wind up in 
unheard of places, O'Donnell said.

"Count how many screens you have in your home and multiply that by a big 
factor," he said.

The Philips technique, called "photo-enforced stratification," involves 
painting a liquid crystal-polymer mix onto a surface  such as a sheet of 
plastic film  then exposing it to two doses of ultraviolet radiation.

The radiation forces the mixture to separate into a honeycomb of tiny 
individual cells covered by flexible, see-through polymer. When connected 
to a computer, the crystal-filled cells change color to create a picture, 
like any LCD display.

Some kinks need to be worked out. So far, the company's scientists have 
painted only glass with their liquid crystal-and-polymer mixture, because 
glass is less susceptible to the distorting contamination that plagues plastic.

An article on Philips' research into the technique appears in Thursday's 
issue of the journal Nature.

The article suggests that the LCD industry ought to quickly overcome 
remaining hurdles to LCD-enhanced clothing.

"We can look forward to the day when we will be able to put displays on 
almost anything," the article says.

The emergence of flexible displays is seen as one of the last impediments 
to more pervasive portable computing.

Wireless transmission, fast processors and small memory components have 
allowed computers to shrink to fit inside portable devices like cell phones 
and personal data assistants.

But screens remain rigid  either attached to a clunky laptop or shrunk to 
fit onto a cell phone or PDA  too small to surf the Web in a rewarding way.

Several companies have marshaled developers to work toward lightweight 
flexible screens that can be rolled up or folded and carried in a pocket. A 
wireless Internet-connected display would allow someone to read, say, an 
instantly updated electronic newspaper while riding on the bus.

Philips is exploring multiple paths toward this goal, developing flexible 
plastic transistors as well as a type of "electronic paper" display in 
concert with Cambridge, Mass.-based E Ink, which is developing paper-like 
screens.

IBM has also done research on flexible displays.

"Trying to surf the Net over your cell phone is like watching a move 
through a keyhole," said Russ Wilcox, E Ink's co-founder. "What people want 
is a big display that is very portable, so they can get access to all the 
information on the Internet."

Philips is an investor and development partner for ultra-thin, 
lightweight  but non-flexible  displays E Ink plans to release next year, 
Wilcox said.
****************
Government Executive
House lawmakers advocate biometrics-based licenses
By Maureen Sirhal, National Journal's Technology Daily

Reacting to the security lapses revealed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks 
and the growing problem of identity theft, Republican Tom Davis and 
Democrat James Moran, both House members from Virginia, on Wednesday 
introduced a measure that would enable states to store biometric 
information on drivers' licenses.

The measure seeks to standardize security features for all state-issued 
licenses. Unique biometric features of applicants would be stored in 
computer chips contained on the licenses. The notion behind the bill is to 
stop people from fraudulently using state-issued identification.

"This is something that we have had the technology to do for some time, but 
we think what happened on September 11 makes a compelling case to do now," 
Moran said at a press briefing. Several terrorists responsible for the 
Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington had obtained fake driver's 
licenses from states including Virginia.

The measure endorses an idea championed by the American Association of 
Motor Vehicle Administrators as a way to close security gaps in the process 
of granting licenses, which in essence have become an ID system.

The Moran-Davis bill would allow state departments of motor vehicles to 
link their databases, but the agencies could only collect biometrics 
information with the express consent of consumers. Moran said the measure 
would not create a "national ID" but would merely give states that need to 
verify the authenticity of license applications access to other states' 
databases.

"States will be able to check with other states and find out if [a] person 
should be issued a driver's license" Moran said, but the bill would place 
very "strict controls to protect people's privacy. We have looked at all of 
these potential problems with this, and I really think we have created the 
legislation in a way to address any concerns that people might have."

Experts from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) argued that the measure 
would achieve a careful balance between security and privacy concerns. 
Non-governmental entities could not collect the biometric information, PPI 
Vice President Robert Atkinson said, but consumers eventually could choose 
to use the system to authenticate their identities in online transactions.

Under the bill, the Transportation Security Administration, in concert with 
states and other federal agencies such as the National Institute of 
Standards and Technology, would set guidelines for implementing the system, 
including the creation of standards for connecting databases and encoding 
chips. The federal government also could provide $300 million in grants.

Privacy advocates charge that the measure could compromise privacy. In a 
February report, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said that 
the proposal could lead to profiling and that the use of biometrics is not 
necessarily fraud proof.

Moran countered on Wednesday that the use of biometrics would be virtually 
impossible to tamper with, and even if the information were compromised, he 
said, individuals could prove their identities in other ways, using birth 
certificates or medical records.
****************
Government Executive
IRS sets the standard for protecting privacy
By Joshua Dean
With a special tool designed to ensure that information is protected when 
new information systems are built, the IRS is setting the standard for 
federal agencies and other governments in protecting privacy in the age of 
electronic information.


In an interview with Government Executive, Peggy Irving, the IRS' privacy 
advocate, said the era of electronic records has people more concerned 
about privacy than ever before. "The public is more concerned about 
electronic records than paper records," she said, "especially because they 
can be sent globally in an instant."


Irving said it is important to ask who has access to sensitive information 
and to identify whether controls are in place to uphold privacy policies, 
especially when numerous databases are connected with one another across 
agency boundaries as a result of new initiatives to share information.


Since taking over the position in 1999, Irving has created a privacy impact 
assessment (PIA), which the IRS uses to help design new information systems 
under its massive Business Systems Modernization program. "The IRS uses the 
PIA to ultimately review what information should be collected and why it 
should be collected," Irving said. "It also asks if the information is 
relevant and from the most timely and accurate source."


The PIA asks a series of questions designed to ensure privacy protection is 
designed into new information systems and to ensure that only the least 
amount of personal information is collected. "Identity theft has become an 
issue," Irving said. "We analyze every IRS form and scrub them to make sure 
the agency is only asking for the information we absolutely need."


Irving's work at the IRS has not gone unnoticed. The federal Chief 
Information Officer's Council has called the PIA a best practice. Other 
federal agencies have come to the IRS for advice on privacy standards and 
assessments, as have businesses and foreign governments.


Irving is not hesitant to share the PIA. She has met with representatives 
from the FBI, the Coast Guard and the Navy to discuss the best practices 
embodied by the tool. "The FBI immediately saw the rightness of the 
PIA?[the agency] really does want to assure the public and encourage 
cooperation," she said.


In 1993, the IRS became the first federal agency to have a privacy 
advocate. Irving took over the position in 1999 after working on privacy 
and disclosure issues at the Justice Department for more than 20 years. She 
said the Department of Health and Human Services was the next agency to 
create the position, since Americans are as concerned about the privacy of 
their medical information as they are about their financial information.


The positions of privacy advocate and chief privacy officer have since 
become more prevalent in both the public and private sectors. To date, such 
companies as Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and Proctor & Gamble Co. have 
created privacy advocate positions. Agencies including the Justice 
Department and the Postal Service have also appointed privacy advocates. 
Irving's office has grown from a staff of three to a staff of 12, 
reflecting the premium the IRS puts on privacy, she said.
******************
Government Executive
Tech firms ally to push homeland security solutions
By Liza Porteus, National Journal's Technology Daily

Technology companies and government need to enhance collaboration as they 
seek the most effective way to secure the nation's airports and other 
transportation methods and facilities, industry leaders said Monday.

EDS, Oracle, PwC Consulting and Sun Microsystems recently formed an 
alliance to help the Transportation Security Administration and other 
federal agencies identify technologies for boosting transportation 
security. Last month, the group began offering a package that combines 
background on individuals with biometrics technology to enable a 
frequent-traveler program. The package also included a "secure employee" 
registration and authentication program designed to identify and assess 
security risks via existing employee information.

But "we can't even begin to define the limits of what has to be done here," 
EDS CEO Dick Brown said during a Council for Excellence in Government 
luncheon in Washington. "We're as vulnerable today to an electronic Pearl 
Harbor as we were on Sept. 11."

Brown suggested that White House Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge "take 
a good, hard look" at the nation's "most obvious" vulnerabilities and 
determine the most detrimental impact that could occur by exploiting those 
vulnerabilities. Although the tech community has been looking to aid 
government in installing new technologies to help detect potential 
terrorists, systems are still faulty, panelists said.

"This is a combination of process and technology," said Scott Hartz, global 
managing partner for PwC, adding that no one company or agency can succeed 
on its own.

Oracle executive Steve Perkins said the technological solutions for many of 
the nation's security challenges exist, but the TSA and other agencies need 
to be educated on how those solutions can be most effective. Despite some 
privacy groups' concerns with ideas such as a centralized database, or 
biometric ID cards, "we're going to have to push that line back and forth" 
between security and privacy, Perkins said.

"It's really a problem of political will and a will of citizens. What do we 
want to trade to be secure?" Perkins asked. "The question is, to secure the 
nation, where do we draw that line?"

Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy echoed those sentiments, saying that as 
more technology is used in homeland security, a "huge set of tradeoffs" is 
created. People want to be more secure, yet as more ideas are floated on 
how technology can affirm identities and track people's whereabouts, many 
say their privacy needs more protection and should not be sacrificed in the 
name of security.

But "you're not losing privacy that you haven't lost anyhow" by using new 
technologies, McNealy said. "Anonymity breeds irresponsibility," he said, 
adding that anonymity is a "very dangerous weapon."

McNealy cited Sun's work with the Liberty Alliance, the consortium of 
technology companies spearheaded by Sun that was created to develop 
e-commerce standards. He said the group's work on data-sharing standards is 
an example of how organizations and governments can do more to use 
technology for homeland security.
***************
Nando Times
Technology: Senator blasts broadcasters for missing digital deadline
 Copyright © 2002 AP Online

WASHINGTON (May 1, 2002 9:26 p.m. EDT) - A U.S. senator Wednesday 
criticized television broadcasters for failing to meet a deadline in the 
transition to digital and said Congress may intervene if significant 
progress doesn't emerge.

While crediting some broadcasters for contributing to the shift to digital, 
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the transition a "grave disappointment 
for American consumers."

On Wednesday, all commercial TV stations in the U.S. were supposed to be 
broadcasting a digital signal, but, as McCain pointed out, most missed it.

"Today it is clear that three-quarters of those broadcasters have not met 
their commitments, and their failure to do so is slowing the transition to 
digital television," said the ranking Republican on the Commerce Committee.

The target date for a complete transition to digital signals, which offer 
crisp images and sound, is 2006. The rollout, however, has run into 
obstacles, including concerns by content providers that their works will be 
pirated.

McCain said a slow transition affects Americans not only as consumers, but 
also as taxpayers.

"Broadcasters were given $70 billion in spectrum to facilitate the 
transition on the condition that they return it when the transition is 
complete," the senator said. "By failing to meet today's deadline, 
broadcasters continue to squat on the taxpayers' valuable resource."

The wireless industry, eager for spectrum, also criticizes broadcasters for 
not making timely digital advances.

"The wireless industry has proven that consumers want and use digital 
technology," the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association said. 
"It's also the most efficient and responsible use of valuable spectrum."

Michael Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, a 
month ago proposed voluntary steps for the industry to accelerate the shift 
to digital. Certain broadcast networks and the cable industry have 
expressed willingness to go along with the plan.

McCain said he hopes those commitments lead to results. He said the FCC 
plan is appropriate for now, but alternative measures might be necessary in 
case of further delays.

Edward Fritts, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, said 
his group is pleased that the cable industry is moving toward carrying 
digital broadcast signals.

"We look forward to the day when cable operators carry all digital 
broadcast signals in their entirety," he said.

The NAB has said that 324 digital television stations are on the air in 108 
markets.
******************
Nando Times
Technology: HDTV: a 'revolution' in search of couch potatoes
By NOEL C. PAUL, The Christian Science Monitor

WARWICK, R.I. (May 1, 2002 3:00 p.m. EDT) - Mary Dean watches television 
all day, every day. The Army officer from Cranston, R.I. - now in the 
middle of a pregnancy - lies horizontal on her couch, morning to night, 
flipping channels.

Looking for a new set recently in a nearby electronics store, however, Dean 
shows no interest in models that promise crystal-clear pictures and sound.

"I wouldn't pay more for what someone else considers more clear," says 
Dean. "Look, I can see this fine," she adds, pointing to a standard model.

The average American watches four hours of TV a day. And yet Americans show 
so little interest in picture quality, one might think they considered TV 
sets mere accompaniments to evenings spent composing poetry in iambic 
pentameter.

Three-quarters of the nation's TV stations required to broadcast programs 
in high-definition (HDTV) format will miss their federally mandated 
deadline today, largely because consumers are content with plain TVs.

A study by the General Accounting Office, a watchdog congressional group, 
found that more than 800 stations - 74 percent of those required to meet 
the new standards - aren't ready to send at least some "high definition" 
programming.

Congress set the deadline six years ago, calling the high-definition leap 
the most important consumer-electronic advancement since TVs moved to color.

But less than 1 percent of Americans have bought in. The reasons, experts 
say, pertain as much to U.S. culture as to consumer economics.

In general, Americans ask little of their televisions. For many, the first 
and only requirement is that they be on. "It's electronic wallpaper," says 
Jim Beniger, professor of communication at the University of Southern 
California in Los Angeles.

Those who turn on their TVs for ambience are not likely to be moved by a 
salesman's advocacy of the virtues of better pixilation.

"As long as it doesn't go like this, I'm happy" says TV shopper Ray 
Sampson, drawing swirly lines in the air.

Televisions labeled "high definition" are equipped with a decoder that 
reads special digital transmissions from TV stations. The picture features 
six times the number of pixels on a standard TV. The result is crisp 
resolution rivaling that of cinema screens.

"You can see the patches of sweat forming underneath Tiger Woods' arms," 
says Cecil Houston, director of communication, culture, and information 
technology at the University of Toronto.

Engineers and entertainment gurus have touted the "high-definition 
revolution" for more than 20 years. In the early days, advocates promoted 
HDTV with almost messianic fervor, and posed dire warnings that Japanese 
suppliers would dominate the industry.

In 1988, Ronald Reagan became the first president to be recorded on HDTV, 
stating that his remarks represented a "historic moment for both the 
presidency and American broadcasting." Ten years later, the TV sets were 
not even available in stores.

HDTV's stay on the shelves

Through last fall, Americans had only bought about 1.7 million HDTV sets - 
less than 900,000 in 2001. Consumers bought more than 21 million 
standard-color TVs last year alone.

Even so, high-end HDTV retailers report growing sales. And more than 100 
stations in major markets have begun broadcasting shows in high-definition 
format.

Overall, however, programs are sparse. The major networks only transmit a 
few marquee shows - like NBC's Tonight Show - in high definition. The same 
is true of nearly all cable operators. Broadcasts sent in the normal format 
look the same on both HDTV sets and regular models.

Gregory Sanders, a salesman at Ultimate Electronics in Albuquerque, says 
his sales pitch for HDTVs is hindered by the lack of programs broadcast 
digitally.

"Customers don't understand that stations aren't broadcasting yet," says 
Mr. Sanders. "They think they can just plug in the TV and instantly get 
high definition."

The biggest consumer turnoff: HDTV sets cost about twice as much as 
standard models. Americans are not likely to pay premium price for visual 
perks. While it's true that, last year, U.S. consumers bought more than 14 
million DVD players - which offer better pictures than VCRs - they were 
prompted by low prices. Quality DVD players only cost $150 - slightly more 
than VCRs.

A revolution stalled?

Now, Regulators are worried. Federal Communication Commissions chairman 
Michael Powell recently encouraged broadcasters, TV-set makers, and cable 
operators to mount a voluntary effort to spark the HDTV revolution. 
Enthusiasm is not boiling over. According to the GAO report, a third of the 
stations that have adopted HDTV would not have done so without a government 
mandate.

They cite a number of disincentives. Among them: the high cost of upgrading 
transmitters and the scant number of televisions on the market that can 
accommodate the signals. Both stem from a lack of consumer interest, 
experts say.

They may be less wowed by innovation than consumers in Western Europe and 
Japan. While baby boomers experienced the first TVs and then the onset of 
color, new technology seems to have lost its luster according to Paul Witt, 
a professor of communication at the University of Texas at Arlington. "The 
innovations are coming faster at a greater volume, they're just not as 
novel anymore," says Witt.
**********************
Euromedia.net  Denmark
Zentropa says it has designed a revolution

Film company Zentropa, partly owned by prize-winning Danish director Lars 
von Trier, is behind Tvropa.com.

Tvropa has been a playground for new talent and an experimentation when 
exploring the internet as a business model for the film company.

It has been producing and broadcasting a wide range of internet TV on its 
website: from weird animated shorts to political talk shows.

Surprisingly, its deficit last year was only E140,000. Maybe due to the 
fact that in the film business many people work for nothing and finance low 
budget productions themselves to get a shot.

Creativity has been of high quality and this is a recipe for success found 
previously by Zentropa with the Dogme95 films that were received 
enthusiastically by audiences all over the world.

The co-owner and president of Zentropa, Peter Aalbaek Jensen, has a nose 
for business and for marketing awkward projects.

The Danish media will forever remember the evening in Cannes when Aalbaek 
Jensen promised an exclusive interview with Nicole Kidman, who is staring 
in Lars von Triers latest film, to the journalist who won a naked swimming 
contest in his swimming pool.

His obscure ideas are certain to capture headlines on the front pages.

Tvropa.com's other co-owner is Aalbaek Jensen's brother, Niels Aalbaek 
Jensen, which should guarantee that there are some surprises in store.

Recently, the company announced nothing less than a revolution. Together 
with Siemens and Motorola, it has developed a set-top box that can 
distribute digital TV (DTV) signals to several TV's.

It has also explored the MPEG4 standard and concluded that the DTV network 
has room for four or five times the number of channels than currently 
estimated. The number rises for TV in less than DVD quality, Tvropa.com 
claims.

Furthermore, the company says it has come up with a model that dramatically 
lowers the cost of establishing a DTV network in Denmark. How exactly it 
has done this is still a secret.

The network has become a hot political topic in the Danish parliament, 
where the recently-elected Liberal government has plans to pass new media 
legislation within a few months.

Tvropa.com has announced that the set-top box, the MPEG4 standard, and the 
secret network plan are key elements in a proposal that it plans to present 
to the media spokesmen of the Danish political establishment in early May.

The new chairman of Tvropa.com's board is an experienced and respected 
businessman: Anders Knutsen, formerly the president of Bang & Olufsen. Two 
well-known companies have bought a 30 per cent share and accounting firm 
Deloitte & Touche has announced an E100m investment plan.

All this to impress the politicians and take the lead in the political 
negotiations for new legislation.

The Aalbaek Jensen brothers have set a new standard for their own audacity 
by trying to influence a political process in this manner.

The exact plans will be studied carefully by the trade when they are 
revealed in May. Though Peter Aalbaek Jensen is known for his big cigars 
and loud mouth, he is also known for his surprising successes.
******************
CNET
Canada and broadband Internet access

Smaller population plays major roll, online shopping

Though Canadains have an ever increasing access to the Internet and all the 
servies it offers, our American counterparts have more choice when it comes 
to shopping online.

A new study released April 30 2002 from marketing research firm Ipsos-Reid, 
Toronto, shows that nearly one-half (48 per cent) of Canadian adults with a 
home Internet connection have a broadband connection, further proof that 
Canadians continue to be at or near the top in the world when it comes to 
Internet adoption and usage.

The findings from the company's Canadian Inter@ctive Reid report - a 
quarterly review of Canadian Internet trends - also show that 75 per cent 
of all Canadians have access to the Internet, one of the highest adoption 
rates in the world. Additionally, 63 per cent of Canadian adults access the 
Internet from home.

Broadband Internet access has doubled in the past two-years in Canada. In 
March 2000, Ipsos-Reid found that only 24 per cent of Canadians with a home 
Internet connection had a broadband connection (DSL or cable modem) versus 
48 per cent in March of this year. Put another way, 30 per cent of all 
Canadians access the Internet from home with a high-speed Internet 
connection, which can be 25 times as fast as dial-up services.

"Broadband has gone mainstream in Canada, and its growth has been nothing 
short of phenomenal," said Chris Ferneyhough, Vice President of Technology 
Research at Ipsos-Reid in Toronto. "Aggressive promotions from the cable 
and telephone companies have obviously succeeded in attracting thousands of 
new broadband users, young and old. But there's also no denying that once 
you've tried broadband, you're hooked."

This increase in Internet use may be due to the government of Canada's, 
National Broadband Task Force, this Force was set up to ensure all 
communities has broadand access by 2004.

In the FAQsection of the Task Force Web site it says the need for broadband 
is because of: "New advanced applications like tele-health, distance 
learning, the delivery of government services and e-business require 
broadband access. These applications have the potential to greatly enhance 
the lives of Canadians, whether through more learning opportunities, better 
access to health care or improved business opportunities. Its important 
that all Canadians have the opportunity to access to these services, no 
matter their location, their education or their income."

Twenty-two per cent of Canadians live in small communities. In a report 
given to the the National Broadband Task Force in 2001 by The Rural 
Secetrait of Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, it says people living in 
rural areas should not be penalized and be able to get highspeed internet 
connections at a reasonable price. This is to ensure that everyone in the 
county has the same access to information and technology.

In a presentaiton by the Task Force in April 2001 they showed how the 
further away from Urban areas the less access you have. It goes from 8 per 
cent with no access to 32 per cent.

The Broadband Task Force suggested it would take 1.3 - 1.9 billion dollar 
invenstment by the Canadain government in fibre and wirsless technology for 
many communites to get the Internet. This does not include helping 
businesses and community access groups. Each province and terrority also 
has set up provisions for helping its inhabitants get access to the Interent.

The incidence of broadband in Canada dwarfs that of the US, where only an 
estimated 21 per cent (see Note 1) with a home Internet connection are 
using broadband. Out of the 21 per cent Canadian communites with high speed 
internet, 10 per cent have DSL only, while sex per cent have cable only and 
five per cent have access to both. Meanwhile, the percentage of European 
households with broadband connections has been estimated at about 5 per cent.

"The acceptance of broadband in Canada and the US couldn't be more 
different," said Ferneyhough. "The difference is due to a myriad of 
factors, including lower access prices in Canada, a less fragmented 
industry relative to the USA, our regulatory framework, better and more 
reliable access, and extremely positive response from consumers to 
marketing campaigns."DSL providers in Canada have steadily increased their 
broadband market share from 29 per cent of broadband users in March 2000 to 
42 per cent currently, the study found.

Not only has broadband penetration reached a new high, but Ipsos-Reid also 
found that the incidence of overall Internet access has reached 75 per cent 
in Canada, compared with 68 per cent at the same time last year. This 
incidence is also higher than that found in the US, where approximately 69 
per cent of all adults have Internet access. Canadians are at or near the 
top in the world in overall Internet adoption, online banking and music 
downloading, earlier studies have confirmed.

In regards to home Internet access, 63 per cent of Canadian adults access 
the Internet from home. While the incidence of household Internet access is 
lower in the US (55 per cent), their larger population means that 114 
million American adults access the Internet from home (see Note 2), 
compared to only 15.1 million Canadian adults who are accessing the 
Internet from home.

"Ultimately that is why Americans are generally going to have a lot more 
choice, selection, and opportunity to purchase goods and services online," 
said Ferneyhough. "We may be ahead of the game in access and broadband on a 
per capita basis, but overall there are 137 million (see Note 3) American 
adults online compared to only 18 million Canadian adults."

Note 1: Rachel Konrad. Survey: Broadband goes mainstream. CNET News.com 
March 5, 2002

Note 2: Humphrey Taylor. Internet Penetration Increases to 66 per cent of 
Adults (137 million). HarrisInteractive. April 17, 2002
****************
Sydney Morning Herald
Broadband the decade's boomer, says Budde
By Alan Wood
May 1 2002

Independent IT and telco analyst Paul Budde says broadband will be the next 
cash cow for the telecommunications industry, and telcos that focus too 
much on mobile or narrow band networks will suffer.

Mr Budde, speaking on industry trends in Sydney today, said the Australia 
telecommunications market would be worth $90 billion in 2010 compared to 
$38 billion in 2001.

Broadband - the transmission of large amounts of electronic information 
including telephone calls, television and the internet, often over phone 
lines, cables or satellite - would account for $81 billion of that, he said.

Mr Budde said the telecommunications market was currently dominated by 
commodities-based products, and telcos would need to develop niche products 
to help grow revenues.

"The nature of commodities is prices are going down, margins are going 
down," he said.

"On the other side there is this value added element - value added services 
need to be bought to the network in order to have these extra margins."

He said the broadband network offered telcos more opportunities to build 
such value-added applications, more than mobile networks or narrow band 
networks.

He said mobile would remain voice driven, peaking at $7 billion annual 
revenue in 2002/2003 and dropping to $5 billion by 2010.

"There are far more opportunities on the broadband network to make lots of 
money out of it for companies, organisations as well as the telcos, than 
there are on the mobile network," Mr Budde said.

"I think 3G (mobile) is dead - I think we will never see the introduction 
of 3G. If anything happens it will be 4G towards the end of this decade".

Carriers including Telstra, Optus and Hutchison Australia have said they're 
committed to the development of a 3G mobile network, with Hutchison 
planning to roll out a network in late 2002/early 2003.

Mr Budde said "killer applications" on the broadband network would include 
family-based content, for example, relatives sending personal videos from 
one side of the world to the other.

He said only 150,000 Australian homes currently had broadband services, 
whereas more than 50 per cent of all 7.2 million households could be 
addressed by broadband.

Mr Budde said broadband development was being held back by a lack of 
foresight and network development by the larger telcos, including Telstra.

He said the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman received around 70,000 
complaints per year compared to around 7,000 for the banking industry.

"Unfortunately the vision is not there and therefore you will start seeing 
reactive situations, rather than the planned organisation of how to 
implement broadband in the market," he said.

He said with the Federal Government bringing new emphasis to broadband 
companies like Canberra-based TransACT, Victorian-based Neighbourhood Cable 
and other regional service providers would emerge with greater prominence.
*******************
CNET
Canada vulnerable to cyber attacks
By DAVID GAMBLE -- Sun Media
Read this before you e-mail your income tax.

The federal government's computer systems -- and all the personal data they 
contain -- are extremely vulnerable to cyber crooks, warns Auditor General 
Sheila Fraser.

Federal computer security is years "out of date," meaning not only could it 
fall prey to computer viruses, but hackers who break into computers to 
steal and manipulate personal information, Fraser warns in her latest report.

"Before Canadians go online to do business with the government, they want 
assurance that government systems are secure and that their personal 
information will be properly protected," Fraser said.

Her staff did some cyber detective work that revealed some alarming 
security gaps. Attempts were made to to hack into 260 federal government 
systems and 85 --nearly one-third -- were found to be vulnerable to 
unauthorized access, finding most could be "readily compromised by a 
targeted cyber attack."

In another test, 10,000 government phone numbers were dialed up by computer 
and 97 were found vulnerable to hackers, many of them connecting 
"unauthorized modems" and opening the door to government information.

None of the departments found wanting were named in the report, but they 
have been informed of the problems.

While the federal government recently adopted a new computer security plan, 
Fraser warns that technical standards date back to 1995 and 1997.
*****************
Sydney Morning Herald
Like hackers to a honeypot
By Patrick Gray
April 30 2002

A honeypot is a computer connected to the Internet in the hope that it will 
be hacked, enabling computer security researchers to capture tools and 
techniques used by hackers.

It is not, as many believe, a bitchy and vindictive attempt to snare and 
then prosecute hackers.


A honeypot is the real-world equivalent of parking an expensive car down a 
dimly lit back street and waiting for someone to break into it.

The car's owner doesn't need to position a sign on the windscreen that says 
"steal me", just as the administrator of a honeypot does not need to make 
their system more vulnerable to attack than the next.

Honeypot administrators do nothing to make their systems less secure. The 
only difference between a honeypot and a normal computer connected to the 
Internet is that every single byte that hits a honeypot is recorded and 
analysed. This makes it possible for analysts to determine when and how the 
system has been breached.

It is the "how" that is particularly interesting. For a long time, 
black-hat hackers have done everything in their power to conceal the 
methods and entry points that they use to hack into computers.

If the method and entry points are unknown, then a defence against attack 
profiles using these entry points and methods is impossible to formulate. 
When honeypots are hacked, all the administrator of that honeypot needs to 
do is look at the recorded data collected immediately before the breach. 
This will tell them precisely how their honeypot was compromised.

The honeynet project is the next step in the evolution of honeypot 
methodologies.

A honeynet is a group of honeypots scattered over the Internet to maximise 
the chance of capturing hacker tools and techniques.

The project was established in 1999 by a group of security professionals.

The first phase of the project ran for two years and focused on 
first-generation honeypots. It was essentially a group of honeypot 
administrators who shared information on attack profiles through a mailing 
list.

The project has just entered its second phase. According to its website, 
the objective is to "develop a superior honeynet, one that it is easier to 
deploy, harder to detect, and more efficient in collecting data".

"These (second-generation) honeynets will be deployed targeting the more 
sophisticated attackers; improving our intelligence-gathering capabilities, 
we are also developing the infrastructure for distributed deployments of 
honeynets, working with various educational, government, commercial and 
military organisations," it says.

The objectives for phase three, due to begin in 2004, are being developed 
by the project board of advisers and active members.

Among these members are the chief executive of Foundstone, the chief 
technology officer of Counterpane and SecurityFocus.com, as well as 
miscellaneous security personalities such as Fyodor, the creator of the 
widely used nmap network scanning utility.

Phase two has already tasted success.

On January 8 this year, the capture of a previously unknown and undisclosed 
exploit occurred.

By January 14, a CERT advisory was released detailing the technique used by 
the hacker to compromise the honeypot. This enabled security analysts to 
build a sophisticated defence against the captured method.

Until this method was known, it had been extremely difficult to detect this 
type of attack.

The honeynet project also enables researchers to capture hacker "tool 
kits". The modus operandi of the average hacker is to load their tools on 
to systems that they have compromised.

They can use their fresh conquest to launch attacks on other systems.

But honeypot builders know how to prevent their systems being used as 
launching pads for these types of attacks.

Hackers are generally less careful when they don't think they're being 
watched, and, by making honeypots appear to be lifeless and banal back-end 
systems, it is likely that they will upload their juiciest tool kits and 
back doors immediately after compromising them.


If the distribution of the honeypots is eventually both dense and 
consistent enough to provide comprehensive Internet-wide coverage, then it 
is likely that the honeynet project will provide the security community 
with invaluable security vulnerability information.

The honeynet project website can be found at:
******************
New Zealand News
NZ slips in e-government stakes
29.04.2002
By ADAM GIFFORD

New Zealand has slipped five places to 14th in an international survey of 
progress towards e-government by global consulting firm Accenture.

But the introduction of a new whole-of-government web portal could push us 
back up the rankings.

The top three countries were Canada, Singapore and the United States. They 
were singled out for putting the citizen at the centre of their efforts and 
for the way they had integrated the online offerings of different 
Government agencies.

Australia jumped to fourth in overall rankings because of a significant 
increase in the number of Government services offered online.

Accenture's government relations head for New Zealand and Australia, Jack 
Percy, says New Zealand is moving a little slower than other countries, but 
the survey is probably not a fair reflection of the amount of attention 
e-government is getting here.

The e-government unit in the State Services Commission has done a lot of 
behind-the-scenes enabling work in terms of data standards, connectivity 
standards and security, and it is due to roll out the new Government portal 
from July.

Percy says the real test will be whether all that activity leads to rapid 
introduction of a lot of new e-government services.

Trevor Mallard, minister responsible for e-government, says he is not 
concerned about the slump in the Accenture ranking.

"Developments in our e-government programme are significant this year and I 
am sure that will be reflected in future surveys," Mallard said.

Accenture surveyed 23 countries, with researchers using Government websites 
to see which services normally available from a Government they could get 
online.

It looked for service maturity and the level of completeness the service 
offered.
*******************
Taipei Times
Wireless TV technology may benefit rural areas
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK


A new television technology coming after eight long years of debate.

It's digital. It's wireless. It's local. It offers high-speed Internet 
access. It's akin to digital cable -- but without any cables.

The service doesn't yet have a catchy one-word name like "satellite" or 
"cable." When the Federal Communications Commission approved the 
technological service last week, it referred to it as a "multichannel video 
distribution and data service."

Whether this new wireless television technology can gain a footing in a 
field crowded with cable and satellite behemoths remains to be seen. One 
advantage is that it could bring broadband access to rural areas not served 
by cable. In addition, it could bring local channels to the 170 or so 
television markets whose satellite services do not carry local channels. 
And it potentially has a key advantage that many consumers care about: 
lower price. Wireless cable, which uses a network of land-based antennas to 
carry signals to and from a small dish at a user's home, is supposed to be 
cheaper than wired cable or wireless satellite service.

"This will be the Southwest Airlines of subscription television," said 
Sophia Collier, the president of Northpoint Technology, the small company 
that originally envisioned the technology.

Last week the US FCC ruled that the spectrum would be auctioned off in 
hundreds of geographic pieces. That decision opens up competition to a host 
of bidders. Satellite companies could potentially buy up licenses to create 
a combination satellite-terrestrial service, with the broadband and local 
channels being served by wireless cable.
*******************
Wired News
The Art of Misusing Technology

NEW YORK -- Hacking has been described as a crime, a compulsion, an often 
troublesome end result of insatiable curiosity run amok.

Rarely has anyone who is not a hacker attempted to portray the creation, 
exploration and subversion of technology as a valid and elegantly creative 
art form.

But Open_Source_Art_Hack, a new show opening Friday at Manhattan's New 
Museum of Contemporary Art, attempts to show how the act of hacking and the 
ethics of open-source development - direct participation, deep 
investigation and access to information - can be art.

Each piece and performance features technology altered by an artist-geek 
with an activist attitude, something that the curators of the show refer to 
as "hacking as an extreme art practice."

"Originally the word 'hacker,' as coined at MIT in the 1960s, simply 
connoted a computer virtuoso," said Jenny Marketou, a new media artist and 
co-curator of Art_Hack. "Now hacking means reappropriating, reforming and 
regenerating not only systems and processes but also culture."

Art created with open-source ethics in mind allows artists to become 
providers of more than pretty pictures. They can produce functional tools 
that they and others can then use to create new art forms, said museum 
director Anne Barlow.

"And given the nature of open source, the process can be as important as 
the end product," Barlow said.

Process -- how the art was created and how it can evolve -- is one of the 
key focal points of the show. Activism -- using art and hacking to tweak a 
system or totally sabotage it -- is the other primary focus.

In this show, it doesn't matter much how the art looks. What matters is 
what the artist and others can do with it and learn from it.

"I have come to think of hacking as a process involving a combination of 
information dissemination, direct action, skills and creative solutions," 
Marketou said. "Hacking is an important phenomenon and a metaphor for how 
we digitally manipulate and think our way through the networked culture 
that engulfs us."

Art_Hack will have a number of interactive exhibits that will involve 
museum visitors in altering or undermining the code used every day in 
software and society.

One installation will allow viewers to clone their own "data bodies" and 
set them loose on the Net. The clones then serve as a sort of digital 
double-identity, allowing people -- at least in theory -- to deflect any 
data-gathering invasions of privacy.

Another piece explores the same disinformation idea by using automated 
tools to create fake homepages. The bogus pages are then propagated through 
various search engines so that it becomes impossible for anyone to verify 
anyone else's personal data. The idea spins off the common practice of 
providing false information on mandatory website registration forms.

In Anti-wargame, Future Farmers artist Josh On challenges the ideas behind 
most computer games. On's games reward players who demonstrate even a shred 
of social conscience.

Cue P. Doll/rtmark's CueJack project turns the infamous "CueCat," an 
electronic device intended to provide marketing information to 
corporations, into a tool that provides consumers with information. With 
one swipe of the CueJack, consumers can access a database with 
"alternative" information about a scanned product's manufacturer.

"I am interested in ways that artists misuse technology, use it for other 
than its intended or sanctioned purposes," said Steve Dietz, curator of new 
media at the Walker Art Center, and co-curator of Art_Hack. "This sort of 
transformation appears to be a common if not fundamental aspect of any 
artistic use of technology, including coding and hacking."

Also on display will be art created from the data collected by electronic 
wiretaps known as "packet sniffers." This project allows museum visitors to 
check the security status of networks belonging to various activist groups. 
When the sniffer finds a security hole, it will launch a sound and light 
show in the museum.

"Due to the nature of the show, I had the opportunity to challenge and to 
be challenged by the museum on several legal issues which were addressed in 
some works," Marketou said. "It has been a surprise to me how most of the 
cultural institutions in this country are not ready yet to host this sort 
of exhibition because of both the technical and controversial issues raised 
by the politics associated with some of these works."

Art_Hack opens with a "Digital Culture Evening" hosted by Marketou and 
Dietz, who will discuss hacking as art.

Other planned programs include German hacker Rena Tangens discussing 
European versus American concepts of privacy, and guided walking tours to 
spot the hidden surveillance equipment installed on and above the streets 
of Manhattan.

Art_Hack runs through June 30.
*****************
News Factor
HP Unveils New Digital Photo Storage Scheme

HP announced Thursday that it will begin storing digital images on its own 
Web sites for users of its "Instant Share" program for digital 
cameras.  Full Story 
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/17558.html#story-start

*********************


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