DOES TECHNOLOGY LEAD US INEVITABLY TO AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE?  OR JUST MORE OF THE SAME?  HOW ABOUT CABLE?
You can sing along with this page - just a simple substitution - just substitute "lawyers" for "clowns" and do a Judy Collins imitation!


China will limit Internet access during the Olympic games 
DAY
By Andrew Jacobs    
Published on 7/31/2008 

Beijing - The International Olympic Committee failed to press China to allow fully unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of journalists arriving here to cover the Olympics, despite promising repeatedly that the foreign news media could “report freely” during the games, Olympics officials acknowledged Wednesday.

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages - among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown of the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers.

The restrictions, which closely resemble the blocks that China places on the Internet for its own citizens, undermine sweeping claims by Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, that China had agreed to provide free Web access for foreign news media during the games.

But a high-ranking IOC official said Wednesday that the committee was aware that China would continue to censor Web sites carrying content that Chinese propaganda authorities deemed harmful to national security and social stability. The committee acquiesced to China's demands to maintain such controls, said the official, who declined to be identified.

In its negotiations with the Chinese over Internet controls, the official said, the IOC insisted only that China provide unfettered access to sites containing information useful to sports reporters covering athletic competitions, not to sites that the Chinese and the Olympic committee negotiators determined had little relevance to sports.

The official said he now believed that the Chinese defined their national security needs more broadly than the Olympic committee had anticipated, denying reporters access to some information that they might need to cover the events and the host country fully.

This week, foreign news media in China were unable directly to access an Amnesty International report that detailed what it called a deterioration in China's human rights record in the prelude to the games.

Chinese officials initially suggested that any troubles journalists were having with Internet access probably stemmed from the sites themselves, not any steps that China had taken to filter Web content. But Sun Weide, the chief spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee, acknowledged Wednesday that journalists would not have uncensored Internet use during the Games.

”It has been our policy to provide the media with convenient and sufficient access to the Internet,” said Sun. “I believe our policy will not affect reporters' coverage of the Olympic games.”  


Demand for Data Puts Engineers in Spotlight
NYTIMES
By STEVE LOHR
Published: June 17, 2008

In Silicon Valley, the stars have long been charismatic marketing visionaries and cool-nerd software wizards. By contrast, mechanical engineers who design and run computer data centers were traditionally regarded as little more than blue-collar workers in the high-tech world.  For years, they toiled in relative obscurity in the engine rooms of the digital economy, amid the racks of servers and storage devices that power everything from online videos to corporate e-mail systems. Their mission was to keep the computing power plants humming, while scant thought was given to rising costs and energy consumption.

Today, data center experts are no longer taken for granted. The torrid growth in data centers to keep pace with the demands of Internet-era computing, their immense need for electricity and their inefficient use of that energy pose environmental, energy and economic challenges, experts say.  That means people with the skills to design, build and run a data center that does not endanger the power grid are suddenly in demand. Their status is growing, as are their salaries — climbing more than 20 percent in the last two years into six figures for experienced engineers.

“The data center energy problem is growing fast, and it has an economic importance that far outweighs the electricity use,” said Jonathan G. Koomey, a consulting professor of environmental engineering at Stanford. “So that explains why these data center people, who haven’t gotten a lot of glory in their careers, are in the spotlight now.”

At one time, “we were seen as sheet metal jockeys,” said Chandrakant Patel, a mechanical engineer at Hewlett-Packard Labs who has worked in Silicon Valley for 25 years. “But now we have a chance to change the world for the better, using engineering and basic science.”

There is no letup in the demand for data center computing. Digital Realty Trust, a data center landlord with more than 70 facilities, says that customer demand for new space is running 50 percent ahead of its capacity to build and equip data centers for the next two years. “We’re building the railroads of the future, and we can’t keep up,” said Chris J. Crosby, a senior vice president at Digital Realty.

For every new center, new data center administrators need to be hired. “It takes us eight months to find a guy to run a data center,” said Mr. Crosby.

Indeed, some data managers with only a degree from a two-year college can command a $100,000 salary. Trade and professional conferences for data center experts, unheard of years ago, are now commonplace. Five-figure signing bonuses, retention bonuses and generous stock grants have become ingredients in the compensation packages of data center experts today.

Paul Marcoux knows the feeling of being wanted. Cisco Systems, giant Silicon Valley maker of equipment used in data centers, recently held a nationwide search for a vice president for “green engineering.” It needed someone who could manage the traditional information technology functions as well as increasingly important mechanical and electrical systems.

Last November, Cisco found Mr. Marcoux, an electrical engineer with an M.B.A. working at American Power Conversion, a manufacturer of power supplies and air-conditioners for data centers. Mr. Marcoux, 57, worked on the design and construction of about 100 data centers in his 30-year career.

“To really make progress, we have to bridge the analog and the digital worlds,” said Mr. Marcoux.

At Cisco, Mr. Marcoux is applying his experience to improving the company’s data centers and its products, so that its computers increasingly can communicate with the coolers and power generators. “Our products need to talk to the power supplies and air-conditioners instead of being standalone boxes,” he explained.

Cisco is just one of the many companies — and the Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — working on the challenge of making data centers operate more like seamless machines, using sensors and software, for example, so the computers can direct air-conditioners and fans where and what level of cooling is needed.

Mr. Patel is overseeing H.P.’s programs in energy-efficient data centers and technology. The research includes advanced projects like trying to replace copper wiring in server computers with laser beams. But like other experts in the field, Mr. Patel says that data centers can be made 30 percent to 50 percent more efficient by applying current technology.

The pace of the data center buildup is the result of the surging use of server computers, which in the United States rose to 11.8 million in 2007, from 2.6 million a decade earlier, according to IDC, a research firm. Worldwide, the 10-year pattern is similar, with the server population increasing more than fourfold to 30.3 million by 2007.

“For years and years, the attitude was just buy it, install it and don’t worry about it,” said Vernon Turner, an analyst for IDC. “That led to all sorts of inefficiencies. Now, we’re paying for that behavior.”

The problem is that most computers in data centers run at 15 percent or less of capacity on average, loafing the rest of the time, though consuming electricity all the while. (In the old days, when they housed a few large computers, data centers were far more efficient. Mainframe computers run at 80 percent of capacity or more.)

The computers also generate a lot of heat, so much so that half of the energy consumed by a typical data center is for enormous air-conditioners, fans and other industrial equipment used mainly to cool the high-tech facilities.

The nation’s data centers doubled their energy consumption in the five years to 2006, exceeding the electricity used by the country’s color televisions, according to the latest government estimates.

The availability of electricity, not just its cost, presents a threat to the continued expansion of data center computing that can hamper companies across the economy, as they increasingly rely on information technology.

Based on current trends, by 2011 data center energy consumption will nearly double again, requiring the equivalent of 25 power plants. The world’s data centers, according to recent study from McKinsey & Company, could well surpass the airline industry as a greenhouse gas polluter by 2020.

Because the task ahead, analysts say, is not just building new data centers, but also overhauling the old ones, the managers who know how to cut energy consumption are at a premium. Most of the 6,600 data centers in America, analysts say, will be replaced or retrofitted with new equipment over the next several years.

They apparently have little choice. Analysts point to surveys that show 30 percent of American corporations are deferring new technology initiatives because of data center limitations.

Mechanical and electrical engineers with experience in data center design, air-flow modeling and power systems management are in demand. “If you have those skills, there are jobs waiting,” says Phil Calabrese, a mechanical engineer and director of I.B.M.’s real estate engineering and construction unit.

No company has longer experience in the care and feeding of data centers than I.B.M., and analysts say improving data center efficiency will involve applying some mainframe-style management disciplines.

To exploit the opportunity, I.B.M., which built its business on mainframes and still sells them, last fall introduced a green data center services unit. The new group signed $300 million in contracts in the fourth quarter of last year, and the business is growing rapidly this year, the company says.

Now that costs and energy consumption are priorities, the data center gurus are getting a hearing and new respect.

“After 25 years, we’re finally elevating mechanical engineering and adding a lot of electrical engineering, computer science and applied physics,” said Mr. Patel of Hewlett-Packard. “I wish I were 20 years younger.”

Lawmakers say computers were hacked from China 
DAY
By PETE YOST and LARA JAKES JORDAN    
Published on 6/12/2008  
 
Washington - Multiple congressional computers have been hacked by people working from inside China, lawmakers said Wednesday, suggesting the Chinese were seeking lists of dissidents.

Two congressmen, both longtime critics of Beijing's record on human rights, said the compromised computers contained information about political dissidents from around the world. One of the lawmakers said he'd been discouraged from disclosing the computer attacks by other U.S. officials.  Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf said four of his computers were compromised, beginning in 2006. New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said two of his computers were attacked, in December 2006 and March 2007.

Wolf said that following one of the attacks, a car with license plates belonging to Chinese officials went to the home of a dissident in Fairfax County, Va., outside Washington and photographed it.  During the same time period, The House International Relations Committee - now known as the House Foreign Affairs Committee - was targeted at least once by someone working inside China, said committee spokeswoman Lynne Weil.

Wednesday's disclosures came as U.S. authorities continued to investigate whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce Department computers. The Pentagon last month acknowledged at a closed House Intelligence committee meeting that its vast computer network is scanned or attacked by outsiders more than 300 million times each day.

Wolf said the FBI had told him that computers of other House members and at least one House committee had been accessed by sources working from inside China. The Virginia Republican suggested that Senate computers could have been attacked as well.  He said the hacking of computers in his Capitol Hill office began in August 2006, that he had known about it for a long time and that he had been discouraged from disclosing it by people in the U.S. government he refused to identify.

”The problem has been that no one wants to talk about this issue,” he said. “Every time I've started to do something I've been told 'You can't do this.' A lot of people have made it very, very difficult.”

The FBI and the White House declined to comment.  The Bush administration has been increasingly reluctant publicly to discuss or acknowledge cyber attacks, especially ones traced to China.

In the Senate, the office of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the Senate's subcommittee on humanitarian issues, asked the sergeant at arms to investigate whether Senate computers have been compromised.

Wolf said the first computer hacked in his office belonged to the staffer who works on human rights cases and that others included the machines of Wolf's chief of staff and legislative director.

”They knew which ones to get,” said Dan Scandling, who currently is on leave of absence from his job as Wolf's chief of staff. “It was a very sophisticated operation,” he said. “The FBI verified that it had been done.”

Smith said the attacks on his office computers were “very much an orchestrated effort.”

He said that after the first intrusion in December 2006, “that was the last time” his office put the names of dissidents on its computers.

In Beijing, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no immediate comment on the allegations by Wolf and Smith.  Last week, China denied the accusations regarding Gutierrez's laptop and the alleged effort to hack Commerce Department computers.  Wolf said he was introducing a House resolution that would help ensure protection for all House computers and information systems.

It calls for the chief administrative officer and sergeant at arms of the House, in consultation with the FBI, to alert members and their staffs to the danger of electronic attacks. Wolf also wants lawmakers to be fully briefed on ways to safeguard official records from electronic security breaches.

”My own suspicion is I was targeted by China because of my long history of speaking out about China's abysmal human rights record,” Wolf said in a draft of remarks he prepared to give on the House floor.

He said Congress should hold hearings, specifically the House Intelligence Committee, Armed Services Committee and Government Operations Committee. Speaking generally in May 2006, Wolf called Chinese spying efforts “frightening” and said it was no secret that the United States is a principal target of Chinese intelligence services.

Wolf thinks that President Bush should stay away from the Olympics because of China's human rights record.  He also has been outspoken on the subject of violence in the Darfur region of Sudan, where China has major oil interests.  Smith has introduced the Global Online Freedom Act which would prohibit U.S. Internet companies from cooperating with countries such as China that restrict information about human rights and democracy on the Internet.

Wolf and Smith both traveled to Beijing 17 years ago seeking the release of 77 people imprisoned or under house arrest because of their religious activities.

Recording Industry Getting Tougher On State's Students For Illegal Downloads; Settle Now Or Face A Federal Lawsuit, Lawyers Tell The Accused In Form Letter 
DAY
Published on 2/15/2008 

Free downloads have never cost so much.

Since last August, 84 University of Connecticut students, along with many others from Yale, Fairfield University, and Trinity College, have received letters from attorneys representing several major record companies threatening heavy fines and legal action against the students, who have allegedly downloaded music illegally using the school's Internet server.

The letters state, “You have been infringing copyrights owned by the Record Companies.”

The correspondence, obtained this week by The Day and addressed Jan. 9 from the Denver-based law firm Holme, Roberts and Owen, goes on to say that the students had 20 days “to settle the claims for a significantly reduced amount.”

If the accused students do not settle, the record companies promise to file a federal lawsuit, according to the letter, and the students would face much stiffer penalties compared to what the companies' settlement offers.

A spokesman for the law firm said it doesn't comment on the letters.

One Canterbury man, who is the father of a UConn sophomore, said his daughter received a presettlement letter. The man asked not to be identified because he fears retaliation from the record companies. When he called the settlement hotline, the law firm asked for $3,000 compensation for the 350 songs his daughter had downloaded.

“It's totally ridiculous — it's extortion,” he said. “They're kind of bullying you.”

The man said his daughter did not pay the fine and now faces $262,000 in penalties from the record companies.

The record companies represented by the law firm are the heavyweights of the industry — EMI Recorded Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as all of their subsidiaries.

Since last February, the Recording Industry Association of America has been waging an aggressive campaign against illegal downloads, especially cracking down on colleges and universities, because there are disproportionately higher incidences of illegal file sharing on college campuses. More than 2,350 students have settled with the RIAA since the stepped-up campaign began, according to the association.

The recording industry does not know the names of the students yet, just the specific IP addresses of their computers; however, the companies can compel the university to reveal the names by issuing a subpoena.

“We're familiar with these kinds of claims, and we have no direct authority to intervene,” Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said earlier this week.

According to Blumenthal and an online database for federal court cases, the university has not yet been served with a subpoena.

Blumenthal said he has been contacted by a relatively small number of people seeking help, and his office has “successfully moderated or reduced such penalties in the past by appealing to the companies' sense of fairness and common sense.”

University officials said that instances of illegal downloading on campus has drastically decreased over the past years, but combating it is still a challenge.

“It's a constantly moving target,” said Michael Kerntke, chief information officer at UConn.

Kerntke said the college has software to prevent the type of person-to-person file sharing that has led to legal challenges, but students who are determined to download files illegally will find a way to do so.

“The RIAA is obviously trying to enforce royalty payments in some way, shape or form,” Kerntke said. As a way to help students avoid the temptation of illicit file sharing, the university points students to a site that allows free, legal downloads, www.ruckus.com.

In a Feb. 6 post on the university's Web site, Dean of Students Lee Williams warned about the consequences of illegal file sharing.

“When the RIAA contacts the University, and produces a legal subpoena, we are obliged to give them information about students' identification and online activity,” Williams wrote in her post. “All we can (and will) do on your behalf is notify you that the RIAA is after you. At that point, you'll have to either pay this fine, or hire a lawyer to fight this.”

The experience of people who have fought that legal battle has not been good. Just this week Oklahoma State University revealed the names of 11 students accused of illegal downloads. The students and the school were unsuccessful in trying to quash the RIAA subpoena.

“The bottom line is: illegal downloading is ... illegal. And it will cost you a bundle,” Williams said in her message.  


Click above for on-line "Brave New World" - the original.  After many years the "Revisited" came out...from Wikipedia:

Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Row, 1958, 1965), written by Huxley almost thirty years after Brave New World, was a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether the world had moved towards or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s. He believed when he wrote the original novel that it was a reasonable guess as to where the world might go in the future but in Brave New World Revisited he concluded that the world was becoming much more like Brave New World much faster than he thought...

Rell seeks to safeguard citizenry's private information from online search sites
Manchester Journal Inquirer
By: Harlan Levy
12/25/2007

Complaints about online directory assistance sites that reveal extensive personal data have prompted Gov. M. Jodi Rell to start developing a legislative package to help

In a news release, Rell said Monday that she's received complaints about online search engines that list not only names, addresses, and telephone numbers but also people's ages, places of work, and other personal information.
 
Rell said she plans to propose restrictions that would likely be in the form of an "opt-out" registry that's an electronic version of the state and federal "Do Not Call" list, which blocks telemarketing calls to citizens whose phone numbers are on the list.

"Anyone who goes to WhitePages.com or 411.com will find personal information published that many people may want protected," Rell said. "This is a safety and security issue, particularly for our elderly citizens who too often are targeted by scam artists and other opportunists."

A third site, veromi.net, provides the names of possible relatives and roommates, as well as a person's name, address, age, and other information.

The opt-out registry Rell outlined would establish a centralized, one-time process for Connecticut residents to remove some or all of their private information from Internet search sites, credit card solicitations, direct mail lists, and other records.

"There have long been Web sites that, for a modest fee, specialize in taking bits and pieces from each of these sources and assembling a surprisingly complete profile of an individual, including Social Security number, address history, employer and even the make and model of their car," Rell said in the release.

"Now some sites are adding even more personal information to search results ... I am concerned this 'personal information creep' will put more and more individual privacy at risk."

Rell said she understands that these sites are breaking no law by gathering and disseminating this information.

Nevertheless, she said, an opt-out registry "will in no way jeopardize my commitment to transparency in government," because "I believe there are reasonable protections we can explore without compromising the Freedom of Information Act and the principles of open government."

One impediment is that the First Amendment of the Constitution prohibits the restraint of free speech. That means that the directory-assistance Web sites cannot be forced to remove any data that is public. And one's name, spouse's name, address (unless unpublished), age, and workplace are probably all available to the public, whether they can be easily found or not.

If it's public, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said, "there are no constitutional problems that I would foresee. The government cannot censor what's in the public realm."

What the government can censor, Blumenthal said, is a party tracking and selling the private information that comes from an individual's Internet dealings and purchases without the individual's knowledge.

Three weeks ago Blumenthal proposed a "Do Not Track" list similar to a Canadian program that would prohibit such conduct by telemarketers and others who use, buy, or sell such information that they surreptitiously obtain without consent. Blumenthal wants next year's legislature to enact the measure.

"The basic concept is to prevent collecting information without the consumer's consent," Blumenthal said.
"If the consumer objects to collecting the information and says, 'Do not track me when I travel the Internet,' that wish should be respected, and this law would compel marketers to protect that right under consumer privacy."

That protection would come from state law and not under the right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment, Blumenthal added.

"The Fourth Amendment right is against the government invading my privacy and telling me what to do," he said.
Privacy laws being scrutinized

Rell noted that many states are examining their privacy laws, security measures, and the kinds of information they collect, manage, and distribute in light of identity theft, fraud, and other computer crimes.

The state has endured several recent incidents of misplaced computers with vast amounts of unprotected personal data. Protective reactions followed soon thereafter.

In October, Rell announced that the Department of Information Technology had selected a new encryption tool for use by state agencies for laptop computers and other mobile computing and storage devices.

On Sept. 10, Rell announced a new mobile computing and storage device security policy requiring agencies to adhere to new restrictions and accountability measures, including mandatory risk assessments and written authorization from the agency head for any instance in which restricted or confidential data must reside on a mobile device for business reasons.

Any data residing on a mobile device under these controlled circumstances must be encrypted, the amount of data and length of time it may reside on the mobile device must be limited, and protections from unauthorized access and disclosure are required.

Rell also directed all agencies to assess and purge sensitive data currently on laptop computers and portable storage devices if there was no compelling business need for the information to be so stored.

"Privacy concerns are constantly evolving," Rell said. "We must not only keep up with them but do our best to stay ahead of the curve."

Rell said she will ask state agencies to review private information about residents that the state collects, manages, and distributes.

"While bearing in mind such traditional functions such as tax collection, media and freedom-of-Information requests and law enforcement, I want to ensure that the security of private information within state government is protected," Rell said.

Recent new laws in other states sharply curtail the business use and release of Social Security numbers and specify that businesses may not retain information from the "magnetic stripe" on the back of credit and debit cards for longer than 48 hours.



Major Internet hubs see lesser influence
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
October 7, 2007

NEW YORK - The recent rush by major Internet portals to buy advertising companies and extend their sales networks is a sign that the business of being a one-stop shop for information and entertainment isn't what it used to be.  Gone are the days of emphasizing ways to attract and keep visitors — the way television networks long have operated — by creating destinations with anything people might need for work, leisure or companionship.

Instead, those companies are now more aggressively trying to follow Web surfers elsewhere — and bring lucrative advertising to them.

As people increasingly turn to blogs, social-networking sites and other sources of user-generated media, Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL have spent more than $10 billion collectively this year to acquire companies and technologies that help extend their online advertising networks.  So instead of relying solely on being portals for consumers, the major companies are creating one-stop shops for advertisers, who are increasingly wanting to buy ads centrally and place them where the eyeballs are. The networks take care of feeding the ads to smaller sites.

"We're not interested in building yesterday's portal," said Ron Grant, AOL's president and chief operating officer. "Consumers are finding what they are looking for is coming from more and more fragmented places. We need a way for advertisers to take advantage of that fragmentation."

That shift is important for the major Internet businesses to grab a substantial share of the marketing dollars expected to flow at the expense of television and print.  For consumers, the development means greater freedom and a further erosion of artificial walls designed to keep visitors from leaving sites.  According to comScore Media Metrix, the U.S. audience for the four major Internet brands grew over the past year. But the total time spent at Yahoo and AOL dropped about 10 percent, while Microsoft's MSN-Windows Live services saw an 8 percent decline.

In other words, these sites are attracting more people but are keeping them for shorter durations as users find what they need elsewhere.  Google was the exception, with a 57 percent jump in total time spent, but even the company recognizes that "no individual property will have all those products and services" a user might want, said Tim Armstrong, Google's head of North American ad sales.

"The Internet is basically being built and scaling (faster) than any one property on the Internet is," Armstrong said. "Companies in the Internet space are changing their business models to have models which are consumer driven, not property driven."

That's not to say the major Internet destinations are ceding their own properties.  In a few cases, the large companies have bought wildly popular sites. Google spent about $1.76 billion last November to absorb the leading video-sharing site, YouTube. It also owns the blogging service Blogger, while Yahoo has the photo-sharing site Flickr.  They are also innovating. AOL revamped its video search site in August, while Yahoo retooled its core search engine this month to try to make it more engaging and lure back those who had defected to Google.

"Everyone still wants to be your home page. They are always going to battle for that," said Nick Nyhan, chief executive of market research firm Dynamic Logic. "But they have to think beyond that. Consumers aren't going to just take your stuff."

Google, Yahoo and AOL still make most of their ad money from sites they own and operate (Microsoft did not break down figures in its regulatory filings). Google and Yahoo even reported relative growth there in the second quarter.  Ad networks set the stage for the future and help the large Internet companies ensure they will have enough inventory to sell in the years ahead.  Ford Motor Co. can, for instance, come to Google and buy ads that run not only there but also at The New York Times' Web site and thousands of others within Google's AdSense network. Ford wouldn't have to deal with all those sites individually; third-party sites wouldn't have to expand their sales team.

Meanwhile, Google gets a cut of ad revenues — without spending a dime developing those specialty sites.  Although this concept isn't new, what is changing is the scale.  In agreeing to acquire DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion, Google is looking for better ways to deliver multimedia display ads to supplement the small, text-based ads the company already does well.  The still-pending acquisition also extends Google's reach beyond AdSense to all the outside sites for which DoubleClick now distributes advertising.

Likewise, in buying Tacoda Inc., AOL not only gets Tacoda's technology for targeting ads, but also extends its reach to NBC Universal, Scripps Networks and the Times (sites can join multiple ad networks). AOL also has a network through its 2004 acquisition of Advertising.com and separately bought companies this year serving international markets and wireless devices.

Yahoo, meanwhile, paid about $650 million for the 80 percent of Right Media Inc. it did not already own and agreed to buy BlueLithium Inc. for $300 million. Microsoft bought aQuantive Inc. for $6 billion.

"It's not that networks are going to supplant these mass-market sites, but they will have less influence as networks have more," said David Hallerman, a senior analyst at the research group eMarketer, which projects U.S. online advertising spending at $44 billion in 2011, more than double the $17 billion last year.

The shift didn't happen overnight. Many factors are involved, including online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace commanding more of a user's time over the past few years. Web sites big and small are making features available, through tools called widgets, for viewing directly at those sites.  Of course, the major brands would still prefer visitors going to them directly, as they wouldn't have to share ad revenues with another site.

But as audiences disperse, advertisers have become reluctant to concentrate their spending at a traditional portal.

Besides standardization, efficiency and diversity, advertisers get better targeting with networks. Say you are trying to reach Seattle natives with a propensity to fly to the remote Arctic island of Svalbard. On a portal you might find 10. On a network 100 times larger, you'd find 1,000 without changing your campaign.

There are drawbacks, though.

U.S. and European regulators are reviewing Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick. Critics complain Google would have too much control over online advertising and personal information collected on users. 
And despite the efficiencies, consolidation could hamper flexibility, said Jason Turner, vice president for interactive at advertising agency Ignited.

"When there were four television networks, you were beholden to those four, (who could say), `Here are the rules. This is what it's going to cost and if you don't like it you're not going to get on TV,'" Turner said.

Nonetheless, ad networks are here to stay.

"Advertisers are going to need to start to use the Internet the way people always use the Internet, spreading out in hot pursuit of the things they need and want," said Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of Burst Media Corp., an independent ad network. "It's much easier to fish where the fish are."

Intel Unveils New Classmate PCs
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 3, 2008
Filed at 10:50 a.m. ET

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Intel Corp. unveiled new features for its line of low-cost laptops for schools Wednesday, adding bigger screens and more data storage capacity as the chip maker ratchets up its rivalry with the One Laptop per Child organization, which sells a competing machine.

Intel's new Classmate PCs -- slated to go on sale in April for between $300 and $500 -- reflect the company's growing efforts to sell computers equipped with its own chips to schools in developing countries, a battleground for technology companies because of the millions of people there just coming online.

But the target market has expanded to include kids in the U.S. as potential users of cheaper, stripped-down machines.

Classmate PCs also are part of Intel's push to generate interest in a new class of mobile devices the company is calling ''netbooks,'' which are smaller and have fewer functions than standard laptops but also use far less power and are easier to carry around.

Other tweaks to the Classmate that Intel announced Wednesday from its developer forum in Shanghai include the availability of both 7-inch and 9-inch screens, a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive and an integrated Web camera.

At the developer forum, Intel executives also rolled out five new processors under the ''Atom'' brand name. The chips are designed for pocket-size Internet devices. The chips come in speeds up to 1.86 gigahertz while using less than 3 watts of power.

Intel said its Classmate PCs will eventually use Atom processors.

Classmates are based on Intel's design and include its processors, but they are built by other manufacturers and sold under a variety of brand names. The first generation went on sale in March 2007 with the 7-inch screen and fewer functions. Intel said it has sold ''tens of thousands'' of the machines but declined to provide more specific data.

Intel and OLPC have feuded furiously over their competing products.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based nonprofit OLPC says it has sold hundreds of thousands of its $188 machines.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff's low-cost XO laptop includes a microprocessor from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the world's No. 2 microprocessor maker behind Intel.

A short-lived truce between Intel and OLPC ended earlier this year when Intel suddenly pulled out from OLPC's board of directors.

Intel claimed it couldn't continue cooperating with OLPC when founder Nicholas Negroponte demanded Intel stop selling Classmates overseas. Negroponte said the dispute stemmed from Intel sales reps disparaging OLPC products while pushing Intel's own machines.

MIT Spinoff's Little Green Laptop A Hit In Remote Peruvian Village 
DAY
By Frank Bajak, AP Technology Writer    
Published on 12/25/2007 

Arahuay, Peru — Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago.

These offspring of peasant families whose monthly earnings rarely exceed the cost of one of the $188 laptops — people who can ill afford pencil and paper much less books — can't get enough of their “XO” laptops. 
At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines.

“It's really the kind of conditions that we designed for,” Walter Bender, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff, said of this agrarian backwater up a precarious dirt road.

Founded in 2005 by former MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte, the One Laptop program has retreated from early boasts that developing-world governments would snap up millions of the pint-sized laptops at $100 each.  In a backhanded tribute, One Laptop now faces homegrown competitors everywhere from Brazil to India — and a full-court press from Intel Corp.'s more power-hungry Classmate.

But no competitor approaches the XO in innovation. It is hard drive-free, runs on the Linux operating system and stretches wireless networks with “mesh” technology that lets each computer in a village relay data to the others.  Mass production began last month and Negroponte, brother of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, says he expects at least 1.5 million machines to be sold by next November. Even that would be far less than Negroponte originally envisioned. The higher-than-initially-advertised price and a lack of the Windows operating system, still being tested for the XO, have dissuaded many potential government buyers.

Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed. Uruguay was the No. 2 buyers of the laptops, inking a contract for 100,000.

Negroponte said 150,000 more laptops will get shipped to countries including Rwanda, Mongolia, Haiti, and Afghanistan in early 2008 through “Give One, Get One,” a U.S.-based promotion ending Dec. 31 in which you buy a pair of laptops for $399 and donate one or both.  The children of Arahuay prove One Laptop's transformative conceit: that you can revolutionize education and democratize the Internet by giving a simple, durable, power-stingy but feature-packed laptop to the worlds' poorest kids.

“Some tell me that they don't want to be like their parents, working in the fields,” first-grade teacher Erica Velasco says of her pupils. She had just sent them to the Internet to seek out photos of invertebrates — animals without backbones.

Antony, 12, wants to become an accountant.

Alex, 7, aspires to be a lawyer.

Kevin, 11, wants to play trumpet.

Saida, 10, is already a promising videographer, judging from her artful recording of the town's recent Fiesta de la Virgen.

“What they work with most is the (built-in) camera. They love to record,” says Maria Antonieta Mendoza, an Education Ministry psychologist studying the Arahuay pilot to devise strategies for the big rollout when the new school year begins in March.

Before the laptops, the only cameras the kids at Santiago Apostol school saw in this population-800 hamlet arrived with tourists who visit for festivals or to see local Inca ruins.  Arahuay's lone industry is agriculture. Surrounding fields yield avocados, mangoes, potatoes, corn, alfalfa and cherimoya.  Many adults share only weekends with their children, spending the workweek in fields many hours' walk from town and relying on charities to help keep their families nourished.

When they finish school, young people tend to abandon the village.  Peru's head of educational technology, Oscar Becerra, is betting the One Laptop program can reverse this rural exodus to the squalor of Lima's shantytowns four hours away.  It's the best answer yet to “a global crisis of education” in which curricula have no relevance, he said. “If we make education pertinent, something the student enjoys, then it won't matter if the classroom's walls are straw or the students are sitting on fruit boxes.”

Indeed, Arahuay's elementary school population rose by 10 when families learned the laptop pilot was coming, said Guillermo Lazo, the school's director.  The XOs that Peru is buying will be distributed to pupils in 9,000 elementary schools from the Pacific to the Amazon basin where a single teacher serves all grades, Becerra said.  Although Peru boasts thousands of rural satellite downlinks that provide Internet access, only about 4,000 of the schools getting XOs will be connected, said Becerra.

Negroponte says One Laptop is committed to helping Peru overcome that hurdle. Without Internet access, he believes, the program is incomplete.

Teachers will get 21/2 days of training on the laptops, Becerra said. Each machine will initially be loaded with about 100 copyright-free books. Where applicable, texts in native languages will be included, he added. The machines will also have a chat function that will let kids make faraway friends over the Internet.

Critics of the rollout have two key concerns.  The first is the ability of teachers — poorly trained and equipped to begin with — to cope with profoundly disruptive technology.  Eduardo Villanueva, a communications professor at Lima's Catholic University, fears “a general disruption of the educational system that will manifest itself in the students overwhelming the teachers.”

To counter that fear, Becerra said the government is offering $150 grants to qualifying teachers toward the purchase of conventional laptops, for which it is also arranging low-interest loans.

The second big concern is maintenance.  For every 100 units it will distribute to students, Peru is buying one extra for parts. But there is no tech support program. Students and teachers will have to do it.

“What you want is for the kids to do the repairs,” said Negroponte, who believes such tinkering is itself a valuable lesson. “I think the kids can repair 95 percent of the laptops.”

Tech support is nevertheless a serious issue in many countries, Negroponte acknowledged in a phone interview.  One Laptop is currently bidding on a contract with Brazil's government that Negroponte says demanded unrealistically onerous support requirements.  The XO machines are water resistant, rugged and designed to last five years. They have no fan so they won't suck up dust, are built to withstand drops from a meter and a half and can absorb power spikes typical of places with irregular electricity.

Mendoza, the psychologist, is overjoyed that the program stipulates that kids get ownership of the laptops.  Take Kevin, the aspiring trumpet player.  Sitting in his dirt-floor kitchen as his mother cooks lunch, he draws a soccer field on his XO, then erases it. Kevin plays a song by “Caliente,” his favorite combo, that he recorded off Arahuay's single TV channel. He shows a reporter photos he took of him with his 3-year-old brother.  A bare light bulb hangs by a wire from the ceiling. A hen bobs around the floor. There are no books in this two-room house. Kevin's parents didn't get past the sixth grade.

Indeed, the laptop project also has adults in its sights.

Parents in Arahuay are asking Mendoza, the visiting psychologist, what the Internet can do for them.

Among them is Charito Arrendondo, 39, who sheds brief tears of joy when a reporter asks what the laptop belonging to ruddy-cheeked Miluska — the youngest of her six children — has meant to her. Miluska's father, it turns out, abandoned the family when she was 1.

“We never imagined having a computer,” said Arrendondo, a cook.

Is she afraid to use the laptop, as is typical of many Arahuay parents, about half of whom are illiterate?

“No, I like it. Sometimes when I'm alone and the kids are not around I turn it on and poke around.”

Arrendondo likes to play checkers on the laptop.

“It's also got chess, which I sort of know,” she said, pausing briefly.

“I'm going to learn.”  
I-BBC; Last Updated: Wednesday, 12 December 2007, 15:04 GMT
A child's view of the $100 laptop
What will a child in the UK make of a laptop designed to help children in the developing world? Rory Cellan-Jones brought an XO home to find out.

The XO laptop
The laptop was designed to be robust and easy to use

In late November I returned from Nigeria with a sample of the XO laptop.

The computer, made by the One Laptop per Child charity, is a robust little machine designed to entertain and educate children while allowing them to learn by themselves.

I knew there was only one person who could review it for me.

The Nine Year-old's View

Enter Rufus Cellan-Jones. He is nine, has far more experience of games consoles than computers, and has strong views on most matters.

"Looks fun," was his only comment when I handed over the small, green and white laptop, explaining that he was the only child in Britain to have one.

But very quickly he was up and running.

All I did was give him the security code for our home wireless network so he could take the XO online. The rest he figured out for himself, as he explains:

Lots of fun

"I just seemed to work it out. It was rather easy. I didn't even need help." Surprise, surprise, his first discovery was a game. "I found Block Party. It's like Tetris. I'm now up to Level 7."

I thought my young games fanatic might stick there but he moved on. "Then I discovered paint. You can use pencils, change the texture, use different sizes of brush."

Even better, there was an animation programme called Etoys.

"That's my favourite.You make things. You can see tutorials and demos. Then you can make a new project. I've made a crazy UFO which you can move."

But Rufus says it isn't just about play.

"I use the calculator - that can be rather useful for sums. You can even browse onto the internet. You can watch and learn stuff. You can write things and it can also remind you which is extremely useful."

What, I asked, does a nine year old need to remind himself about? "Christmas stuff," he said, with an air of mystery.

Social networking

But the real surprise came one evening, when Rufus asked me to explain what his friends were telling him on the laptop.

I thought those imaginary childhood friends from years back must have returned.

But I went and had a look - and it was true - he appeared to be chatting online.

So how had he managed that?

"You go on "neighbourhood", then you go to the chat thing.

You go on Nigeria and you chat to them."

But why, if he was online with the children at the Nigerian school I had visited, were they sending messages in Spanish?

I decided he must be linking up with one of the South American schools taking part in the OLPC project but we still aren't sure quite how that is happening.

Still, Rufus is widening his social circle. " I have three friends. It's nice to talk to them. They don't speak much English but I can understand them." The conversation is not exactly sparkling, but Rufus has learned to say "Hola".

Not a toy

So Rufus is using his laptop to write, paint, make music, explore the internet, and talk to children from other countries.

Because it looks rather like a simple plastic toy, I had thought it might suffer the same fate as the radio-controlled dinosaur or the roller-skates he got last Christmas - enjoyed for a day or two, then ignored.

Instead, it seems to provide enduring fascination.

I had returned from Nigeria not entirely convinced that the XO laptop was quite as wonderful an educational tool as its creators claimed.

I felt that a lot of effort would be needed by hard-pressed teachers before it became more than just a distracting toy for the children to mess around with in class.

But Rufus has changed my mind.

With no help from his Dad, he has learned far more about computers than he knew a couple of weeks ago, and the XO appears to be a more creative tool than the games consoles which occupy rather too much of his time.

The One Laptop Per Child project is struggling to convince developing countries providing computers for children is as important as giving them basic facilities like water or electricity.

Unusually, Rufus does not have an opinion about that controversy, but he does have a verdict on the laptop. "It's great," he says.

Laptop Project Says Each Sale To U.S. Buyer Will Donate One To Developing-Country User 
DAY
By Brian Bergstein, AP Technology Writer    
Published on 9/24/2007 
   
Cambridge, Mass. — The project that hopes to supply developing-world schoolchildren with $188 laptops will sell the rugged little computers to U.S. residents and Canadians for $400 each, with the profit going toward a machine for a poor country.

The One Laptop Per Child project expects that its “Give One, Get One” promotion will result in a pool of thousands of donated laptops that will stimulate demand in countries hesitant to join the program. It will be offered for only two weeks in November.

Originally conceived as the “$100 laptop,” the funky green-and-white low-power “XO” computers now cost $188. The laptops' manufacturer, Quanta Computer Inc., is beginning mass production next month, but with far fewer than the 3 million orders One Laptop Per Child director Nicholas Negroponte had said he was waiting for.

Negroponte said the availability of donated laptops would not be the sole condition for many countries weighing whether to place multimillion-dollar orders. But “it just triggers it,” he said. “It makes it all happen faster.”

By opening sales to people in the U.S. and Canada at http://www.xogiving.com, “Give One, Get One” will delight computing aficionados, because the XO is unlike any other laptop.

It has a homegrown user interface designed for children, boasts built-in wireless networking, uses very little power and can be recharged by hand with a pulley or a crank. Its display has separate indoor and outdoor settings so it can be read in full sunlight, something even expensive laptops lack.

The machines use the Linux open-source system and don't run Windows; Negroponte expects that to be possible soon, but Microsoft Corp. insists it can't guarantee that, given the machine's idiosyncratic specs.

The catch is that “Give One, Get One” will run only from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26. Negroponte said the limited availability is partly necessary so the nonprofit doesn't run afoul of tax laws, but mainly designed to create scarcity-induced excitement.

“We need that burst,” he said.

Just the first 25,000 buyers will be promised delivery of their XOs by the Christmas season. Everyone else will be on a pace reminiscent of the old Sears Roebuck catalog, with the computer probably arriving in January.

Then again, most buyers figure to be motivated more by the “Give One” aspect than the “Get One” part. Negroponte said that dynamic is beginning to pervade the program, with several poor countries finding that richer governments are willing to act as sponsors.

For example, Italy is buying all 50,000 XOs that Ethiopia will get in the program's first wave. Now Negroponte is trying to encourage similar arrangements with governments in Europe and Asia, with Pakistan and Afghanistan among the possible recipients. Megabillionaire Carlos Slim is expected to purchase 25,000 XOs and lend them to Mexican children.

Thailand, Uruguay, Nigeria, Brazil, Libya and Rwanda are among the countries that could be in the first wave of laptop customers, though specifics have not been announced.

Given all the innovations in the XO and the discussions it has inspired about computers in education, One Laptop Per Child — a spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — can claim significant achievements. However, Negroponte hoped to be further along by now.

In September 2005, he was saying that 5 million to 15 million machines might be in production in 2006, with perhaps 100 million out by now. In April 2006 he foresaw 5 million to 10 million XOs dotting the landscape in 2007.

Now 250,000 to 300,000 are due to be made by the end of this year. Negroponte expects that to ramp up to 1 million a month next year, though he still lacks signed orders for that many.

One reason things may have gone slower than predicted is One Laptop Per Child's impending emergence awoke commercial vendors to the promise of a low-cost international educational market. Now governments considering buying XOs for their youngsters have multiple options in the $200 range — including more-conventional computers that can run Windows. Negroponte acknowledges the absence of Windows led Russia to say no.

One of the laptop program's unabashed admirers is Miguel Brechner, who runs a government-funded technology group in Uruguay. Brechner has been overseeing a test of 200 XOs in a Uruguayan village and believes the laptops have stimulated collaboration and raised expectations for children. He expects to buy many more XOs as Uruguay soon begins to outfit all 400,000 of its primary schoolchildren with laptops.

“I'm absolutely a believer that this will change the country,” Brechner said.

But not all of those computers will be XOs. To hedge its bets, Uruguay probably will buy other inexpensive laptops as well, including Intel Corp.'s Classmate PCs. Brechner argues that Windows is a better option for older kids who are closer to entering the computing work force.

“We will see (what happens) in the field and change whatever is necessary,” Brechner said. “We will make some mistakes. We don't know who to copy on this.”

Wireless is beefed up in downtown
By FRANK MacEACHERN, fmaceachern@thestamfordtimes.com
September 6, 2007

STAMFORD —Three small parks in the city's downtown are more than just places to relax on a warm day, they're also areas where people can connect to the Internet via free Wi-Fi service.

City officials hope it's just the start of a "wireless corridor" running from the downtown to the transportation center, said Michael Pensiero, Stamford's director of technology management services.

"Our entire plan is to have a wireless service from Ferguson Library to the transportation center, to create a wireless corridor," said Pensiero.

The service enables people who have a laptop to work in an area where they can't plug in to a wall socket in order to access the Internet. Instead they're able to sit in an area, such as a park, and connect to the Internet wirelessly.

The project is funded by a $15,000 federal grant which was used to purchase the radio equipment and for service fees, said Pensiero. Approval for the grant came last fall and the city received the money approximately two months later.

Last year the city offered the service at Columbus Park. This summer the city added Latham Park on Bedford Street and Veterans Park on Atlantic Street near Stamford Town Center.

The city is working with the state to have the service extended to the transportation center so commuters would be able to use it while waiting for a train, said Pensiero.

To access the Internet users have to type the 13-digit access code on Connecticut library cards. Out-of-state residents have to obtain a library card from Ferguson Library if they wish to connect to the Internet.

There haven't been many users yet, said Pensiero, but he hoped more will take advantage of it once they get to know about the service.

Once users know about free Wi-Fi service they're eager to use it, said Alice Knapp, director of public services at the Ferguson Library.

The library began offering the service three years ago at its main branch and then expanded it this year to the Harry Bennett and the Weed & Hollander Memorial branches in Turn of River and Springdale areas respectively. She estimated about 12-13,000 users have signed on to use the Wi-Fi service.

For people who bring their laptop to the library to work on a project or assignment the Wi-Fi service is another convenience for them. They can work and also access reference material at the same time as others are doing so, said Knapp.

Internet speed at the Wi-Fi sites is very good, said Pensiero, although he cautioned it's affected by how many users are online.

Municipal Wi-Fi faces financial hurdles
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
Fri Aug 31, 2:54 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO - A year ago, it seemed like just about every major U.S. city was drawing up ambitious plans to build wireless Internet networks so more people, both rich and poor, could have online access wherever they wanted. Now, economics is blurring the Utopian vision as city leaders and the companies proposing to build the Wi-Fi networks haggle over whether the projects make financial sense.

The problem came into sharper focus this week as once-ballyhooed projects in San Francisco and Chicago unraveled while another high-profile deal in Houston neared a breaking point.

"Cities and companies are rethinking the models that they are adopting," said Esme Vos, founder of MuniWireless.com, a Web site that tracks trends in the industry. "It's all about economics and risk-sharing now."

MuniWireless estimates Wi-Fi networks have either already been built or are under consideration in 455 cities and counties across the United States, up from 122 two years ago.

The second thoughts about municipal Wi-Fi revolve around questions about whether the networks will generate enough revenue to justify the multimillion-dollar investments to build and maintain them.

EarthLink Inc., an Internet service provider that had been one of the chief evangelists in the crusade to blanket cities with Wi-Fi, has decided it can no longer afford to foot the bill by itself as the Atlanta-based company tries to bounce back from $46 million in losses during the first half of this year.

"We will not devote any new capital to the old municipal Wi-Fi model that has us taking all the risks," Rolla Huff, EarthLink's chief executive, told analysts during a Wednesday conference call. "In my judgment, that model is simply unworkable."

Later Wednesday, Huff informed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom that EarthLink was rescinding a proposal to cover the estimated $14 million to $17 million cost of building the city's Wi-Fi network.

Had the San Francisco system been built, EarthLink planned to charge about $20 per month for Wi-Fi access that would have been three to four times faster than a free service subsidized by ads sold by Google Inc. San Francisco still hopes to find other vendors willing to build a Wi-Fi network in its city, an effort that Google said it will continue to support.

"Google is committed to promoting alternative platforms for people to access the Web no matter where they are, and we encourage others to think creatively about how to address access issues in their own communities," Google spokesman Andrew Pederson said.

Last year, Google completed a free Wi-Fi network in its home town of Mountain View that the company says attracts about 15,000 users per month.

EarthLink had doubts about whether it could sign up enough San Francisco subscribers to recover its costs there, based on its experience so far in other cities, including Philadelphia and New Orleans, where it has already completed or is still building Wi-Fi networks.

Houston was counting on EarthLink to invest about $50 million to build a Wi-Fi network there, but those high hopes are now fading. The city this week notified EarthLink that it will fine the company $5 million for missing its contractual deadlines. The payment will give EarthLink more time to consider whether it wants to abandon the Houston project or find other partners willing to help defray the costs.

Chicago canceled its $18.5 million Wi-Fi project after concluding it would require the city to spend too much money to help finance it.

Financial worries also have jeopardized a $20 million Wi-Fi network in Milwaukee. The project remains in its testing phase, but the vendor, Midwest Fiber Networks, has publicly expressed concerns about whether the network will attract enough customers to recoup the investment.

Vos and other industry observers believe the dreams about wireless Internet access in big cities can still be realized if the some of the financial burden is shifted from the private sector.

"What is happening right now is a black eye (for Wi-Fi), but I don't think it's a death blow," said Godfrey Chua, who follows wireless networking issues for the research firm IDC. "We just need to work on new business models."

Some cities already have agreed to help finance Wi-Fi by sharing some of the upfront costs and guaranteeing subscriptions. Minneapolis, for instance, has agreed to become the "anchor tenant" on its Wi-Fi network — a commitment that will cost the city $1.25 million annually.

Houston had also agreed to pay EarthLink $500,000 annually to give the city's workers Wi-Fi access during the first five years of its contract, but that still might not be enough to keep EarthLink on board.

DPUC Issues Certificate For U-Verse; Decision Clears The Way For AT&T's New Phone-Line Television Offering 
By Anthony Cronin, Day Business Editor    
Published on 11/2/2007         

AT&T and union officials on Thursday welcomed state regulators' approval of the communications company's new U-verse offering, which provides television services over its phone network.

The state Department of Public Utility Control issued a “certificate of video franchise,” making AT&T the first competitor to offer television services under a new state law designed to increase competition with the cable industry.

New London is one of the introductory markets for the new U-verse television service. AT&T, whose statewide headquarters is in New Haven, launched the service last December in a handful of towns and cities. Since then, it has expanded to 42 municipalities and serves more than 150,000 customers. Company officials said AT&T would continue to expand the service to more towns and cities across Connecticut.

In addition, downtown New London is home to a service center for the new U-verse service that employs about 100.

Ramona Carlow, president of AT&T's Connecticut operations, said her company is pleased with the DPUC decision, saying that Connecticut consumers “have long desired more choice in the video marketplace.”

The U-verse service comes into a residence via the telephone network. Once inside the home, equipment essentially “splits” the television signal off from the voice or data signals, providing cable-like service to individual television sets in a home.

Earlier this week, AT&T won an important court victory when a Hartford Superior Court judge backed the communications company in its battle to convince state regulators to let it sell the service without being considered a regulated cable provider.

The DPUC had ruled this past month that AT&T needed a cable-television license for its new service. AT&T objected, along with its union workers and many of its customers. AT&T officials said they have invested more than $300 million in the new service and disputed that it is a cable-like service.

William F. Henderson III, president of the Communications Workers of America Local 1298, said the DPUC decision on Thursday offers welcome relief to his union, which had forecast the loss of at least 1,300 jobs across the state if the new television offering were halted.

The CWA workers include various technicians and service personnel who are working to install the new service and broaden the U-verse network to more municipalities across the state. “I'm happy that they (DPUC) moved so quickly because jobs were at stake and the economy in the state of Connecticut would suffer” if jobs were lost from the initial DPUC ruling in October, Henderson said.

U-verse basic service starts at $44 a month, but the price increases depending on the level of service, such as adding television offerings or Internet-related packages.
AT & T Wins In Court; TV Service To Continue
By MARK PETERS | Courant Staff Writer
November 1, 2007

A Hartford Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that AT&T can resume signing up customers for its TV service, possibly ending the battle over how to regulate the company's alternative to cable television.

Judge Robert McWeeny overturned a ruling by the state Department of Public Utility Control that required AT&T to follow the same rules as cable companies. McWeeny ruled that AT&T should instead be regulated under a new state law designed to promote TV services that compete with cable companies, something the state hopes will lead to lower rates and improved service.

"The legislature has made a policy determination to encourage competition in the area of cable services by reducing the regulatory burden on providers… The DPUC and [state Office of Consumer Counsel] are created by the legislature to facilitate and implement their policy determinations, not to frustrate them," the judge wrote.

As a result of the recent DPUC decision, AT&T threatened to lay off hundreds of workers, call off hundreds of millions of dollars in construction and shut down the TV service for its 7,000 existing customers.

AT&T now plans to continue expanding its TV service known as U-verse, which is available in parts of 42 towns and cities in Connecticut. The company uses an Internet-like technology to deliver ESPN, HBO and other TV programming over telephone lines.

As part of the new state law, AT&T will have to receive a new kind of license from the DPUC as a competitive video provider. The company said it won't start signing up new customers until it gets the license.

"Connecticut consumers will have a chance for video choice at last. We are proud and pleased today to have gotten clarity from [the court]," Seth Bloom, an AT&T spokesman, said in a statement.

It wasn't clear Thursday whether the state might appeal the ruling. Neither officials at the DPUC nor the Office of Consumer Counsel, which represents TV service customers, could be reached for comment.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had argued that U-verse should be treated the same as cable TV companies and abide by the same rules. But he softened his position in recent days, and said Thursday he doesn't believe McWeeny's ruling should be appealed. He may seek legislative changes to ensure competition for TV service is fair.

"We may differ on legal issues, but we share the goal of providing cable consumers with this new service so they, hopefully, have the benefits of lower prices and better service. Continued legal combat ill-serves that common objective," Blumenthal said in a statement.

The battle over AT&T's U-verse service had focused on whether the phone giant should be compelled to get a franchise license for the whole state and provide service to anyone who wanted it, statewide. Cable companies like Comcast and Cox Communications currently have that requirement for their franchise areas, which encompass several municipalities and not the whole state.

The consumer counsel and Blumenthal had argued that if AT&T wasn't required to serve everyone, then only certain areas of the state would benefit from competition. The company could then pick and choose the most lucrative areas, leaving others particularly the poor or those in rural areas with no competitive choice.

AT&T argued that to offer the service to everyone would be burdensome as it entered a market where cable companies have had a decades-old monopoly. If the state wanted competition, the company maintained, it would have to drop the so-called universal service requirement.

The General Assembly did just that in a law passed earlier this year that prevents AT&T from discriminating against low-income areas, but doesn't require the company to offer U-verse to all customers. The law also set up a lighter regulatory system that still included customer service requirements and public access TV funding.

However, that law came into question after a federal court ruled that AT&T was a cable company in a lawsuit brought by the consumer counsel and cable industry. The federal ruling resulted in the DPUC ruling on Oct. 15 that AT&T didn't qualify under the new state law and had to stop signing up customers until it received a cable franchise license.

AT&T balked and appealed the ruling to state court, leading to Wednesday's ruling.

AT&T building U-verse
CT POST
By PAM DAWKINS
Article Last Updated: 08/23/2007 10:35:33 PM EDT

While a federal district court and state regulators contemplate rulings about the nature of AT&T's U-verse television service, the company continues building up the infrastructure and customer base.

AT&T plans to spend about $336 million on infrastructure improvements in the state as part of its three-year plan to roll out U-verse nationally.

It started the service in Connecticut in parts of nine towns in December; today it is available in parts of 35 cities and towns, including Bridgeport, Danbury, Derby, Fairfield, Milford, New Haven, Stratford, Trumbull, Westport and West Haven. The company won't disclose specific numbers, but says it has thousands of subscribers here already. Its marketing efforts include a doublewide trailer with two living rooms, where customers can check out the service. That trailer is at the Best Buy parking lot in Danbury for another month.

"The main driver behind U-verse is the empowerment of the Web U-verse is about bringing that Web empowerment to your TV," Chris Traggio, AT&T's vice president for consumer operations, said Thursday during a media tour of the video hub office.

For security and competitive reasons, AT&T has asked the hub's location be identified only as being in New Haven County, around the center of the state. The hub has no identifying signage.

This is where AT&T acquires Connecticut and New York City channels — sent digitally through fiber optics — and merges them with national content, said Rob Frey,
the facility manager.

Inside, gray and black bookcase-like shapes line rows, holding black boxes sporting a variety of wires and lights; bundles of yellow fiber-optic cable are everywhere. Everything has a redundancy, Frey said, so service isn't interrupted. This includes the power supply; huge batteries fill in for a secondary backup generation if the primary generator, which is on site, fails.

The local signal moves down an aisle of machinery, which processes it into an Internet Protocol stream. Technicians can also change the color or volume in a program. The process is mirrored on the other side of the room for national programming.

Both sets move via fiber optics to neighborhood nodes but once there, the content moves to individual sites via the copper wire that also carries phone service, said Chad Townes, AT&T's vice president and general manager for Connecticut. That need to move through sites with fiber optics is why it's not available in the whole state at once, he said. "Every day, we're adding more fiber."

Part of the installation — the company has 100 technicians now with more going through six-week training courses continuously — includes rewiring the house if the wires are too old.

U-verse is billed as competition to cable television, but Attorney General Richard Blumenthal maintains the service is cable television, and so AT&T should be regulated like a cable company, which includes requesting a franchise from the state Department of Public Utility Control.

One worry, Blumenthal has said, is that AT&T will "cherry pick" its demographic, bringing U-verse to wealthier communities and leaving poorer areas behind. Also, unless held to franchise rules, the company won't offer public access television; AT&T, however, has promised to do this.

In June 2006, the DPUC ruled AT&T's Internet Protocol Television is not subject to cable franchising requirements; Blumenthal sued in U.S. District Court for a ruling that it is. In July 2007, the court overturned the DPUC's decision. Now, AT&T has moved for a reconsideration while Blumenthal has filed an emergency request with the DPUC to force AT&T to apply for a franchise.

Blumenthal puts AT&T's chances of a reconsideration at "virtually zero," calling it a "futile attempt" at delaying the inevitable.

"Whatever the rules for cable franchises they should apply to IPTV," he said Thursday. "It's the law," and what the federal courts have decided.

"We're waiting until court action is finalized," because it would be imprudent to take action until then, DPUC spokeswoman Beryl Lyons said Thursday. The DPUC's cable regulating authority is minimal and includes ensuring cable companies meet public, education and government access requirements.

"Cable competition has been permitted since 1984," Lyons said, but "the investment is enormous. The risk was very great," so no one wanted to start up service. AT&T, however, already has a fiber-optic infrastructure.

In its most recent session, the state Legislature passed, and Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed, a bill to prompt competition wherever possible. In part, Lyons said, as of Oct. 1, the bill narrows the DPUC's jurisdiction once competition — when there's at least one non-cable company customer in an existing franchise — is established. The DPUC, however, remains the franchising authority and continues to oversee access channels and customer service.

Townes declined to comment Thursday about the court case, but said, "There's a huge difference between the two technologies." Cable, he said, is a one-way broadcast of content; U-verse is two-way communication.

The cable box, he said, brings in a signal with all the offerings. The U-verse set-top box tells the hub what programming to send. This frees up bandwidth for more channels and other offerings.

The company has four packages, which include high definition television channels. Prices for bundled U-verse and Internet service — customers can buy the television service alone but the highspeed Internet service is embedded in the signal — range from $59 to $129 a month, depending on Internet speed.

The basic package has more than 100 channels and comes with one receiver. Other packages come with three receivers, including one with a digital video recorder, which can record up to four channels at once. "We don't ever expect to replace the computer," Townes said, but U-verse will soon be capable of showing photos from the Web, stock quotes and movie times and even send messages to appear on the screen from an off-site computer. Today, users can program their DVR from an off-site computer or cell phone.Wallingford resident Leslie Spiars, an AT&T employee, has a projection television hooked up to U-verse, as well as a 1988-era model in the basement. "We're kind of into technology," said Spiars; the company used her home setup as a demonstration for reporters Thursday. While AT&T is looking at U-verse as a way to bring new services to existing customers, it is also planning to take people away from the cable companies. According to Townes and other executives, their service is about 20 to 30 percent cheaper than comparable cable television prices.

But the cable companies, which are going after telephone customers through their new offerings, won't be giving up on television.Cablevision, for example, has about 1.4 million residential phone service customers; it also offers customers a chance to bundle telecommunications services.

"Cablevision is successful in a competitive market because customers love and value our television, Internet and phone products. Our digital cable service features real interactivity, local news and information through News 12 Connecticut, and 40 high-definition programming services at no additional charge," the company said in a prepared statement. Blumenthal, meanwhile, said even if the court and DPUC rule against AT&T, he doesn't expect the company will pull its U-verse out of Connecticut, because there's "too much money and opportunity [here]."

AT&T Asks Court To Reconsider 'U-verse' Decision; Company's new interactive video service must abide by cable-TV rules, judge said 
DAY
By Patricia Daddona    
Published on 8/14/2007 

AT&T has asked the U.S. District Court in New Haven to reject a recent federal opinion that finds the same rules for cable programming apply to a new video product offered by the phone company.

At the same time, one of the plaintiffs in the case, the state's Office of Consumer Counsel, has asked Judge Janet Bond Arterton to halt AT&T's acceptance of its new “U-verse” interactive video technology until it obtains a cable franchise license and to direct the state Department of Public Utility Control to require the company to take that step immediately.

Last month, the judge ruled in a summary judgment in federal court that U-verse must be subjected to the same regulations as conventional cable. The opinion, if it becomes a final ruling, would require AT&T to get a cable franchise just like other cable providers.

Arterton's judgment has the effect of potentially shooting down a 2006 decision by the DPUC, which had said AT&T was not required to seek a cable franchise for its Internet protocol television service, since it was not the same as conventional cable, but rather relied on two-way interaction between the company and the subscriber.

Arterton said, however, that federal law pre-empts the state's interpretation. Although AT&T uses two-way delivery of services, AT&T still delivers prepackaged programming to all subscribers, so subscriber interaction “is the same as that involved in traditional” cable programming, she wrote.

In its request to be heard again, in writing and orally, AT&T argues that the judge erred factually and as a matter of law, in part by failing to take into account that the new video service is capable of providing — and “in time” will enable — features and functions that subscribers can use to customize the type of video content they receive.

The distinction makes AT&T's service “fundamentally” different than traditional cable service, the telecommunications giant argues.

AT&T describes U-verse as interaction over a corporate Internet network that enables a person's TV to communicate and work with other Internet-driven devices. For instance, a cell phone might be used to set the recording time for a digital video recorder, or a subscriber might display ball-game statistics without waiting for a program producer to do it.

The court also mistakenly decided, AT&T contends, that U-verse is not a two-way transmission and that “interactivity must be visible to the subscriber” to count as interactivity, an interpretation the company claims is nowhere to be found in legislative language or history governing cable franchises in Connecticut, or in the Federal Communication Commission's interpretations.

The cable company also provided the court with a “status report” on recent changes in Connecticut law regarding cable franchises. A new law intended to encourage competition among video service providers requires new providers like AT&T to get a certificate of video franchise authority, the company states, asserting that the law was written with specific regard for AT&T.

“Once (the judge) evaluates the information we submitted, we're eagerly anticipating her decision on that,” said Adam Cormier, a spokesman for AT&T.

But William Vallee Jr., lead attorney for the state's Office of Consumer Counsel, said the judge's opinion “is pure law” and correctly interprets what existing federal law means.

“There's nothing new here,” Vallee said of the motion for reconsideration. He also points out in a status report for the plaintiff that the state certificate does not become effective until Oct. 1. “Only a clear, unambiguous order from this Court can ensure ... compliance,” he wrote.

Last week, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal asked the DPUC to force AT&T to apply for a franchise license, but DPUC spokeswoman Beryl Lyons said no action could be taken until any appeal period on a final ruling expired. Lyons was not available for comment late Monday.

“AT&T's request for reconsideration is without basis in law or fact,” Blumenthal said, “a blatant delaying tactic to forestall state licensing and regulation of its Internet television service.”

Big Brother is watching us all
By Humphrey Hawksley, BBC News, Washington
15 September 2007

The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game.

computer image capturing Humphrey Hawksley's height, tracking and gait DNA
Humphrey Hawksley's data is captured by a camera in one second

"Five nine, five ten," said the research student, pushing down a laptop button to seal the measurement. "That's your height."

"Spot on," I said.

"OK, we're freezing you now," interjected another student, studying his computer screen. "So we have height and tracking and your gait DNA".

"Gait DNA?" I interrupted, raising my head, so inadvertently my full face was caught on a video camera.

"Have we got that?" asked their teacher Professor Rama Challapa. "We rely on just 30 frames - about one second - to get a picture we can work with," he explained.

Tracking individuals

I was at Maryland University just outside Washington DC, where Professor Challapa and his team are inventing the next generation of citizen surveillance.

They had pushed back furniture in the conference room for me to walk back and forth and set up cameras to feed my individual data back to their laptops.

Gait DNA, for example, is creating an individual code for the way I walk. Their goal is to invent a system whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify instantly who you are.

Crowd of people at airport
How you walk could be used to identify you in a crowd
"As you walk through a crowd, we'll be able to track you," said Professor Challapa. "These are all things that don't need the cooperation of the individual."

Since 9/11, some of the best scientific minds in the defence industry have switched their concentration from tracking nuclear missiles to tracking individuals such as suicide bombers.

Surveillance society

My next stop was a Pentagon agency whose headquarters is a drab suburban building in Virginia. The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) had one specific mission - to ensure that when it comes to technology America is always ahead of the game.

Its track record is impressive. Back in the 70s, while we were working with typewriters and carbon paper, Darpa was developing the internet. In the 90s, while we pored over maps, Darpa invented satellite navigation that many of us now have in our cars.

"We ask the top people what keeps them awake at night," said its enthusiastic and forthright director Dr Tony Tether, "what problems they see long after they have left their posts."

"And what are they?" I asked.

He paused, hand on chin. "I'd prefer not to say. It's classified."

"All right then, can you say what you're actually working on now."

"Oh, language," he answered enthusiastically, clasping his fingers together. "Unless we're going to train every American citizen and soldier in 16 different languages we have to develop a technology that allows them to understand - whatever country they are in - what's going on around them.

"I hope in the future we'll be able to have conversations, if say you're speaking in French and I'm speaking in English, and it will be natural."

"And the computer will do the translation?"


Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance

"Yep. All by computer," he said.

"And this idea about a total surveillance society," I asked. "Is that science fiction?"

"No, that's not science fiction. We're developing an unmanned airplane - a UAV - which may be able to stay up five years with cameras on it, constantly being cued to look here and there. This is done today to a limited amount in Baghdad. But it's the way to go."

CCTV cameras
In Britain we are monitored 24/7 by four million CCTV cameras

Smarter technology

Interestingly, we, the public, don't seem to mind. Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance. Some American cities like New York and Chicago are thinking of taking a lead from Britain where our movements are monitored round the clock by four million CCTV cameras.

So far there is no gadget that can actually see inside our houses, but even that's about to change.

Ian Kitajima flew to Washington from his laboratories in Hawaii to show me sense-through-the-wall technology.

"Each individual has a characteristic profile," explained Ian, holding a green rectangular box that looked like a TV remote control.

Using radio waves, you point it a wall and it tells you if anyone is on the other side. His company, Oceanit, is due to test it with the Hawaiian National Guard in Iraq next year, and it turns out that the human body gives off such sensitive radio signals, that it can even pick up breathing and heart rates.

"First, you can tell whether someone is dead or alive on the battlefield," said Ian.

"But it will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised. And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking."

He glanced at me quizzically, noticing my apprehension.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "It sounds very Star Trekkish, but that's what's ahead."


Chips: High tech aids or tracking tools?
By TODD LEWAN, AP National Writer
Sun Jul 22, 6:23 AM ET

CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little notice itself — until a year ago, when two of its employees had glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their forearms.

The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs — radio frequency identification tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick — was merely a way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance codes, the company said.

"To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques," Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. "There's a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door."

Innocuous? Maybe.

But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability to erode privacy in the digital age.

To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention — a high-tech helper that could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help authorities identify wandering Alzheimer's patients, allow consumers to buy their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.

To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and do as they pleased, without being tracked, unless they were harming someone else.

Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer's patients or Army Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then parolees, then sex offenders, then illegal aliens — until one day, a majority of Americans, falling into one category or another, would find themselves electronically tagged.

The concept of making all things traceable isn't alien to Americans. Thirty years ago, the first electronic tags were fixed to the ears of cattle, to permit ranchers to track a herd's reproductive and eating habits. In the 1990s, millions of chips were implanted in livestock, fish, dogs, cats, even racehorses.

Microchips are now fixed to car windshields as toll-paying devices, on "contactless" payment cards (Chase's "Blink," or MasterCard's "PayPass"). They're embedded in Michelin tires, library books, passports, work uniforms, luggage, and, unbeknownst to many consumers, on a host of individual items, from Hewlett Packard printers to Sanyo TVs, at Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

But CityWatcher.com employees weren't appliances or pets: They were people made scannable.

"It was scary that a government contractor that specialized in putting surveillance cameras on city streets was the first to incorporate this technology in the workplace," says Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID."

Darks, the CityWatcher.com executive, dismissed his critics, noting that he and his employees had volunteered to be chip-injected. Any suggestion that a sinister, Big-Brother-like campaign was afoot, he said, was hogwash.

"You would think that we were going around putting chips in people by force," he told a reporter, "and that's not the case at all."

Yet, within days of the company's announcement, civil libertarians and Christian conservatives joined to excoriate the microchip's implantation in people.

RFID, they warned, would soon enable the government to "frisk" citizens electronically — an invisible, undetectable search performed by readers posted at "hotspots" along roadsides and in pedestrian areas. It might even be used to squeal on employees while they worked; time spent at the water cooler, in the bathroom, in a designated smoking area could one day be broadcast, recorded and compiled in off-limits, company databases.

"Ultimately," says Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate who specializes in consumer education and RFID technology, "the fear is that the government or your employer might someday say, 'Take a chip or starve.'"

Some Christian critics saw the implants as the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy that describes an age of evil in which humans are forced to take the "Mark of the Beast" on their bodies, to buy or sell anything.

Gary Wohlscheid, president of These Last Days Ministries, a Roman Catholic group in Lowell, Mich., put together a Web site that linked the implantable microchips to the apocalyptic prophecy in the book of Revelation.

"The Bible tells us that God's wrath will come to those who take the Mark of the Beast," he says. Those who refuse to accept the Satanic chip "will be saved," Wohlscheid offers in a comforting tone.

___

In post-9/11 America, electronic surveillance comes in myriad forms: in a gas station's video camera; in a cell phone tucked inside a teen's back pocket; in a radio tag attached to a supermarket shopping cart; in a Porsche automobile equipped with a LoJack anti-theft device.

"We're really on the verge of creating a surveillance society in America, where every movement, every action — some would even claim, our very thoughts — will be tracked, monitored, recorded and correlated," says Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C.

RFID, in Steinhardt's opinion, "could play a pivotal role in creating that surveillance society."

In design, the tag is simple: A medical-grade glass capsule holds a silicon computer chip, a copper antenna and a "capacitor" that transmits data stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic reader.

Implantations are quick, relatively simple procedures. After a local anesthetic is administered, a large-gauge hypodermic needle injects the chip under the skin on the back of the arm, midway between the elbow and the shoulder.

"It feels just like getting a vaccine — a bit of pressure, no specific pain," says John Halamka, an emergency physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
He got chipped two years ago, "so that if I was ever in an accident, and arrived unconscious or incoherent at an emergency ward, doctors could identify me and access my medical history quickly." (A chipped person's medical profile can be continuously updated, since the information is stored on a database accessed via the Internet.)

Halamka thinks of his microchip as another technology with practical value, like his BlackBerry. But it's also clear, he says, that there are consequences to having an implanted identifier.

"My friends have commented to me that I'm 'marked' for life, that I've lost my anonymity. And to be honest, I think they're right."

Indeed, as microchip proponents and detractors readily agree, Americans' mistrust of microchips and technologies like RFID runs deep. Many wonder:

Do the current chips have global positioning transceivers that would allow the government to pinpoint a person's exact location, 24-7? (No; the technology doesn't yet exist.)

But could a tech-savvy stalker rig scanners to video cameras and film somebody each time they entered or left the house? (Quite easily, though not cheaply. Currently, readers cost $300 and up.)

How about thieves? Could they make their own readers, aim them at unsuspecting individuals, and surreptitiously pluck people's IDs out of their arms? (Yes. There's even a name for it — "spoofing.")

What's the average lifespan of a microchip? (About 10-15 years.) What if you get tired of it before then — can it be easily, painlessly removed? (Short answer: No.)

Presently, Steinhardt and other privacy advocates view the tagging of identity documents — passports, drivers licenses and the like — as a more pressing threat to Americans' privacy than the chipping of people. Equipping hospitals, doctors' offices, police stations and government agencies with readers will be costly, training staff will take time, and, he says, "people are going to be too squeamish about having an RFID chip inserted into their arms, or wherever."

But that wasn't the case in March 2004, when the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, Spain — a nightclub catering to the body-aware, under-25 crowd — began holding "Implant Nights."

In a white lab coat, with hypodermic in latex-gloved hand, a company chipper wandered through the throng of the clubbers and clubbettes, anesthetizing the arms of consenting party goers, then injecting them with microchips.

The payoff?

Injectees would thereafter be able to breeze past bouncers and entrance lines, magically open doors to VIP lounges, and pay for drinks without cash or credit cards. The ID number on the VIP chip was linked to the user's financial accounts and stored in the club's computers.

After being chipped himself, club owner Conrad K. Chase declared that chip implants were hardly a big deal to his patrons, since "almost everybody has piercings, tattoos or silicone."

VIP chipping soon spread to the Baja Beach Club in Rotterdam, Holland, the Bar Soba in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Amika nightclub in Miami Beach, Fla.

That same year, Mexico's attorney general, Rafael Macedo, made an announcement that thrilled chip proponents and chilled privacy advocates: He and 18 members of his staff had been microchipped as a way to limit access to a sensitive records room, whose door unlocked when a "portal reader" scanned the chips.

But did this make Mexican security airtight?

Hardly, says Jonathan Westhues, an independent security researcher in Cambridge, Mass. He concocted an "emulator," a hand-held device that cloned the implantable microchip electronically. With a team of computer-security experts, he demonstrated — on television — how easy it was to snag data off a chip.

Explains Adam Stubblefield, a Johns Hopkins researcher who joined the team: "You pass within a foot of a chipped person, copy the chip's code, then with a push of the button, replay the same ID number to any reader. You essentially assume the person's identity."

The company that makes implantable microchips for humans, VeriChip Corp., of Delray Beach, Fla., concedes the point — even as it markets its radio tag and its portal scanner as imperatives for high-security buildings, such as nuclear power plants.

"To grab information from radio frequency products with a scanning device is not hard to do," Scott Silverman, the company's chief executive, says. However, "the chip itself only contains a unique, 16-digit identification number. The relevant information is stored on a database."

Even so, he insists, it's harder to clone a VeriChip than it would be to steal someone's key card and use it to enter secure areas.

VeriChip Corp., whose parent company has been selling radio tags for animals for more than a decade, has sold 7,000 microchips worldwide, of which about 2,000 have been implanted in humans. More than one-tenth of those have been in the U.S., generating "nominal revenues," the company acknowledged in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in February.

Although in five years VeriChip Corp. has yet to turn a profit, it has been investing heavily — up to $2 million a quarter — to create new markets.

The company's present push: tagging of "high-risk" patients — diabetics and people with heart conditions or Alzheimer's disease.

In an emergency, hospital staff could wave a reader over a patient's arm, get an ID number, and then, via the Internet, enter a company database and pull up the person's identity and medical history.

To doctors, a "starter kit" — complete with 10 hypodermic syringes, 10 VeriChips and a reader — costs $1,400. To patients, a microchip implant means a $200, out-of-pocket expense to their physician. Presently, chip implants aren't covered by insurance companies, Medicare or Medicaid.

For almost two years, the company has been offering hospitals free scanners, but acceptance has been limited. According to the company's most recent SEC quarterly filing, 515 hospitals have pledged to take part in the VeriMed network, yet only 100 have actually been equipped and trained to use the system.

Some wonder why they should abandon noninvasive tags such as MedicAlert, a low-tech bracelet that warns paramedics if patients have serious allergies or a chronic medical condition.

"Having these things under your skin instead of in your back pocket — it's just not clear to me why it's worth the inconvenience," says Westhues.

Silverman responds that an implanted chip is "guaranteed to be with you. It's not a medical arm bracelet that you can take off if you don't like the way it looks..."

In fact, microchips can be removed from the body — but it's not like removing a splinter.

The capsules can migrate around the body or bury themselves deep in the arm. When that happens, a sensor X-ray and monitors are needed to locate the chip, and a plastic surgeon must cut away scar tissue that forms around the chip.

The relative permanence is a big reason why Marc Rotenberg, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is suspicious about the motives of the company, which charges an annual fee to keep clients' records.

The company charges $20 a year for customers to keep a "one-pager" on its database — a record of blood type, allergies, medications, driver's license data and living-will directives. For $80 a year, it will keep an individual's full medical history.
___

In recent times, there have been rumors on Wall Street, and elsewhere, of the potential uses for RFID in humans: the chipping of U.S. soldiers, of inmates, or of migrant workers, to name a few.

To date, none of this has happened.

But a large-scale chipping plan that was proposed illustrates the stakes, pro and con.

In mid-May, a protest outside the Alzheimer's Community Care Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., drew attention to a two-year study in which 200 Alzheimer's patients, along with their caregivers, were to receive chip implants. Parents, children and elderly people decried the plan, with signs and placards.

"Chipping People Is Wrong" and "People Are Not Pets," the signs read. And: "Stop VeriChip."

Ironically, the media attention sent VeriChip's stock soaring 27 percent in one day.

"VeriChip offers technology that is absolutely bursting with potential," wrote blogger Gary E. Sattler, of the AOL site Bloggingstocks, even as he recognized privacy concerns.

Albrecht, the RFID critic who organized the demonstration, raises similar concerns on her AntiChips.com Web site.

"Is it appropriate to use the most vulnerable members of society for invasive medical research? Should the company be allowed to implant microchips into people whose mental impairments mean they cannot give fully informed consent?"

Mary Barnes, the care center's chief executive, counters that both the patients and their legal guardians must consent to the implants before receiving them. And the chips, she says, could be invaluable in identifying lost patients — for instance, if a hurricane strikes Florida.

That, of course, assumes that the Internet would be accessible in a killer storm. VeriChip Corp. acknowledged in an SEC filing that its "database may not function properly" in such circumstances.

As the polemic heats up, legislators are increasingly being drawn into the fray. Two states, Wisconsin and North Dakota, recently passed laws prohibiting the forced implantation of microchips in humans. Others — Ohio, Oklahoma, Colorado and Florida — are studying similar legislation.

In May, Oklahoma legislators were debating a bill that would have authorized microchip implants in people imprisoned for violent crimes. Many felt it would be a good way to monitor felons once released from prison.

But other lawmakers raised concerns. Rep. John Wright worried, "Apparently, we're going to permanently put the mark on these people."

Rep. Ed Cannaday found the forced microchipping of inmates "invasive ... We are going down that slippery slope."

In the end, lawmakers sent the bill back to committee for more work.

Camera phone maker mulls gadget's impact
By MAY WONG, AP Technology Writer
Sun May 20, 1:47 AM ET

SANTA C