Fergie's Tech Blog

Vietnam has resurrected its delayed project to launch a satellite and now plans to put one into orbit in 2008, government sources said.

Hanoi's plans to put a satellite in space are a priority for the government which is keen to acquire a powerful symbol of its sovereignty and technological prowess.

Prime Minister Phan Van Khai has formally asked authorities to reopen an international tender for the construction of the country's first satellite after months of standstill, sources said.

The premier said the satellite carrying up to 20 communication modules would have to be launched before the second quarter of 2008 and earlier this month sent written instructions asking the state-owned Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Corp (VNPT) to go ahead with the bidding for the "Vinasat" satellite.

Red Herring Profile: Blue Security Spams Spammers

Image source: Red Herring

Via Reporters sans Frontières.

Like many boys growing up, Eran Reshef was fascinated by an animal that would gross out most adults: the blue frog, a poisonous species with luminous cobalt blue skin and shiny black warts found in the tropical forests of South America.

Twenty-three years later, the Israeli serial entrepreneur’s fascination has come full circle, with a startup called Blue Security. Its flagship product is the downloadable Blue Frog anti-spam application, which is represented on the company’s web site by a wide-jawed blue frog with bulging eyes and a three-fingered hand raised in a sort of a wave.

“When I was a kid I used to read about these frogs so poisonous that after one brush with them, for the rest of their lives predators try to avoid eating them again,” says Mr. Reshef.

He hopes the program will act much like its namesake in the wild, but targeting a different predator—the people who send spam, and the companies whose products are touted in the unwanted emails.

FCC delays votes on telecom deals

A Reuters newswire article, via CNN/Money, reports that:

The Federal Communications Commission said it postponed until Monday a meeting to vote on Verizon Communications' $8.6 billion purchase of MCI Inc. and SBC Communications Inc.'s $16 billion acquisition of AT&T Corp.

The FCC had tried to schedule votes several times Friday, but sources close to the matter said the commissioners and staff were still reviewing and negotiating conditions the agency may require before clearing the deals.

The agency plans to take up the mergers at a public meeting that is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. ET Monday. An FCC spokesman declined to comment on the reason for the delay.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin had proposed approving the deals without any conditions. The agency is split with two Republicans and two Democrats so Martin must convince at least one Democrat to support his decision or reach a compromise.

Mr. Sulu: "I'm gay"

Image source: CNN / AP

An AP newswire article, via CNN, reports that:

George Takei, who as "Star Trek's" Sulu was part of the Starship Enterprise crew through three television seasons and six movies, has come out as a homosexual in the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community.

Takei told The Associated Press on Thursday that his new onstage role as psychologist Martin Dysart in "Equus," helped inspire him to publicly discuss his sexuality.

Takei described the character as a "very contained but turbulently frustrated man." The play opened Wednesday at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles, the same day that Frontiers magazine featured a story on Takei's coming out.

The current social and political climate also motivated Takei's disclosure, he said.

Russian satellite reportedly fails to reach orbit

An AP newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

A Russian satellite has failed to reach its designated orbit, Russian news reports said Friday, marking the latest is a series of mishaps that have dented the prestige of the country's space program.

The Mozhayets-5 satellite, intended for optical experiments, was launched Thursday by the Kosmos-3M booster rocket from the northern Plesetsk launch pad. Space officials have lost contact with the satellite which failed to enter its planned orbit, the ITAR-Tass, Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies reported.

The rocket also carried seven smaller foreign satellites that successfully entered their designated orbits.

Officials at Russia's Space Forces that oversaw the launch weren't immediately available for comment.

As many as 1,000 Texans receive fake flu vaccine

An AP newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

As many as 1,000 Exxon Mobil employees and 14 residents of a senior citizens home were injected with fake flu vaccine, authorities said Friday, and the owner of a home health care company was arrested.

Preliminary tests indicated the syringes were filled with purified water, U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said. And no ill effects from the shots were reported.

But Hermina Palacio, head of the Harris County health department, recommended that people who received the shots get tested for blood-borne pathogens such as the AIDS virus and hepatitis B and C.

End of U.S Daylight Savings Time: Time to reset your clock

Via MSNBC:

It’s that time of year again, when pumpkins sprout on doorsteps, the winter coats come out of the closet, and most Americans get an extra hour's sleep by resetting their clocks. (Remember? Spring forward, fall back.)

The change officially takes place at 2 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 30, but most Americans will turn back their clocks an hour before going to bed Saturday night. (Others may forget and arrive an hour early at church or brunch.) The time switch marks the end to daylight-saving time, which started in April.

UPDATE: Hijacker of 'Sex.com' Is Arrested

Update:

I' ve just found out a distressing bit of news from Kieran McCarthy's blog where he says the LA Times plagarized his story on this, which he filed first this this morning with The Register.

Kieran's storyin El Reg is here.

Earlier:

Richard Marosi and Joseph Menn write in The L.A. Times:

Four years after dodging a $65-million court judgment by fleeing the country, former online-porn mogul Stephen Michael Cohen was arrested by Mexican authorities in Tijuana and handed over Thursday to U.S. agents.

Cohen, a multiple felon and longtime con man, had been on the run since before 2001, when a judge ordered him to pay a San Francisco entrepreneur for hijacking the Internet address Sex.com. In 1995, Cohen forged a letter to Internet authorities to gain control of the address, which he transformed into a highly profitable site for pornography ads.

Cohen, who had been living in a Tijuana mansion, was arrested on an immigration violation by Mexican authorities and turned over to agents of the U.S. Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Marshals Service, according to Deputy Marshal Tania Tyler.

Cohen was being held without bail at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego.

His apprehension was the latest twist in one of the most bizarre and longest-running feuds of the dot-com explosion.

Brazil: Call for press law repeal after arrest of website editor

Reporters Without Borders called today on Brazil to repeal its press offences law, which enabled the arrest on 26 October of editor and commentator José de Arimatéia Azevedo, of the Internet website Portal AZ (www.portalaz.com.br), which was shut down by a judge in Teresina (capital of the northern state of Piauí).

“He was arrested even though his lawyers said he had no intention of fleeing or avoiding a future court summons,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “The Brazilian parliament should repeal the 1967 press law, passed during the 1964-85 military dictatorship and giving judges the right to imprison journalists for their public comments or writings.”

Police arrested the editor in a raid on the Teresina offices of Portal AZ using a warrant issued a few hours earlier by Judge José Bonifácio Júnior at the request of lawyer Audrey Magalhães, who had been criticised in an editorial on the site.

Arimatéia Azevedo, who has long specialised in investigating organised crime, criticised online (under the pseudonym of Xico Pitomba) Antonio Rivanildo Feitosa da Silva, of regional TV station Meio Norte (his former employers), who was suing him for defamation and insults.

Daily gapingvoid.com fix....

Via gapingvoid.com. Enjoy!

ICANN-VeriSign Deal Could Prove Costly

Jim Wagner writes in internetnews.com:

As more registrars digest a proposed settlement deal between VeriSign and the Internet governance body ICANN, at least one is feeling some heartburn over higher rates they could be facing.

VeriSign and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) settled VeriSign's antitrust lawsuit this week, and in the process approved a proposed deal that provides an improved framework for new registry services.

ICANN is taking public comments on the settlement agreement until mid-November and will make a final determination after public comment has come in.

Some registrars, the companies that reserve domain names for Internet publishers, are already weighing in on the deal, which, in part, extends VeriSign's management of the popular .com TLD beyond 2007 to 2012.

Another Black Eye for Microsoft Patch Creation Process

Ryan Naraine writes in eWeek:

A private security research firm has published an advisory with details on a fundamental mistake made by Microsoft Corp. that caused a security patch to ship without an adequate fix for the flaw it was meant to address.

Cesar Cerrudo, founder and CEO of Argeniss Information Security, found that the inadequate fix was included in the MS05-018 bulletin that shipped on April 12, leading to a situation where a new patch had to be created to provide comprehensive protection.

Cerrudo, a well-known researcher who specializes in application security, published technical details, here in PDF form, to explain how the original patch missed several attack vectors.

The original patch was meant to address a denial-of-service flaw on CSRSS (Client/Server Runtime Server Subsystem), the user-mode part of the Win32 subsystem.

However, when Cerrudo reverse engineered the bug to build an exploit, he found that that the vulnerability could still be exploited.

Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport boasts full WiFi coverage

Marc Perton writes over on Engadget:

Travelers passing through Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport may soon find that the airport’s high-tech infrastructure runs deeper than iPod vending machines. The airport this week rolled out a WiFi network that covers all 5.8 million square feet of its premises, allowing travelers to connect from just about anywhere, including the tarmac (which could mean actually being able to use your laptop while you’re stuck in an idling plane).

Of course, the service comes with a price: fees will run from roughly $7.95 per day to a monthly rate of $38 for frequent fliers. So far, there’s no word on whether travelers using airline clubs will be able to get free access, or if they’ll be forced to pay for WiFi, as is happening at Boston’s Logan Airport.

Blu Gene doubles it's own record

Image source: IBM

The Blue Gene/L supercomputer has broken its own record to achieve more than double the number of calculations it can do a second.

It reached 280.6 teraflops - that is 280.6 trillion calculations a second.

The IBM machine, at the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, officially became the most powerful computer on the planet in June.

The fastest supercomputers in the world are ranked by experts every six months in the Top 500 list.

Blue Gene's performance, while it has been under construction, has quadrupled in just 12 months.

MIT Fires Professor Over Falsified Data

An AP newswire article by Michael Kunzelman, via ABC News, reports that:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has fired a biology professor for allegedly fabricating research data.

Luk Van Parijs, an associate professor in MIT's Center for Cancer Research, was placed on leave after a group of colleagues reported the allegations of "research misconduct" to MIT administrators in August 2004.

He was fired Wednesday, according to MIT spokeswoman Denise Brehm.

The school says Van Parijs, 35, admitted to fabricating and falsifying data in a paper, several manuscripts and grant applications.

An MIT investigation found no evidence that his co-authors or other members of his research group were involved in the alleged misconduct, said Alice Gast, the school's associate provost and vice president for research.

Red Tape Chronicles: ATM fee for getting nothing

Bob Sullivan writes in the MSNBC Red Tape Chronicles:

We all know it often costs money to get your own money at an ATM machine; but now, you might have to pay up when you don’t get money. Let me introduce you to a fee you've probably never heard of -- the "ATM denial fee." Rejection, it turns out, can be costly.

Some banks are sneaky; their ability to slip itsy-bitsy fees onto your monthly statement proves their creativity knows no end. The death-by-a-thousand-cuts draining of our bank accounts happens relentlessly -- $3.00 check enclosure charge; $2 out-of-network withdrawal fee; $10 for dipping below a minimum $1,000 balance for an afternoon; $13 for new checks. One of those fancy free checking accounts can easily cost $50-$100 a year.

But the denial fee is a new entrant into this game, or at least, it is new to me and many industry insiders. Bank of America, on the other hand, says it's old hat. Either way, here's how $1.50 leaked out of my checking account for money I didn't get, and how it might be leaking out of your account too.

Divine Comedy on Forbes: "Attack of The Blogs"

The only comment that I provide on this is that if a company (or anyone else) cannot stand up to online scrutiny, then it has no business being in business.

Danial Lyons writes in Forbes:

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.

Gregory Halpern knows how to hype. Shares of his publicly held company, Circle Group Holdings, quadrupled in price early last year amid reports that its new fat substitute, Z-Trim, was being tested by Nestlé. As the stock spurted from $2 to $8.50, Halpern's 35% stake in the company he founded rose to $90 million. He put out 56 press releases last year.

Then the bloggers attacked. A supposed crusading journalist launched an online campaign long on invective and wobbly on facts, posting articles on his Web log (blog) calling Halpern "deceitful,""unethical,""incredibly stupid" and "a pathological liar" who had misled investors. The author claimed to be Nick Tracy, a London writer who started his one-man "watchdog" Web site, our-street.com, to expose corporate fraud.He put out press releases saying he had filed complaints against Circle with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Halpern was an easy target. He is a cocky former judo champion who posts photos of himself online with the famous (including Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of this magazine). His company is a weird amalgam of fat substitute, anthrax detectors and online mattress sales. Soon he was fielding calls from alarmed investors and assuring them he hadn't been questioned by the SEC. Eerily similar allegations began popping up in anonymous posts on Yahoo, but Yahoo refused Halpern's demand to identify the attackers. "The lawyer for Yahoo basically told me, ‘Ha-ha-ha, you're screwed,'" Halpern says. Meanwhile, his tormentor sent letters about Halpern to Nestlé, the American Stock Exchange, the Food & Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission and the Brookhaven National Laboratory (involved in Circle's anthrax deal).

UK Survey: Offshore call centres damage your brand

Via Reporters sans Frontières.

Four out of five UK adults feel "negative" about the trend of locating call centres overseas, with more than half feeling "very negative" – particularly those who have used an overseas call centre, according to a survey by Harris Interactive.

The analyst firm surveyed almost 2,300 UK adults in July this year and found that even many of those who had never used an overseas call centre had a negative perception of them.

Outsourcing firms are aware of the perception and, according to Harris Interactive, had hoped that customer concerns would be allayed once they had experienced the service. But this is not the case, apparently.

Low Tech: Major Dust Storm on Mars Visible with Backyard Telescopes

Image source:
Space.com

Robert Roy Britt writes on Space.com:

A major dust storm has just broken out on Mars and the event will be visible this weekend with good-sized backyard telescopes.

The timing is incredible. Amateur skywatchers around the world are planning to gaze at Mars Saturday night because it will be closer to Earth than anytime until the year 2018.

The dust storm was no more than a small bright dot Thursday yet it was large and obvious Friday, as seen in images taken by Clay Sherrod at the Arkansas Sky Observatories.

NASA took note and is monitoring signals from its Mars rovers, one of which has detected signs of the storm, SPACE.com has learned.

Dell sues man for domain-squatting

Via The Inquirer.

THE DELL CORPORATION has filed suit in an Illinois district court against a man who it alleges has cybersquitted sites it should own.

Dell Inc is suing Jeremy Mondell for doing business under the trade names Dellsmedia and Dellsmedia.com.

The firm alleges Mondell infringed its trademarks contrary to the Lanham Act, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, unfair competition under Illinois Statute 756 ILCS 103/65 and the common law of the state of Illinois, and also for unfair competition and deceptive trade practices Dell claims Mondell breached in Illinois.

In short, Dell is throwing the book at Mr Mondell.

Microsoft Strong-Arms South Korea

Via Wired News.

Microsoft said that an investigation by Korea's antitrust watchdog could lead to the withdrawal of Windows from the country, or to delays in introducing new versions of the operating system there.

Microsoft's competitive practices have been under investigation by the Korean Fair Trade Commission, which is looking into the company's inclusion into Windows of streaming media and instant messenger technology.

Singapore bans gay Web site, fines another

A Reuters newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

Singapore has banned an overseas-hosted gay Web site after receiving complaints it was recruiting underage boys for sex and nude pornography, and promoting a promiscuous homosexual lifestyle.

The city-state's media watchdog, the Media Development Authority (MDA), said on Friday that it had also slapped a S$5,000 fine on a local gay Web site, titled "Meet Gay Singapore Friends," and warned the operators to remove offensive content.

ISP identification issue trips up S. Korean firm

A Reuters newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

South Korea's information ministry will allow cable network operator Powercomm to add new customers from Saturday after the company moved to address issues raised over its operations, a ministry official said on Friday.

The Ministry of Information and Communication had barred Powercomm, which launched its broadband Internet services last month, from adding new customers since late September. It said the company incorrectly identified itself to other service providers when exchanging Internet traffic.

The ministry had also asked Powercomm, 45.4 percent owned by long-distance call carrier Dacom Corp., to build backup routes in its nationwide networks.

"The identification problem has been addressed and Powercomm can start taking new subscribers where it completed setting up backup routes," an official at the ministry's telecommunication committee said.

EU: Six Telecom Firms File Qualcomm Complaint

An AP newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

Six telecommunications equipment makers said Friday they filed antitrust complaints with European regulators against Qualcomm Inc., claiming the California-based wireless technology company was refusing to license essential patents on fair terms.

Nokia Corp., LM Ericsson, Broadcom Corp., NEC Corp., Texas Instruments Inc. and Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. asked the European Commission to investigate and stop Qualcomm's alleged abuse of EU competition rules.

"The companies believe that Qualcomm's anticompetitive behavior has harmful effects for the mobile telecommunications sector in Europe, as well as elsewhere, because carriers and consumers are facing higher prices and fewer choices," they said in a joint statement.

They said Qualcomm was making it harder for rival mobile phone chipmakers to compete because it was refusing to license essential patents on the latest cell phone technology on reasonable terms and offered lower royalty rates to handset customers who only buy Qualcomm chips.

"Sophisticated" eBay fraudsters jailed in Britain

A Reuters newswire article by Matthew Jones, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

Three Romanian fraudsters were jailed on Friday in London for a worldwide fraud carried out via Internet auction house eBay which netted at least 300,000 pounds.

Some 3,000 victims from as far away as the United States and South Korea were snared by the trio in a scam involving crime bosses in Romania and which police fear continues to this day.

Judge Duncan Matheson sentenced Nicolae Cretanu, 30, to 3-1/2 years and his wife Adriana Cretanu 23, and their accomplice George Titar, 26, to 30 months each.

Turkey, Motorola reach deal on Telsim debt

An AFP newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

Turkish authorities said a deal had been reached with Motorola to settle a dispute over debts owed to the US telecom giant by Turkey's second largest mobile phone operator Telsim, in state receivership since 2004.

Under the deal, Motorola will be paid 500 million dollars (414.4 million euros) and will also get 20 percent of the planned sale of Telsim if the price exceeds 2.5 billion dollars (2.1 billion euros), Ahmet Erturk, the head of the state deposit insurance fund (TMSF), was quoted as saying by Anatolia news agency.

In return, Motorola has agreed "to end all lawsuits it has opened against the company (Telsim) and Turkey as of today," he said.

Two arrested for using university computers for Islamist militant propaganda

An AFP newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

An Algerian and a Moroccan were arrested on suspicion of using the computer system at the University of Geneva to spread propaganda about Islamist militant groups over the Internet, local police said.

A journalist for the German-language newspaper Weltwoche who graduated from the university in Geneva told school officials that the computer system was being used to send hate messages and to make excuses for Islamist terrorist attacks.

After receiving the report, the university filed a complaint against unknown perpetrators last Tuesday.

Searches by police and university officials led to detaining a 27-year-old Moroccan, who did not have papers to stay in Switzerland, and a 41-year-old Algerian, who had gone into hiding when his petition for asylum was dismissed.

Vodafone pushes $1.5B Bharti deal

A Reuters newswire article, via CNN/Money, reports that:

UK-based mobile phone company Vodafone Group Plc returned to India on Friday with a $1.5 billion deal to buy 10 percent of the country's top mobile phone company Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd.

Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone company by revenue, said it would have preferred to buy a larger stake in Bharti but dismissed suggestions that the small economic holding would leave it with too little leverage and no dividends. "We expect dividends from this company in the next couple of years," Chief Executive Arun Sarin told a London conference call, adding that Vodafone would have similar rights to those of larger Bharti shareholder Singapore Telecommunications.

Level 3 and Cogent Reach Agreement on Equitable Peering Terms

Via Yahoo! News.

Level 3 Communications and Cogent Communications today announced that the companies have agreed on terms to continue to exchange Internet traffic under a modified version of their original peering agreement. The modified peering arrangement allows for the continued exchange of traffic between the two companies' networks, and includes commitments from each party with respect to the characteristics and volume of traffic to be exchanged. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies have agreed to the settlement-free exchange of traffic subject to specific payments if certain obligations are not met.

The modified arrangement is designed to mitigate any impact to customers' Internet connectivity as it sets forth an agreed process to protect customers upon the expiration of the peering relationship, or upon violations of the agreement that are not remedied in accordance with the revised agreement. Those protections include advance written notice to the customers of each party upon termination of the agreement, as well as terms assuring the continued exchange of traffic for a reasonable transition period.

The specific terms of the agreement are confidential.

NASA Astronauts Hail Space Station's Fifth Year

Image source: MSNBC / NASA

Tariq Malik writes in Space.com:

Five NASA astronauts held a reunion of sorts in Houston, Texas Thursday to celebrate the upcoming birthday of a rather bulky five-year-old to be: the International Space Station (ISS) currently orbiting Earth.

The astronauts – all of them space station veterans– gathered at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) to reminisce about their experiences aboard the ISS, which will hit the five-year mark of manned operations on Nov. 2.

Chinese Cyber-dissident detained during EU visit

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the arrest of cyber-dissident Shi Xiaoyu because of his online reporting on workers’ protests in the southwestern industrial city of Chongqing. Shi has been held by the Chongqing authorities since 20 October.

“Shi’s detention is unacceptable as all he did on the Internet was to defend workers’ rights enshrined in the Chinese constitution,” the press freedom organisation said. “It is shocking to learn of the arrest of yet another cyber-dissident while a European Union delegation is in China to discuss human rights.”

Reporters Without Borders added : “The Chinese authorities must immediately release Shi and the approximately 60 other cyber-dissidents currently in prison.”

Shi was arrested when members of the Chongqing public security department travelled all the way to his home in Shaoxing, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and escorted him back to Chongqinq. They took his laptop and personal notes. It is still not known where exactly he is being held in Chongqinq.

Hotmail outage hits Apple and broadband users

Following up on a story from Tuesday, Tom Sanders writes on vnunet.com:

A problem with Microsoft's Hotmail and MSN email service is preventing users from multiple providers from sending messages to the Microsoft email services.

Users of the Mail application in Apple's OS X operating system on Monday started reporting that email messages addressed at Hotmail and MSN addresses weren't being delivered. The problem doesn't occur if a copy of the message is sent to the user's own account. Changing the priority setting from 'normal' to either high or low also provides a workaround, users reported on the forum.

Microsoft was made aware of the issues with the Apple users by vnunet.com on Monday. The company acknowledged the problem and said it has been working on a solution. As of Wednesday afternoon there was still no fix and Microsoft couldn't provide any background information on what was causing the problems.

Subscribers of the Comcast broadband internet service reported similar issues last week. The provider started blocking all outgoing email sent to Hotmail and MSN accounts after these messages were queuing up on their servers. The issue was resolved on October 20, as vnunet.com reported earlier this week.

Austin's Forgent settles another patent infringement case

Via The Austin Business Journal.

Austin's Forgent Networks Inc., along with its Compression Labs subsidiary, has reached an agreement with Research In Motion Limited over a patent license dispute.

Forgent settled with Waterloo, Canada-based Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM), with the agreement covering Forgent's data compression technology embodied in its JPEG-related patent, often referred to as the '672 patent.

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of wireless products for the worldwide mobile communications market, including the BlackBerry wireless platform.

Canadian military tracks beer keg to test security

A Canadian Press article, via The Globe and Mail, reports that:

A Canadian-led marine security surveillance trial involving existing and experimental technology is being called a success.

The trial involved tracking a metal beer keg from Liverpool, England, to its intended drop off point in Nova Scotia's Chedabucto Bay.

Using satellite, sonar, radar and unmanned aerial surveillance and stealth buoys, researchers were able to track the pretend contraband and eventually seize it, as it was transferred between four vessels.

Zotob/IRCbot Cost $97K per Company

The Zotob worm that crippled corporate computer networks in mid-August cost infected businesses an average of $97,000 to clean up, but its impact was milder than the Slammer or Sasser worm outbreaks, a security software company said Thursday.

Some 61 percent of the organizations hit by Zotob reported that cleaning their systems required more than 80 hours of work, Cybertrust said. The healthcare industry experienced the greatest Zotob impact with 26 percent of companies experiencing problems from Zotob, compared to 7 percent of financial institutions.

Cybertrust surveyed 700 companies about the Zotob worm’s impact.

The worm began to spread four days after Microsoft released a note on August 9 detailing a vulnerability in its plug-and-play feature for Windows 2000. The worm, which propagated by installing a backdoor entry in infected computers, spread quickly because many corporate users failed to download the patch in time to prevent an outbreak in their networks.

Google introduces flight search ability

Elinor Mills writes in C|Net News:

A new search feature on Google lets people quickly get to airline flight information.

Users can type in two different cities, or airport codes, in the Google search box to bring up two boxes for entering departing and returning flight dates. Below those are links to the travel Web sites Expedia, Hotwire and Orbitz. Clicking on one of those links leads directly to flight options for your selected itinerary on that site.

Mars to swing unusually close to Earth this weekend

Image source: NASA

An AP newswire article by Alicia Chang, via USA Today, reports that:

Mars is ready for another close-up. For the second time in nearly 60,000 years, the Red Planet will swing unusually close to Earth this weekend, appearing as a yellow twinkle in the night sky.

Mars' latest rendezvous will not match its record-breaking approach to Earth in 2003, when it hovered from 35 million miles away. But more skygazers this time around can glimpse the fourth rock from the sun because it will glow above the horizon.

Texas prosecutor admits to using work computer for porn

Renee C. Lee writes in The Houston Chronicle:

A Montgomery County assistant district attorney acknowledged Wednesday that he received and sent pornographic e-mails using his county computer.

First Assistant District Attorney David Bluestein came clean after the accusation was made in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Montgomery County's 284th District Court.

Earlier this year, Bluestein temporarily lost his e-mail privileges for having an autopsy photograph of a nude male on his computer.

U.S. Gov't Approves Two Huge Telecom Mergers

An AP newswire article by Jennifer C. Kerr, via The Washington Post, reports that:

Federal antitrust regulators on Thursday approved two multibillion-dollar telecommunications mergers: SBC Communications Inc. and AT&T, and Verizon Communications Inc. and MCI Inc.

The Justice Department attached some conditions to the mergers, requiring Verizon and SBC to divest some local fiber-optic network facilities in 19 metropolitan areas.

Without the condition, the mergers would have resulted in higher prices for certain customers in eight metropolitan areas in Verizon's territory and 11 metropolitan areas in SBC's area, the Justice Department said in announcing approval.

The Federal Communications Commission still must sign off on the deals. The agency is scheduled to vote on the mergers Friday at its monthly public meeting, though the decision could slip to next week.

U.S. Cell Phone Tracking Shot Down (Again)

Ryan Singel writes in Wired News:

Federal law enforcement attempts to use cell phones as tracking devices were rebuked twice this month by lower court judges, who say the government cannot get real time tracking information on citizens without showing probable cause.

This summer, Department of Justice officials separately asked judges from Texas and Long Island, New York to sign off on orders to cellular phone service providers compelling them to turn over phone records and location information -- in real time -- on two different individuals.

Both judges rejected the location tracking portion of the request in harshly worded opinions, concluding investigators cannot turn cell phones into tracking devices by simply telling a judge the information is likely "relevant" to an investigation.

BT outlines its plans for battle with pay-TV rivals

Saeed Shah writes in The Independent Online (UK):

BT has announced plans to enter the television market, putting the telecoms group in direct competition with satellite operator BSkyB and the cable companies.

The dominant telecoms company will offer a new broadband product from autumn next year which will be integrated with a Freeview decoder for picking up the digital terrestrial television signal. It will supplement the Freeview channels with on-demand content, such as movies, plus a "catch-up TV" archive of recent programmes. It will also have a personal video recorder, capable of digitally storing 80 hours.

Ian Livingston, head of BT's retail division, said the service would be open only to the company's broadband customers, currently comprising 2 million households.

Scanner Grabs Identity Data From Driver's License

Evan Schuman writes in CIO Insight:

A high roller walks into the casino, ever so mindful of the constant surveillance cameras. Wanting to avoid sales pitches and other unwanted attention, he pays cash at each table and anonymously moves around frequently to discourage people who are trying to track his movements.

After a few hours of losses, he goes to the cashier and asks for a cash advance off of his credit card. The card tells the casino his name, but not much else. As is required by card issuers, the cashier asks for some other identification, such as a driver's license. That license offers the casino a ton of CRM identification goodies, but the cashier is only supposed to glance at the picture and the name to verify identity and hand the license--and its info treasure trove--back to the gambler.

Not any more, at least if a Minneapolis company called Cash Systems Inc. has anything to say about it. The firm was recently awarded a U.S. patent for a device that can grab all of the data of almost any U.S. driver's license in seconds and instantly dump it into a casino's CRM system.

FCC's Martin Phones In on Video Franchising

Via Light Reading.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Kevin Martin told an audience of telecommunication industry professionals the Commission plans to discuss video franchising issues in its November meeting, and suggested some sort of regulatory action may result.

More pleasing words could not be heard for many in attendance here. The video franchising issue has been increasingly on the minds of telcos and their equipment vendors in recent months as RBOCs like SBC Communications Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. move closer to large-scale rollouts of their video products.

Traditionally, video service providers (to date, cable companies) have been required to obtain local-level franchises in each market where they sell video. It is a rigorous and costly process, and one the telcos would very much like to avoid.

Rest assured a full-court press by telco lobbyists is under way to pass legislation creating a state-wide video franchise or no franchise at all.

"Old School" Media Companies Ready to Panic?

A Reuters newswire article, via Wired News, reports that:

WPP chief executive Martin Sorrell warned on Thursday that leading media companies like News Corp. are on the verge of panic amid seismic shifts brought on by the internet.

He singled out the recent internet acquisition spree by Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate as one sign that media conglomerates are scrambling to catch up, saying News Corp. has been making internet acquisitions "almost willy-nilly."

Sorrell, head of the world's second-largest advertising and marketing company and one of the media sector's best known prognosticators, told attendees at a Internet Advertising Bureau conference that declining circulation, viewership and revenue figures had big media companies running scared.

NSA patents under security scrutiny

Paul Marks writes in NewScientist:

The hyper-secretive US National Security Agency – the government’s eavesdropping arm - appears to be having its patent applications increasingly blocked by the Pentagon. And the grounds for this are for reasons of national security, reveals information obtained under a freedom of information request.

Most Western governments can prevent the granting (and therefore publishing) of patents on inventions deemed to contain sensitive information of use to an enemy or terrorists. They do so by issuing a secrecy order barring publication and even discussion of certain inventions.

Experts at the US Patent and Trademark Office perform an initial security screening of all patent applications and then army, air force and navy staff at the Pentagon’s Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) makes the final decision on what is classified and what is not.

Now figures obtained from the USPTO under a freedom of information request by the Federation of American Scientists show that the NSA had nine of its patent applications blocked in the financial year to March 2005 against five in 2004, and none in each of the three years up to 2003.

More Oracle Security Woes: Weak Password Hashing Algorithm

Over on the SANS Internet Storm Center's Daily Incident Handlers' Diary:

Handler Joshua Wright and Dr. Carlos Cid from the Information Security Group at the Royal Holloway, University of London have published a paper describing the inner workings and vulnerabilities in the Oracle password hashing algorithm. A copy of the paper is available through the SANS Reading Room at http://www.sans.org/rr/special/index.php?id=oracle_pass.

The authors findings indicates that the password hashing algorithm is weak, and subject to a number of attacks. If an attacker is able to obtain Oracle password hash information from a compromised system, through traffic sniffing, SQL injection or other attack vectors, they will likely be able to recover plaintext passwords with few resources, even when strong passwords are selected. The paper also recommends several actions Oracle DBA's can take to help mitigate this threat.

The SANS Institute contacted the Oracle product security team about these findings on 7/12/2005. Subsequent requests for clarification on what Oracle plans to do to address these vulnerabilities have gone unanswered. Oracle customers are encouraged to communicate their desire to resolve these vulnerabilities through the appropriate channels.

New telescope captures galaxy with one eye shut

Galaxy NGC 891 was chosen simply because it is a
beautiful object, says Richard Green, director of the
Large Binocular Telescope.
Image source:
NewScientist / Large Binocular Telescope Observatory

Kelly Young writes in NewScientist:

The Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, US, has taken its first spectacular image, even though one of its eyes is still shut.

The $120-million telescope is the first of its kind, bring comprised of two 8.4-metre primary mirrors on the same mount. It is still being built, but when completed, the telescope should have vision 10 to 12 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope.

At present only one mirror is ready for observations, but even with "monocular" vision, the telescope has captured an arresting image of the spiral galaxy NGC 891. It was chosen simply because it is a beautiful object, says Richard Green, director of the LBT.

NGC 891 is just 24 million light years away in the constellation Andromeda. Once the telescope is fully operational, scientists hope to be able to study more distant galaxies, such as those in the background of this image.

House, Senate Still in Squabble Over DTV Details

Roy Mark writes in internetnews.com:

Though a U.S. House panel joined its Senate counterpart Wednesday in agreeing to flip a 2009 switch on digital broadcasting, much remains in question.

The precise date, the exact cost and the absolute certainty of the digital television transition are issues that stand between the two entities as they search for a resolution.

As with all federal budget reconciliation bills, though, everything and anything is negotiable.

IRS torn between enforcement and e-filing

Aliya Sternstein writes in FCW.com:

Internal Revenue Service officials say they are caught between devoting technology resources to booking tax evaders and helping taxpayers file electronically.

Addressing a tax industry group yesterday, Mark Matthews, the IRS’ deputy commissioner for services and enforcement, said the agency needs to expand e-file and build an enterprise data warehouse that the chief financial officer’s division could use to track tax collections.

By law, the agency must receive 80 percent of all tax returns electronically by 2007. The agency also needs a tax collection data warehouse, which the Government Accountability Office highlighted in its review of the IRS’ fiscal 2004 financial statements. GAO found weaknesses in the IRS' ability to track unpaid taxes and minimize improper refund payments.

House Passes Bill to Allow NASA to Buy Soyuz Spacecraft

A Florida Today article by John Kelly, via Space.com, reports that:

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to let NASA continue buying Russian spaceships to deliver astronauts and supplies to the space station until 2012.

The Senate already adopted a similar measure, though some minor details need to be worked out before the legislation is finalized.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice asked Congress earlier this year to amend a arms control law that prevented the space agency from buying spaceships from the Russians. The intent of the law was to prevent Russia from providing nuclear technology to Iran.

NASA has relied upon Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get its astronauts to and from the International Space Station since the Columbia accident in 2003 grounded the shuttle fleet. Only one shuttle mission has flown in the nearly three years since.

However, Russia's obligation to provide such rides ended with a Soyuz that launched earlier this month. Beginning next year, NASA faced the prospect - barring more normal shuttle flights - of having no way to get its astronauts to the $100 billion international station.

German Web Hosting Provider 1&1 Plans Significant U.S. Expansion

Jim Louderback writes in eWeek:

International Web hosting provider 1&1, based in Karlsruhe, Germany, plans significant expansion over the next 18 months in both the United States and around the world.

In less than two years, 1&1 has vaulted into the top 10 of Web hosting and domain registrars in the United States. But according to CEO Andreas Gauger, in a series of wide-ranging discussions held here, he wants more. Much more.

Texas H5N1 News: Pandemic flu plan envisions up to 250,000 deaths

Mary Ann Roser writes in The Austin American-Statesman (obnoxious, but free, registration required):

Five million to 10 million Texans could get sick, as many as 400,000 could be hospitalized and as many as 250,000 could die during the first wave of an influenza pandemic, according to the state's latest plan to prepare for a worldwide flu epidemic.

The draft plan, which the Texas Department of State Health Services posted on its Web site this week, predicts a second wave of flu about three to nine months after the first bout. It estimates that there will be fewer infections and hospitalizations, and 18,000 more deaths.

Microsoft's Decoy Zombie: Microsoft Teams with FTC and Consumer Action to Promote PC Protection

Via Microsoft.

Today, Microsoft, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Consumer Action, a public watchdog and education group, launched a campaign aimed at helping consumers prevent their computers from getting turned into zombies.

Timed to coincide with National Cyber Security Awareness Month and Halloween on Oct. 31, the “Don’t Get Tricked on Halloween” campaign alerts computer users to the threat of zombie computers and how to protect their personal computers (PCs) from being infected with malicious code. In addition, Microsoft is announcing a legal enforcement action that for the first time specifically targets illegal e-mail operations that connect to zombie computers to send spam.

“The only way to slow the spread of zombies and other online threats is by going after them as resolutely and in as many ways as possible,” says Tim Cranton, director of Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement programs.

AND, Brian McWilliams writes over on the Spam Kings blog:

Microsoft said it has filed "John Doe" lawsuits against the operators of 13 spam organizations that use illegal "zombie" computers to send their spam. The company held a press conference today with officials from the Federal Trade Commission to announce the lawsuits, filed in Washington State's King Country court on August 17.

Microsoft tracked down the spam operations by intentionally infecting a PC with some malicious code known to turn unprotected computers into zombies. The company said that within 20 days, the PC received more than 5 million requests to send 18 million spam e-mails. These requests contained advertisements for more than 13,000 unique domains. (Microsoft said it "cordoned off" its zombie to prevent it from actually sending out any spams.)

Microsoft aims to trounce Google

People are underestimating what Microsoft is doing with search technology, said Bill Gates.

The head of the software giant told the BBC that its ambition is to be bigger than Google in search.

He said that competition had ultimately been good for web users because it has pushed search technology. This means search would be "far better" in a year.

The next decade looks even better, he said, with a lot more advances in software technology ahead.

Crimeware authors unleash bird flu-themed Trojan

John Leyden writes in The Register:

Today brings further proof that no human disaster these days arises without been exploited by internet ne'er-do-wells. Hot on the heels of a spam campaign punting Tamiflu, the drug believed most effective at protecting humans from the potentially-lethal H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, comes a piece of malware designed to tap into topical concerns about the disease.

The Naiva-A Trojan masquerades as a Word document containing information about the bird flu epidemic in order to dupe unwitting Windows users into opening the maliciously constructed file. Once executed, the malware uses two Word macros to run and install a second item of malicious code, Ranky-FY, onto infected PCs. Ranky-FY gives hackers the ability to control compromised PCs.

France looking to ramp up online anti-terrorist laws

An AFP newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

A proposed anti-terror law in France, presented to the cabinet, aims to clamp down on terrorist activity carried out via the Internet as the Al-Qaeda network develops increasingly dangerous online activities.

The proposed law would introduce measures such as extending the period for which cybercafes have to keep records of Internet connection data, but faces a tough battle against "cyber-jihadists" who avoid being tracked through cunning and the fluid nature of the Internet, according to experts.

Terrorists use the Internet for "communication, recruitment, planning" and, importantly, for military instruction, said Rita Katz, head of the Washington-based institute Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE), which monitors Islamist websites.

"Everything is there, it replaces the training camps," she said.

First student satellite successfully lifts off

The first satellite built entirely by European students has launched from Plesetsk in northern Russia.

The 52 kg micro-satellite, Sseti Express, was designed and built by 100 students from 10 universities in nine countries.

It blasted off aboard a Russian Cosmos 3M rocket in the first launch from the cosmodrome since the loss of Europe's ice mission, Cryosat.

Sseti Express shared a ride with satellites for China, Iran and the UK.

Graham Shirville, who masterminded the telecommunications side of the project, said it was essentially a demonstration payload.

"It's the first European-built satellite that has been built largely by using the Internet as communication between the teams," he said.

Vulnerability researchers pick holes in Oracle patches

Joris Evers writes in C|Net News:

Oracle, the business software maker that has marketed its products as "unbreakable," faces mounting criticism over its security practices.

A quarterly patch update sent out by the company last week contained fixes for a laundry list of flaws affecting much of its lineup. But it left out some vulnerabilities that prominent security researcher David Litchfield expected to be tackled--leading him to call for a security overhaul at Oracle, including the resignation of its chief security officer.

"That was the last straw," said Litchfield, a security researcher and co-founder of U.K.-based Next Generation Security Software. "I was extremely disgusted and upset, and I think their customers should take umbrage too. Oracle needs to re-address their security philosophies--their understanding of what security is and what it means."

SBC to take on AT&T name

Nancy Gohring writes in InfoWorld:

Even after a breakup and a new marriage, Ma Bell's name is here to stay. SBC Communications, which expects to close its acquisition of AT&T this year, said on Thursday that it will adopt the name AT&T once the deal is finalized. It will be AT&T Inc., however, rather than AT&T Corp.

Edward E. Whitacre Jr., SBC's chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement that the AT&T brand has unparalleled recognition around the globe.

At the close of the acquisition, a new logo will be revealed as part of the largest multimedia advertising and marketing blitz that either company has ever launched, SBC said.

H5N1 News: Moscow zoo vet attributes bird flu spread to illegal poultry trade

Via RIA Novosti.

The Moscow Zoo's Chief Veterinarian said Thursday that the cause of the bird flu outbreak is the unmonitored transit of domestic birds, not wild bird migration.

"No one has proved anywhere that the carriers of avian flu are wild birds...However, the black market for trading animals provides all the conditions for the unmonitored transit of un-examined birds," Valentin Kozlitin said.

Kozlitin highlighted Russia's parrot trade, saying that 99% of these birds are sold illegally.

CarlyWatch: Fiorina pops up at Cybertrust

Guy Matthews writes in The Inquirer:

CARLY FIORINA has popped up on the board of security company Cybertrust, her first big move since leaving HP.

Fiorina, as you’ll remember, left HP under a bit of a cloud after her controversial decision to buy Compaq for $19 billion never really worked out. Plus channel partners of the company were left in some confusion as to their future role.

At one point it looked like she might head up the World Bank. Now she’s had to settle for Cybertrust. Both the nature of her role and her salary remain secret as yet. Cybertrust executives say Fiorina will bring her extensive industry contacts to the party, as well as her experience in leading HP.

H5N1 News: Roche temporarily suspends delivery of Tamiflu to U.S. due to increased demand

An AP newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG said Thursday it had temporarily suspended shipments of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu in the United States to ensure that enough treatments will be available for the regular influenza season.

Roche spokesman Alexander Klauser said that Roche’s U.S. management suspended the shipments because of the increased global demand for Tamiflu, the drug that experts believe is most effective in treating flu in humans. Demand has increased due to fears of the potential spread of bird flu.

“The priority is that there is enough Tamiflu for the people who need it at the start of the influenza season,” Klauser told The Associated Press. “At the moment, there is no influenza currently circulating.”

Lockheed in Talks To Acquire Tech Firm CSC

Renae Merle and Ben White write in The Washington Post:

Lockheed Martin Corp. and three venture capital firms are negotiating to acquire Computer Sciences Corp., the giant California technology firm that has enjoyed a boost from increased government spending on information technology services, according to sources with knowledge of the talks.

CSC employs 11,000 people in the Washington area, and a merger with Bethesda-based Lockheed would continue the move by old-line weapon-makers into the information technology field.

Lockheed is interested in CSC's government contracts, which include information technology consulting and the development of vaccines through a joint venture in Frederick, sources with knowledge of the talks said. The discussions with Lockheed and the three private equity firms -- Warburg Pincus LLC, Blackstone Group and Texas Pacific Group -- just began, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are at an early stage.

Web 2.0 (Bubble 2.0?) Cracks Start to Show

Thankfully, Xeni puts the brakes on the phantasmically over-hyped "Web 2.0" shennanigans.

Xeni Jardin writes in Wired News:

Spam, scams and scatterbrains -- the same problems that plagued the old internet are cropping up again in a new wave of technologies known collectively as Web 2.0.

But this time around, proponents say Web 2.0 has been better engineered to withstand the troubles that wrecked Usenet, BBSes and free e-mail.

The cycle is so predictable, it's almost a natural law: Every new internet movement popular enough to generate buzz also generates a backlash.

This time, the debate revolves around the cracks that are starting to appear in Web 2.0, a term coined by O'Reilly Media Vice President Dale Dougherty to describe a post-dot-com generation of sites and services that use the web as a platform -- things like Flickr, BitTorrent, tagging and RSS syndication.

Dilbert: The "Anti-Walmart" Workplace

Click on image for enlargement.

SBC CTO says IPTV is on track

Jim Duffy writes in NetworkWorld:

SBC claims its Project Lightspeed fiber build out is not delayed, even though it's now scheduled to pass 18 million homes six months later than initially intended.

SBC is now saying Lightspeed will pass those homes in mid-2008 instead of year-end 2007 as first planned when it announced the project last year. Lightspeed is the carrier's $4 billion to $6 billion effort to provide fiber- and DSL-based voice, data and video services to consumers and businesses.

Napster has nothing to sell you....

Get ready for a massive backlash in the world of digital music.

As I mentioned earlier, pointing out an article which mentioned that Yahoo! is doubling prices for MP3 digital music subscriptions, there seems to a movement afoot in the "digital music subscripton" service provider world where they're trying to either (a) lock subscribers into long-term contracts for digital music downloads (and if the subscriber leaves the service, nullify their already paid-for digital music content), or (b) jack the prices through the roof. Or both.

And of course, the greed of the recording industry (and Hollywood) is behaind all of this.

I'm no expert here, but I foresee a backlash like an F5 tornado, leaving such of a whirlwind of discontent that seekers of digital music and video content will return to the digital underground of P2P networks to get what they want without being cheated and gouged.

Just my opinion, mind you, but it doesn't look good for digital music and video content subscription services -- they're certainly making efforts to make legitimate music and video content either too expensive, undesirable, or unworkable for the masses.

Andrew Orlowski writes in The Register:

Earlier this month, Napster began a billboard campaign making a virtue of its greatest shortcoming: that you don't get to keep any music. If you rent music from Napster, the music disappears when the relationship ends. If you want your music to last for life, you need a lifetime subscription to Napster.

Several other companies offer similar services. What they're really selling is a proprietary subscription radio service with a little time-shifting, and a little customization. Not a lot of customization because with a choice limited to a mere million songs there are sure to be a lots of tunes you can't hear, that you might want. And not a lot of time-shifting, either. But at the end of the day, you still have nothing to show for it.

Societies worse off "when they have God on their side"

From the "No-Duh" Department:

Ruth Gledhill writes in The Times Online (UK):

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.

U.S. cybersecurity testing shelved until 2006

Anne Broache writes in C|Net News:

A national exercise designed to test the government's readiness to handle cyberemergencies won't happen until February, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed Wednesday. The department, which is headed toward a cybersecurity makeover of sorts, originally planned to run the mock attack-and-response game--known as Cyberstorm--in November.

"While this exercise will be an important test of our readiness to respond to and mitigate a significant cyberattack, our first priority as a department is responding to real world events," spokesman Kirk Whitworth said in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "As a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, many of the department's resources, as well as those of the private sector which would have been involved in the Cyberstorm exercise, were reallocated to deal with the disasters in the Gulf."

FEMA renews AT&T contract

Michael Hardy writes in FCW.com:

AT&T Government Solutions has received the nod to continue operating the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Network Operations Center. FEMA awarded AT&T a four-year, $8.9 million contract after conducting a competition.

AT&T has been involved in the design, installation, operation and management of the center for 16 years, according to the company. FEMA uses the center to remotely monitor and maintain its communications network, the applications that run on it and the information technology equipment and infrastructure associated with it. The center is part of FEMA's Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center in Northern Virginia.

Under the contract, AT&T will continue to provide networking, program management, configuration of local-area networks and wide-area networks, videoconferencing setup, and other duties.

H5N1 News: Improved global disease surveillance systems needed

Bob Brewin writes in Government Health IT:

Health ministers and delegates from more than 30 countries and international health organizations meeting in Ottawa, Canada, this week called for beefed up efforts, including improved disease surveillance systems, to prepare for a possible flu pandemic.

In a communiqué released yesterday at the end of the two-day “Global Pandemic Influenza Readiness” meeting, delegates, including Mike Leavitt, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that “while at this time, there is no pandemic influenza anywhere in the world, vigilance and surveillance need to remain high.”

But the delegates said monitoring the H5N1 strain of influenza, known as bird flu, is essential. They agreed that the immediate global public health issue “is to work collaboratively with the animal health sector to prevent and contain the spread of the H5N1 virus among animals and from animals to humans.”

Zipa Gains Nearly 1 Million Sites As It Weathers Katrina

Via Netcraft.

The past two months have been an extraordinary time for the InterCosmos Group, which operates a network of Internet companies in New Orleans. The company's colocation and hosting unit, Zipa, gained 990,000 hostnames between Aug. 15 and Sept. 15, capping a year of strong hostname growth. The huge gain appears to have come almost entirely from the registration of new domains that are now parked at Zipa, which added just 15,000 active sites on the month.

The company gained widespread notice during Hurricane Katrina, when its staff labored to keep its operations online as the city was battered and flooded. InterCosmos' domain registrar business, DirectNIC, is housed on the 10th and 11th floors of a 27-floor office tower near Lafayette Square, a portion of New Orleans that escaped the worst of the flooding. Employees live-blogged their efforts and posted photos of the storm's impact on the DirectNIC facility. An on-site webcam broadcast video of looting on surrounding streets.

Microsoft to retire Exchange Server 5.5 by year's end

Elizabeth Montalbano writes in NetworkWorld:

Microsoft will be retiring Exchange Server 5.5 and support for the product at the end of the year and is recommending users upgrade to the latest version, the company said Wednesday.

Microsoft is urging customers who are still running Exchange 5.5 to upgrade to Exchange Server 2003, a more secure version of the company's messaging and collaboration server product. Information about upgrading to Exchange Server 2003 can be found here .

According to Microsoft, the number of Exchange Server 5.5 users dropped by about 40% over the past year, evidence that customers have been upgrading in anticipation of the product phase-out.

Microsoft also reminded customers Wednesday that Exchange Server 2000 will move out of mainstream support into extended support at the end of 2005. Mainstream support includes free incident support, security updates and nonsecurity hotfixes. Once Exchange Server 2000 moves into extended support, customers will have to pay for support and nonsecurity related hot fixes, according to Microsoft.

L(3) sells off outsourcing subsidiary (i)Structure

Michael Cooney writes in NetworkWorld:

After reporting disappointing third-quarter earnings last week, network operator Level 3 Communications Wednesday sold off its outsourcing subsidiary for $81.5 million to Infocrossing, a technology and business process outsourcing provider.

The proposed deal for Level 3's (i)Structure business is an effort by the company to shed itself of what it termed non-core businesses. Once the sale is final -- expected in the fourth quarter of 2005 -- (i)Structure's 300 employees will become employees of Infocrossing, which currently has almost 550 workers. (i)Structure has IT operations in Omaha, Neb., and Tempe, Ariz.

Yahoo! doubles price for music subscription service

My prediction: There will be a backlash from their customers, which will lead to Yahoo! and RIAA music executives standing around scratching their heads, wondering why....

An AP newswire article by Michale Liedtke, via USA Today, reports that:

Yahoo is doubling the price of its online music subscription service for portable MP3 players, ending a short-lived promotion that tried to lure consumers away from Apple Computer market-leading iTunes store.

Effective Nov. 1, Yahoo will charge about $120 annually to download selections from a library of more than 1 million songs and transfer the music to portable players. The Internet powerhouse has been charging just under $60 annually — a price most industry observers predicted wouldn't last when Yahoo entered the market in early May.

Subscribing to the service on a monthly basis will cost $11.99, up from $6.99 under the initial pricing plan. That narrows the gap separating Yahoo's price from similar services offered by Napster Inc. and RealNetworks Inc.

Domain Parking Industry Faces A Shakeout

Via Netcraft.

The business of advertising on parked domains is facing a shakeout that could dampen speculation in the domain name market. The domain advertising business, which is based on pay-per-click advertising from Google and Yahoo, has seen explosive growth this year. This week one of the industry's largest players, DomainSponsor, announced that it was shifting its payment model to combine pay-per-click and pay-per-sale ads.

The shift is driven by advertiser concerns about low conversion rates on click-throughs from parked domains. While the new model offers higher payouts for domains that generate sales, it will also mean smaller checks for domains that produce click-throughs but no sales. It also reduces the incentive for click fraud, which is believed to inflate the cost of campaigns in some advertising niches.

Banks to blacklist rogue workers in fraud fight

Joris Evers writes in C|Net News:

Major U.S. financial institutions are working to set up a new defense against insider fraud: a database of employees who are known to be scam risks.

Banks and similar organizations already run reference and background checks on new employees, but an extra security measure is needed, according to BITS, a consortium of 100 of the largest U.S. financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase and Wachovia. The new database, announced Wednesday, will list information on employees at financial institutions who were fired because they compromised customer data or knowingly caused financial losses, the group said.

Engineers Report Breakthrough in Laser Technology

John Markoff writes in The New York Times:

A team of Stanford electrical engineers has discovered how to modulate, or switch on and off, a beam of laser light up to a 100 billion times a second with materials that are widely used in the semiconductor industry.

The group used a standard chip-making process to design a key component of optical networking gear potentially more than 10 times faster than the highest-performance commercial products available today.

The team reported its discovery in the current issue of Nature, which was published on Wednesday. Such an advance could have broad applications both in accelerating the already declining cost of optical networking and in potentially transforming computers in the future by making it possible to interconnect computer chips at extremely high data rates.

VeriSign Buys Retail Solutions

VeriSign said Wednesday it will pay $24 million to acquire Retail Solutions, a company that provides point-of-sale data about products, giving the infrastructure services company a foothold in the supply chain management business.

The deal marks VeriSign’s third acquisition in a month.

Lincoln, Rhode Island-based Retail Solutions specializes in operational point-of-sale data which gives detailed information about products sold through retailers. That information, when combined with data forecasting demand and identification technologies like RFID [Radio Frequency Identification], is designed to help retailers better manage their inventory. It is also expected to help increase sales and reduce costs.

Retail Solutions has about 50 employees and has more than 130 customers including Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline.

Microsoft Chided Over Exclusive Music Idea

An AP newswire article by Ted Bridis, via Yahoo! New, reports that:

The federal judge overseeing Microsoft Corp.'s business practices scolded the company Wednesday over a proposal to force manufacturers to tether iPod-like devices to Microsoft's own music player software.

Microsoft abandoned the idea after a competitor protested.

In a rare display of indignation, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly demanded an explanation from Microsoft's lawyers and told them, "This should not be happening."

Legal and industry experts said Microsoft's demands probably would have violated a landmark antitrust settlement the same judge approved in 2002 between the company and the Bush administration. The government and Microsoft disclosed details of the dispute in a court document last week.

H5N1 News: French trio tested for bird flu after Thai trip

A Reuters newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

China said a fresh outbreak of bird flu was free of any human infections, but three people on a French island off Africa were being tested on Wednesday in what were thought to be the first suspected human cases outside Asia.

“These three people who all traveled to Thailand have visited a bird zoo where they had come into contact with birds,” French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said of the tourists who were now back home on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion.

“Initial tests have been done there and these came out positive,” he said, but fuller results would only be ready on Thursday. “For the moment, these are only suspected bird flu cases. Nothing is confirmed.”

Database of civilian casualties in Iraq

Mike Yamamoto writes in the C|Net News Esoterica Blog:

A site called IraqBodyCount.net provides continual updates to a comprehensive, sortable database of civilian casualties based on reports by major news organizations. The information includes dates, locations and weapons used in each case.

Nortel adds Websense cell-phone filtering

Nortel has teamed with a San Diego security developer on a filtering solution for text-capable cell phones.

The filter produced by Websense is aimed at curbing the growing annoyances of spam and spyware designed to infiltrate increasingly sophisticated handsets. An added feature of the filtering system allows parents to block adult material from being downloaded on their children's cells.

EarthLink Wins 2nd Citywide Wi-Fi Deal: Anaheim

Ed Oswald writes in BetaNews:

Internet service provider EarthLink scored another big win in the large area Wi-Fi industry on Wednesday, announcing it was selected by the city of Anaheim to build out its wireless network. Upon approval of the contract, the 50-square mile network would be completed by the end of 2006.

The contract will run for a period of 20 years, and EarthLink would receive exclusive rights to install, operate and maintain the Wi-Fi network during that period. Unlike other deals, the Anaheim network would be privately owned and operated.

Carriers dragging feet on E911?

Via PhysOrg.com:

A number of telecom carriers may not meet next month's Federal Communications Commission deadline to implement 911 emergency call services for Internet telephony, experts tell United Press International's The Web.

The deadline of Nov. 28 may have to be extended -- by up to two years -- and a number of companies are petitioning for an extension right now.

"The telcos have been dragging their feet on this forever," Robert Schwaninger, an attorney who practices before the FCC in Washington D.C., told The Web.

Internet bolsters French Yellow Pages

Via Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonist Index.

France Telecom said Wednesday sales of the French equivalent of the Yellow Pages were solid from strong Internet demand.

The French telecommunications group said the overall revenue of its PagesJaunes Group rose 6.3 percent in the third quarter from the same period a year ago, despite a slowdown in advertising revenue.

BlackBerry Maker Denied High Court Appeal

An AP newswire article, via The Washington Post, reports that:

The maker of BlackBerry e-mail devices on Wednesday lost an emergency Supreme Court appeal which sought to put a long-running patent suit against the company on hold.

Research In Motion Ltd. is appealing an infringement verdict to the high court and wanted the lawsuit stalled while the appeal was pending. Chief Justice John Roberts denied the company's request for a stay, without comment.

H5N1 News: China, Croatia Report Bird Flu Outbreaks

An AP newswire article by Maraiah Foley, via ABC News, reports that:

A third outbreak of deadly bird flu has emerged in China, authorities said Wednesday, raising concerns that the vast country's surveillance system could be failing. Thousands of miles away, meanwhile, a British laboratory confirmed the presence of the lethal virus in six Croatian swans.

The Chinese veterinary bureau said more than 500 chickens and ducks in the central part of the country died in the latest outbreak Saturday, prompting authorities to destroy 2,487 fowl in an attempt to contain the disease.

Repeated bird flu outbreaks in China over the past two weeks suggest its surveillance system has failed somehow, even though Beijing has carried out an extensive program of vaccinations and disease monitoring, a U.N. official said.

U.S. Seeks Review of Chinese Piracy Enforcement

An AP newswire article by Martin Crutsinger, via The Washington Post, reports that:

The Bush administration, under pressure to deal with a soaring trade deficit with China, asked the Chinese government Wednesday to outline what it's doing to reduce the piracy of American movies, computer programs and other copyrighted material.

The formal request for details on China's enforcement efforts was made through the Geneva-based World Trade Organization and could be a precursor to WTO-authorized economic sanctions if the United States uses the information in a trade case against China. Japan and Switzerland filed similar information requests.

Qwest to roll out WiMAX, consumer VoIP next year

Jim Duffy writes in NetworkWorld:

Qwest next year will roll out consumer VoIP nationwide and turn up a WiMAX wireless broadband service, according to CTO Balan Nair.

Nair spoke to Network World at this week's Telecom '05 conference here.

Qwest currently offers consumer VoIP in select cities in its 14-state territory. Next year's nationwide expansion will mirror what the carrier currently offers businesses with its OneFlex hosted and Integrated Access services.

Bird Flu Toon: "The Sky Is Falling"

Web defacer sentenced, facing deportation

Robert Lemos writes in SecurityFocus News:

Rafael Nuñez-Aponte will soon be going home to Caracas after spending seven months in a U.S. jail for compromising a computer belonging to the Department of Defense, but only if the National Aeronautics and Space Administration decides not to pursue charges against him.

Last week, a U.S. district court sentenced the Venezuelan security professional to time served--about seven months--for defacing an Air Force training Web site in June 2001 under the monicker "Rafa" as part of the online vandal group, World of Hell. The sentence followed a plea agreement between prosecutors and Nuñez signed in July.

BT Announces Internet TV Service

Dinah Greek writes in Computeract!ve:

BT has outlined its plans for delivering internet television services by next year.

The telecoms giant has joined forces with electronics giant Philips and Microsoft so it can offer combined access to 30 digital terrestrial channels, video on demand and a range of other interactive services using broadband.

The move puts BT in direct competition with satellite broadcasters such as BSkyB, which recently bought internet service provider (ISP) Easynet, as well as other ISPs and cable and television companies.

Consumer Reports Study Finds Less Trusting Internet Users

An AP newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

As identity theft has grown, so has fear of being victimized through high-tech means. A new study finds some computer users are cutting back on time spent surfing the Internet. Some have also stopped buying altogether on the Web.

The report from Consumer Reports WebWatch finds nearly a third of those surveyed say they've reduced their overall Web site use.

Some 80 percent of Internet users say they're at least somewhat concerned someone could steal their identity from personal information on the Internet. A majority of users asked say they've stopped giving out personal information on the Web and a quarter say they've stopped buying online.

The survey was of 1,500 U.S. Web users aged 18 and older.

Typing error has Israel ‘admit’ to spy mission

A Reuters newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

Israel has blamed a clerical error for a government statement that appeared to admit that its Mossad intelligence agency operated in New Zealand last year.

The arrest in Auckland of two Israelis who confessed to trying to obtain a New Zealand passport fraudulently soured diplomatic ties. Israel apologized over the incident but made no comment on Wellington’s charges that the men were spies.

German security agency warns of VoIP security risks

John Blau writes in InfoWorld:

Germany's Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BSI) is warning businesses of potential security risks with VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) technology in a study presented at the Systems IT exhibition and conference in Munich.

The VoIPSEC report, released on Monday at the opening of Systems, appeared one day before Skype Technologies, one of the world's largest providers of VoIP service, acknowledged critical flaws in its software and urged users to upgrade to the latest version.

In its report, BSI warns that although no spectacular attacks in the business world have been reported yet, it's only a matter of time before problems will emerge.

The report lists 19 varieties of attacks on VoIP systems. These, in turn, can lead to a number of security threats, such as identity theft, data manipulation, transmission errors and incorrect billing.

User Friendly: "No one gets the chicks like MI6!"

Via UserFreindly.org.

Click on image for enlargement.

VoIP E911 Deadline (and Litigation) Looming

Roy Mark writes in internetnews.com:

VoIP provider Nuvio says it will go to court no later than Nov. 14 to halt a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) order that Internet telephone companies provide E911 calling ability by Nov. 28.

Citing public safety concerns, the FCC ruled in May that all IP phone firms' systems that interconnect with the public switched telephone network (PSTN) must provide E911 operators with the location of callers.

Because of the inherent portability of VoIP phones that work with any broadband connection anywhere, providers are struggling to beat the 120-day compliance clock.

"No service provider is going to be able to provide a nationwide solution for nomadic VoIP users," Nuvio chief Jason Talley said in a statement, noting wireless phone providers were given 10 years to meet their E911 obligations.

Haywired: Russian Man Faces Jail for Sex on Neighbor’s Phone

Via MosNews.

A young man from the northern Russian city of Archangelsk has been detained for making calls to Moscow phone sex services from his neighbors’ phone, Gazeta.ru reported.

When the owners of the phone number, an elderly couple, received a bill for $5,000, they complained to the police. Detectives discovered that their 25-year-old neighbor had connected his phone up to theirs.

He had been using his own phone to call sex services, but it was cut off by a local phone utility when his unpaid bills amounted to $10,000.

A criminal case has already been launched against the telephone sex addict. He is facing charges of property damage and could face up to two years in prison.

SK-Earthlink rebranded "Helio" in an effort to attract youth

A Reuters newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

SK Earthlink, a venture of SK Telecom and EarthLink Inc., changed its name to Helio Inc in a bid to lure young, tech-savvy consumers to a mobile phone service it plans to start selling early next year, the company said on Wednesday.

Helio is one of several companies, including Disney Corp. and privately-held Amp'd Mobile, hoping to break into the competitive U.S. wireless market by renting space on existing networks to sell services for niche market segments.

UK: ISPs urged to block child porn

Internet service providers have been urged to publicly declare whether they block the use of websites containing child pornography.

Labour MP Margaret Moran says she has support from MPs of all parties for a law compelling such companies to publish their policies.

But the Home Office has said it would prefer the industry to regulate itself.

Around one in five internet service providers have not declared whether they block child pornography sites.

H5N1 News: Bird flu found in Croatia

An AP newswire snippet, via ABC News, reports that:

European Union announced Wednesday the dangerous H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in Croatia, the latest European nation to be hit by the virus.

"The Commission has been informed by the European Union reference laboratory in Weybridge that the virus isolated in wild birds in Croatia is indeed the H5N1 virus," said EU Commission spokesman Philip Tod.

H5N1 News: Chief Russian doctor warns about more dangerous bird flu virus

Via RIA Novosti.

Russia's chief doctor Gennady Onishchenko said Tuesday that a more dangerous strain of the bird flu virus could appear in the country by spring when birds were migrating from Southeast Asia, China, Africa and the Mediterranean.

"New strains of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, including those more pathogenic to humans, are quite likely to be brought to Russia in spring," Onishchenko told parliament.

He said West Siberia was volatile to getting a new, more deadly strain, but that no bird flu virus strains had mutated in Russia that could be passed from human to human yet.

Earlier, Director of the Institute of Virology Dmitry Lvov called on medical insitutions to prepare for a possible bird flu pandemic. He said Russia must immediately start developing vaccines against bird flu on the basis of obtained strains of the virus.

H5N1 News: Russian volunteers for bird flu vaccine trials to get 200 euros

Via RIA Novosti.

Volunteers for trials of a bird flu vaccine will get about 200 euros each, Director of Russia's Influenza Research Institute Oleg Kiselyov said Wednesday.

"Each volunteer will receive no more than 200 euros for the trials," he told RIA Novosti. "An ideal volunteer for us is a 25-year-old man."

"Twenty volunteers will participate in the trials, which will be conducted in November-December 2005," he said. "If the results are successful, we will be able to start selling the vaccine as early as March 2006."

South Africa pushing electronic ID cards

Lucy Sherriff writes in The Register:

The South African government is planning to speed up the introduction of electronic ID cards and passports, according to reports, in an effort to crack down on identity fraud. The switchover is expected to cost the government around R1.5bn (around £127m).

ID books are already commonplace in South Africa, and include a photograph and the finger print of the holder. This new legislation would swap the existing paper-based format for a credit card-style ID card with the biometric data stored on a chip, with the transition beginning in six months' time.

No porn for the Video iPod

Larry Buhl writes in Wired News:

There's a widespread notion that pornographers eagerly jump on new technology long before it goes mainstream, but with Apple Computer's new video-playing iPod, the adult industry is largely staying away.

With a couple of exceptions, porno producers are in no hurry to provide stag movies for the iPod, thanks to fears of a public outcry and a government crackdown.

Microsoft to Start Online Book Searches

An AP newswire article by Allison Linn, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

Microsoft Corp. is diving into the business of offering online searches of books and other writings, and says its approach aims to avoid the legal tussles met by rival Google Inc.

The Redmond-based software giant said Tuesday that it will sidestep hot-button copyright issues for now by initially focusing mainly on books, academic materials and other publications that are in the public domain.

Microsoft plans to initially work with an industry organization called the Open Content Alliance to let users search about 150,000 pieces of published material. A test version of the product is promised for next year.

Comcast "temporarily" blocked e-mail to Hotmail

Tom Sanders writes in vnunet.com:

Broadband internet provider Comcast has temporarily prevented its subscribers from sending emails to Hotmail and MSN accounts.

For a period of three days, users trying to send messages addressed at the Microsoft owned internet services received an error message. The return email stated that: "The message could not be sent because one of the recipients was rejected by the server".

A spokesperson for Comcast did not return several requests seeking further information. Comcast operates as a US cable TV provider. Its broadband internet business has 7.7 million subscribers.

The email outage lasted from 18 until 20 October, according to postings by a support agent for the US service on a members-only user forum.

BusinessWeek: "Cisco Steps Up"

Peter Burrows writes in the BusinessWeek "The Tech Beat" blog:

For years, Cisco Systems chief executive John Chambers has been vocal about pointing out trends he believes will threaten the United State's future competitiveness. There's the paucity of broadband infrastructure relative to many other developed nations, options expensing requirements that he feels will make it harder to motivate the best workers, and the sad state of America's education system, particularly when it comes to churning out engineers.

But earlier this year, I asked Chambers if it was enough to just point out the problems. Wasn't it time for Americas business leaders to start coming up with some real solutions--say, by hiring US workers in lower-cost areas of the country rather than by outsourcing jobs to India and elsewhere? No, he shot back: some things were beyond Cisco's control. "You have to recognize major market transitions. And if countries don't adjust, they get left behind. We've been very clear about the need to create an environment that keeps job growth in the US. But so far, the country hasn't stepped up."

VoIP Providers Ask FCC to Stay E911 Order

Gene J. Koprowski writes in eWeek:

An alliance of Internet telephony providers Tuesday petitioned the Federal Communications Commission for an administrative delay of an order requiring that providers furnish 911 service for all Internet phone users by Nov. 28.

"We don't think it is technically possible to comply with the deadline," said Jason Talley, chief executive officer of Nuvio Corp., a VOIP (voice over IP) provider, based in Overland Park, Kan. "We're asking them to see if they agree that it is not practical to meet the deadline," he said.

Nuvio's petition, filed Monday, was joined by three other firms, including Lightyear Network Solutions, LLC, Lingo Inc. and i2 Telecom International Inc., said Talley.

Engadget: Taxi kiosks that charge your card and show you ads

Paul Miller writes in Engadget:

There’s something inherently perverse about getting served up ads by a Linux box, especially after it just took your money, but such is the case for some new kiosks planned for taxis in NYC and elsewhere.

Verifone and TaxiTronic have teamed up to provide a credit card reader that can verify payments over cellular networks, and when it’s not busy with that, it will download and display “multimedia ads” for your viewing pleasure—lucky you. The device also covers other cab duties such as cab sign-in, and GPS navigation.

Group stresses need for scientific evidence

Via USA Today.

A leading science group Tuesday called for teaching kids "What Is and Isn't Science" in schools.
Endorsing proposed nationwide science-literacy standards for grades 4, 8 and 12, the American Association for the Advancement of Science also called for better discussion of scientific evidence and principles.

AAAS head Alan Leshner said that without better standards, students would be unable to tell "intelligent design," which he called a religious viewpoint, from real science.

The standards endorsed by AAAS were developed by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), which sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as "the Nation's Report Card."

NAGB held a hearing about the proposed standards Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Comedy Central taps broadband for the "MotherLoad"

Marguerite Reardon writes in C|Net News:

Cable channel Comedy Central, which is owned by media conglomerate Viacom, announced Tuesday that it will launch its first broadband-optimized video channel on Nov. 1.

Initially the site called MotherLoad will have five distinct channels and offer more than 450 video clips, with roughly 50 to 80 new clips added per week. The site will include short three-minute clips from original Comedy Central shows, including "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report."

It will also offer original content developed especially for the Web site. This will include titles such as "I Love the Thirties," "Odd Todd" and "Meet the Creeps." Each weekday, comedian Greg Giraldo, host of the network's "Friday Night with Greg Giraldo," will anchor a one-minute roundup of what's new on the site.

With about 85 percent of Comedy Central's viewers already using broadband, creating a more interactive channel seemed like a perfect opportunity to drive additional advertising revenue and extend the brand of the cable channel, said executives during a press conference in New York City.

V.P. Cheney's daughter hired by AOL

Elinor Mills writes in C|Net News:

Time Warner's America Online has hired Mary Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, an AOL spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.

Mary Cheney will work closely with Ted Leonsis, vice chairman of America Online and head of the unit whose function it is to increase AOL's Internet audience via Web-based programming and products, AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said.

While Graham said Mary Cheney will begin her new job "in the near future," he added that he could not say exactly when she would start, exactly what her title would be, or in which office she would be based. Leonsis works in the company's Dulles, Va., headquarters.

Mass. Secretary Attacks Open Document Plan

Nate Mook writes in BetaNews:

Massachusetts' plan to drop Microsoft Office in favor of open standards formats has drawn criticism from the Commonwealth's Secretary of State, who says he has "grave concerns" about switching to OpenDocument. But politics could be playing a larger role in Secretary William Galvin's opposition.

The proposal, which was finalized last month, calls for all electronic documents created by Executive Department agencies after January 1, 2007 to utilize only formats deemed "open," which include OpenDocument and Adobe's PDF. OpenDocument is the centerpiece in the new OpenOffice.org 2.0 release, but is not supported by Microsoft Office.

CSM: Why your dog is smarter than a wolf

A fascinating article in The Christian Science Monitor, by Colin Woodward, reports that:

At Eotvos Lorand University's [Budapest] Department of Ethology, visitors are usually greeted not by a security guard, but by a delegation of friendly mongrels, tails wagging. Dogs have the run of the place. They play in classrooms, visit faculty members in their offices, or nap in the laboratories. Animals here are no surprise - ethology is the zoological study of animal behavior - but the total lack of cages is.

And why would there be, asks research fellow Adam Miklosi, who leads much of the research here into the cognitive abilities of man's best friend.

After a decade studying dogs in their human habitat, Mr. Miklosi and his colleagues have accumulated a body of evidence suggesting that dogs have far greater mental capabilities than scientists had thought. Dogs' smarts, it turns out, come out in their relationships with people.

Warner Brothers Reorganizes, Creates New Unit

An AP newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports

Warner Bros. Entertainment has reorganized its home video and digital distribution efforts, creating a new group that will encompass games, wireless, Internet strategy and anti-piracy efforts.

The Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group will be led by Kevin Tsujihara, 41, who will report directly to Barry Meyer, Warner Bros.' chairman and chief executive, and to President Alan Horn.

The company said Tuesday it is also forming Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, a business unit that will concentrate on video-on-demand, wireless distribution of entertainment and emerging technologies.

Warner Bros. also announced that it had replaced its current home video head with Ron Sanders, who becomes president of Warner Bros. Home Video.

Juniper buys Acorn Packet Solutions

Michael Hardy writes in FCW.com:

Juniper Networks has acquired Acorn Packet Solutions in a deal intended to sweeten Juniper's network technologies for federal customers.

Acorn develops technologies to connect legacy time-division multiplexing applications across new IP networks. TDM is a data transmission technology that sends multiple streams of data through a single circuit. Acorn's products enable systems using the legacy technology to interact with IP networks.

Acorn's solutions, which also apply to other circuit-based technologies such as serial encryption, allow agencies to continue to use the older systems while making the migration to IP networks.

Internet wiretapping (CALEA) rules challenged

An AP newswire article by Jennifer C. Kerr, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

A new federal regulation making it easier for law enforcement to tap Internet phone calls is being challenged in court.

Privacy and technology groups asked the federal appeals court in Washington on Tuesday to overturn a Federal Communications Commission rule that expands wiretapping laws to cover Internet calls — or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Law enforcement agencies already can obtain a subpoena for the contents of VoIP calls from Internet access providers. But the FBI and others want the ability to capture the technology live and they want systems designed so it would be easy to do that.

"The whole process of innovation on the Internet would be seriously damaged," said John Morris, staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Document security flap at U.N. causes uproar

And people want to let the U.N. run the Internet root? Right...

Patience Wait and Dawn S. Onley write in GCN.com:

A “technical fault” in a U.N. report on the assassination of the prime minister of Lebanon that was posted to the Internet has led to a crisis at the world body and heightened tensions in the international community.

The report, summarizing the investigation by Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor heading up the U.N. International Independent Investigation Commission into the Valentine’s Day assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was presented Oct. 20 to the U.N. Security Council.

The report did not identify specific suspects by name but when the electronic document was posted online, readers quickly discovered that the “track changes” function of the file could be enabled—revealing any revisions made to the document.

Senate bill would increase radio spectrum for first responders

Alice Lipowicz writes in GCN.com:

First responders would have more radio spectrum in the 700 megahertz band under legislation approved Oct. 20 by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee as part of the fiscal 2006 fiscal budget resolution. The spectrum would be available starting April 7, 2009.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to mark up its version of the budget legislation Oct. 26. The House version is expected to include a definite transition date of Jan. 1, 2009, for the same radio spectrum.

Homeland Security: Secret Service’s network security falling short

Alice Lipowicz writes in GCN.com:

The Secret Service is falling short in its efforts to protect sensitive online data about its operations and in securing its IT networks, according to two new reports from Homeland Security Department inspector general Richard L. Skinner.

The IG’s audit found inadequacies in the security controls for sensitive data about protective operations contained in the Secret Service Web System (SSWeb).

A redacted copy [.pdf] of the audit is available on the IG’s Web site.

Vulnerabilities were discovered in access controls, configuration management procedures and continuity-of-operations safeguards, the report said. In some cases, default passwords were not changed at the time new software was installed.

U.S. Passports to get RFID chip implants

This seems like a good time to mention (again) RFIDKills.com.

Declan McCullagh writes in C|Net News:

All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely-readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.

Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that date will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as "fingerprints or iris scans."

Over the last year, opposition to the idea of implanting RFID chips in passports has grown amidst worries that identity thieves could snatch personal information on them out of the air simply by aiming a high-powered antenna at a person or a vehicle. Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan the State Department received this year, 98.5 percent were negative. The objections mostly focused on security and privacy concerns.

But the Bush administration chose to go ahead with embedding 64KB chips in future passports, citing a desire to abide by "globally interoperable" standards devised by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency. Other nations, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, have announced similar plans.

Death toll for U.S. troops in Iraq reaches 2,000

This has all sorts of negative correlations with technology issues, but as a U.S. Army veteran and concerned American, I just had to mention this horrible bit of news.

An AP newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

The U.S. military announced the death of an American soldier wounded in Iraq on Tuesday, bringing to 2,000 the number of American service members killed since the war started in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Earlier, the military announced the deaths of two Marines in fighting with insurgents last week in a village west of Baghdad.

Just before the toll hit 2,000, President Bush warned the nation to brace for an even higher casualty count as the mission there has more work remaining to be successful.

You will not be forgotten.

Physicists Sign Petition To Oppose U.S. Policy On Nuclear Attack

More than 470 physicists, including seven Nobel laureates, have signed a petition to oppose a new U.S. Defense Department proposal that allows the United States to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.

The petition was started by two physics professors at the University of California, San Diego, Kim Griest and Jorge Hirsch, who said they felt an obligation to speak out about the nuclear policy change because their profession brought nuclear weapons into the world 60 years ago.

H5N1 News: Bird Flu Could Hit U.S. Next Year

An AP newswire article by Joseph B. Verrengia, via ABC News, reporst that:

As bird flu is spread continent-to-continent by wild birds, the seasonal migration that is normally one of nature's wonders is becoming something scary.

Could bird flu reach North America through migrating birds? Biologists in Alaska and Canada are keeping an eye out and say it's possible by next year.

Scientists from several agencies have been monitoring large flocks in the northern part of this continent since last summer, collecting both live birds and thousands of samples from bird droppings. The results of those tests are pending, but so far scientists have not found the virus that is spreading across Asia.

Google to take on Technorati?

Nate Mook writes in BetaNews:

Let the "All your base" jokes begin. Google is preparing to unveil a new service that will serve as a giant Web database for miscellaneous content submitted by users. Called Google Base, the site will host all times of items and make them searchable through the use of "attributes," or tags.

Google says examples of items that could be added include a description of your party planning service, listing of your used car for sale or a database of protein structures. Standard Google searches, including Froogle, could even include Google Base items if their relevance is high. Google is expected to launch the service today at its invite-only Zeitgeist conference.

Wilma, nor’easter beat up on Northeast

Via MSNBC.

Howling winds and driving rain lashed the Northeast on Tuesday, causing power outages in two states, disrupting air travel, pounding New Jersey beaches with 20-foot waves and forcing authorities to issue flood and high wind warnings in areas saturated by earlier rain.

Fueled by moisture from Hurricane Wilma, the nor’easter was forecast to soak New England with 2 to 4 inches of rain and bring snow to northern New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.

In Connecticut, downed trees closed roads in Easton and Harwinton, and 4,000 Northeast Utilities customers were without power Tuesday.

Skype Multiple URI and VCARD Handling Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities

Via FrSIRT.

Advisory ID : FrSIRT/ADV-2005-2197
CVE ID : CVE-2005-3265 - CVE-2005-3267
Rated as : Critical
Remotely Exploitable : Yes
Locally Exploitable : Yes
Release Date : 2005-10-25

* Technical Description *

Multiple vulnerabilities were identified in Skype, which could be exploited by remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands or cause a denial of service.

The first issue is due to buffer overflow errors when processing a specially crafted "callto://" or "skype://" URL, which could be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary commands.

The second vulnerability is due to an error when importing non-standard VCARD files, which could be exploited by attackers to compromise a vulnerable system by convincing a user to import a malicious VCARD.

The third flaw is due to an unspecified error in a specific networking routine, which could be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary commands or cause a denial of service.

* Affected Products *

Skype for Windows Release 1.4.*.83 and prior
Skype for Mac OS X Release 1.3.*.16 and prior
Skype for Linux Release 1.2.*.17 and prior
Skype for Pocket PC Release 1.1.*.6 and prior

* Solution *

Apply patches :
http://www.skype.com/download/

* References *

http://www.frsirt.com/english/advisories/2005/2197
http://www.skype.com/security/skype-sb-2005-02.html
http://www.skype.com/security/skype-sb-2005-03.html
http://www.pentest.co.uk/documents/ptl-2005-01.html

BellSouth: "Carriers are first responders'"

Stephen Lawson writes in InfoWorld:

Carriers need to be given higher priority in disasters because telecommunications infrastructure is so critical to recovery efforts, a high-ranking BellSouth executive said Monday.

"Our industry really needs first-responder status, because so many of the emergency services personnel are counting on us," said Bill Smith, chief technology officer (CTO) at BellSouth, the carrier that bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina last month. Smith has discussed the issue with leaders in Washington, D.C., he said.

Smith appeared with top technology executives from the three other major regional carriers on the first day of Telecom '05, the U.S. Telecom Association trade show in Las Vegas. Along with talk of next-generation infrastructure, they discussed lessons learned from hurricanes Katrina and Rita even as Wilma ravaged southern Florida on Monday.

Tiscali power glitch reaches across Europe

John Leyden writes in The Register:

A power outage in Tiscali's Frankfurt data centre disrupted net services to its German customers on Sunday. Power was down for 40 minutes between 2005 and 2045 on 21 October knocking an unknown proportion of the ISP's Germany hosting customers offline and affecting at least one UK firm whose international partners used the TINet data centre.

Although performance graphs from Tiscali show the affect of the power outage (French portion) on its backbone it's unclear how many businesses, either directly or indirectly, were hit by last weekend's outage. A spokeswoman for Tiscali said she was unable to comment on the Frankfurt issue but added that the glitch in "no way" affected UK services.

Savvis CEO on unpaid leave amid strip club flap

This is something that caught my attention last week. The drama continues....

A Reuters newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

Savvis Communications Corp. has placed its chief executive on unpaid leave and will launch an internal probe related to a credit card company lawsuit alleging he was two years late in paying $241,000 in charges at a Manhattan strip club.

The telecommunications carrier said Robert McCormick was placed on unpaid leave effective Monday, pending the outcome of the investigation. Jack Finlayson, president and chief operating officer, has been appointed acting CEO.

The lawsuit, brought by American Express against McCormick and Savvis last week, charges that the two were late in paying charges rung up on McCormick’s corporate credit card at Scores, a trendy New York strip club.

Pakistan Investigates Reported Volcanic Activity

An AP newswire article by Munir Ahmed, via ABC News, reports that:

Pakistan's army flew a team of geologists to an isolated northwestern valley Tuesday to investigate reports by anxious villagers of possible volcanic activity in the quake-shattered Himalayan foothills, a government official said.

An official from Pakistan's meteorological department said there was little chance of volcanic activity as the country has no recent history of eruptions.

Nevertheless, a two-man team left for the Alai Valley to investigate the villagers' claim, said chief army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan. The valley is at an elevation of about 6,000 feet, surrounded by mountains as high as 10,000 feet.

BellSouth CTO: "We lost 9 COs to Katrina"

Jim Duffy writes in NetworkWorld:

Hurricane Katrina destroyed nine BellSouth central offices in the Gulf Coast region, BellSouth's CTO said this week.

The lost COs served 20,000 lines on the Mississippi coast and on the peninsula south of New Orleans, said Bill Smith, BellSouth CTO. BellSouth is deploying digital loop carrier systems to restore service, Smith says.

Reconstructing the COs, however, will depend on whether people repopulate those affected areas.

BellSouth has 4.7 million lines in the Katrina-affected areas of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Ericsson to buy most of Marconi for $2.1B

Nancy Gohring writes in InfoWorld:

Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson on Tuesday said it agreed to buy parts of struggling telecommunications equipment vendor Marconi for £1.2 billion ($2.1 billion).

As wireless networks continue to boost data throughput rates, the back-end supporting wired networks must continue to grow, said Carl-Henric Svanberg, president and chief executive officer of Ericsson. With this acquisition, Ericsson will be able to supply the equipment that can help operators increase capacity on their wired networks.

As part of the deal, Ericsson will get Marconi's optical networking equipment, broadband access products, and softswitch products as well as research and development operations. Ericsson is also buying Marconi's radio access business. Combined, the parts of Marconi that Ericsson is buying account for 75 percent of Marconi's income. Ericsson is also acquiring the Marconi brand.

Ericsson expects that the acquisition will add £1 billion in sales but likely won't positively affect Ericsson's bottom line until 2007.

20 Turks fined for using letters "W" and "Q"

I'm...uh...speechless.

A Reuters newswire article, via CNN, reports that:

A Turkish court has fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law that bans use of characters not in the Turkish alphabet, rights campaigners said.

The court in the southeastern city of Siirt fined each of the 20 people 100 new lira ($75.53) for holding up the placards, written in Kurdish, at the event last year. The letters Q and W do not exist in the Turkish alphabet.

Brain drain from UK is "worst in the world"

Philip Thornton writes in The Independent (UK):

Britain has lost more skilled workers to the global "brain drain" than any other country, according to a report by the World Bank.

More than 1.44 million graduates have left the UK to look for more highly paid jobs in countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia. That far outweighs 1.26 million immigrant graduates in the UK, leaving a net "brain loss" of some 200,000 people.

The findings will fuel concerns that Britain's failure to defend its manufacturing, science and university base is pushing highly skilled workers overseas and risks damaging long-term productivity.

Hurricane Wilma creating major problems for airlines

An AP newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

Along with causing billions of dollars in insured damage, swiping electricity from millions of Floridians and killing at least six people, Hurricane Wilma also created major problems for air travelers on both domestic and international routes.

Miami International Airport is the busiest U.S. hub for Latin American travel and the busiest state hub for foreign travel. Yet it was empty on Monday and will remain that way Tuesday, when county workers will begin what officials called an “enormous” task to resume normal operations.

At least 2,000 flights — affecting hundreds of thousands of fliers — have been canceled into and out of South Florida’s three major airports because of Wilma, and normal service may not resume until the middle of the week.

For 4th Time, Judge Seeks to Shield Indian Data

John Files writes in The New York Times:

For the fourth time since 2001, a federal judge has sought to force the Interior Department to disconnect from the Internet its computers that have access to data related to trust accounts it administers for American Indians.

In an opinion of more than 200 pages, the judge, Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court here, said computer security at the department was "disorganized and broken," making it vulnerable to computer hackers.

The ruling, issued on Thursday, exempted those computers necessary "to protect against fires or other such threats to life, property or national security."

But Interior Department officials said that the order could affect as many as 6,000 government computers containing Indian trust data, and others still with indirect access to the information. Dan DuBray, a department spokesman, said the agency received a temporary stay of the order from an federal appeals court on Friday, as it seeks to have the decision reversed. Government lawyers had argued that the stay was "necessary to prevent grave injury to the public interest" and the operations of government.

Daily gapingvoid.com fix...

Via gapingvoid.com. Enjoy!

Swedish Man Convicted of Online Piracy

An AP newswire article by Mattias Karen, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

A Swedish court on Tuesday handed down the country's first Internet piracy conviction, fining a man 16,000 kronor ($2,000) for using a file-sharing network to distribute a movie online.

The Vastmanland district court ruled that Andreas Bawer, 28, violated Swedish copyright laws by making a Swedish movie available for others to download.

The verdict was hailed by the entertainment industry as a first step toward stricter enforcement of copyright laws in Sweden, which has been criticized as a safe haven for online piracy. Up to 10 percent of all Swedes are estimated to freely swap music, movies and games on their computers.

But by saying the crime does not warrant a prison sentence, the court's precedent may have encouraged other file sharers to continue the swapping, as Swedish police can only devote limited resources to offenses that merely result in fines.

UK: Identity Cards Bill has inadequate safeguards, says Parliamentary Committee

The all-party House of Lords Constitution Committee has published a critical report which reiterates concerns about insufficient safeguards in the Identity Cards Bill. But with a curious history lesson, the Government was quick to reject its comments.

The Government has previously rejected comments about the need for safeguards made by the Home Affairs Select Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

iMesh Going Legit

Via The World Health Organization.

Emerging from the shady world of illegitimate file-sharing, iMesh is set to launch a beta online music service Tuesday in the latest attempt to convert the world’s millions of peer-to-peer (P2P) users to paying music customers.

Though it’s a few years behind other online music offerings, iMesh has the advantage of an existing user base of about 100 million. It also has a leg up on other lifetime P2P services, which are still mired in legal woes. iMesh is the first major network to convert to a legal service authorized by the major labels.

The New York City-based company, founded in Israel in 1999, joined the P2P game early on, right after the original Napster. After becoming one of the most popular file-sharing networks in the world, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued it for contributing to copyright infringement.

Some of its peers fought the music industry, including Napster, Grokster, Kazaa, and StreamCast (see Grokster Loses). Instead, iMesh settled, paying out $4.1 million in July 2004.

FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations

Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post:

The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.

Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view.

In one case, FBI agents kept an unidentified target under surveillance for at least five years -- including more than 15 months without notifying Justice Department lawyers after the subject had moved from New York to Detroit. An FBI investigation concluded that the delay was a violation of Justice guidelines and prevented the department "from exercising its responsibility for oversight and approval of an ongoing foreign counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. person."

In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper "unconsented physical search," according to the documents.

H5N1 News: 4th bird flu victim in Indonesia, disease spreads

A Reuters newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

Indonesia confirmed on Tuesday a fourth person in the country had succumbed to bird flu while China said hundreds of farm geese had died, the latest outbreak of a disease that seems to defy efforts to halt its spread.

The deadly H5N1 virus first surfaced in Asia but appears to be spreading quickly to the West. Russia confirmed more bird flu cases in poultry on Monday, further raising fears the disease could spread across Europe on the wings of migratory birds.

The European Union was poised on Tuesday to ban all imports of captive wild birds after a parrot died of the H5N1 strain in Britain.

Dilbert: The Specter of Unpaid Overtime

Click on image for enlargement.

H5N1 News: Newsweek -- The Fight Against the Flu

Image Source: Newsweek / Robert Ghement / AP

Jerry Adler writes in the Oct. 31, 2005 issue of Newsweek:

One parrot, imported from South America and held in quarantine in Britain, along with a shipment of birds from Taiwan.

One swan, in the Romanian village of C.A. Rosetti, near the border with Ukraine.

One man, Bangorn Benpad, 48, a sometime driver and gardener in the Thai province of Kanchanaburi, who had helped himself on a couple of occasions to chickens from a neighbor's flock. The flock had been dying off, and the chickens he took were close to death anyway. Days after he killed, plucked, grilled and ate the birds, he developed a cough and a fever and visited a local clinic, where they took an X-ray of his lungs and suggested he check himself into a hospital. Instead, he went home, but last Monday his condition worsened, and a new X-ray showed a rapid deterioration in his lungs. By Wednesday he was dead.

In ordinary times these deaths last week would have gone unnoticed by the world at large, but this is not an ordinary time: the world is on edge, stalked by a virus that travels the great migratory flyways and kills where it lands.

Boing Boing: Pakistani blogger documents quake relief efforts

Definately worth a visit.

Via Boing Boing.

Sajjad Zaidi has taken a leave from his job at an ISP in Islamabad to join the aid relief distribution in remote areas. He is documenting what he sees on his blog in photos and text.

Also, this seems like a really good time to mention RISE-PAK, the Relief Information System for Earthquakes - Pakistan.

E-tickets strike out with White Sox fans

Via Reuters.

Here's one problem the 1959 Chicago White Sox never faced -- some fans who were lucky enough to buy seats to this year's World Series were disappointed to learn they would receive electronic tickets.

The White Sox, who begin their first World Series since 1959 on Saturday, are fielding complaints from fans who want to trade in their paper e-tickets for traditional card stock ones that can be framed as souvenirs.

When you live in Chicago, home of the two Major League Baseball franchises that have waited the longest for a World Series championship, a Fall Classic here is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

DOJ raises anti-trust questions over Oracle-Siebel acquisition

Tom Saunders writes on vnunet.com:

The US Department of Justice has requested additional information from Oracle about its planned acquisition of Siebel Systems as part of an anti-trust investigation into the deal.

The request sends a strong reminder of the legal clash between Oracle and the Department of Justice last year over Oracle's plans to buy Peoplesoft. A federal judge in San Francisco in the end ruled in favour of Oracle.

H5N1 News: WHO update 36 -- Situation in Thailand, Indonesia

24 October 2005

The Ministry of Public Health in Thailand has confirmed an additional case of human infection with H5N1 avian influenza. The patient, a 7-year-old boy from Kanchanaburi Province, developed symptoms on 16 October and was hospitalized on 19 October. He is recovering. He is the son of a confirmed case who died on 19 October.

These are the first two confirmed cases in Thailand in a year. Since the start of the outbreaks in Asia, Thailand has confirmed 19 cases, of which 13 have been fatal.

Indonesia

The Ministry of Health in Indonesia has confirmed two additional cases of human infection with H5N1 avian influenza.

The first newly confirmed case is a four-year-old boy from Sumatra Island in Lampung Province. He developed symptoms on 4 October, was hospitalized, recovered fully, and has returned home.

This case is the nephew of the 21-year-old man from Lampung, who was reported on 10 October 2005. Although the two cases are related and lived in the same neighbourhood, human-to-human transmission is considered unlikely.

The second newly confirmed case was a 23-year-old man from Bogor, West Java. He was hospitalized on 28 September and died on 30 September.

Epidemiological investigations uncovered exposure to infected poultry as the likely source of infection in both cases.

To date, Indonesia has reported 7 human cases of H5N1 avian influenza. Four of these cases were fatal.

H5N1 news: EU mulls wild bird import freeze

Via Reporters sans Frontières.

Live wild bird imports to any European Union state may be banned when agriculture ministers meet to discuss the bird flu threat on Tuesday.

Fears of infection arriving among pet birds have risen after a parrot died of the H5N1 strain - potentially deadly to humans - while in quarantine in the UK.

N.J. Principal says students can't keep blogs or MySpace profiles

Thanks to a Boing Boing post for pointing out this article.

A Gannett newswire article by Laura Bruno, appearing in The Asbury Park Press, reports that:

When students post their faces, personal diaries and gossip on Web sites like Myspace.com and Xanga.com, it is not simply harmless teen fun, according to one Sussex County Catholic school principal.

It's an open invitation to predators and an activity that Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta will no longer tolerate, the Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago.

Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.

While public and private schools routinely block access to noneducational Web sites on school computers, Pope John's order reaches into students' homes.

The primary impetus behind the ban is to protect students, McHugh said. The Web sites, popular forums for students to blog about their lives and feelings about their teachers and schools, are fertile ground for sexual predators to gather information about children, he said.

Kazakhstan: Press freedom under threat in run-up to presidential elections

In the space of one week, in Kazakhstan, an opposition Internet site has been banned, five journalists have been arrested and released and two editions of independent newspapers have been seized.

"There have been too many violations of press freedom in the country in the past few days, as the government attempts to gag all those who could embarrass it ahead of the 4 December presidential poll," said Reporters Without Borders.

“Steps must be taken to allow the opposition to have its say during this pre-election period”, the worldwide press freedom organisation added.

Opposition website Navi.kz, formerly Navigator.kz has come in for escalating harassment. On 13 October, the Kazakh network information centre (KazNIC), that runs .kz (the equivalent of .fr), cancelled the domain name Navi.kz, forcing the site to change its address to navikz.net. On 14 October a court in Almaty banned the domain names "Navigator" and "Navi" in both the Cyrillic and Roman alphabets. The editorial board again changed the name, to Mizinov.net.

VeriSign to control ".com" domain until 2012

Andy Sullivan writes for Reuters:

VeriSign Inc. said on Monday it would maintain control of the lucrative ".com" Internet domain until 2012 in return for dropping an antitrust lawsuit against the nonprofit body that oversees the Internet's addressing system.

The agreement settles a long-running dispute between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and the most powerful company under its jurisdiction. The settlement comes at a time when ICANN is under attack from China, Iran and other countries that want more direct control over the domain-name system that guides traffic around the Internet.

"New recruits" said needed for intelligent design

An AP newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

Introducing "intelligent design" to high school students could help the idea gain wider acceptance among mainstream scientists, a sociology professor testified Monday in a landmark federal trial over whether the concept can be mentioned in public school biology classes.

Lawyers for the Dover Area School Board called Steve Fuller, a sociology professor at the University of Warwick, England, as an expert witness Monday morning. He tried to bolster the school board's contention that intelligent design, which holds that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force, is a scientific concept.

Fuller said minority views can sometimes have a difficult time getting a toehold in the scientific community, but students might be inspired to develop intelligent design as future scientists if they hear about the concept in school.

Microsoft Details More On IE 7 Security

Ryan Naraine writes in eWeek:

Microsoft plans to discontinue the use of the SSLv2 (Secure Socket Layer) protocol in the coming Internet Explorer browser refresh.

In its place, he company will fit the stronger TLSv1 (Transport Layer Security) protocol into IE 7 as part of an overall plan to improve the security and user experience for HTTPS connections.

Microsoft Corp. made the announcement on its official IE Blog where a call to action was issued for Web site owners to make the necessary configuration changes to permit the new protocol connections.

Yahoo! in China: Rising tide of anger

A New York Times article by Tom Zeller Jr., via The International Herald Tribune, reports that:

It is bad enough when newspaper editorials, Western human rights groups and ordinary customers condemn your company for bowing to the Chinese dictatorship and contributing to oppression.

But when the outrage begins rising, at great personal risk, from dissident voices trapped inside that dictatorship, well, that has to hurt.

Or does it?

Yahoo has suffered a good deal of opprobrium since it was revealed last month that, when government officials came calling, the company's Hong Kong division simply surrendered information on a Chinese citizen who had presumably sought refuge, anonymity and a bit of freedom in the bosom of a Yahoo e-mail address: huoyan1989@yahoo.com.cn.

SBC denies it will block video traffic

Marguerite Reardon writes in the C|Net Broadband Blog:

Representatives from SBC Communications deny that the company will block video on the new fiber-to-the-curb network it's building.

An item in the Sunday edition of the industry newsletter Future of TV.net, published by Broadband Reports publisher Dave Burstein, quoted SBC's chief operating officer, Randall Stephenson, as saying, "We're going to control the video on our network. The content guys will have to make a deal with us."

The brief item in the newsletter implies that SBC will block all video traffic traveling over its broadband network even if it comes from the public Internet. This means that SBC would essentially block video traffic from any Web sites that distribute video, if the content provider has not struck a deal with SBC.

FBI Net-wiretapping rules face challenges

Declan McCullagh writes in C|Net News:

New federal wiretapping rules forcing Internet service providers and universities to rewire their networks for FBI surveillance of e-mail and Web browsing are being challenged in court.

Telecommunications firms, nonprofit organizations and educators are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., to overturn the controversial rules, which dramatically extend the sweep of an 11-year-old surveillance law designed to guarantee police the ability to eavesdrop on telephone calls.

The regulations represent the culmination of years of lobbying by the FBI, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which have argued that "criminals, terrorists and spies" could cloak their Internet communications with impunity unless police received broad new surveillance powers. The final rules, published this month by the Federal Communications Commission, apply to "any type of broadband Internet access service" and many Internet phone services.

For escape from high-rises, it's high tech to the rescue!

A Christian Science Monitor article by Mark Clayton, via USA Today, reports that:

Down at the Safer America store in midtown Manhattan, the "high-rise kit" with the Executive-Chute — an escape parachute for skyscrapers — sells for about $1,000.

The high-rise parachute kit is not the store's bestseller — not close, says its manager. But some buy it.

Since 9/11 and the collapse of the World Trade Center, business executives, architects, engineers, and safety experts have worked to find safer ways to evacuate skyscrapers, focusing mostly on improving stairwells and elevators.

But on the fringes of this effort is a raft of what are called "last-resort" devices like the Executive-Chute, intended for people who might otherwise be trapped by blocked stairwells or inoperable elevators.

GWA shines light on Google privacy concerns

David writes over on the Signal vs. Noise blog:

So you thought the Google Web Accelerator was bad just because it destroys all your data? Try reading their privacy policy. Especially the two choice bits about how all your traffic and all your cookies are belong to Google:

When you use Google Web Accelerator, Google servers automatically receive and log your web requests. Web requests and data sent in encrypted form using an HTTPS connection will not go through Google. It is possible that a URL or other page information sent to Google may itself contain personal information… Google temporarily caches cookies from third party sites that are used in your web requests.

So let’s recap. Google…

tracks all your TCP/IP packages
reads all your email
follows all your surfing
owns all your cookies
knows your postings to usenet from 1981
keeps the drafts for future blog postings

Oh, and btw, they’re an advertising company.

Now I usually care as little about conspiracy theories as the rest of you, but I’m starting to grow a little uncomfortable with the one ring to bind them all in darkness.

SureWest to Launch Internet-Based HDTV Service

An AP newswire article, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

A company that has linked more than 80,000 Northern California homes to a fiber-optic network plans to launch a TV service that relies on Internet technology to deliver programs, including high-definition shows.

Roseville-based SureWest Communications said it will be the first broadband provider in the nation to deliver commercial HD programming with the technology known as Internet Protocol.

Trials of the services were expected to get under way on Tuesday, with a full commercial rollout expected in November, said Bill DeMuth, SureWest's vice president and chief technology officer.

SureWest said it will be able to deliver 260 video and music channels to its customers — as well as voice and high-speed Internet access. Of those, 15 will be high-definition channels.

Group Announces VoIP Security Taxonomy

Matthew Friedman writes in Networking Pipeline:

The Voice over IP Security Alliance (VoIPSA) today announced its much anticipated VoIP Security Threat Taxonomy, a classification and description of the types of security threats that affect IP telephony.

Identified as the alliance's first major task when VoIPSA was formed last February, alliance secretary and taxonomy project head Jonathan Zar, who is also SonicWALL Senior Director, say that the taxonomy is the first step in dealing with VoIP security. "When we were asked by the press and the regulatory community about threats, we weren't always talking about the same thing," he says. "Everyone was talking about their part of the elephant."

Wilma to become powerful nor'easter on Tuesday

Image source: National Hurrican Center / NOAA

An AP newswire article by Brooke Donald, via The Boston Globe, reports that:

Hurricane Wilma headed into the Atlantic Monday but forecasters said it will stay close enough to the East Coast to bring high winds and heavy rains to New England on Tuesday.

Meteorologists said Wilma should continue moving northeastward, along the way absorbing Tropical Depression Alpha and colliding with another weather system heading into New England from the west early Tuesday.

"It's almost a bizarre-type situation. It's not something you see every day. It's a three-way coming together of systems," said Butch Roberts, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Gray, Maine.

The weather service issued a high wind warning for the Massachusetts coast, saying Wilma will bring sustained winds of 40 mph, with gusts up to 65 mph. A wind advisory was issued for Rhode Island and central Massachusetts, including Worcester.

US computer game touches Iran's atomic nerve

Christian Oliver writes for Reuters:

U.S. special forces dart through Iran's underground nuclear facilities, gunning down any hapless Iranians standing between them and centrifuges that must be blown to bits.

Much to Tehran's relief, this crack team exists only in a new U.S. computer game. But even these animated saboteurs are too close for comfort, downloadable into Iranian living rooms at the click of a mouse.

The cyberspace troopers have sparked bitter press comment in Iran and a petition asking that the game be shelved.

DHS to State Its Case to Business

Caron Carlson writes in eWeek:

Improving cyber-security may be in the public interest, but to persuade the commercial owners of the country's critical infrastructure to invest in more secure networks, the Department of Homeland Security next year plans to show them the bottom line.

Echoing what has become a mantra on Capitol Hill, lawmakers chided the DHS last week for not making greater strides in developing a plan to protect the cyber-networks that gird the country's transportation, power, water, telecommunications, oil and gas pipeline, and chemical processing systems, as well as other critical infrastructure.

Andy Purdy, acting director of the DHS' National Cyber Security Division, told legislators that next year the department is going to present the business case for investing in the security of SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems.

France Telecom to buy Amena

An AP and Canadian Press article, via The Globe and Mail, reports that:

The EU head office cleared Europe's second-largest telecom operator, France Telecom SA, to buy 80 per cent of Spanish wireless company Amena on Monday.

The 6.4-billion euros ($7.7-billion U.S.) deal is the French firm's largest since it bought mobile business Orange in 2000 at the height of the technology boom.

The takeover would not harm competition in Europe, the European Commission said.

ICANN Announces Settlement With VeriSign

An AP newswire article, via The Washington Post, reports that:

The Internet's key oversight agency said Monday it had tentatively agreed to settle a longstanding dispute with VeriSign Inc., a private company that runs much of the Internet's core.

The dispute stemmed in part from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' attempt to pressure VeriSign into suspending a controversial search service it created in late 2003 for guiding Internet users who mistype Web addresses.

VeriSign agreed, but responded soon thereafter by suing ICANN first in federal court then in state court after a judge dismissed antitrust charges.

ICANN's board on Monday unanimously endorsed sending the proposed settlement to the Internet community for public comment. Any settlement needs final approval by the board.

Exploit Code Released for Oracle Hole

Lisa Vaas writes in eWeek:

Exploit code is being circulated that can crash both patched and unpatched Oracle 10g databases.

The code was posted on the Full Disclosure mailing list on Thursday.

David Litchfield, a security researcher with Next Generation Security Software Ltd., said that the code is relatively benign in that the exploit crashes servers but doesn't run arbitrary code that might issue malicious commands.

"The [circulating code] is just a pointer to how to exploit the code," he said. "Whilst it will launch a DoS [denial of service] attack, this exploit doesn't allow you to run arbitrary code. It's benign in the fact that it does nothing but crash the server—if that can be considered benign."

Hong Kong man convicted sharing movies on BitTorrent

A Reuters newswire article, via The Houston Chronicle, reports that:

A Hong Kong court on Monday convicted a man of trying to illegally distribute movies by using BitTorrent software, in the first copyright infringement case involving the file-sharing technology.

Chan Nai-ming was charged in April for uploading to the Internet and trying to distribute three Hollywood blockbusters -- Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality -- without licences. He pleaded not guilty.

However, a court clerk said that Chan had been found guilty on three counts of attempting to distribute copyrighted films without licences and the court would reconvene on Nov. 7 for sentencing.

Cable Wireless supplies Caribbean broadband

C&W said Monday that NetSpeak's menu of broadband services would be offered to residential customers throughout the West Indies.

NetSpeak is powered by Net2Phone, which has a full-service Session Initiation Protocol VoIP solution.

The service was launched by C&W in the Caymans last May and gave the Caribbean's customers and resort industry a taste of the communications services availably through broadband telephony, the company said in a news release.

Xbox Live Goes Offline for Upgrades

Ed Oswald writes in BetaNews:

Microsoft's Xbox Live service went offline Monday, promising: "we'll be back soon with a whole new look and amazing new features." During a 24-hour period, the service will be upgraded with features aimed at Xbox 360 users, which will become available after the launch of the console on November 22.

New features to be added include an Xbox Live Marketplace, as well as a ranking system where gamers will be able to see their score in games compared with other Xbox Live users. Gamer information will also be integrated into other MSN properties, such as the company's Spaces blogging tool.

Juniper gains corporate network ground

Jim Duffy writes in NetworkWorld:

Juniper last week offered up fresh evidence that its enterprise networks strategy is working, as it posted third-quarter financial results that included security-product sales growth nearly double that of competitors over the past year.

The company made a determined effort to enter the enterprise market about 18 months ago, with the $4 billion acquisition of leading firewall and VPN vendor NetScreen. Juniper's move perplexed the industry at the time, because CEO Scott Kriens pledged in 2002 not to compete with the company's core service provider customers by also selling routers and other products into the enterprise.

Motorola iTunes Phone Not Selling Well

Ed Oswald writes in BetaNews:

Cingular is struggling to sell the much-hyped iTunes phone as data indicates return rates are as much a six times higher than launches for other new phones. However, Motorola is determined to fix the marketing issues and make the phone a success, CEO Ed Zander said in an interview with Bloomberg News Service.

News of high return rates is the latest setback for Motorola's ROKR, which received a cool reception at its launch and has been criticized for its non-Apple feel.

Correction: First MS05-047 malware found

Update:

McAFee's AVERT sez:

After further analysis, AVERT has confirmed that this threat does not exploit MS05-047, but rather MS05-039. Initial analysis suggested the MS05-047 was being exploited due to similarities between those exploits (including overlapping code between publicly available source code), field infection reports where administrators incorrectly stated that machines were patched from MS05-039, and similarities between an earlier MS05-039 exploiting bot, where the only significant change was the exploit code being used.

Additionally, AVERT has confirmed that automated propagation has/had been configured on remote IRC servers, such that infected systems that are able to connect to the remote IRC server are immediately instructed to seek out vulnerable systems to infect them.

Earlier:

Mikko writes over on the F-Secure "News from the Lab" blog:

We're currently looking at a botnet client known as "Mocbot".

This botnet client has been spread using the MS05-047 vulnerability. This is the first case of using this vulnerability in malware we've seen.

Symptom of an infection is the existance of a file called wudpcom.exe in the SYSTEM directory.

The botnet client tries to connect to two IRC servers in Russia, but the servers seem to be down (or overloaded). Info on this PnP vulnerability (not to be confused with the MS05-039 vulnerability used by Zotob) is available from the Microsoft web site.

Patch against this vulnerability was published in the last monthly update set from Microsoft. Patch now.

The vulnerability can be exploited via 139/TCP and 445/TCP.

Virgin to become virtual mobile operator in France

Nancy Gohring writes in InfoWorld:

The French mobile phone market may be about to get a bit more crowded. Virgin Mobile Holdings said on Monday that it's in talks with mobile phone operator Orange about launching a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in France.

Virgin Mobile is in talks with Carphone Warehouse Group, a retail chain that sells mobile phones and service, to jointly deliver the mobile phone service in France. The offering would be sold under the Virgin Mobile brand and use the Orange network in France. A spokesman for Virgin Mobile could not comment further on the company's plans.

Bank of New Zealand Shuts Down Web Site After Phishing Attack

Via Netcraft.

A phishing attack led the Bank of New Zealand to take its online banking web site offline Thursday to prevent scammers from draining customer accounts. The bank said that although there had been no threat to its Internet infrastructure, the site was shut for eight hours to protect customers who shared their banking logins with a spoof web site operated by a phishing crew. The BNZ web site came back online Thursday evening with "restricted functionality," and returned to full service on Friday, bank spokesman told the National Business Review.

Bank of New Zealand said it will continue to closely monitor Internet banking transactions, and has revised daily transaction limits for all customers. The bank also suspended Internet banking access for customers who enteered their details at the fake site.

The bank issued a security advisory describing the email and spoof site and asking customers to contact the bank if they responded to the bogus "bait" email. The bank also restated measures customers can take to protect themselves against phishing attacks.

H5N1 News: EC, CSL Fight Bird Flu

The European Commission said on Monday it is considering banning all imports of pet birds following the death of a South American parrot quarantined in the United Kingdom and diagnosed with the H5N1 strain of the virus.

Agriculture ministers from the European Commission’s representative nations are meeting in Brussels, Belgium to discuss the move, although they are unlikely to reach a decision on Monday, according to Commission spokesperson Jonathan Todd.

The news came as the world’s largest maker of blood plasma products, CSL, said it had high hopes that the vaccine it is testing in humans could protect against a form of H5N1 that mutates so it can spread from person to person, unless the mutations were “major.”

Private equity firms looking to buyout CSC

A Reuters newswire article, via CNN/Money, reports that:

Private-equity firms are looking at a buyout of Computer Sciences Corp., a computer-outsourcing company with more than $14 billion in sales and $8.4 billion market value, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The firms looking at Computer Sciences include Texas Pacific Group, Warburg Pincus and Blackstone Group. They say the takeover plans remain in the early stages, and in the end there may be no deal for the 46-year-old El Segundo, Calif. company.

The private-equity buyers also are exploring how to break up the business and share the company with a strategic player, the paper said, citing the unnamed sources.

Top cable companies close to Sprint wireless deal-source

A Reuters newswire article by Kenneth Li, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

Three top U.S. cable operators are close to landing a deal with Sprint Nextel Corp. to offer wireless service, one source said, raising the stakes in the cable industry's battle with telephone companies.

Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications Inc. could be close to offering cell phone service using Sprint Nextel's network as part of its bundled services, which currently include cable TV, high speed Internet and digital home telephone services.

The deal could be announced as early as November 1, ahead of third quarter earnings reports for two of the three cable companies, the source said.

Most DNS servers "wide open" to attack

John Leyden writes in The Register:

Four in five authoritative domain name system (DNS) servers across the world are vulnerable to types of hacking attacks that might be used by hackers to misdirect surfers to potentially fraudulent domains. A survey by net performance firm the Measurement Factory commissioned by net infrastructure outfit Infoblox of 1.3m internet name servers found that 84 per cent might be vulnerable to pharming attacks. Others exhibit separate security and deployment-related vulnerabilities.

Pharming attacks use DNS poisoning or domain hijacks to redirect users to dodgy urls. For example widespread attacks launched in April attempt to fool consumers into visiting potentially malicious web sites by changing the records used to convert domain names to IP addresses. These particular pharming attacks exploited name servers that allow recursive queries from any IP address. Recurssive queries are a form of name resolution that may require a name server to relay requests to other name servers.

Separating myth from reality in ID theft

Joris Evers writes in C|Net News:

Gretchen Hayes was understandably concerned when she received a letter warning that she could be at risk of identity theft.

A laptop had been stolen from the University of California at Berkeley in March, and stored on it was personal information on 98,369 graduate students or graduate-school applicants, including Hayes.

The breach--which exposed names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers--was widely reported in the media, and the school created a special Web site to help individuals who found themselves suddenly vulnerable.

In the months since, however, not a single case of stolen identity related to the incident has been reported. The laptop was recovered in September, and police believe that the thief was interested only in the computer, not in the information in its files.

Daily gapingvoid.com fix...

Via gapingvoid.com. Enjoy.

Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems for CALEA

Sam Dillon and Stephen Labaton write in The New York Times:

The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications.

The action, which the government says is intended to help catch terrorists and other criminals, has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers. Because the government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising civil liberties issues.

The order, issued by the Federal Communications Commission in August and first published in the Federal Register last week, extends the provisions of a 1994 wiretap law not only to universities, but also to libraries, airports providing wireless service and commercial Internet access providers.

It also applies to municipalities that provide Internet access to residents, be they rural towns or cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco, which have plans to build their own Net access networks.

So far, however, universities have been most vocal in their opposition.

EU: Privacy watchdog warns of "fuzzy" data sharing plans

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has called for better privacy protection in the European Commission's plans for revising a system that enables authorities to share information about the movement of people across the EU.

The EDPS is Peter Hustinx, the person responsible for monitoring the processing of personal data by the Community institutions and bodies. His 26-page opinion on three proposals related to the Second Generation Schengen Information System, known as SIS II, was published today.

Hustinx welcomed some aspects of the proposals, including measures in favour of victims of identity theft and a better definition of the grounds for alerting individuals for the purpose of refusing entry to a country.

UK: Teen sex secrets could be shared with police