Clips January 28, 2004

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips January 28,
2004

ARTICLES

Virulent MyDoom virus skirts feds, military users
Gloomy forecast for MyDoom fallout
DSL Lawsuit Against BellSouth Dismissed
Cybersquatters continued to plague big-name brands, celebrities in
2003
China Holds 54 Over Use Of Internet, Group Says 
Frist aide put on leave in probe
Capitol Flag Resale Questioned 
Sites match voters, candidates
U.S. creates cyberalert system
IRS to miss e-filing target?
NASA?s Mars images generate billions and billions of hits 
DHS seeks bids to build secret network 
Oracle Adds RFID Support To Its Software
GPS technology helps in lake ice rescue

*******************************
Government Computer News
Virulent MyDoom virus skirts feds, military users 
By Wilson P. Dizard III and William Jackson 
1/27/04

The W32/MyDoom virus now raging across the Internet has special code
designed to prevent it from attacking federal and military users,
according to Symantec Corp. 

?This particular virus tries to avoid sending itself to any domain with a
.gov or .mil extension,? said Alfred Huger, senior director of
engineering for Symantec security response. ?It contains a list that says
do not mail to these domains or if these words are contained? in the
address. 

The virus' method of skirting the federal government ?certainly does
work, but it isn't foolproof because there are government domains that
don't contain these extensions,? he said. Huger also cited state.us and
local government domains as potential targets. 

The security engineer added that the MyDoom virus, also known as Norvag,
is designed to avoid domains of antivirus vendors and major software
companies, such as IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp. ?We think the reason
that it does this is to give this [virus] author a little more time for
MyDoom to spread before people who are likely to do something about it
respond,? he said. 

Huger predicted that MyDoom likely would lurk on the Internet for a long
time, partly because it is targeted at home users who are less educated
about systems security.
*******************************
CNET News.com
Gloomy forecast for MyDoom fallout
Last modified: January 27, 2004, 11:35 AM PST
By Robert Lemos 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

The mass-mailing MyDoom virus has become the fastest spreading program to
date and the damage could continue for months or years. 

The virus, also known as Novarg and Mimail.R, spread quickly across the
Internet on Monday, traveling as an e-mail attachment and infecting PCs
whose users opened the malicious file.

When opened, the virus installs a stealth program on the victim's
computer that opens up a software "back door." Attackers can
then bypass the PC's security and turn the system into a bounce point, or
proxy, for any network-based attack. 

The virus has programmed infected PCs to send data to the SCO Group's Web
server between Feb. 1 and Feb. 12. The SCO Group has incurred the wrath
of the Linux community for its claims that important pieces of the
open-source operating system are covered by SCO's Unix copyrights. IBM,
Novell and other Linux backers strongly dispute the claims. 

Perhaps more troubling is the fact that other online vandals could route
new attacks through the infected PCs, said Alfred Huger, senior director
of engineering for security software firm Symantec. 

"For people that handle incident response, (the proxies) will cause
problems," he said. Attackers can use the proxies to hide their real
locations, making it very difficult to trace the origin of an online
assault. "This is going to hang around and hound us for a long
time--if Code Red is any indication, for years."

The Code Red worm infected Windows computers running Microsoft's Web
server software, called Internet Information Server. While the primary
infection hit in July 2001, tens of thousands of computers remain
infected with the worm, which is still scanning the Internet looking for
vulnerable systems to infect. 

The effects of the massive spread of the MyDoom virus have already been
felt. 

The virulent program has flooded the Internet with e-mail messages
bearing the program, doubling the time it takes most major Web sites to
deliver a page. About one in every 12 messages being sent through the
Internet contains the virus, said e-mail service provider MessageLabs.
The previously most prevalent mass-mailing virus, called Sobig.F, only
accounted for one out of every 17 e-mail messages.

"This is the most aggressive that we have seen to date," said
Mark Sunner, chief technology officer for MessageLabs, which filters
e-mail for corporate customers. However, Sunner believed that the
infection rate of the virus had begun slowing by Tuesday afternoon.
"It has had one cycle around the world, so it's likely that it's
peaked." In the first 27 hours of the infection, MessageLabs
quarantined more than 1.5 million messages that included the
virus.

The virus affects computers running Windows versions 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000
and XP, and arrives in the user's in-box as an attachment to an e-mail
message that appears to be an error response from an e-mail server.

The message sports one of several different random subject lines, such as
"Mail Delivery System," "Test" or "Mail
Transaction Failed." The body of the e-mail contains an executable
file and a statement such as: "The message contains Unicode
characters and has been sent as a binary attachment." and "The
message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent
as a binary attachment." 

The Web site for SCO Group, the target of the virus, was slow to load on
Monday and Tuesday, a SCO spokesperson acknowledged. The site has had
intermittent problems responding to requests over the past two days,
according to Internet performance measurement firm NetCraft. 

SCO's Web site was knocked offline by denial-of-service attacks several
times in the past year, none of which had been initiated by a virus. In
the past, the company has blamed Linux sympathizers for at least one of
the attacks. 

The MyDoom virus also copies itself to the Kazaa download directory on
PCs, on which the file-sharing program is loaded. The virus camouflages
with one of seven file names: Winamp5, icq2004-final, Activation_Crack,
Strip-gril-2.0bdcom_patches, RootkitXP, Officecrack and Nuke2004.

Not everyone agreed that the attack tools installed on infected systems
will have a significant impact on Internet security. With the large
number of PCs with poor security, MyDoom-infected computers will be a
drop in the bucket, said Vincent Gullotto, vice president of antivirus
research for security software company Network Associates. 

"There are lots and lots of people that are out there that are
compromised today," he said. "I think the mass-mailing part
will have more of an impact."
*******************************
Associated Press
DSL Lawsuit Against BellSouth Dismissed
Tue Jan 27, 9:25 PM ET

MIAMI - A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit that claimed
BellSouth Corp. broke antitrust law by requiring customers seeking
high-speed DSL lines to buy its local phone service.


U.S. District Judge Alan Gold ruled that the customers lacked legal
standing to pursue the lawsuit and failed to state any valid legal claims
against the Atlanta-based regional Bell. 


The lawsuit was filed in February 2003 in Miami by BellSouth-DSL customer
Richard Levine. 


It sought to band similar BellSouth customers in a class action in the
nine Southern states where BellSouth provides 85 percent of local phone
service and 80 percent of the fast digital phone lines. 


Calls to BellSouth and plaintiff attorneys were not immediately returned.


The suit claimed the dual-service requirement artificially raised the
price for local telephone service and helped BellSouth maintain a
monopoly. 


Under state regulations, existing DSL customers can switch to a different
local provider if the company has a service agreement with
BellSouth.
*******************************
Associated French Press
Cybersquatters continued to plague big-name brands, celebrities in
2003
Tue Jan 27,11:02 AM ET

GENEVA (AFP) - Famous brands and celebrities continue to fall foul of
cybersquatters, with the number of complaints about unfair domain names
lodged last year almost unchanged from 2002, the World Intellectual
Property Organisation (WIPO) said. 


The WIPO arbitration centre received 1,100 cases in 2003 or roughly three
complaints per day about disputed website addresses such as
pepsi-smash.com, calvinklein-watches.com, piercebrosnan.com and
jrrtolkien.com. 


A trademark holder has the right to complain to the United Nations'
intellectual property body if he or she believes their name is being used
on an Internet site by a third party without their authority. 


Similarly, a person with a common law right to a name is able to lodge a
case at WIPO. 


An arbitrator then rules who has the right to use a particular web
address, but does not have the power to impose any financial penalities
for the misuse of someone else's name. 


"The fact that over 80 percent of the WIPO expert decisions went in
favour of the trademark holder, be it a large multinational corporation
or a small or medium-sized business, underlines the bad faith inherent in
this practice," said WIPO deputy director-general Francis Gurry.


The number of cases registered last year was an improvement from an
average of five-per-day in 1999, but the level was barely changed from
2002 due to the growing number of domain name spaces and more relaxed
rules for registering country code addresses, such as dot-uk or dot-ch, a
WIPO spokesperson said. 


"While daily filings with WIPO are less now than in the early days
of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, we need to continue
our efforts to ensure that the rights of legitimate trademark owners are
not diluted," Gurry said in a statement. 


Asked whether the sustained level of complaints indicated the arbitration
system was failing to deter cybersquatters and should be strengthened, a
WIPO official explained that a balance had to be made between providing
an effective enforcement mechanism and not over-stepping legal
boundaries. 


At present, both parties in a domain name dispute have the right to go to
court to challenge a WIPO ruling or to pursue financial damages for
trademark infringement, said Eric Wilbers, deputy director of the WIPO's
arbitration centre.
*******************************
Washington Post
China Holds 54 Over Use Of Internet, Group Says 
By Philip P. Pan
Wednesday, January 28, 2004; Page A18 

BEIJING, Jan. 28 -- The Chinese government is holding at least 54 people
in prison for allegedly using the Internet to disseminate political
opinions or other information it considers dangerous, 21 more than the
number known to have been detained on Internet-related charges in China a
year ago, according to a report released Wednesday by Amnesty
International.

The London-based human rights group said the figure included only those
cases it has been able to confirm through multiple sources, and that
there are probably many more people imprisoned in China for expressing
views on the Web that the ruling Communist Party finds subversive or a
threat to state security.

China has been trying to strengthen its ability to control and monitor
what its citizens see and write on the Internet as cyberspace becomes an
increasingly important forum for Chinese to discuss public affairs and --
more worrying to the authorities -- to make contact with those in other
parts of the country who share their views.

The prisoners identified by Amnesty included students, factory workers,
lawyers, teachers, civil servants and businessmen, all serving two- to
12-year sentences. Their crimes included advocating democratic reform,
criticizing government corruption, calling for a review of the 1989
crackdown in Tiananmen Square, communicating with foreign organizations
deemed hostile to China and distributing information about last year's
SARS outbreak, which the government tried to cover up.

"We consider them all to be prisoners of conscience and reiterate
our calls to the Chinese authorities to release them immediately and
unconditionally," the group said.

There was no immediate response from the government. 

In addition to the 54 people in prison, the Amnesty report identified
four Falun Gong practitioners detained for downloading or posting
information about the banned spiritual movement who later died in police
custody. One of them, Zhao Chunying, 56, was arrested in April and was
reportedly beaten to death by police after she posted an account on the
Internet of being tortured during a previous detention.

The report said there were signs of increasing political activism on the
Internet, including online petitions in support of those who have been
detained, and it welcomed the release of a handful of prisoners,
including a college student, Liu Di, 23. 

But it also noted that at least four people in different parts of China
who had signed online petitions calling for Liu's release were arrested
last year and remain in prison: Cai Lujun, a businessman; Luo Changfu, a
laid-off worker; Du Daobin, a civil servant; and Kong Youping, a factory
employee.

Others sentenced to prison include Li Zhi, 32, a local official in
Sichuan province who allegedly communicated with exiled dissidents in
Internet chat rooms and asked to join the banned China Democracy Party,
and He Depu, 47, a member of the banned party who posted articles
advocating political reform. Both received eight-year prison terms.
*******************************
Washington Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS 
Frist aide put on leave in probe
    An aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has been
put on leave during an investigation into how Republicans gained access
to Democratic memos concerning opposition to President Bush's judicial
nominees. 
    Manuel Miranda, who works for the Tennessee Republican
on judicial nominations, is on leave pending the outcome of the inquiry
by the Senate sergeant-at-arms, Frist spokesman Nick Smith said
yesterday. In the matter under investigation, Democratic memos stored on
a computer server shared by Judiciary Committee members ended up in
Republican hands. 
    Mr. Miranda told the Knoxville News-Sentinel that
investigators were looking at work he performed for the Judiciary
Committee before he joined Mr. Frist's office. "There was no
stealing," he said. "No systematic surveillance. I never
forwarded these memos  period." 
    Asked about the investigation yesterday, Mr. Frist
refused to talk about it. 
    Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin G. Hatch, Utah
Republican, began the investigation in November after Sens. Richard J.
Durbin, Illinois Democrat, and Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat,
protested what they said was the theft of the memos from their servers.
The memos, concerning political strategy on blocking confirmation of
several of Mr. Bush's judicial nominations, were obtained and reported on
by the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times. 
    Republicans and Democrats on the committee got
separate servers during the just-completed year-end recess, officials
said. 
    Conservatives have talked up the memos as proof the
Democrats colluded with outside liberal groups in their choices of which
Bush appellate nominees to block. 
    The memos also show, conservatives contend, that
Hispanic lawyer Miguel Estrada was blocked largely for two reasons: 
    ?Confirmation would have put him in line for a Supreme
Court nomination, and Democrats did not want a Republican president to
appoint the first Hispanic to that court. 
    ?Democrats wanted to keep conservative nominees off
the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals until after the University of
Michigan affirmative-action case was decided. 
    Mr. Hatch, the Judiciary chairman, placed an aide on
leave late last year for improperly obtaining data from the computer
networks of two Democratic senators. That aide, who has not been
identified, has since left government work, officials said. 
    The leak of the messages "shouldn't have
happened," Mr. Hatch said yesterday after being criticized by
conservatives for going along with the investigation. "I'd be the
first to admit that it shouldn't have happened, and I'm upset that it
did." 
    Mr. Hatch said he hoped to make the final report
public. 
    Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has been
working with the Secret Service and outside investigators since November
to try and determine how the Democratic memos got to Republicans. A
report is expected to go to Mr. Hatch's Judiciary Committee in about two
weeks, officials said. 
    Democrats have used the threat of a filibuster to
block six U.S. Appeals Court nominees this congressional term: Mr.
Estrada, Mississippi federal Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr., Alabama
Attorney General William Pryor, Texas Judge Priscilla Owen and California
Judges Carolyn Kuhl and Janice Rogers Brown. 
    Mr. Estrada had his nomination withdrawn last year.
Mr. Bush gave Judge Pickering a temporary "recess" appointment
to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this month.
*******************************
Washington Post
Capitol Flag Resale Questioned 
Associated Press
Wednesday, January 28, 2004; Page A19 

An Internet company that buys American flags from lawmakers for less than
$20 and then resells them for $79.99 or more has raised concerns at the
Capitol. 

The Architect of the Capitol alerted lawmakers last week that Internet
seller Capitol Flags had used "unsuspecting members' offices"
to obtain the flags that had flown over the Capitol. 

Brian Walsh, spokesman for the Committee on House Administration, said
the resale is "not breaking the letter of the law" but has
caused a lot of concern. It is "just price-gouging people," he
said. 

For less than $20, people can buy from their congressional representative
or senator a 3-by-5-foot flag that has been flown over the Capitol. For
example, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sell the flags for $13.30, including postage. The
same flag costs $79, plus $13.50 shipping and handling, when purchased
from Capitol Flags.

Capitol Flags also offers a 5-by-8-foot flag for $99.88 plus $16.48
shipping and handling, according to its Web site. The same flag can be
purchased from the House leaders for $22.05. 

Inquiries sent to the company through its contact e-mail address were
rejected. 

The story was reported in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.

The Architect of the Capitol is considering the creation of a
congressional Web site, which would show up at the top of Internet search
lists, to tell people how to purchase the flags from their elected
representatives.
*******************************
CNET News.com
Sites match voters, candidates
Last modified: January 27, 2004, 5:19 PM PST
By Paul Festa 

With online searches for boyfriends and girlfriends now commonplace, Web
sites are encroaching on a different kind of matchmaking--between voters
and political candidates. 

Increasingly, political news and information sites offer tools that
resemble those on dating sites, where the uncommitted can answer
questions about themselves to an engine that spits out an ideal candidate
or a ranked list of potential matches. 

One scholar of elections applauded the online political matchmakers,
citing the difficulty voters can have determining shifting stands on many
issues from multiple candidates through media coverage that tends to
focus more on daily campaign events than policy stands.

"What's great about these sites is they've made the effort to
characterize where the candidate stands, and they've made the matching
process easy," said Jon Krosnick, a visiting professor of
communications at Stanford University and board member of the National
Election Studies. "I think it's a terrific idea."

Sites that offer candidate match engines for the coming U.S. presidential
election range from lesser-known voter education projects, such as
SelectSmart.com and OnTheIssues.org, to America Online's President
Match.

"In 2000, this proved to be our most popular one-off feature of the
election guide," said Kathleen Hayden, a senior programming manager
for AOL News. Since the 2004 version launched earlier this month,
"we have seen the same indications that this is proving to be one of
its most popular features."

The political matchmakers enjoy significant word-of-mouth exposure on
discussion boards, blogs and e-mail lists. But they also receive
criticism from some voters.

"I can't put too much stock in any quiz of this format," Dan
Hall, a Ph.D. student in linguistics at the University of Toronto, wrote
in response to a blog about President Match. "I think the multiple
choice approach to issues is limited and (more dangerously) limiting. I
don't just want a candidate who opposes the invasion of Iraq and the
(USA) Patriot Act; I want one who also proposes creative, substantive,
effective alternatives."

AOL's Hayden acknowledged that the matchmaking engines are reductive, but
called them useful in the context of the election site's other
offerings.

"I'd have that concern if it were the only feature we were
offering," Hayden said. "But we have the luxury of having an
entire election guide."

Other sites offer political matchmaking engines to introduce people to
alternative political parties or political ideologies.
*******************************
CNET News.com
U.S. creates cyberalert system
Last modified: January 28, 2004, 7:59 AM PST
By Robert Lemos 

update The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday an
e-mail alert system aimed at informing two groups of citizens--technical
experts and the average home user--of potential online threats. 

The system, known as the National Cyber Alert System, will be maintained
and administered by the U.S. national computer emergency response team,
or US-CERT, but it relies on the expertise of many security companies,
said Amit Yoran, director of National Cyber Security Division of the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security.

"Part of the focus of the National Cyber Alert System is to
consolidate some of the information sources and come up with a national
perspective," he said. "This is one of the building blocks and
collaboration points for the public-private partnerships." 

Such cooperation between the government and private industry has been the
rallying cry of the security community and federal officials since the
Bush Administration began developing the National Strategy to Secure
Cyber Space, an effort that was begun a year ago. 

While the strategy has been criticized as being soft on an industry keen
to avoid regulation, several administration officials talked tough at the
National Cyber Security Summit in December. At that event, officials met
with technology industry experts to form plans in five areas: awareness
for home users and small businesses, cybersecurity early warning,
corporate governance and security, technical standards, and building
better security into software. 

As expected, the new alert service kicks off two days after the latest
e-mail virus, MyDoom, began spreading. The epidemic underscores the need
for a system to alert and inform Internet users. The mass-mailing
computer virus took off on Monday, spreading faster than any previous
virus, security experts said this week. 

PC users can sign up for the new alert service online by going to the
US-CERT Web site. The site offers four categories of e-mail alerts, two
for nontechnical people and two others for a technical audience.

In addition, the site offers ways for PC users and technical experts to
report incidents and vulnerabilities. 

Yoran stressed that the alert system is not done. 

"This is not the national alert system in its final format," he
said. "It is very much an iterative process."
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
IRS to miss e-filing target?
BY Florence Olsen 
Jan. 27, 2004

The Internal Revenue Service most likely will miss its goal of having 80
percent of all federal tax returns filed electronically by 
2007.

That prediction, coming from Larry Levitan, a member of the IRS Oversight
Board, stood undisputed by tax lawyers, tax accountants and taxpayer
advocates at the board's annual public meeting this week in Washington,
D.C.

While expressing his view that electronic filing has benefits for
everyone, others who said the IRS is unlikely to achieve the 80 percent
filing goal set by Congress joined Levitan. Last year, about 40 percent
of federal returns were filed electronically.

The five-member oversight board, an independent advisory group, makes
suggestions to the IRS on long-term strategies.

Misplaced marketing efforts, mistrust among taxpayers and dwindling
financial resources were among the concerns expressed by the tax industry
officials. Other industry officials said technical glitches could
discourage e-filers.

One of the government's e-filing successes, the IRS Free File program,
which lets some taxpayers file electronic returns at no cost, got off to
a bumpy start at the opening of this year's tax-filing season, according
to Michael Cavanagh, executive director of a group of tax preparation
software companies known as the Free File Alliance.

Cavanagh told the oversight board that several glitches, resulting from
the IRS moving ahead with its systems modernization project, disrupted
the e-filing experience for some early-season Free File taxpayers. The
greatest incentive for e-filing is a smooth user experience, Cavanagh
added. He praised the Free File program while he urged the IRS to perfect
its "blocking and tackling" moves, a reference to the technical
difficulties.

Some reports indicate that e-filers at all IRS Service Centers were
affected by software problems that caused a high number of returns to be
falsely rejected.

Other tax industry officials disagreed on whether programs in eight
states that make e-filing mandatory will hurt or help the federal
government's own e-filing efforts. Cavanagh called the state efforts
counterproductive, adding that tax preparation software companies cannot
afford to build 50 different versions of their products as would be
required to meet various state filing requirements.

But other taxpayer representatives said that state-mandated e-filing may
offer the best indirect means for the IRS to achieve its 80 percent
e-filing goal. Jeffrey Adelstone, chairman of the Information Reporting
Program Advisory Committee, which advises the IRS, said mandatory
e-filing will quickly spread to other states once state tax commissioners
realize the administrative savings they can achieve from it. Taxpayers
would be more likely to file their federal returns electronically if they
were required to go online to file their state returns.

Adelstone also suggested that legislation providing a tax credit for
e-filing would spur more citizens to file their returns electronically.
He said that additional legislation may be necessary to assure taxpayers
that their credit card and banking information will not be used for any
purpose other than e-filing.

The IRS Oversight Board heard from several tax organizations that said
the IRS could persuade more taxpayers to file their returns
electronically if the agency shifted its marketing focus. "The IRS
has failed to market e-filing compellingly," said Rick Oelerich, a
member of the Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee, which
also advises the IRS. Instead of promising faster returns, the marketing
message should be that e-filing reduces errors, he said.

Levitan, who is chairman of the oversight board's committee on business
transformation, warned that the IRS must face the prospect of getting
less money from Congress for modernizing its computer systems. And having
less money for modernization, he said, will not be helpful to the IRS as
it pushes to offer more e-filing services.
*******************************
Government Computer News
NASA?s Mars images generate billions and billions of hits 
By William Jackson 

NASA?s twin Mars Rover missions have proved to be crowd pleasers,
generating more than 4.5 billion hits on the space agency?s Web site.

?What we?re seeing is hands-down the biggest event we?ve ever seen at
NASA,? both in terms of single-day traffic and sustained interest, said
Internet Services Manager Brian R. Dunbar. 

It took less than two weeks this month to exceed traffic for all of last
year on NASA?s Web portal. 

?Comparisons are hard, because there is no central repository for
statistics, but as near as we can tell this is bigger than anything else
the government has ever handled,? Dunbar said. That includes the annual
tax-season rush to the IRS Web site and last year?s coverage of Hurricane
Isabel by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

NASA has been able to handle the volume because content management and
delivery has been outsourced to companies to provision the capacity for
massive spikes in demand. ETouch Systems Corp. of Freemont, Calif.,
provides content management that lets NASA publish the graphics that have
drawn so much attention. Speedera Networks Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif.,
hosts the Web portal and delivers content through a distributed network
of servers. 

According to Speedera, peak traffic reached almost 50,000 simultaneous
online viewers of streaming video of the Mars Rover Opportunity landing
on Jan. 24. The company registered more than 33 million unique visitors,
each viewing an average of 17 pages and spending eight minutes on the
site. 

Speedera was chosen to host NASA Web content when the agency redesigned
its decentralized Web pages under a central portal in 2002. At that time,
the main Web page was hosted on a server in the basement of NASA
headquarters in Washington. 

?We wanted to get the public sites as much as possible off our network,?
because of the demand created by spikes in traffic, Dunbar said.

NASA set the baseline for traffic based on demand generated by space
shuttle missions, and planned to accommodate spikes beyond that. ?It has
worked very well,? Dunbar said. 

?We figured from the start it was going to be big,? Dunbar said of the
Mars missions. But the scope of the demand came as a bit of a surprise.
?We thought there might be some fall-off between the first and second
landing,? but online viewership of video from mission headquarters and
photos from the rovers proved to be just as great the second time around.

Dunbar said he expected interest to remain high. 

?We?re still in the early part of the mission,? he said. ?There are some
great outcroppings that the scientists are just champing at the bit to
get a closer look at,? which are generating public interest. 

The troubled Spirit, which landed Jan. 3, is expected to come back online
in two or three weeks, creating more traffic. 

?They feel like they have a handle on what the problem is,? and NASA
scientists are working to bring Spirit back up, he said.
*******************************
Government Computer News
DHS seeks bids to build secret network 
By Wilson P. Dizard III 
1/27/04

The Homeland Security Department is soliciting vendors on the General
Services Administration?s Millennia contract to build and run the
Homeland Secure Data Network, a secret network for communication across
DHS. 

The department issued an HSDN proposal request late last year but then
withdrew it so officials could complete their review of the program and
align the network initiative with other DHS systems projects. 

This month, after settling on a plan for the network, the department
issued the solicitation to vendors on the governmentwide Millennia
acquisition contract, said Lee Holcomb, Homeland Security?s chief
technology officer. 

Millennia contractors Computer Sciences Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp.,
Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego and SRA
International Inc. of Fairfax, Va., are likely bidders for the HSDN
contract. Proposals are due to the department within weeks, Holcomb said.

Meanwhile, in the sensitive but unclassified arena, Holcomb said,
department officials want to link the Joint Regional Information Exchange
System with the Law Enforcement Online-Regional Information Sharing
System-Antiterrorist Information Exchange network operated with Justice
Department funding. 

?We believe there are viable ways for those programs to work together
technically,? Holcomb said. ?We are encouraging them to work together to
close the interoperability gap, and we have had positive responses from
both sides.? 

For unclassified networking, the department is building DHSInfo. So far,
it has begun the DHSInfo networks to serve users in Seattle and in
Indiana, Holcomb said. 

The pair of networks is based on a regional FBI information-sharing
system, the Dallas Emergency Response Network, that links managers of
critical infrastructure components and public-safety organizations in
Texas. 

DHS plans to launch a third DHSInfo network in Atlanta in about two
months, Holcomb said. 

The department also is continuing negotiations to consolidate its
software contracts through enterprise licenses, Holcomb said. The
department already has forged agreements with Autonomy PLC of Cambridge,
England, Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. 

?We have a list of a dozen or so companies that we are working with right
now to finalize licenses,? he said.
*******************************
Information Week
Oracle Adds RFID Support To Its Software 
Jan. 28, 2004
Vendor integrates radio-frequency identification technology and
electronic-product -code capabilities into Oracle Warehouse Management to
improve visibility into the supply chain.
By Laurie Sullivan

Oracle announced Tuesday at its AppsWorld conference in San Diego that it
has integrated radio-frequency identification technology and
electronic-product-code capabilities into Oracle Warehouse Management
software.
Full article See:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=FAESEEY5OAR2GQSNDBCSKHQ?articleID=17501607
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USA Today
GPS technology helps in lake ice rescue
1/27/04 3:47 pm updated 1/28/04 9:50 am

CLEVELAND (AP)  Cell phones, night-vision goggles and a satellite
tracking system are being credited with helping save the lives of 14
fishermen who were stranded on ice in Lake Erie. 
The Coast Guard was able to more easily find the men because they had a
global positioning system receiver, which allowed rescuers to track a
satellite signal to their location. 

The guard's goggles allowed them to see 5 miles ahead in the twilight and
the men had used their cellular phones to call for help Sunday when the
ice floe broke loose northwest of Catawba Island. 

"This group did everything right," said Mark Butts, a Coast
Guard helicopter pilot and the commanding officer at Air Station Detroit.

Everyone was back on land within two hours. No one was injured. 

The guard warns people to stay off the lake ice but still 50 to 100
people are rescued each year from ice floes on the Great Lakes, said
Jerry Popiel, chief of the command center section in the Coast Guard's
Ninth District. 

Most of the ice rescues occur on western Lake Erie. 

The annual cost of such rescues was not available, but Sunday's operation
cost $16,300. 

Butts rescued 10 of the men by shuttling them to land in three trips.

The four other men, who live on Put-in-Bay and were snowmobiling, were
brought back to the island on an airboat, along with their snowmobiles.

"Thank God for the Coast Guard," said Linda Neill, whose
husband was among the rescued. 

One of the rescued fishermen, Kim Neill of Bellevue, said he was grateful
for the five-minute flight to shore. 

"It was an amazing ride," he said. 

Neill has been using his global positioning system for about four years.
He also carries a cellular phone and wears a flotation suit. 

On Tuesday, Neill, 42, planned to return to the ice with an airboat to
recover his four-wheeler, two shanties and fishing gear. 

If conditions are right, Neill said he would go ice fishing in the same
location this weekend.
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USA Today
U.S. retailers give Wal-Mart a head start on RFID
By Emily Kaiser, Reuters
1/27/04 8:04 pm

CHICAGO  Wal-Mart Stores is getting a head start in the quest for
inventory-tracking technology that promises to replace bar codes, cut
costs and even prevent theft, but other retailers don't seem to
mind.
Analysts said this wait-and-see approach may actually be the best bet
because the radio frequency identification  or RFID  technology
is pricey and still needs to be perfected.

A survey by consulting firm BearingPoint of U.S. retailers with more than
$200 million in annual revenues found that just 23% consider RFID a
priority for 2004.

Wal-Mart has set a January 2005 deadline for its top 100 suppliers to
start using RFID tags, which use radio frequencies to send such
information as the merchandise's origination point or the expiration date
for perishable items.

"The very large retailers are looking at RFID, but they're not going
to spend as much money as Wal-Mart," said John Cummings, a managing
director of McLean, Virginia-based BearingPoint. "The technology
needs to mature some."

RFID has been around for decades, and is currently used in devices like
the gas station "Speedpass" that lets customers pay for fuel by
simply waving a keychain in front of a reader.

Retailers plan to use RFID to track merchandise from the manufacturer to
the store, helping to control inventory and reduce theft. The idea is,
suppliers affix a Band-Aid-sized tag onto merchandise, and retailers
install readers that collect the data once the tags come within
range.

Retailers are hoping that someday everything in the store will carry an
RFID tag that will allow them to track electronically when shelves are
empty, or when goods disappear off the loading dock.

Theft is a major issue for retail chains  not just shoplifting, but
larger-scale looting from warehouses and storage rooms. Employee theft
cost U.S. retailers $15 billion in 2002, far more than the $10 billion
they lost to shoplifting, according to the National Retail
Federation.

Unlike bar codes, which contain a limited amount of information that must
be scanned by hand, RFID tags hold more data that electronic readers
automatically cull. As a result, retailers won't need a human being to
scan the tag.

Wait and see

For now, most retailers are content to let Wal-Mart spend the money and
work through any hassles, but analysts say they would be reckless to let
the dominant player get too far ahead on what could one day become the
industry standard.

"Somebody has to be first, but you don't want to give them too much
of a lead-time," said Scott Hardy, a vice president with
BearingPoint.

The key is to keep up with the technology while Wal-Mart tests it out and
get ready to jump in once the kinks are worked out, analysts
said.

"As long as the other retailers are spending a minimal amount of
effort  having experts getting familiar with it, staying in touch
with (RFID researchers)  it is a reasonable strategy to let Wal-Mart
do the experimenting and refinement," said Gib Carey, a partner at
Boston-based consulting firm Bain & Co.

Indeed, Carey and others said retailers may actually be wise to hold off
for a couple of more years because RFID still needs a lot of work before
it can live up to the promise of lowering costs and stopping
thieves.

For example, readers sometimes have trouble gathering information through
liquids or metal  a major problem for grocery stores trying to track
cases of soft drinks, cleaning supplies or canned vegetables.

Reliability is also a concern, Carey said. Until retailers are confident
that the tags would be read correctly 99.999% of the time, he said, they
would have to keep back-up systems running, which could be costly and
cumbersome.

"I wouldn't blow it out big if it weren't reliable," he
said.

BearingPoint's Cummings said that for most retailers, RFID doesn't make
much economic sense until they can start using it on every item in the
store.

Retailers envision "smart shelves" that would know when it's
time to restock or if items are in the wrong place, and instant check-out
lines that would tally up purchases as customers push their carts past an
RFID reader.

Some analysts say it could be a decade before such technology becomes
good enough and cheap enough. The key will be to make RFID tags as easy
to use as bar codes.

For now, Wal-Mart is requiring its suppliers to affix tags only on
pallets and cases of goods, not individual items, so those bar codes
won't disappear just yet.
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