Clips May 8, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips May 8, 2002

ARTICLES

Bill Would Ban Suggestive Child 'Modeling' Sites
Personalizing TV With On-Demand Services
Eleven Federal Courts To Permit Web Access To Criminal Records
A Cell Phone Left for Dead Saved His Life
EU to Tax Digital Goods, Annoy U.S. Businesses
EU imposes e-commerce tax  BBC Article
House Passes Bill to Delay Airwave Auction
Interior Systems Face Renewed Shutdown
Kids Not Masters Of The Net - Study
PKI interoperability 'paramount'
Benefits site could set standard
Community groups short on tech
FAA finishes Free Flight phase
DOD adds XML resource
Air Force ready for top-flight Pentagon net
Improving with age - Digital signature
F.C.C.'s Powell Sees Programming Key to Digital TV
Video games to help you relax
Net lifeline for victims of violence
FAA OKs Boeing Internet System
OMB to e-gov partners: Show us the money you need
DOD awards $1 billion in systems support contracts
Device gives 'Insider' view of sports action
UK calls e-voting a success
Screen slaves
Chinese Scientists Bring Forth New Digital Signature Device
China Releases World's First National IT Index
Tech firms in Hsinchu prepare for water shortages





**************************
Washington Post
Bill Would Ban Suggestive Child 'Modeling' Sites
David McGuire
May 7, 2002; 3:08 PM

A pair of U.S. lawmakers today will introduce legislation to ban Web sites 
that feature photos of clothed, but suggestively posed children.

So-called "child modeling" sites like Allcutekids.com and Jessithekid.com 
feature photographs of prepubescent girls wearing bikinis and other attire. 
Virtually all of the sites have pay-per-view sections and don't appear to 
sell anything other than photographs of the girls.

"The only thing they are modeling are themselves," said Chris Paulitz, a 
spokesman for Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who is cosponsoring the 
legislation. "They are not modeling a product (and) they are not modeling a 
service."

Foley said that child modeling is a term used by the Web site operators to 
describe themselves. "We think its child erotica," he said.

Drafted by Foley and Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas), the legislation would ban 
all Web sites that charge fees to view pictures of children younger than 
16. Web sites that sell clothing and other legitimate products would be 
exempt from the ban.

The legislation also would amend labor law to make it a crime for Web site 
operators to hire underage children to pose for those sorts of modeling 
sites, Paulitz said.

The bill would create penalties of up to 10 years in prison for violators.

Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) Associate Director Alan Davidson 
said he hadn't seen the legislation, but warned that it could send up some 
constitutional red flags.

"One has to ask the question: Is this likely to pass Supreme Court muster?" 
Davidson said. "The court has been pretty clear that the standing child 
pornography (statutes are) the law of the land."

Paulitz said the Foley-Lampson bill was designed to be constitutionally 
acceptable.

Several states, including New York and Colorado, already ban the child 
modeling sites, but Paulitz said the nature of the Internet makes it 
difficult to enforce state statutes.

Paulitz said Foley and Lampson hope to tack their bill onto a recently 
introduced measure that would ban pornographic images that have been 
digitally "morphed" to appear to depict children.
********************
Los Angeles Times
Personalizing TV With On-Demand Services
Satellite and cable firms are letting viewers take control of programming.
By JON HEALEY

The fierce competition between cable and satellite TV services is driving a 
fundamental change in the way television is delivered, giving consumers a 
growing number of ways to seize control of the programming schedule.

After several years of dabbling with video-on-demand services, the 
country's top cable TV companies are enabling millions of customers to 
watch what they want, when they want.

Four kinds of on-demand service are emerging from cable operators this 
year, with satellite companies working on a fifth. The systems have some 
glaring weaknesses--they don't offer the most popular TV programs, they're 
not included yet in the regular cable program guides, and the selection is 
no match for the local video store. Yet cable operators, satellite 
companies, studios and networks all have a stake in getting the new 
services up.

For cable operators, VOD is one of the few services that clearly separates 
digital cable from satellite TV and traditional basic cable. Satellite 
companies counter with personal video recorders, which have limited 
on-demand potential but are extremely popular with their owners.

A number of movie studios, meanwhile, have embraced VOD as a step up from 
pay per view, which has generated fewer dollars than most other outlets for 
their films. And several TV networks see on-demand services as a new way to 
turn programs into cash, with or without advertisers' support.

HBO, for example, is testing a service that lets subscribers watch any 
original program from that month's lineup at any time. A subscriber can 
watch "Six Feet Under" at 8 p.m. Tuesday instead of 11 p.m., or even watch 
all four of the month's episodes back-to-back.

The shift to on-demand is expected to be gradual, yet it challenges many of 
the ways networks promote shows, build audiences and attract advertisers. 
For starters, cutting programs loose from their time slots means networks 
lose the benefit of running new shows after popular and established ones.

And broadcasters can't assure local merchants that their commercials will 
be seen before the big holiday sale or promotion ends.

Granted, cable and phone companies have been hyping video on demand for 
years without ever committing to it. But analyst Josh Bernoff of Forrester 
Research Inc., a technology research and consulting firm, said, "This is 
real. These [cable] guys are going for this in a huge, huge way.... This is 
the year they're all doing VOD."

For a cable operator, the new VOD services start with two-way, 
high-capacity digital networks. The operator stores several dozen movies on 
a powerful central computer, and customers browse through titles on their 
TV screens. When they find one they want to watch, the central computer 
streams it to their digital converter box. The computer can pause, rewind 
and fast-forward the movie in response to commands from the customer's 
remote control, just as if the movie were on videotape.

The last wave of VOD services came and went in the mid-1990s, when a group 
of major cable and phone companies launched and then abandoned several 
experiments with interactive services. Although consumers liked VOD, the 
systems required such expensive set-top boxes and computers that they were 
economically unfeasible.

Suppliers of VOD technology eventually adapted their services to basic 
digital converter boxes, and the cost of computers plummeted to the point 
where on-demand services could turn a profit. The lingering issue today is 
obtaining the rights to offer programs on demand--some top Hollywood 
studios have yet to strike deals with VOD services, and winning the rights 
to the major networks' prime-time shows is complicated by the interests of 
producers, licensees, syndicators and advertisers.

Nevertheless, cable operators are enthusiastic about VOD in part because 
it's something the satellite companies can't offer, said Mitchell E. 
Kertzman, chief executive of Liberate Technologies, which makes software 
for set-top boxes. VOD also helps convince consumers to switch from analog 
to digital cable, which cable operators view as a springboard to future 
services, Kertzman said.

Satellite TV operators DirecTV and DishNetwork don't have the capacity on 
their orbiting transmitters to beam programs on demand. Instead, they're 
offering receivers with built-in personal video recorders, laying the 
foundation for a different kind of on-demand service.

In recent roll-outs of VOD, the increased control and convenience leads 
consumers to order two to three times as many movies as they do with 
regular pay per view, said Greg DePrez, a vice president at Starz Encore 
Group. Their usage increases even more, DePrez said, when they can order an 
unlimited number of programs for a flat fee.

Starz has been a leading advocate of "subscription video on demand," 
offering consumers on-demand access to 100 of the 800 movies that are 
scheduled to run on the Starz Encore channels each month. HBO and Showtime 
also have begun subscription VOD services built around their original 
programming, and Walt Disney Co. subsidiary ESPN plans one to let 
subscribers call up extreme sports programming on their TV or computer.

Companies still are trying to figure out how much to charge for these 
services. Fees for subscription VOD are expected to cost between $3 and $10 
a month, although several cable operators have included such services in 
their digital cable packages at no extra charge.

A third version of VOD is being developed by Comcast Corp., which would 
become the largest U.S. cable operator if its $72-billion bid for AT&T 
Broadband is approved.

Later this year, Comcast plans to offer a free VOD tier to digital-cable 
subscribers that includes 750 hours of programming each month from cable 
and broadcast networks, said Dave Watson, executive vice president of 
marketing and customer service.

Watson wouldn't say which shows will be offered, but the networks 
developing on-demand versions of their original programming include NBC, 
A&E, Lifetime, Discovery, CourtTV, Comedy Central, ESPN, BBC America and 
TNT. Comcast has found so much interest among programmers in its new 
on-demand service, it's "running out of shelf space" on the company's 
central computers, Watson said.

A final variation being explored by cable operators is to record programs 
digitally on central computers as they're broadcast, letting customers 
replay them on demand. To avoid getting ensnared in a copyright dispute, 
the operators are focusing on news and sports programs whose rights are 
readily available.

The only deployment so far has been by Adelphia Communications Corp. in 
Buffalo, N.Y. Earlier this year, the company made Buffalo Sabres hockey 
games available on demand for free on digital cable.

The satellite operators' on-demand strategy starts with personal video 
recorders, which Bernoff estimates were in 700,000 of their customers' 
homes by the end of 2001. Once PVRs have sufficient capacity, satellite 
companies could broadcast 10 to 15 popular movies to customers' recorders 
in the middle of the night, and users would pay only for the ones they watched.

Cable operators have been slow to deploy PVR-equipped converter boxes, but 
the pace is picking up.

Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications Inc. have started testing a 
PVR-equipped digital cable box from Scientific-Atlanta Inc., and Charter 
Communications Inc. has announced plans to deploy this fall a PVR-equipped 
box made by Motorola Inc.

One potential pitfall of PVRs for cable operators is that they may dim 
customers' interest in VOD.

David Rothman, a Cablevision customer in Long Island, N.Y., has filled his 
customized digital recorder with movies from various cable channels. "Now 
I've got 120 to 180 hours of movies on my hard drive," Rothman said. "It's 
unlikely, unless there's something very new, that I'm going to want to go 
to video on demand."

Still, the recorders enable cable operators and advertisers to store 
personalized, interactive programming in subscribers' homes, creating a new 
source of revenue, said Manu Mehta, chief executive of Metabyte Networks, 
which supplies the PVR software for Scientific-Atlanta's boxes.

For example, he said, consumers could shift from a 10-second commercial for 
a cruise line to a stored program that provides an interactive tour of the 
ship. Or they could click on a beer ad to launch a video game sponsored by 
the brewery.

"In the long run, the cable operators see PVR as a new way of doing 
business," Mehta said. "PVRs will change television."
*********************
Washington Post
Eleven Federal Courts To Permit Web Access To Criminal Records
Brian Krebs

In an unprecedented move, the federal judiciary's policymaking body said 
today it would allow limited public access to criminal court records on the 
Internet.

Eleven federal courts are allowing Internet access to criminal case files 
as part of a pilot program adopted by the Judicial Conference of the United 
States, a panel of 27 federal judges responsible for crafting policy in the 
federal court system.

The conference in September approved a plan to continue offering Web-based 
access to civil and bankruptcy filings, provided that certain personal 
identifiers such as Social Security numbers, birth dates and account 
numbers are omitted.

But the Judicial Conference chose to prohibit Internet access to criminal 
files out of concern for the safety of law enforcement officers, and to 
safeguard the identity of key witnesses and informants.

"While the judges remain concerned about certain security and safety 
problems, they also realized that individuals could get the same criminal 
information directly from the local courthouse," said Dick Carelli, 
spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Internet access to criminal records is already available - or will be soon 
- in most participating courts, Carelli said. The Federal Judicial Center 
will track the courts during the course of the pilot project, and report 
its findings when the Judicial Conference revisits the issue again in 
September 2003.

"We'll see what goes right and what goes wrong, and go from there," Carelli 
said.

Media organizations have pressed state and federal courts to release more 
criminal record information, arguing that the records are public and should 
be made freely available online.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of 
the Press, praised the Judicial Conference for reaching what she called "an 
inevitable solution."

"There are no court decisions out there that say balancing privacy with 
openness is the law," Dalglish said. "My guess is the Judicial Conference 
looked at the law and concluded that not only was it good public policy to 
provide as much access as possible, but it's also the law."

"This decision will make it much easier for reporters to do their jobs 
around the clock, instead of racing from one courthouse to the next before 
closing time," she said. "And the public will be better informed as a result."

Dalglish also said the decision would have an enormous impact on state 
courts currently wrangling with similar issues.

The National Center for State Courts is expected to consider electronic 
access to criminal records when it begins drafting model access and privacy 
rules at its national conference in Washington, D.C. next week.
*****************
A Cell Phone Left for Dead Saved His Life
Canada: Steven Stacey, hurt and far from help, found salvation in his glove 
compartment.
From Associated Press

May 8 2002

VANCOUVER, Canada -- A man who spent last weekend at the bottom of a steep 
embankment after a car crash that broke his back was saved by a deactivated 
cell phone that still allowed him to call 911.

Steven Stacey, 48, lost control of his car Friday night on a rural road 
near Quesnel in central British Columbia.

His vehicle plunged down an embankment and landed upside-down nearly 80 
feet from the road. Stacey found himself suspended by his seat belt.

"It took me five hours to get the seat belt off," Stacey said from his bed 
at a hospital in Quesnel, where he is being treated for severe hypothermia, 
dehydration and several fractures. "I tried to burn it with my cigarette 
lighter."

Stacey spent the first night in the car, using a seat cover like a sleeping 
bag.

Over the next two nights, a snowstorm dropped about 8 inches of wet snow on 
the overturned car.

When he was conscious, he cried for help. But no one heard him. By 
Saturday, he tried to crawl up the embankment. His injuries forced him back 
down.

Stacey has lived in the area for 18 years but, unemployed and with no 
family living nearby, he knew that no one would miss him.

He survived by eating ice.

"It was a godsend to have something wet," Stacey said.

It was Sunday when he remembered his old, deactivated cell phone, locked in 
the glove compartment. He'd bought a new one Friday, but it wasn't working yet.

But breaking into the glove compartment proved difficult because of his 
injuries.

By the time he had the phone out and was attempting a 911 call, it was dawn 
Monday.

The emergency feature still worked. He reached an operator, who told him to 
call back in five minutes.

"But then my phone went dead," he said.

Within minutes, he heard sirens, but they were searching too far away.

He tried the phone again and reached an operator who directed the rescuers 
to him.

Andrea Lindsay, the hospital's nursing unit coordinator, said Stacey broke 
his lower back, ribs and breastbone.

Sgt. Gary Clark-Marlow said Stacey was extraordinarily lucky to survive the 
crash, let alone his ordeal.
***********************
Washington Post
EU to Tax Digital Goods, Annoy U.S. Businesses
By Robert MacMillan

The European Union next year will begin collecting the "value-added" tax 
(VAT) on digital products sold via the Internet, following the European 
Council of Ministers' formal adoption of the plan today.

Companies based in E.U. member states and in the United States will be 
required to collect the tax starting July 3, 2003, prompting outrage from 
both the Bush administration and business groups in the U.S.

The move brought immediate criticism from several U.S.-based trade groups, 
including the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which claims 
that the tax regime discriminates against U.S. businesses, and that it is 
difficult to enforce properly.

"Needless to say, we're extremely concerned about tax collection duties on 
U.S. companies," said Kimberly Pinter, who handles tax issues for NAM. 
"There normally isn't a reliable way to tell where your customer is."

"We continue to be concerned about the potential for discrimination 
inherent in the new E.U. VAT regime that applies to downloaded products," 
said Treasury Department spokeswoman Tara Bradshaw. "The regime may 
discriminate against non-E.U. companies in terms of the tax rates required 
to be charged and the administrative and compliance burdens, and may 
discriminate against e-commerce more generally." Under the plan, companies 
doing business in the E.U. would be required to register in one country as 
their headquarters. They then would collect the VAT rate of the country in 
which they registered, but hand over the revenue to the country where the 
customer resides.

The VAT would apply to all products sold on the Internet, as well as 
products used online, such as digital music or books. The VAT also would 
apply to goods and services that E.U. citizens and companies buy from 
businesses operating in the U.S. and other countries.

The new system would not require E.U. businesses to charge the tax when 
selling products to people or companies in markets outside the union.

Questions remain, however, about whether a person who says they live in, 
for example, Germany, actually lives there. Critics of the plan say that 
just because someone's e-mail address features a "dot-de" domain does not 
mean they live in the Federal Republic.

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) said that 
non-European vendors - mainly those in the U.S. - could lose valuable time 
trying to verify the customer's location to compute the VAT they are 
supposed to levy.

The 15 E.U. member states sport a variety of VAT rates, from as low as 15 
percent in some countries to as high as 25 percent in others.

European Union First Secretary for Trade Matthew King said that it is 
possible that e-commerce companies doing business in the E.U. will 
gravitate toward countries with lower VAT rates, such as Luxembourg, but 
that there are many other reasons besides low VAT to set up shop in various 
countries.

Administration officials say the program could violate World Trade 
Organization rules, hinting at a possible trade dispute, though the E.U. 
claims the VAT is consistent with the Organization for Economic Cooperation 
and Development's rules.

An official with France Telecom, who requested anonymity, said that the 
company supports the VAT measure.

"We agree with the principle of taxation at the place of consumption, which 
this directive advocates," the spokesperson said, adding that France 
Telecom has worked with other companies in the European E-Business Tax 
Group to develop the plan with input from Cisco Systems, Compaq, Deutsche 
Post, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Vodafone, Siemens 
and Sony.
******************
BBC
EU imposes e-commerce tax

The European Union has agreed new rules forcing internet retailers based 
outside the EU to levy value-added-tax (VAT) on sales to customers within 
the 15-nation bloc.
The measures, which look set to hit the European sales of major US 
e-commerce operators such as AOL Time Warner, could exacerbate an ongoing 
EU-US trade dispute over steel.

The European Commission said the new rules would make it easier for 
EU-based internet retailers, who are already obliged to charge VAT on sales 
to customers within the European bloc, to compete with their non-EU rivals.

"They will remove the serious competitive handicap which EU firms currently 
face in comparison with non-EU suppliers," the Commission said.

At present, EU consumers can avoid paying VAT on many products by ordering 
them online from US-based e-commerce companies.

Discrimination fears

Under the measures, non-EU internet retailers wishing to sell within the 
bloc will be obliged to register for tax purposes in one of the 15 EU nations.

The online retailer - or 'e-tailer' - will levy VAT on all sales to EU 
customers at the rate applied by the country it is registered with.

That country will in turn divide the revenues between the other EU nations 
according to where the sales are made.

National VAT rates vary widely within the EU, ranging from 15% in 
Luxembourg to 25% in Sweden.

The new VAT regime, which is due to come into force in July 2003, will 
apply to sales of products downloaded from the internet, including software 
and online film or radio subscription.

The US, which has already threatened to refer the issue to the World Trade 
Organisation (WTO), fears that the rules could be used to shut non-EU firms 
out of the market.

Tensions mount

A spokesperson for the US Treasury said the US was concerned about "the 
potential for discrimination against non-EU companies in terms of the tax 
rates to be charged".

Critics also object to the extra administrative burden that the VAT rules 
will impose on non-EU firms.

A referral to the WTO would mark a further deterioration in transatlantic 
trade relations, already strained by the US decision earlier this year to 
tax steel imports in order to protect domestic producers from foreign 
competition.

The EU is planning to retaliate with a range of import tariffs targeted at 
selected US industries.

The steel dispute erupted months after the two sides had settled a ten-year 
old trade row over EU subsidies to Caribbean banana growers, which the US 
claimed had harmed US fruit exporters.
****************
Los Angeles Times
House Passes Bill to Delay Airwave Auction
Bloomberg News

AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and other mobile-phone companies won House 
approval of a bill to delay two auctions of airwaves in June and give the 
industry time to resolve ownership disputes with broadcasters. Television 
station operators such as Paxson Communications Corp. control licenses to 
the airwaves until at least 2006 as they upgrade to digital TV. Federal law 
requires that the government sell rights to the licenses to mobile-phone 
carriers by September, even though they won't get to use the airwaves until 
TV stations complete their upgrades.

Mobile-phone companies are reluctant to take part in the June 19 sale 
unless they can find out exactly when broadcasters will relinquish the 
frequencies. They worry they may have to pay billions at the government 
auctions and billions more to get broadcasters to give up the airwaves 
before 2006.

The House bill postpones the auctions until the conflict is resolved. The 
Senate is considering a similar measure.
*******************
Washington Post
Interior Systems Face Renewed Shutdown
Wilson P. Dizard III
Government Computer News

The Interior Department could be ordered to shut down some of the systems 
it has reactivated since it received a court order in December to cut off 
its Internet connections, sources said.

The presence of American Indian trust data in Office of Surface Mining 
systems could lead Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for 
the District of Columbia to order the office to disconnect its links to the 
Internet, according to the plaintiffs' attorneys in the case of Cobell v. 
Norton and other sources close to the case.

Interior gradually has been reconnecting its systems to the Internet as the 
court has approved security upgrades [see story]. The upgrades provide 
protection for trust data from hacking via Internet access to Interior 
files, which a court consulting team late last year proved was possible.

But in a recent exchange of telephone conferences and letters between 
government lawyers and Mark Kester Brown of the Cobell legal team, the 
government said it could not confirm that the OSM computers are free of all 
trust data. Justice Department and Interior lawyers told Brown the 
government is reviewing OSM records.

Lamberth had granted permission for OSM to reconnect to the Internet based 
on earlier government statements that no trust data resided on the systems. 
Brown said the question of whether the court might order OSM to again sever 
its Internet connection depends on the judge's "reaction to being lied to." 
Other sources confirmed that OSM's computers could be shut down if the 
facts are not made clear.

In a related issue, court-appointed special master Alan Balaran advised 
Justice in an April 30 letter that consultants from IBM Corp. who are 
assisting his oversight of the reconnection process found new security 
flaws in Minerals Management Service computers.

According to Balaran, IBM found that MMS had been transferring trust data 
to state government and private-sector networks, "the security of which is 
unknown."

He added: "I share IBM's concern that there may exist a lack of protocols 
securing royalty data and that, in reaction to the court's orders, 
individual Indian trust data has simply been migrated from one insecure 
system to another."

Interior did not respond to requests for comment.
***************
Washington Post
Kids Not Masters Of The Net - Study
Adam Creed

Maybe children should be more involved in the design of Web sites targeted 
at them because, according to a new study, the little things that don't 
bother adults so much online result in markedly different behavior from kids.

A new study by Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) with children from the first 
through fifth grades found if they get lost in a Web site or are confused 
by some supposed cutting-edge interactivity, they will immediately lose 
interest and click to another site.

Among the Web annoyances likely to result in this behavior were boring 
content or lack of immediate attraction; complex interfaces; "fancy 
wording;" and inconsistent navigation options, according to the study.

NNG researchers blamed poor design for the frustrated Web surfing habits 
they witnessed.

?Our study convinced us that most Web sites for children are built upon 
pure folklore about how kids supposedly behave,? said Jakob Nielsen, 
principal of NNG. ?For example, while it?s true that kids love whiz-bang 
animation and sound effects, even these things won't hold their attention 
if they come upon something too difficult to figure out, or they get lost 
on a Web site."

Perhaps one of the most interesting observations to come from the study was 
the difference between children's and adults' behavior toward online 
advertising.

NNG said children regularly click on banner advertising because they fail 
to distinguish between the site's specific content and ads.

Kids' online behavior also differs from adult surfing in other ways. For 
example, they rarely scroll pages; they like animation and sounds; and are 
willing to move the cursor over a Web page to find places of interactivity.

Gender differences also were observed. Female children were found to be 
more patient with instructions on Web sites, while boys were annoyed at 
lengthy explanations.

The researchers also observed the behavior of seniors online and found that 
while they, like children, also have difficulties they find their online 
experience more satisfying.

The seniors were quite happy to patiently work out complex Web sites - 
mostly designed by and for people much younger than them - and learn from 
their errors.

The report, ?Usability of Websites for Children: 70 Design Guidelines,? was 
based on observing 55 children interacting with Web sites.

It can be found on the Web at http://www.nngroup.com/reports/kids .

Reported By Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .
*****************
Federal Computer Week
PKI interoperability 'paramount'

The government risks undermining the potential benefits of a public-key 
infrastructure unless it develops common policies and processes to ensure 
interoperability, a new report from a coalition of vendors says.

"Interoperability is paramount. If this is not achieved, the U.S. 
government and American industry is dealing with a potentially disruptive 
technology that will affect the policy, legal, technical and process 
implementation aspects of their business," according to the report, issued 
May 3 by the Federated E-Government Coalition.

PKI technology allows users to conduct secure transactions through a Web 
browser. Transactions are encrypted, and the decryption key is provided 
when a user's identity has been authenticated with a digital certificate.

If there is no unified way for digital certificates to work across 
government, industry will have to create and support multiple environments. 
"The subsequent overhead costs would be significant for all parties," the 
report says.

The report is the third in a series of assessments of the government's PKI 
initiatives. The first report, in December 2000, was an assessment of the 
Defense Department's PKI policy.

The report issued May 3 is based primarily on work with DOD. But Michael 
Mestrovich, FEGC chairman and the president and chief executive officer of 
consulting firm Unlimited New Dimensions LLC, said the report has 
implications across government.

The report is critical of DOD's PKI efforts. Mestrovich, however, noted 
that DOD has been on the cutting edge of government PKI initiatives.

"DOD has progressed more quickly and aggressively than any other federal 
agency.... The DOD overall vision is commendable," the report says. "It is, 
however, in the execution of that vision  at the application level" that 
issues arise.

The government should establish pilots using "domains of common interest" 
that can focus on interoperability across their groups. A 
procurement/supply chain group, for example, could then drive interoperability.

The issues are not technological, said Katherine Hollis, director of global 
information assurance services at EDS. Instead, they are questions about 
how PKI works with business processes. Therefore, the leaders of the 
business process must drive PKI's development.

PKI development has been hampered by the "chicken-and-the-egg dilemma": 
Most applications have not been designed with PKI functionality because 
their digital certificates were not widely deployed. And most organizations 
were not deploying digital certificates because there were few PKI-enabled 
applications.

The group suggests that may be changing. DOD, for example, is putting 
digital certificates on each of its new Common Access Cards. However, those 
certificates are designed for internal DOD use.
*****************
Federal Computer Week
Benefits site could set standard

It's no easy task to determine an individual's eligibility among more than 
50 federal benefits programs spread across 10 agencies, but the Labor 
Department has found a way to do it.

GovBenefits, launched April 29 by Labor and the Office of Management and 
Budget, is intended to provide a single portal for citizens to access 
information on, and eventually apply online for, government benefits 
programs, including flood insurance, student financial aid and Medicare.

GovBenefits will serve as a model for the Bush administration's other 23 
e-government initiatives by working across agencies and focusing on 
providing an initial operating capability instead of waiting for full 
functionality, said Mark Forman, associate director for information 
technology and e-government at OMB.

"It's really setting the benchmark of what we need to do in e-government as 
we work across traditional lines," he said.

Labor developed an automated tool that enables program officers to easily 
translate "governmentese" into yes-or-no questions that citizens can 
understand. The questions are the primary tool the GovBenefits Web site 
uses to help people sort through the various benefits programs.

Citizens first choose from a list of potential beneficiary categories, such 
as disaster victim, senior citizen or veteran. Those choices determine the 
yes-or-no questions that will be asked to match the citizen to the programs 
for which they might be eligible. The description of those programs and 
contact information are then displayed and can be printed in a report.

Each benefit program uses its own language and processes, and to bring them 
all together under a single, simple look and feel required that Labor  the 
managing partner of the GovBenefits initiative  do a lot of prep work, said 
Ed Hugler, deputy assistant secretary for administration and management at 
Labor.

Beyond establishing relationships with each of the program offices in the 
partner agencies, the initiative team created an automated tool so the 
program officers themselves could develop the wording for the questions, 
said Hugler, the day-to-day leader of the team.

The Labor team then reviewed the questions, made any modifications deemed 
necessary and gave the program offices one last look to ensure that there 
were no mistakes before final approval, he said.

"That, really, is the hidden magic to this program," he said.

All of this is important to give citizens a single look and make sure the 
questions are easy to understand. But it is also an important part of 
meeting the initiative's goal of 80 percent or better confidence that the 
benefits programs citizens are referred to by the site will be ones they 
are actually eligible for, Hugler said.

The first version of the site brings together information on 55 benefits 
programs from 10 federal agencies that give approximately $1 trillion in 
benefits payments. But during the next year and a half, it will expand to 
more than 300 programs from federal, state and local agencies, said D. 
Cameron Findlay, deputy secretary of Labor.

Several other e-government initiatives should be released in their initial 
version in late May, with another possibly released in early June, Forman said.
*****************
Federal Computer Week
Community groups short on tech

Although community development organizations use computers for word 
processing, e-mail and some database applications, few have gone beyond the 
basic use of information technology to transform their organizations, 
according to a recent report.

The report  titled "The Evolving Role of Information Technology in 
Community Development Organizations"  cited barriers to adoption, including 
the high cost of building or acquiring IT platforms and the lack of 
technical assistance for advanced functions, such as mapping and management 
software.

The Structured Employment Economic Development Corporation, or Seedco 
(www.seedco.org), a national nonprofit group that supports community 
development centers through financial and technical assistance, released 
the report last month.

Almost all of the community development organizations surveyed  353 
respondents  said IT improved their service delivery and internal 
operations. Hardware and software costs have declined precipitously, 
enabling such groups to afford many of the tools, according to the report.

But the report also cited a number of limitations, including:

* About one-third of the groups lack a Web site.

* Many still rely on donated equipment, which is less sophisticated in 
running advanced software and has higher maintenance costs.

* Organizations are "not making much use" of geographic information systems 
to collect community-level data because of the technical expertise required 
to run the software.

* Median IT spending "has not been very large," possibly because of 
competing programmatic and operational choices.

* Half to two-thirds of respondents do not have a dedicated IT staff member 
or department, and about half provide little or no IT training for staff.

The report said IT could have a positive impact on such programs as 
workforce and economic development, affordable housing and community 
capacity building. It also suggested that one way to foster IT innovation 
is through partnerships with colleges and universities, funders and other 
community groups.

Seedco, in partnership with the research unit at the City University of New 
York's School of Public Affairs at Baruch College, conducted the survey in 
February and March 2001.

The organization is engaged in a multiyear project to assess how 
community-based groups are using IT, and is also identifying and working 
with eight pilot sites that are using technology creatively to revitalize 
their communities.
*****************
Federal Computer Week
FAA finishes Free Flight phase

The Federal Aviation Administration has finished the first phase of its 
high-profile Free Flight program, introducing several systems with safety, 
efficiency and cost-saving benefits, agency officials announced May 6.

Most recently, the FAA deployed software at the Washington Air Route 
Traffic Control Center in Leesburg, Va., that enables controllers to look 
20 minutes ahead, helping them determine whether a pilot's request to 
change route or altitude is safe.

The en route center is one of six  the others are in Chicago, Cleveland, 
Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mo., and Memphis, Tenn.  using the User Request 
Evaluation Tool (URET), which replaces paper strips and mental calculations 
with digital predictions and alerts. Atlanta is slated to join them by the 
end of the year.

The Washington center went operational in April, the same month many major 
airports recorded significant increases in flights, according to the 
aviation agency.

"We did what we said we were going to do when we promised," said FAA 
Administrator Jane Garvey at a news conference. "It's a major milestone in 
our ongoing modernization."

Garvey established Free Flight Phase 1 in 1998 in cooperation with the 
aviation industry in hopes of transforming the National Airspace System. A 
year later, the FAA awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a $204 million contract 
to refine and install URET, which was conceived by Mitre Corp.

Already, Indianapolis and Memphis are saving $1.5 million a month in 
operating costs, according to the FAA. Other advantages to the software 
include increased capacity, fuller airspace use and real-time 
collaboration, said John Thornton, director of the Free Flight program office.

In addition to URET, the Free Flight program includes a collaborative 
decision-making tool, which enables airlines to exchange flight plans with 
the FAA in real time; a surface movement adviser, which increases awareness 
of traffic flow into an airport; and a traffic management adviser, which 
helps manage planes in the en route space. The latter has increased 
airports' arrival capacity by 3 percent to 5 percent, according to the FAA.

The program reflects Garvey's building block approach to fielding new 
systems and is critical to the agency's operational evolution plan, she said.

"It's one of the biggest leaps forward that we've made with technology in 
the last 25 years," said Jerry Whittaker, the National Air Traffic 
Controllers Association liaison to Free Flight. And "we're not done. This 
program is meant to go nationwide. We need to keep working, fix the bugs 
and make the system seamless across the NAS."

The FAA plans to expand URET to four more centers next year and the 
remaining nine by the end of 2004.
*****************
Federal Computer Week
DOD adds XML resource

The Defense Department plans to use an Extensible Markup Language 
clearinghouse developed in-house to help it standardize XML components and 
encourage interoperability across the department.

DOD chief information officer John Stenbit said in an April 22 memo that 
developing a single clearinghouse and registry for creating, finding, 
reusing and identifying XML components would "support interoperability and 
minimize overhead." Pete Aldridge, undersecretary of Defense for 
acquisition, technology and logistics, also signed the memo.

XML enables agencies to "tag" data and documents so it is easier to 
exchange information among applications and systems. A registry provides 
standard definitions of those XML tags.

The DOD policy is the first to establish an XML registry and clearinghouse, 
said Defense Information Systems Agency spokeswoman Betsy Flood. However, 
"it is not a policy that mandates how to use or implement XML," she said. 
"Services and agencies are developing specific guidelines and are 
cooperating and coordinating with DISA as they evolve."

The policy is important because it makes XML "visible and therefore 
available" to users and developers, Flood said. This means it is "easier 
for developers to reuse XML and components without having to re-invent 
them. It facilitates sharing of information so XML developers are more 
aware of who is using XML and how they are using it."

DISA developed the registry in 1999, but this is the first time that the 
Pentagon has declared the registry as the DOD clearinghouse.

The registry and clearinghouse will be developed "by identifying best 
practices, establishing partnerships with industry, public interest groups 
and other governmental activities, and coordinating XML education and 
outreach," the two-page memo stated.

All program managers who use XML as an interchange format "must register 
XML components in accordance with procedures established by DISA," 
according to the memo.

The move was well received. At "a quick glance, it looks good, which is 
what I would expect in light of DOD [and] DISA's leadership along these 
lines," said Owen Ambur, co-chairman of the XML Working Group established 
by the CIO Council.

"I believe it is very much in line with what we're aiming to do with 
registry services at XML.gov," he said. "I look forward to continuing to 
work very closely with DOD toward the establishment of a worldwide set of 
XML registries that act as one by virtue of compliance with the applicable 
standards for interoperability."

The XML Working Group, with the National Institute of Standards and 
Technology, is developing a registry of "inherently governmental" data 
elements, document type definitions and schemas.

Michael Jacobs, data architecture project leader for the Navy's CIO office, 
which recently issued a draft XML guide, said the DOD policy is a good 
first step toward formalizing the DOD XML registration requirements.

"The hard work is yet to come, in the form of the implementation guidance 
which will flow from the policy," he said.

In an April report, the General Accounting Office said that despite 
multiple initiatives to define common federal standards and requirements 
for XML, the lack of central XML guidance could derail interoperability 
within government.

Every user community must create business standards that provide the 
vocabulary to perform transactions, GAO officials said, and federal 
agencies have not come together to define a governmentwide vocabulary.
*********************
Federal Computer Week
Air Force ready for top-flight Pentagon net

A dual government-contractor team expects this summer to complete its 
upgrade of the Air Force's Pentagon network  in less than half the time 
originally expected and within budget.

The network modernization project, carried out by the Army's Office of the 
Deputy for Information Technology and Communications and systems integrator 
Lockheed Martin Corp., will replace the Air Force's 10M Ethernet network 
with a Gigabit Ethernet backbone. It is intended to provide the increased 
bandwidth necessary to support voice, video and data traffic for the Air 
Force's 3,000 Pentagon employees.

Air Force officials once thought the upgrade would take two years. But when 
the team won the bid last August, its members signed a service-level 
agreement that laid out "rigorous levels of performance," including an 
aggressive 34-week timetable and $6.5 million fixed price, said Andrew 
Brasch, director of programs, requirements and implementation for the Air 
Force-Pentagon Communications Agency (AFPCA).

The network replacement, which was originally scheduled to begin on Sept. 
11, was delayed for one month.

The Air Force network was scheduled for replacement as part of the 
Pentagon's overall renovations, because it could not keep up with the 
service's computing and bandwidth needs, Brasch said.

Gerald Gaskins Sr., a project manager for Lockheed Martin Information 
Technology, said the fixed price and inflexible schedule were daunting 
challenges, but his team separated the job into five phases  planning, 
survey, design, testing and implementation  which has helped meet and 
exceed goals.

Gaskins and George Wilamowski, project manager for the Lockheed Martin 
implementation team, are leading a core group of 18 of their employees and 
subcontractors from SMS Data Products Group Inc. The team is now more than 
halfway through the final phase and may finish ahead of the scheduled 
end-date of July 8, Gaskins said.

Still, replacing the legacy network with a Cisco Systems Inc. standard 
Gigabit Ethernet model in less than nine months has not been easy. "The 
Pentagon network infrastructure is fairly old, and there's always a 
surprise a minute," Gaskins said. "During the first two phases, we couldn't 
certify all the legacy fiber to connect into, and once we found it, the 
fiber may not be any good."

The new Gigabit Ethernet network will handle the Air Force's large volume 
of Pentagon traffic and meet its future needs, which could include 
videoconferencing to the desktop, Gaskins said. "They needed higher 
bandwidth. With the 10M network, you can do e-mail and that's it, but 
[Gigabit Ethernet] allows you to do everything faster."

Capt. Theophilus Jackman, chief of the AFPCA's network implementation 
branch, said the modernization project is about providing the Air Force 
with more reliable communications.

"The overall vision here is to make sure our people can communicate on a 
more reliable network than we had previously," Jackman said. "Before, it 
was a hodgepodge...with Band-Aids everywhere. Now it's scalable to meet the 
needs of not just the next two years, but for five years as the Air Force 
grows and our requirements grow."

But the use of Gigabit Ethernet involves some risk since it means 
consolidating numerous Air Force networks within the Pentagon. "This gives 
them one huge network that is easier to maintain and upgrade, and it's all 
the same equipment," Gaskins said. "Before, the different equipment in 
different offices made it difficult to isolate problems."

Jason Smolek, an enterprise networks analyst at IDC, said because of its 
high computing and bandwidth needs, the Air Force's decision to upgrade to 
a Gigabit Ethernet network was a smart one. "It's natural for them to do 
this," he said.

Gigabit Ethernet networks are relatively cheap and easy to deploy, Smolek 
said, adding that he was not surprised by the choice to use Cisco equipment 
as the standard, although its products tend to be more expensive than others.

Frederick Budd, the Army's deputy for IT and communications, said the Air 
Force had long supported the Army's Pentagon networks, and now it's time to 
return the favor. "The Air Force gets back their military after years of 
supporting the Army," he said.

"This is a significant piece of the networks in the Pentagon that will be 
completely upgraded," Budd said. "We got rid of old equipment and 
centralized in our organization...and that's the trend: to centralize the 
networks in the Pentagon."

***

A hard bargain

The Air Force's network modernization project includes three major players: 
the Air Force, the Army and Lockheed Martin Corp. What makes this threesome 
work is a service-level agreement (SLA) signed last August by the two 
services' chief information officers, said Frederick Budd, the Army's 
deputy for information technology and communications.

Budd said Lockheed Martin had previously won a competitive outsourcing 
contract to take over the Army's Office of the Deputy for Information 
Technology and Communications networks. The service was so pleased with the 
results that Budd said he was thrilled at the opportunity for an 
Army/Lockheed team to perform the Air Force network modernization, despite 
the quick turnaround and fixed price.

Capt. Theophilus Jackman, chief of the Air Force-Pentagon Communications 
Agency, said he was pleased so far with the work being done through the SLA.

"They've been meeting our expectations," Jackman said. "It looks like most 
of the rooms will be done by the first week of May, and then it's just a 
matter of tying up the loose ends, since the testing has been completed 
already."

Jackman acknowledged that there have been some minor obstacles along the 
way, including equipment delivery problems and people changing rooms, but 
the Army/Lockheed team "took care of the all the bumps and made my job easy."
********************
Federal Computer Week
Improving with age
Digital signature technology still requires planning, but products are 
better than ever

It's no secret that government has not made the shift to the paperless 
office. In many agencies and departments, processing and routing 
old-fashioned manila envelopes with memos and forms inside is still a chore 
that takes up a good deal of staff time. E-mail is, of course, faster and 
more efficient than hard-copy forms, but how to collect that all-important 
signature?

Digital and electronic signatures offer the allure of delivering signed 
electronic documents across a network or around the world in the blink of 
an eye. A digital signature encrypts a series of numbers that identify the 
originator of the encryption, the validity of the signature and whether any 
changes to the signature have been made. An electronic signature adds a 
visible image of a handwritten signature to the encrypted digital signature.

Many information technology decision-makers, however, have been hesitant to 
embrace digital and electronic signatures and automated forms for two 
reasons. First, there has been widespread sentiment that these technologies 
are not yet mature enough to securely handle highly sensitive documents. 
Second, there is a lot of confusion in general about the digital signature 
marketplace.

But agencies that have evaluated signature technologies and workflow 
automation in the past will definitely want to revisit the solutions now 
available. As we found during our recent evaluation, the technology has 
improved significantly. Solutions now available have improved usability, 
security and scalability.

Whether routing within the agency, across multiple agencies, with external 
business partners or citizens, solutions are available to make the process 
seamless and much less painful than the traditional manila envelopes or 
snail mail.

The only real drawback I found during my evaluation is that many of the 
solutions in this category are limited to Microsoft Corp. Windows-based 
technologies. This can complicate things for agencies that may be using 
Linux, Apple Computer Inc. Macintosh, Sun Microsystems Inc. Solaris or 
other computing platforms. To their credit, digital signature solution 
providers are beginning to adopt forms standards, such as HTML, Extensible 
Markup Language (XML) and Adobe Systems Inc.'s PDF, all of which easily can 
transcend platforms.

A word of caution to agency representatives who may be evaluating digital 
signature solutions: Check solution implementation requirements carefully.

Many solutions that support forms that are formatted in PDF, HTML, XML and 
others also require you to use a particular e-mail application or Web 
server to implement the solution. Care should be exercised to match 
available solutions to your computing environment. Providers in this 
category should also consider adopting a wider range of the industry 
standards, platforms and technologies that agencies use today.

To decide what solution your agency might need, it is best to divide this 
technology category into three segments. Probably the most developed and 
well-known segment is public-key infrastructure (PKI). Products in this 
category enable agencies to incorporate public and private key pairs, 
certificates and digital signatures into various applications, such as e-mail.

And a new breed of products has emerged that can augment a PKI strategy by 
increasing security and usability. If your agency is using or considering 
smart cards, fingerprint readers or retinal scan solutions, these are 
considered to be access add-ons that complement a PKI.

Most of the recent growth in digital signature tools comes from a third 
category of typically software-based solutions that can work with or 
without a PKI. These products are mainly concerned with integrating 
signature capabilities with agency business processes. They usually include 
repository services, workflow automation and authentication.

In this review, I examined a PKI service solution from VeriSign Inc. In 
addition, I tested Silanis Technology Inc.'s ApproveIt and Cardiff Software 
Inc.'s LiquidOffice  two software-based solutions that integrate neatly 
with agency processes.

I found that all three solutions are well prepared to go the distance for 
agencies that need to implement digital signature technologies in order to 
support interagency activities or secure transactions and messaging with 
business partners or the general public.

I also investigated a fourth solution from Digital Signature Trust Co., but 
did not include it in this comparison because the company was in the 
process of being acquired by Identrus LLC during my evaluation. However, 
the company's solutions are expected to continue once the acquisition has 
been completed.

Silanis' ApproveIt

Silanis' ApproveIt solution includes the ApproveIt Desktop and the 
ApproveIt Collaboration Server. ApproveIt neatly combines digital signature 
support with electronic signature capabilities. Joining the two 
technologies assures agencies that the signer is the authorized person.

I had no trouble setting up ApproveIt on a Windows 2000 platform. The 
client portion of the solution, ApproveIt Desktop, also can be installed on 
Windows 95/98 and Windows NT. The ApproveIt Collaboration Server installs 
on Windows 2000, but requires Microsoft SQL Server. The product also 
requires that form originators use Microsoft Outlook and that an Internet 
Information Server is available. This is fine if your agency is a 
Windows-based shop, but not such a good match if you use other vendors' 
e-mail solutions, databases or Web servers.

However, platform limitations aside, ApproveIt was marvelously easy to set 
up and use. The first step was to create an electronic signature file, 
which ApproveIt calls an ePersona file. The solution includes a handy tool 
that enables you to build an image file of your signature from various 
sources.

I tried creating several signature files. One file I created from a 
previously scanned signature, another using the mouse, one from a fax and 
one directly from my scanner. ApproveIt enables you to use a number of 
input devices to create your signature file.

Once the signature file is created, the user can select what type of 
digital signature to combine with the signature image file. ApproveIt 
supports third-party digital certificates from providers, such as VeriSign 
and Entrust Inc., but it also lets you generate a self-signed certificate.

The combining of electronic and digital signatures is handled transparently 
to the user, and the signature file is password-protected. Authorized users 
have the ability to modify their signatures, if necessary. Users can also 
view their own signature information to verify the validity of the file 
before signing documents.

ApproveIt supports signature capabilities on documents that are formatted 
using Microsoft Office documents, PDF files and output from Adobe Accelio's 
Capture FormFlow. This differs from Cardiff's LiquidOffice, which supports 
both PDF- and HTML-based forms.

I had no trouble inserting multiple signatures in Word documents and PDF 
files. Different users can be granted different rights based on their 
signing authority. For example, a consumer might fill out and 
electronically sign a request for federal grant money, but agency 
representatives could be given rights to validate the consumer's signature 
and approve or deny the request via their own signature.

Signers of documents would want to verify any previous signatures on a 
document, and ApproveIt prompts you to do this. You can tell if a signature 
is valid, has been revalidated, invalid or unusable based on icons that 
ApproveIt displays with documents and forms. ApproveIt is tightly 
integrated with Office, Adobe Acrobat and FormFlow via menu options that 
are added to these products during the installation of ApproveIt.

The ApproveIt Desktop can also be used with the ApproveIt Collaboration 
Server. The combined solution is ideal for agencies whose processes require 
signature activity with other agencies, business partners or citizens. As 
long as the other party has Office, Acrobat or FormFlow, the ApproveIt 
Collaboration Server automatically downloads the appropriate plug-in so the 
other party can sign documents and forms.

Silanis' ApproveIt is a solid solution that can easily be used within or 
outside of the agency for signature activities. Its tools and facilities 
are very easy to use and will require minimal training for agency staffers. 
Expansion of platform support to include Unix, Linux, Macintosh and other 
platforms as well as the inclusion of other formats, such as HTML and XML, 
would make ApproveIt even more valuable as a signature solution for a 
broader audience.

Cardiff's LiquidOffice

As with the Silanis ApproveIt solution, I had no trouble setting up 
Cardiff's LiquidOffice eForm Management System. The Cardiff solution 
combines three tools. The first is the Forms Designer, which I installed on 
a Windows 2000 platform. This graphical form-building tool can also be 
installed on Windows 98, Me, NT or XP. It cannot be installed on 
non-Windows platforms, such as Mac OS X or Linux.

The LiquidOffice Forms Server can be installed on Windows 2000, Windows NT 
or Solaris Version 8, and it can be used with Microsoft SQL Server or with 
Oracle Corp. databases. The third piece of the LiquidOffice solution is the 
Web Desktop, which supplies authenticated access to forms for processing 
and sign-off. The Web Desktop is browser-accessible, and the company 
officially supports access via Netscape Communication Corp.'s Versions 4.7 
or 6.1 and Microsoft's Internet Explorer Version 5.01 and later. However, I 
also had no trouble accessing the Web Desktop using other browsers from 
Opera Software, the Mozilla Organization and Galeon.

I began by creating several forms using the Forms Designer. I had no 
trouble building forms using the included palette, which offers various 
form elements as well as access to fields you might want to add or hide as 
needed.

When adding signature blocks to our forms, I was able to select what 
attributes would be in play when the form was accessed and used. For 
example, I could lock certain form fields until a particular signature was 
provided. I could also define what the signature implied  approval, 
acknowledgment and so on.

I also had the choice of authenticating the signature using a LiquidOffice 
password, click-through on the part of the user or a certificate. These 
choices are good because a nonsensitive document could easily have 
signatures authenticated via click-through, while certificates could be 
used for information that required greater security.

After creating forms, I configured the options that would enable me to 
connect to the Forms Server to publish my forms. I merely added the Form 
Server URL and my user identification and password for access. I was then 
able to connect and publish forms in either PDF or HTML.

The publishing process is seamless to the user and it completes relatively 
quickly. Using a built-in publishing wizard, the user can determine if the 
form will be made publicly available or will be published for access by a 
specific group of individuals, such as the financial department.

Once published, I found it easy to use various Web browsers to access the 
Web Desktop to manipulate the published forms that I was authorized to use.

I logged on to the Web Desktop using Opera on Linux, Mozilla on Mac OS X, 
and both Netscape and Internet Explorer on several Windows platforms. I had 
no trouble accessing either PDF or HTML versions of the forms, and I was 
able to sign and route several documents and forms without incident.

LiquidOffice is a sound solution that combines easy-to-use form-building 
and publishing tools with industry-standard output, such as PDF and HTML. 
Its server component and Web-based accessibility make it ideal for a 
variety of agencies.

Like Silanis' ApproveIt, LiquidOffice supports verifiable digital 
signatures, but it does not include an image of your actual signature.

VeriSign's Managed PKI Service

VeriSign's Managed PKI for Server IDs Certificate Management System enables 
agencies to implement digital certificate technology across a broad range 
of platforms, systems and applications. Rather than implement this 
technology at an agency via a software-based approach, the VeriSign service 
speeds digital certificate implementation by making it available via the Web.

Under the umbrella of the VeriSign service, extranets, intranets, virtual 
private networks and e-commerce applications can easily be outfitted with 
digital signature technology. The company also supports digital 
certificates for major agency platforms, such as Lotus Development Corp.'s 
Notes, Microsoft Exchange and SAP AG's products, as well as securing 
technologies for wireless and smart card applications.

I decided to test-drive VeriSign's Managed PKI for Server IDs and the 
company's OnSite client. The former product can be used to implement 
digital certificate-based authentication and encryption across Web sites or 
for intranets. The latter is a useful tool that enables administrators to 
easily create and implement digital signatures.

I found it simple to interact with both the Managed PKI for Server IDs and 
the OnSite client. VeriSign has created wizard-based interfaces that are 
browser-accessible. I was able to step through the wizards in a short 
period of time and quickly implement secure digital certificates for our 
test environment.

VeriSign's services offer a different approach to implementing digital 
signature technologies when compared with the solutions offered by Cardiff 
and Silanis. For agencies, the upside of a service-based approach to 
digital signatures is that the deployment is outsourced, which may be 
well-suited to agencies that are under the gun to implement the technology.

The downside of this approach is that your agency has to have a pretty good 
understanding of digital signature technology and the knowledge of where it 
should be inserted in agency processes. VeriSign does offer consulting 
services and training to help their customers hit the ground running.

For agencies that need both digital certificates and electronic signatures 
(actual images of physically generated signatures), a combination solution 
that joins external PKI services to software-based add-on products may be 
the best approach.

What a Difference

ApproveIt and LiquidOffice are both sound software-based solutions that 
demonstrate just how much digital and electronic signature technology is 
maturing when compared with solutions available even just a year ago.

They differ on some details  one integrates with other products such as 
Office and Acrobat while the other supplies tools to generate and publish 
PDF- and HTML-based forms  but they both offer functionality that is 
reliable and ready to implement in agency workflow environments.

VeriSign's service offerings provide a different strategy for agencies that 
need to deploy digital signature technologies. By using one or more of the 
available service-based VeriSign solutions, agencies can outsource the 
creation and management of digital certificates.

These services enable the rapid implementation of digitally secured 
transactions, e-mail, and other server-based interactions across extranets 
and intranets supported by major agency platforms.

Before selecting a digital or electronic signature strategy, note what 
platforms, e-mail solutions, databases, and Web servers your agency has in 
play. In addition, account for all document formats your agency needs to 
support. You also need to consider platforms in use by the general public 
and at any partner organizations, including other agencies and businesses.

After careful evaluation of available services and solutions, your agency 
might be able to finally ditch those manila envelopes and reduce the amount 
of manual forms processing needed to conduct agency operations.

Biggs has more than 15 years of business and IT experience in the financial 
sector.
*******************
New York Times
F.C.C.'s Powell Sees Programming Key to Digital TV
By REUTERS

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - More industries will likely jump on the bandwagon 
to accelerate the transition to digital television and new, innovative 
programming will play a key role in pushing that move, Federal 
Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell said on Tuesday.

The cable industry recently committed to Powell's voluntary plan of 
deadlines for carrying high-definition broadcast channels and he noted that 
much of what consumers want is on pay television services.

The transition to digital has been slowed in part by the lack of 
high-definition digital programming, the expensive television equipment 
required to receive the signals and the potential for piracy of content.

``You're seeing all sorts of interesting shows that are experimenting, it's 
really neat,'' Powell told a breakfast meeting of cable executives 
attending the National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference.

``What we don't know is what kind of chances the creative community will 
take in the future,'' he said. ``You all have some of the very best suited 
content for this (digital TV) format than anyone.''

``Everyone tells me the big sellers are sports and movies,'' Powell said, 
noting Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN and News Corp.'s Fox popular sports networks. 
``These avid fans of these things ... are largely on these platforms and if 
they're not they're very likely to be in the near future.''

Television broadcasters like Viacom Inc.'s CBS network broadcasts much of 
its primetime lineup in high-definition and premium movie channels like HBO 
and Showtime also offer a channel with the higher-quality, crisper signals.

MEDIA OWNERSHIP

More broadcasters as well as consumer electronics manufacturers will likely 
commit to his plan in which he called on the major television networks to 
begin broadcasting at least half of their primetime lineups in digital by 
this fall and that digital tuners be included in new sets starting in 2004.

``Who will be next as the wheel turns, I don't know,'' he told reporters 
afterwards. ``I still have a lot of confidence that at the end of the day 
it will be all of them.''

Powell also told the cable industry that he would not rush out new media 
ownership rules that were struck down by a federal court because he wanted 
to make sure they would withstand judicial scrutiny.

``We're not going to be pushed on this until we are ready to do it in a way 
that I think is constructive, and the public interest is going to survive 
judicial scrutiny,'' Powell said.

The FCC has had a bad streak with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 
District of Columbia which struck down a rule that prevented cable 
companies from reaching more than 30 percent of the market. The agency is 
in the process of rewriting it.

Another rule barring a company from owning a cable system and a local 
broadcast television station that serve the same market was also struck 
down and analysts do not expect it to be rewritten.

Even as the agency moves forward with re-examining the ownership rules and 
whether they are necessary, Powell said the media sphere was largely 
competitive.

``I think there's still pretty energized competitive pressures for who gets 
on ... when,'' he told the executives. ``I think there's things to watch 
there, but for the moment I would describe it as a healthy market 
environment.''
***********************
BBC
Video games to help you relax

Most video games tend to get the pulse racing, but researchers in Dublin, 
Irish Republic, are working on developing games to help calm people.
Gary McDarby and his MindGames team at MediaLab Europe are looking at using 
gaming technology to aid people suffering from depression or trauma.

In their latest project, called Brainchild, you try to unlock a door simply 
through your brain waves.

"You are playing a video game but hopefully over time you would learn what 
is it that helps you relax," explained Dr McDarby.

Child nightmares

Dr McDarby came up with the idea of using technology to help people with 
disorders about 10 years ago when he was in Liberia.


McDarby: Wants to help troubled children

He came across a 12-year-old child soldier who was suffering from 
nightmares after taking part in a firing squad.

"I had a Walkman with an Enya tape so I suggested that he go to bed and 
listen to it to see if it calmed him and it actually helped him sleep," Dr 
McDarby told the BBC programme Go Digital.

"It made me think, 'imagine if you could have some kind of technology that 
you would know the effect it was having on you'. Now, 10 years later, we 
have a group looking at what is called affective feedback."

Dragon racing

One of games is a two-player dragon racing game called Relax To Win.

The idea is simple. Two electrodes are attached to a player's fingers and 
as the person relaxes, their dragon moves faster.

The game uses galvanic skin response technology which works measuring the 
ability of the skin to conduct electricity. This changes as a person 
relaxes or tenses up and forms the basis for lie detector tests.

"As you relax, your dragon will walk, then run and then fly," Dr McDarby said.

"If you can get it to fly, it means you have got into a nice relaxed state.

"The technology is trying to make decisions to improve or enhance your 
state of mind," he explained.

The game takes place in a virtual 3D world set aboard a starship in space. 
The environment is designed to immerse the player, drawing more of their 
attention and making the feedback more effective.

"We're looking at a medium that a lot of people are drawn to and how we can 
use this constructively," he said.

Brainy approach

His team are now working on their next project, a game called Brainchild.

This measures brain reaction as well as galvanic skin response.

The player wears a cap packed with tiny sensors that pick up changes to 
brain wave patterns associated with concentration and relaxation.

During the game, the player is guided through a relaxation technique to 
unlock a door. The system reacts to the brain waves, making the game easier 
or harder, depending on how relaxed you are.

Brainchild is still being tested out, as the team is researching how far it 
can be used to help children with concentration or attention span difficulties.
****************
BBC
Net lifeline for victims of violence

Public internet kiosks are providing a lifeline to victims of domestic 
violence in the UK.
Research from kiosk providers CitySpace shows that a domestic violence 
channel is proving particularly popular.

About 5,000 women have sought advice and information since its launch less 
than a month ago.

"Primarily, it acts as a digital signpost to refuges and to counsellors who 
offer professional help and advice," said a CitySpace spokesperson.

Totally anonymous

There are currently around 100 so-called i-plus points in towns and cities 
up and down the UK.


The kiosks can be used anonymously and in private

The free, internet-based, touch screen kiosks provide users with e-mail 
facilities, news and local council information.

Usage for the domestic violence channel is highest at weekends when women 
may be out shopping or meeting friends.

"A lot of women in abusive relationships can't use the internet at home or 
at work. The crucial thing about i-plus is that it is totally anonymous," 
said the spokesperson.

About 10% of women suffer domestic violence at any one time and up to a 
quarter of all women will be victims at some point in their lives.

Domestic violence can be physical, verbal, emotional and sexual.

More publicity

Nearly 200 women each day are using the channel and most of them print out 
information.

"This new initiative is playing a very real and important role in assisting 
those who are being abused," said Cityspace's head of e-government, Patrick 
McGuirk.

The Greater London Authority launched the channel as part of its own 
strategy to combat domestic violence.

It is pleased by the success of the online channel but wants more publicity 
for the booths.

"It is proving to be an invaluable resource but I want more people to know 
that it's there," commented Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.
********************
New York Times
FAA OKs Boeing Internet System
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEATTLE (AP) -- The Federal Aviation Administration has certified Connexion 
by Boeing's airborne communications network to bring e-mail and other 
Internet services to airlines and their passengers, the company said Tuesday.

The certification is the first of its kind for a broadband network linking 
satellite and ground networks to commercial aircraft during flight, Boeing 
said.

Tests for the three-month certification process were conducted aboard a 
specially modified Boeing 737-400, to verify both that the system worked 
and that it did not interfere with other aircraft systems or the plane's 
structural integrity or handling characteristics.

The final test summary paperwork necessary for certification was e-mailed 
to FAA officials in Los Angeles from the test aircraft while it was flying 
at 35,000 feet above New Mexico.

Boeing says Connexion will bring high-speed Internet and e-mail to airborne 
passengers, along with real-time television and other entertainment.

Further tests will continue aboard the aircraft this year to make sure the 
system is reliable. Boeing plans to begin trial service in late 2002 with 
German airline Lufthansa.

United, American and Delta airlines originally intended to be equity 
partners in Connexion, but pulled out after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks 
devastated the airline industry.
**********************
Government Computer News
OMB to e-gov partners: Show us the money you need
By Jason Miller
GCN Staff


The Office of Management and Budget is asking the agencies managing the 24 
e-government initiatives to detail their resources needs so OMB can use its 
authority under the Clinger-Cohen Act to better allocate funding.

Mark Forman, OMB associate director for IT and e-government, last week sent 
a memo to project leaders outlining the plan. He said the estimates should 
include money, personnel resources and in-kind contribution requirements, 
such as hardware and software, for each initiative. A plan on how agencies 
will share redundant resources will be in place by the end of next month, 
Forman added.

"The CIOs agreed we had to get funding and resource decisions made by the 
end of June," Forman said. "We are going to pull all the data together and 
will work with agencies to share resources through a memorandum of 
understanding or through Clinger-Cohen authorities."

The Online Rule-making initiative is the first project that will combine 
redundant resources. OMB director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. sent a memo May 3 
to agency heads evoking Clinger-Cohen authorities to consolidate 
rule-making systems.

The Transportation Department, which is managing Online Rule-making, will 
redo the project's business case to include a technical assessment of the 
disparate systems it will consolidate. Forman said the business case is due 
by mid-July.

Meanwhile, OMB will review agencies' 2003 budget requests to identify 
duplicate technology investments and redistribute resources to the 
appropriate e-government projects.

Daniels said agencies this year will spend $28 million on online 
rule-making systems and an estimated $32 million next year.

OMB set a Dec. 31deadline for the creation of a front end for a new online 
rule-making system, but Forman said the new Web site would be up well 
before the deadline.

Forman said the reasons for forcing the consolidation of systems were many. 
He said a combination of a lack of cooperation and a need for speed in 
delivering services played a big role. Plus, the Online Rule-making team 
requested "strong definitive guidance from OMB," he added.
******************
Government Computer News
DOD awards $1 billion in systems support contracts
By Dawn S. Onley

The Defense Department has awarded IT support contracts worth a total of $1 
billion to eight companies that will vie for systems engineering work at 
DOD locations worldwide.

The Defense Information Systems Agency awarded the seven-year 
Next-Generation Engineering contracts, which are indefinite-delivery, 
indefinite-quantity deals. Defense agencies can place cost reimbursement, 
fixed-price or time and material orders against the contracts.

The work will include providing support for the Defense Information 
Infrastructure Common Operating Environment, Defense Message System, Global 
Combat Support System, Global Command and Control System and Global 
Information Grid.

The winning vendors are Artel Inc. of Reston, Va.; Femme Comp Inc. of 
Sterling, Va.; FGM Inc. of Dulles, Va.; Northrop Grumman Corp. of Herndon, 
Va.; Pragmatics Inc. of McLean, Va.; Science Applications International 
Corp. of San Diego; and SRA International Inc. of Fairfax, Va.
******************
USA Today
Study: Discarded cell phones pose health hazard

WASHINGTON (AP)  A new kind of cell phone pollution  and this one is silent.

Within three years, Americans will discard about 130 million cellular 
telephones a year, and that means 65,000 tons of trash, including toxic 
metals and other health hazards, a study says.

"Because these devices are so small, their environmental impacts might 
appear to be minimal," says Bette Fishbein, a researcher at Inform, an 
environmental research organization, who wrote the report.

But, she says, the growth in cell phone use has been so rapid and enormous 
"that the environmental and public health impacts of the waste they create 
are a significant concern."

There are more than 135 million people now registered as users of cell 
phones and the number is growing, according to the Cellular 
Telecommunications and Internet Association, the industry's trade group.

The study by Inform said that on average a cellular telephone is kept only 
18 months and in many cases thrown into a closet or drawer and finally 
discarded with the household garbage.

By 2005, there will be at least 200 million cell phones in use across the 
country and another 500 million older phones may be stockpiled in drawers, 
closets and elsewhere, waiting to be thrown away, the report estimates, 
based on expected market growth and cell phone purchases in recent years.

Cell phones, along with other "wireless waste" from increasingly popular 
pagers, pocket PCs and music players, pose special problems at landfills or 
when they're burned in municipal waste incinerators because they have toxic 
chemicals in batteries and other components, said the report.

These include persistent toxins that accumulate in the environment, 
including arsenic, antimony, beryllium, cadmium, copper, lead, nickel and 
zinc, said the report. These toxins have been associated with cancer and 
neurological disorders, especially in children.

The report urges the industry to take measures to reduce the amount of cell 
phones that are thrown away by developing "take-back" programs so phones 
and batteries can be recycled and adopt industrywide technical and design 
standards so phones are not thrown away after a user switches services.

The report said a number of states including California, Massachusetts and 
Minnesota are considering legislation that would make manufacturers pay the 
cost of managing the waste from electronic products, including cell phones.

Internationally, Australia has implemented a nationwide cell phone 
recycling program and the European Union is considering actions to make 
manufacturers responsible for electronic product wastes.
******************
Government Executive
Web site will consolidate all federal rules for comment

By Tanya N. Ballard
tballard@xxxxxxxxxxx


A Web site that will allow the public to submit comments electronically on 
the federal government's proposed rules and regulations will be up and 
running by the end of the year, the Office of Management and Budget 
announced Monday.


"Millions of Americans want to easily find and comment on proposed 
regulations," said Mark Forman, OMB's associate director for information 
technology and e-government. "This action means that, by the end of this 
year, the public will no longer need to navigate through a sea of agency 
Web sites to comment on regulations that will impact their lives."


The rulemaking portal is part of OMB's e-government initiative. It will 
consolidate proposed and interim rules from all federal agencies on one Web 
site, making them easier to find and eliminating the need for maintaining 
multiple Web sites across the federal government, OMB Director Mitch 
Daniels wrote in a May 3 memo to agency and department chiefs. Though the 
Federal Register prints proposed, interim and final agency rules, it does 
not allow people to respond through its site, and the information printed 
in the publication is not limited to rules and regulations, an OMB 
spokeswoman said.


"The potential benefit to citizens and businesses in this area is 
dramatic," Daniels wrote. According to Daniels, duplicative rulemaking Web 
sites will cost the government more than $70 million to run and maintain 
during the next 18 months. Daniels cited the Defense Department's 
Electronic Rulemaking Management System and the EPA's Regulatory Public 
Access System as two examples of rulemaking sites that already exist for 
particular agencies.


The Transportation Department will lead the new initiative, working with 
other agencies to develop a plan to eliminate redundant rulemaking systems. 
Once the Web site comes online, agencies will be responsible for providing 
it with their proposed rules, the OMB spokeswoman said.
*********************
MSNBC
Music industry finally online

But listeners stay away in droves

By Anna Wilde Mathews, Martin Peers and Nick Wingfield
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

May 7  Early last December, three of the world's biggest music companies 
launched a counterattack against the rampant digital piracy that has gnawed 
at their sales in recent years. It was called MusicNet, a joint venture 
that would provide consumers with a legal alternative to Napster Inc. and 
other freewheeling Internet song-swapping services.

     WITHIN A couple of weeks, the results were clear. As MusicNet Chief 
Executive Alan McGlade told the venture's board: "The current version of 
the service is not viable."
       It isn't hard to see why. MusicNet's main owners  AOL Time Warner 
Inc., EMI Group PLC and Bertelsmann AG, along with fourth partner 
RealNetworks Inc., a Seattle software company  created a service that 
lacked just about everything that makes online music downloads appealing. 
It didn't allow consumers to keep downloaded songs permanently. It didn't 
allow them to transfer songs to portable devices or exchange them with 
friends who weren't signed up to the service. And it charged a monthly fee. 
Renegade Internet services allow all that and more, for no charge.
       Since the launch, MusicNet has attracted only about 40,000 
subscribers. Critics have panned it. AOL Time Warner's America Online 
service, which was supposed to be MusicNet's biggest distributor, says it 
wants something better before it will introduce the service. MusicNet plans 
soon to offer about 100,000 music tracks, but it still has enormous gaps in 
its collection  most notably, all the artists whose work is controlled by 
the two biggest recording companies, Sony Corp. and Vivendi Universal SA. 
They have created their own struggling online venture, called pressplay.
      So now, as free sites continue to attract millions of users and 
before most of the public has even heard of MusicNet , its backers are 
trying to fix it. "The first offering was too clunky and too consumer 
unfriendly to hold much hope for its success," says Richard Parsons, AOL 
Time Warner's incoming chief executive. "So we are going to go back, and we 
will come out with a 2.0 product which will be more consumer friendly, easy 
to use. ... This is a business of trial and error."

'A BEGINNING'
       Mr. McGlade, MusicNet's CEO, is in advanced negotiations with the 
companies involved, trying to persuade them to allow the kind of features 
that consumers want. "You couldn't keep it static and say this is fine," he 
says. "It's certainly a beginning. We're going to be able to significantly 
advance the ball in the next year."
       But getting it right the second time may not be easy since the 
program still faces the same problems that dogged it the first time. There 
is the tension among MusicNet's backers, rivals in other areas whose 
agendas often don't mesh. There are persistent antitrust concerns, 
including a continuing Justice Department investigation of record labels' 
online ventures, which complicate discussions among MusicNet's owners. And 
there are the problematic relationships between the record companies and 
the rest of the music industry, which make it difficult for MusicNet to 
offer as much music as the illegal services do.
       The upshot is that, even with the future of their industry at 
stake, the companies that own recorded music are still unable to fully 
exploit that trove online. Global sales of compact-disc recordings fell 
5.1% last year from a year earlier, the first drop since the format was 
launched in 1983. The industry blamed the fall largely on the proliferation 
of homemade CD compilations, as well as free offerings online.
       It's a problem not just for the music business, but for the entire 
entertainment industry, which is trying to figure out online business 
models for movies and TV shows at a time when these things, too, are 
increasingly being swapped on the Internet. Just last month, Hollywood got 
a lesson in how difficult it will be to harness digital distribution when 
News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox withdrew from a planned video-on-demand 
venture with Walt Disney Co. That came as the Justice Department's 
antitrust division is investigating all the major studios' efforts to 
deliver their films to consumers via the Internet and digital cable-TV.
       The struggle to create a legitimate commercial online music service 
goes back years, before there even was a Napster. RealNetworks, which 
develops multimedia software, first began talking about it in 1995 with 
executives at MCA Music, now owned by Vivendi Universal. But Rob Glaser, 
RealNetworks' fast-talking chief executive, was too early: The Internet was 
still a new medium with uncertain commercial potential.

'PROJECT HAVANA'
       Then, a little more than two years ago, the company launched a 
secret initiative, dubbed "Project Havana." Mr. Glaser, a music buff who 
got Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder to play at his 40th birthday party, wanted to 
build a service that would allow consumers to download songs using Real 
software. Before that could happen, he would have to secure licensing 
agreements with each of the major music labels in order to use their songs.
       In March 2000, RealNetworks struck its first deal, with Time Warner 
Inc.'s Warner Music Group. Time Warner would get a stake in the new 
venture. The executives involved hoisted glasses of Moët & Chandon 
champagne to celebrate what seemed like a painless entry into the world of 
digital music.
       Mr. Glaser spent months wooing top executives at other record 
companies. Yet the industry still feared that creating a legitimate market 
for music downloads would cut into sales of compact discs. "Established 
businesses find it very difficult to embrace disruptive technologies that 
threaten them. The music industry is no different," says Paul Vidich, an 
executive vice president for Warner Music.
       But now, music fans were racing to outlaws such as Napster. 
Teenager Shawn Fanning introduced Napster to the Internet in 1999 as a free 
software program that let users share digital song libraries on their 
computers. The program, maintained by Napster Inc., Redwood City, Calif., 
quickly became the most popular and convenient way to exchange music over 
the Internet.
      By the fall of 2000, Napster had about 38 million devotees, and the 
music industry was scared. To stop the free-for-all, the major labels sued 
to shut down Napster. Then, in October that year, Bertelsmann broke ranks 
and formed an alliance with Napster, agreeing to lend money to the service 
and to help it develop a legitimate membership service.
       Growing congressional interest in online music prodded the industry 
onward. Lawmakers were eager to see legitimate online music services. For 
one thing, they were hearing from Internet companies frustrated by the 
record labels' slow pace licensing their catalogs. And they were also 
hearing from constituents who were agitating on behalf of Napster. Also, in 
February, a federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld a lower-court 
ruling that ordered Napster to dramatically curb its file-sharing service, 
raising optimism about the prospects for a commercial online music service 
that would be friendlier to copyright holders.
       "We saw an intensification of interest on the part of the music 
companies to go beyond what they had done before, which were trials and 
promotions, to really do something deep and serious," Mr. Glaser said later.
       By early 2001, Bertelsmann and EMI were deep in discussions to join 
MusicNet , Bertelsmann hoping that MusicNet would act as a conduit for 
licensing music to Napster. Warner Music and RealNetworks had dropped the 
idea of simply selling song downloads. Instead, they focused on creating a 
subscription service in which users would pay a set fee for unlimited 
access to all the music they wanted, but on a temporary basis.
       Weeks of negotiations on the shape of the venture reached a crisis 
point on Friday, March 30. The Senate Judiciary Committee had scheduled a 
hearing on online music for the following Tuesday. The record companies 
feared that the panel would focus on why they were putting the bulk of 
their efforts into blocking pirate services through litigation, rather than 
getting a commercial service up and running.
       The companies agreed to spend the weekend hammering out final 
MusicNet terms. The negotiations foreshadowed some of MusicNet's later 
operating difficulties. Holed up at the New York offices of law firm Weil, 
Gotshal & Manges, representatives of the different labels couldn't even sit 
together in the same room because of competitive and antitrust concerns. On 
the advice of lawyers, they spread out to half a dozen conference rooms, 
with Mr. Glaser urging compromise as he bounced from one to the other.
       The final deal, completed early that Monday, put in place a service 
that would be owned 40% by RealNetworks, with a $13 million investment, and 
20% by each of the labels, putting in between $4 million and $5 million 
apiece. Hoping to respond to Napster's popularity, the group devised 
something that was more like a rental model, in which subscribers would 
have access to songs only for as long as they paid the monthly fee. The 
music companies wanted generous financial terms, which meant higher charges 
for the service. RealNetworks, meanwhile, wanted its software, at least 
initially, to be favored over other technologies, despite the popularity of 
formats such as MP3 and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media.

'EXCITING NEW ERA'
       Mr. Glaser boasted in a news release that MusicNet would "catalyze 
an exciting new era in digital music distribution." The next day, AOL's Mr. 
Parsons declared "a breakthrough platform for online music subscription 
services" before the Senate committee.
       But the deal was just the beginning of MusicNet's headaches. 
Designing the service itself proved even stickier. Because the labels 
weren't supposed to know each other's business, board members couldn't 
discuss any details of MusicNet's distribution or licensing agreements, 
leaving them in the dark about many of the venture's dealings. The MusicNet 
board had to keep an antitrust attorney present for all discussions.
       The tensions surfaced publicly on June 5, when Mr. Glaser announced 
that Napster would become an affiliate of MusicNet , under a pact that he 
called "an important step in the process" of bringing legitimate music to 
the file-swapping company. EMI and Warner Music publicly disputed the 
significance of the agreement, which they had learned about just a few days 
earlier. Both said the situation with Napster hadn't changed since they 
formed MusicNet , and the song-swapping service hadn't met key conditions 
necessary for getting access to their music. Privately, executives at the 
two companies were skeptical that Napster would ever be able to use their 
music legally, even as Napster and MusicNet assured reporters that Napster, 
RealNetworks and AOL would all be offering MusicNet by late summer.

TOO OPTIMISTIC
       That timetable proved too optimistic for a venture that didn't even 
have a permanent chief executive until Mr. McGlade came on board on Oct. 
23. The former MTV executive, now 47 years old, soon learned that obstacles 
to launching the service remained. The record labels had only just 
completed a pact with music publishers on how the publishers would be 
compensated for songs bought by MusicNet customers. Still, MusicNet 
sometimes had to track down the names of individual publishers through 
Copyright Office records, a slow and cumbersome process.
       And in picking through old artist contracts, the labels were trying 
to solve another thorny problem: They didn't control the rights to 
digitally distribute songs by prominent artists, including the Beatles, 
Garth Brooks and the Eagles, who had had the clout to retain the digital 
rights to their own work. Every few days, MusicNet would get lists from the 
record labels of what music could be offered on the service, and the 
results were disappointing. The venture did score one coup when it signed 
up independent Zomba Recording Corp., which took a small ownership stake 
and brought in such well-known names as Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys.
       "There was little question from the start that MusicNet would pose 
an enormous challenge," Mr. McGlade says. "But the fundamentals are sound."
       Despite the many gaps in its inventory and unresolved issues, 
MusicNet made its debut in early December. The first consumer version of 
the product came via RealNetworks, which began offering a new entertainment 
software package called RealOne that lets users play audio and video clips 
and organize song libraries on their PCs. Users first download RealOne, 
then enter their credit-card numbers in the software, and access premium 
services, including MusicNet and other entertainment programming.
       RealNetworks held a lavish unveiling spiced up by Willa Ford, a 
young pop singer for Warner's Atlantic Records. But some artists lobbed in 
last-minute complaints. The day of the launch, for example, BMG officials 
got a call from a lawyer for the Dave Matthews Band, telling them not to 
use songs by the popular group. The band, like many other artists, was 
reluctant to let its music be used in a new, rapidly evolving medium. The 
songs were yanked, though a Dave Matthews Band CD cover was pictured in 
some RealNetworks press materials that had already been distributed.
       When details of how the service would work were finally made 
public, consumers shrieked. In the RealNetworks version, a MusicNet 
customer pays $9.95 a month to download as many as 100 tunes and to access 
"streamed" songs, meaning they can be played on a computer but not 
downloaded to its hard disk. Downloaded songs are disabled after 30 days. 
Customers also can't transfer the music to portable players or CD burners.

'IN MY CAR'
       Robb Carlson is typical of MusicNet users who want better song 
selection and the ability burn music onto CDs. "It's great to have it all 
on a computer, but I'm in my car two to three hours a day," says the 
19-year-old freshman at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
       A week after MusicNet's launch, Universal and Sony announced their 
service, pressplay, which managed to make MusicNet look bad. Though 
pressplay's plan is also lacking, the service does allow consumers to burn 
a limited number of tracks onto CDs and to assemble an online collection 
over time.
       Something had to be done. In an early December retreat with his 
fledgling staff at a Seattle hotel, Mr. McGlade passed out New York Fire 
Department hats to signal that it was time for the company to stop putting 
out fires and move forward. A couple of weeks later, he told the MusicNet 
board that the service wasn't viable. The board couldn't discuss such 
issues in depth because of antitrust issues. As Mr. McGlade began a 
presentation outlining what changes needed to be made, the company's 
antitrust lawyer interrupted to say that if he was going to discuss revenue 
models, he "shouldn't get into specific details," according to a person who 
was present.
       But in later talks with the music companies, Mr. McGlade pushed the 
labels to offer features such as permanent downloads and portability, 
according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. McGlade also has laid out 
financial targets, according to these people. With major expenses including 
antitrust attorneys, people familiar with the matter say, Mr. McGlade is 
now seeking a total of about $10 million more from the partners. In 
addition, these people say, he wants to make MusicNet more attractive to 
distributors and consumers, in part by lowering the minimum guaranteed 
amount that the labels would receive for each song consumers download or 
stream from the service.
       There is also an effort to make the service more attractive to 
other potential distributors, many of whom have thumbed their noses at 
MusicNet because it's easier and cheaper to get music elsewhere. Sean Ryan, 
chief executive of San Francisco-based Listen.com Inc., says that he talked 
to MusicNet about a distribution agreement, but that he thinks he got a 
better deal when he signed up directly with four of the five major labels 
to distribute their music. MusicNet "made no sense for us," he says.
       All three music companies say they generally support Mr. McGlade's 
effort to retool MusicNet . EMI Group Executive Vice President John Rose, a 
MusicNet board member, says his company is "completely aligned" with Mr. 
McGlade's goals, and MusicNet needs to offer "a full suite of distribution 
services that people can get from pirate services at a higher level of 
quality." Bertelsmann's MusicNet board representative, Joel Klein, says: 
"Nobody thought you would put out a service MusicNet 1.0 and it would not 
need to be debugged. ... We knew this was not going to be the last and 
final offering for MusicNet ."
       So far, all of MusicNet's roughly 40,000 subscribers are signed up 
through RealNetworks' version of the service. The much-discussed Napster 
version of MusicNet never got off the ground. And AOL, which was supposed 
to be MusicNet's biggest distribution partner, informed Mr. McGlade early 
this year that it wouldn't sell the service until he made it more 
attractive for customers. In a trial of about two months, the Internet 
giant's test audience found that MusicNet was difficult to use, and 
complained about the limited selection of music and lack of portability.
       But, promises Mr. McGlade, "even a year down the road, everything 
you see today is sure to be radically transformed."
       While the music industry has largely succeeded in shutting down 
Napster, free online music swapping is bigger than ever. Indeed, the big 
music companies, along with major film studios, last fall filed a lawsuit 
in federal court in Los Angeles against the companies that offered both the 
Morpheus peer-to-peer application and the similar Kazaa application, 
alleging copyright infringement. Representatives of both companies deny any 
wrongdoing. The lawsuit is pending. Meanwhile, Morpheus has been downloaded 
89.3 million times, according to Cnet Networks Inc.'s Download.com, while 
Kazaa has been downloaded 64 million times.
********************
CNN
Device gives 'Insider' view of sports action
Armchair quarterbacks inspired to go to a game?


ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) --Not sure the runner touched the bag rounding 
second? Wondering whether that last pitch was off the plate?

A new wireless video device available to fans at Atlanta Braves games 
offers personal instant replays from multiple camera angles.

And when the game is a yawner, it's no problem: The gadget gets seven 
channels to watch other games, the news -- even cartoons.

The device, called The Insider, was introduced on opening day at the Turner 
Field. It looks like a fancy pair of binoculars and rents for $20 a game.

Baseball may be just the beginning.

Creator Taz Anderson envisions a day when golf fans use it to keep an eye 
on holes they don't feel like walking to, and NASCAR fans tune in to a 
camera placed in their favorite driver's car.

Victor Boudolf borrowed one from his friend at a recent Braves-Diamondbacks 
game, slipping the gray, 1-pound device around his neck, putting on the 
earphones and switching on the palm-sized receiver/battery pack.

"Whoa. It's like one national pastime right with the other. You got 
baseball, and you got sitting on your butt watching TV. This is way cool," 
he said.

Anderson, 60, is a booming ex-fullback from Georgia Tech who can't stop 
smiling at curious fans milling around The Insider booth at Turner Field. A 
real estate salesman who dabbles in the outdoor-advertising business, 
Anderson came up with the idea as a way to give sports fans a little more 
to do than, say, just watch the game.

Sports themselves aren't enough to keep people coming back to the park, 
Anderson said, pointing out the nearby baseball arcade games, the 
speed-pitch machines, a face-painting booth and a costumed Scooby Doo 
character walking by.

"People want more," he said.

Also shows TV
Which is why, Anderson said, that venue owners won't mind renting a device 
that allows fans to watch events other than the one they paid to see.

Anderson doesn't claim to have invented any part of the device, though he 
said its patent is pending and it has an experimental Federal 
Communications Commission license.

A short-distance transmitter at the stadium sends several camera feeds to 
the devices, which feature dual LCD screens. The Insider also shows 
ESPNews, CNN Headline News and the Cartoon Network.

The channels could be changed for major sporting events. For example, 
baseball fans could switch over to local college football games on Saturday 
evenings in the fall.

"We see nothing but positive results so far," Bob Wolfe, a senior vice 
president for the Braves, said of the Insider. The devices will be 
available at Georgia Tech and Atlanta Falcons football games this fall, 
with possible expansion to other baseball parks next season.

The Braves aren't the first to experiment with wireless gadgets at a sports 
arena. In San Francisco, 3Com Stadium allows 49ers fans to use handheld 
computers to check statistics or send e-mail, thanks to 50 transmitters in 
the stadium.

Better than binoculars?
Anderson, meantime, is negotiating to make the Insider available for 
rentals at NASCAR races and PGA events.

"I think everyone's waiting to see how it goes at the Braves games," said 
John Marshall, a spokesman for the PGA's BellSouth Classic tournament in 
Atlanta.

Not terrific, actually. After a dozen games at Turner, business remains 
tepid. About 50 units are rented a game out of 200 available.

But Anderson and his two dozen employees have reason to hope -- at times 
curious fans were stacked five deep to get a look at the binoculars.

"Hey, y'all, you gotta come look at this," Anderson waved to two 
khaki-wearing, golf-shirted men. He handed the pair a couple of demo 
Insiders. "Isn't it great? Isn't it the greatest thing you ever saw?"

The men took a look, nodded in agreement, then smiled apologetically and 
declined to rent one.

Regan Gealy, 25, decided to rent one with a free coupon she got elsewhere 
in the park. She later found the binoculars to be a little unwieldy, the 
picture too fuzzy to justify the $20.

Some see it as distracting
"Where would it ever be convenient to use it? I don't get it," Gealy said, 
trying to cue up a replay of a Curt Schilling pitch and struggling with the 
receiver.

Gealy's friend gave it higher marks.

"It's good if you like to watch the pitchers," said Bobby Williamson. 
"Myself, I'd rather just watch the game."

The Insider costs about $1,000 to make, and is not currently for sale to 
the public. Anderson said he's waiting until the price drops to about $500, 
hoping by then that the service will be available at many venues.

One fan who tried The Insider, Elizabeth Boylin, initially scoffed at the 
idea people would pay to watch TV when they already paid to see a game.

But then the Diamondbacks jumped to an early 3-0 lead off a double to left 
field that Chipper Jones should've caught. Boylin asked to borrow her 
friend's Insider.

"If it keeps going like this, the Cartoon Network's gonna start looking 
pretty good," Boylin said.
*******************
Euromedia.net
UK calls e-voting a success

The St Albans City and District Council has said its e-voting campaign in 
the recent local elections was a success .

The 10,000 voters in the St Albans constituencies of Sopwell and Verulam 
were able to vote online, by phone, by person, or through regular mail in 
Friday's local elections.

In Sopwell, where 23 per cent of the population turned out to vote, nearly 
24 per cent of voters used the internet to cast their ballots. That rose to 
more than 28 per cent in Verulam, where overall voter turnout was close to 
40 per cent.

About 30 local governments tested new voting technology, including via 
mobiles, digital TV (DTV) and telephones.

Wards that used SMS and online voting reported that voter turnout what five 
per cent higher than elsewhere, although some have argued this was because 
voter turnout was four per cent higher overall.

The federal government hasn't discussed what it will do after the pilot 
projects finished, except to say it plans to extend them to other areas.

However, Mike Lovelady, St. Albans head of legal and democratic services, 
predicts big reactions to the results of UK's e-voting programme. "We 
believe the success of the St Albans campaign will no doubt be part of the 
foundation of future voting methods used worldwide," he said.
********************
Sydney Morning Herald
Screen slaves
May 3 2002

Intense? Yes. Challenging? No doubt. But, asks Keith Austin, does playing 
hours and hours of back-to-back computer or video games qualify as an 
addiction?

The maker of EverQuest, the hugely successful online multiplayer game, is 
being sued by the mother of a 21-year-old who killed himself, she says, 
after becoming "addicted" to the game.

Before Shawn Woolley shot himself at his home in Hudson, Wisconsin, last 
year he had quit his job in a pizza restaurant and was playing EverQuest - 
known facetiously among the computer games fraternity as EverCrack - for up 
to 12 hours a day.

In Germany last week 19-year-old Robert Steinhaeuser shot dead 16 people at 
his former school. He was reportedly an avid player of the PC shoot-em-up 
game, Counter-Strike.

"It's like any other addiction," Elizabeth Woolley told American newspapers 
when she launched her bid to get Sony Online Entertainment to put warning 
labels on the games. "You either die, go insane or you quit. My son died."

Kevin Durkin, an associate professor of psychology at the University of 
Western Australia, has another view: "We don't know because we don't know 
enough about the circumstances [Woolley was an overweight epileptic who had 
been diagnosed with depression and a personality disorder] but it's 
possible that computer games may have kept him alive for longer than would 
have been the case if he didn't have them as a diversion."

And while Durkin will not deny that it's possible to get addicted, he says 
that the proportion of people who do is small, "much lower than the 
proportion of people who become addicted to drugs, alcohol or tobacco".

"In general ... if you or I started playing tomorrow it's not as if we 
would suddenly find we're hooked ... certainly the idea that people can be 
hooked by a particular game and be trapped there for the rest of their 
lives is pretty implausible, unless the person is seriously mentally ill to 
begin with."

Part of the difficulty, he explains, is in defining addiction. Nobody, for 
instance, suffers the agony of withdrawal symptoms if he/she can't get to a 
screen: "They might be unhappy but it's not quite as severe a reaction as 
not being able to get a drug once you're addicted to it.

"If a child gets addicted to nicotine, for example, then it's very 
difficult to get that individual off it for the rest of his or her life ... 
if a child goes through a phase of excessive involvement in computer games 
then there's a pretty good chance that over the next few years interest 
will diminish naturally."

If not addiction then, perhaps 'obsession' is a better word? "Obsession?" 
Durkin rolls the word around and concludes: "I suppose I'd call it 
engagement, intense engagement ... as any parent knows, you see kids who 
get any new toy and they'll play obsessively with it for a while and the 
next thing you know it's tossed to the back of the garage and never seen 
again. This is a very similar phenomenon."

Durkin is the author of two studies, in 1995 and 1999, that suggest 
computer games are only rarely addictive and that they can actually be 
beneficial to family life. The most recent study - a research project 
entitled Computer Games and Australians Today - found that 94 per cent of 
teenagers played computer or video games at least once a year and 
concluded: "Young people interviewed in focus groups said that computer 
games could be addictive when they were new but that the addiction soon waned.

"The predominant motives for game play ... are enjoyment, diversion and 
challenge. These are psychologically healthy motives, common to many 
leisure activities."

It's an argument often used by games players too. In reply to a question on 
addiction on Telstra's GameArena messageboard 
(http://games.telstra.com/gamearena), the majority of gamers were quick to 
point out that if the same criteria were applied to chess, reading, 
watching television and just about any sport at elite level then everyone 
would be classed as addicts.

Take, for instance, Quiet, a gamer from Canberra, who wrote: "Game playing 
is not a novelty nor is it a nerd activity. It is a mainstream leisure 
activity for many, particularly amongst the younger generations brought up 
with PCs at home and school.

"It is just another leisure choice like playing sport or watching TV ... 
given the interactive nature of the Net, the level of grassroots 
involvement (such as voting for players to represent countries and 
organising practice matches with the 'sporting elite') is astonishing and 
certainly a much more exciting prospect to many than a night of TV watching.

"If this was thought of as a sport like rugby league or cricket I don't 
suspect we would be seeing articles about kids being 'addicted' to it."

And then there's Beef Machine from Melbourne, who points out: "What do most 
people do when they come home after a day's work, have cleaned up, had tea? 
They watch TV. They stare mindlessly at flashing images for hours on end.

"What do we, the game players, do of an evening? Jump online, play a few 
rounds, chat to others, mail spam forums, browse, play some more, chat some 
more ... a hell of a lot more fun and involving than mindless television."

Agreeing with this is Chris Johnson, a lecturer on computer games at UTS's 
faculty of information technology. He asks what is addiction - the number 
of hours you play? On that basis "no game player would be as addicted as 
the average child or adult is to TV given the number of hours they spend at 
it".

"Personally, I think any serious sports person today is addicted. And that 
addiction is far worse; the hours they spend, the lack of schooling, the 
monotony of doing the same thing over and over and over again. Life should 
be rich in experiences, teenagers and kids should have a whole range of 
things they do - not spending 5-7am swimming, go to school, come back, do 
another four hours, practise on Saturday and practise on Sunday.

"To me, that's seriously bad addiction. You're consuming a lot of your time 
and not allowing anything else to come into it, and you're given this model 
that you have to win, right? It's not about playing the game. Whereas if 
you play computer games - OK if you play long enough you'll eventually win, 
but if you win all the time you'll eventually stop playing because it's too 
easy," he laughs.

As far as Johnson is concerned games like Civilization or Sim City are, if 
anything, beneficial: "These games are intellectual challenges, puzzles. 
They require perseverance, they require understanding ... anything that 
makes human beings think has got to be good."

Like Durkin, Johnson is of the opinion that addiction is the wrong word for 
the behaviour of gamers: "You get enthralled, yes, you get involved ... 
addiction is far too strong."

Oh no, it's not, say critics such as American Dr James Fearing, chief 
executive of National Counselling Intervention Services, who warned last 
year that about 7 per cent of computer users are addicted to chat rooms and 
gaming.

Fearing believes that using the Internet can be just as addictive as 
gambling but refuses to blame games themselves. Addicts, he says, suffer 
the same personality traits as people who form other addictions.

He's also certain that the problem will only increase as more and more 
people connect to the Internet. Opinion among gamers is divided. Most throw 
around the term "addict" loosely and are vociferous in their belief that 
computer games are no more harmful than, as Chris Johnson says, the 
"addictions" many of us have for "Minis or Jaguars or sailing".

Tell that to George, a former games player from Adelaide, who says he 
bombed out of Year 12 because of his Internet games addiction: "It really 
does consume you ... it got to the point where I was sleeping at school. I 
was a blank; brain turned to mush. I was going to school and sitting there 
staring blankly at the wall until lunch, when I'd stumble across to the 
courtyard and stare blankly at a different wall."

After a teacher began to get concerned, George deleted all his games and 
gave away all his disks: "I would put it in the same league as giving up 
smoking after four years, which is what I've recently done."

And he has a warning that echoes Dr Fearing's prophecy: "The up and coming 
generation is going to be plagued by it ... and there's nothing anyone can 
do about it."

Someone who's not so sure is games player Black Lord, from somewhere in 
Victoria. He is totally convinced that gaming is addictive and believes 
that warning labels are needed. He would also like to see games such as 
EverQuest created in such a way that there aren't such "massive rewards for 
24/7 play".

"By making gamers and game developers aware of the issue," he writes, "it 
can be stopped now in a sensible way - not by banning these games outright, 
just modifying them to reduce the advantage of playing them for long 
stretches at a time. Perhaps by requiring the online characters to 
sleep/rest for X amount of time per day."

The games industry is unlikely to take up such measures, if the response of 
Sony Computer Entertainment Australia managing director Michael Ephram is 
anything to go by. "It's a bit like a CD saying 'turn me off and feed the 
dog please' - it's a ludicrous situation." Ephram also points out that the 
PS2 manual suggests taking regular breaks from playing.

Perhaps the last word should go to UWA's Kevin Durkin: "I've got a 
colleague who works on the mathematics of addiction; he points out that for 
almost anything, whether it's buying toothpaste or drinking orange juice or 
gambling or playing computer games, you will find a small proportion of the 
population that will engage in that behaviour to excessive lengths.

"Then what tends to happen is that these extremes make for an interesting 
story - such as the EverQuest guy - but clearly this is not happening all 
the time. It's one in probably 100 million young Americans who are playing 
computer games has decided to kill himself."

Or maybe Spag, from Melbourne: "Personally, I feel the type of person who 
watches every minute and becomes enamoured of the current crop of reality 
television shows such as Big Brother is someone who bears watching more 
than someone who enjoys playing a lot of computer games."

A truer word was never spoken.


Gameover
How excessive gaming can affect you physically.


Main problems

Stiffness, aches, pains and soreness are most likely in muscles between 
neck and shoulders, especially for those playing PC-based games. Playing 
the games leaves people in a heightened state of anxiety as they try to 
stop themselves getting "killed" and leads to excessive tension and strain 
in the trapezius muscles.

Headaches and eye problems such as blurred vision are the next most common 
complaints. It's harder work for your eyes to focus on something quite 
close for a long period. Fainting spells and fits, though uncommon, are not 
unknown.

Depending on what games they play and what devices they're using, it's 
going to be wrist, finger and thumb problems. Most common among action 
games with lots of button pressing. Typical symptoms can include tingling 
and numbness in the thumb, index and middle fingers, weakness in grasping.


Other problems

Back Excessive curving of lower, middle, and upper back; rounded shoulders; 
and excessive forward curving of upper neck is a natural result of being 
slumped over games in a flexed position, increasing pressure on the discs 
in the back.

Tennis elbow Another type of RSI, it is a common cause of elbow and forearm 
pain. Pain may also radiate up the arm or down into the forearm.

Hands Cuts, punctures, blisters and friction burns from aggressive joystick 
movements. Tendonitis in thumb from repetitive use of toggle switches, also 
known as "Nintendo Thumb". Excessive mouse use can strain index finger 
tendons. Joysticks can strain the tendons on the palm side of the wrist.

Legs Some numbness through inaction.
*********************
Peoples Daily  China
Chinese Scientists Bring Forth New Digital Signature Device

Chinese scientists successfully developed a new and sophisticated digital 
signature device to efficiently solve the identity verification problem 
under Internet environment.

The current digital signature in e-business usually adopts password as an 
access key, which is easy to get lost and decoded. While the digital 
signature device named "eBioSign" developed by Hangzhou Miaxis Biometrics 
Co., Ltd can solve the problem effectively.

The device, sized like a stamp, takes people's fingerprints as an access 
control method to protect private key. It raises the security level of 
private key administration and, therefore, improve security functions on 
the Internet such as identity verification, digital signature and data 
encryption.

Scientific statistics show one's fingerprint is unique among 5 billion 
people during a period of 300 years, which means using fingerprint as 
private key and password is of higher reliability.

The new device, using fingerprint verification to open digital signature, 
effectively raises the security level without fearing loss of password.

The device can so far store at most eight users' private keys, each 
corresponding to user's fingerprint. For more assurance, each user can 
store as many as four fingerprints of his/her own. As a result, the error 
rate of verification is reduced to almost zero.
******************
Peoples Daily  China
China Releases World's First National IT Index
China's and the world's first national information technology (IT) index 
has drawn a true picture of the adoption of IT in the country and is 
expected to further accelerate its process.

The National Informatization Quotient (NIQ) - believed by Wu Jichuan, 
minister of MII, as another important indicator to gauge the development of 
gross domestic product - comprises 20 items, including computer owners per 
thousand people, per capita band width, the contribution rate of the 
information industry to the national economy, and Internet users per 
million people.

"After eight years' hard work, we finally launched the NIQ index, and it 
will become a key index of China's IT development," said Song Ling, 
director of China Informatization Evaluation Centre (NIEC) and 
director-general of the Department for the Promotion of Informatization 
under the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

Song believed the index will be a guideline for the promotion and adoption 
of IT.

According to NIEC's report, the NIQ in 2000 was 38.46, compared with 30.14 
in 1999 and 25.89 in 1998, and the average growth rate in the three years 
was 21.9 per cent, much higher than the average growth of the national 
economy at 7-8 per cent.

According to Jiang Qiping, due to some statistical problems, the NIQ for 
last year will not be published until later this year.


Information technology playing greater role in China's economy
China's 2000 national informatization quotient is 38.46, compared with 
30.14 in 1999 and 25.89 in 1998, according to a national evaluation made by 
the China National Informatization Evaluation Centre (NIEC).

Entrusted by the Informatization Department of the Ministry of Information 
Industry, the centre issued the Evaluation Result of the State 
Informatization Index and a research report on the State informatization 
level on March 19 in Beijing.

Related experts said the national information quotient (NIQ) is an 
important national index besides the gross domestic product (GDP) to 
demonstrate a country's comprehensive strength.

The evaluation was made based on 20 aspects of China's national 
Informatization.

They include:

1. Radio and TV broadcasting hours/per 1,000 people

2. Bandwidth per person

3. Telephone use: frequency per person

4. Total length of long distance cable

5. Microwave channels: number in total channels

6. Total number of satellite stations

7. Number of telephone lines per 100 people

8. Number of cable TV stations per 1,000 people

9. Number of Internet users per 1 million people

10. Number of computers per 1,000 people

11. Number of TV sets per 100 people

12. Total capacity of Internet data bank

13. E-commerce trade volume

14. Proportion of investment in the Information Industry by enterprises to 
the total fixed investment

15. Added value contributed by the information Industry to the total GDP

16. Contributions made by the information industry to the total GDP increase

17. Proportion of expenses for research and development (R&D) of the 
information industry to the country's total budget in R&D

18. Proportion of investment on the infrastructural development of the 
information industry to the country's total investment in capital construction

19. Proportion of university graduates per 1,000 people

20. Information Index

China's 2000 national informatization quotient of 38.46 shows that the 
index for 19 provinces, cities and autonomous regions was higher than the 
country's average, and that of 12 provinces was lower.

The average informatization index of China increased an average of 21.9 per 
cent annually during the 1998-2000 period.

The rapid increase indicates that the development of informatizaton is 
playing an increasingly important role in China's economy.

The research results are expected to be of great importance in setting up a 
national informatization index system; evaluating the informatization level 
of a country and region; directing the development of informatization in 
various regions, and helping a country to reach the strategic goal to 
develop industrialization through the progress of the information industry.
******************
Taipei Times
Tech firms in Hsinchu prepare for water shortages
By Joyce Huang
STAFF REPORTER

High-technology investors in Taiwan are hoping that the government will 
keep the water taps open, as more restrictive water-rationing measure take 
effect in Taipei today.

"It would be a suicidal situation if chip producers had to cut production, 
because their global competitors may step in and take over the market -- 
which would be hard for local chip producers to regain," said David Loomis, 
a strategist at Primasia Securities Co.

Many companies in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (¦Ë¬ì) are 
searching for back-up water sources in addition to government assurances, 
he said.

The central government promised a continuous supply of water by trucking in 
supplies and drilling new wells. On Monday the National Science Council 
(°ê¬ì·|) said that if the water supply falls by 20 percent in the park, 
semiconductor companies may be forced to cut production by half.

"The losses will be immeasurable if production were cut," said Tzeng 
Jin-hao (´¿®Êµq), public relations manager at Taiwan Semiconductor 
Manufacturing Co (TSMC, ¥x¿n¹q).

The park's administration on Monday nevertheless, vowed that the water 
level in Hsinchu's Paoshan (Ä_¤s) and Yunghe (¥Ã©M) reservoirs are 
sufficient to supply water to the park until the end of June.

The government said it would give special priority to the semiconductor, 
TFT display and the petrochemical industries.

"The water-rationing policy does not appear to have had a direct, immediate 
impact on Taiwan's semiconductor and TFT-LCD industries because it's a 
government priority to supply sufficient water to the high value-added 
industries," said Neal Stovicek, a strategic advisor at National Securities 
Corp.

If the water shortage worsens, Stovicek said that the high-tech industry 
will implement contingency measures to boost water sources, including the 
purchase of water domestically or from abroad.

Major companies in Hsinchu yesterday said that water shortage has not yet 
affected them.

"There is currently no lack of water," TSMC's Tseng said.

The company is doing all it can to reduce its use of water, including 
revising production processes in compliance with government policy, he said.

TSMC Chairman Morris Chang however, said that he fears that the dry spell 
could affect the sector's orders and production, and that he hopes the 
government will quickly draw up measures to cope with the crisis.

Officials at United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, Áp¹q) said that they have 
also instituted water-conservation measures.

Silicon Integrated Systems Corp  -- Taiwan's second-largest designer of 
computer chipsets, said that the company is located near water mains and it 
does not suffer from the 10 percent to 15 percent reduction in water 
pressure that has affected the surrounding area.

A spokeswoman from SiS, who refused to be identified, said that the company 
has an underground storage tank which offers a five-day back-up water supply.

Silicon previously invested NT$150 billion to build a water-recycling 
system, which is capable of recycling up to 85 percent of the company's 
wastewater, she said.

Computer chipset designer VIA Technologies Inc will not be affected by the 
drought, VIA spokesman William Lee said yesterday. But he warned that the 
company's downstream manufacturers, including chip foundries, said they 
would seek out production lines in Singapore or the US to take over the 
orders if domestic plants were forced to shut down.
********************

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