[no subject]

He expressed special wishes for the success of one initiative, E-Recruitment.
"Has anyone tried to get a job in government lately?" asked Lorentz, who began
working at OMB Jan. 2. "The system is broken." 

Lorentz said the federal government should not try to build an electronic
recruiting system from scratch, but should seek help from the commercial
sector. Before joining OMB, Lorentz was chief technology officer for Dice Inc.,
an online technology employment company. 

The 24 e-government initiatives are intended to be online in 18 to 24 months,
Lorentz said. He predicted "four to five will roll out quickly, some this
calendar year." Most will take closer to two years and "two to three" may have
to be redesigned or scrapped. 

Lorentz did not say which projects he expects to be ready early or which he
expects to flounder.
****************
Federal Computer Week
Bill proposes 'high-tech guard'

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and George Allen (R-Va.) introduced legislation
Wednesday to create a high-tech volunteer corps that could be mobilized quickly
in the wake of an emergency such as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

The legislation would make it easier to mobilize high-tech teams  modeled after
the National Guard, urban search and rescue and medical emergency response
teams  to respond to threats posed by terrorist attacks, natural disasters and
other emergencies.

Wyden, who is chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation
Committee's Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee, and Allen, who is
ranking member, said the bill would utilize private industry to create rapid
response teams that can offer private-sector expertise and equipment. The teams
would be certified by a central office created in the executive branch of the
federal government. 

The legislation would set up a comprehensive database of equipment and
emergency help that could be accessed quickly and would create a national
clearinghouse and test bed for innovative technologies relating to emergency
prevention and response.

"Access to this database would enable federal, state and local officials, as
well as nongovernmental relief organizations, to locate quickly whatever
technology or scientific help they may need," Wyden said on the Senate floor
March 20.

The legislation would also establish a program that would award seven grants of
$5 million each to help fund pilot projects to enable interoperable
communications among first responder agencies. 

The proposal has the support of some of the biggest technology companies in the
country, including Microsoft Corp., AOL Time Warner Inc., Intel Corp. and
Oracle Corp.

"A national strategy for ensuring the resiliency of our [information
technology] infrastructure against attacks and natural disasters is long
overdue, particularly as our country has become increasingly dependent on the
interconnected digital network," wrote Andrew Grove, chairman of Intel Corp.,
in a March 18 letter to Wyden.

Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) plans to introduce similar legislation in the
House.

****************
Federal Computer Week
GAO: Agencies struggle with IT architectures

The majority of federal agencies and departments have only just begun to
develop an information technology enterprise architecture that would eliminate
separate and duplicative systems, according to a General Accounting Office
governmentwide review.

GAO has developed the initial version of a five-step enterprise architecture
management maturity framework that it used to measure agencies' progress in
developing and implementing an enterprise architecture.

The framework is based on the federal CIO Council's "Practical Guide to Federal
Enterprise Architecture," which GAO developed with the council and released
last year, said Randy Hite, GAO's director of IT architecture and systems
issues. 

Of the 116 agencies surveyed by GAO in its review, 98 met the minimum
requirements for stages one and two of the framework  which means that the
agencies have either no enterprise architecture plan or are just starting to
develop one. 

However, only five agencies meet the requirements of stages four or five  under
which agencies have a complete enterprise architecture plan, or they have a
plan and a policy to update and maintain the plan.

Agencies are required to develop and use enterprise architectures under the
Office of Management and Budget's Circular A-130. However, until recently, most
agencies did not understand the importance of having an enterprise architecture
and did not have personnel with the skills to develop them, leaving the federal
government far behind the private sector, according to the GAO report, which
was released March 19.

"The current state of the federal government's use of [enterprise
architectures] is mixed, but overall it is not sufficiently mature to support
well-informed IT investment decision-making," the report stated. "As a result,
most federal agencies currently run the serious risk of investing in IT
solutions that will not overcome but will, rather, perpetuate longstanding
incompatibilities and duplication within agency operational and systems
environments."

OMB recently has increased its focus on enterprise architecture. For instance,
in the fiscal 2003 budget, agencies must demonstrate how every IT investment
aligns with their architecture. However, OMB has no way to measure agencies'
progress in developing these architectures. 

GAO developed the maturity framework to have a way to measure and compare
agencies' capabilities after it collected volumes of enterprise architecture
survey information from agencies, Hite said. Now GAO is recommending that OMB
work with the federal CIO Council to use the framework to help agencies improve
their enterprise architectures and to measure the agencies' progress, according
to the report. 

GAO is also recommending that OMB require agencies to submit an annual update
of their progress against the framework, and then for OMB to provide an annual
governmentwide review to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and the
House Government Reform Committee.
****************
New York Times
Finding Pay Dirt in Scannable Driver's Licenses

BOSTON -- ABOUT 10,000 people a week go to The Rack, a bar in Boston favored by
sports stars, including members of the New England Patriots. One by one, they
hand over their driver's licenses to a doorman, who swipes them through a sleek
black machine. If a license is valid and its holder is over 21, a red light
blinks and the patron is waved through.

But most of the customers are not aware that it also pulls up the name,
address, birth date and other personal details from a data strip on the back of
the license. Even height, eye color and sometimes Social Security number are
registered.

"You swipe the license, and all of a sudden someone's whole life as we know it
pops up in front of you," said Paul Barclay, the bar's owner. "It's almost
voyeuristic."

Mr. Barclay bought the machine to keep out underage drinkers who use fake ID's.
But he soon found that he could build a database of personal information,
providing an intimate perspective on his clientele that can be useful in
marketing. "It's not just an ID check," he said. "It's a tool."

Now, for any given night or hour, he can break down his clientele by sex, age,
ZIP code or other characteristics. If he wanted to, he could find out how many
blond women named Karen over 5 feet 2 inches came in over a weekend, or how
many of his customers have the middle initial M. More practically, he can build
mailing lists based on all that data  and keep track of who comes back. 

Bar codes and other tracking mechanisms have become one of the most powerful
forces in automating and analyzing product inventory and sales over the last
three decades. Now, in a trend that alarms privacy advocates, the approach is
being applied to people through the simple driver's license, carried by more
than 90 percent of American adults. 

Already, about 40 states issue driver's licenses with bar codes or magnetic
stripes that carry standardized data, and most of the others plan to issue them
within the next few years.

Scanners that can read the licenses are slowly proliferating across the
country. So far the machines have been most popular with bars and convenience
stores, which use them to thwart underage purchasers of alcohol and cigarettes.

In response to the terrorist attacks last year, scanners are now also being
installed as security devices in airports, hospitals and government buildings.
Many other businesses  drugstores and other stores, car- rental agencies and
casinos among them  are expressing interest in the technology.

The devices have already proved useful for law enforcement. Police departments
have called bars to see if certain names and Social Security numbers show up on
their customer lists.

The electronic trails created by scanning driver's licenses are raising
concerns among privacy advocates. Standards and scanning, they say, are a
dangerous combination that essentially creates a de facto national identity
card or internal passport that can be registered in many databases.

"Function creep is a primary rule of databases and identifiers," said Barry
Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, citing
how the Social Security number, originally meant for old-age benefits, has
become a universal identifier for financial and other transactions. "History
teaches us that even if protections are incorporated in the first place, they
don't stay in place for long." 

But companies that market the scanning technology argue that it poses no threat
to privacy. 

"It's the same information as the front of the license," said Frank Mandelbaum,
chairman and chief executive of Intelli- Check, a manufacturer of
license-scanning equipment based in Woodbury, N.Y. "If I were to go into a bar
and they had a photocopier, they could photocopy the license or they could
write it down. They are not giving us any information that violates privacy."

Machine-readable driver's licenses have been introduced over the last decade
under standards set by the American Association of Motor Vehicle
Administrators, an umbrella group of state officials.

Under current standards, the magnetic stripe and bar codes essentially contain
the same information that is on the front of the driver's licenses. In addition
to name, address and birth date, the machine-readable data includes physical
attributes like sex, height, weight, hair color, eye color and whether
corrective lenses are required. Some states that put the driver's Social
Security number on the license also store it on the data strip.

The scanning systems present a challenge to efforts by state and federal
governments to limit the amount of information that can be released by
departments of motor vehicles. In 1994, Congress passed the Driver's Privacy
Protection Act, largely in response to the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer, an
actress who was killed in 1989 by an obsessed fan who had found her unlisted
address by using California motor vehicle records. 

Before the law was adopted, states were selling driver's license information to
direct marketing companies, charities and political campaigns. Businesses
selling, for example, fitness products and plus-size clothing were able to
focus on customers within a given range of height or weight.

While the privacy act staunched the flow of information from state motor
vehicle departments, there are only spotty controls over how businesses can
create such databases on their own. In Texas, the driver's licenses can be
electronically scanned for age verification, but the information cannot be
downloaded from the machine. In New York, businesses are only allowed to store
name, birth date, driver's license ID number and expiration date for the
purpose of age verification. Many states require people to give consent to be
on marketing lists, but businesses generally interpret consent to mean not
actively removing their names from a list.

When Mr. Barclay, the bar owner, saw a demonstration of Intelli-Check
(news/quote)'s driver's license scanner at a trade show in 1999, he was
surprised. "It had never dawned me that that strip had information on it," he
said. 

He bought an Intelli-Check system, which costs about $2,500 and can scan both
bar codes and magnetic strips. Now, three years and 1.3 million scanned
customers later, he has grown to understand how the data reflects the bar's
business. 

On Tuesdays, for example, the number of customers born between 1955 and 1960
spikes when the 40-something crowd comes for the jazz.

Thursday night is popular among people who have the upscale Boston ZIP codes
02109, 02111 and 02113. They come to hear Cat Tunes, a band well known among
those who go to Martha's Vineyard.

When the singer Chad LaMarch performs on Sundays, women make up 60 percent of
the crowd. "The men always follow the women," Mr. Barclay said. 

While attributes like age and sex can be observed from simply looking at the
crowd, the hard statistics are more valuable in negotiating with liquor
companies over promotions, he said. 

Other bars are using the information gleaned to give repeat customers special
treatment, similar to the way airlines reward their frequent fliers. Some are
planning to tap into the addresses.

"Let's say I'm doing an all-male-performer show," said Kenny Vincent, who owns
a bar in New Orleans called Kenny's Key West. "I could just mail to just girls
I want to target between 21 and 34. I have all that information. The whole
reason to have a database is to advertise and market to your customers."

In some cases the data can be correlated to what customers buy. Polka Dot
Dairy/ Tom Thumb, a convenience store chain based near Minneapolis that
operates about 100 stores, including the Bonkers chain, in Minnesota and
Wisconsin, installed machines made by the Logix Company to comply with age
minimums on the sale of tobacco. But Terry Giebel, a controller at Tom Thumb,
said the ability to build customer databases was also a selling point.

"Any marketing tool that we have that makes us different than our competition
is an advantage," Mr. Giebel said. "We could do direct marketing to people who
are smokers."

But such cross-linking of data raises concerns. "As more and more people in the
private sector want to make use of that identity document, it becomes coercive
since it's linked to the transactions," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director
of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. 

The scanner can also be programmed to reject troublesome customers. Simply
knowing that a quarrelsome man is named Greg and lives in a specific town can
be enough information to lock someone out. The Rack has determined people's
identities simply by remembering the face and approximate time of arrival,
since the bar also has a digital video camera that films people as they walk
in. "You don't need a lot of information to find out who someone is," Mr.
Barclay said.

Newer, two-dimensional bar codes that can store more data have been adopted by
almost 30 states, including New York. Some states are already using this extra
storage capacity to pack in biometric information. Georgia stores two digital
fingerprints as well as the person's signature. Tennessee stores a facial
recognition template. Kentucky recently became the first state to embed a
black-and-white electronic version of the photograph in the bar code.

Such biometric information is designed to add extra security to the document,
even though few scanners are designed to read such specialized information.

But as Americans debate expanding the national standards for driver's licenses
to improve security, the scanner technology has already gained impetus. 

Logan Airport in Boston is using the machines to check the identity of
passengers. New York University Hospital scans and stores visitors' driver's
license information. Delaware has installed the machines to screen visitors at
the state legislature and its largest state office building.

The scanners' manufacturers are generally aware of the potential for personal
information to be abused. The Logix Company, based in Longmont, Colo., allows
clients like bars to view aggregate but not specific data, to prevent a
scenario in which "a bouncer at a bar stalks a blond, 20-year-old, 5-foot-7
girl," said Lana Rozendorf, a sales manager with Logix. "As a company we want
to take responsibility for who has responsibility for this information."

But with Intelli-Check's scanners and those of many other manufacturers, the
information is stored locally, with the client gaining easy access. 

Mr. Vincent, who uses an Intelli-Check scanner at his bar in New Orleans,
shrugged off the notion of someone's abusing the information. He said he had no
interest in keeping information on people who objected to being in his
database. "Will I use it in the wrong way?" he said. "No." 

Then he paused. "But then again, what is to stop the next guy?"
************
New York Times
A Proper Table for Passover, Then Easter

I USED to worry that our household's unusual holiday traditions might confuse
the children. But I didn't fully realize the toll they took on the fellow who
bags our groceries until one recent day when he held aloft two boxes, one full
of matzos for Passover and the other harboring pastel tablets of Easter egg
dye, and asked cautiously, "Are these both yours?" 

Yes, and the lamb shank, the horseradish root and the milk chocolate bunnies.
My husband and I have not taken a strong position on God. But technically, he's
Jewish, I'm Catholic, and as a result our three daughters observe more official
holidays than our plumber does. 

"So, are we getting ready to celebrate Easter or Passover?" my 11- year-old
asked, as I was checking the white "company" tablecloth for stains this week. 

"Yes," I said. And I felt a twinge of what in another person might be described
as doubt. But while I'm wrestling with my secular approach to spirituality,
we'll keep celebrating both holidays. 

Which brings me to the immediate problem: the Easter table. Yes, the big,
solid-white linen cloth is, as I feared, stained, perhaps irrevocably, with red
wine. And the smaller, backup white one probably won't do because, as my friend
Lisa informed me on Saturday during a party (my daughter's bat mitzvah), "I may
have accidentally invited some people to your house for Easter." 

"People you ran into on the street?" I asked. 

"No, people who know you," she said, looking around the crowded room. "I
think." 

It should be quite an egg hunt. Luckily, I have in reserve Table Plan C, which
calls for the use of my most beautiful cloth, white embroidered linen, which
once belonged to my husband's grandmother. The only problem: with the cloth's
openwork pattern, I need an undercloth, preferably pink (we are talking about
Easter, after all, when the pale green Depression-glass dishes make a rare
public appearance). 

Buying a tablecloth is not as cut- and-dried a proposition as you might think.
Beyond the issues of color and fabric  linen? cotton? rayon?  loom the thorny
questions of shape and size. I am not that picky, other than to stay with
natural fibers (yes, I iron), but still have found that most stores
unfortunately stock limited options  and always in the wrong color. While I am
not one of those Victorian purists who call for a white-only table, I do try to
avoid mauve. And turquoise. 

Since I needed a specific size to fit under the openwork cloth, I decided to
shop online for greater selection. If I had been after a white cloth, my work
would have been over in minutes. There were a number of specialty retailers,
like The Linen House (www.thelinenhouse.com), for instance, which offered a wide
variety of fabrics and sizes, at prices that ranged from affordable ($34.85 for
a small-size white linen damask) to some that I consider more suitable for a
monthly car payment ($317.75 for a large embroidered linen cloth described as
having the "refined elegance of a grapevine motif"). 

And some linen sellers, like Gracious Style (www.graciousstyle
com), also sold protective felt table liners in a variety of sizes (for $70 to
$100). There I found a pricey pink damask cloth called the St. Tropez (which
cost $145 for the rectangular size I needed), but its pattern, described as
"fanciful vines, birds and butterflies," would not work as an undercloth.

At BlueLight.com, I looked at 10 thumbnail images of the Martha Stewart
Everyday collection of tablecloths, where the cotton Victorian Lace Woven
Tablecloth seemed like a good value ($15.19 for the 60-inch- by-104-inch
rectangular size). Unfortunately, it did not come in pink. At
www.marthastewart.com, where the merchandise was significantly more expensive, I
found a pink linen tablecloth for $135 (70 inches by 108 inches) but was too
cheap to pay that much. 

I considered the possibility of giving up. I flirted briefly with the idea of
bleaching the red wine from my big white linen cloth. I phoned Cynthia Cooper,
who sells vintage cloths at www.antique-linens.com, for stain-removal advice. I
figured that someone who handled rare and expensive fabrics (one of the cloths
at her site had a price tag of $1,450) would know the answer. 

"Don't bleach," said Ms. Cooper, a self-described linen addict who confesses on
her Web site: "Old linens make my heart pound faster. If they have a wonderful
monogram, I start to sweat! If they are dated, it sends shivers down my
spine!!!" 

"But on your Web site, you say old linens are sturdy," I said. "Rugged, you
say. You said you sometimes even make a paste with automatic dishwasher soap
and water and rub it on to remove stains." 

`I'll try almost anything if I get desperate," she said. "But bleach will
destroy the fibers. Lay the cloth outside on the grass on a bright day and let
the sun do the work." 

"I tried that, last summer," I said. "The stain is still there." 

"Did you keep the cloth damp?" she said. "I run out with a spray bottle from
time to time." 

I promised, in the end, not to bleach. And to go rinse out all my previously
tortured linens (how did she know I am a serial bleacher?) in vinegar water.
Right away. Then I bought a pink cotton tablecloth from Williams-Sonoma
(news/quote) (www.williams
-sonoma.com) for $39. Described as a "tinted hotel tablecloth," it came in
seven sizes and shapes and in four colors. When it arrived, I saw that the
cloth was a good-quality heavy fabric. (It will, of course, need ironing.) 

But if something stains it? "Don't bleach it," a customer service
representative told me over the phone. "Soak it overnight, use a fine fabric
detergent, try vinegar, just don't bleach it." 

Note to anyone Lisa may have invited to Easter: white wine will be served.
L'chaim.
*************
New York Times
Grinding Terror or Grand Adventure: Choose Your War

OUTSIDE an almost deserted town I crawled through mud from bush to bush,
steadily moving toward my objective. As I tried to run across a clearing into
an empty house, I heard a shot and saw a flash of red, and I was dead. Not
wounded, dead. 

I was playing Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, a game that gives the
player a disturbingly realistic vision of war. My reaction to such a game might
once have been, "That is so cool" but this time I did not feel that way. With
American troops fighting in Afghanistan, I could only wonder whether this was
perhaps what war is: real people crawling on the ground and dying without ever
seeing who shot them. 

Starting off as a simple foot soldier, a player will later command squads and
tanks and fly fighter planes and helicopters. The game is so real and so
comprehensive that the United States Marine Corps is using a modified version
called Virtual Battlefield Systems 1 as a tool to train troops. 

The fictional plot of Flashpoint, set in 1985, centers on an attempt by rogue
Soviet troops to take over a NATO-protected island. You ride toward a hot spot
in the back of a truck with your comrades as they trade war rumors in hushed,
scared voices. On the battlefield, missions are chaotic, with shifting goals.
You see war from a soldier's perspective, trying to capture a town or protect
an encampment for no other reason than because you have been ordered to do so. 

In early missions, I did what I would probably do in real combat: I crawled on
the ground, hid behind bushes and let my companions do all the shooting. Thrown
onto the battlefield, confused and scared, barely able to see the camouflaged
soldiers firing from more than 100 meters away, my only strategy was survival. 

After allowing me to coast through a few missions, Flashpoint raised the
difficulty level. I found myself alone in a forest, surrounded by enemy forces,
with my fellow soldiers all dead. It was no longer possible to hang back and
let other soldiers kill the enemy. If you fail to complete a mission, you can
be discharged for incompetence, although in real life it is more likely that
you would be put on permanent latrine duty. 

There are other games in which you can be killed by a single bullet; in that
regard, Flashpoint follows a tried-and-true model of realism. But the game goes
beyond simple realities like ballistics. It is not afraid to risk being boring,
for example. At times you may find yourself driving for miles through a
peaceful area. What saves such sequences from tedium is a pervasive sense of
danger that gives the game emotional depth. 

Flashpoint is not a fun game, just as "Saving Private Ryan" was not a fun
movie. It is disturbing and engrossing, an adult game, not because of the
bullets, but because of the profound and unsettling horror of the unexpected. 

On paper, Operation Flashpoint is similar to Halo, a game developed by Bungie
for the Xbox. Both games allow players to fight side by side with soldiers who
are remarkably skilled and to steal enemy vehicles and take command of mounted
guns. But if Flashpoint gives players the kind of ground-level view of war
offered in films like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Steel Helmet,"
Halo is more reminiscent of movies made during World War II, which depicted war
as a noble adventure fought by fearless, tough-as-nails soldiers. 

A science-fiction first-person shooter, Halo begins with murderous aliens
boarding your spaceship. Weaponless, you run through the ship while other
soldiers battle aliens. With its rousing musical score and wisecracking
soldiers, Halo portrays war as most games do, as mindless fun. What makes Halo
notable is how well it is done. 

Your fellow soldiers are just as smart as those in Flashpoint, the weapons are
imaginative (one of them shoots small bullets that explode a few seconds after
attaching themselves to an enemy), and a soldier can leap into an abandoned
enemy aircraft and start blasting the bad guys from the air. 

Halo is best when you and a friend play as a team in the cooperative mode. The
first time I played with a friend, he climbed into a jeep that had a gun
mounted in the back. I discovered that I could also climb in and take control
of the gun, which I thought was about the coolest thing in the world (in
single-player mode you can drive up to a soldier and he will climb in and man
the gun). Another good reason to play in cooperative mode is to have someone to
talk to when you get lost. The geography is vast and can be difficult to
navigate. You will sometimes find yourself wandering about looking for the way
out. 

Unfortunately, Halo can be repetitive. Many missions involve entering a big
room and killing a bunch of aliens, then moving through a hall into a similar
room and killing another bunch. After doing this three or four more times, you
go back through the same rooms killing even more aliens. It is as though the
designers created a short game and used a cookie-cutter approach to pad it out.


In spite of the tedious stretches, Halo is an exciting game and makes war look
like so much fun that you might want to run out and enlist. But war is not like
that. When Marine recruits whose only experience of war is playing games like
Halo sit down to play the military version of Operation Flashpoint, they may be
in for a surprise.
*************
Batteries Promise Not to Fade Before the Light Does

Digital cameras have a reputation for slurping down battery power like linemen
at the Gatorade table during a summer football practice. A new long-lasting
battery may give photographers many more snaps per pack in a year when some
industry analysts are predicting a 29 percent increase in digital camera sales.
It could mean a lot less fumbling to change the batteries before the baby
moves. 

The new battery, a nickel-zinc type developed by Panasonic specifically for
power-mad digital cameras, will soon be available to consumers and will come in
the familiar AA-size used by most camera models.

The nickel-zinc battery was tested in Japan against two popular alkaline
battery brands in various digital cameras from six major manufacturers. 

The cameras took flash photos every 30 seconds until their batteries were
drained. The results showed that the nickel-zinc batteries could produce an
average of 50 more pictures than the alkaline competition. 

The new batteries will cost around $6 for a pack of four and should start
arriving in stores in May  just in time for all those summer-vacation photo
ops.
************
New York Times
Finally, a Way to Itemize Star Trek Memorabilia

Collectors of everything from Fitzgerald first editions to ceramic chicken
figurines now have another software option for keeping track of their
inventory, a cataloging program called MyStuff. 

Version 1.1 of MyStuff, made by a company called Collectify, is compatible with
Windows 95 and later and includes many new features to help collectors corral
their collections on the computer. 

MyStuff provides areas in which to enter information on an object's history,
condition and location, and allows the user to import a digital image of the
object within the listing. MyStuff records could be useful for wider purposes,
including appraisals, insurance policy information, inventory and accounting.
Users can also use the software to create slide shows and screen savers. 

MyStuff version 1.1 sells for $99.95. Users can download a free 30-day trial
version and find more information at www.collectify.com.
*************
New York Times
A Concrete That Percolates, Keeping Snow and Spies at Bay

SECURITY experts looking to prevent spies from eavesdropping on computers by
intercepting the electromagnetic waves they throw off don't turn to Martha
Stewart for interior-design inspiration. The solutions they employ are often
unattractive and well beyond even her budget. For example, one involves
building a room within a room out of welded thick steel plates.

But a new concrete that can conduct electricity may make it possible to
construct buildings in which the basic structure does double duty as an
electromagnetic shield.

Not that the scientists who developed conductive concrete at the National
Research Council of Canada were looking to play a role in the world of
counterespionage.

"The initial development evolved from a discussion I had with a graduate
student," said James J. Beaudoin, the lead researcher and a concrete expert at
the research council's Institute for Research in Construction, based in Ottawa.
"We were trying to come up with projects to address the needs of people in cold
climates, such as snow and ice melting." Concrete that could conduct
electricity would also create heat through resistive heating.

Of course, electrical elements and pipes carrying heated liquids have long been
embedded in concrete to create ice-free garage ramps and walkways. But such
installations are expensive and difficult to repair.

Nor, Dr. Beaudoin acknowledges, is the idea of a concrete that can carry
electricity a particularly novel one. "But most of the concepts developed in
the past wouldn't be useful because you couldn't build anything with them," he
said. "They didn't have structural integrity."

Early on, Dr. Beaudoin and other researchers at the research council looked
into using carbon fibers similar to those that are woven into special fabrics
and covered with resins to create lightweight but strong parts for aircraft and
sports equipment.

Less exotic fibers have long been used in concrete for a variety of purposes,
like increasing its ability to deform without shattering. The lab did
eventually come up with a concrete mix that retained its strength after the
addition of the carbon fibers and gained the ability to conduct electricity
evenly  a property that Dr. Beaudoin calls percolation.

But as anyone who has seen the price tag of a carbon-fiber-composite bicycle
knows, carbon fibers are expensive. "You have to remember we are dealing with a
construction material here," Dr. Beaudoin said.

The group found a much cheaper substitute in coke breeze. Coke is essentially
coal that has been reduced mostly to carbon by high-temperature baking. Most of
the time it is added to blast furnaces at steel mills. Coke breeze is the
leftover material that is too small for the steel industry. With coke breeze,
the lab was able to create a conductive concrete that is only two to three
times more expensive than ready-mix concrete.

Finding a suitable additive proved to be only half the problem. Mark Arnott,
the conductive concrete project manager, said that a far bigger issue was
developing special mixing, handling and curing processes that ensure consistent
electrical conductivity between different batches of the concrete. "We could
give you the recipe but you would most likely not be able to produce the
material," he said. (The recipe would not make light reading in any case. The
manual on making and using the conductive concrete runs about 400 pages.)

Because of the complexity of creating this concrete, St. Lawrence Cement, a
Swiss-owned company based in Montreal that has licensed the technology,
initially plans to offer it only in precast pieces.

Except for the positive and negative leads embedded in them, St. Lawrence's
conductive concrete slabs look much like those sold at The Home Depot
(news/quote). At the offices of a construction company in Oakville, Ontario,
owned by St. Lawrence, the concrete company built a sidewalk and a loading ramp
to test the material late last year. 

The winter has been unusually mild, so the system has not been overwhelmed by
snow. But Peter J. Tumidajski, the manager of new product development for St.
Lawrence, said that the eight times it did snow, the self- heating ramp was
never more than slushy. "You never actually get a buildup of snow," he said.
"It always keeps up." A 20-by-80- foot pad at the National Research Council's
far more wintry grounds in Ottawa melted the snow and ice without fail for
three years.

Although a relatively high voltage is used, the actual current flowing through
it is small because of the high resistance of the concrete. So it is safe to
touch the concrete.

St. Lawrence is dreaming of bigger things than loading ramps, however. Dr.
Tumidajski hopes that the material, encased in two layers of conventional
concrete, will be laid on the decks of highway bridges. The system would have
two functions. When relatively high-voltage electricity was sent through it, it
would melt ice and snow. But a much lower voltage could be sent through the
concrete to inhibit the electrochemical corrosion of the steel reinforcing bars
that are buried in it.

Several Canadian and United States government agencies, including the United
States Army Corps of Engineers, have approached the research council about
using conductive concrete to trap computer signals. While a variety of
technologies are used within computers and monitors to limit the amount of
electromagnetic radiation they throw off, high-security facilities are
generally housed within something called a Faraday cage. In effect, this
involves surrounding the room with metal, ranging from aluminum or copper mesh
for less-secure facilities to one-quarter-inch-thick steel plate in more
high-security applications.

Whatever their proportions, all Faraday cages work on the principle that a room
made of a grounded, electrical conducting material will block electromagnetic
waves from escaping. 

Dr. Beaudoin and Mr. Arnott said there was no doubt that the conductive
concrete could block emissions. "But we don't have any hard data on how such a
system will react," Mr. Arnott added. Research is now under way to come up with
precise measurements of the concrete's efficiency. 

There is one immediate use for conductive concrete. But it makes the prototype
loading ramp  not to mention the counterespionage applications  seem positively
glamorous. In rocky areas, it is often difficult to ground radio towers so that
energy will dissipate when lightning strikes. One solution, Mr. Arnott said, is
"to just pour a trough of conductive concrete at the base."

Home | Back to Technology | Search | Help  Back to Top  

Computerworld
Technology briefs: Top Layer releases tool to fight DOS attacks 

Top Layer Networks Inc. announced the general availability of Attack Mitigator,
its dedicated tool to fight denial-of-service (DOS) attacks. 


Attack Mitigator is a rack-mountable appliance that sits on a corporate network
between the firewall and the router, according to Bob Bradley, senior director
of product line management at Top Layer. Attack Mitigator is the second of
Westboro, Mass.-based Top Layer's dedicated appliances, following the IDS Load
Balancer, which was released in November. The company's first product,
AppSwitch, was an all-in-one device. 


Attack Mitigator is designed to protect networks from DOS attacks and
distributed DOS attacks. It ships preconfigured to block 15 of the most common
such attacks, Bradley said. The device is designed to block attacks through a
combination of packet filters, connection counters and threat-assessment
technology. 


Attack Mitigator is available immediately worldwide and starts at $8,995. 


Gartner: E-mail marketing proves irresistible 


E-mail marketing campaigns are faster, cheaper and more effective than direct
mail campaigns and will ultimately supersede them, according to a study from
Stamford, Conn.-based market research firm Gartner Inc. 


The most effective form of e-mail marketing is permission-based, which gets a
reader response of between 6% and 8%, Gartner reported. Non-permission-based
e-mail marketing, commonly known as spam, receives a response rate of 1%, about
the same as direct postal mail campaigns, Gartner said. 


But e-mail marketing campaigns can be put together in seven to 10 business
days, compared with four to six weeks to complete a direct mail campaign.
Replies arrive in three days, compared with an average of three to six weeks
for a postal mail campaign. E-mail campaigns are 100 times cheaper than
direct-mail campaigns, with the cost ranging from $5 to $7 per 1,000 addresses.
Direct-mail costs range from $500 to $700 per 1,000 addresses, Gartner said. 
**************
BBC
New web controls to protect children

An internet watchdog has launched a new system as part of ongoing attempts to
keep children safe on the web. 
Worries about child safety on the net is the number one concern for parents and
high profile cases where children have met paedophiles online have intensified
fears in recent years. 

The labelling system developed by the Internet Content Rating Association,
(ICRA), enjoys the backing of some of the world's top sites including Yahoo,
MSN and AOL. 

The system is designed to give parents' control over net content by blocking
access to certain sites and chat rooms known to be used by paedophiles. 

The filters can be sent to block access to nudity, violence, drug and alcohol
promotions. 

Parents can download the software free from ICRA's website and can either opt
for pre-set filters or set up their own depending on how much freedom they want
their children to have. 

Choice not censorship 

Such filters have been criticised in the past by advocates of net freedom who
say it is bringing unnecessary censorship to the web. 

ICRA says that its system is about choice and is sophisticated enough to
distinguish sites that have educational, artistic or medical content. 

"We do not make judgements about what is good or bad," said ICRA chief
executive Stephen Balkam. 

"Parents decide and they have a strong, legitimate concern about what children
are doing on the internet." 

No filter system can be 100% safe though, he admitted, and such filters are not
designed to take the place of parental supervision. 

"You wouldn't leave a child wandering around Leicester Square and you shouldn't
leave them alone on the web. 

"Computers should not be buried away in the corner of the child's room," said
Mr Balkam. 

Backed by parents 
BTopenworld is the first Internet Service Provider, (ISP), in the UK to sign up
for the labelling system. 

Vice president Duncan Ingram said they were simply responding to parental
demands. 

"Security is the biggest issue for parents. The internet is uncensored which is
both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. 

"This is not about censorship but about choice, especially for parents," he
said. 

ICRA hopes to get the endorsement of every major ISP in the world and 50,000
sites are already joined up to the filter scheme. 

Online paedophile rings are becoming increasingly prevalent. 

This week two British men were charged with involvement in a sophisticated
internet paedophile group calling itself The Round Table. 

The group traded thousands of images of child pornography over the net.
****************
BBC
UK slow to close digital divide

As the UK Government launches a series of projects designed to bring broadband
to the countryside, it emerges that both town and country surfers could be
losing out. 
Around £30m has been handed over to Rural Development Agencies (RDAs) to find
the most cost-effective way of bringing high-speed net access to remote towns
such as Buckfastleigh in Devon. 

It is hoped that Buckfastleigh can become the first rural broadband town, with
high-speed net connections in the local school, health centre, town hall and
library. 

However, the government admits that despite making the money available over a
year ago, no technology to provide rural broadband has yet been found. 

For residents living in rural areas, existing technology simply cannot reach
them. 

A spokesman for the Department of Trade and Industry admitted that so far no
solution had yet emerged. 

"Buckfastleigh was chosen for the pilot because of its location. BT doesn't go
there and it is unlikely that any telecommunication company will invest in
places like that," he said. 

Bidding for broadband 

Satellite could be an option but it is very expensive and so local businesses
and public services would have to share the cost. Wireless is also being
considered in other remote areas. 

A brokerage system, where rural businesses and public services collectively bid
for broadband is being tested in the east of England. 

Critics point out that government noises about promoting broadband in rural
areas is doing little to find concrete solutions to the problem of a
geographical digital divide. 

A DTI spokesman admitted that getting money out to RDAs to deal with the
problem has been slow. 

"These things do take time due to bureaucracy and red tape," he said. 

Hard to connect 

For those urban dwellers lucky enough to get their hands on broadband, a survey
has found that 41% of users are finding it hard to set up services. 

The survey, commissioned by software firm Motive Communications, shows that the
initial setting up of a broadband connection was frustrating 20% of users. 

Connecting up to the internet was also flummoxing would-be surfers. 

Requests for customer service were found to be relatively high with 32% of
broadband users requesting help up to three times a month. 

The general manager of Motive Communications, Bruno Teuber, is concerned that
prospective users are being turned off the technology. 

"If ISPs and broadband operators fail to address these service issues, they
risk creating a nation of broadband castaways," he said.
**************
BBC
Women beat men in web browsing

Women know what they want from the internet and spend less time than men
getting it, according to analyst firm Jupiter MMXI. 
Women spend an average of seven hours online compared with male surfers who
clocked up 10 hours per month, its study found. 

While there are still half as many European women online as men, the number of
females getting wired has shot up by 29% in the past year. 

Spain has one of the lowest numbers of women surfers - 29% compared with 42% in
the UK. But they spend the most time online, favouring instant messaging sites
and file-sharing. 

The majority of wired women across Europe are young, except in Germany where
the over-50s spend over nine hours online each month, with almost four hours of
that time on AOL. 

Shop till you drop 

Generally men are more interested in browsing, reading content and downloading
software. 

Women use their time online more purposefully - shopping, organising travel,
banking and sending e-greeting cards. 

Report author Michele Poliziani believes sites need to tailor their content to
appeal to women. 

"Clearly sites that allow women to perform a function or provide information to
help with their daily lives in some way are popular," he said. 

For the average young British woman, the most popular site in February was a
supermarket site, sainsburystoyou.co.uk, followed by egreetings.com and a
health website, wellbeing.com. 

Retailers Argos and Marks and Spencer were also in the top five. 

Surprisingly, only one site aimed at women, ivillage, made it into the top 10. 

Music and the man 

For men, the music software site Winamp.com was the number one destination. 

It was followed by computer retail site dabs.com and music site hmv.co.uk. 

Portals such as lads' magazine fhm.co.uk were also popular, with
Datingdirect.com also making it into the top 20.
***************
San Francisco Chronicle
The Rising Tide Of Spam 
More than ever, a big drain on our time and money

San Francisco, California, USA -- If you're a customer of Internet service
provider AT&T WorldNet, you may recall that your e-mail was substantially
delayed around February 18 and 19. Hit with an unprecedented load of spam,
WorldNet's e-mail servers slowed down to a crawl, with reception delayed as
much as a day as its spam filters churned through the massive amount of mail. 

Since all the e-mails eventually reached the intended recipients, one could say
the incident was not such a big deal. True, in a way. But on the other hand,
this incident, the first major slowdown of a large ISP's e-mail servers due to
spam, serves as a wake-up call: Spam isn't just a minor annoyance any more. In
fact, many believe spam has grown into a huge percentage of all e-mail sent,
and that the percentage is getting larger all the time. And likewise, as
spammers steadily grow more savvy and use increasingly sophisticated techniques
and spamming software, the question arises: Can anything be done to stem its
flow? 

The first question to consider is whether spam is indeed on the rise. Sources
that track spam generally say yes. Brightmail, the San Francisco-based company
that filters the e-mail of corporate ISP customers like AT&T WorldNet, Verizon,
Earthlink and MSN, estimated last year that spam constituted 10 percent of all
e-mail. The company now says that figure has doubled. Online
business-statistics provider eMarketer estimates that due to e-mail
solicitations, the average U.S. e-mailer receives twice as many e-mails as he
or she sends, and Jupiter Media Metrix estimates that each Internet user
received 571 spam messages in 2001 and predicts that the number will nearly
triple to 1,500 messages per year by 2006. 

Of course, tracking spam is easier said than done. Tom Geller, executive
director of antispam organization SpamCon, says such statistics don't mean
much, because "the Internet is so vast and spread out that any e-mail tracking
is bound to be a tiny, statistically insignificant subsample of all mail
traveling across the Net." But he admits that the widespread perception is that
spam is increasing. 

Anecdotally, many are noticing that their personal spam load is growing. In the
course of researching this story and speaking to many people about spam, I
heard from every one of them that their e-mail boxes are increasingly filled
with unwanted messages advertising adult sites, insurance, Viagra, loans, DVDs
and other products or services. 

My brother, for example, says that every time he opens his AOL e-mail box,
about once every three days, he's likely to find hundreds of messages stacked
up. 

"I can't tell you how many times I've deleted e-mails from friends -- and from
you, Joyce -- because I just don't have the time to go through each one of
these messages and make sure they're really a spam message," Dave fumes. 

Dave is most likely dealing with the phenomenon of "dictionary" spamming.
Because he has an account with a major ISP -- an attractive spamming target --
he's vulnerable to spammers who use bulk e-mail programs that try every
possible combination of words appearing in a dictionary. 

"It'll run through first and try 'dog@xxxxxxx,' 'cat@xxxxxxx,'" says SpamCon's
Tom Geller. "Then it'll start combining the words -- 'dogcat@xxxxxxx,'
'catdog@xxxxxxxx'" 

Geller also notes that the longer you keep the same address, the more spam
you'll get as spammers find that messages sent to your mailbox don't bounce and
pass that information along to other spammers. My poor brother, who's had his
AOL account for over five years, is definitely in that camp. Also, according to
Brightmail CTO Ken Schneider, an e-mail account at a large ISP like AOL or
Hotmail is another way to ensure that you get lots of spam, as is having an
easily guessed nom de e-mail. If your e-mail address is long, is spelled
unusually or contains difficult-to-guess letter or number combinations, you get
a measure of protection. 

But not much, since spamming software is evolving all the time. Spammers are
now beginning to use software that tracks messages initially refused by e-mail
servers. If the program sends a message to johndoe@xxxxxxx and it doesn't get
through, the program will try 'jdoe@xxxxxxx,' 'johndoe1@xxxxxxx,'
'john_doe@xxxxxxx' and so on until the message gets through. 

According to Brightmail marketing VP Francois Lavaste, spammers are also using
software that randomly changes the spacing or wording of an e-mail header or a
return address in order to fool the simple text filters many users have set up
in their e-mail accounts. If you set up a filter to block e-mails with "sex" in
the subject heading, for example, the filter wouldn't know what to do with
"sex1" or "s ex," even though a human reading the subject line would understand
what to expect. 

Of course, programs exist to counteract the spam attacks. Brightmail, for
example, works with large ISPs to filter spam by setting up numerous fake
e-mail addresses and watching them for spam messages. When a message is
received, a technician at Brightmail's 24-hour San Francisco operations center
analyzes the message's headers, its subject line, its return address, its body
and other attributes. Brightmail then writes a filtering rule that filters out
messages with these attributes and installs that rule into the filtering
systems on ISP e-mail servers. 

This filtering method includes several variables that ensures its specificity.
"It's not as simple as filtering for a single word," says Lavaste. "[If you do
that,] you block a lot of legitimate e-mail." 

Consumers whose ISPs don't use filtering systems, or whose providers use
inefficient systems, may want extra spam protection. The first line of attack
is to write a filter for your own e-mail box. Directions on doing this abound
online: Do a quick search on "e-mail filter" and the name of your e-mail
program, and you'll soon find step-by-step instructions on writing filters for
common programs like Eudora, Outlook Express and Netscape Messenger. You'll
also find numerous tutorials out there on other spam-fighting or spam-avoiding
techniques. 

Another line of defense is programs like SpamKiller or Spam Buster. Such
programs analyze messages before they hit users' mailboxes and try to block
mail with spamlike attributes. 

"Spam commonly has an empty or missing 'from' field in its headers, as well as
empty or missing reply headers," says Thor Ivar Ekle, the man behind
SpamKiller. "SpamKiller also filters for certain senders, can block e-mails
sent from certain countries, can filter based on certain words found in the
body or in the subject line, all according to the level of protection the user
wants. SpamKiller can also import your e-mail address book and check to see if
mail's coming from a friend or not." 

Ekle says he has to update SpamKiller every six months or so as spammers get
better at evading filters. One new gambit, for example, is sending an image in
the body of an e-mail instead of text. With no text to sift through, filters
are often stumped. 

But spam-blocking programs aren't perfect. Sometimes they block legitimate
e-mails or let certain spam through. Tom Geller says most techniques will only
slow spammers down for a while until they figure out ways to get around the
newest filtering techniques, which is why SpamCon is focused on stopping spam
on a Net-wide level. 

Make no mistake, spammers aren't about to stop what they're doing without a
major law-enforcement hassle. Those who make a business selling spamming
services to companies hawking Viagra, adult sites or any other goods and
services have a vested interest in getting their messages to you. Even if their
response rate is really low, the costs involved in sending spam are so
miniscule that it's more than worth it. And some spammers have discovered they
don't even have to sell anything to make some cash. 

A former Autobytel Web developer "Rick," who asked that his name not be used,
says he doesn't spam, but his out-of-work programmer friend "Bob" does, by
using the following method: Bob creates a site that he registers as an
affiliate with companies like Amazon, Autobytel and Autoweb that makes it
legitimate for him to hawk their products. Bob then obtains lists of e-mail
addresses from acquaintances or friends of friends who work at companies about
to go under. (According to Rick, a lot of programmers and sysadmins at dying
dot-coms will sell their staff e-mail lists for a mere $400-$800.) Bob then
writes a script that sends newsletters to these people, offering products. If a
recipient buys a product, Bob gets an affiliate referral fee. Rick says the
purchase rate for click-throughs is about 2 percent, and with several of these
campaigns going at once, Bob makes anywhere from $2,000 to $8,000 a month. 

When told about Rick's claims, Geller professed suspicion: "Those response
rates are ridiculously high -- either he's so good at it, the legitimate
marketers would like to know his secrets, or he's lying so that he can sell
spamming services to someone who believes him." 

Rick agrees that his friend may be exaggerating about the amount of money he
makes -- but he adds that, by all appearances, Bob makes enough money to
support himself without a "real" job. Rick adds that when he's laid off from
his own dying company, he's likely to jump on the spam bandwagon while looking
for work. 

"I have kind of a mixed feeling, because I hate spam, but it's a good way to
make money if I lose my job," Rick says. 

Rick's story may send chills up the spines of Net users inundated by spam
already. I know my own spam load has jumped enormously in the last year, even
though I've been careful not to answer surveys, respond to spam, post my e-mail
address on Web pages or provide it when it's not necessary. 

And spam's not just a problem here in the United States. The European Union
released a study last year that estimated the financial hit on connection costs
due to spam to be about $10 billion euros a year worldwide. 

So just where does it all end? Spammers send messages and people block them,
which means spammers just devise new ways to get through. And the load on
e-mail servers just gets heavier and heavier. 

Maybe it's time for antispam legislation to be enforced more stringently. The
burden on businesses -- and consumers -- seems to be getting too heavy to bear
for long. Just ask WorldNet, or my brother or anyone who spends his or her
precious time and resources deleting message after annoying message from an
overstuffed mailbox.
**************
San Francisco Chronicle

Hacker suspect sent to jail after hearing

A man accused of hacking EBay, E-Trade and other companies has been thrown in
jail after employing a string of bizarre tactics at a routine hearing in San
Jose federal court. 

Jerome Heckenkamp, 22, claimed in a Monday court appearance that the person
charged must not be him because the government complaint wrote his name in all
capital letters. Heckenkamp argued that he capitalizes only the first letter of
his first and last names, said Ross Nadel, the assistant U.S. attorney
prosecuting the case in the Northern District of California. 

Heckenkamp also tried to testify to the charges he faces even though the
proceeding was only a hearing to set future appearance dates, Nadel said. 

Heckenkamp is representing himself after firing attorney Jennifer S. Granick
last week. He could not be reached for comment. 

In court Monday, Heckenkamp demanded to know whom the prosecution represented. 

When Judge James Ware informed him that Nadel represented the United States, 

"He complained that I had not brought my client with me," Nadel said. 

"Ultimately Judge Ware found that based on his conduct and his statements, that
he was a danger to himself and others and a flight risk, and remanded him into
custody," Nadel said. 

Heckenkamp's trial hasn't even started yet, but his case has already raised
eyebrows. Since being indicted on 15 counts of hacking and one count of witness
tampering last year, Heckenkamp has fired and rehired Granick several times. 

After being out on $50,000 bond, he returned to jail for two weeks in January
when a friend needed the bond money back. 

"I wish him the best. I hope the prosecutor and the court can ensure that he
gets a fair trial despite his lack of legal education," said Granick, who also
serves as clinical director at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society. 

Heckenkamp is next scheduled to appear in court April 8. He is charged with
breaking into computers at EBay, E-Trade, Exodus, Juniper Networks, Lycos and
Cygnus Support Solutions and of causing more than $5,000 damage to each
company. 

He's also charged with intercepting electronic communications from the same
companies and with trying to persuade a witness to withhold testimony. 

The alleged hacking occurred in 1999, when Heckenkamp was a teen prodigy about
to complete his master's degree in computer science at the University of
Wisconsin. Each of the 15 hacking charges against him carries a maximum
sentence of five years and a fine of up to $250,000. The witness-tampering
charge carries a 10-year maximum sentence and a $250,000 fine. 

Heckenkamp is also charged with breaking into Qualcomm's computers in San
Diego. He is scheduled to go on trial for that case April 23 in San Diego.
****************
San Francisco Chronicle
Send an e-mail, go to jail

Stephen Martin of Sonoma says he's not angry about being only the second person
brought to trial under the U.S. Economic Espionage Act. 

Nor is he peeved about the year he spent in federal prison as a convicted
industrial spy. 

The thing that gets Martin's bacon sizzling is that people still have a totally
cavalier attitude about e-mail. 

"They think they can say anything in an e-mail," he told me the other day.
"People don't realize that horrible things can happen." 

Take Martin. Or don't. The guy, after all, is a handful. 

"I'm basically a bio-nerd," he said. "I'm someone with a giant I.Q. and an ego
the size of Brazil." 

He's also a 54-year-old who still lives at home with his mom and has no plans
to get out and find a job, even though he has a doctorate in immunology from
the University of California at Berkeley along with four other degrees. 

And to a Maine biotech company called Idexx Laboratories, Martin is a malicious
interloper who used e-mail to coax an employee into passing along trade
secrets. 

"The case speaks for itself," said Elisabeth Perry, a spokeswoman for Idexx. 

"He was found guilty." 

Nevertheless, Martin is now attempting to warn others about the potential
perils of electronic communication. 

As part of this effort, he sent out a press release last week on "how to e-
mail yourself to hell and/or federal prison with only the click of a mouse." 

For instance: 

-- "Try to correspond with someone who writes funny and endearing e-mails that
lull you into a noncritical state of mind." 

-- "Try to correspond with someone who will prompt the FBI to tap your phones."


-- "Try to correspond with someone who is much better looking, better behaved
and more sympathetic than you, especially in front of a jury." 

Needless to say, many of Martin's pointers stem from his own experiences. Or
his own perception thereof. 

In 1999, he was charged with manipulating an Idexx worker, Caryn Camp, into
handing over the company's inside dope. 

Camp had contacted Martin months earlier after coming across his Web site,
which at the time was espousing advances in veterinary technology. Idexx is a
leading manufacturer of veterinary technologies. 

Martin insists today that his seven-month correspondence with Camp was purely
innocent. "I was only interested in her knowledge of veterinary diagnostics and
regulatory affairs," he said. 

Prosecutors -- and, eventually, a jury -- saw things differently. Specifically,
they zeroed in on a single e-mail that Martin sent to Camp on July 21, 1999,
shortly before her planned departure from Idexx. 

Saying he was "embarrassed to ask this," Martin urged Camp to "absorb as much
information physically and intellectually as you can." 

He added: "I never had a spy before. We are going to be in the veterinary
business big time." 

Martin told me his comments were taken out of context and that, in fact, he
couldn't recall having written that or what he had meant to say. 

"I don't know why I threw that in there," he said. "But I do know that those
two lines sent me to prison." 

And off he went, to a minimum-security facility near Bakersfield, where Martin
said things actually weren't all that unpleasant. He worked a lot in the garden
and was nicknamed "Compost King" by the other inmates. 

Martin was released in November 2000 and spent a month at a halfway house in
San Francisco. 

He's now back at home with his mom and focusing his energy on a natural-
medicine organization called Grouppe Kurosawa, which the Web site describes as
a "bunch of super-intelligent freaks who do not work and play well with others.
" 

You can e-mail Martin if you like (grouppekurosawa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), but he
may not write back. He makes it a policy these days not to correspond with
anyone who works for a private company. 

"I learned my lesson," Martin said. 

Better late than never. 

PG&E BONUSES: I quoted PG&E sources a while ago as saying that Chairman Robert
Glynn was likely to receive a bonus of $1.2 million for his hard work steering
the utility into bankruptcy. 

And sure enough, Glynn received $1.2 million last week, plus a stock award
worth $3 million. 

But one thing I had trouble pinning down was a rumor that the $64 million
overall that PG&E handed out to managers and administrators was a record high. 

If true (as my sources say is the case), this would have added an embarrassing
coda to the outlandish generosity PG&E showed those who engineered the largest
utility bankruptcy in U.S. history. 

PG&E spokesman Ron Low said he would check on it for me. And when I called back
later in the day, he said he was still checking. And when I called yet again,
he said he was still checking. 

My column ran, but I still phoned Low a few days later to see what he'd finally
managed to come up with. 

"Still checking," he said. 

"Ron," I replied, "you're not going to tell me if this is a record high, are
you?" 

Long pause. 

"No," he admitted. 

Good old PG&E. A class act all the way.
**************
Government Computer News
E-gov projects likely to end up in a bell curve

Progress on the Office of Management and Budget?s 24 e-government projects
likely will end up in a bell curve, according to Norman Lorentz, OMB's chief
technology officer. A few projects will lead the way, most will come to
fruition in the middle of OMB?s 18- to 24-month time frame, and a few will have
to be adjusted or scrapped altogether. Lorentz was a featured speaker at the
Association for Federal Information Resources Management luncheon yesterday at
FOSE 2002 in Washington and again today at an Adobe Systems Inc. breakfast. In
talking about one of the 24 projects, e-Recruitment, Lorentz called the
government?s recruitment process broken, citing his own experience in applying
for the OMB job he assumed in January. The e-Recruitment project will adapt and
scale up technologies already developed for job portals such as Monster.com,
Lorentz said; "When it makes sense, we'll private-label external capabilities."
But not all of the projects can follow a commercial model, he said: 

e-authentication, for instance, has no private-sector counterpart. "Initiative
by initiative, we're going to take a consistent approach" to authenticating
users who access e-government services, Lorentz said. "There's a dynamic
tension between openness and security. We should be able to allow citizens
access in any way they wantand measure what they want." Lorentz said OMB will
"take an open, plug-and-play approach in a consistent partnership with the
private sector. We'll rebrand methods that work for government use. It gets you
there faster, at lower cost and makes you marketplace-connected." Lorentz
predicted four to five of the 24 initiatives "will roll out quickly with some
deliverables this calendar year." He also joined a panel discussion yesterday
on managing the cultural changes of e-government projects, along with John
Condon, president for federal services of GDSS Inc. of Washington, Denise
McKeehan of Unisys Corp. and Keith Thurston, acting deputy associate
administrator in the General Services Administration's IT Office. The panelists
agreed that the best setting for cultural change is when there are both good
and bad consequences to adapting or failing to adapt to change. Lorentz said
four levers to culture change are reward and recognition, training and
education, communication, and compensation. "Reward and recognition is the most
powerful lever," he said. "It means a lot to be recognized by those higher up."
Compensation provides the biggest hammer, but managers have the least control
over it, Lorentz added. OMB is considering using both reward and recognition
and compensation in the form of bonuses for the e-government projects that make
the most progress, Lorentz said.
****************
San Jose Mercury News
New technology to transmit video without wires through home

Someday soon, you will be able to take the video stream that your set-top cable
box brings into your living room and beam it to the television set in the back
bedroom without hooking up any cables. You will be able to transfer the video
footage from your last vacation from the camcorder to the TV without fumbling
with wires. You will be able to send a multimedia presentation from a laptop to
an overhead projector without plugging in any cords.

These are some of the promises of ultra-wideband, a powerful technology that
can transmit streaming video and other bandwidth-hogging content around homes
and offices. Although ultra-wideband -- or UWB -- has been around for about 12
years, the wireless networking industry only last month received the crucial
go-ahead from the Federal Communications Commission to develop the technology
for mainstream commercial applications.

Now ultra-wideband is poised to potentially shake up the world of wireless
networking -- going head to head with more established wireless technologies
like 802.11 and Bluetooth -- as UWB-enabled TV sets, VCRs and other devices hit
the market in time for Christmas 2003.

``Ultra-wideband will allow you to make your surround-sound system and your
video system completely wireless,'' said Michael Gallagher, deputy director of
the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a bureau of the
Commerce Department that manages the federal wireless spectrum along with the
FCC. ``This lets you get rid of the rat's nest of wires.''

First developed by the military, ultra-wideband works by sending very short,
narrow pulses of electromagnetic energy across a broad swath of the radio
spectrum. The military already uses the technology in ground-penetrating radar
systems to detect land mines and other objects buried underground, and police
officers use it in imaging systems to monitor movement behind doors and walls.

But while ultra-wideband technology is quite compelling, it is also
controversial. That's because UWB signals can cross parts of the radio spectrum
already licensed for other uses, including the PCS spectrum used by cellular
providers like Sprint and the GPS spectrum used by the military for global
positioning.

Although companies developing UWB networking technology maintain that
ultra-wideband emissions are too low-powered to interfere with other radio
signals, it has taken the Federal Communications Commission three years to
approve the use of the technology for commercial wireless networking
applications. When the FCC -- with an endorsement from the National
Telcommunications and Information Administration -- finally gave the green
light last month, the commission was careful to restrict the parts of the
spectrum used by UWB and to limit UWB emission levels to minimize any risk of
interference.

Crosses spectrum

According to Rudy Baca, an analyst for the Precursor Group, a telecom research
firm, the approval of UWB for use in wireless networking -- even though UWB
signals cross parts of the spectrum licensed by others -- allows the FCC to
make better use of the existing radio spectrum at a time when spectrum is in
short supply.

The real question facing ultra-wideband now is whether it can break into a
market already dominated by two existing wireless networking standards:
Bluetooth, which is used for short-range personal area networks, or PANs, and
802.11, which is used in wider local area networks, or LANs.

Although some analysts don't see much of a difference between UWB and 802.11 in
particular, those developing the UWB market said the technology can do things
that the existing wireless networking systems cannot.

Most important, they say, UWB can handle more bandwidth-intensive applications
-- like streaming video -- than either 802.11 or Bluetooth because it can send
data at much faster rates. UWB technology has a data rate of roughly 100
megabits per second, with speeds up to 500 megabits per second. That compares
with maximum speeds of 11 megabits per second for 802.11b, often referred to as
Wi-Fi, which is the technology currently used in most wireless LANs; and 54
megabits per second for 802.11a, which is being rolled out as the next version
of Wi-Fi, called Wi-Fi 5. Bluetooth has a data rate of about 1 megabit per
second.

As a result, UWB is particularly well-suited for wireless home entertainment
networks, explained Jeff Ross, vice president of corporate development for Time
Domain, an Alabama company that designs UWB chip sets for military, law
enforcement and now commercial uses.

Cheaper to produce

Ultra-wideband is also less expensive than 802.11, which is critical in the
price-sensitive world of consumer electronics, said Chris Fisher, vice
president of marketing at XtremeSpectrum, a Virginia company developing UWB
chip sets that would go into consumer electronics like VCRs and TVs.

According to Fisher, the bill of materials -- the cost to the consumer
electronics manufacturer to place UWB technology inside a device -- is $20 for
ultra-wideband, compared with $40 for 802.11b and $65 for 802.11a.

In addition, UWB technology consumes much less power than 802.11, making it
ideal for use in battery-powered devices like cameras and cell phones. Wi-Fi,
in contrast, ``is limited to PCs and things that you can plug into a wall,''
said Geoffrey Anderson, vice president of Sony's advanced wireless technology
group.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of UWB is its range of operation, although the
technology can transmit signals farther when sending at lower data rates.
Ultra-wideband can transmit signals within a range of about 10 meters, or 35
feet. That's roughly comparable to the range of Bluetooth but smaller than the
range of both 802.11a at 15 meters and 802.11b at 50 meters.

Still, the range of an ultra-wideband network can be extended by placing
``repeaters'' -- other UWB-enabled devices -- around a home or office.

Someday, said Cahners In-Stat analyst Mike Wolf, ultra-wideband systems may
even emerge as a competitor to the 3G wireless data networks that cellular
providers like Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless are now building.

Now that the FCC has given its blessing to the use of UWB technology for
wireless networking, Gartner Dataquest Group analyst Todd Hanson believes the
big challenge for companies like Time Domain and XtremeSpectrum will be to
bring consumer electronics manufacturers on board. ``They will have to
evangelize the technology,'' Hanson said.

Time Domain is already working with more than two dozen companies to develop
applications for its UWB chip sets. And Xtreme Spectrum plans to be providing
sample chips to potential customers by the middle of this year.

Delivering `more value'

Texas Instruments is also considering incorporating UWB into its chips. And
even Intel is studying the technology. ``Intel wants to help create a UWB
industry because it will allow devices we care a lot about, like PCs, to
deliver more value,'' said Ben Manny, co-director of the wireless technology
development organization in Intel Labs.

For now, consumer electronics manufacturers like Sony maintain that it is too
early to say exactly how they will use UWB technology in their products. But
they seem intrigued.

``Maybe this is a technology chasing a market today,'' Hanson said. ``But there
is a market for this.''
*****************
Mercury News
Love at first site Create your own Web page with inexpensive and easy-to-use
design sites

The geeky kid who lives down the street had better learn how to use a lawn
mower this summer.

There's no reason to pay him -- or a high-priced Webmaster -- to design and
construct your personal Web site now that a handful of Web publishing companies
are offering easy-to-use tools to make your home page look like a million
bucks.

``Instead of spending $10,000 or more designing a unique looking site, you
should be spending a few hundred a year and doing it yourself,'' said Justin
Kitch, CEO of Homestead, a Menlo Park Web publisher.

And you don't need a master's degree to do it.

Homestead -- much like Tripod, Yahoo's GeoCities and others -- has revamped its
publishing services in the past few months to include features such as
e-commerce tools, one-click uploads and domain name registration.

If you're a beginner, you'll like the wizards that allow you to simply pick a
template, insert text and photos and click on the upload button. More advanced
users will like the build-from-scratch features that allow them to pick their
own colors, fonts and design features such as borders and lines.

What you may not like is that many of the new features are available only to
those who cough up a few dollars every month.

It's all part of a new business plan that not only allows these companies to
pick up some revenue -- now that the free ride on the dot-com train has come to
a halt -- but also lets consumers place some value on their sites.

``The average everyday person wants ease of use and customization,'' said Mark
Hull, director of Yahoo's community services. ``They know what they want.
They've seen people with their own domain names with personalized sites. These
sites are fun and cool and powerful calling cards for people on the Internet
today.''

For no money, you can get fun and cool but you'll also get a long URL name and
plenty of pop-up ads. For as little as $5 per month, you can lose the ads. For
a few more dollars, you can get your own domain name. And if you're willing to
dig deeper in your wallet, you can have multiple e-mail addresses and extra
storage space to handle all of those photos and graphics you want on your home
page.

But that doesn't mean you have to cough up cash to create a presence on the
Web. Homestead has dropped its free service, though it is keeping a free 14-day
trial period for new customers, while the competition has kept free services in
place, realizing that there is a market there.

``I think there will always be some element of a free service out there,'' Hull
said. ``But after people get a taste of what publishing is all about and
realize that we're talking about fairly manageable costs, you gain an
appreciation of the higher-end services.''

Kitch notes that fee-based services have changed the look of the Internet as a
whole. When the services were all free, surfers were building sites about their
rock collections, favorite music stars or the daytime adventures of their pet
gerbils.

``A lot of those sort of sites have dropped off,'' Kitch said. ``I think the
market shifted toward serious hobbyists, clubs, teams, churches, small
businesses, those sort of things. Most of them are building kind of official
sites.''

A sports team, for example, could post team pictures, game statistics,
tournament schedules and even sell some merchandise.

But there's still plenty of room on the Web for teens who want to show their
love for 'N Sync.

Angelfire, a Web publishing service of Terra Lycos, targets teens and young
adults while its counterpart, Tripod, leans more toward serious hobbyists and
small businesses.

``You can see it on the sites, these are meant for different audiences,'' said
Charles Kilby, director of personal Web publishing for Terra Lycos.

``Look at Angelfire. It's very hip. Very young. When we acquired Angelfire, it
was heavy into teens with entertainment and fashion-related sites. Tripod
attracts an older audience, people who are a bit more technical. There are a
lot more business sites there.''

The company, Kilby said, is committed to keeping the free services in place.

``We want to be able to allow everyone to come and start with us,'' he said.
``Later, they can upgrade and improve their skills. We've seen people start
with basic pages and come back with multipage sites with things they learned to
use by poking around and visiting other member sites.''
*******************
Mercury News
The truth behind PC sales figures: Does everybody really have one?

Six in 10 U.S. households have at least one personal computer, the same as a
year ago. Does that mean everyone who wants a PC already has one?

A study from the Odyssey research firm this week delivered this news.
Immediately, people set about interpreting the figures. Odyssey blames
marketing based on processor speed or hard-drive size for the flat percentages,
saying PC makers should instead focus on what people can do with a PC.

``Most households without a PC report they don't have one because they don't
believe they need one,'' said Sean Baenen, Odyssey's managing director. ``It's
a breakdown in marketing, not sales.''

The truth could be more complicated. Other studies suggest it's overly simple
to imply that every household that wants a PC has one, or that if you call it a
``digital photo manager'' instead of a ``PC'' all of a sudden more people will
buy one.

There are three factors the industry seems to be ignoring. One, many non-PC
households already know they could use a PC -- they just don't absolutely need
one. Two, there is no reason to believe PC ``penetration,'' a term for the
percentage of people who own PCs, can get dramatically higher. Three, unlike
the telephone, television or dishwasher, the PC is less accessible to users who
are not fluent in English.

Many non-PC households know that having a PC would be useful, because they have
kids. Kids do book reports. And these days, teachers often prefer that book
reports be typed.

There are libraries, computer labs and community centers where students can
type their reports, and library officials say students heavily use the
computers in the afternoons. Still, students must reserve time on a computer --
a maximum of two hours per day in San Jose. That can make it harder to work on
it right before bed, since most days San Jose libraries close at 6 p.m.

``There is access throughout the system to personal computers -- we recently
instituted a `Reserve A Computer' system, and there hasn't been anyone who
really needed to use it who has been turned away,'' said Lorraine Oback,
marketing communications director for the San Jose Public Library System.
``It's just always convenient to do stuff at home. If you can reduce traveling
time, so much the better.''

Most PCs still cost at least $500. The ones available at electronics stores
usually cost more than that, after tax. For most families, that's a whole lot
of money, whether PC-makers call them ``cheap PCs'' or not.

Which brings us to the second point. When we look at the technologies that have
achieved a high penetration in the U.S. household -- things like the telephone,
TV and VCR -- none costs $500, and none is as complicated as the Windows and
Macintosh operating systems.

``Penetration, relative to the cost of the product, is pretty high,'' said
Steve Baker, analyst at NPD Techworld, a market research firm. ``One of the
fallacies with PCs is that we're going to get to 95 percent penetration. It may
not be that kind of a product.''

And there are challenges beyond price. Broader studies suggest that PC makers
have picked the low-hanging fruit, and if they want to sell computers to the
other 39 percent, they're going to have to fix some fundamental problems with
the mass-market computing experience.

For instance: A Commerce Department study released last month shows that as of
September 2001, 71 percent of Asian-Americans and 70 percent of whites said
they used computers in their homes or elsewhere. Just 56 percent of blacks and
49 percent of Hispanics said they use computers.

Blacks and Hispanics (``Hispanic'' is the term used in the survey) are the two
largest ethnic minorities in the country, so if they're buying less of
something, it matters to the bottom line.

Why are those groups using computers less? There are probably many reasons.

A statistic from the study might shed light on one issue: One in nine Hispanics
lives in a household in which Spanish is the only language spoken. About 14
percent of Hispanics who live in such households use the Internet. In the rest
of the Hispanic population, 38 percent used the Internet. That is a dramatic
difference.

``I think most of the people do want a computer in the home, at least one --
they're scared to go to the American stores sometimes, because of language,''
said Gloria Paredes, owner of Latino Computers, a San Jose business that sells
refurbished PCs. She said most households know they need a computer for the
children. ``I find that they ask for Spanish software. It's not easy to find.''
***************
San Jose Mercury News
ICANN's problems more than bickering
CHALLENGE BOILS DOWN TO HOW TO GOVERN NET

Once again, the people who decide how the Internet is supposed to function
aren't getting along. The Net is alight with e-flames, and people from all over
the world went to Accra, Ghana, last week to argue 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. 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 must 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 who work on these issues (also known as ``the
technology community'') 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 should predominate.

What evolved is the non-profit entity Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers, or ICANN (www.icann.org).

ICANN is an odd bird. It's a corporation in look and feel, with a chief
executive, a board of directors and an organizational chart befitting the best
of bureaucracies.

Some of its 19 directors are technology legends, such as board chairman 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. A year ago, at 63, Lynn stepped out of retirement 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'' and signing contracts with registration companies. 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 the board might end the conference 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, access and privacy, to name a few.

There are no fiendish black hats in this dispute, and all 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.
****************
TECH NEWS ROUNDUP

HANDHELDS

Adapter offers options for Visor expandability

While they have a common operating system, Palm-based organizers take different
approaches to expandability. Palm uses memory cards, Sony uses its own Memory
Stick, and Handspring uses the Springboard module. A new line of Springboard
modules from Portable Innovation Technology (www.pitech.com) will allow
Handspring Visor users to take advantage of all the possibilities.

The MemPlug adapter is available in four versions, for the Compact Flash card,
SmartMedia card, secure digital (SD) cards and the Memory Stick. It looks like
a standard module but has a slot that accommodates those storage solutions in
various sizes ranging up to 256 megabytes. Inserting a card from a digital
camera into the MemPlug allows the user to view pictures and short videos on
the Visor without first downloading the images to a computer. The MemPlug comes
with programs for backup and file transfer and a viewer for reading e-books.
The Compact Flash and SmartMedia MemPlug models are $50, and the SD and Memory
Stick versions are $70.

-- New York Times 

LAPTOPS

Sony introduces model with 16.1-inch display

Sony introduced a laptop computer that it says is the first laptop personal
computer to come with a 16.1-inch display. The new Vaio GRX laptop ``offers a
viewing area similar to a standard 17-inch CRT monitor in a flat, space-saving
panel,'' the company said. The notebook, which is powered by Intel's new
Pentium 4-M mobile processor, comes with a CD-RW/DVD drive, two PC card slots
and Sony's audio and video editing software. Sony said the machine will be
available later this month in three configurations. The most expensive model,
the Vaio GRX590, will cost about $3,000 and comes with a 40 GB hard drive. The
least expensive, the Vaio GRX550, will sell for about $2,100, but has a
slightly smaller 15-inch monitor. 

-- Associated Press 

KEYBOARDS

Logitech's new device doubles as case for Palm

Fremont's Logitech used this year's CeBIT in Hanover, Germany, to show off a
waterproof fabric keyboard that wraps around a Palm device to double as a case.


Logitech's European public relations manager, Garreth Hayes, splashed a soft
drink on it to demonstrate; the sticky stuff dribbled off without leaving a
stain. The $100 device, which ships in April, felt a little cramped and slowed
down typing speed compared with more conventional folding keyboards. 

CeBIT is the world's biggest technology show. 

-- Associated Press 

PaceBook separates display and keyboard

Liberating notebook users from cramped typing positions is the idea behind the
PaceBook. Its display and keyboard are separate, though they can be held
together by the device's case. 

The product by Taiwan-based PaceBlade lets users position the keyboard wherever
they want, including in portrait rather than traditional landscape mode, good
for reading Web pages. 

``There are a lot of mechanical issues with PCs,'' said PaceBlade director of
corporate development Michael Lim. ``For instance, hinges fail. Here, there is
no hinge.'' 

An infrared connection lets users position the keyboard anywhere, and the
touch-sensitive screen means information can be entered with a stylus or
on-screen keyboard. 
*************
San Jose Mercury News
Amazon boosts service to Germany and U.K.

Amazon.com, the largest Web retailer, began allowing individual customers in
the United Kingdom and Germany to list items for sale, expanding a service
available in the United States since 2000.

The Marketplace allows sellers to list their new and used items alongside new
items being sold by the company. The U.K. and Germany sites started with about
1 million listings, Amazon.com spokeswoman Christina Smedley said.

Amazon.com has said the feature gives customers a wider selection of
merchandise at lower prices, while providing added revenue; the Web retailer
charges a 15 percent sales commission. Sales from these listings accounted for
15 percent of the items sold on Amazon.com's U.S. site in the fourth quarter.



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