Clips May 7, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips May 7, 2002


ARTICLES

Rockville Firm Hoping To Help the Navy Go Wireless
ACLU Backs Yahoo, 'Cybergriper' In Free-Speech Cases
Switch puts brains in network
'Spidey' Already Being Swapped By Online Pirates
A Human Touch for Machines
New Pentium 4 Processors Unveiled
Worldwide weather watchers wanted
McDonald's 'to offer web access'
Cable execs: Broadband needs more compelling content
Health site garners accreditation
FAA speeds up deployment of flight path app
Mothers stay online longer than the kids
CIO Council rolls out first take on e-gov best practices
Logitech's new Pocket Digital Camera is no big deal
Pages of 12,000 Yiddish books digitally preserved
Declaring 'Warcraft' on sales to kids
Digital mailing products introduced
Study: Most e-government initiatives fail
Urban-Centric Pay Net Plans Debut
Sony reportedly working on next generation of PlayStation
Billions wasted in frenzy for fiber-optic networks, firm calculates
E-banking fraud: When, not if
'There will be an explosion of company TV channels available on intranets'
P2P programs boost music sales: report
Big Brother is looking to read your e-mail
Law school sues student over Web site
A Challenge to Dissect Some Code
Copyright issues become kids' stuff
Banks in Asia not tracking customers with IT technology
China's chipmakers challenge the US

**********************
Washington Post
Rockville Firm Hoping To Help the Navy Go Wireless
By Yuki Noguchi

Aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Howard, newly installed wireless 
technology allows a sailor on the deck to e-mail questions to a shipmate 
working in the engine room several decks below. Shipboard technicians can 
also send and receive status reports from their handheld personal digital 
assistants to a land-based engineer.

Sailors can even synchronize their handheld computers with their desktop 
computers by swiping the pocket-size devices across the infrared beams 
transmitted by the new technology's boxes.

The Rockville firm that installed the new wireless network on the ship in 
January, 3e Technologies International Inc., clearly is hoping that the 
pilot program on the Howard works out. The company, a subsidiary of 
Rockville-based Aepco Inc., an engineering and research firm that does 
government contracting, was awarded a five-year, $45 million contract 
through a federal small-business program to develop technologies that will 
help the Navy better monitor its systems.

The technology is a potential boon for the Navy, which is considering 
broadening the network upgrade to some other destroyers and cruisers as well.

"The business potential is huge" if the Navy eventually choses to hire 3e 
to install similar technologies on all 300 of its ships, said Benga Erinle, 
3e's director of government operations. Her company is still far from being 
able to project its sales, however, because it is still helping the Navy 
define its requirements and test the new communication system, he said.

The devices aboard the Howard look like metal boxes the size of a VCR. They 
convert desktop computers' data to a wireless signal that can be 
transmitted through the airwaves. About 50 of devices have been installed, 
mostly in easily accessible areas such as hallways, Erinle said. The 
network covers 95 percent of the ship.

For David Bartlett, being able to move without wire "umbilical cords" means 
using computers in more aspects of the ship's operation.

"We're moving our ships from an industrial mind-set to an information 
technology mind-set," said Bartlett, who is manager of the Smart Ship 
Science and Technology program and works on upgrading fleets for the Navy. 
"We can go into some of the dirtier areas where you wouldn't want to leave 
a computer full time. Now, if something breaks, you can go down there" with 
a portable computer, he said.

"There are still some risks we need to mitigate," such as potential 
security breaches caused by people hacking into the wireless system, 
Bartlett said. If those concerns are overcome, the Navy will consider 
installing similar networks on a broader scale, he said.

The company is treating the Navy contract as its own kind of trial program 
so it can use the same technology to build similar networks for corporate 
customers, said Steven Chen, president and chief executive of 3e, a 
six-year-old firm that employs 125 people.

Chen and others at 3e are attending trade shows, trying to drum up interest 
among corporate customers, he said. Eventually, 3e's goal is to get about 
40 percent of its revenue from commercial sales, he said.

Providing high-speed wireless capacity is only one of 3e's three 
businesses, Chen said. Its other businesses include a wireless service that 
provides roadside assistance (like OnStar) and emergency notification, as 
well as a unit that uses similar technology to monitor and control, for 
example, nuclear generators or home security systems from afar.

The company's sales have doubled every year for the last four years, 
topping $14 million last year, Chen said. With long-term contracts worth 
$180 million over the next five years, it hopes to reach $200 million in 
annual revenue in the next five to eight years, he said.

That's a modest sum, considering the size of the project. Destroyers are 
like small villages, with 350 or so inhabitants doing myriad complex tasks.

The Navy is trying to halve the size of the crew required to run its newest 
ships, said 3e's Erinle, who managed the Navy project.

"It's essential to know what's going on on the ship at all times," he said.
*******************
Washington Post
ACLU Backs Yahoo, 'Cybergriper' In Free-Speech Cases
Steven Bonisteel
Newsbytes

The American Civil Liberties Union is speaking out on behalf of giant Web 
directory Yahoo and a small-business operator in Texas - both involved in 
high-profile lawsuits the ACLU says threaten U.S. rights to free speech on 
the Internet.

The ACLU said Monday that it has filed amicus - or, "friend-of-the-court" - 
briefs in separate federal court appeals, one of which pits Yahoo, of 
Sunnyvale, Calif., against the rule of a French court. In that case, Yahoo 
has already won the first round in a bid to keep a French prohibition on 
Nazi memorabilia from reaching its Web servers in the U.S.

In the other case, a Web-site developer from Carrollton, Tex., on the 
outskirts of Dallas, wants a court to rule that Internet addresses like 
TaubmanSucks.com can be fair comment on shopping mall developer Taubman 
Centers Inc. and not trademark infringement.

"The ACLU has become increasingly concerned about the growing tendency of 
large corporations and governments to use their powers to suppress 
legitimate protected speech and intimidate critics in the online context," 
Ann Beeson, litigation director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty 
Program said in a prepared statement.

Two years ago, the ACLU was criticizing Yahoo for divulging users' personal 
data when investigators came calling for information on anonymous 
message-board posters. But, Monday, the civil rights organization said the 
Internet company is standing up for the First Amendment in its fight with 
Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l'Antisemitisme (League Against 
Racism and Anti-Semitism) and the French Union of Jewish Students.

The case, which many commentators have said could end up on the doorstep of 
the Supreme Court, began with a lawsuit by the two anti-hate groups and a 
French court's ruling prohibiting Yahoo France from allowing the sale of 
Nazi memorabilia on its pages.

In a move to confirm its sovereignty over information published largely on 
U.S.-based Web severs, Yahoo counter-sued. Late last year, a U.S. District 
Court judge ruled that demands such as those made by the French court 
wouldn't wash in America, but the two French groups are appealing that 
decision.

"This case hinges on one crucial question: do Americans' First Amendment 
freedoms extend into cyberspace or do foreign governments have the power to 
censor our online speech?" said Ann Brick, an attorney for the ACLU of 
Northern California. "The appeals court decision will be enormously 
significant in either bolstering or chilling free expression on the Internet."

In a brief submitted to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Monday, the ACLU 
national office in New York, its Northern California branch and nearly a 
dozen other rights groups say the order from the French court "is but one 
example of the sort of judgment that this and other American courts can 
expect to see with increasing frequency as Internet use expands throughout 
the world."

"It is a predictable consequence of the global character of the Internet 
and the conflicts that inevitably will arise concerning speech protected by 
the U.S. Constitution but forbidden by repressive laws elsewhere."

The brief says the District Court was correct when it "refused to permit 
the seeds of foreign censorship to be planted on U.S. soil."

"Whether or not all nations share a belief in the evils of Nazism - a point 
not in dispute here - the critical issue in this case is that all nations 
do not agree that there is 'an ethical and moral imperative' (as the French 
court stated) to censor disfavored speech," the brief says.

"The legal principle upon which the French order is based is not confined 
to Nazism or to other issues in which values presumably are 'shared,'" it 
says. "Its reasoning would permit enforcement of any nation's limitations 
on Internet speech, regardless of the extent to which such restrictions 
undermine human rights."

In the other litigation joined by the ACLU Monday, Web developer Henry 
Mishkoff and his Texas company, Webfeats, is awaiting a ruling from the 6th 
Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati over a stable of 'cybergripe' 
domains targeting Michigan-headquartered Taubman, a developer of malls the 
size of theme parks.

Mishkoff's case is particularly notable among disputes over "sucks.com" 
protest domains because the Dallas-area resident may have once been his 
target's biggest fan. But that was before Mishkoff was introduced to 
Taubman's lawyers.

Mishkoff claims he was so enthusiastic about the construction of a new 
Taubman property - The Shops At Willow Bend - in nearby Plano that he 
registered ShopsAtWillowBend.com to provide information on the development 
and the stores it would house.

However, after Taubman complained of trademark infringement, a jilted 
Mishkoff retaliated by registering TaubmanSucks.com, four variations on the 
WillowBendSucks.com theme and one for Taubman's legal help, 
GiffordKrassGrohSprinkleSucks.com.

Last fall, a U.S. District Court in Detroit issued a pre-trial injunction 
forbidding Mishkoff from using ShopsAtWillowBend.com, and then later added 
the "sucks.com" domains as prohibited addresses. Meanwhile, Mishkoff, 
backed by rights group Public Citizen, had already turned to the 6th 
Circuit, making his case the first sucks-domain case to reach an appeals court.

The ACLU argues in its amicus brief that it is unlikely that Mishkoff's 
"cybergripe" sites could be mistaken as a commercial ventures or confused 
with something Taubman itself might create.

"The only content on his site is criticism of Taubman and legal documents 
about the current dispute," the brief says. "Mishkoff has merely used 
Taubman's (name) to identify the target of his criticism and accurately 
describe the contents of his Web site."

Said the ACLU's Beeson: "Consumer criticism and commentary has long been 
recognized as core protected speech. In the context of cyberspace, that 
right does not diminish, in fact, it expands."

The brief urges the appeals court to protect such protest domains in order 
to send a message to lower courts, which have so far produced a mixed bag 
of rulings in similar cases.

In addition, the brief suggests that such a ruling from the court could 
guide arbitrators who referee a fast-track process for resolving 
domain/trademark disputes on behalf of the Internet Corporation for 
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The ACLU claims ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy 
frequently results in "inconsistent and arbitrary" rulings that are 
sometimes "contrary to First Amendment rights."

"Though these decisions should not bind federal courts, a rejection of 
their reasoning by this court may help to curb future abuses," the brief 
states.

The ACLU's Yahoo amicus brief can be found online.

The Taubman brief is here.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .
********************
Chicago Sun-Times
Switch puts brains in network
HOWARD WOLINSKY BUSINESS REPORTER








The mythology of the computer industry is that applications or programs are 
"smart," and the networks that carry them are "dumb."

Sarvega, the Burr Ridge-based start-up, Monday introduced a new hardware 
device, known as the Sarvega XPE switch, aimed at smartening up the 
networks under challenging conditions for businesses using the increasingly 
popular new computer language, XML.

John D. Chirapurath, one of Sarvega's founders and its vice president of 
marketing, said, "Sarvega levels the playing field between the apps and the 
network.

The new switch made its debut at the Networld + Interop show in Las Vegas.

"Real time, pro-active communication with the customers we support 
worldwide is of the highest priority for CommWorks" said Chandru Bolaki, 
CommWorks' director. "Prior to implementing the Sarvega solution, we had to 
rely on manual processes or custom development to enable delivery of such 
communication."

Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst, ZapThink, said, "It is clear that customers 
like CommWorks can leverage the power of XML routing systems such as 
Sarvega's XPE Intelligent XML Switch in order to provide a higher level of 
customer support service and reduce operational costs."

Chirapurath said, "XML is emerging as lingua franca of business 
communications." But problems are emerging with a proliferation of 
languages and security issues.

Hundreds of XML dialects have been developed, making communications 
difficult. XML also gobbles up lots of computing power.

Chirapurath said companies using the Sarvega switch can reduce the pressure 
on their systems by offloading the XML work to the Sarvega switch.

Based on XML coding, the devices can give priority to large orders or to 
orders for critical parts. Also, Chirapurath said that the switch can 
detect and bypass blockages in the network, sending messages a number of 
different ways.
*****************
Washington Post
'Spidey' Already Being Swapped By Online Pirates
Brian McWilliams
Newsbytes
Monday, May 6, 2002; 10:09 AM

While Columbia Picture's new "Spider-Man" movie was breaking box-office 
records over the weekend, Internet movie pirates were busily downloading 
free copies of the film on file-trading networks.

By Saturday, pirated versions of the comic book inspired movie were showing 
up in "screener" format on the EDonkey, Kazaa, and Morpheus Internet 
file-swapping systems.

"Screeners," also known as "Telesyncs," are digital versions of movies that 
have been filmed off a screen in a movie theater.

The boot-legged "Spider-Man" was being offered in Windows AVI and MPEG file 
formats, with some versions of the complete movie exceeding 2 gigabytes.

Many Internet users apparently were undeterred by the huge file size of the 
pirated film. More than 12,000 copies of "Spider-Man" have already been 
downloaded from a link at the ShareReactor.com site.

Fake or mislabeled copies of the new movie also have been uploaded to 
file-sharing networks, according to reports in Internet newsgroups.

One user, who reported he was on a slow Internet connection, complained 
that he downloaded two files purported to be illegal copies of 
"Spider-Man," only to find they instead contained the recent Paramount 
thriller "Changing Lanes."

An online guide to creating telesyncs suggests bringing a folding tripod 
into the cinema, although the document notes that "concealability might be 
an issue for you." The guide also recommends discretely sticking wireless 
audio transmitters on the theater's sound speakers and capturing the output 
with portable FM receivers.

According to studio estimates, "Spider-Man" grossed $114 million in the 
three days following its opening on Friday, surpassing the previous record 
set in November by "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

When Columbia releases the DVD version of the hit movie in coming months, 
pirates likely will begin swapping "rips" or copies of the DVDs online. 
According to a description at ShareReactor, rips offer "excellent video and 
audio quality. It's no guarantee though, but even the biggest idiots can't 
screw this up too much."

The official Spider-Man movie homepage is at 
http://www.spiderman.sonypictures.com .
****************
Los Angeles Times
A Human Touch for Machines
The radical movement of affective computing is turning the field of 
artificial intelligence upside down by adding emotion to the equation.
By CHARLES PILLER
TIMES STAFF WRITER

May 7 2002

SAN DIEGO -- If the face is a window into the soul, then Javier Movellan 
has peered deeply into the human condition.

His research team has studied more than 100,000 faces, analyzing each one 
for the smallest shifts in facial muscles--a lexicon of emotional 
expression. A computer scans the faces 30 times a second and then squirrels 
away the information in a bulging databank.

Pausing to gather his thoughts, Movellan rubs his eyes and contemplates the 
face of the young woman on his computer screen. She seems cheerful, but her 
eyes squint slightly--a hint of vexation? There is no quick way for 
Movellan to say, but somewhere in the trillions of bits of information 
stored in his computer, he is convinced, there is an answer.

For the last decade, the UC San Diego psychologist has traveled a quixotic 
path in search of the next evolutionary leap in computer development: 
training machines to comprehend the deeply human mystery of what we feel.

Movellan's devices now can identify hundreds of ways faces show joy, anger, 
sadness and other emotions. The computers, which operate by recognizing 
patterns learned from a multitude of images, eventually will be able to 
detect millions of expressions.

Scanning dozens of points on a face, the devices see everything, including 
what people may try to hide: an instant of confusion or a fleeting grimace 
that betrays a cheerful front.

Such computers are the beginnings of a radical movement known as "affective 
computing." The goal is to reshape the very notion of machine intelligence.

It finds inspiration in Hal, the eerily alluring supercomputer of "2001: A 
Space Odyssey," which transcended mere computation with astute emotional 
skills and even a sense of duty. Compared with its impassive astronaut 
companions, Hal seemed the most human figure in the 1968 film.

Affective computing would transform machines from slaves chained to the 
limits of logic into thoughtful, observant collaborators. Such devices may 
never replicate human emotional experience.

But if their developers are correct, even modest emotional talents would 
change machines from data-crunching savants into perceptive actors in human 
society. At stake are multibillion-dollar markets for electronic tutors, 
robots, advisors and even psychotherapy assistants.

With other pioneers of this new realm, Movellan, a quiet, 41-year-old 
Spaniard, is turning the field of artificial intelligence, or AI, upside down.

For decades, computer scientists have pursued the holy grail of AI: a 
thinking machine. Their efforts have produced devices of astonishing 
sophistication.

Yet each new generation of technology follows a pattern set by the first 
digital computer, the "analytical engine" designed by mathematician Charles 
Babbage in 1833.

Redefining What

It Means to Feel

Classical AI researchers model the mind through the brute force of infinite 
logical calculations. But they falter at humanity's fundamental 
motivations. Romantic love can be as irrational as it is compelling. And 
every teacher knows the futility of logic for resolving playground 
disputes, as do diplomats in conflicts between nations.

Movellan is part of a growing network of scientists working to disprove 
long-held assumptions that computers are, by nature, logical geniuses but 
emotional dunces.

The ability to interpret markers for emotion--facial expressions, vocal 
tones and metabolic responses such as blood pressure--may seem like crude 
first steps.

Yet experts see machine intelligence, unswayed by human frailty and bias, 
as an eventual advantage. They envision machines that know us better than 
we know ourselves.

No one can say whether such a goal will be achieved. Some say that without 
the ability to experience emotions--far beyond today's 
technology--perceptive machines would offer simplistic, unreliable readings 
of human feelings. Others recoil at the prospect, suggesting that if 
machines perceive, store and catalog people's emotional responses, they 
would open a new assault on personal privacy.

But if scientists are right about the potential of today's research, 
emotion machines would force a debate that could redefine intelligence, 
artificial or human, and shed new light on the core of humanness--what it 
means to feel.

"Modern AI is offering us [a] realization that ... the essence of 
intelligence is in our capacity to perceive patterns, deal with uncertainty 
and operate successfully in the natural world," Movellan said. "Emotional 
processes may be a form of intelligence more complex and important than we 
ever imagined."

Affective computing updates an age-old fascination. In some versions of the 
ancient Jewish myth, the clay creature Golem gains human desires when a 
slip of paper inscribed with the name of God is placed in its mouth. Like 
Pinocchio and Frankenstein's monster, Golem is a touchstone for the often 
frightful preoccupation with turning inanimate objects into sentient beings.

The word "robot" (Czech for "forced labor") was coined in a 1920 stage play 
in which machines assume the drudgery of factory production, then develop 
feelings and turn against their makers. Hal in "2001" was programmed with 
intuition and empathy to keep astronauts company, only to become a murderer.

Scientists don't foresee machines with Hal's emotional skills--or, 
fortunately, its malevolence--soon. But they already have debunked AI 
orthodoxy considered sacrosanct only five years ago--that logic is the one 
path to machine intelligence.

It took psychologists and neuroscientists--outside the computer 
priesthood--to see inherent limits in the mathematical pursuit of 
intelligence that has dominated computer science.

For Terry Sejnowski, director of the Institute for Neural Computation at 
UCSD and Movellan's mentor, the pursuit of emotion machines began a decade 
ago when he viewed Sexnet, a program designed to distinguish male from 
female faces that had been stripped of cultural cues such as hair and 
cosmetics. In a test against people, the computer proved the better judge.

Sejnowski began to imagine computers that see past faces to the emotions 
behind them. Now he and Movellan are helping to create a digital compendium 
of human emotion--"a catalog of how people react to the world."

The basis of that catalog is a coding system developed in the 1970s by UC 
San Francisco psychologist Paul Ekman, who classified dozens of facial 
muscle movements into 44 discrete units--phonemes of emotional expression.

These "action units" define the meaning of raised eyebrows and furrowed 
brows. Experts in Ekman's method recognize combinations of movements that 
correspond to dozens of variations on basic expressions--such as joy, 
surprise, anger, fear, sadness and disgust--interpreted with remarkable 
consistency across human cultures.

Movellan's team videotapes subjects who show a range of emotions. The 
researchers feed the images into a computer, then use pattern-recognition 
software to train the computer to make Ekman assessments and to generalize 
from one person to the next.

Smiles and wrinkles are only first steps. Researchers are adding body 
language, vocal tones, speech recognition and metabolic signals to give 
computers a richer mix from which to draw conclusions.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have fashioned 
earrings to measure blood volume pressure and shoes to monitor the 
electrical conductivity of the feet--much the way a lie detector works. 
About 80% of the time, a computer correctly relates such data to emotional 
states, such as joy and anger.

Perceptive machines soon may assist even top clinicians. The keenest human 
observer often misses or misinterprets revealing yet ephemeral expressions.

The computer, however, never blinks. Recording a fleeting grimace can solve 
a standard therapeutic dilemma: deciding what a patient is really feeling, 
even when the patient is unsure.

And computers are free of the psychological baggage that clouds human 
perceptions.

Jeffrey Cohn, a University of Pittsburgh psychologist and pioneer in 
machine perception, said one of his researchers is exploring these 
techniques to quantify conflict in schizophrenics, whose feelings and 
expressions are often out of sync.

"Clinicians may sense that something is not quite right but be unable to 
describe it," he said. "By creating a tool that can perform these kinds of 
analyses, we expand the therapist's repertoire."

His colleague has found that while normal people raise their eyebrows in 
surprise or delight, schizophrenics do so randomly. Such insights could 
lead to early intervention for at-risk patients.

From Helpful

to Obnoxious

Psychology provides inspiration for emotion machines, but their success 
depends on commercialization. Consider Pod, a concept car from Toyota Motor 
Corp. and Sony Corp., with features straight out of the sci-fi cartoon "The 
Jetsons."

Pod, short for "personalization on demand," is a cross between a video game 
and a lie detector. It "attempts to monitor not only driver preferences but 
the driver's state of mind," said Dave Hermance, Toyota's top environmental 
engineer.

At the driver's right, a silver joystick replaces the steering wheel and 
pedals for complete one-handed control. The question is: Who's controlling 
whom?

Switch on the ignition, and the car begins to monitor your heart rate and 
perspiration through joystick sensors. A computer records your driving habits.

"If over time it notices that your driving is erratic"--rapid acceleration 
followed by sudden braking or sharp turns--"Pod plays soothing music and 
blows air in your face, cooling you down from your excited state," Hermance 
said.

Hermance allows that some features may cross the line from helpful to 
obnoxious.

"If you are really driving badly, it pulls over to the curb. If it did that 
to me, I'd shoot it," he said.

Pod may not hit the freeways for a while, but the burgeoning robotics 
market already is emotion-driven. Sony's dog-bot Aibo--an expensive 
electronic "pet"--uses lights, sounds and gestures to portray joy and fear 
in response to praise or scolding.

Such primitive skills gradually will be replaced by accurate perceptions of 
a broad range of moods and emotions.

The largest commercial effect of emotion machines might be on marketing, 
experts say--focus groups based not on what people say about a product, but 
on what they feel.

Skeptics see the potential of perceptive machines. But they view computers 
that have genuine understanding and the ability to credibly mimic a human 
response--a likely outcome of today's work, some experts say--as farfetched 
if not dangerous.

Critics See Danger

to Personal Privacy

Just as standard computers solve complex equations by chopping them into 
millions of pieces, emotion machines divide human characteristics--facial 
gestures, voice tones and sweat--into bits of emotional data to categorize.

But understanding is a far different and more difficult process.

"You don't get emotions by manipulating 0s and 1s," said John Searle, a UC 
Berkeley philosopher known for challenging the intellectual underpinnings 
of AI. "Simulation of digestion won't digest pizza."

Psychiatrists say emotional responses that sometimes cause us to 
misinterpret others' intent may paradoxically ensure that machines never 
equal humanity's perceptive skills. How we feel about other people suggests 
how they affect others.

Ronnie Stangler, chairwoman of the American Psychiatric Assn.'s technology 
committee, said top clinicians realize that "it's the richness of our 
history, our personal experience and our relationships that make us ... 
appreciate the emotional state in the larger context of a person's life."

But the ability of perceptive machines to quantify emotions provides a 
strong incentive for corporations or governments to capture the data.

Stangler said the prospect opens a range of new dangers concerning personal 
privacy.

"Can you imagine those same credit bureaus that know the size of our 
mortgage and our credit card debt knowing also how anxious we are?" 
Stangler said.

Still, actual understanding of emotions may not be required to 
fundamentally transform our relationships with machines.

The last time humanity was forced to recast its assumptions about 
technology was during the Industrial Revolution, when machines went from 
enhancing human abilities to exceeding them--from helper to replacement. 
The shock provoked generations of social and economic dislocation.

The digital revolution has been less disorienting. Today's devices are 
still servants ruled by logic.

Emotion machines could end that implicit social contract between people and 
machines and create a perplexing new one.

"If robots are visibly sad, bored or angry, humans, starting with children, 
will react to them as persons," writes John McCarthy, an AI pioneer at 
Stanford University and a critic of emotion machines.

"Human society is complicated enough already."
*********************
New York Times
New Pentium 4 Processors Unveiled
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:03 p.m. ET

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) -- Intel Corp. on Monday introduced new versions 
of its Pentium 4 microprocessor line and a set of accessory chips to go 
with it.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor giant said its fastest Pentium 
4 will now operate at a frequency of 2.53 gigahertz, up from 2.4 gigahertz 
for a chip introduced in early April.

Intel has picked up the pace of new-chip introductions since last year, 
partly to counter competition from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The new chip 
will be priced at $637 in 1,000-unit quantities.

To ensure computers can take advantage of the increased speed, Intel also 
is introducing accessory chips, called chipsets, that connect Pentium 4 
chips to memory and other components at a speed of 533 megahertz, up from 
400 megahertz previously. The chip set is designed to support a variety of 
fast memory that is based on a design from Rambus Inc.

Intel also introduced new Pentium 4s operating at frequencies of 2.40, and 
2.26 gigahertz. Those processors, which also have a 533 MHz system bus 
speed, are priced at $562 and $423 in 1,000-unit quantities.
*******************
BBC
Worldwide weather watchers wanted

Net users will soon get the chance to take part in a grand experiment to 
work out how global climate could change over the next 50 years.
Scientists have developed software that simulates 100 years of worldwide 
weather patterns in order to refine predictions about global warming and 
its effect on climate.

Climatologists already have some ideas about climate change over the next 
50 years, but they need the help of thousands of people running the 
simulation to find out the full breadth of potential outcomes.

The 100-year simulation software is expected to be ready in late summer and 
those downloading it must be prepared to let the model run for at least 
eight months.

A century of weather

The climateprediction.com experiment is similar to the Seti@home project, 
started in 1997, that uses idle home computers to look for signs of alien 
intelligence in radio signals collected by telescopes.

However, climateprediction.com has one crucial difference.

"The Seti@home project is analysing data from a central source, we are 
generating it on PCs and will analyse it ourselves," said Dave Frame, a 
climateprediction.com developer and researcher at the University of Oxford 
department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, UK.

Each simulation carried out by climateprediction.com participants will be 
unique because all of them will use slightly different starting conditions.

"This is a fully-fledged research climate model," said Dr Myles Allen, 
project leader for climateprediction.com and a physicist in the Space 
Science and Technology Department of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

"It's not a stripped down 'toy' version, so the runs take time," he said.

The unpredictable physics of weather patterns means that they could 
generate very different end results.

The simulation will cover the hundred years from 1950 to 2050.

The results of the simulations will be returned to the 
climateprediction.com team who will then pick the ones that generated 
global temperature changes similar to those seen during the period 1950 to 
2000.

All outcomes

Although it is impossible to forecast weather patterns for specific regions 
many years ahead, phenomena such as global temperature patterns do seem 
predictable, said Dr Allen.

"That's one of the most intriguing things about the planet," he added. "Its 
large scale behaviour is simpler than its small scale behaviour."

With a vast range of simulations done, it should be possible to get an idea 
of the full range of possible changes to global climate over the next 50 
years, said Dr Allen.

At the moment climatologists had only explored a small fraction of all the 
possible outcomes and this had inevitably led to disputes about the effects 
of global warming, he said.

"Quantifying the uncertainty is something we cannot do at the moment," he 
said.

The project needed at least 20,000 participants and would cap numbers at 
two million, said Dr Allen.

To reward participants, the simulation will be interactive and will let 
people fly around their programmed planet and watch how weather patterns 
change.

"We cannot just tell participants: 'thank you very much'", said Dr Allen 
"They have to get something back out of this, too."

The simulation software should be ready in time for August to coincide with 
a UN conference held to mark the 10th anniversary of the Earth Summit in 
Rio de Janeiro that attempted to start tackling problems wrought by climate 
change.
**********************
BBC
McDonald's 'to offer web access'

McDonald's fast-food burger restaurants in Japan are reportedly about to 
offer equally speedy access to the web.
The burger firm has signed a deal with the internet investor Softbank which 
will lead to the installation of high-speed internet services in almost 
4,000 of its restaurants, according to the news daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

The partnership would enable McDonald's to attract more customers, while 
Softbank's broadband business would be given a boost, the paper said.

The installation of a so-called wireless LAN network would allow people 
with a laptop, or a handheld device like a palmtop, to send and receive 
data at broadband speed while they are away from their home or office.

Quick result

Testing of Softbank's equipment in McDonald's restaurants are due to take 
place this month, the newspaper said.

If the tests are successful, the network could be installed later this year.

The installation of LAN networks has become popular in Japanese restaurants 
and cafes as it is relatively cheap.

Neither company would comment ahead of a scheduled news conference at 0800 
GMT.

Softbank shares fell 2.39% to 1,875 yen while McDonald's Japan shares 
gained 3.46% to 2,990 yen.
******************
San Francisco Gate
Cable execs: Broadband needs more compelling content

(05-06) 13:55 PDT NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Digital cable television and 
high-speed Internet are catching on quickly with consumers, but providers 
must offer the public more compelling content, several cable industry 
executives said Monday.

"The consumer has this new Ferrari, but can drive it only 10 miles per 
hour," Brian Roberts, president of Comcast Corp., told the opening session 
of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association convention.

There are currently about 16 million digital cable customers, 8 million 
cable Internet hookups and 1.7 million households that get their basic 
telephone service through cable, said NCTA president Robert Sachs. 
Broadband cable hookups could now potentially reach 75 million homes, he said.

But to this stage, content is lagging, said Richard Parsons, co-chief 
operating officer of AOL Time Warner.

"Essentially, what you get with broadband now is narrowband faster," Parson 
said. "The challenge is not having the same old stuff faster."

Overall, the cable industry is emerging from the economic downturn in 
fairly solid shape, executives said.

Parsons said the only major glitch for his company was a sharp drop in 
advertising. Roberts said sales of new products, such as telephone service 
and digital cable, remain strong, and Comcast has had success in winning 
customers back from satellite TV after converting service areas to broadband.

"People turn off their cable right after they turn off their electricity," 
said Michael Willner, president of Insight Communications.

With competition from satellite-delivered TV services, though, the cable 
industry must push to quickly develop two-way services, such as the instant 
delivery of movies and music -- so-called video-on-demand, the executives 
said.

"Consumers want to be able to watch what they want, when they want to," 
Sachs said. "We've expanded choice, but we need to give consumers more 
choice."

Roberts said standard television has a potentially rich lineup of programs, 
such as news programs and replays of sporting events, that viewers might 
pay to see at their convenience.

"'60 Minutes' is played once," he said. "Why don't they give their viewers 
a chance to watch it besides on Sunday evenings?"

But Frank Dangeard, vice president of Thomson Multimedia, which 
manufactures cable system equipment, said consumers are sometimes slow to 
buy innovations -- as well as increase their cable bills with such purchases.

For now, video-on-demand will be "a specific delivery system for specific 
high-end products," Dangeard said.

The cable industry also faces the vexing question of how to adapt to such 
new technologies as personal digital video recorders, which allow consumers 
to record programming with infinitely greater ease than with VCRs -- and 
also permit them to bypass commercials.

DVRs and interactive television were among hot topics at this week's 
convention.

On Monday, Microsoft Corp. unveiled a new television programming guide for 
cable television companies, an area largely dominated by Gemstar-TV Guide 
International Inc.

The guide is designed to let viewers search easily for programs by name, 
type of show and channel, and to view specific information about the show.

Microsoft has been struggling with its interactive television software 
business, cutting some 200 jobs this year

The company's UltimateTV software combined the Web-browsing features of 
Microsoft's WebTV unit with a DVR service that lets subscribers pause live 
TV and record shows onto a set-top box with a built-in hard disk.

But the service, launched last year, failed to garner much interest beyond 
the 1 million customers of WebTV. It works only with a DirecTV satellite 
television service.

The new interactive program guide, which was demonstrated at the cable 
convention, can be used with low-tech boxes used on cable TV service.
******************
Government Computer News
Health site garners accreditation
By Patricia Daukantas

A consumer-oriented Web site run by the National Library of Medicine has 
received accreditation from an organization that promotes standards in the 
health care industry.

MEDLINEplus.gov is the first government-run Web site to receive the URAC 
Health Web Site Accreditation designation from URAC, a Washington group 
also known as the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission.

Eve-Marie LaCroix, chief of NLM's Public Services Division, said she sought 
accreditation because the other 15 sites that received URAC's stamp of 
approval were commercial sites. NLM is a part of the National Institutes of 
Health.

Accreditation was a "very, very thorough process," LaCroix said. The 
commission had to assess whether MEDLINEplus met 53 criteria, including 
customer service, customer privacy, frequent updating and accessibility to 
the disabled.

MEDLINEplus began as a program to develop Web pages on health topics that 
consumers were frequently asking about, LaCroix said.

The Web site now contains pages for almost 550 separate topics, LaCroix 
said. Each page lists the results of a preformulated search on that topic 
within the library's comprehensive MEDLINE database of research articles, 
plus other consumer-oriented online articles published by NIH and other 
research organizations. The library has also licensed about 150 tutorials 
from the University of Iowa's Patient Education Institute.

Searching on MEDLINE, which indexes medical and scientific journals going 
back to the mid-1960s, can be confusing to lay people. "It really is 
professional research literature," LaCroix said.

This fall, NLM plans to debut a Spanish version of MEDLINEplus.
*********************
Government Computer News
FAA speeds up deployment of flight path app
By Preeti Vasishtha

The Federal Aviation Administration this week began an accelerated rollout 
of a system to assess pilots' requests to change flight paths.

The User Request Evaluation Tool, part of FAA's Free Flight program, gives 
controllers a 20-minute advance look at air traffic patterns to detect 
possible conflicts in pilots' routes. Generally, pilots request to take 
more direct routes or to change altitudes and avoid turbulence, for example.

The original plan called for rolling out the URET application at FAA's 20 
en route centers over the next 10 years. But following Sept. 11, FAA 
compressed the schedule and will install the app at all centers by 2004.

Officials already had been thinking of speeding up the deployment because 
of controllers' positive feedback about URET.

So far, six centers use URET. The latest is the Washington en route center 
in Leesburg, Va., which began using the app today. In addition to Leesburg, 
centers in Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mo., and Memphis, 
Tenn., use URET.

Lockheed Martin Corp. built the $200 million app. As soon as a request 
comes in, the system can immediately identify whether a change would be 
safe. Previously, controllers relied on paper flight diagrams and mental 
calculations.

"With more direct routes, Free Flight helps bring shorter flights to 
passengers," she said. "This technology helps pilots, controllers and the 
person sitting in Row 15, Seat B."
*******************
USA Today
Mothers stay online longer than the kids
By Karen Thomas, USA TODAY

Teens may think they're the most wired member of the family, but moms 
actually spend more time online, says a survey out today.

Mothers with kids under 18 average 16 hours and 52 minutes online a week, 
says the survey by America Online. Another AOL survey early this year found 
teens average about 12 hours a week online.

For moms, going online is "modern-day me time," says AOL's Regina Lewis. 
"Communication is a big part of it  moving some of that phone time online." 
Moms also would "like to move chores online," she adds.

The top online activity is keeping in touch with friends and family by 
e-mail and instant messages, cited by 86%. Others include finding driving 
directions and local information, 47%; visiting kid-friendly sites, 47%; 
paying bills online, 36%.

Findings don't surprise those who run women's Web sites. The Net is "the 
ultimate household appliance" for multitasking mothers, says Nancy Evans, 
co-founder of iVillage.

Among other findings:

Frequent online activities include letter writing, 77%; gift shopping, 45%; 
coordinating family activities, 27%. Only 6% grocery-shop online, and 53% 
say they never will.
Moms are online most hours on weekdays and weekends. The highest 
percentage, 55%, log on from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
It's not clear why so many of the top wired-mom cities are in the South, 
but Evans notes that "Southern women are great talkers, great networkers. 
Could it be that this is their fertile soil?"

Findings are based on an online survey of 8,098 moms (AOL members and 
others) who use the Internet from home; 44% work full time, 15% part time; 
24% are homemakers. The other 17% were students or retirees, or they didn't 
specify.
********************
Government Computer News
CIO Council rolls out first take on e-gov best practices
By Jason Miller

The CIO Council last week laid the foundation for an e-government knowledge 
base. "We wanted to do something in real time and create a set of best 
practices that would be helpful immediately," said Debra Stouffer, 
co-chairwoman of the CIO Council's Best Practices Committee.

White papers by industry and government teams outlined the issues, success 
factors and recommendations for the Business Compliance One-Stop and the 
Geospatial One-Stop projects. The teams, made up of government officials 
and members of the Industry Advisory Council, plan to issue similar reports 
for all 24 e-government initiatives under the Office of Management and 
Budget's sponsorship [see story at www.gcn.com/21_4/news/17995-1.html].

"We are building a knowledge base that is important because it is 
applicable across the board for all e-gov projects and agencies," Stouffer 
said.

The council released the best-practices documents, which can be found 
online at cio.gov, at an Association for Federal IRM event in Washington.

"We need to change the way government brings in best practices," said Mark 
Forman, associate director of OMB for IT and e-government. "We used to read 
it in a magazine and say, 'We need to do this.' But we have to work faster, 
and we are getting there. Part of it is our ability to bring best practices 
into government like the way we did with these."
*******************
USA Today
Logitech's new Pocket Digital Camera is no big deal

The big deal about Logitech's new digital camera is that it is no big deal 
indeed.

It's literally the size of a credit card, and with its integrated brushed 
aluminum case is about half an inch thick at it thickest point and weighs 
just 1.8 ounces.

It's a point-and-shoot, no-focus viewfinder affair and connects to Windows 
PCs with a supplied USB (Universal Serial Bus) cable, which also recharges 
the built-in lithium polymer battery every time you hook it up to download 
pictures. The camera includes a built-in 10-second self-timer. You can also 
turn the shutter beep off, handy if you want to capture a napping baby's 
smile without disruption.

The camera ships with Logitech's Pocket Digital 5.0 software, which 
includes MGI Photosuite 4.0 SE to fiddle with your pictures. And the 
download software is a one-click process. The software launches when your 
PC detects the camera as attached, and clicking the "yes" button is all you 
have to do to both download your shots and erase the camera.

So all this glitz demands a CIA-size budget? Hardly  Logitech's pricing 
this at $129.95.

Beyond the obvious always-have-a-camera-handy benefits for those lucky 
souls whose children have presented them with grandchildren, insurance 
adjusters, appraisers, architects, contractors and cops might want to check 
it out, either as a primary or as a backup camera.

Because the camera is so light and small, I found it difficult to banish 
camera shake when I pressed the shutter unless I made a conscious 
effort  and sometimes not even then. Suggestion to Logitech: put the 
shutter release on the next one smack in the middle, making it easier to 
avoid the twist that comes with pressing down on one side of the camera.

The camera works best in brightly lighted situations, but produced 
acceptable results outdoors on an overcast day.

System requirements: Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000 or XP, 64 megabytes of RAM, 
400-megahertz-or-better processor, CD-ROM drive and USB port, 16-bit or 
higher color display.

Although there's certainly much to be said for MGI Photosuite, if you want 
to use another package, it's no problem.

The camera is available at retail and on the Web at http://www.logitech.com.
********************
USA Today
Pages of 12,000 Yiddish books digitally preserved

AMHERST, Mass. (AP)  They were rescued from trash bins, attics and 
basements  crumbling books written in Yiddish, a language with a future as 
flimsy as the volumes themselves.

Now the pages of 12,000 Yiddish books have been digitally preserved and, as 
of Monday, many titles that haven't been published in more than 50 years 
were expected to be available online.

The project is a culmination of four years of work for the National Yiddish 
Book Center. And it's a crowning achievement for its founder, Aaron Lansky, 
who has directed a 22-year mission to salvage 1.5 million Yiddish books.

"Could you imagine if in all the bookstores and libraries in the world, 
there were only three copies of Moby Dick left?" Lansky said. "That's the 
situation we were facing."

Yiddish, a Germanic language written in Hebrew, was spoken by about 11 
million Jews in Eastern Europe, North America and elsewhere. As Jews 
immigrated to America after the Holocaust, some Yiddish words such as 
"schmooze" and "klutz" assimilated with English, but future generations 
largely lost interest in the language.

The books Lansky collected are mostly duplicates of some 15,000 titles. 
They've been stored at the center's home at the Hampshire College campus 
and sold to institutions and scholars trying to bolster their Yiddish 
libraries.

About five years ago, Lansky and his colleagues realized they were getting 
down to their final few copies of some of titles. With $3.5 million in 
private donations, the center soon began digitizing each title in its 
collection.

At a warehouse in Mechanicsburg, Pa., workers severed the spines of 12,000 
works of poems, plays and stories and scanned each of their pages into a 
computer system.

"We had to destroy the books in order to save them forever," said Nancy 
Sherman, the center's vice president. "We've realized that our mission 
wasn't just about collecting books. It's about preserving them."

It took four years to get the 12,000 titles scanned and onto a Web site, 
where people can scroll through the list of titles and buy one online.

About 3,000 more books  the center's most fragile  still need to be scanned.

Within minutes of receiving an order, a printer in Mechanicsburg will spit 
out an entire book, now printed on paper estimated to last about 500 years. 
Each book will cost $29, or $21.75 for members of the National Yiddish Book 
Center.

Now that the books have been preserved, Lansky and other Yiddish scholars 
say their focus needs to be on making sure there will be people who are 
able to read them.

"At least we now know there will always be a supply of Yiddish books," said 
Jeremy Dauber, a professor of Yiddish literature at Columbia University. 
"Now we need to make sure there's a demand."
************************
CNN
Declaring 'Warcraft' on sales to kids
Trade group: Bill is 'both unnecessary and unconstitutional'

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- A California congressman wants to make it a 
federal crime to rent or sell video games showing violence, prostitution 
and drug use to anyone under the age of 17 without parental consent.

But representatives of the video game industry and a leading retailer call 
the bill unnecessary and question its legal standing under the United 
States Constitution's free-speech provisions.

Rep. Joe Baca , a Democrat who represents a district in southern 
California's "Inland Empire" region, has introduced the bill, H.R. 4645.

Co-signed by 21 members of the House of Representatives, it covers eight 
kinds of explicit in-game depictions, including scenes of:


decapitation and dismemberment,

murder, car jackings, illegal drug use, rape, prostitution, assault and 
other violent crimes.

Under the proposed law, a first offense by a retailer would carry a fine of 
up to $1,000. A second offense would carry a fine of up to $5,000.

Any subsequent offenses would be punishable by a jail term of up to 90 days 
and/or a fine of up to $5,000.

Violent video games have been a commercial hit in recent months but have 
also attracted the scrutiny of regulators in the United States and elsewhere.

Concern, and praise

Rockstar Games' "Grand Theft Auto III," a criminal-adventure game that 
includes scenes of violence against the elderly and police, was the 
best-selling game in the nation for more than four months until March. The 
game was initially banned in Australia.


More recently, German lawmakers have debated violence on television and in 
video games after a 19-year-old failed student shot dead 16 people at his 
former school and then killed himself. The April 26 shooting in the eastern 
town of Erfurt was Germany's worst mass murder since World War Two. (Read 
CNN.com coverage of the Erfurt shooting.)

"I'm a parent and grandparent, and I've had enough of the violence we're 
experiencing among our youth," Baca said in a statement announcing bill. 
"We saw it at Columbine High School, and we saw it last week in Germany."


The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is in the process of preparing a report 
on both media violence and the ability of minors to access such content.

A report on the same subject last December praised the video game business 
for its self-imposed system of game ratings and its compliance efforts, but 
said more could be done to strengthen controls at the retail level.

"I certainly respect the concerns that give rise to a bill like this," says 
Doug Lowenstein, the president of the Interactive Digital Software 
Association, the video game industry's trade group. But Lowenstein calls 
the bill "both unnecessary and unconstitutional."

At least one major U.S. retailer also questions the need for such legal 
penalties.

"For us, we believe it's ultimately an issue of parental responsibility," 
says Bill Cimino, a spokesman for Circuit City Stores. That company already 
has a policy of requesting identification from anyone who appears to be 
under age when they buy video games, he says.

Precedents for pressure

An April 19 ruling in a St. Louis, Missouri, federal court upheld a local 
ordinance requiring parental consent to purchase video games with graphic 
violence.

But a similar law in Indianapolis, Indiana, was struck down as 
unconstitutional by a federal court last year.

In a statement announcing the bill last week, Baca cited statistics 
indicating that 92 percent of American children between the ages of 2 and 
17 play video games. He said that previous studies have shown that children 
can be made to identify with the "digital criminals" in video games.

"I've had enough of the violence we're experiencing among our youth," Baca 
said.

"When kids play video games, they assume the identity of the characters in 
the games. ... Do you really want your kids assuming the role of a mass 
murderer or car jacker when you are away at work?"

Under the system established by the Entertainment Software Review Board, 
games rated "Mature" are not intended for children under 17 years old.
*********************
USA Today
Digital mailing products introduced

NEW YORK (AP)  Pitney Bowes on Monday introduced a series of digital 
mailing products designed to speed up mail processing at small businesses 
as well as medium-sized and large corporations.

To celebrate the launch of the DM Series machines, equipped with a new 
Internet program, the company's chairman and chief executive, Michael J. 
Critelli, was to ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

The company, based in Stamford, Conn., is the world's largest producer of 
postage meters and other mailing equipment. It currently services about 1.4 
million metered mail customers in the United States, company officials said.

"The DM Series is the most technologically advanced line of solutions we 
have introduced in our 82-year history," Critelli said in an interview. 
"For the first time, people will be able to do transactions from their 
desktop that they used to have to go to the post office to do."

He called it the "future of mail" and pointed out that the company was five 
years ahead of the U.S. Postal Service mandate for conversion to digital 
systems.

Kevin Weiss, president for customer marketing, said the digital system was 
developed in response to customer demands for greater speed and flexibility.

The DM Series solutions, powered by IntelliLink Technology, "will give high 
performance access to information, to funds management, to software changes 
and to postal rate downloads," Weiss said.

Among the activities that customers will be able to perform with the new 
system is sending and tracking priority and certified mail online, the 
company said. Customers will get a discount on the postage fee for using 
the online service.

Customers also will be able to download carrier and postal rate changes and 
get access to instant updates for the DM Series operating system.
*******************
USA Today
Study: Most e-government initiatives fail

By William Matthews, Federal Computer Week

From rounding up funding to compelling cooperation among agencies, 
e-government is a tough business  so tough that more than 60% of 
e-government initiatives fail or fall short of their objectives, according 
to a study by analysts at Gartner.

E-government often takes more money, planning, leadership and sustained 
focus than government officials anticipate, and without those key 
ingredients, e-government initiatives are likely to falter, Gartner 
analysts concluded.

Perhaps the most difficult impediment for e-government is the structure of 
traditional government.

Typically, multiple agencies function at different levels of government, 
each operating according to its own laws and policies. A Gartner survey 
found that national-level governments average 160 such departments or agencies.

That creates instant problems for e-government, which aims to span multiple 
agencies and even multiple levels of government, said Judith Carr, vice 
president and senior program director for Gartner's Executive Programs.

"The governance structures of many governments are not designed to support 
multidepartment initiatives such as e-government," Carr said. "To 
complicate matters, some still view them as information technology projects 
rather than business initiatives. E-government can require new legislation, 
new procurement processes and new civil service rules  which are all 
difficult to change."

"It's critical that governments groom a new generation of endeavor managers 
to head these complex, expensive and risky initiatives," Carr said in an 
address to a Gartner symposium April 30.

Even at 60%, the number of e-government initiatives that fail or fall short 
"is not all that bad," said Gartner research director French Caldwell. 
"Take a look at e-business. Back in 1999, we said that 98% of dot-coms 
would fail  and they did."

That so many e-government initiatives fall short should not be surprising, 
Carr said. About 60% of traditional government initiatives also fail to 
fulfill all expectations, she said.

Funding is a frequent stumbling block for e-government initiatives.

"IT-related projects typically require up-front investment long before the 
benefits start to flow," Carr said. But in times of tight budgets, agency 
managers are under pressure to keep costs down and pursue projects that 
yield prompt payoffs.

Beyond that, government funding tends to be doled out year-by-year and 
agency-by-agency. "Budgeting and accounting cycles and practices are not 
well geared to funding cross-department, shared resource, multiyear 
efforts  which most e-government initiatives are," Carr said.

Lack of adequately skilled personnel is another common problem.

"Traditionally, governments have designed their human resources practices 
to attract people who like to work in a secure, stable and often less 
competitive workplace," Carr said. "For e-government, they need people who 
not only adapt to change quickly, but also drive change."

Nevertheless, 40% of e-government initiatives succeed, Carr said. Gartner 
analysts identified "five imperatives" for e-government successes:

? Maintain focus on the goal.

? Find capable leadership.

? Secure adequate funding.

? Invest in the building blocks.

? Maintain constant pressure for continued progress.
*********************
TVinsight
Urban-Centric Pay Net Plans Debut
By SIMON APPLEBAUM
Multichannel News


A new multi-niche digital premium service  with aspirations to morph into a 
digital service suite with hip, funky fare for urban cable customers  will 
go public at this week's National Show in New Orleans.

S Network, managed by New York-based Sovereign New Media Group Ltd., will 
launch a trial preview of its proposed service May 9, using Galaxy XI, 
transponder 13. The satellite feed will continue through the end of the 
month, as Sovereign officials hold carriage negotiations with MSOs.

A search for permanent transponder space is underway. S Network's premiere 
is planned for September or October.

Sovereign founder and chairman Newton Hinds III, who also serves as a 
general sales manager for AT&T's collection of digital media centers, will 
set up operator discussions and unveil the service at a press luncheon 
scheduled for May 7.

"I'm looking forward to getting some deals done," Hinds said. "Just because 
of where I am at AT&T, I can't pull out a wand and wave for some AT&T 
Broadband contracts. But things look promising. We've got a tremendous 
amount of advance interest in our pay model."

That model has a collection of independent programmers and entrepreneurs 
contributing material to S Network, and keeping internal overhead low.

The format is divided into seven categories, each with its own programmer. 
They target the interests of urban cable subscribers, particularly people 
of color.

The categories are Arts, Caribbeanet (music, lifestyle, and sports shows on 
Caribbean culture), Comedy, Glory (religious content), Music, Sports and 
Worldcast (international event coverage and movies in English).

Each genre will be featured one night per week, and float within the other 
dayparts. If particular genres work well, they could become separate 
digital pay or basic services, and another programmer will assume the open 
timeslots.

Operators will be encouraged to offer S Network for $6 per month. Hinds 
estimated the channel could break-even at the 5 million customer mark.

S Network's model recalls Intro Television, Tele-Communications Inc.'s 
early 1990s basic-channel venture, which blended material from a variety of 
proposed services into one outlet. TCI ultimately turned the service off, 
after it failed to land clearances with other operators.

Hinds has higher aspirations. With $5 million from seed-fund appeals, 
Sovereign and its executive board  including Inner-City Broadcasting 
founder Percy Sutton and New York Knicks basketball player Mark 
Jackson  are working to raise $40 million.

Several executive board members have pledged funds, and Hinds is 
approaching AOL Time Warner Inc.'s minority media-opportunity fund, as well 
as a similar fund from J.P. Morgan Chase.
***********************
Nando Times
Sony reportedly working on next generation of PlayStation

TOKYO (May 6, 2002 8:19 a.m. EDT) - Sony Corp. has started developing the 
next generation of its PlayStation video game for sale by 2005, when it 
plans to roll out a console that would allow gamers to play opponents over 
high-speed Internet networks, a news report said Sunday.

The new game console will run on a computer chip expected to be around 200 
times faster than those currently installed in personal computers and game 
units, Kyodo News agency said. It quoted Sony sources it did not identify.

Developing the chip will cost the Japanese electronics and entertainment 
giant about $400 million, Kyodo said.

Sony has set its sights on online gaming as the new frontier and is trying 
to take control of the market before rivals Microsoft Corp. and Nintendo 
Co. come up with their own versions. Microsoft makes the Xbox, and Nintendo 
has GameCube.

Microsoft and Sony both have said they will sell adapters and software for 
games that can be played over the Internet later this year.

The new PlayStation would work over super-fast fiber-optics connections and 
would be Sony's first console to run games without a digital video disc, 
Kyodo said.

Sony also is considering offering the new chip to other companies for use 
in televisions and electronics equipment, Kyodo said.

Worldwide, Sony has shipped more than 28 million PlayStation2 machines. 
Nintendo says 2.7 million GameCube consoles have been shipped worldwide, 
about half of those in Japan. Microsoft expects to ship 3.5 million to 4 
million Xbox consoles worldwide by the end of June.
*******************
Nando Times
Billions wasted in frenzy for fiber-optic networks, firm calculates

By JEFF SMITH, Rocky Mountain News of Colorado


(May 6, 2002 11:31 a.m. EDT) - More than 18 months into the telecom 
downturn, experts still are divided over the depth of the bandwidth glut.

But there's little disagreement about the money wasted building 
long-distance fiber-optic networks to carry high-speed communications traffic.

A Boston consulting firm, Adventis Corp., recently calculated that about 
$70 billion was squandered over the past five years in the "crazy" frenzy 
to build Internet backbones across the country.

"It was very short-sighted" and much of the fiber may never be used, said 
Blake Kirby, vice president of Adventis Corp. About $139 billion was spent 
wisely, according to the company.

The Oklahoma communications consulting firm TeleChoice has a slightly 
different take.

"The bottom line isn't that there's too much fiber, the problem is that 
there are too many companies that put that fiber into the ground," said 
Russ McGuire, TeleChoice's chief strategy officer. "It was a fundamental 
capital market mistake. I don't know of any other time when capital markets 
have funded more than three (players) in any given utility market. It's 
just dumb."

The common thread between these two views is this: Much of the money wasted 
wasn't in fiber, but in construction crews, engineers, executives, 
buildings and everything else needed to fund telecom upstarts such as 
Denver-based Qwest and Level 3.

"Each of these companies spent $10 billion to $20 billion to build out 
their national networks," Kirby said. "It doesn't matter whether you light 
the fiber now or later, you aren't going to generate the revenue to pay off 
the debt."

The 1996 Telecommunications Act, which was supposed to usher in a new era 
of competition, instead spurred a disastrous network overbuild.

Adventis' chief executive Mark Bruneau concluded back in 1999 that there 
would be a capacity glut.

"But at the time, we were viewed as heretics," Kirby said.

And amid the dot-com boom, more capital poured in.

Historically, Kirby said, about $3 has been spent on the local 
telecommunications infrastructure for every dollar spent on the 
long-distance backbone. But that formula became inverted in recent years, 
with $3 being spent on the backbone for every dollar spent in local access.

Because of that inversion, the so-called "last mile" bottleneck became even 
more pronounced. Most U.S. consumers still access the Internet through 
dial-up modems rather than high-speed broadband connections and with costs 
figured in that isn't expected to change anytime soon.

Adventis says that less than 10 percent of the fiber laid in the ground has 
been "lit" with the amplifiers, routers and other communications devices to 
make it operational.

McGuire, who has looked at 22 long-distance routes connecting the country's 
top 12 cities, agrees there's a surplus of fiber in the ground now. But he 
said that's not the point.

"It takes a long time to put the fiber in the ground," so companies want to 
plan 20 years in advance. "Whether it's the right amount, too much or too 
little, is kind of hard to know because I don't want somebody to be digging 
in my back yard again for a very long time."

However, in a report late last month, the Washington, D.C., consulting firm 
TeleGeography Inc. said the dramatic price collapse caused by the bandwidth 
glut may be nearing an end.

TeleGeography agreed the supply of the city-to-city bandwidth still "far 
exceeds actual needs." But with prices already near or below cost, "it 
seems unlikely that the capacity oversupply will depress prices any 
further." Carriers basically can't cut the prices any more without risking 
bankruptcy, according to TeleGeography analyst Stephan Beckert.
******************
New Zealand News
E-banking fraud: When, not if
30.04.2002
By RICHARD WOOD

With all the horror stories of the online world, you would be forgiven for 
wondering how secure internet banking could possibly be.

A case of fraud was reported this year in Australia involving its largest 
online bank, the Commonwealth Bank's NetBank.

No cases have been reported in New Zealand. The banks deny there have been 
any, and the banking ombudsman's office has not been advised of any either.

Nevertheless, e-crime experts warn it is a matter of when rather than if. 
Phone banking has been hit in the past, and so have ATMs.

We still use those technologies, just as we still use credit cards even 
though we know there has been a lot of credit card fraud.

Consumers weigh up the convenience against the risks and usually choose to 
go for it.

While "brute force" attempts using huge quantities of passwords to break 
into bank accounts online are unlikely to succeed, potential 
vulnerabilities still exist, such as the use of surreptitious software 
"agents" that record your password keystrokes, people looking over your 
shoulder, and the risk of human error at banks when applying for or 
replacing passwords.

Next time someone checks your identity by asking your date of birth and 
your mother's maiden name, politely point out that this information is 
publicly available and really a waste of time.

Chris Budge, of consultancy E-crime NZ, advises against using internet 
banking in places where people might watch your password entry.

He says to avoid banking at internet cafes while travelling as you do not 
know who owns those machines and what they have been programmed to do.

If travelling, be ready to change your password quickly if you think it has 
been compromised. You can authorise your bank to allow a partner to change 
it, or use phone banking.

Above all, keep that all-important password in your head, not your wallet, 
and make it complicated, with a combination of upper and lower-case 
characters and numerals.

You may want to use something like a phrase from a book to make it easy to 
remember but not possible for someone else to guess.
****************
Euromedia.net
Knight: 'There will be an explosion of company TV channels available on 
intranets'

Corporate communications broadcasts to individual employees and consumers 
is one of the most prosperous areas of webcasting and digital television, 
says Gavin Knight. He is a producer at Firehouse Productions, London, a 
specialised company that moved on from simply producing corporate training 
videos, to offering content on a variety of platforms.

Knight explains his point of view in this interview with Fiete Stegers, Van 
Dusseldorp & Partners, as part of a series of interviews in anticipation of 
the TV Meets The Web Seminar, May 16th and 17th.


Q: Firehouse considers corporate communications one of the fastest growing 
areas of webcasting. Why is that so?

Knight: Three years ago, very little of our work on film was reused in 
different formats for interactive applications (CD-ROM, DVD and 
webcasting). Now almost all our films for corporate clients are briefed for 
this medium and appear as webcasts.

Why? The client makes an investment in a message by producing a film (or 
staging a live event), so it makes sense to distribute it to as many people 
as possible within the target audience. The technology allows this, in fact 
the technology has changed the way people work, get trained, or absorb any 
corporate information.

A webcast is an effective way of distributing messages to people who do not 
always have time to attend company events or see screenings on film, video, 
or even satellite TV.


Q: Is there any research supporting your view?

Knight: Yes indeed. AV Magazine estimates the interactive media market in 
the UK to be around £550m (E883m), which is slightly bigger than the 
corporate video market, but smaller than the live (business) event market. 
AV estimated from a survey conducted in January 2002 that the interactive 
market was going to grow by 22 per cent this year  impressive given the 
current economic climate!

The IVCA (International Visual Communications Association), that is the 
main UK industry association for this sector, estimates the whole business 
event/video/interactive market to be worth £1.8bn (E2.9bn) in the UK, but 
only estimates growth of around 10 per cent.

For clients to get more value for money all this production work is ripe 
for streaming. This helps to explain why AV's growth estimate is so much 
higher. In our view, streaming makes great use of existing programmes, it 
extends the reach of a live event and the message hits people where it is 
most convenient  on their desks at work.

The financial sector in the UK has long recognised this. Research conducted 
with all FTSE 100 & Fortune 100 companies identified that, while 47 per 
cent of these companies were using streaming media on their websites, 42 
per cent were also using this technology for investor relations, mostly 
streaming results presentations as live. Not glamorous filmmaking, but 
effective nonetheless. The equivalent figures in the US are 62 per cent 
streaming, with 58 per cent for IR.

As the picture quality of streaming video improves and with (the UK) 
government committed to "Broadband Britain," webcasting of corporate 
information and direct B2C messages will contribute some growth to the area 
your conference is addressing.


Q: How will corporate communications rely on webcasting?

Knight: Probably one of the most advanced comes from the US: On November 1, 
2001, when General Mills's acquisition of Pillbury took effect, over 20,000 
employees from the combined companies tuned into a special live broadcast 
from the two headquarters and the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, 
where the company chairman rang the opening bell. Most people watched the 
40-minute event over streaming media on the enterprise's network.

The company's own "Champions TV" streams 24 hours per day, every day. 
Programming is created in eight-hour blocks so people on every shift can 
view it (or search the archives). It is viewed by 60 per cent of the staff 
through 10,000 desktops and 70 special kiosks.

Regular programming includes the chairman's quarterly review, annual 
company meeting, departmental meetings, training materials, and product 
demos. Live events let employees submit questions via chat from any 
location to the production studio.

In the UK there are about 30 private company satellite networks 
transmitting regular corporate programmes, some live. Companies like Ford, 
Sainsbury's, BMW, CGNU will want to consider streaming in the future...not 
only is it more effective (in reaching more employees more conveniently) 
but it will also reduce transmission costs.

Many companies who rely on videotape to distribute such information will 
look at streaming for cost reasons alone. The case for stream is compelling 
when you consider the interactivity and immediacy of the medium.


Q: Where is your company in this growing market?

Knight: Firehouse streams regular internal programmes for Accenture and 
Morgan Stanley. For British Telecom we are producing CD-ROMs aimed at 
consumers to launch new products  the video elements are designed to be 
streamed as extended commercials on BT's website.

Video Arts, who is the UK's leading training organisation, commissioned 
Firehouse for generic training films. Their library is being re-purposed 
for pay-per-view (PPV) streaming on company intranets. Traditionally, they 
would produce a 30-minute linear drama, but we have developed a new sketch 
show format to meet the needs of the new interactive climate, one that is 
ideally suited to intranet, CD-ROM and DVD delivery.


Q: I guess if the future is that bright, there must be a lot of competitors 
trying to enter this market right now?

Knight: YES! But its not just about technology  creatively, one has to use 
the medium appropriately. Corporate video producers who do not have the 
understanding of the content and editorial requirements peculiar to 
webcasting will fail.


Q: What's more important here for the performance of a company in this 
field, understanding webcasting or having a strong background in 
traditional TV/film production?

Knight: Having a strong background in film production is key, but also 
knowing how to make short programmes (two to three minutes maximum) that 
are effective. It is also vital to understand how to structure interactive 
information.


Q: Company videos often tend to be rather different, more serious, probably 
less creative than ever-experimenting advertising. Can Firehouse still 
profit from its advertising experience?

Knight: Yes, because webviewers (and current viewing trends) favour short, 
sharp bytes of information. Anything that adds impact or entertainment to a 
corporate message will be more effective than a long-winded "talking head" 
approach.

Our webcasts either contain vital content (i.e. results) or compelling 
stories, supported by text/design-based information. Again, it's about 
understanding the medium rather than just re-purposing existing corporate 
work for webcast.


Q: Do your webcasts include also include interactive features?

Knight: Yes. Presentation and live event streams are frequently supported 
online with PowerPoint slides and charts that run simultaneously.

If the video is part of web-based content, there are other routes the 
audience can follow, both before and after the film. Video Arts frequently 
recaps and ask questions within their training courses online, and a record 
of the users performance is then recorded along the way.


Q: In general terms, how much do streaming/internet video and TV still 
differ concerning their audience and the technology required?

Knight: Essentially it's the difference between watching TV and using a 
computer. TV is still viewed as a "sit back and relax" medium, while 
streaming/internet video is very much a sit "forward and engage" medium.


Q: Do you think webcasting is there to stay? Skeptics may argue that when 
broadband and DTV happen, people will want real rich media  not just 
something that's closer to animated pictures.

Knight: I'm afraid we do not make a distinction...when webcasts become the 
quality of broadcast TV (which they will), we predict there will be an 
explosion of company TV channels available on intranets.

It's corporate TV and it's still a webcast (delivered to the desktop), even 
if it becomes full-screen digital quality. Many will become available to 
the public, threatening advertising and the way most TV is funded. For 
example, I hear Coca-Cola is already planning its own consumer TV channel 
for this webfuture!!
***************
Euromedia.net
P2P programs boost music sales: report
07/05/2002  Editor: Tamsin McMahon

Online music fans who use file-sharing services to download free songs 
spend more on music purchases then other web surfers, a new study says.

The report, from research firm Jupiter Media Metrix, found that 34 per cent 
of web surfers who use unauthorised peer-to-peer (P2P) services spent more 
money on music after they started file-swapping, compared to 15 per cent 
who spent less.

Only 19 per cent of internet users who didn't access file-sharing 
programmes like KaZaA and Music City increased their music spending, while 
71 per cent said there was no change.

The report contradicts a study commissioned last year by the Recording 
Industry Association of America, which found that 23 per cent of internet 
users spent less money on music because they could get it for free.

The RIAA and major record labels have launched a series of attacks on 
file-swapping services like Napster, which has had to suspend its program 
until it settles a court case, claiming such programs were the cause of a 
five per cent drop in record sales last year.

But the Jupiter report found that equipment and technology used to burn 
music CDs  such as broadband connections and rewritable CD drives  has no 
effect on music spending.

"The internet is the greatest thing that ever happened to the music 
industry, and they're just missing out on cashing in on it," report author 
Aram Sinnreich told Reuters.

File-swapping programs attract users who are already willing to spend on 
music and can be used by the recording industry to gain customers, 
Sinnreich added.
*****************
Sydney Morning Herald
Big Brother is looking to read your e-mail
By Nicole Manktelow
May 7 2002

Police are increasingly turning to Internet Service Providers in a bid to 
fight crime - both online and off - but is this growing relationship doomed 
to endanger the privacy of Australian Internet users?

As the thin blue line stretches into cyberspace, tracking the trail of data 
is as important to investigators as finding fingerprints on a murder weapon 
is to homicide detectives. It is little wonder authorities are seeking to 
extend access to our electronic communications.

Proposed changes to the Telecommunications Interception Act - part of a 
package of anti-terrorism amendments - will make it easier for police to 
read a suspect's e-mail than it is to tap a phone or search premises.

So easy, it is raising privacy concerns for Internet users.

Without additional security or encryption technologies, e-mail is a 
notoriously insecure method of communication.

However, e-mail has benefited from at least a little legal protection, with 
Australian law-enforcement agencies restricted in the kind of information 
they can ask ISPs to provide about their customers. ISPs already provide 
some details to these agencies on request but this does not include e-mails.

Strictly controlled interception warrants are required before ISPs can hand 
over a message's contents.

All that is about to change, however, as Australian law-makers attempt to 
make e-mail something of a special case - so that reading e-mail stored on 
an ISP's server is not an interception of communication.

Irene Graham of the online civil liberties group Electronic Frontiers 
Australia, says the argument is a danger to privacy.

"Up until now, an unread e-mail has been considered to be a message still 
passing over the telecommunications system and cannot be intercepted 
without a specific interception warrant," Graham says.

An interception warrant can only be issued by a nominated member of the 
Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

It can only be issued for serious crimes that carry a penalty of at least 
seven years imprisonment.

"Once an e-mail has been read it is no longer passing, so getting access to 
the content isn't intercepting it," Graham says.

Representatives for the Attorneys-General argued their case at a recent 
hearing of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee 
inquiry into the provisions of the Cybercrime Bill.

"They are saying that sometimes the ISP cannot tell if a message has been 
downloaded or not . . . and so some ISPs were asking for two warrants. The 
government has decided to resolve the problem by deeming that all e-mail on 
a server is no longer passing," Graham says.

"It's like saying you can't intercept mail while it is in an Australia Post 
van but when it is in the post office that's OK."

If passed into law, the changes could have implications for voicemail and SMS.

"Anything that gets delayed in transit somewhere, and that the police can 
access somewhere without using a telephone line, will be deemed not 
necessary to obtain an interception warrant," Graham says.

The EFA is concerned that e-mail will be accessed by more easily obtained 
warrants or on the authority of various government departments.

"Police have always been able to get details of the phone numbers being 
called without a warrant. And they can get the to-and-from details of an 
e-mail without a warrant," Graham says.

"Under section 282 of the Telecommunications Act they can ask an ISP for 
the information . . . or make a certified request, which is a special 
notice police can give an ISP which means they must provide the information."

This has so far excluded the content of the e-mail.

Increasing cooperation between ISPs and police is generally regarded as a 
positive.

"Law-enforcement agencies like to talk up the e-crime aspect," but the 
bigger picture involves more than just e-crime, says computer crime expert 
Graham Henley.

"Criminals these days are organising drug importations via e-mail or the 
Internet, not by a phone call," he says.

Henley spent 11 years in the Australian Federal Police, including five 
years in the computer-crime division. He now runs the computer forensics 
and technical investigations team for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

"Telephone interceptions are ineffective if a criminal organisation is 
using Internet Relay Chat. To investigate these, as well as emerging crimes 
in e-commerce, police must be able to get information from the electronic 
forums," Henley says.

Police already request so much information from ISPs that many larger 
providers have a dedicated staff to manage the queries. "The bigger ISPs, 
out of time and necessity, have worked out ways to deal with the police," 
Henley says.

ISP OzEmail has a staff member who is "divided between police matters and 
internal fraud checking and processing", says chief executive Justin Milne, 
who is also head of the Internet Industry Association and head of the IIA's 
cybercrime taskforce.

"It's wrong to suggest there is an ad hoc method [that law enforcement can 
just call and get information on anyone], they need to have procedures and 
have warrants. Privacy is a super concern for ISPs and the IIA."

Milne says that information requested by police could include a customer's 
name and address, session logs or the phone number from which the person 
called.

While anyone using a phone can withhold their number, the IIA wants to 
remove this right.

"CND (Calling Number Display) could be turned on by Telstra for all calls 
to Internet points of presence. We want it turned on," Milne says.

Milne believes Telstra has the technical capacity and the legislative 
capacity to achieve this under the Telecommunications Act.

"If the alleged criminal has overridden the calling number display they are 
invisible to us. The problem is that only 70 per cent of calls have it 
turned on," he says.

However, Electronic Frontiers Australia's Graham says forcing users to 
activate their CNDs was "totally unacceptable".

The "proposal is a gross infringement of people's rights," she says.

"You might catch the odd stupid criminal but how many people's privacy do 
we have to infringe in the process?"

The Senate committee is due to report to the parliament this week.
***************
Sydney Morning Herald
Law school sues student over Web site
May 7 2002

A law school in Louisiana is suing one of its law students over a Web site 
maintained by him, according to a story on the New York Times web site.

Douglas Dorhauer, who studies at the Paul M. Herbert Law Center at 
Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, runs a site called lsulaw.com. 
The site has a school calendar, law-related links and comments by Dorhauer, 
some of them critical of the law school.

Recently, the site has also included copies of cease-and-desist letters 
from the school's lawyers and the trademark infringement suit received last 
month by the student, two days before his second-year final exams.

The lawsuit has accused Dorhauer of trading on the school's good will and 
confusing people and sought to prohibit him from using the site's name and 
requests an unspecified amount of money and the law school's legal fees.

The Times said school officials and the school's lawyer, Marc S. Whitfield, 
had refused requests for interviews. In an e-mail, the school's chancellor, 
John J. Costonis, said: "We feel the suit speaks for itself. We certainly 
respect Mr. Dorhauer's entitlement to express himself, but not at the cost 
of likely confusion regarding the source of information, particularly when 
that information is incorrect."

Dorhauer has posted details of the suit at the site. Says he: "Because of 
the similarity between this site's name and that of a local law school (of 
which I am a student), this site has recently been under attack. 
Specifically, in a letter dated November 30, 2001, Marc S. Whitfield of 
Taylor, Porter, Brooks & Phillips, L.L.P., legal counsel to Louisiana State 
University asked me to give up the domain name "lsulaw.com."
*****************
Wired News
A Challenge to Dissect Some Code
By Michelle Delio

2:00 a.m. May 7, 2002 PDT
Systems administrators have to stop thinking like glorified janitors.

Cleaning malicious code from a system as quickly as possible should never 
be an administrator's primary goal, security experts agree. Administrators 
should instead focus on carefully dissecting malicious program code and 
preserving the evidence of attacks.

Peering deeply into the guts of the malevolent mystery code that sometimes 
shows up on networks is an approach strongly advocated by the Honeynet 
Project, a group of top security experts who try to find some semblance of 
order in the chaos of cybercrime.

To encourage the careful dissection of malicious program code, the Honeynet 
Project has issued a challenge to anyone who cares to participate: Download 
a chunk of unusual code that appeared one day on one of the Honeynet 
Project's servers, rip it apart and see how it works.

Programmers have a month to pick apart the code, determine its intentions, 
figure out a way to fight it and submit documentation of the process they 
used and their findings to Honeynet.

Successful competitors will win the adulation of their peers, plus signed 
copies of a popular security book or complimentary admission to the Black 
Hat Briefings, a computer security conference.

This competition is a first for the security community, but the idea is to 
simulate the standard analytic methods network administrators should use 
whenever a rogue program appears on their system.

These rogue programs may snoop for sensitive data or probe for weaknesses 
in the compromised system, or be used to launch attacks on other systems.

Why not simply yank the malicious file out of the system and delete it? 
Because then the attacker will come right back and do the same thing again, 
said Lance Spitzner, security architect at Sun Microsystems and founder of 
the Honeynet Project.

"One of the things I learned as an officer in the Army's Rapid Deployment 
Force was to defend against a threat, you have to first understand it," 
Spitzner said. "To understand how an enemy would attack me with tanks, I 
crawled around in T-72 tanks. We have to apply the same methodology to 
cyberspace threats. To defend against our enemy, we have to first 
understand the threat."

Systems administrators who choose to simply purge their network of a threat 
are also destroying evidence that others could use to manage Internet 
crimes. Law enforcement officials who investigate computer crime sometimes 
complain that they are frustrated in their investigations by lack of evidence.

"Most of us are under big pressure to clean up fast and get the system back 
online," said Frank Vitelle, a systems administrator at a university. "But 
in the same way that you wouldn't decide to mop up the blood at a crime 
scene before the detectives show up, you shouldn't just pull a Trojan out 
of your system and discard it.

"You want to preserve the data and then examine it. Systems administrators 
have to start acting like cops and thinking like scientists."

Evidently systems administrators agree with Vitelle's assessment, or are at 
least piqued by the Honeynet Project's challenge. On Monday, the challenge 
site had already had over 30,000 visitors, and the binary had been 
downloaded over 1,700 times.

The mystery file that competitors will be analyzing appeared earlier this 
year after one of the Honeynet's decoy systems was hacked. Honeynets are 
systems set up specifically in the hopes that hackers will attack them so 
that security experts can secretly observe how those attacks are carried out.

Spitzer said the code left behind on the server has some very unusual 
features, and contestants will need to discover exactly what those features 
are. Bonus points will be awarded to those who can profile the type of 
person who could have written the code, and what he or she is apt to do next.

Honeynet Project membership consists of some of computer security's 
brightest stars, any of whom could have easily analyzed the binary code and 
then simply posted their findings in a paper.

But Spitzner said that previous papers describing security issues have 
never been as popular as last year's Forensic Challenge, a contest that 
encouraged systems administrators to dig through a compromised security 
system to see what they could learn about how it was attacked.

The Forensic Challenge drew twice as many pageviews and reactions as all of 
the Honeynet's white papers combined, Spitzner said.

The Honeynet Project's Reverse Challenge runs through the end of May. 
Submissions will be judged by a panel of experts and winners will be 
announced on July 1.

Spitzer added that the person who hacked the Honeynet server and left the 
code behind is not eligible to enter the contest.
******************
Sydney Morning Herald
Copyright issues become kids' stuff
By James Norman
May 7 2002

When Newcastle teenagers Emily, Sarah and Elise Boyd designed the website 
matmice.com two years ago, they had no idea of the monster they had 
created. The website, which allows children to easily design their own free 
websites, has spawned tens of thousands of matmice.com sites worldwide and 
attracted more than 100,000 members.

Many of the sites created through matmice.com are unofficial fanzine 
websites created by children in honour of their favourite rock stars, movie 
characters and other pop-culture icons. Harry Potter, Britney Spears, 
Jennifer Lopez and the new Star Wars prequels are common subjects.

But by giving children an easy way to download images, text or animations 
on to publicly accessible websites, is matmice.com walking into a copyright 
storm?

"We are happy to take down sites at the request of copyright holders," says 
19-year-old matmice.com co-creator and webmaster Emily Boyd, "but a lot of 
companies now encourage kids to make fanzine websites - it's free advertising."

It wasn't always the case. Just before the release of Harry Potter and the 
Sorcerer's Stone, the legal department of Warner Brothers sent letters 
threatening legal action to unofficial Potter fan-site webmasters worldwide.

In a now-infamous case, 15-year-old English schoolgirl Claire Field was 
threatened with legal action by Warner Brothers to force her to remove her 
site at www.harrypotterguide.co.uk and to hand over the domain right to 
Warner Bros. It was only after Field helped organise a boycott of Potter 
merchandise in protest, coordinated through the website potterwar.org.uk, 
that the studio backed down.

In a significant turnaround, many entertainment industry companies are now 
offering fans new ways to legally create unofficial fan sites, while 
retaining greater influence over the content.

Warner Brothers appears to have revised its position on Harry Potter fan 
sites. The company issued a statement promising that "no legal action to 
take over or shut down sites has been or will be taken against webmasters 
who are determined to be enthusiastic fans who simply want to pay homage to 
Harry Potter".

The company added, however, that it would continue to prosecute sites that 
sought commercial gain from Harry Potter, or posted offensive images.

Warner Brothers has also created a Harry Potter Webmaster Community page, 
which allows webmasters to enrol their unofficial sites for regular updates 
of Harry Potter material and downloads, plus offers the opportunity for 
selected unofficial sites to be linked to Warner Brothers' official Harry 
Potter homepage.

"We encourage you to creatively integrate the images provided on these 
pages into your website," reads the Warner Brothers Page, offering a vast 
selection of Harry Potter banners, shields and seals.

Emily Boyd says: "Kids love being able to share their interests with others 
and think it's great when they get messages from kids on the other side of 
the world who've visited their page and like the same things."

It seems some entertainment giants are so persuaded of this that they are 
now actively cultivating contact with fanzine webmasters. George Lucas, the 
creator of the Star Wars series, recently invited high-profile Star Wars 
webmasters to spend two days at Skywalker Ranch where they enjoyed a tour 
of the grounds and a 20-minute meeting with Lucas.

And Michael Regina, the 23-year-old co-founder of theonering.net, one of 
the most popular unofficial Lord of the Rings sites, was recently employed 
by New Line Films' viral marketing department to work on its official website.

But despite the corporate sector's change of attitude towards online 
fanzines, Emily Boyd says matmice.com terms and conditions clearly specify 
that children must still be responsible for ensuring they have copyright 
approval for the content of their pages.

"Although we do monitor content, it would be impossible for us to know by 
looking at a picture on a child's page whether they had permission to use 
it," she concedes.

And this is where copyright issues could arise.

Other Australian Web hosts seem to take a similar view, although most don't 
actively monitor content. Vic Cinc, of webcity.com.au, says his company has 
terminated contracts in the past, but only after being contacted by 
aggrieved copyright holders.

"We won't touch content until a copyright owner contacts us and 
demonstrates to our satisfaction that the material is clearly in violation 
of the Copyright Act. So, for instance, if a user put up a Harry Potter 
site, we won't do anything about it," he said.

"However, if someone claiming to own the Harry Potter copyright contacted 
us demanding we take action against a user, and we are satisfied that a 
breach of Commonwealth law has occurred, we will terminate a hosting 
contract with the client on the grounds that this is a violation of our 
terms and conditions."

Matmice.com recently moved its content to a large dedicated server in Hong 
Kong, which was donated by international communications giant Cable and 
Wireless, because its local server, donated by Scholastic Educational 
Books, could not keep up with the site's growth.
********************
Taipei Times
Banks in Asia not tracking customers with IT technology
DPA
SINGAPORE
Banks in Asia have yet to unlock information technology's full potential 
for tracking customer profiles, a study by a US consulting firm said in a 
report yesterday.

Customer relation management (CRM) techniques use information technology to 
monitor needs and develop services for particular groups of clientele, a 
Peppers & Rogers report said.

Its five-country study cited the relative novelty of CRM methods in the 
region, with many Asians unaware of how to benefit.

For affluent consumer banking markets such as Singapore, where consumers 
are given a wide range of choices, the study said employing CRM techniques 
will eventually become important for banks to serve customers better and 
retain their loyalty.

Extending earlier research carried out in the US, the P&R report found the 
loyalty of the average Asian customer is less affected by the usage of CRM 
techniques than in the US.

Tim Tyler, chairman of P&R's Asia's practice, cited "the effect of culture."

Asian societies are more communal in nature than the West, placing a 
premium on building good relationships, Tyler told the Straits Times.

Asian customers have a tendency to consolidate most of their business needs 
with one major service provider once they develop a relationship of trust 
with a bank, he said.
*******************
Taipei Times
China's chipmakers challenge the US

SEMICONDUCTORS: US export controls used to keep a lid on the Middle 
Kingdom's technological advances have recently become ineffective, creating 
policy questions
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
SHANGHAI
Despite earlier efforts by the US to keep China behind the high-technology 
curve, the country is fast catching up with America's ability to make 
advanced semiconductors, the computer chips that run everything from rice 
cookers to missile guidance systems.

Already, two semiconductor plants in China have ordered equipment from 
Europe and Japan capable of etching circuitry just 0.13 microns wide, or 
less than one-hundredth the width of a human hair. Such tiny circuitry is 
used in the smallest, fastest and most powerful computer chips in world.

The two Shanghai companies that have ordered the equipment, Semiconductor 
Manufacturing International and Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing, could 
start manufacturing made-to-order chips with superfine circuitry as early 
as next year.

Export controls that were originally intended to restrict the sale of such 
chipmaking technology to China have lost their teeth, largely because the 
US no longer has a monopoly on any of the roughly 250 processes used to 
manufacture computer chips.

"If the US won't sell us a piece of equipment, we can get it elsewhere," 
said Joseph Xie, an American-educated native of Shanghai who returned to 
China last year to work for Semiconductor Manufacturing International, 
which was founded by Richard Chang, a Taiwanese businessman.

The general availability of the most sophisticated chip-making tools poses 
a problem for Washington, which has long wielded cumbersome export controls 
meant to ensure that American technology does not fall into the hands of 
China's military.

It is part of a broader challenge to keep an American edge at a time when 
commerce often trumps politics and the line dividing commercial and 
military technology is increasingly blurred.

American executives say that if the US does not relax its grip on 
semiconductor manufacturing equipment shipments to China, American makers 
of such gear will lose an increasing share of sales as nimbler competitors 
meet China's quickening demand for the sensitive machines.

Though American companies created the semiconductor manufacturing equipment 
and materials industries decades ago, Japan took over several critical 
areas of the market in the 1980s and today is the leading supplier of 
several key pieces of equipment, including lithography machines that 
miniaturize circuitry designs and use lightwaves to transfer them onto 
silicon wafers.

European companies, too, now make and sell much of the equipment, 
chemicals, gases, films and other materials needed to make integrated 
circuits. The result is that anyone wanting to build an up-to-date 
semiconductor plant no longer needs to turn to the US.

So, the chip-making technology is flooding into China, raising concerns 
that it could help the country turn its enormous yet inefficient army into 
a streamlined, high-technology force.

Chinese government institutes have bought some of the most sensitive 
equipment, including some from Germany that could be used to manufacture 
radiation-hardened electronics and solar cells for satellites, high-power 
radio-frequency weapons and infrared sensors and imaging equipment.

A report recently released by the Government Accounting Office in 
Washington warned that China's new chip plants gave China's military an 
important source of custom-made integrated circuits not subject to foreign 
export controls. That makes China's communications, surveillance and 
missile guidance equipment "less vulnerable to foreign disruption during a 
protracted conflict," the report said.

The report called for a review of American export-control policy, which it 
said had been aimed at keeping China two generations behind American 
industry in semiconductor manufacturing. It quoted an unidentified senior 
official of the Defense Department as saying that China's advancing chip 
industry "will have direct application in future military systems," 
including advanced radar used to track missiles.

To control the dissemination of such technology, the US is a member of the 
Wassenaar Arrangement, an information-sharing forum that was created in 
1996 to succeed the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export 
Controls. The forum's 33 participating countries agree to maintain export 
controls on a long list of technology and to notify the group of any sales.

But the Wassenaar Arrangement does not have the binding status of a treaty, 
and each country is free to decide what it will export.

"Think how bad the Japanese economy is," said Nasa Tsai, president of Grace 
Semiconductor. "They love to sell."

The US, for that matter, also approves most equipment sales. But it can 
take six months or more for American companies to secure an export license. 
By that time, many have lost the sale.

Last year, Semiconductor Manu-facturing International dropped plans to buy 
a piece of sophisticated equipment from a California company after waiting 
months for the US to issue a license. It placed a multimillion-dollar order 
with a Swedish company instead.

"We love to do business with the US, but we can't wait forever," Xie said. 
"Europe and Japan are getting the business."

China's semiconductor industry consisted of a handful of relatively 
primitive plants just a few years ago, but it has grown quickly as 
manufacturers shift operations here to feed the fastest-growing computer 
chip market in the world.

A multinational industry association, Semiconductor Equipment and Materials 
International, predicts that China will be the world's second-biggest 
consumer of computer chips by 2010, behind only the US.
*************************


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