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China Fury Over Mass Japanese Tourist Orgy In Hotel

(AFP) -- The Chinese government has ordered Japan to teach its citizens how to behave following an "extremely odious" mass orgy between hundreds of Japanese tourists and Chinese prostitutes.

Responding to mounting fury over the three-day orgy in a hotel in the southern city of Zhuhai on the anniversary of Japan's occupation of China, the Chinese foreign ministry said it had launched a formal investigation

The Chinese media and Internet chatrooms have been crackling with anger over reports of the September 16-18 sex marathon which reportedly involved 380 male Japanese tourists and 500 prostitutes at a five-star hotel.

"This case is of an extremely odious nature," foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said in a statement late Sunday.

"Foreign citizens in China must abide by Chinese laws," Kong said. "We hope the Japanese government will improve their citizens' education about this."

The incident has ignited a wave of nationalistic and anti-Japanese sentiment, with many people convinced the orgy was timed to humiliate China on September 18, the anniversary of the start of Japan's occupation of northeast China in 1931.

Newspapers quoted Chinese witnesses as saying the Japanese tourists admitted coming to Zhuhai purely for sex. They said the five-star Zhuhai International Convention Center Hotel was overrun with tourists openly groping and hugging prostitutes in elevators and other public places.

Reports said doors between hotel rooms were left open and that up to three or four girls could be seen or heard servicing clients in each room.

The public security bureau in the southern province of Guangdong has also launched an inquiry into the incident, while the hotel has been temporarily shut down.

The incident underlines sensitive the relationship between the Chinese people its Asian neighbors, despite booming trade and the fact that Japan is China's largest trade partner.

Anti-Japanese sentiment forever simmers under the surface of increasing trade, tourism and cultural exchanges between the two countries.

Memories of Japan's wartime atrocities, including rapes and use of Chinese women as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers, remain strong among the older generation, and the history of the Japanese occupation until 1945 is regularly taught to the younger generation.

Despite the official outrage over the incident, China's booming southern cities are a well-known magnet for sex tourists from within China as well as from places such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan.

Media reports said the hotel's marketing and sales department, using its contacts in Japan, had organized the group of all-male Japanese tourists to come to Zhuhai. The "madame" of the hotel's nightclub allegedly prepared the large group of prostitutes.

More than 15,000 messages by angry Chinese have been posted on one Chinese website alone, denouncing the incident as "national shame" while some called for a boycott of Japanese products.


Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.

(via Rense.com)

China Looks Into Windows Code

CNETAsia staff reports from Singapore:

The Chinese government has set up a lab to study Microsoft Windows source code.

The Source Code Browsing Lab--set up in Beijing last week--is part of an existing government-run software site, the China Testing and Certification Center for Information Security Products, according a report in the People's Daily newspaper.

Microsoft is the first commercial software company to have signed an agreement for the browsing of its operating system source code with the Chinese government, said the report, which hinted that the lab is also open to other commercial software companies that wish to have their products certified for security.

The report stressed the need for checking Windows source code for security loopholes, especially in light of recent attacks. PCs running Windows software were recently the target of high-profile attacks by the Slammer and MSBlast viruses.

However, previous reports have said that the search for backdoors installed by national intelligence agencies is also among the aims of the agreement.

China--potentially a huge market for Microsoft, once the problem of software piracy is solved--has seen wholehearted government support for open-source operating systems such as Linux. In response, Microsoft has drawn up policies to develop closer ties with officials and to open up its Windows source code for inspection.

In February, the government-run China Information Technology Security Certification Center (CNITSEC) signed an agreement with Microsoft to participate in Microsoft's Government Security Program (GSP).

Under the GSP plan, Microsoft will share the source code underlying its Windows operating system with several international governments, a move designed to address concerns about the security of the operating system.

Microsoft has announced GSP agreements with Russia, NATO and the United Kingdom. The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker is in discussions with more than 30 countries, territories and organizations regarding their interest in the program.

Company Recalls Segway Scooter

Channel4000.com reports:

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- The government has announced a recall of all Segway scooters.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, riders can fall off the futuristic scooter if its batteries are low. Segway LLC is voluntarily recalling the scooters so the software can be upgraded.

The CPSC said that it received three reports of people falling from the scooters, including one person who received a head injury that required stitches.

The Segway can lose power when the battery is low and the rider speeds up abruptly, encounters an obstacle or continues to ride after receiving a low-battery alert, according to the CPSC.

The recall involves all Segway HT i167 ("i Series") models sold to consumers. In addition, Segway LLC is including all e167 ("e Series") and i167 models sold to commercial users and all p133 ("p Series") models sold to consumers in test markets.

About 6,000 Segway scooters are affected.

The Segway was introduced after months of hype in December 2001 by Dean Kamen, the New Hampshire inventor who also created a wheelchair that can climb stairs and the first portable kidney dialysis machine.

Anyone who owns one of the scooters can call Segway LLC toll-free at between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. EDT Monday through Friday for information on how to receive a free software upgrade. Segway LLC is directly contacting owners of the products.

Copyright 2003 by Channel4000.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The World’s Simplest Steam Powered Boat

This next toy is an example of the simplest steam engine you will ever see. It has no valves, no moving parts (in the traditional sense of the phrase), and yet it can propel it's little boat easily across the largest swimming pool or quiet duck pond.

"Science Toys You Can Make With Your Kids" via Kevin Kelly.

Virus Knocks Out State Department's Visa-Checking System

AP via SiliconValley.com, reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department's electronic system for checking every visa applicant for terrorist or criminal history failed worldwide late Tuesday because of a computer virus, leaving the U.S. government unable to issue visas.

The virus crippled the department's Consular Lookout and Support System, known as CLASS, which contains more than 12.8 million records from the FBI, State Department and U.S. immigration, drug-enforcement and intelligence agencies. Among the names are those of at least 78,000 suspected terrorists.

In an internal message sent late Tuesday to embassies and consular offices worldwide, officials cautioned that ``CLASS is down due to a virus found in the system.'' There was no backup system immediately available, and officials could not predict how long the outage might last.

Such an outage would represent the most serious disruption in years to U.S. government computers from an Internet infection.

State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said the agency experienced some computer problems but could not confirm the visa-checking system was affected.

``We did have some computer problems,'' she said. ``They're working on it.''

Every visa applicant is checked against the names in the CLASS database. The State Department's automated systems are designed not even to print a visa until such a check is completed.

It was unclear which computer virus might have affected the system. But a separate message sent to embassies and consular offices late Tuesday warned that the ``Welchia'' virus had been detected in one facility. Welchia is an aggressive infection unleashed last month that exploits a software flaw in recent versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software.

Collectively, Welchia and a related virus, ``Blaster,'' have infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, including computers at the Federal Reserve in Atlanta, Maryland's motor vehicle agency and the Minnesota Transportation Department.

The State Department has invested heavily in the CLASS system since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, more than doubling the number of names that applicants are checked against. One provision of the Patriot Act, passed just weeks after the attacks, added FBI records, including the bureau's violent gang and terrorist database. The list also includes the names of at least 20,000 people accused of serious Customs violations and the names of 78,000 suspected terrorists.

California Outlaws Spam

SAUL HANSELL, The New York Times, reports:

California is trying a deceptively simple approach to the problem of junk e-mail: It is about to ban spam.

Gov. Gray Davis of California signed a bill today that outlaws sending most commercial e-mail to or from the state that the recipient did not explicitly request. That is a far more wide-reaching law than any of the 35 other state laws meant to regulate spam or any of the proposed bills in Congress.

``We are saying that unsolicited e-mail cannot be sent and there are no loopholes,'' said Kevin Murray, the Democratic state senator from Los Angeles who sponsored the bill.

The law would fine spammers $1,000 for each unsolicited message sent up to $1 million for each campaign.

As the nation's most populous state and the home to many large Internet companies, the California bill could well have a significant effect on spam. The bill puts the burden on the sender to determine if the recipient resides in California.

The marketing industry vehemently opposes the law, saying that it will only restrict actions by legitimate marketers and not the rouges who send the most offensive spam.

The burden of complying with the state law, moreover, could well affect nearly all e-mail marketing.

``California represents up to 20 percent of the e-mail that is sent or received,'' said J. Trevor Hughes, the executive director, of the Network Advertising Initiative, a group of technology companies that send e-mail for marketers. ``Instead of trying to segregate the California e-mail addresses, many of our members are going to make the California standard the lowest common denominator.

Thirty-five states have already passed laws meant to regulate spam. But mostly these ban deceptive practices in commercial e-mail - like fake return addresses - and many require that spam be identified with the phrase ``ADV'' in the subject. But these laws do nothing to stop someone from sending advertising by e-mail, so long as it was properly labeled and not deceptive.

Delaware, also, banned sending unsolicited e-mail in 1999. But that law can only be enforced by the state attorney general, who has not taken any action under the statute.

Action under the California law, by contrast, can be brought by the state, by e-mail providers that have to handle spam and by the recipient. The bill's proponents say the right of individuals to file lawsuits should ensure that the bill is enforced, even if state prosecutors have other priorities. Indeed, a similar provision is credited with helping to insure compliance with the federal law against unsolicited faxes.

But at a news conference today, Kathleen Hamilton, the director of California Department of Consumer Affairs, promised that the state was ready to enforce the new law when it takes effect on Jan. 1.

``There will be a focus to make sure that once this law is in effect that advertisers abide by it so consumers and businesses are free from unsolicited spam,'' she said.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

A New Kind of Revolution in the Dorms of Dartmouth

KATIE HAFNER, The New York Times, reports:

Perhaps because of its geographic remoteness, Dartmouth College in the small town of Hanover, N.H., has long been willing to try novel means of communication.

The college introduced e-mail messaging to campus in the 1980's, well ahead of most other higher educational institutions. And in 2001, it was one of the first colleges to install a campuswide wireless data network.

Now, the college is venturing into the world of "voice over Internet protocol," also known as VoIP, which essentially turns a computer into a telephone.

This week, as classes begin, the 1,000 students entering the class of 2007 will be given the option of downloading software, generically known as softphones, onto Windows-based computers.

Using the software together with a headset, which can be plugged into a computer's U.S.B. port, the students can make local or long-distance telephone calls free. Each student is assigned a traditional seven-digit phone number.

The software, supplied by a variety of companies, works on laptops and desktop computers alike. Over the next six months, the softphone platforms will expand to include Apple computers, as well as Palm and Pocket PC hand-held devices.

When running, the software appears on the screen as a phone with a dial pad. Phone numbers are dialed by clicking the numbers on the key pad.

Voice over Internet protocol is not new. But running so much voice over a wireless data network is.

"As far as I know, no one has done a wireless voice-over-I.P. network this large before," said David Kotz, a computer science professor at Dartmouth.

The network is being phased in across the entire campus with plans to reach 13,000 people, including faculty and staff.

"So far, it's just incoming freshmen, because they're the ones mostly likely to grab on to this," said Larry Levine, the director of computing at Dartmouth.

The $50 headsets are being sold at the campus computer store. "But most headsets will work," said Bob Johnson, director of network services at Dartmouth. "It's just a question of what kind of voice quality you want."

The roll out of voice over Internet protocol is closely coupled with Dartmouth's recent decision to stop charging students, faculty and staff for long-distance phone calls. The college made that decision when administrators discovered that the billing function was costing more than the calls themselves.

"One wouldn't be possible without the other," Mr. Johnson said. "Imagine the complexities of trying to track down who made what call when on a large, mobile campus voice-over-I.P. network."

The phone system will also serve as a laboratory for study. With underwriting from Cisco Systems, Dr. Kotz will study the impact of the VoIP on the campus wireless network.

Audio places more demands on a network's capacity than pure text, Dr. Kotz said. And he is interested in seeing how the wireless network responds to increased demand.

Dr. Kotz said he was also interested in studying the new phone system from the user's point of view.

"I'm curious to monitor how much people use it," Dr. Kotz said. "Are students who have had a very e-mail-oriented culture going to use it Will they use it from dorm rooms, dining halls, classrooms Will they make lengthy calls Long-distance calls"

In a year or so, Dr. Levine said, the college will be offering a similar service with video.

"It all ultimately relates back to this idea of convergence," he added, "where anything you see or hear can be digitized."

Mr. Johnson said the quality of the calls made with softphone was "indistinguishable" from a traditional phone. "It will be interesting to see what wins out in the long run," he said. "Instant messaging, cellphones, traditional e-mail or this voice over I.P."

King George

An Open Invitation to Election Fraud

Farhad Manjoo, Salon, writes:

As if the public image of punch-card voting machines had not already been bruised and battered enough, on Sept. 15 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals went for the K.O. Punch-card voting, a three-judge panel of the court said in its ruling halting the California gubernatorial recall election, is an embarrassment to our high-tech times: "Just as the black and white fava bean voting system of revolutionary times was replaced by paper balloting, and the paper ballot replaced by mechanical lever machine, newer technologies have emerged to replace the punch-card, including optical scanning and touch screen voting."

But according to Bev Harris, a writer who has spent more than a year investigating the shadowy world of the elections equipment industry, the replacement technologies the court cited may be worse -- much worse -- than the zany punch-card systems it finds so abhorrent. Specifically, Harris' research into Diebold, one of the largest providers of the new touch-screen systems, ought to give elections officials pause about mandating an all-electronic vote.

Harris has discovered that Diebold's voting software is so flawed that anyone with access to the system's computer can change the votes without leaving any record. On top of that, she's uncovered internal Diebold memos in which employees seem to suggest that the vulnerabilities are no big deal. The memos appear to be authentic -- Diebold even sent Harris a notice warning her that by posting the documents on the Web, she was infringing upon the company's intellectual property. Diebold did not return several calls for comment.

The problems Harris uncovered are not all that surprising; technologists have been warning of the potential for serious flaws in electronic voting systems -- especially touch-screen systems -- for years. In July, scientists at Johns Hopkins and Rice found that security in Diebold's voting software fell "far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts." The report prompted Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich to order a review of the Diebold systems used in his state. Many of the world's most highly regarded computer scientists have called on voting companies to build touch-screen systems that print a paper ballot -- a "paper trail" -- in order to reduce the risk of electronic tampering.

Activists have also questioned the political affiliations of the leading voting companies. Late last year, Harris found that Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, used to run the voting company that provided most of the voting machines in his state. And in August, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, is a major fundraiser for President Bush. In a letter to fellow Republicans, O'Dell said that he was "COMMITTED TO HELPING OHIO DELIVER ITS ELECTORAL VOTES TO THE PRESIDENT NEXT YEAR."

But the problems Harris found in Diebold's system are perhaps the best proof yet that electronic voting systems aren't ready for prime time. Indeed, the vulnerabilities in the software, as well as the internal memos, raise questions about the legitimacy of the California recall election. In its ruling, the 9th Circuit Court put the election on hold until the six counties that currently use punch-card systems -- six counties that comprise 44 percent of the state's voters -- upgrade their systems. On Monday, 11 judges on the 9th Circuit reheard the recall case; they may very well allow the election to go ahead on Oct. 7. If the recall vote is put on hold until March, however, many may wonder whether to trust the results: Four of the six punch-card counties -- including the largest, Los Angeles and San Diego -- have plans to upgrade to Diebold machines by March.

Harris is a literary publicist and author whose investigations into the secret world of voting equipment firms have led some to call her the Erin Brockovich of elections, and who is now writing a book called "Black Box Voting." She spoke to Salon about her findings, by telephone, from her home in Seattle.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Tell me about the flaw you uncovered in the Diebold system.

Well, we uncovered a few problems in the memos, but the first one that we published specifically supported the flaw that I wrote about in July of 2003. And to my surprise these memos admitted they were aware of the flaw, and it was actually brought to their attention by Ciber labs -- which is a certifier -- in October 2001, and they made a decision not to fix it.

So it was brought to their attention two years ago

Right.

So what was the flaw

Specifically the flaw was that you can get at the central vote-counting database through Microsoft Access. They have the security disabled. And when you get in that way, you are able to overwrite the audit log, which is supposed to log the transactions, and this [audit log] is one of the key things they cite as a security measure when they sell the system.

So you can break in and then hide your tracks.

You don't even need to break in. It will open right up and in you go. You can change the votes and you can overwrite the audit trail. It doesn't keep any record of anything in the audit trail when you're in this back door, but let's say you went in the front door and you didn't want to have anything you did there appear anywhere -- you can then go in the backdoor and erase what you did.

Who would have access to this Are we talking about elections officials

A couple situations. Obviously anybody who has access to the computer, whether that's the election supervisor, their assistants, the IT people, the janitor -- anybody who has access to the computer can get into it.

Where is this computer -- is there one per county

Yes, there's one per county.

The other situation would be supposing someone gets in by either hacking the telephone system or by going backwards in through the Internet, because the Internet does connect to these GEMS computers, even though they deny it. A lot of the press watches election results come in on the Web and what they're watching is actually being uploaded directly off the GEMS computer.

These computers in the counties are connected to the Internet, and someone can go through the Internet --

-- and just go into it, correct. It would be as the results are uploading. You see, they make a big point of the fact that there's no Internet connection to the voting machine, but that's sort of parsing the issue. That's true, in the polling places there's no Internet connection, but the voting machines connect into the GEMS machine through modem. And the GEMS machine then connects to the Internet, and that's what the press watches.
And somebody who knows about this can go to each one of those GEMS machines and have access to the vote and change the results

Yes, as they're coming in.

What led you to believe that there might be this flaw in the first place

Well I work with about 22 computer programmers who have been looking at this stuff -- I'm not that brilliant. Immediately when they began looking at the GEMS program they began commenting on the fact that it has no -- it's something called referential integrity. And what that means is that there are many different ways that it can become vulnerable to hacking. It has to do with how one part of the database is hooked into the next part.

I got a call from one of our more brilliant computer programmers -- he's got quite a few advanced degrees -- and he called me on a weekend and he said, "I want you to go to your computer." And he walked me through it just like a support tech does -- open this panel, click this, do this, do that. And as I'm doing this it was appalling how easy it was. Once you know the steps, a 10-year-old can rig an election. In fact it's so easy that one of our activists, Jim March in California, put together a "rig-a-vote" CD. He's been going around showing it to elections officials, and now this CD has been making its way to Congress members.

It's shocking. All you do is double-click the icon. You go backwards through the Internet to that county computer, and if you have Microsoft Access on your machine you can walk right into that election database while it's open. It's configured for multiple access at the same time. You can be in there changing things and you can change anything you want.

There's nothing -- no security in this

No, in fact in the memo, [Ken Clark, an engineer at Diebold] says specifically that they decided not to put a password on it because it was proving useful. They were using the back door to do end runs around the voting program. And he named two places where they were doing this, Gaston County, N.C., and King County, Wash.

Right, in the memo he says, "King county is famous for it. That's why we've never put a password on the file before." What does that mean Why would the counties find this useful

I have no idea what they were doing. [But] because you can change anything on the database, they could have been doing anything, whether it was nefarious or just fixing a stupid thing that they had done. The problem is this: You should set up the program so that anything you do is going to be recorded and watched and audited -- it's official. There's nothing you can do that's legitimate by going into a back door that never records anything. If you need to go change some vote total because they came out wrong, that needs to be done publicly and the candidates should be aware of it. You don't do that by going into a back door.

What do officials in these counties say

Well in Gaston County it was done by a Diebold employee. [In the memo, Clark says this employee, identified only as "Jane," "did some fancy footwork on the .mdb file in Gaston recently."] I would assume that someone would need to contact Diebold. For King County, it doesn't say whether an election official did it or whether [Diebold] did it.

But it is curious wording -- King County is famous for it.

I know! Dave Ross, who has a radio show in Seattle, called King County and asked if they would like to explain it and they said no. [In an interview with Salon on Thursday, Dean Logan, King County's elections director, could not immediately say what the reference to his county in the Diebold memo could mean. Logan, who said he has just been on the job two weeks, said he would check with members of his staff and call back.]

And these counties are still using Diebold systems

They still are.

Where else are Diebold systems being used

They're in 37 states. And, by the way, this flaw that we're discussing right now affects optical-scan and touch-screen machines equally. They both come into the GEMS program.

Diebold is actually the fastest-growing voting company in the United States right now. The reason they're the fastest-growing is they tend to sell a whole state at a time. They sold to the state of Georgia, the state of Maryland, the state of Arizona. They're trying to sell the state of Ohio. They also picked very large metro areas.

Georgia used Diebold's touch-screen machines in 2002, right

Yes.

And Georgia also had some wacky results, right

They did. They had six upsets. The most famous one is Max Cleland [the Democratic senator and the incumbent]. That's because he was quite far ahead in the polls and an 11-point shift happened overnight and [Republican] Saxby Chambliss won instead. And the other upset that surprised people was Sonny Purdue, who was the first Republican governor elected in 134 years.

Do you think those elections were legitimate elections

Well, I think that it was an illegal election in that they had no idea what software was on the machines at the time. Georgia was a situation where they had changed the software not once or twice but seven or eight times so it went through so many permutations without even being examined by anyone, and nobody has any idea what the machines did. [Harris says she confirmed these preelection changes to Diebold's software in conversations with Georgia voting officials, but Diebold denies that any changes were made. In February, Joseph Richardson, a spokesman for the company, told Salon: "We have analyzed that situation and have no indication of that happening at all."]

I do find this suspicious -- they have since scrubbed clean the flash memory [small cards that store the results from each touch-screen machine]. They've overwritten it with a whole new thing. What's amazing is you keep paper ballots for 22 months, and they're an awful lot bulkier than these credit card-size memory cards, but for some reason they felt compelled to get rid of them all. They have also overwritten all of the GEMS programs in the counting machines. They've gone through and overwritten everything in the state.

OK, so we should talk about how Diebold responded to your posting these memos.

As soon ... a few days after we posted them they sent us a cease-and-desist letter -- interestingly authenticating the memos and laying claim to them, telling us that they were copyrighted. So they claimed copyright and they told us to take them off the Web.

Right. By claiming copyright they're saying they own them, so that seems to indicate they are authentic memos.

Exactly.

So what's your response to their copyright claim

Well, I don't believe you can protect intent to break the law by slapping a copyright on it. And the memos that we posted show that the law has been broken. If you can protect intent to break the law, all anybody would need to do is take their bank robbery plans and put a copyright on it, and then say nobody can look at them because they're copyrighted.

Do you really think that their memos show intent to break the law

Oh yes, yes. The Ken Clark memo is absolutely clear. It says they have been aware of these security flaws for years and they have chosen not to correct it. He says something to the effect of, find out what it will take to make this problem go away. [Referring to a voting equipment certifier, Clark tells a colleague to "find out what it is going to take to make them happy."] He says if you don't mention [a problem] you may "skate through" certification. And talking about doing "end runs" is not a good thing either.

And what's disturbing is the very same thing that these memos are talking about -- overwriting the audit log -- in the presentation in which they sold their machines to the state of Georgia they specifically bring up the audit log and say that no human can change it. This shows they made fraudulent claims, frankly.

There's a thing called a Qui Tam suit which citizens can file if they feel that federal money has been spent based on fraudulent claims. I haven't done it because it gives you a gag order and I refuse to be gagged even for billions of dollars, but these things are wide open for such a thing. If you go and look at the sales documents, they made one claim after the next.

So because the memos show what you say is clear intent to break the law, that's why you don't think that they have a valid copyright claim.

Well, the other issue is an overriding public interest. We are told that we are to depend on these systems in 37 states and yet they are admitting that they are easy to tamper with.

Are you going to respond to them

Well, these memos are on the Web in so many locations that we took them off and put a link to someone else who put them up. So that fulfills our requirement under the law.

But do you know if it's possible for you to face any --

-- any retaliation It's certainly possible that they will try retaliation, and if so I will use the full extent of the law available to me for full discovery of everything. And I think that going through discovery will become a very uncomfortable process and perhaps put some people in jail ... Not on our side, by the way.
At this point activists are now taking these memos from various places on the Web into their state attorneys general and asking for an investigation, and since Diebold has now authenticated them it's no longer, "I found this on the Web," it's, "I found this on the Web and Diebold says they wrote them."

When Diebold is put to greater scrutiny, won't the elections officials say, "We won't go with Diebold, but we'll use touch-screen systems from this company or this company"

Well, I think that won't fly in the long run because the same illness is afflicting all of them, and that is that they are not auditable and secret. The solution is pretty simple and obvious, and that is to get properly auditable machines. A lot of the security stuff goes away -- the most bulletproof system that I know anyone has come up with is one that is a touch screen but then prints a ballot that the voter verifies.

Whatever the software is doing, if you have something with a really bulletproof audit -- the voter verifying the paper, and the computer tally -- if those two things match, you've got a pretty good confidence level.

If Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia want to come up with a nice paper trail, voter-verified paper trail that's a touch screen, I'm supporting them. But right now they're fighting it tooth and nail.

How are they fighting it

For one thing they had a meeting on Aug. 22 -- the voting machine manufacturers and the Election Center [a nonprofit management division of the National Association of State Election Directors, which handles part of the voting-machine certification process] and a lobbyist. The whole purpose of this meeting was to try to get the public to figure out how to accept machines without a paper trail.

How did you find out about this meeting

Actually, this is kind of funny. My publisher found out about this. It was a teleconference and he just called in under his own name and nobody asked him where he was from, and he sat in on the whole meeting. [Harris' publisher, David Allen, posted notes on the meeting on his Web site.]

The meeting had quite a few things of concern in it. They were being told that as an industry they had to come up with $200,000 in seven days in order to come up with a P.R. campaign to whitewash their P.R. problem, as they put it.

So apparently they feel they have a problem

Yeah, they do. And in this particular meeting, one of the things they discuss is, they say, "Now we need to make sure the press never finds out this because we don't want them to know we have a problem." [According to David Allen, Harris Miller, the president of the Information Technology Association of America, said, "We just didn't want a document floating around saying the election industry is in trouble, so they decided to put together a lobbying campaign."]

Was there anything discussed about addressing the problem

Absolutely, what they want to do is not fix the problem, but they agreed to fix the perception of the problem.

Did they indicate what they thought would be a problem with printing paper ballots

No. It was a foregone conclusion that we don't want paper.

But they say that they would try to convince the public that having no paper is fine

Right.

It's rather confusing why they're fighting this ...

Yes, actually I find it a little bit suspicious frankly.

What do you mean by that

Well -- it just seems like, OK, most of us who've ever run a business before, you know what the public wants. Diebold could have early on become a hero by saying, "You know what, this is a problem, but here's what we're going to do. We're going to make sure that you guys have what you want, we're going to get you this paper ballot." And instead there's this huge amount of money being expended to avoid it. It's such a simple solution -- it's too much fighting over something that's so simple and that is pretty much agreed on by all of the tech experts anyway.

The last thing I wanted to talk to you about is the California recall.

Hey, you Californians. What in Sam Hill are you doing

Well -- as you know, the other day the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the election should be put on hold because punch-card systems are being used in six counties. Do you have any opinion on that -- on whether it's a good idea to hold off on the election because of the punch-card systems Isn't it better to have punch cards than touch screens

Well, here's my opinion on that. First of all I don't understand why you guys are doing this election, but be that as it may. There's a study by MIT and Caltech from 2001, and it found that optical scans lose about 3 percent of the vote, punch cards lose about 4.1 percent, and touch screens lose 5.7 percent. [Harris' numbers are a bit off. The Caltech MIT study, which was one of the most thorough investigations into what went wrong in the 2000 election, analyzed "residual votes" -- "uncounted, unmarked and spoiled ballots" -- caused by different types of voting machines. For the presidential race, 2.5 percent of all votes cast on punch-card machines were residual votes; the rate was slightly lower, 2.3 percent, for touch-screen machines. But in gubernatorial and senatorial races, punch-card machines had a 4.7 percent error rate, while touch-screen machines had an alarming 5.9 percent error. The study's 95-page report is available here.]

If you're going from punch cards to optical-scan ballots, that is an upgrade, but if you're going from punch cards to touch screens, that makes no sense. According to the research, the one system that is currently being sold that is less accurate than a punch card is a touch screen. The court decision doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It sounds to me that, as is so typical with this, you have people who really don't understand the issues and don't understand much about how the computer programs work forming decisions based on a combination of what politicians and vendor P.R. people say.

But one of the problems with optical-scan ballots is that you have to print up a lot of paper -- and, you know, if this election is postponed until March, a lot of the counties are going to have huge bills because they have to print new ballots.

Oh, goodness! I hadn't thought of that. Huge, huge bills, completely wasted.

So isn't that an argument for touch-screen voting

I think the touch screens, if they had a paper trail so that we could do a proper audit, they would be my choice. The thing is if you speak Chinese, they can print something in Chinese. There would be no reason for all these combinations of ballots that folks have. It's kind of a nightmare which would be solved with the touch screens that can print.

Yes, I imagine that's one of the main selling points for touch-screen machines.

I would think so. It's just that they're not auditable. I'm not opposed to it, and I think it has tremendous advantages, but it just needs to be auditable. That's a deal-breaker -- it has to be auditable. And why I've been so down on Diebold is because they're the poster child for why it has to be auditable.

Galileo Probe Ends in Deliberate Dive

Reuters via Washington Post reports:

WASHINGTON - NASA's Galileo space probe ended its eight-year mission to Jupiter Sunday as expected in a fiery collision with the largest planet as the space scientists celebrated back on Earth.

The space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., lost contact with the spacecraft slightly after 3:40 p.m. EDT, 2 minutes and 36 seconds before expected, laboratory spokesman D.C. Agle said.

More than 1,000 people who worked on the Galileo program gathered at the Laboratory to celebrate the end of the mission, Agle said.

Galileo was low on propellant and six years past its original end date. Launched from space shuttle Atlantis in 1989, Galileo traveled about 2.8 billion miles .

Galileo orbited Jupiter 34 times and obtained the first direct measurements of its atmosphere by sending a descent probe parachuting down toward the planet in 1995.

It detected evidence of underground salt water oceans on Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, and examined the lively, intensely hot, volcanoes on the moon Io.

Telstar 4 is Down

Slashdot Reports:

An anonymous reader writes "Sometime this morning (Sept. 19) Telstar 4 had a major onboard failure. I just checked a few minutes ago and there are CW carriers up on 11700 MHz V & 12200 MHz H, so the spacecraft would appear to still be in its orbital slot - just no traffic. The Loral Skynet site has no mention of this yet, but supposedly Telstar 8 was already scheduled to replace T4, so they may just speed the process up. This turn of events will no doubt be of some small concern to Intelsat, who recently agreed to purchase most of Loral's US domestic fleet, including T4."

A major crisis! (Score:5, Funny)
by mercuryresearch (680293) on Friday September 19, @05:09PM (#7008415)

This is a crisis of earth-shattering proportions for many.

One of Telstar 4's nicknames in the industry is "nookiesat" -- as it carries several of the leading porn channels in the US. :-)

This may affect you because (Score:5, Informative)
by cleveland61 (321761) on Friday September 19, @05:16PM (#7008482)

Telstar 4 is one of the most heavily used TV satellites. We had to move our channels over to Telstar 6 for the time being. (I work for the Erotic Networks) It caries many of the east coast ABC and CBS feeds. I'm sure they were scrambling to find alternate carriers just like we were this morning.

Loral shuts down satellite due to short circuit
Reuters, 09.19.03, 2:39 PM ET

NEW YORK, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Bankrupt satellite operator and maker Loral Space & Communications Ltd. said on Friday one of its North American satellites shut down after a power short circuit.

The company, which has already agreed to sell the Telstar 4 satellite to Intelsat, said it is working with manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp. (nyse: LMT - news - people) to determine the cause of the problem and to restore service if possible.

Loral said it was able to make capacity available to most customers using the Telstar 4. Many of these customers had their service restored at the time of the statement, the company said.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service
http://www.forbes.com/technology/newswire/2003/09/19/rtr1086720.html

Microsoft's Revamped Patch Management

DEFEAT THE RIGHT IN THREE MINUTES

Conceptual Guerilla writes:

Have you got three minutes. Because that's all you need to learn how to defeat the Republican Right. Just read through this handy guide and you'll have everything you need to successfully debunk right-wing propaganda.

It's really that simple. First, you have to beat their ideology, which really isn't that difficult. At bottom, conservatives believe in a social hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots" that I call "corporate feudalism". They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a "respectable" sounding ideology. That ideology is pure hogwash, and you can prove it.

But you have to do more than defeat the ideology. You have to defeat the "drum beat". You have to defeat the "propaganda machine", that brainwashes people with their slogans and catch-phrases. You've heard those slogans."Less government", "personal responsibility" and lots of flag waving. They are "shorthand" for an entire worldview, and the right has been pounding their slogans out into the public domain for getting on forty years.

So you need a really good slogan a "counter-slogan" really, to "deprogram" the brainwashed. You need a "magic bullet" that quickly and efficiently destroys the effectiveness of their "drum beat". You need your own "drum beat" that sums up the right's position. Only your "drum beat" exposes the ugly reality of right-wing philosophy the reality their slogans are meant to hide. Our slogan contains the governing concept that explains the entire right-wing agenda. That's why it works. You can see it in every policy, and virtually all of Republican rhetoric. And it's so easy to remember, and captures the essence of the Republican Right so well, we can pin it on them like a "scarlet letter".

Is there really a catch phrase a "magic bullet" that sums up the Republican Right in such a nice easy-to-grasp package. You better believe it, and it's downright elegant in its simplicity.

You want to know what that "magic bullet" is, don't you. Read on. You've still got two minutes.

Right-Wing Ideology in a Nutshell

When you cut right through it, right-wing ideology is just "dime-store economics" intended to dress their ideology up and make it look respectable. You don't really need to know much about economics to understand it. They certainly don't. It all gets down to two simple words.

"Cheap labor". That's their whole philosophy in a nutshell which gives you a short and pithy "catch phrase" that describes them perfectly. You've heard of "big-government liberals". Well they're "cheap-labor conservatives".

"Cheap-labor conservative" is a moniker they will never shake, and never live down. Because it's exactly what they are. You see, cheap-labor conservatives are defenders of corporate America whose fortunes depend on labor. The larger the labor supply, the cheaper it is. The more desperately you need a job, the cheaper you'll work, and the more power those "corporate lords" have over you. If you are a wealthy elite or a "wannabe" like most dittoheads your wealth, power and privilege is enhanced by a labor pool, forced to work cheap.

Don't believe me. Well, let's apply this principle, and see how many right-wing positions become instantly understandable.

• Cheap-labor conservatives don't like social spending or our "safety net". Why. Because when you're unemployed and desperate, corporations can pay you whatever they feel like which is inevitably next to nothing. You see, they want you "over a barrel" and in a position to "work cheap or starve".

• Cheap-labor conservatives don't like the minimum wage, or other improvements in wages and working conditions. Why. These reforms undo all of their efforts to keep you "over a barrel".

• Cheap-labor conservatives like "free trade", NAFTA, GATT, etc. Why. Because there is a huge supply of desperately poor people in the third world, who are "over a barrel", and will work cheap.

• Cheap-labor conservatives oppose a woman's right to choose. Why. Unwanted children are an economic burden that put poor women "over a barrel", forcing them to work cheap.

• Cheap-labor conservatives don't like unions. Why. Because when labor "sticks together", wages go up. That's why workers unionize. Seems workers don't like being "over a barrel".

• Cheap-labor conservatives constantly bray about "morality", "virtue", "respect for authority", "hard work" and other "values". Why. So they can blame your being "over a barrel" on your own "immorality", lack of "values" and "poor choices".

• Cheap-labor conservatives encourage racism, misogyny, homophobia and other forms of bigotry. Why Bigotry among wage earners distracts them, and keeps them from recognizing their common interests as wage earners.

The Cheap-Labor Conservatives' "Dirty Secret":
They Don't Really Like Prosperity

Maybe you don't believe that cheap-labor conservatives like unemployment, poverty and "cheap labor". Consider these facts.

Unemployment was 23 percent when FDR took office in 1933. It dropped to 2.5 percent by time the next Republican was in the White House in 1953. It climbed back to 6.5 percent by the end of the Eisenhower administration. It dropped to 3.5 percent by the time LBJ left office. It climbed over 5 percent shortly after Nixon took office, and stayed there for 27 years, until Clinton brought it down to 4.5 percent early in his second term.

That same period especially from the late forties into the early seventies was the "golden age" of the United States. We sent men to the moon. We built our Interstate Highway system. We ended segregation in the South and established Medicare. In those days, a single wage earner could support an entire family on his wages. I grew up then, and I will tell you that life was good at least for the many Americans insulated from the tragedy in Vietnam, as I was.

These facts provide a nice background to evaluate cheap-labor conservative claims like "liberals are destroying America."In fact, cheap-labor conservatives have howled with outrage and indignation against New Deal liberalism from its inception in the 1930's all the way to the present. You can go to "Free Republic" or Hannity's forum right now, and find a cheap-labor conservative comparing New Deal Liberalism to "Stalinism".

• Cheap-labor conservatives opposed virtually all of the New Deal, including every improvement in wages and working conditions.

• Cheap-labor conservatives have a long and sorry history of opposing virtually every advancement in this country's development going right back to the American revolution.

• Cheap-labor conservatives have hated Social Security and Medicare since their inception.

• Many cheap-labor conservatives are hostile to public education. They think it should be privatized. But why are we surprised. Cheap-labor conservatives opposed universal public education in its early days. School vouchers are just a backdoor method to "resegregate" the public schools.

• Cheap-labor conservatives hate the progressive income tax like the devil hates holy water.

• Cheap-labor conservatives like budget deficits and a huge national debt for two reasons. A bankrupt government has a harder time doing any "social spending" which cheap-labor conservatives oppose, and . . .

• Wealthy cheap-labor conservatives like say, George W. Bush, buy the bonds and then earn tax free interest on the money they lend the government.[Check out Dubya's financial disclosures. The son of a bitch is a big holder of the T-bills that finance the deficit he is helping to expand.] The deficit created by cheap-labor conservatives   while they posture as being "fiscally conservative" may count as the biggest con job in American history.

• "Free Trade", globalization, NAFTA and especially GATT are intended to create a world-wide "corporate playground" where national governments serve the interests of corporations which means "cheap labor".

The ugly truth is that cheap-labor conservatives just don't like working people. They don't like "bottom up" prosperity, and the reason for it is very simple. lords have a harder time kicking them around. Once you understand this about the cheap-labor conservatives, the real motivation for their policies makes perfect sense. Remember, cheap-labor conservatives believe in social hierarchy and privilege, so the only prosperity they want is limited to them. They want to see absolutely nothing that benefits the guy or more often the woman who works for an hourly wage.

So there you have it, in one easy-to-remember phrase. See how easy it is to understand these cheap-labor conservatives. The more ignorant and destitute people there are desperate for any job they can get the cheaper the cheap-labor conservatives can get them to work.

Try it. Every time you respond to a cheap-labor conservative in letters to the editor, or an online discussion forum, look for the "cheap labor" angle. Trust me, you'll find it. I can even show you the "cheap labor" angle in things like the "war on drugs", and the absurd conservative opposition to alternative energy.

Next, make that moniker cheap-labor conservatives your "standard reference" to the other side. One of the last revisions I made to this article was to find every reference to "conservatives", "Republicans", "right-wingers", and "righties", and replace it with "cheap-labor conservatives". In fact, if you're a cheap-labor conservative reading this, you should be getting sick of that phrase right about now. Exxxxcellent.

If enough people will "get with the program", it won't be long before you can't look at an editorial page, listen to the radio, turn on the TV, or log onto your favorite message board without seeing the phrase "cheap labor conservatives" and have plenty of examples to reinforce the message. By election day of 2004, every politically sentient American should understand exactly what a "cheap labor conservative" is, and what he stands for.

Now if you stop right here, you will have enough ammunition to hold your own with a cheap-labor conservative, in any public debate. You have your catch phrase, and you have some of the facts and history to give that phrase meaning.

But if you really want to rip the heart out of cheap-labor conservative ideology, you may want to invest just a little bit more effort. It still isn't all that complicated, though it is a bit more detailed than what we have covered so far.

To explore that detail, just click one of the links below.

"Less Government" and "Cheap Labor".

The Public Sector and Private Fortunes.

"Personal Responsibility" and Wages.

For more detailed theoretical understanding, check out The Mythology of Wealth, or just browse through some of the articles in the sidebar.

Now go find some "cheap labor conservatives", and pin that scarlet moniker on them.

LESS GOVERNMENT AND CHEAP LABOR

“Less Government” is the central defining right-wing slogan. And yes, it’s all about “cheap labor”.

Included within the slogan “less government” is the whole conservative set of assumptions about the nature of the “free market” and government’s role in that market..In fact, the whole “public sector/private sector” distinction is an invention of the cheap-labor conservatives.They say that the “private sector” exists outside and independently of the “public sector”. The public sector, according to cheap-labor ideology, can only “interfere” with the “private sector”, and that such “interference” is “inefficient” and “unprincipled”

Using this ideology, the cheap-labor ideologue paints himself as a defender of “freedom” against “big government tyranny”. In fact, the whole idea that the “private sector” is independent of the public sector is totally bogus. In fact, “the market” is created by public laws, public institutions and public infrastructure.

But the cheap-labor conservative isn’t really interested in “freedom”.What the he wants is the “privatized tyranny” of industrial serfdom, the main characteristic of which is – you guessed it -- “cheap labor”.

For proof, you need only look at exactly what constitutes “big government tyranny” and what doesn’t. It turns out that cheap-labor conservatives are BIG supporters of the most oppressive and heavy handed actions the government takes.

• Cheap-labor conservatives are consistent supporters of the generous use of capital punishment.They say that ‚Äúgovernment can‚Äôt do anything right‚Äù ‚Äì except apparently, kill people. Indeed, they exhibit classic conservative unconcern for the very possibility that the government might make a mistake and execute the wrong man.

• Cheap-labor conservatives complain about the ‚ÄúWarren Court‚Äù ‚Äúhandcuffing the police‚Äù and giving ‚Äúrights to criminals‚Äù. It never occurs to them, that our criminal justice system is set up to protect innocent citizens from abuses or just plain mistakes by government officials ‚Äì you know, the one‚Äôs who can‚Äôt do anything right.

• Cheap-labor conservatives support the ‚Äúget tough‚Äù and ‚Äúlock ‚Äòem up‚Äù approach to virtually every social problem in the spectrum. In fact, it‚Äôs the only approach they support. As for the 2,000,000 people we have in jail today ‚Äì a higher percentage of our population than any other nation on earth -- they say our justice system is ‚Äútoo lenient‚Äù.

• Cheap-labor conservative ‚Äì you know, the ones who believe in ‚Äúfreedom‚Äù ‚Äì say our crime problem is because ‚Äì get this ‚Äì we‚Äôre too ‚Äúpermissive‚Äù. How exactly do you set up a ‚Äúfree‚Äù society that isn‚Äôt ‚Äúpermissive‚Äù

• Cheap-labor conservatives want all the military force we can stand to pay for and never saw a weapons system they didn‚Äôt like.

• Cheap-labor conservatives support every right-wing authoritarian hoodlum in the third world.

• Cheap-labor conservatives support foreign assassinations, covert intervention in foreign countries, and every other ‚Äúblack bag‚Äù operation the CIA can dream up, even against constitutional governments, elected by the people of those countries.

• Cheap-labor conservatives support ‚Äúdomestic surveillance‚Äù against ‚Äúsubversives‚Äù ‚Äì where ‚Äúsubversive‚Äù means ‚Äúeverybody but them‚Äù.

• Cheap-labor believers in ‚Äúfreedom‚Äù think it‚Äôs the government‚Äôs business if you smoke a joint or sleep with somebody of your own gender.

• Cheap-labor conservatives support our new concentration camp down at Guantanamo Bay.They also support these ‚Äúsecret tribunals‚Äù with ‚Äúsecret evidence‚Äù and virtually no judicial review of the trials and sentences.Then they say that liberals are ‚ÄúStalinists‚Äù.

• And let‚Äôs not forget this perennial item on the agenda. Cheap-labor conservatives want to ‚Äúprotect our national symbol‚Äù from ‚Äúdesecration‚Äù. They also support legislation to make the Pledge of Allegiance required by law.
  Of course, it is they who desecrate the flag every time they wave it to support their cheap-labor agenda. [Ouch! That was one of those “hits” you can hear up in the “nosebleed” seats.]

Sounds to me like the cheap-labor conservatives have a peculiar definition of “freedom”.I mean, just what do these guys consider to be “tyranny”.

That’s easy. Take a look.

• ‚ÄúSocial spending‚Äù otherwise known as ‚Äúredistribution‚Äù.While they don‚Äôt mind tax dollars being used for killing people, using their taxes to feed people is ‚Äústealing‚Äù.
• Minimum wage laws.
• Every piece of legislation ever proposed to improve working conditions, including the eight hour day, OSHA regulations, and even Child Labor laws.
• Labor unions, who ‚Äúextort‚Äù employers by collectively bargaining.
• Environmental regulations and the EPA.
• Federal support and federal standards for public education.
• Civil rights legislation. There are still cheap-labor conservatives today, who were staunch defenders of ‚ÄúJim Crow‚Äù ‚Äì including conspicuously Buckley‚Äôs ‚ÄúNational Review‚Äù.Apparently, federal laws ending segregation were ‚Äútyranny‚Äù, but segregation itself was not.
• Public broadcasting ‚Äì which is virtually the only source for classical music, opera, traditional theatre, traditional American music, oh yes, and Buckley‚Äôs ‚ÄúFiring Line‚Äù. This from the people constantly braying about the decay of ‚Äúthe culture‚Äù. The average cost of Public Television for each American is a whopping one dollar a year.‚ÄúIts tyranny I tell you.Enough‚Äôs enough!‚Äù

See the pattern

Cheap-labor conservatives support every coercive and oppressive function of government, but call it “tyranny” if government does something for you – using their money, for Chrissake. Even here, cheap-labor conservatives are complete hypocrites.
Consider the following expenditures:

• 150 billion dollars a year for corporate subsidies.
• 300 billion dollars a year for interest payments on the national debt ‚Äì payments that are a direct transfer to wealthy bond holders, and buy us absolutely nothing.
• Who knows how many billions will be paid to American companies to rebuild Iraq ‚Äì which didn‚Äôt need rebuilding three months ago.
• That‚Äôs all in addition to the Defense budget ‚Äì large chunks of which go to corporate defense contractors.

Is the pattern becoming clearer

These cheap-labor Republicans have no problem at all opening the public purse for corporate interests. It’s “social spending” on people who actually need assistance that they just “can’t tolerate”.

And now you know why. Destitute people work cheaper, while a harsh police state keeps them suitably terrorized.

For a short primer on the importance of a strong public sector, see:

“The Public Sector and Private Fortunes”.

Pay No Attention to This Day

Harry Browne writes:

You see, today is supposed to be "Constitution Day". And no one really cares about the "Constitution" anymore.

The Constitution was supposed to spell out what government can do and what it can't do. The government's few legal functions are listed in Article 1, Section 8. It was a revolutionary document, in that no government in history had ever had its duties and restrictions so carefully defined.

Despite frequent violations of the Constitution by the government, the document did its job reasonably well for the first hundred years -- making America the freest country in history.

As late as 1887, when Congress passed a bill providing federal relief to drought-stricken Texas farmers, Grover Cleveland vetoed it, saying, "I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution."

But that was about the last gasp for limited, Constitutional government. Because the Constitution wasn't self-enforcing, it depended on the good intentions of politicians -- something Thomas Jefferson specifically warned against in 1798 when he said, "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

Michael Cloud put it more succinctly in recent years: "The problem isn't the abuse of power, it's the power to abuse." So long as the politicians have the power, they'll abuse it. And the Constitution was intended to prevent letting the politicians have the power to abuse.

The Transformation

But by the end of the 1800s, too many Americans had lost their fear of government and politicians. The introduction of government schools had made it almost certain that most children would never learn the importance of binding down government with the chains of the Constitution.

And so government was transformed in the public mind from a necessary-but-dangerous evil into "the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else," as Frederic Bastiat described it.

More and more, the Constitution became a political toy, to be tossed about, invoked, ignored, or misrepresented -- whatever suited a given politician's agenda at any given moment.

The income tax amendment in 1913 hammered the final nail into the coffin of limited, constitutional government. Now the politicians had not only the authority, but also the unlimited revenue, to do whatever they wanted. It seems very, very unlikely, for example, that Americans would have been dragged into World War I if the government hadn't had the unlimited revenue to finance it.

Even the Bill of Rights -- which eliminates all ambiguity by spelling out specific things the government may _not_ do -- was relegated to second place behind the needs of politicians. By the first World War, the Supreme Court had decided that the words "Congress shall make no law . . . " don't really mean that "Congress shall make no law . . . " They mean only that the government must have a "compelling interest" in doing something. Not surprisingly, the government employees on the Court almost always decide that the government does have a compelling interest.

Where Do We Go from Here

Those conservatives who still care about the Constitution say that it should be taught in the schools. As though government employees will emphasize the original purpose of the Constitution in restraining government. Instead, they'll give snap quizes on such weighty questions as "How many years in a Senator's term" or "Who appoints the Supreme Court justices"

If the American people are to learn the importance of limited, Constitutional government, we have to teach them ourselves.

But people aren't interested in academic lectures on constitutional government. They're far more interested in their own lives -- and rightly so.

That's why repealing the federal income tax is our best tool. We can offer them the reward of never paying income tax again in exchange for giving up any unconstitutional federal programs.

The next time you want someone to understand the importance of the Constitution, try approaching him this way . . .

"If we repeal the federal income tax and yours is an average American family, you'll have at least $10,000 a year more to spend or invest. What will you do with that money

"Will you put your children in a private school, where they can get whatever kind of education you want for them

"Will you help your favorite cause or charity in a way you've never been able to do before

"Will you start that business you've always wanted, plan a better retirement, send your children to college

"All you have to do in return is to restrict the government to the Constitution -- giving up whatever pittance unconstitutional government provides to you personally."

If you try this, you may be surprised to find that the Constitution isn't such a hard sell after all.

And maybe someday "Constitution Day" will mean something again.

via: L i b e r t y W i r e, the official email list of the American Liberty Foundation

Heil!

President Bush waves at a fundraiser for the Republican candidate for the Mississippi governorship, Haley Barbour, at the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson, Sept. 12, 2003. With Bush's poll numbers dropping, many fellow Republicans are uneasy about the state of the U.S. economy, rising budget deficits, and the U.S. military operation in Iraq. (Larry Downing/Reuters) ( via Mind is Moving)

Scrambled Words Are Legible

From Joi Ito's Web:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

(via BoingBoing)

Jamie Zawinski has written a perl script to convert blocks of normal text into text where letters excluding the first and last are "scrmabled," to prove the point that legibility is only marginally affected by altering spelling of words, provided that first/last letters are left intact.

http://www.jwz.org/hacks/scrmable.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# Coyprgiht © 2003 Jamie Zawinski
#
# Premssioin to use, cpoy, mdoify, drusbiitte, and slel this stafowre and its
# docneimuatton for any prsopue is hrbeey ganrted wuihott fee, prveodid taht
# the avobe cprgyioht noicte appaer in all coipes and that both taht
# cohgrypit noitce and tihs premssioin noitce aeppar in suppriotng
# dcoumetioantn. No rpeersneatiotns are made about the siuatbliity of tihs
# srofawte for any puorpse. It is provedid "as is" wiuotht exerpss or
# ilmpied waanrrty.
#
# Cretaed: 13-Sep-2003.
# Fix0red: 15-Sep-2003.

require 5;
use diagnostics;
use strict;

my $porgnmae = $0; $porgnmae =~ s@.*/@@g;
my $vresoin = q{ $Revision: 2.2 $ }; $vresoin =~ s/^[^0-9]+([0-9.]+).*$/$1/;

sub scrmable {
while (<>) {
foreach (split (/([^[:alnum:]]*[\s[:punct:]]+)/)) {
if (m/\w/) {
my @w = split (//);
my $A = shift @w;
my $Z = pop @w;
print $A;
if (defined ($Z)) {
my $i = $#w+1;
while ($i--) {
my $j = int rand ($i+1);
@w[$i,$j] = @w[$j,$i];
}
foreach (@w) {
print $_;
}
print $Z;
}
} else {
#print "]";
print "$_";
#print "[";
}
}
}
}

sub usgae {
print STDERR "usage: $porgnmae < text > scrbameld-txet\n";
exit 1;
}

sub mian {
usgae if ($#ARGV != -1);
scrmable();
}

mian;
exit 0;


Johnny Cash Dies

NASHVILLE, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Johnny Cash, the country music legend who conquered poverty and drug addiction to become an enduring superstar, died [today]. He was 71.

The "Man in Black," as he was known, died of complications from diabetes at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, hospital spokeswoman Nicole Bates told CNN.

Perhaps the most widely recognized voice in country music, Cash turned out hit after hit with his smoky, rumpled baritone from the brooding "Ring of Fire" and the soulful "Folsom Prison Blues" to the surging romanticism of "I Walk The Line" and the deliriously silly "A Boy Named Sue."

He recorded more than 1,500 songs in a career that spanned more than four decades. His 10 Grammys include a lifetime achievement award and the 1998 Grammy for country album of the year ("Unchained").

While Cash has long had one of the premiere voices in country music, his success crossed well over onto the pop scene with 48 singles on Billboard's pop charts.

Hexayurt

The Hexayurt is a prototype for a family of refugee shelters. At the moment, most refugees wind up in poly tarp structures held up by PVC pipe. These structures rot rapidly, offer little protection from the elements, and in the long run feel like tents.

Tents are fun for a while, but few people would choose to live in one for years at a time.

The Hexayurt is a first draft of a different kind of super-low-cost housing. This prototype is made from cardboard, but the design holds good for any 4' x 8' sheet goods, allowing different materials like plywood or styrofoam to be used in different climates.

The exterior is made from a reflective insulating material, which lends both insulation and waterproofing. Separating the structural and waterproofing elements means a much wider range of structural materials can be used.

Finally, the Hexayurt is made to be portable on a car, truck, donkey, or at worst, on the back of humans. A single adult can carry the hut in this picture without undue difficulty, and two adults could carry a hut for many miles in a single day if the need arose.

---

This prototype was made with materials given to me by three companies. Pactiv Corporation donated their Hexacomb board material, which forms the sides and roof of the hexayurt, Innovative Energy donated Heatshield, the reflective insulation which surronds the structure, and 3M donated the fibre tape which holds the structure together.

I'd like to thank all three companies. I was completely amazed and gratified by their generosity and genuine interest in this project, and I hope that their time and money will turn out to be a worthwhile investment.

Nepal Adopts New Policy of Protection for Tibetan Refugees

International Campaign for Tibet Press Release:

Following the May 31 forced deportation of 18 Tibetan refugees from Kathmandu by Nepalese authorities working in collusion with the Chinese Embassy, an international campaign of governmental and non-governmental approaches targeting the government of Nepal has resulted in Nepal's official adoption of a new policy of protection for Tibetan refugees.

"Nepal will uphold the principle of non-refoulement of the refugees. Nepal will not forcibly return any asylum seekers from its soil."

"This is a significant achievement for the Tibet movement and the rights of vulnerable Tibetan refugees," said Mary Beth Markey, U.S. Executive Director of the International Campaign for Tibet.

"Safe transit through Nepal is the linchpin in the flight to freedom for Tibetans refugees," Markey continued.

The policy was set forth as an attachment to an August 4 letter from Nepal's Foreign Secretary Madhu Raman Acharya to Senator Dianne Feinstein (full text below) and follows the Senator's withdrawal of support from legislation intended to provide Nepal with preferential treatment for its textile imports to the United States in protest over Nepal's treatment of Tibetan refugees.

This articulation of the Nepalese policy has been shared with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu.

Secretary Acharya headed a Nepalese trade delegation visit to Washington during the first week in August. The delegation met with Feinstein and other U.S. policy-makers in an effort to reinvigorate the stalled textile legislation. In response to concerns raised by policymakers, the delegation attempted to provide verbal assurances on Nepal's treatment of Tibetan refugees. Senator Feinstein reportedly requested that such assurances be conveyed formally and followed up by consistent good practices.

"Friends of Tibet everywhere will be gratified to know that His Majesty's government has adopted an official policy that tracks so well with the 'gentlemen's agreement' developed with the UNHCR and Tibetan transit center in Kathmandu," said Markey.

"However, only Nepal's consistent implementation of the new policy -- which must include the training of Nepalese police and officials according to its tenets -- will demonstrate its commitment to the policy and to its proponents, including Senator Feinstein and others in the U.S. government," Markey concluded.

Full text of Foreign Secretary Acharya's letter to Senator Feintsein:

Her Excellency Dianne Feinstein
Senator
The US Capitol
Washington, DC

August 4, 2003

Honorable Senator,

I am writing to express my sincere gratitude for the opportunity to call on you at your office during my recent visit to Washington, DC. I appreciate your very sympathetic yet candid view with regard to the status of the bill you had introduced for the duty free and quota free access of the Nepalese readymade garments to the US market. I also appreciate your genuine concerns regarding the Tibetan refugees.

On behalf of His Majesty's Government of Nepal, I would like to reiterate the continuation of Nepal's policy with regard to the refugees in accordance with international norms, practices and standards. His majesty's Government cooperates with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for the verification, care and maintenance of refugees, and whatever applicable, for the processing of refugees to be resettled in a third country. You will appreciate that in the last thirteen years, the UNHCR itself has acknowledged that we have allowed them to process some 28,557 Tibetan refugees from Nepal to the third countries (UNHCR letter enclosed).

I have enclosed the policy recently adopted by His Majesty's Government towards the refugees. With cooperation and understanding of the international community, His Majesty's Government will endeavor to uphold these policies and principles in the treatment of the refugees. I hope this categorical statement of our position will help you facilitate to move ahead with the proposed bill in the Senate.

Once again, I would like to sincerely thank you for your willingness to continue to support the case of the legislation to grant duty free and quota free access to the Nepalese readymade garments to the US market, which will go a long way for the economic and political stability of Nepal.

Please accept, Honorable Senator, the assurances of my higher consideration.

Madhu Raman Acharya
Foreign Secretary
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
His Majesty's Government of Nepal
Kathmandu

His Majesty’s Government of Nepal
Policy towards Refugees

Nepal has a long track record of humanitarian approach to the refugees. It has provided asylum to refugees since 1959. At present, Nepal has given asylum to more than 132,000 refugees, which includes 100,000 Bhutanese and several thousand Tibetan refugees.

Although not a party to any international refugee conventions and therefore not bound by international legal obligations as such, Nepal has given shelter to refugees on humanitarian grounds. In view of her own socio-economic constraints and other limitations, Nepal’s treatment of asylum seekers has earned appreciation from all over the world.

Nepal understands and respects the humanitarian and human rights issues of the asylum seekers. The asylum seekers are treated in Nepal in accordance with international norms, practices and standards.

Nepal fully cooperates with the UNHCR and allows the UNHCR in Kathmandu to assist the asylum seekers to be processed as refugees. Nepal appreciates the involvement of the UNHCR and the international community in the care and maintenance of the refugees in the country.

Aliens, who declare their intention to seek asylum before the Nepalese authorities, are interrogated by the immigration authorities and the UNHCR is given access to them for their status determination. Such “persons of concern” are then processed accordingly through the UNHCR in accordance with the international norms and practices. His Majesty’s Government allows the processing of the refugees by the UNHCR for resettlement to any third country.

Voluntariness has been an accepted principle for the treatment of refugees in Nepal. Only persons seeking voluntary return shall be repatriated in accordance with the international norms and practices. His Majesty’s Government has a policy not to forcibly return refugees from its soil.

Nepal will uphold the principle of non-refoulement of the refugees. Nepal will not forcibly return any asylum seekers from its soil.

Nepal will allow the UNHCR to verify and establish the status of people seeking asylum and will allow the UNHCR to process them without any hindrance.
(signed by Foreign Secretary Acharya)

(August 26, 2003)

10 a Day Wounded in Action

Vernon Loeb, Washington Post Staff Writer, reports:

U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks by remnants of Saddam Hussein's military and other forces, with almost 10 American troops a day now being officially declared "wounded in action."

[..]With no fanfare and almost no public notice, giant C-17 transport jets arrive virtually every night at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, on medical evacuation missions. Since the war began, more than 6,000 service members have been flown back to the United States. The number includes the 1,124 wounded in action, 301 who received non-hostile injuries in vehicle accidents and other mishaps, and thousands who became physically or mentally ill. [..]

The number of those wounded in action, which totals 1,124 since the war began in March, has grown so large, and attacks have become so commonplace, that U.S. Central Command usually issues news releases listing injuries only when the attacks kill one or more troops. The result is that many injuries go unreported.

The rising number and quickening pace of soldiers being wounded on the battlefield have been overshadowed by the number of troops killed since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations May 1. But alongside those Americans killed in action, an even greater toll of battlefield wounded continues unabated, with an increasing number being injured through small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, remote-controlled mines and what the Pentagon refers to as "improvised explosive devices."

Indeed, the number of troops wounded in action in Iraq is now more than twice that of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The total increased more than 35 percent in August -- with an average of almost 10 troops a day injured last month.

Fifty-five Americans were wounded in action last week alone, pushing the number of troops wounded in action since May 1 beyond the number wounded during peak fighting. From March 19 to April 30, 550 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq. Since May 1, the number totals 574. The number of troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of May already has surpassed the total killed during the height of the war.

Pentagon officials point to advances in military medicine as one of the reasons behind the large number of wounded soldiers; many lives are being saved on the battlefield that in past conflicts would have been lost. But the rising number of casualties also reflects the resistance that U.S. forces continue to meet nearly five months after Hussein was ousted from power.

Although Central Command keeps a running total of the wounded, it releases the number only when asked -- making the combat injuries of U.S. troops in Iraq one of the untold stories of the war.

With no fanfare and almost no public notice, giant C-17 transport jets arrive virtually every night at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, on medical evacuation missions. Since the war began, more than 6,000 service members have been flown back to the United States. The number includes the 1,124 wounded in action, 301 who received non-hostile injuries in vehicle accidents and other mishaps, and thousands who became physically or mentally ill.

"Our nation doesn't know that," said Susan Brewer, president and founder of America's Heroes of Freedom, a nonprofit organization that collects clothing and other personal items for the returning troops. "Sort of out of sight and out of mind."

On Thursday night, a C-17 arrived at Andrews with 44 patients from Iraq. Ambulances arrived to take the most seriously wounded to the nation's two premier military hospitals, Water Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. Dozens of others stayed overnight at what the Air Force calls a contingency aeromedical staging facility, which has taken over an indoor tennis club and an adjacent community center.

On Friday morning, smaller C-130 transports began arriving to take the walking wounded and less seriously injured to their home bases, from Fort Bragg in North Carolina to Fort Lewis in Washington state. Another C-17 was due in Friday night from Germany, with 12 patients on stretchers, 24 listed on the flight manifest as ambulatory and nine other passengers, either family members or escorts.

"That's going to fill us right back up by the end of today," said Lt. Col. Allen Delaney, who commands the staging center. Eighty-six members of his reserve unit, the 459th Aeromedical Staging Squadron, based at Andrews, were called up for a year in April to run what is essentially a medical air terminal, the nation's hub, for war wounded from Iraq.

At Walter Reed, a half-hour drive from Andrews, Maj. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the hospital's commanding general, said there were only two days in July and four in August that the hospital did not admit soldiers injured in Iraq.

"The orthopedic surgeons are very busy, and the nursing services are very busy, both in the intensive care units and on the wards," he said, explaining that there have been five or six instances in recent months when all of the hospital's 40 intensive care beds have been filled -- mostly with battlefield wounded.

Kiley said rocket-propelled grenades and mines can wound multiple troops at a time and cause "the kind of amputating damage that you don't necessarily see with a bullet wound to the arm or leg."

The result has been large numbers of troops coming back to Walter Reed and National Naval Medical with serious blast wounds and arms and legs that have been amputated, either in Iraq or at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where virtually all battlefield casualties are treated and stabilized.

"A few of us started volunteering [at Walter Reed] as amputees in 1991, and this is the most we've seen ever," said Jim Mayer, a double amputee from the Vietnam War who works at the Veterans Administration. "I've never seen anything like this. But I haven't seen anybody not get good care."

Kiley said that Walter Reed has 600 physicians and 350 physicians in training, plus reservists and the ability to bring in more nurses if necessary. The hospital "could go on from an operational perspective indefinitely -- we have a lot of capacity," he said. The hospital has treated 1,100 patients from the war, including 228 battlefield casualties.

National Naval Medical Center was most severely stressed during the major combat phase of the war, said Capt. Michael J. Krentz, its deputy commander. During that period, 800 of the hospital's medical professionals -- a third of its regular staff and half its military staff -- deployed overseas to the USNS Comfort, a Navy hospital ship. The hospital called up 600 reservists to replace them.

Before the fall of Baghdad in April, the hospital had 40 patients a night -- mostly Marines -- from Iraq. Now the number is down to three, since the Marines have begun departing and will soon hand peacekeeping duties in their area south of Baghdad to multinational forces.

"Taking care of returning casualties is our number one job -- that's why we're here," Krentz said. "That's our sworn duty, and it's our honor to do so."

Kiley and Krentz said high-tech body armor and state-of-the-art battlefield medical procedures are keeping more seriously wounded soldiers alive than ever before.

Krentz said advanced radiological equipment aboard the Comfort enabled doctors to spot internal injuries and operate much sooner than they might have otherwise been able to, preventing fatalities. In fact, he said, patients had been stabilized so well overseas that there were no deaths of returning service members at Bethesda.

Kiley said he had seen several cases in which soldiers had been operated on in the field so quickly that doctors managed to save limbs that might otherwise have been lost. "But it's a long haul even when they do preserve limbs," he said.

Tuesday, September 2, 2003; Page A01

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

You're Free Nw, Ain't Ya

Anniversary of the First Computer Bug

aheath, Slashdot, writes:

"According to the US Naval Historical Center the first computer bug was logged on September 9, 1945 at 15:45: "Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1945. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: "First actual case of bug being found". They put out the word that they had "debugged" the machine, thus introducing the term "debugging a computer program."

Cisco to Fund Voice Mail For Poor

John Boudreau, Mercury News, reports:

Today, Cisco Systems is announcing a $2.5 million grant to a Seattle non-profit agency that gives the homeless, poor and jobless -- here and around the country -- something most Silicon Valley residents take for granted: a voice-mail box.

``It is virtually impossible to get a job without a phone,'' said Jennifer Brandon, executive director of Community Voice Mail, the grant recipient that works with organizations around the nation to provide free voice mail. ``This isn't a phone. But it is a cost-effective alternative. It's a reliable and consistent phone number. It removes the stigma of being homeless or in transition.''

(via Techdirt.)

Brandon's organization (www.cvm.org), which employs just four people, works with agencies such as San Jose's Community Technology Alliance to provide the free mailboxes, a simple tool that can profoundly change the life of someone who is down and out. The voice-mail box can be accessed from a pay phone or a phone at a social-service agency.

Geno Gallegos, 35, said the free voice mail was key to landing him a job last year as a real estate title researcher. The San Jose resident, who had been a restaurant manager in Santa Clara for seven years, was laid off in 2001 and couldn't afford a phone. He received assistance from Sacred Heart Community Service, which has 75 voice-mail accounts.

``Most employers require you have some type of telephone or voice mail,'' said Gallegos. ``It was a blessing.''

Last year, Community Technology Alliance provided the voice-mail service to more than 620 people through 33 agencies in Santa Clara County.

Cisco's grant is intended to double the number of people Community Voice Mail assists nationwide, from 25,000 to 65,000 by the end of 2007. It is one of the company's larger grants to a single non-profit.

Cisco also is donating about $60,000 worth of equipment to create an Internet-based phone service, which uses a technology known as Voice over Internet Protocol. About 40 Cisco employees will assist Community Voice Mail. In addition, the San Jose-based network equipment giant is providing office space for the organization at its Seattle campus.

In 2000, Cisco acquired voice-mail software manufacturer Active Voice, which had been supporting the non-profit group. The Active Voice employees who became Cisco workers wanted to continue that relationship, and Cisco complied, Brandon said.

``It's a very robust grant,'' said Michael Yutrzenka, senior manager of Cisco corporate philanthropy. ``We are very excited about it.''

At least 5 million people in the United States don't have a phone, according to the Federal Communications Commission. And that does not include the homeless.

``When you have been laid off from your job, you have to look at whether you are going to pay the mortgage or rent, your electricity or your phone,'' Brandon said. ``The phone is the first thing to go.''

Having a number at which a message can be left can sometimes be the crucial link between getting a job or finding affordable housing, and not, she said.

Her agency provides clients of social-service organizations around the country with their own phone number. That means a job seeker doesn't have to give a prospective employer the number of a homeless shelter or a relative. The number does not reveal the dire economic situation the person is experiencing.

The agency, which has an annual budget of about $500,000, contains costs by developing partnerships with existing programs in 37 regions of the nation that serve the economically disadvantaged. It plans to increase that to 65 regions in four years.

Brandon said that in 2002, 50 percent of the people using her agency's voice mail to find work found jobs; 65 percent of the homeless people using the system found housing.

Jobs Cut Since 2001 Are Gone for Good, Study Says

Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writer, reports:

The vast majority of the 2.7 million job losses since the 2001 recession began were the result of permanent changes in the U.S. economy and are not coming back, which means the labor market will not regain strength until new positions are created in novel and dynamic economic sectors, a Federal Reserve Bank of New York study has concluded.

The findings by Erica L. Groshen, an assistant vice president at the New York Fed, and Simon Potter, a senior economist, will be sobering news to policymakers scrambling to reverse the longest hiring downturn since the Depression. The conclusions of the study, which was published last week, were underscored yesterday by two Labor Department reports showing a surge in corporate productivity even as work hours are plunging.

The Labor Department said productivity -- the amount an employee produces for each hour of work -- rose at a stronger-than-expected annual rate of 6.8 percent in the April-to-June quarter.

The government will release August's unemployment and payroll levels today, and most economists expect little change since July, even though other economic indicators have improved considerably in recent weeks.

"I hope in September and October we will see some job growth," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who added, however, that such a bad job market "is not what we should be seeing at this point in a recovery."

Most past recessions have been followed by a rapid recovery of jobs, as companies that laid off workers during the downturn brought them back when business picked up. But a growing body of evidence suggests that this recession and recovery are different. Large industrial companies with such cyclical employment policies account for just 21 percent of the workforce, down from 49 percent in the early 1980s, according to the Fed study.

Now, even as the economy has slowly expanded over the past 20 months, businesses have stepped up automation, sent jobs overseas and produced more while employing fewer people.

"Instead of seeing a recession as something just to weather, managers this time seem to have seen it as an opportunity or even a mandate for permanently changing the way they operate," Groshen said.

Researchers such as Groshen say job growth will return as some industries gain importance or new ones emerge, just as telecommunications and computers drove the employment boom of the 1990s. The problem for lawmakers is that there is no way to know when or where such developments will occur.

"The job market is vastly worse right now than it was a couple of years ago," said Gary Burtless, a labor economist at the Brookings Institution.

By historic standards, the current jobless recovery is remarkable, the New York Fed study says. During the 1991-1992 recovery that crippled George H.W. Bush's bid for a second term as president, overall economic output grew slowly but steadily, while job growth remained flat for more than a year.

In 2002 and 2003, the economy has grown each quarter at annualized rates between 1.3 and 5 percent, but the number of payroll jobs has fallen an average of 0.4 percent every three months. Moreover, nationally, the number of hours worked per employee has remained steady, the Fed study said, pointing to "the emergence of a new kind of recovery, one driven by productivity increases rather than payroll gains."

The numbers are striking. Industrial machinery and equipment companies lost 160,000 jobs during the 2001 recession and 106,000 during the recovery. As consumers snapped up cars, trucks and sport-utility vehicles in record numbers, makers of transportation equipment shed 62,000 jobs during the recession and 71,000 since. Securities and commodities brokers, which saw boom times in the 1990s, eliminated 44,000 positions during the recession and 25,000 during the recovery.

And, Groshen and Potter suggest, they are not coming back.

A new study by the McKinsey Global Institute, the think tank of the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., suggests why. When a firm ships a $60-an-hour software job to a $6-an-hour code writer in India, the most obvious benefit goes to the Indian. But, the McKinsey study reports, the U.S. economy receives at least two-thirds of the benefit from offshore outsourcing, compared with the third gained by the lower-wage countries receiving the jobs.

American firms and consumers enjoy reduced costs. Larger profits can be reinvested in more innovative businesses at home. New and expanding subcontractors abroad create new markets for U.S. products. And, at least theoretically, displaced U.S. workers will find new jobs in more dynamic industries.

Forrester Research Inc., a trend-analysis firm, has predicted that 3.3 million U.S. jobs will be shipped overseas by 2015, adding that those jobs are not just assembly-line work but increasingly are white-collar positions. About 200,000 service-sector jobs will be lost each year over the next decade, Forrester predicts.

The promise of eventual economic gains are cold comfort to the roughly 9 million Americans now unemployed. The Census Bureau reported this week that more than 1.3 million more Americans were living below the federal poverty line in 2002 than 2001.

Lawmakers have focused their policy proposals on tax credits, regulatory and health care changes and trade measures designed to lower the cost of domestic production, raise the relative costs of foreign competitors and get those jobs back. But both the McKinsey study and Groshen suggest that Washington's job preservation and recovery efforts may be fruitless.

Instead, McKinsey said, policymakers should be examining new job-loss-insurance programs funded from profits generated by moving jobs offshore.

Groshen took a similar tack. "The kind of questions that policymakers need to have answers for are 'How can we get workers displaced from these old jobs into the next-best alternative as quickly possible, through training, through [job] placement, even through moving' "

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Buddhists Are Happier

Buddhists are happier. No, really. Also, they/we are calmer and more serene than most people, at least according to research conducted by several sets of scientists. Using sophisticated brain scanners, neuroscientists showed that certain parts of the brain associated with positive mood states light up constantly in Buddhist meditators. And this happens even when they're not meditating.

Research at the University of Wisconsin, examining experienced Buddhist meditators, demonstrated an unusual amount of activity in the prefrontal lobes of the brain. These areas are linked to positive mind states as well as self-control.

Paul Ekman of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center suggests that meditation also tames the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory. Experienced meditators, he found, were less likely to be shocked, flustered, surprised or angry, compared to other people. "There is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek," he says.

The studies are published in New Scientist. (via Snow Lion Publications).

Kudzu: Come Out Fighting

To combat Worms, Diversity Helps

Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe columnist, writes:

"Computer administrators spent much of August fending off a series of computer worms that infect only machines embedded with the DNA of Bill Gates. Meanwhile, Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintoshes are immune, as are Unix and Linux boxes,' reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe.

"We'll skip the tedious arguments over which operating system is best -- although, come to think of it, have you ever heard anyone claim that Windows was the best Never mind. The real issue isn't superiority, it's diversity. We live in a computing monoculture, in which nearly everybody uses the same type of software running on the same type of hardware, and consequently gets infected with the same kinds of malware,' Bray writes.

"The great culprit, of course, is... no, not Microsoft. Instead, blame Apple -- or at least the company Apple used to be. Its current leadership is doing a first-class job of introducing elegant, innovative products, and turning a profit despite holding just a sliver of the market," writes Bray. "But in the late 1980s, the days when the desktop computer market was still young and fluid, Apple blundered in ways that ensured it would never gain mass-market popularity. At the same time, Microsoft made pretty nearly all the right moves."

"Yes, the company cheated a bit, but less than its critics allege. For the most part, the Microsofties succeeded by working hand in hand with the chip makers at Intel Corp. to drive the cost of personal computing through the floor," writes Bray. "Apple could have joined this merry race to the bottom -- by porting its wonderful software onto Intel hardware. But it didn't. And so, instead of half of us using Mac software and half Windows, it's more like 3 percent Mac, 95 percent Windows, with Linux thrown in as a rounding error."

Bray writes, "And now the bill has come due. Our stagnant software monoculture is so susceptible to worms and viruses that the more potent ones sweep around the planet in under a day. Some say that Macs and Linux boxes are inherently less susceptible. Maybe yes, maybe no. But they certainly aren't susceptible to the same malware, and if more of us used them, they'd serve as a sort of digital firebreak, protecting us against the worst of the worms' impacts."

(via MacDailyNews)

No, it's not your imagination. Our computers really are going bananas. Not in a bad science-fiction movie sense. Our desktop PCs won't be starting World War III anytime soon. That's mythology; this is biology.

It turns out that bananas, the tasty yellow fruits that humans consume by the billion, are extraordinarily fragile, and not just because they bruise easily. The kind we like to eat are sterile, and can only be grown by planting shoots cut from older banana plants.

It's a neat, clean, asexual way to reproduce, and consequently very dangerous. Sexual reproduction is better. It ensures our gene pool is constantly stirred up. The resultant genetic diversity makes the species healthier, better able to resist diseases.

Recently, a fatal fungus has flared up among the world's bananas. And since they're genetically almost identical, the entire global crop is at risk. So botanists are busily carrying out genetic engineering experiments aimed at introducing a little more diversity into the banana population.

The millions of us who use Microsoft Corp. software should have a good deal of sympathy for the banana growers. We are after all, in the same boat, and we don't even have Harry Belafonte to cheer us up.

Computer administrators spent much of August fending off a series of computer worms that infect only machines embedded with the DNA of Bill Gates. Meanwhile, Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintoshes are immune, as are Unix and Linux boxes.

We'll skip the tedious arguments over which operating system is best -- although, come to think of it, have you ever heard anyone claim that Windows was the best Never mind. The real issue isn't superiority, it's diversity. We live in a computing monoculture, in which nearly everybody uses the same type of software running on the same type of hardware, and consequently gets infected with the same kinds of malware.

The great culprit, of course, is . . . no, not Microsoft. Instead, blame Apple -- or at least the company Apple used to be. Its current leadership is doing a first-class job of introducing elegant, innovative products, and turning a profit despite holding just a sliver of the market.

But in the late 1980s, the days when the desktop computer market was still young and fluid, Apple blundered in ways that ensured it would never gain mass-market popularity. At the same time, Microsoft made pretty nearly all the right moves.

Yes, the company cheated a bit, but less than its critics allege. For the most part, the Microsofties succeeded by working hand in hand with the chip makers at Intel Corp. to drive the cost of personal computing through the floor.

Apple could have joined this merry race to the bottom -- by porting its wonderful software onto Intel hardware. But it didn't. And so, instead of half of us using Mac software and half Windows, it's more like 3 percent Mac, 95 percent Windows, with Linux thrown in as a rounding error.

And now the bill has come due. Our stagnant software monoculture is so susceptible to worms and viruses that the more potent ones sweep around the planet in under a day. Some say that Macs and Linux boxes are inherently less susceptible. Maybe yes, maybe no. But they certainly aren't susceptible to the same malware, and if more of us used them, they'd serve as a sort of digital firebreak, protecting us against the worst of the worms' impacts.

Perhaps some of us are getting a clue. Consider the market for instant messaging software. Just a few years ago, consumer groups, Internet activists, and even Microsoft were all clamoring that America Online should make its Instant Messenger software compatible with everybody else's versions. AOL has studiously dragged its feet in the matter. The federal government actually restricted AOL's right to add new features to its IM service until it made progress toward interoperability.

The other day, the feds dropped those restrictions. The reaction Dead silence. It seems that nobody cares any more that AOL's software is incompatible. That's largely because Microsoft and Web portal titan Yahoo have gotten millions of users for their own IM software. Competitors feared that consumers would choose only one IM client -- AOL's. But millions of people happily use two or three of them at a time. It turns out that compatibility to a single global standard might have been ever so slightly overrated.

Alas, IM software is one thing -- massive, complex operating systems are another. We're locked into the Windows monoculture because it does make life simpler than running a variety of incompatible systems. It would be immensely costly and difficult to diversify our computing platforms with a Linux machine here and an iMac there.

On the other hand, how much did last month's worms cost the world economy Maybe not enough to justify a mass migration from Windows. But what about next time With each infection, the price of bananas keeps going up.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at [email protected].

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

Heart of Darkness, on a Desktop

KATIE HAFNER with MICHAEL FALCONE, New York Times, report:

[..] The alien programs extend well beyond viruses and worms - so named because of the way they spread, as the most familiar carriers of malicious code - to new categories known as spyware and adware. Indeed, the number of home PC's that are infested with alien software that comes in over the Internet and installs itself without the knowledge or consent of the PC user is increasing at an alarming rate.

Richard M. Smith, a computer security expert in Brookline, Mass., estimates that one in every two Windows computers has unsolicited software lurking within. [..]

Vulnerabilities in Microsoft software have only made matters worse. People who use the Macintosh or Linux operating systems are safer, as are those who use Netscape Communicator. Some spyware exploits security holes in Internet Explorer, both because it has more flaws, said Mr. Smith, the computer security expert, and because it is the most widely used browser on the market. [..]

Mr. Kibler's wife, Stephanie, said that it was hard to keep up with all the new threats, and that computer companies did not make it simple enough for the average user to deal with problems like the ones that afflicted her family's machine.

"When you give someone the car keys, you also teach them how to drive," she said. "How could you expect regular everyday users to be able to figure this out The expectation is not reasonable."

The Kiblers of Santa Clara, Calif., thought they were doing everything right. Bill Kibler, a product manager in Silicon Valley and the unofficial system administrator for his family, was nothing short of diligent about running antivirus programs. He had also erected a software firewall to shield his computer from intruders, and he regularly downloaded patches to inoculate his PC when he heard about new viruses.

But over the course of six months this year, the Kiblers noticed their computer displaying some odd behavior. The automatic weekly scans by Norton AntiVirus mysteriously stopped, and when Mr. Kibler tried to run the software manually, the program would shut down before he could execute commands.

By the middle of the summer, the Kiblers' computer had grown so phlegmatic that the family considered replacing the machine, a powerful Compaq desktop of recent vintage, with a new one.

After many hours of computer forensic work performed by a friend, it turned out that a virus program called Klez was sapping the computer of 90 percent of its processing power. Adding to the burden was a host of strangely named files discovered on the list of programs installed on the hard drive. All of them had entered the machine from the Internet, producing a blizzard of pop-up ads.

The Kiblers' experience is hardly a rarity. More and more PC owners are discovering software lurking on their computers that they had no idea was there - software that can snoop, destroy or simply reproduce itself in droves.

The SoBig and Blaster worms that have been invading computer systems worldwide for several weeks are slowing down. But the two intruders left behind software that could linger undetected for months.

"Both SoBig and Blaster have components that are actively trying to communicate or reach out to master servers without the knowledge of the user," said Vincent Weafer, a senior director at Symantec Security Response, part of the software company that makes Norton AntiVirus.

The alien programs extend well beyond viruses and worms - so named because of the way they spread, as the most familiar carriers of malicious code - to new categories known as spyware and adware. Indeed, the number of home PC's that are infested with alien software that comes in over the Internet and installs itself without the knowledge or consent of the PC user is increasing at an alarming rate.

Richard M. Smith, a computer security expert in Brookline, Mass., estimates that one in every two Windows computers has unsolicited software lurking within.

"I'm the official computer maintainer in my extended family, and I have seven computers to keep up and running," Mr. Smith said. "With the exception of my computer, they've all been whacked." He was spared, he says, only because of his extreme vigilance.

The programs hide in the recesses of the machine and seldom announce their presence. They can enter the machine by way of a virus that has attached itself to an incoming file. Or they can be downloaded unawares by simply clicking on, say, a pop-up ad. Mr. Smith said such assaults were called "drive-by downloads."

"These programs are small and can be downloaded within seconds on a broadband connection," he said. "Once it's started, there's no way to stop it."

Until symptoms appear, the user knows nothing of the unwanted software's presence. Spyware, which may piggyback on another downloaded program, often operates in the background, sending information back to a remote site and displaying pop-up ads tailored to the user's online habits, or harvesting e-mail addresses to sell to spammers.

Adware is similar but more benign, or at least better encased in euphemism; its defenders say that it is something that consumers consciously agree to download. More insidious programs, perhaps better described as annoyware, redirect the computer's browser to pornographic Web sites, often to pump up those sites' traffic figures or commandeer the machine's modem to dial 900 numbers at the computer owner's expense.

PC owners are just beginning to become aware of the extent of such lurkware, and antivirus companies are beginning to expand their products to notify users of its presence.

McAfee Security, a division of Network Associates that makes antivirus products, estimates that 60,000 viruses are in circulation, and some experts say that perhaps 200 new ones are created each month. No comparable figure is available for spyware and adware, said Bryson Gordon, a senior product manager at McAfee, but their growth has mirrored the surge in spam and in music-file-sharing programs like Napster and KaZaA, which link the hard drives of thousands of users into something resembling one big co-op.

Spyware programs are easier to create than a virus, Mr. Gordon says, and some Web sites even offer spyware and adware toolkits.

Some software requests the user's permission before installing itself. Such is the case with the Gator Corporation, a company in Redwood City, Calif., that delivers Web advertising to people who click on an end-user license agreement in which they agree to receive the ads in exchange for a free program. This can include Gator's own e-wallet (a program that automatically fills in Web forms with log-ins and passwords), the downloadable DivX video player or a simple calendar program.

About 100 million copies of Gator have been downloaded to date, said Scott Eagle, chief marketing officer at Gator. He and other Gator officials make a point of insisting that their product is adware, not spyware, and that the distinction is crucial.

"Spyware is stuff that you don't know how it got on your computer and it doesn't add value," Mr. Eagle said. "It could be a program that's specifically designed to seek out information like credit card information or e-mail information but you have no idea how you got it, there's no permission and there's no way of removing it."

Adware, on the other hand, Mr. Eagle said, is something that consumers agree to download. Once Gator is installed, it tracks a user's Web travels and delivers what he called "highly relevant, highly branded" ads. "Users are very much aware that they have this ad-supported software on their computer,'' Mr. Eagle said.

Yet the line between informed consent and naïve clicking can be thin. Although Gator requires permission from users before it is downloaded, people often have no recollection of having agreed to its terms.

One of the programs Mr. Kibler had on his computer was Gator, which he did not recall having consented to.

Lavasoft, a company in Sweden that makes security software, sells a popular program called Ad-Aware, which alerts users to the presence of programs like Gator, as well as others that track Web browsing habits and collect information to use for targeted advertising.

Mike Wood, a spokesman for Lavasoft, said that most PC users fail to take the time to understand exactly what was being downloaded to their machines and frequently click straight through the fine print of end-user license agreements.

Those who fight spyware and adware engage in escalation wars similar to the ones facing antivirus companies. No sooner do Lavasoft and others discover a new form of adware and spyware than the makers of such software turn around and develop another one.

"It's turned into something of a minor cold war," Mr. Wood said.

Mr. Kibler suspected that his 14-year-old daughter, Carly, and her frequent use of the free version of KaZaA, known for installing adware on people's computers, might have had something to do with the problem.

"The minute you install KaZaA you have three or four questionable things on your computer," Mr. Smith said.

In the end, the Kiblers theorized that the troubles may have originated with a program attached to one of Carly's MP3 files. Or it could have been a malicious file sent as an e-mail attachment and downloaded accidentally by any member of the family.

Douglas Berman, a computer specialist in Berkeley, Calif., who works in health care, said he noticed a few months ago that whenever he used his home PC to do a search on Google, a different screen appeared underneath the Google page. The unsolicited page offered up an entirely different set of search results, all of them ads thinly disguised as Google pages.

When Mr. Berman examined the contents of the machine more closely, he found a half dozen or so Gator files on the hard drive.

The Berman family computer resides in the kitchen, perhaps the most heavily trafficked room in the house. Not only do Mr. Berman, his wife and their 10-year-old daughter use the computer, but visiting neighbors, relatives and house guests often gravitate to it as well.

Although Mr. Berman has no doubt that someone at some point gave permission for the software to be installed, he wanted it off the computer.

"I'm not conscious of any benefit I'm getting from having it," he said. "Then there's the question of, 'What's it opening the door for' " With a few simple instructions from Gator, Mr. Berman was ultimately able to remove the software that created the Google look-alike pages.

Todd Jones, a senior at the University of California at Berkeley, also found himself plagued by spyware. The programs reconfigured his computer, changing his toolbars and installing new favorites in his browser and shortcut icons on his desktop, all of which linked to adult Web sites.

"I thought that in order for you to have a program on your computer, you had to install it yourself," Mr. Jones said. "Now I know that's obviously not true."

Vulnerabilities in Microsoft software have only made matters worse. People who use the Macintosh or Linux operating systems are safer, as are those who use Netscape Communicator. Some spyware exploits security holes in Internet Explorer, both because it has more flaws, said Mr. Smith, the computer security expert, and because it is the most widely used browser on the market.

Microsoft officials say it is not the holes in its software but the people who write spyware and viruses that are the problem. The end user, they say, is ultimately responsible for what gets downloaded onto a hard drive.

"We need to do everything we can to make our software more secure than it is," said Amy Carroll, the director of product management in Microsoft's security business unit. "We are constantly addressing the core software. But the Internet is a really powerful tool, and there are bad actors out there who will take advantage of that."

The antivirus companies, meanwhile, are adding to their quarry. The latest version of the Norton program, called Norton AntiVirus 2004, scans for a host of so-called "expanded threats," or security threats that are not necessarily viruses. The new Norton program also scans for adware like Gator.

And last month, McAfee released a version of its VirusScan software that includes spyware and adware detection. Since then, the program has found that results from 660,000 computers using the new version showed spyware on 20 percent of the machines, said Mr. Gordon, the McAfee product manager.

But that kind of help came too late for John Harrington, a semi-retired communications consultant in Fairfax, Va.

All the recent news about the Blaster and SoBig worms prompted Mr. Harrington to run his McAfee program. It identified not those particular scourges, but nearly a dozen others, with names like adware-wind.dr.

The McAfee program was unable to delete the files, and a call to the support line did no good.

"She asked me if I had heard of spyware or adware, and I said no," Mr. Harrington said.

Mr. Harrington eventually downloaded the Ad-Aware program from Lavasoft, and it removed the files.

"I was surprised they were on my computer because I thought I had perfect protection through McAfee," he said.

Even with the additional help, people feel overwhelmed by the abundance of software they have not asked for, especially when it comes to monitoring, managing and safeguarding against it.

Mr. Kibler's wife, Stephanie, said that it was hard to keep up with all the new threats, and that computer companies did not make it simple enough for the average user to deal with problems like the ones that afflicted her family's machine.

"When you give someone the car keys, you also teach them how to drive," she said. "How could you expect regular everyday users to be able to figure this out The expectation is not reasonable."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company