[no subject]

AT&T Broadband Considers Arbitration Against CSG 
Thu Mar 14, 4:36 PM ET 

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (Reuters) - Customer care and billing services provider CSG
Systems Inc. on Thursday said it was notified by AT&T Broadband, a unit of AT&T
Corp. , that it is considering arbitration against CSG in an attempt to
terminate a contract. 
  
Shares of the Englewood, Colorado-based company closed down 14.98 percent, or
$5.31, to $30.14 in Nasdaq trading. Earlier in the day, the stock fell to
$28.87, its lowest point since October 2000 -- the last time AT&T, its biggest
customer, requested arbitration. 
CSG said arbitration would only become an option if the two companies are
unable to negotiate a resolution relating to their Master Subscriber Management
System Agreement. 
According to the company, if a negotiated resolution is not achieved, AT&T
Broadband could seek to terminate the agreement on its fifth anniversary, on
Aug. 10. 
AT&T Broadband, the No. 1 U.S. cable television company, claims CSG failed to
provide bundled billing services and has not cooperated with attempts to
utilize another vendor to provide these services. 
CSG said the AT&T claims are ?entirely without merit.? The company also said it
intends to negotiate in good faith with AT&T Broadband. 
AT&T Broadband previously asked for arbitration in September 2000. The matter
was settled amicably less than 2 weeks later. 
USA Today
Oscar rules ads with golden fist
By Michael McCarthy, USA TODAY 
This Diet Pepsi ad starring Cindy Crawford made the cut. 
It?s that time of year for Oscar buzz. It?s also the time for the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to perform a little-known ritual behind the
scenes: censoring both the advertiser list and the TV commercial content that
you?ll see during ABC?s March 24 telecast.
The so-called Super Bowl for Women is usually the second-most-watched U.S.
special telecast each year after the Super Bowl, drawing about 45 million
viewers, a majority women.
The academy?s multimillion-dollar, 10-year deal with broadcast partner ABC is
special, too: The group retains complete veto rights over advertising in the
show.
?We approve the advertisers and the individual spots,? says Ric Robertson,
executive administrator of the 75-year-old academy in Beverly Hills, Calif.
The Hollywood moguls are dead serious when it comes to forcing Madison Avenue
to adhere to the ?Oscar Rules.?
Among their advertising no-nos:
Attention Oscar Mayer: Don?t try to buy time on the show. No ads can use the
words ?Oscar,? ?Oscars,? ?Academy Award? or ?Academy Awards.? And nobody gets
to use the trademarked image of Oscar except the academy and ABC. 
Ad agencies should put down the phone if they want to air best actress nominee
Halle Berry?s Pepsi Twist ad or show one of the ads host Whoopi Goldberg has
done. No ads can feature nominees, performers or presenters scheduled to appear
on the telecast. 
The only time you?ll see clips from A Beautiful Mind or Lord of the Rings are
during the telecast. No nominated films can be used in ads. 
So don?t look for silly parodies of award shows during commercial breaks. No
ads can detract from the solemn ?dignity? of the Oscars or refer to the event. 
Oscar do?s and don?ts 
Advertisers purchasing commercial time on ABC?s telecast of the Academy Awards
on March 24 must follow the Academy?s strict script. Here?s what they can  and
can?t  do on Oscar night:  
Ads must be appropriate to the overall image and dignity of the Academy Awards.
That includes not only the commercials themselves but also links to the
advertiser?s Web site, the URL and buffer pages. 
No ads can use in any way the trademarked Oscar statuette. No ads can use the
names ?Oscar,? ?Oscars,? ?Academy Award? or ?Academy Awards.? 
No ad can feature nominees, performers or presenters scheduled to appear that
night. 
No ads can incorporate current or potentially nominated films. 
No ads can directly or indirectly tie in with awards presented by the Academy. 
Source: USA TODAY 
The academy leaves nothing to chance: An internal team reviews all commercials
before they go on the air, Robertson says. Sometimes they reject spots out of
hand. Sometimes they send the spots back to ad agencies with suggested editing
changes. If they get wind in advance of an ad they?re concerned about, they ask
to see storyboards early on.
The goal? To eliminate anything that ?demeans or degrades? the Oscars or ?blurs
the line? between the commercials and the show, Robertson says.
Some Madison Avenue executives, however, think the ?Oscar Rules? go overboard
given ads must already run the gamut of network censors at ABC. ?Does this mean
we can?t use Oscar De La Hoya in our ads? Or Oscar Madison?? asks Jim Ferguson,
chief creative officer for Young & Rubicam in New York.
Ferguson has worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, where he wrote the Little
Giants script, and on Madison Avenue where his ?Make 7Up Yours? campaign was
rejected as too racy for the Super Bowl. So Ferguson has a beef with network
censorship in general. ?They can show Dennis Franz?s butt on TV  but we can?t
say ?Make 7Up Yours?? I don?t understand why they hold us to different
standards than their own programming.?
They say a principle is not a principle unless it costs you money. ABC and the
academy say they are leaving money on the table this year to maintain the
upscale look of the Oscars show.
The network is not accepting any ad bucks either from movie studios or personal
hygiene marketers, according to Mike Shaw, president of sales and marketing for
ABC. That?s costing the network. While the show sold out by mid-February,
prices have dropped 7% to $1.2 million, media buyers say.
With the ad recession driving out some longtime advertisers, such as Revlon,
the academy has had to open the door to second-tier marketers this year, such
as Salton and ING. The more liberal policy at least keeps out the ?fourth-tier
marketers,? Robertson says.
The academy does not sell ads directly. ABC pockets ad sales from marketers.
The network then pays the academy a ?license fee? that Robertson will only say
is in the ?millions.?
Similar to the Super Bowl, more Oscar advertisers are creating commercials just
for the event. Exclusive retail advertiser J.C. Penney will target the 60% of
the viewing audience that is female with two 90-second spots from DDB Chicago.
They show a customer?s journey from girlhood to motherhood.
?Our female customers really look to this as the place to see their heroes and
heroines of the silver screen,? says Patrick Conboy, director of strategic
marketing for the $32 billion chain.
Diet Pepsi and BBDO, New York are remaking a famous ad from 1991. The sequel
shows teenage boys ogling supermodel-turned-supermom Cindy Crawford.
USA Today
Fewer jobs may force many immigrants to go home
By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY 
The economic downturn means scores of immigrants who poured into this country
on special visas for skilled workers face little choice but to return home.
Here?s why:
Layoffs. Many immigrants have arrived in the USA on H-1B visas, which mean that
their ability to stay hinges on employer sponsorship. But as companies
downsize, these workers are finding themselves out of jobs. Their visa status
ends as soon as they?re downsized. 
Case in point: Dozens of those laid off from Enron were on H-1B visas and may
have to return to their native countries.
?It?s sad, really,? says Margaret Wong, a Cleveland-based immigration lawyer
who says her caseload has tripled in the past year. ?Most of them don?t want to
go home. They may have children in school here.?
Fewer jobs. Many immigrants here on H-1B visas are finding it?s tougher to get
employer sponsorship because the recession has dried up hiring prospects. 
Many visas had been issued to workers in the high-tech sector, which had
suffered from a worker shortage. But now that industry is reeling from job
cuts.
That?s one reason some politicians and labor leaders are calling for a
reduction in the number of skilled immigrants allowed into the USA. In 2000,
the number of immigrants with H-1B visas allowed into this country was raised
from 115,000 annually to 195,000. Last fall, legislation was introduced that
would reduce that maximum to 65,000, although hearings have not been held on
the proposal.
H-1B visa holders also are facing a post-Sept. 11 anti-immigrant sentiment that
has some companies leery of hiring non-citizens. In addition, the recession has
critics saying the H-1B program is taking valuable jobs away from Americans in
need of work.
According to a survey by Techies.com, an online provider of career resources,
85% of respondents say worry over losing jobs to non-citizens is the primary
reason H-1B policy is controversial.
As many as half a million immigrants on H-1B visas came to the USA in the
1990s, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
?If I get laid off, it?s going to be really hard to find an employer,? says
Bernadette Rose, an Australian working in Atlanta on an H-1B visa. ?It is very
scary, because I took out a $10,000 loan to buy a car, pay for moving fees,
hiring a lawyer, etc.?
The Washington Post
Angry Bush Orders Probe Of ?Inexcusable? INS Action 
Agency Just Sent Visas for 2 Sept. 11 Hijackers to Flight School 
By Dan Eggen and Cheryl W. Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 14, 2002; Page A13 

President Bush ordered an investigation yesterday into the belated mailings of
visa approval notices for two Sept. 11 hijackers, calling the Immigration and
Naturalization Service?s action an ?inexcusable? blunder that should serve as a
?wake-up call? for the leaders of the troubled agency.
A Venice, Fla., flight school received the INS documents Monday for presumed
terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta and compatriot Marwan Alshehhiexactly six
months after they piloted separate jetliners into the twin towers of the World
Trade Center. The paperwork was a routine notification to Huffman Aviation
International that the pair had been awarded student visas that had been
approved the previous summer.
The delayed mailings came as a huge embarrassment to the beleaguered INS, which
dispatched an agent yesterday to Huffman Aviation to seize the documents with a
subpoena, according to the school?s owner, Rudi Dekkers.
It also set off a second day of political fireworks in Washington, where
lawmakers and Bush administration officials clamored to condemn the episode as
a stark reminder of the nation?s troubled immigration system.
?I was stunned, and not happy,? Bush said during a news conference yesterday.
?Let me put it another way: I was plenty hot. . . . We?ve got to reform the
INS, and we?ve got to push hard to do so. This is an interesting wake-up call
for those who run the INS.?
At the Justice Department, which oversees the INS, Attorney General John D.
Ashcroft formally requested an investigation by Inspector General Glenn A.
Fine, who has launched a probe of the INS?s student visa program, to determine
why the agency did not halt delivery of the letters and why it took so long to
process them. Ashcroft also hinted that jobs may be on the line.
?It is inexcusable when document mismanagement leads to a breakdown of this
magnitude,? Ashcroft said in a statement. ?Individuals will be held responsible
for any professional incompetence that led to this failure, and inferior INS
quality-control mechanisms will be reformed.?
The INS debacle is the second major record-keeping snafu for Ashcroft, who
delayed the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh last year
after the FBI failed to turn over thousands of documents to defense attorneys.
In the INS case, one Ashcroft aide said yesterday, ?firings have not been ruled
in or ruled out.?
INS Commissioner James W. Ziglar, who is presiding over a three-day INS
conference in San Francisco, declined repeated requests for comment. The
conference, which ends today, was attended by about 300 senior INS managers and
included an awards ceremony honoring employees ?for outstanding service with
cash and days off,? according to an attendee.
Bush, who appointed Ziglar in August, indicated that the former Senate
sergeant-at-arms was not in danger of losing his job.
Ziglar is working on an INS restructuring plan announced by Ashcroft in
November. It calls for splitting the agency?s enforcement and service functions
to make it more accountable and efficient. The agency is also switching to a
new computerized record-keeping systemfirst mandated by Congress in 1996 --
that is designed to eliminate chronic backlogs.
When they showed up at Huffman Aviation seeking flight training in July 2000,
Atta had a business visa and Alshehhi was traveling on a tourist visa,
according to U.S. officials. The school?s student coordinator submitted
applications in August 2000 seeking a change in the status of their visas, as
required by INS procedures.
But the changes weren?t approved for either man until about a year later, well
after both had finished their training. INS officials said the approvals are
presumed to have been sent to Atta and Alshehhi at that time, but the flight
school did not receive its copies until Monday, according to Dekkers.
Dekkers said the INS?s Miami office served him with a subpoena yesterday
afternoon and seized the two application forms. A Justice Department official
called soon after, and was surprised to learn of the INS?s actions, Dekkers
said.
INS officials stress that neither Atta nor Alshehhi was a suspected terrorist
before Sept. 11, and one official called the episode a ?misunderstanding.?
There are no other known outstanding visa notices for the other 17 hijackers,
officials said, although they conceded they could not be sure.
?The procedures that were in place were followed,? the official said. ?If
someone wants to accuse us of being insensitive, maybe that might hold ground.
But to accuse us of being out of touch, that?s not fair.?
But leading lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle
(D-S.D.), lambasted the mailings yesterday as a symbol of deeper problems
within the INS.
Added Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.): ?We cannot continue to tolerate a
flawed information collecting and tracing system that allows potential
terrorists to enter or remain in the United States.?
The outrage extended to the streets of New York, where thousands of residents
just marked the six-month memorial of the terror attacks.
?It?s absolutely ridiculous. I?m lost for words,? said John Hickey, 66, a
retired Verizon technician as he finished a soda at a midtown supermarket cafe.
?They should be screened before they even hit our shores.?
Brenda Keene, admissions director at Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla.,
said INS paperwork delays are the rule rather than the exception. Just
yesterday, Keene said, she received visa notices for two students who enrolled
nearly a year ago, including a man from India who completed his lessons in
September.
Airman also applied for a student visa last year on behalf of Zacarias
Moussaoui, who was later arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota and has
been charged as a conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks.
?Who knows,? Keene said. ?Maybe we?ll get his approval in the mail any day
now.?
Federal Computer Week
Locals look to IT in homeland plan
State and local officials called the federal government?s release of a Homeland
Security Advisory System March 12 a good first step to enhance communication,
but expressed concern that local agencies may not have the technology to make
the system useful.
During the past week, the Office of Homeland Security has discussed the
Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) with many state and local officials,
who said the system?s five threat levels and recommended actions will be
particularly important for facilitating coordination between the levels of
government (see ?Homeland threat system released?).
?It gives us the predictability we need to protect our citizens,? said Anthony
Williams, mayor of Washington, D.C. 
?I like it because it has very specific conditions attached to very specific
security levels which we didn?t have before,? said Tom Canady, an assistant
director at the National Center for Rural Law Enforcement and a former FBI
agent.
And the system shows that homeland security director Tom Ridge, formerly the
governor of Pennsylvania, is clearly concerned about the flow of information,
said Rock Regan, who is the president of the National Association of Chief
Information Officers (NASCIO) and the CIO of Connecticut.
But there is a lot more room for improvement as state and local agencies try to
figure out how to get the threat advisory information out, officials said.
NASCIO already is coordinating with the National Governors Association and
their responses will include an information technology component, Regan said.
?We need to make sure the method the federal government uses to alert
communities is one that can be received by every community in the countryrural
and urban,? said Javier Gonzales, who is the commissioner of Santa Fe County,
N.M., and is also the president of the National Association of Counties (NACo).
Many county information systems are fragmented and not necessarily designed to
address homeland security issues, and they often do not have e-mail or fax
systems, he said. 
Communication is also an issue for local law enforcement agencies, Canady said.

?There are even local police departments that may not have access, let?s say,
to the Arkansas state crime information and other state systems much less the
[FBI?s National Crime Information Center],? he said. ?As you get into those
rural areas, you?re going to see communication systems that aren?t as up to
date.?
NACo?s various steering committees and its homeland security task force will
also examine the HSAS to respond within Ridge?s 45-day comment period, Gonzales
said.
?The most important thing to recognize is it?s good to have these levels of
alert,? he said. ?But to have it doesn?t necessarily mean our communities have
all the resources to effectively respond.?
********************
The Washington Post
Should Geeks, Or Governments, Run the Net? 

By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 14, 2002; Page E1 

Once again, the people who decide how the Internet is supposed to function are
not getting along. The Net is alight with e-flames, and people from all over
the world are in Accra, Ghana, this week, arguing with the passion of parents
at a Little League game.
Sometimes, what these relatively anonymous Internet gurus worry about is
impossibly geeky. Things like root servers, protocol parameters and port
numbers are critical to making sure we see the right Web pages and get the
right e-mail, and we?re grateful for these people  as long as they don?t go
into too much detail at parties.
But as the Internet has insinuated itself more deeply into global commerce and
daily life, more fundamental business and political questions have begun to
boil:
What are the rules for assigning and naming Web addresses, which enable us to
find anything and everything? Who controls, and profits from, granting and
registering these addresses? Should there be space reserved for purely public
endeavors? And so on.
Indeed, these questions are mere proxies for the really big one, the one with
incalculable zeroes after the $64: How, if at all, should the Internet be
governed?
This is such a colossal container of worms that people have basically chosen to
avoid tackling it head-on, and you can hardly blame them. But recently, the
head of what passes for Internet management tossed out a grenade that blew all
the smaller issues out of the way.
Internet management needs to go well beyond making the technical trains run on
schedule, he said. Let?s forget about members of the public having seats at the
governing table, he said. Replace them with representatives of world
governments, he said.
Ka-boom.
To appreciate how incendiary this is requires only a short look back.
For several years, the people (also known as ?the technology community?) who
work on these issues have been toiling in the virtual lab, operating on the
basic premise that the Internet is best left to develop on its own. National
governments should be avoided at any cost, corporations should not have too
much power and no country (i.e., the United States) should predominate.
After dozens of fits and numerous starts, what evolved is a nonprofit entity
called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.
As with many things Internet, ICANN is an odd bird. It is a corporation in look
and feel, with a chief executive, a board of directors and an organizational
chart befitting the best of bureaucracies (you can learn more at
www.icann.org.
Some of its 19 directors are technology legends, such as the chairman of the
board, Vinton Cerf, who helped design the communications protocol that enables
the Internet to work. Another is a former president of Radcliffe College. There
are directors from Japan, South Korea, Ghana and Spain.
And five of these directors got their posts in a remarkable way: An electronic
vote open to all Internet users worldwide. About 33,000 ballots were cast.
At the ICANN helm is a grandfatherly Brit named M. Stuart Lynn, a technologist
who spent much of his professional life running the computer systems of U.S.
universities. At 63, Lynn stepped out of retirement a year ago and into a world
riven by a level of infighting that made academic politics look like an Up With
People concert.
So Lynn and ICANN have struggled along, assigning domains such as ?.kids? and
?.museums,? signing contracts with registration companies, and doing a lot of
arguing.
And in the process Lynn has come to believe that ICANN is broken.
?The original noble ?experiment?  and it was noble  to see whether a purely
private entity could successfully manage a critical global resource simply will
not work,? he wrote recently.
So Lynn proposed his reforms, and the nicest of his critics accuse him of
mongering for power.
In the view of the more reasoned opponents, the elected public members provide
the checks and balances to ensure that ICANN?s mission remains technical.
Strategically, perhaps Lynn?s ploy on public elections will backfire, although
reports from Ghana indicate that the board might end the conference today by
letting the public members? terms expire in November and providing no process
for replacement.
But it?s reasonable for Lynn to ask, now, whether the Internet, the most
pervasive commercial organism to come along since the telephone  needs broader
oversight. And if so, by whom?
Even technical decisions have real-life implications, about price, about
access, about privacy, to name a few. As Stanford University professor Lawrence
Lessig frequently reminds us, in the digital age the code writers are also
policymakers.
There are no fiendish black hats in this dispute, and both sides seem to
genuinely want to ensure that the Internet not become the province of special
interests.
On the Internet all politics might not be local, but one hopes it remains the
art of compromise.
Reuters Internet Report
 Chirac Chats Online to Show Voters He?s Switched On 
Wed Mar 13, 4:46 PM ET 

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac tried to woo voters ahead of
spring elections with an Internet chat session on Wednesday, seeking to project
a funky, with-it image and shrug off charges he is too old for office. 
  
Popular myth says conservative Chirac, 69, once used the word for fieldmouse
for the mouse used on a computer and was keen to prove he was now au fait with
the modern world. ?The fieldmouse incident was a farce. I?m not an expert but I
use the Internet a lot,? was his typed-out reply in response to one question. 
Chirac, whose arch-rival Prime Minister Lionel Jospin last weekend attacked him
as old and worn out, notched up 12,000 hits on the site, compared to a crowd of
8,000 at his first major campaign meeting on Tuesday. 
?It?s frankly much better than a rally,? a member of the president?s campaign
team told Reuters after 45 minutes of questions and answers that proved more
popular than a chat session on the same site with top footballer Christophe
Dugarry. The questions stuck mostly to key campaign themes of crime and taxes,
and Chirac reiterated earlier pledges to cut both. 
Websurfers also quizzed him over the issue of soft drugs but he was unable to
reply due to temporary technical failure. 
France will elect its new president at a two-round vote on April 21 and May 5. 

Newsbytes
Teen Hacker?s Offer To Help Leads To Felony Charges  

By Brian McWilliams, Newsbytes
OVERLAND PARK, KANSAS, U.S.A.,
13 Mar 2002, 2:30 PM CST

A Kansas teenager who the FBI says hacked a California city?s Web site and then
offered to secure it was charged Thursday with 11 felony counts of computer
crime. 
Matthew T. Kroeker, 18, allegedly used the nickname ?Artech? while defacing
more than 50 Web sites in 2000. 
Among Artech?s suspected victims are sites operated by the U.S. Department of
Transportation and Department of Labor, and the Internet home page of the City
of Stockton, Calif. 
Webmaster Cathy Sloan said that the Stockton homepage was replaced in June 2000
with one that simply said ?Tard.? 
Shortly thereafter, Sloan received an e-mail from someone identifying himself
as ?Matt? who took credit for the defacement and offered to help her secure the
site in exchange for a laptop computer. 
?I immediately called the local police and we decided I should play along with
him while our tech guys were trying to trace where his e-mails were coming
from,? said Sloan, who said that the FBI took over the case when it determined
Kroeker was from out of state. 
As part of the ruse, Sloan said she exchanged 90 e-mails with Kroeker over the
course of several weeks..After gaining his confidence, she told Kroeker that
the city would bring him in as a volunteer to work on the Stockton Web site and
give him a laptop, but that he first needed to complete an application form. 
?He sent us his name and address and all sorts of other information,? Sloan
said. ?The next thing I knew, he was arrested at home in July by FBI agents
dressed up as UPS delivery men.? 
Kroker?s attorney, Kevin P. Moriarity, said that Kroeker was 16 when the arrest
occurred, and that he cooperated fully with law enforcement officials. 
FBI agents took a statement from Kroeker and confiscated his computers, but no
charges were filed against the boy, Moriarity said. 
?The FBI told his parents he didn?t need an attorney and they didn?t need to
worry about anything else. His family assumed it was all over with,? said
Moriarity. 
Kroeker has not defaced any sites since the arrest in 2000, and subsequently
completed high school and is enrolled in a community college, Moriarty said. 
?He wasn?t very mature at the time but he took responsibility and altered his
behavior. They couldn?t have asked for a better outcome, so this is very
unfortunate that this happened now,? he said. 
Artech signed his Feb. 15, 2000 defacement of the Department of
Transportation?s information services site with the words, ?Artech - America?s
biggest screw up!? 
Kroeker, who turned 18 on Jan. 30, will not face federal hacking charges, but
state prosecutors said they will seek to try him as an adult under Kansas?
computer crime statutes. 
?We?re vehemently opposed to that. We hope that when the state reviews all the
facts they will agree that it will be fundamentally unfair to pursue this case
on the adult level,? said Moriarity. 
The FBI and Kansas prosecutors were not immediately available for comment. 
Brian Martin, one of the operators of the Attrition.org security information
site, said that Artech apparently was conflicted over his status in the hacking
ranks. 
Several of his defacements included the statement, ?Artech supports d2sk,?
which Artech said stands for ?death to script kiddies, according to copies of
the defaced pages archived by Attrition. 
Yet in an interview with ZDnet in February 2000, Artech admitted to using
?script kiddie? methods and said he would ?rather be a script kiddie than use
some mad skill and take down an unknown Web site.? 
?Script kiddies? is a pejorative term used by hackers to describe young hackers
who rely on tools created by more skilled hackers. 
Martin said that Attrition warned Artech that his methods could land him in
jail. In July 2000, Attrition notified Artech that the site would not mirror
his new defacements because they suspected him of staging attacks on sites
operated by friends. 
?It was obvious that his goal was merely to gain status and get his name on the
mirror,? said Martin. 
The Los Angeles Times
In Breakthrough, Monkey Think, Computer Do
By ROBERT LEE HOTZ 
Times Staff Writer

March 14 2002

An experimental brain implant the size of an M&M has allowed a monkey to
control a computer cursor by thought alone, Brown University researchers
announced Wednesday. 
It is the latest advance by scientists trying to perfect a link between mind
and machine in the hope that thousands of patients who are unable to move or
speak can resume communication with the world around them. 
The development heralds a future when the paralyzed and infirm may send e-mail,
surf the Web and command other computer resources simply by thinking about
them. 
The new device, described in research published today in Nature, uses a special
mathematical formula to translate signals from a few motor neurons on the
surface of the monkey?s brain via cable into movement on a computer screen.
There is no need for the extensive training previous experimental techniques
have required. 
?We substituted thought control for hand control,? said Brown neuroscientist
John Donoghue, the project?s senior researcher. 
Lead researcher Dr. Mijail D. Serruya and his colleagues at Brown tested the
device by having a monkey play a simple video game, in which the animal used
the cursor to chase a moving target on a computer screen. 
The monkey was able to move the cursor ?instantly? with almost as much control
as if it were using a computer mouse or a joystick, Serruya said. The monkey
wills the cursor to move. The cursor moves. 
The animal?s hands-free cursor control was almost as fast and accurate as when
it used its hands, the researchers reported. So far, three monkeys have
received the implant. 
Linked to a personal computer, the cursor control device ?would work for
anything you can do or you can imagine doing by pointing and clicking. This
includes reading e-mail,? Donoghue said. ?Or imagine an on-screen keyboard that
someone can use to type sentences or issue commands by pointing and clicking.? 
The Brown implant system uses an array of 100 tiny electrodes to detect
electrical activity from a pinprick of neuronsbetween seven and 30 of the
untold thousands of nerve cells in the motor cortex, the section of the brain
that controls movementand relay it to a personal computer. 
There, a formula the Brown group designed turns the brain activity into
instructions a computer can use to plot the cursor movements. That software
interpreter uses a fairly straightforward application of textbook algebra, the
scientists said. 
The system is so small and draws so little power that any future device
developed for human use could easily be made wireless, said biomedical engineer
Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. 
?In clinical terms, that is quite important,? he said. 
It may be a decade or more before any clinical product is ready for testing,
however. So little is known about tapping the neural activity of the human
brain that researchers are likely to proceed slowly. No one knows, for example,
what the effect would be of having such an electrode in the brain for years or
whether over time the implant might lose its ability to function. 
?This implant is potentially one that is very suitable for humans,? Serruya
said. ?It shows enough promise that we think it could ultimately be hooked up
via a computer to a paralyzed patient. 
?We want to be careful that the implant is suitable and safe,? Serruya said.
?There are a few technical details that we are still working on.? 
The Brown researchers have filed for a patent on the technique and formed a
company called Cyberkinetics to develop medical applications. 
Other research groups in recent years have announced encouraging successes in
experiments with devices designed to turn brain commands into computer
instructions. Until now, these were limited in their potential usefulness by
technical constraints. 
In 1998, neuroscientists at the University of Tuebingen in Germany tested an
experimental cursor control device in human volunteers, as did researchers at
Emory University in Atlanta. 
Those devices allowed several patients paralyzed by advanced strokes or
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to spell words on a computer screen by modulating
their brain waves. 
Both implant systems, however, required intensive practice to masterup to 150
training sessions over more than a year. The implanted electrodes themselves
were bulky. 
In related work, researchers led by neurobiologist Miguel Nicolesis at Duke
University successfully used the motor control signals from monkeys to move a
robot arm. During an experiment last year, Nicolesis linked the monkey to the
Internet and used its brain signals to control a robot arm 600 miles away. 
To mimic arm movements, however, that system requires extensive computer
analysis after the scientists have recorded the brain signals during many
repetitions. 
What makes the newest effort to link brain and machine remarkable is the ease
with which it can be learned and the small number of neurons it requires to
operate, Mussa-Ivaldi said. 
?There are a mountain of things we still need to know,? he said. ?But this is
progress.?
The Washington Post
FCC Gives Cable Firms Net Rights 
By Christopher Stern
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 15, 2002; Page E01 

The Federal Communications Commission sided with cable companies yesterday in a
ruling that will allow them to offer high-speed Internet service without being
forced to open their networks to rival Internet providers.
The ruling drew loud complaints from public interest groups and cable?s
competitors, who said it will let a few large media companies dominate the
Internet.
But supporters said the 3 to 1 vote was consistent with the deregulatory
approach of the majority-Republican agency, which tentatively decided last
month that telephone companies should not be required to open their Internet
networks to other providers. Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps was the lone
vote against both decisions.
Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy summed up the majority view, saying the
decision fosters ?a minimal regulatory environment that promotes investment and
innovation in a competitive market.?
Yesterday?s vote classifies high-speed Internet service as an ?information
service? requiring little regulation. Consumer advocates and public interest
groups had been pushing the agency to classify high-speed Internet service as a
?telecommunications service,? which would have compelled cable companies to
provide consumers with a choice of Internet providers.
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a public
interest law firm, said his organization will challenge the decision in court.
He said the FCC?s ruling makes it easier for cable companies to steer users
toward their own corporate Web content and away from services provided by
rivalsa key competitive advantage.
The FCC is effectively ?allowing a system that permits restrictions on where
you can go and what information you can access,? Schwartzman said.
But the FCC action won praise from the cable industry, which has been fighting
to stop local regulators around the country from requiring that cable lines be
open to competitors. ?Today?s FCC decision establishes a needed national policy
framework for cable high-speed Internet services,? said National Cable and
Telecommunications Association President Robert Sachs.
With more than 7 million subscribers, cable companies are currently the primary
providers of so-called broadband access in the United States. Telephone
companies use their DSL technology to serve more than 3 million customers.
Rival Internet service providers such as Earthlink Inc. were critical of
yesterday?s FCC decision, saying it will make it harder for them to gain access
to cable systems.
?It has been a consistent policy for more than 30 years now to increase
competition and consumer choice in the area of telecommunications,? said David
Baker, Earthlink vice president for law and public policy. ?This is just a
giant step backwards.?
But FCC officials and cable industry executives pointed out that some cable
companies have been opening their lines voluntarily. Public interest advocates
such as Schwartzman said such actions are in part a response to the Federal
Trade Commission?s decision to require Time Warner Cable to open its networks
as a condition of approving last year?s merger between America Online and Time
Warner.
Some members of Congress also argued that the FCC is charting a course that
runs contrary to the intent of Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
which attempted to spur competition by forcing telephone companies to open
their networks to competitors.
Yesterday, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) issued a statement criticizing the
agency?s action. ?Today?s FCC decision is wrong on the law and wrong on the
policy. Quite simply it represents extraordinary regulatory activism as the FCC
rewrites the words of Congress to return to pre-1996 regulatory
classifications,? said Markey, who played a key role in crafting the
Telecommunications Act.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell defended yesterday?s and last month?s agency
decisions, saying consumers will be helped by increased competition and
investment brought on by the light regulatory approach.
Chicago Sun Times
Critics hit proposed overhaul of Internet overseer 
March 14, 2002
ACCRA, GhanaThe chief executive of the oversight body for Internet domain names
unfairly blindsided the online community with a proposal to scrap direct
elections of board members, critics complained Wednesday.
At a key gathering of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers,
many Internet users and administrators denounced the proposed overhaul as
misguided and premature.
ICANN?s regularly scheduled meeting this week was the first for commenting on
chief executive Stuart Lynn?s proposal to end direct elections. Instead,
governments would nominate one-third of board members, with other seats filled
by appointments from the private sector.
To demonstrate its international commitment, ICANN brought its high-tech
conference to Ghana, a country where Internet access is limited to the elite
and an hour of access costs nearly a month?s salary at minimum wages.
The debate over ICANN?s structure is mostly about who would manage and set
policies for the Internet?s naming system, which is key to how Internet users
send e-mail and find Web sites.
Last month, Lynn concluded that private control proved unworkable and proposed
a government-private alternative. While the proposal?s critics agreed that
ICANN needs restructuring, they said a change was possible without scrapping
private control or direct elections by the Internet community.
Lynn spent the week drumming up support for his proposal, but said it was only
?a means to an end.? He said he would entertain workable alternatives.
No final decision was expected when the full board meets Thurs 
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