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NetHappenings Headlines

This is how i condense 17 email down to 1.

respecting our time, bandwidth, & need to know burn out


have a great weekend and enjoy,

<Karen>


1)
Defense seeks industry input for authentication infrastructure
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/37768-1.html
By Rob Thormeyer GCN Staff 12/13/05
The Defense Department is seeking industry input to help the agency
establish and deploy an authentication infrastructure that will
support a variety of IT devices, including desktops, domain
controllers, routers, and Web and mail servers.
In a request for information[1], DOD's Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
Program said respondents should offer information about conceptual
technical architecture, the technical feasibility of developing a
responsive PKI that will support a minimum of 25 million certificates
and, among other things, ideas and suggestions for designing,
developing, acquiring and operating the PKI.
The information collected will be used in an official solicitation
Defense will issue for a PKI infrastructure to support commercial
devices, the department said.
<snip>

2)
Brookfield student accused of hacking
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wauk/dec05/377589.asp
By DAVID DOEGE Dec. 13, 2005
Waukesha - Brookfield police this week seized computer gear from the
home of an 18-year-old student who said he illegally accessed Elmbrook
School District computer records, according to documents filed in
circuit court Tuesday.
The student told a police detective investigating the computer
break-in that he used "password cracking" software to access district
records, then obtained an administrator's password, "which allowed him
further access to confidential computer records," according to an
affidavit used by investigators to obtain a search warrant for the
teen's home.
The affidavit indicates that a police investigation into a school
district computer break-in began in August and that at least one other
student obtained the illegal access.

3)
Beijing goes on hacking defensive
<http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=2&art_id=7809&si
d=5899047&con_type=1&d_str=20051214>
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE December 14, 2005
China has reacted to speculation that its military is trying to
penetrate computer networks in the United States, saying hacking is
against Chinese law.
"We have clear stipulations against hacking. No one can use the
Internet to engage in illegal activities," foreign ministry spokesman
Qin Gang told a regular briefing Tuesday.
"The Chinese police will deal with hacking and other activities
disturbing social order in accordance with law."
Qin was responding to a reported claim by the head of a leading US
security institute that the People's Liberation Army is most likely
behind a systematic effort to penetrate US government and industry
computer networks. <snip>

4)
Security chiefs share pains of being caught in the middle
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/121205-security-interop.html
By Tim Greene 12/13/05
Corporate security experts face a crisis as they are caught between
regulators demanding better accountability for data security and the
need to keep businesses up and running with the help of many business
partners, an American Express security executive told Interop New York
attendees Tuesday.
As more data is housed at least temporarily outside corporate data
centers, it becomes more difficult to comply with industry and
government regulations, according to Steven Suther, director of
information security management for American Express.
"Tell me where your data is and how it is being secured," regulators
want to know, he says. "So we need to define at what point is
information outside our domain and how is it being protected."
<snip>

5)
Tech Group Blasts Federal Leadership on Cyber-Security
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR200
5121301294.html>
By Brian Krebs December 13, 2005
A group of leading technology companies today chastised Congress and
the Bush administration for what it characterized as a failure to
support initiatives to fight online crime, saying a lack of leadership
and accountability in this area is endangering U.S. economic and
national security.
The Cyber Security Industry Alliance said the federal government has
largely declined to act on recommendations the group outlined a year
ago, goals that mirrored policies originally set forth in early 2003
by the White House in the "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace."
Cyber-security as a government priority "has been on a downward slope
and we need to arrest that decline and bring the issue back to the
level [of importance] it was a few years ago," said Paul Kurtz, a
former Bush administration cyber-security official who serves as chief
executive of the alliance. The group's members include such tech
titans as Computer Associates, Entrust, McAfee, RSA Security and
Symantec. <snip>

6)
CodeCon 2006 February 10-12, 2006 Call For Papers
San Francisco CA, USA
www.codecon.org
CodeCon is the premier showcase of cutting edge software development.
It is an excellent opportunity for programmers to demonstrate their
work and keep abreast of what's going on in their community.
All presentations must include working demonstrations, ideally
accompanied by source code. Presentations must be done by one of the
active developers of the code in question. We emphasize that
demonstrations be of *working* code.
We hereby solicit papers and demonstrations.
* Papers and proposals due: December 15, 2005
* Authors notified: January 1, 2006
<snip>

7)
Teaching teens about ID theft
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/251779_lcenter13.html
By DEBORAH BACH December 13, 2005
Applying for a job at an electronics store two years ago, Zach Friesen
was stunned to learn that the store manager was turning him down
because of his terrible credit record.
"I looked at him and said, 'I've never had credit in my life. What are
you talking about?'" the 19-year-old recalled.
Someone had rung up about $40,000 worth of bills related to a
houseboat purchase under Friesen's name -- when he was 7 years old.
The fraud went undetected for a decade, and only when he applied for
the job did Friesen discover that he was a prime target for identity
thieves, who are increasingly focusing on young people.
<snip>

8)
Google 2006 Anita Borg Scholarships
As part of Google's ongoing commitment to furthering Anita Borg's (1949 -
2003) vision, we are pleased to announce the 2006 Google Anita Borg
Scholarship, through which we hope to encourage women to excel in computing
and technology and become active role models and leaders. For more
information see, http://www.google.com/anitaborg/.
All applications must be postmarked by Friday, January 20, 2006.

9)
"The Anatomy of Web Fonts"
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/anatomy-web-fonts
If one aspect of design has suffered most in its transition to the Web,
it is the art of typography. For years, Web typography involved
little more than choosing a typeface and font size. Unstyled
Times New Roman was the norm, and the integration of
established typographical techniques and rules was unimagined.
<snip>

10)
Internet encyclopaedias go head to head
Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005)
Jim Giles
Full Text at Nature
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
Abstract
Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the
accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds.
One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of
Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This
radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4
million entries, is now a much-used resource. But it is also
controversial: if anyone can edit entries, how do users know if
Wikipedia is as accurate as established sources such as Encyclopaedia
Britannica?
Several recent cases have highlighted the potential problems. One
article was revealed as falsely suggesting that a former assistant to
US Senator Robert Kennedy may have been involved in his assassination.
And podcasting pioneer Adam Curry has been accused of editing the
entry on podcasting to remove references to competitors' work. Curry
says he merely thought he was making the entry more accurate.
However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature - the first
to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of
science - suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception
rather than the rule.
The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but
among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not
particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained
around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.
Considering how Wikipedia articles are written, that result might seem
surprising. A solar physicist could, for example, work on the entry on
the Sun, but would have the same status as a contributor without an
academic background. Disputes about content are usually resolved by
discussion among users.
But Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and president of the
encyclopaedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation of St
Petersburg, Florida, says the finding shows the potential of
Wikipedia. "I'm pleased," he says. "Our goal is to get to Britannica
quality, or better."
Wikipedia is growing fast. The encyclopaedia has added 3.7 million
articles in 200 languages since it was founded in 2001. The English
version has more than 45,000 registered users, and added about 1,500
new articles every day of October 2005. Wikipedia has become the 37th
most visited website, according to Alexa, a web ranking service.


11)
Dog Genome Sniffs Out Disease
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14784&hed=Dog+Genome+Sniffs+O
ut+Disease>
December 7, 2005
Genome of man's best friend could help hunt down the way in which
genes contribute to many human diseases.
A team of scientists from the United States, France, and the United
Kingdom announced Thursday the first high-quality sequence of the
domestic dog's genome, a development that could help researchers
sniff out the cause of many human ailments.
The summary explanation of the dog's genetic code was published in
Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
The 99 percent-complete sequence of a female boxer named Tasha adds
to a partial survey of the poodle genome. By sampling the genomes of
10 different dog breeds the scientists have also managed to catalog
about 2.5 million specific genetic differences across pedigrees.
<SNIP>

12)
Roll Your Own Google
<http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69817,00.html? tw=wn_tophead_2>
By Jeff MacIntyre 02:00 AM Dec. 13, 2005 PT
In a move with potentially far-reaching implications for the search
market, Alexa Internet is opening up its huge web crawler to any
programmer who wants paid access to its rich trove of internet data.
Alexa, a subsidiary of Amazon.com that is best known for its
traffic rankings, on Monday unveiled Alexa Web Search Platform, a
set of online tools for searching, indexing, computing, storing and
publishing vast quantities of net data.
Alexa claims it's the first time that developers, students and
startups will be given inexpensive access to an industrial-scale
web crawler -- the same technology used by industry giants like
Yahoo (Yahoo Slurp) and Google (Googlebot).
<snip>

13)
EU passes surveillance bill
press release from Strasbourg:
<http://www.europarl.eu.int/news/expert/infopress_page/019-3536-348-12-50-902
-20051206IPR03225-14-12-2005-2005--false/default_en.htm>
It might interest you to know that the European Parliament just passed a
bill that requires electronic comunication providers to keep logs of
almost everything for up to two years.
That includes email, surfing, IM conversations, text messages and even
mobile phone conversations that never connected. The directive came
about as a result of the Madrid and London bombings (Britain holds the EU
presidency this period), and will have to be passed into law by the individual
member states within 2007.
From what I've read online, the directive doesn't require the actual
contents of conversations to be logged - only the time, duration and
location of them - and the police will need warrants to access the logs.

14)
Reporters Without Borders put Kazakhstan on a list of
"countries to watch" because of repeated violations of free
expression on the Internet.
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15613

15)
Could a U.S. Shift to IPv6 Cost $75B?
By Sean Michael Kerner December 12, 2005
<http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3570211>
Moving to IPv6 will present a number of challenges for the U.S.
federal government, not the least of which is the associated price
tag, which could hit $75 billion.
A new 63-page report issued late last week by the IPv6 Summit and
Juniper Networks offers U.S. federal agencies a bevy of suggestions
on how best to go about transitioning to IPv6.
The government is supposed to be on a relatively rapid path toward
IPv6 migration since the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
mandated (PDF file) this past August that the federal government move
to IPv6 by June 2008.
Last week's report, titled "IPv6 Best Practices World Report Series:
Guide for Federal Agencies Transitioning to IPv6," recommends that
federal agencies develop a business case for moving to IPv6,
centralize their migration tactics and define metrics to help track
transition progress. <snip>

16)
Telecoms want their products to travel on a faster Internet
Major site owners oppose 2-tier system
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | December 13, 2005
<http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/12/13/ telecoms_want_their_products_to_travel_on_a_faster_internet/>
AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp. are lobbying Capitol Hill for the right
to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers' own
Internet services would be transmitted faster and more efficiently
than those of their competitors.
The proposal is certain to provoke a major fight with Google Inc.,
Yahoo Inc., Time Warner Inc., and Microsoft Corp., the powerful
owners of popular Internet sites. The companies fear such a move
would give telecommunications companies too much control over
a fast- growing part of the Internet.
The battle is largely over video services. Several major telecom
companies are working on ways to deliver broadcast-quality television
over the Internet. Currently, online video can be slow to download
and choppy to watch, even with higher-speed Internet services.

17)
Tool helps you find stuff that you didn't know you were looking for
By Dawn Chmielewski, Mercury News / 12/12/2005
<http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/columnists/ dawn_chmielewski/13388016.htm>
Here in Silicon Valley, we're search snobs. We act like the whole
notion of searching the Web was practically invented here.
Certainly, with Google and Yahoo, we enjoy considerable bragging
rights. But a little-known company out of Chicago has created a
search assistant called Watson that turns the traditional
seek-and- ye-shall-find approach to online information on its head.
Watson is a downloadable piece of software that sits in the corner
of your computer screen, like AOL's Instant Messenger, and looks
over your shoulder as you work.
Watson could well represent the next step in Web search. By adding
intelligence and context to what is now mostly a popularity
contest, the search results are clearly more relevant to you,
although its desktop omnipresence (like an editor hovering over
your words) can sometimes get on your nerves.
<snip>

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