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Bird flu: you'll die but your IT will survive
By Lester Haines (lester.haines at theregister.co.uk)
Published Tuesday 18th October 2005 15:10 GMT
 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/18/bird_flu_pandemic/
If the latest news from the wonderful world of Pandemia has got your
organisation running around like a headless Romanian chicken, then don't
fret: Gartner has released an essential guide to avian influenza, aka  bird
flu, aka Black Death II, which mercifully states that although you will
most likely be lying dead among the smouldering ruins of society,
your IT infrastructure can be saved for future generations.
Gartner rightly warns that bird flu could be even worse than SARS, which
in 2003 killed a chilling 774 of 8,096 people infected worldwide, in the
process generating 1.2bn column inches of press hysteria and rating an
impressive 7.2 (out of ten) on the international "Imminent Pandemic
Apocalypse" scale.
That's as nothing compared to avian Armageddon, though, as Gartner
explains:
The WHO says that "even in the best case scenarios of the next
pandemic, 2 to 7 million people would die and tens of millions would
require medical attention." The WHO urges the development or updating of
"influenza pandemic preparedness plans for responding to the widespread
socioeconomic disruptions that would result from having large numbers of
people unwell or dying."
<snip>




Security pros win out in office politics
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/18/security_workforce_study/
By John Leyden
18th October 2005
More than a quarter (25.4 per cent) of the security workforce in
Europe spends most of their workday dealing with internal politics or
selling security to upper management, according to early results from
a new survey. The second annual workforce study from security
certification and training organisation ISC(2) also found that either
researching or implementing new technologies occupied the majority of
time for around a third (30.1 per cent) of the 595 experienced
security practitioners and managers quizzed.
According to the survey, the efforts of many in the profession to sell
their value to the organisations they work for are beginning to pay
off. Survey respondents were generally optimistic about levels of
influence within their organizations, with a third (33.4 per cent)
saying that information security?s level of influence within business
units and executive management has significantly increased.
The survey, conducted by analyst firm IDC on behalf of ISC(2), also
looked at the places inhabited by security functions within
organisations. Around one in five (18.8 per cent) of those quizzed
report into a dedicated security or information assurance department,
with another one in ten (10.5 per cent) reporting directly to the
board of directors and 17.4 per cent to executive management. This
compares to around a quarter (28.4 per cent) who indicated they
reported directly into an IT department. "We are encouraged to see
from the study strong evidence that information security is becoming a
domain in its own right, separate from IT, and backed by a swell in
the desire to professionalise security as a recognised field of
practice," said Sarah Bohne, director of communications at (ISC)2.
<snip>

Hacker loses name suppression
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411749/620770
One News
Oct 19, 2005
A Dunedin university lecturer who hacked into a US company's computer
has finally been outed after an 18 month battle to keep his name
suppressed.
Timothy Molteno, 38, was the first person caught under new computer
crime laws. The senior lecturer in physics at Otago University pleaded
guilty 18 months ago, but wanted his name permanently suppressed.
Molteno had been employed as a software writer for US online shopping
company buymusichere.com. But he fell out with CEO Bob Lee and
subsequently hacked into the site from Dunedin - deleting and
destroying data.
<snip>

End of Internet over power lines?
PPL calls it quits but a telecom company pushes on in Virginia.
By Sam Kennedy Of The Morning Call October 16, 2005
<http://www.mcall.com/business/local/all-
broadbandoct16,0,4487727.story?coll=all-businesslocal-hed>
PPL Corp. announced this month that it was giving up on the
futuristic technology that provides high-speed Internet access,
or broadband, through electrical wires and power outlets.
A day later, another company held a news conferrence celebrating
the country's first city-wide deployment of that very
technology, called broadband over power lines. The company was
COMTek, whose focus is telecommunications, and the city was
Manassas, Va., a Washington, D.C., suburb with 37,000 residents
and 12,500 households ? 700 of which are already using the
technology to get on line.
So which is it? Is broadband over power lines a failed
experiment, or does the upstart technology present a real
challenge to the two primary sources of residential high-speed
Internet access ? the cable modem and the digital subscriber
line, DSL?
<snip>

Another Google Print Library lawsuit 10/19/2005
"The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today announced the filing
of a lawsuit against Google over its plans to digitally copy and
distribute copyrighted works without permission of the copyright owners.
The lawsuit was filed only after lengthy discussions broke down between
AAP and Google's top management regarding the copyright infringement
implications of the Google Print Library Project."
AAP press release: http://tinyurl.com/byq7k
<snip>

Google Confirms Plan to Conquer Outer Space
http://tinyurl.com/ccaeu
Google confirms Ames plan
Search engine plans offices, partnership with space agency
Verne Kopytoff and Dan Levy, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Google Inc. confirmed Wednesday that it will build up to 1 million
square feet of offices at NASA Ames Research Center and collaborate with
the space agency on research surrounding topics such as supercomputing
that could benefit everything from moon launches to online searches.
The partnership is intended to blend the expertise and huge resources of
one of the leading Internet companies with an army of scientists focused
on the stratosphere and beyond.
"Google and NASA share a common desire to bring the universe of
information to people around the world," said Eric Schmidt, the
company's chief executive officer, in a statement. "Imagine having a
wide selection of images from the Apollo space mission at your
fingertips whenever you want it."
<snip>

Summerized A Journey to a Thousand Maps Begins With an Open Code
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/technology/circuits/20maps.html
You can still search Google Maps to figure out how to get from here
to there, but why would you, when you can use it to pinpoint kosher
restaurants in Cincinnati, traffic cameras in Dublin, or hot spring
spas anywhere in the United States?
...An army of programmers, most of them doing it just for fun, has
grabbed the software code that generates the distinctive maps with
their drop-shadowed virtual pushpins, and combined it with other data
like the locations of potholes, taco trucks and U.F.O.
...(It currently has data only for homes in the San Francisco and Los
Angeles areas, but the service promises that Chicago and New York
data are coming soon.)
<snip>


Level 3's de-peering of Cogent threatens the inter in Internet
<http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/newslog/CategoryView,category,Policy%20and%20Regulatory.aspx>
The anti-competitive instinct that leaves the US a laggard in Internet
access arrived as a threat to the Internet backbone business with Level 3's
de-peering of Cogent on Wednesday, October 5, 2005.  Level 3's move against
Cogent marks an escalation of the tensions that threaten settlement free
peering.  It has the hallmarks of an anti-competitive strategy rather than
just a business decision about the merits of peering.  Businesses can
compete by improving the value proposition offered customers or they can
attempt to injure the ability of other businesses to make competing offers.
A wannabe monopolist accepts short term self injury as the price of reducing
competition and winning future monopoly profits.   Level 3's decision to
make at least 15% of the Internet unreachable did not improve the value
proposition it offers customers.
A world without settlement free peering is a world without an Internet.
Level 3's test of the restraint of trade option comes only six months before
SBC and Verizon come together with collective scale five times larger than
Level 3 and with far more experience in allocating markets.  The refusal to
interconnect has always represented the weapon of choice for companies
seeking reduce competition in the communication business.  AT&T used refusal
to interconnect to establish a monopoly over telephone service at the
beginning of the last century as did the Bell cartel at the beginning of
this century.  The antitrust remedy that led to the breakup of AT&T in 1984
arose to win interconnection for competing long distance companies.  The
story offered in Level 3's press release regarding Cogent comes straight out
of the monopolists handbook.  Level 3 disconnected Cogent to protect its
"investment" and end the "free ride" enjoyed by Cogent.
The increasing consolidation of Internet backbones inevitably brings out the
toll collecting instincts, but the move against Cogent was less about a size
and more about a disparity in business models.  Level 3 CEO Crowe
consistently laments the lack of pricing power during quarterly earnings
calls.  He seems to blame Cogent for this lack of pricing power, but he
should blame himself for debt and lavish spending on a network that prevent
him from remaining price competitive.  Punishing Cogent for keeping transit
prices low does not begin to solve Level 3's troubles.  Level 3 pays out in
interest 25% of every dollar in communication revenue, but the company would
still have a negative net income without interest payments.  Level 3 enjoys
an enterprise value equivalent to 75% of what Verizon plans to pay for MCI,
but MCI remains 10 times larger than Level 3 in communication revenue.
Level 3's problem remains the same as other backbones in the Internet access
bottlenecks that limit traffic growth.  Success in raising prices transit
prices will only reduce traffic volumes further.
The motivation for settlement free peering decreases as the disparity
between networks increases, but a concern for the long term health of the
Internet should remain a part of the decision making process.  Level 3's
toll collecting ambitions conflict with its embrace of companies like Skype
as the source of traffic to fill its network.  The promise of the Internet
depends on continuous cost performance improvements like every other area of
the info tech industry.  Level 3 benefits from cost performance improvements
in processing power, storage, Internet access, and everywhere else in the IT
value chain.  Any success Level 3 achieves in raising prices will throttle
the Internet's growth.  Rising costs will shrink the types of viable
applications and associated data traffic setting in motion a vicious cycle
where backbone companies will need to raise their prices still further.  The
replacement of settlement free peering with a toll collecting ethic means a
less connected and lower performing Internet.
Level 3's plan to raise backbone transport prices can't succeed by just
de-peering Cogent.  Level 3 needs SBC (AT&T) and Verizon (MCI) to de-peer
Cogent.  Qwest and Savvis (acquired C&W) look like the next most likely
candidates to lose their Tier 1 ISP credentials.  Level 3 might not even
make the cut if SBC and Verizon decide to embrace Sprint.  The smaller
backbones can use settlement free peering between each other to minimize
dependence on the Tier 1 cartel,  but Level 3's move against Cogent leads
inevitably to a period of arrested development.  The US government has
proven a friend of market power in the battles over Internet access.  A
cartel of US companies controlling the Internet backbone provides yet
another reason for the UN to assert a role in Internet governance.   If
Level 3 proceeds with the plan of de-peering again on November 9, 2005, they
should revise the empty sentiment of their "the network partner you can rely
on" motto.


Cities Unleash Free Wi-Fi
By Michael Grebb
<http://www.wired.com/news/technology/ wireless_special/0,2914,68999,00.html>
02:00 AM Oct. 19, 2005 PT
In November, Dianah Neff will go to Africa for the first time in her
life.
She?s not going for a safari or to buy souvenirs. Instead, she?ll be
meeting with local officials in Douala, Cameroon, to discuss how they
might set up a municipal Wi-Fi network.
"They have no wired infrastructure," explains Neff. "They?re looking
to wireless to connect the entire town."
Neff should know. As the chief information officer in Philadelphia
Mayor John Street's Office of Information Services,
she heads a $49- million project -- known as Wireless Philadelphia --
to blanket the  city in a broadband wireless network. The city plans to begin
construction by year-end, administering the network through a
nonprofit group that will partner with private vendors and ISPs.
The project has attracted much attention and, in the process, Neff
has become an evangelist of sorts for municipal broadband wireless
networks, often dispensing advice to other cities that want to follow
in Philly?s footsteps.
<snip>


Ring tones--the new protest songs
by John Borland of CNET News, covers the US
http://www.developmentseed.org/blog/politicalringtones
adaptation of the form used in the Philippines
earlier this year by opponents of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Political ringtones:
What if you could take one of the most annoying public disturbances,
a ringing cell phone, and turn it into a little bit of activism and community building?
If a cell phone rings with Bush saying, ?Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job?
on your morning bus/subway commute, you might get some smiles.
And create a little bit of community in a random place by letting
other concerned Americans know they are not alone or unpatriotic
by being pissed at the government.
<snip>


Web 2.0 worm downs MySpace written in 7 hours
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/17/web20_worm_knocks_out_myspaces/
... Samy says the worm was his first attempt at learning 'AJAX' and
it took only a week of studying one hour a day to develop:
"The worm was my intro to and first time using Ajax, and I learned a
few other things while developing it. I spent an hour or two a day
trying to do something new on MySpace for about a week. After one
week, I put a few of the things developed into one big piece and had
the resulting worm."
<snip>


CALEA and Colleges
New York Times
October 23, 2005
Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/technology/23college.html?hp&ex=1130040000&en=82e2a961640ae05b&ei=5094>
By SAM DILLON and STEPHEN LABATON

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.
<snip>


Skype security evaluation by Tom Berson
Skype has released an external security evaluation of its product
http://www.skype.com/security/files/2005-031%20security%20evaluation.pdf
PGP signature of the report
<http://www.skype.com/security/files/2005-031%20security% 20evaluation.pdf.sig>
French government bans Skype at Universities
According to <http://www.01net.com/editorial/289360/telephonie/skype-banni-des-facs-par-la-securite-nationale/>
the French government has banned use of Skype at universities. The
purported reason: it's insecure. http://www.oberle.org/?p=122 points
out that the real reason may be that it's too secure. A third possible
reason, though I'd have to know more about the funding model there:
someone is losing money because of free phone calls.
Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb



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