Iceland tops Internet broadband league: survey Yahoo! NEWS
Iceland had the highest concentration of broadband Internet users in 2005, but the United States still leads in absolute numbers with more than double the connections of Japan, a survey showed on Wednesday. In Iceland, 26.7 percent of citizens have a subscription to an always-on broadband Internet connection, compared with 25.4 percent in South Korea, 25.3 percent in the Netherlands and 25 percent in Denmark, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said in a study. The number of broadband connections in Iceland grew to 78,017 by the end of 2005, from a penetration rate of 18.2 percent broadband penetration a year earlier, when it lagged Korea, the Netherlands and Denmark. The number of broadband subscriptions throughout the OECD countries grew to 158 million by December 2005 from 136 million six months earlier. This is an average of 13.6 subscribers per 100 inhabitants in the entire OECD. The United States, with 16.8 percent broadband penetration, counted 49.39 million subscribers in 2005, compared with 22.52 million in Japan which has 17.6 percent penetration. The fastest broadband download speeds are in Japan and Korea as a result of fibre-optic cable connections. More than 6 out of every 10 broadband households in the world get their broadband over Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) which uses copper phone wires connecting homes and businesses.

Search users 'stop at page three' BBC NEWS
Most people using a search engine expect to find what they are looking for on the first page of results, says a US study. At most, people will go through three pages of results before giving up, found the survey by Jupiter Research and marketing firm iProspect. It also found that a third of users linked companies in the first page of results with top brands. The study surveyed 2,369 people from a US online consumer panel. It also found 62% of those surveyed clicked on a result on the first page, up from 48% in 2002. Some 90% of consumers clicked on a link in these pages, up from 81% in 2002. And 41% of consumers changed engines or their search term if they did not find what they were searching for on the first page.

Effective marketing
Robert Murray, president of iProspect, said the study shows the "increased importance of being found in the first top search results". He added as search engine efficacy has improved, along with the searching skills of users, so have expectations. "They [users] know what they want, and they want to find it immediately, and the majority want to find it on page one," he said. He said businesses needed to take the results of the study on board. "It should be clear that to be effective, marketers need to take action to ensure that their company is found in the top search results on a broad range of search terms and not just single word generic terms." "It's time that companies that are refreshing, re-designing, or launching a new website start with the end in mind. If no one can find it, no one will use it."

Increasing traffic
Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Watch, said the study reinforced current thinking. "It's always been the case that businesses want to be on the first page because then you get the traffic," he told the BBC News website. "This study tells me it was already important to be on the first page, now it is even more so. "It's another call for search engines to look at their performance." He said businesses wanting to improve their chances of returning good results should have "good pages, text rich content, and good links pointing to you".

African fish leaps for land bugs BBC NEWS
Scientists have discovered a fish that can hunt and catch its prey on land. The eel catfish, Channallabes apus, is found in the muddy swamps of the tropics of western Africa. The 30-40cm-long (12-16in) fish is able to propel itself out of the water and bend its head downwards to capture insects in its jaws. The Belgian researchers, writing in the journal Nature, hope this discovery will help to explain how fish moved from sea to land millions of years ago.

Beetle eater
With a small head and a long, flexible body, C. apus has an eel-like appearance. The fish's diet provided the scientists with the first clue to its remarkable behaviour - it mainly eats beetles which are found on land. After an expedition to study the fish in its swampy habitat in Gabon, Africa, the team brought some of the animals back to Belgium for further research. They placed the fish in a specially designed aquarium with both wet and muddy areas, mimicking C. apus's natural environment. "We pointed high-speed video cameras towards the place where we had left the prey and waited until the fish was hungry enough to leave the water and catch it," explained Sam Van Wassenbergh, an author on the Nature paper and a biologist from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. "The first time we saw it, we were amazed - it was really spectacular." The fish captures its prey by propelling itself onto the shore, raising the front part of its body and bending its head downwards over the insect. Usually, the fish uses suction to feed underwater; but because air is much less dense than water, the fish needs to employ a new strategy to catch its food. "The way it positions its head prevents the prey from being pushed away," said Mr Van Wassenbergh. "This way it can place its jaws over the prey; and when it is strongly between the jaws, the fish will return to the water where it can further ingest the insect." C. apus has a specially adapted spine which gives it extra flexibility, allowing it to tilt its head. The fish uses the rest of its long body to maintain stability while it is out of the water.

From sea to land
The best studied fish that feeds on land is the mudskipper. It feeds using a similar method to the catfish, but can use its pectoral fins to hop onto land and to lift and lower its head. The researchers hope the discovery of another species of land-going fish will help shed light on how sea creatures evolved into land-living tetrapods during the Devonian Period, about 400 million years ago. They say C. apus bears similarities to fossils found from this period, including the recently described Tiktaalik rosea. This creature, found in Arctic Canada, may be a "missing link" between sea and land-living animals. "[T. rosea] had a neck that appears to be quite mobile, and strong fins. If you ask me if it could feed terrestrially in a similar way to catfish or mudskippers - I would say it probably could," said Mr Van Wassenbergh.
By Rebecca Morelle, BBC News science reporter

- Volcano-Like Tremors Detected Near San Andreas
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Volcano_...an_Andreas.html

Parkfield CA (SPX) Apr 13, 2006 - Tremors within the Earth are usually--but not always--related to the activity of a volcano. Now, such vibrations have been recorded nowhere near a volcano, but at a geologic observatory at the San Andreas Fault.

- Pacific Northwest Tectonic Plates Are Moving
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Pacific_...Are_Moving.html

Beatles set to join online music revolution Yahoo! NEWS
The Beatles are preparing to sell their songs online after years of refusing to take part in the Internet music boom, according to testimony given by the head of their record company. Neil Aspinall, a former Beatles road manager and managing director of Apple Corps, was a witness in the company's trademark lawsuit against Apple Computer. He said that the company was digitally remastering the entire Beatles catalog, which would pave the way for selling the songs online. "I think it would be wrong to offer downloads of the old masters when I am making new masters," he said in a written statement submitted to the High Court in London earlier this month. "It would be better to wait and try to do them both simultaneously so that you then get the publicity of the new masters and the downloading, rather than just doing it ad hoc." A spokeswoman for Apple Corps confirmed Aspinall's statement, and said that the company is preparing to make the Beatles catalog available through online music services. "There's no firm date on any of this at the moment. There are a lot of projects that Apple are working on at the moment," she said on Thursday. The Beatles have been high-profile holdouts from the booming online music sector, which saw sales triple to $1.1 billion in 2005. Apple Corps, owned by Beatles Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono and the estate of George Harrison, have accused Apple Computer of violating a 1991 agreement by using the Apple name and logo to sell music downloads through its market-leading iTunes Music Store. The trial ended on April 6, with a decision from the judge due after Easter.
By Adam Pasick

Google offers free Web calendar service Yahoo! NEWS
Google Inc. is introducing on Thursday a free Web calendar service for consumers to schedule events and share them with others, opening a new level of competition with rivals such as Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Google Calendar, available at www.google.com/calendar, offers a variety of features to make using Web calendars as easy as desktop calendars such as Outlook, allowing users to "drag and drop" events from one calendar to another. The new service takes advantage of slick Web programming tricks using Javascript and XML along with RSS. But perhaps the biggest breakthrough is the calendar's use of "natural language processing" technology that simplifies how events are entered. The feature allows users to type simple commands like "leave work today at 5 p.m." or "drinks Thursday with Elinor" that the system can interpret and automatically insert into the calendar. Events can be private, shared with friends, or made public on the Web, Google Calendar's product manager said. Users of Google's free e-mail service Gmail may find the Google Calendar particularly useful. Google's software scours Gmail to recognize mentions of events and then automatically offers the user to add the date information to the calendar.

PRESSING OTHERS TO INNOVATE
Details of the long-rumored calendar, complete with screenshots of features and instruction guides, had leaked out in late February among Silicon Valley technology enthusiasts. The calendar poses a direct challenge to Yahoo Calendar, the No. 1 Web calendar service in the United States, which was introduced in 1998 and has changed little in substance in recent years. But Google said it plans to "play nice" and allow users to share Google Calendar events with Yahoo Calendar. While Sjogreen is careful to say that Google Calendar is not designed to replace corporate calendars, it could raise expectations among office workers that its features should be part of corporate scheduling systems like Microsoft's Outlook or IBM's Lotus Notes. Sjogreen said Google is working to offer seamless connections to Microsoft Outlook, the Palm Treo smartphone and to various other mobile phone calendars in coming months. The trial version of Google Calendar is being offered in English. Gmail users will begin being offered the service within the next week. In coming months, Google will translate the calendar into multiple languages, Sjogreen said. The Sunnyvale, California-based rival of Google said in a statement that the company is working on updates to Yahoo Calendar, which it plans to release in coming months. Last year, Yahoo acquired Upcoming.org. < http://upcoming.org/ >, a social event calendar that helps users manage events, share them with friends and family, and post notifications to one's own or to other Web sites.
By Eric Auchard

MetroFi selected to operate Portland Wi-Fi network Yahoo! NEWS
MetroFi Inc. said on Wednesday it was selected by the city of Portland, Oregon, to design and operate a citywide Wi-Fi network that will provide free wireless Internet access and improved public services. MetroFi said the Portland system will be built at no cost to the city, which expects to save millions of dollars in productivity and wireless Internet service fees by using the network. MetroFi's free Internet access services will be supported by local and national advertisers. Customers who want Internet access without ads will be able to connect to a premium service for about $20 a month, the company said.

China students prep for study abroad Yahoo! News
Chinese students are putting the "world" back into the Worldwide Web, using the Internet to prep each other in ultra-fine detail on the unfamiliar and often laborious process of applying to study abroad. Online chatter in China's cyberspace has intensified to a virtual roar, as many U.S. colleges this month issue admission letters for their Class of 2010. A posting at one of the most trafficked local sites, www.cuus.cn, keeps an ongoing list of the latest admittees from China, including one to Harvard, one to Princeton, five to Yale and six to Stanford, among the 65 schools listed. Earning a degree from a foreign university has become big business, not only for schools looking to diversify their student body, but for Chinese students, who hope that an overseas education -- with four-year tuition often running $100,000 or more -- will open doors for them and end with lucrative jobs. "Without the Internet, you don't know where to start, and you don't know there's a way you can get into American universities," said Chen Shuang, a Shanghai high school senior who will go to Stanford in the fall. "These sites tell you how to apply, how to write your essays, and also how to prepare for the SATs and the TOEFL," she said, referring to the crucial Test of English as a Foreign Language. The Internet provides not only an information exchange, but also helps to hook people up for everything from advice on how to write admission essays to prepping for interviews, said Tina Shi, a graduate student who went to Stanford last year from Shanghai. "Students also use the message boards to facilitate offline events. In my year, we had four or five application teams, each with 10 to 12 people," she said. "They get to know each other from the online setting and do offline events, like editing each others' personal statements and resumes. They also do mock interviews."

VISA VORTEX
With admissions over and done, the topic in online chat rooms and message boards has turned to the next, and often last, stage in the study abroad process: getting a visa. Recent postings are full of advice on the visa application process, which centers on a trip to the local consulate and a brief -- usually five minutes or less -- interview, for which many Chinese spend hours, or even days, preparing. The biggest fixation is on U.S. visas, since the largest number of Chinese students end up going to the United States. Postings from one site contain everything from detailed reports of a variety of visa interviews, to the temperature inside the consulate waiting room, to commentary on which officers like to ask what questions. Sites also contain descriptive designations for many of the visa officers, such as "the bald good-looking man" and "blonde little sister." "Most of the visa officers are very nice," says one posting from someone called Annekoo in an internal message board for Fudan, Shanghai's top university. "Their work is very demanding. It's not that they don't want to let you go (to the United States), but rather that their country doesn't want to let you go. If you soothe them with a few sentences first, it will have a good effect." Another posting advises visa applicants to say they would return to China after graduating, giving reasons such as to be reunited with family, and also to mention that they have no interest in seeking work in the United States. "But don't go overboard by talking too much about your patriotism or wearing traditional Chinese clothing," it says. U.S. consular officials take pains to point out that seven of eight student applicants now get visas, and that the total number has grown steadily in the last two years, up 25 percent to 7,198 in 2005 from 5,748 in 2004. "The officers all realize their interviews are going to be microscopically analyzed and shared on the Web," said a U.S. consular official. "The interviews are short. But our officers do a lot of interviews, so they can come to decisions very quickly."
By Doug Young

Details Revealed About Huge Dinosaurs news.ask
Scientists are learning more about what appears to be one of the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs known, a two-legged beast whose bones were found several years ago in the fossil-rich Patagonia region of Argentina. One expert called the discovery the first substantial evidence of group living by large meat-eaters other than tyrannosaurs like T. rex. The creature, which apparently measured more than 40 feet long, is called Mapusaurus roseae. The discovery of Mapusaurus included bones from at least seven to nine of the beasts, suggesting the previously unknown animal may have lived and hunted in groups. That hunting strategy might have allowed it to attack even bigger beasts, huge plant-eating dinosaurs.

In an undated photo provided by Professor Rodolfo Coria, a dog sits by a replica of the head of a Mapusaurus roseae at the Carmen Funes Museum in Plaza Huincul, Argentina. The dinosaur was discovered in the Patagonia region of Argentina and appears to be one of the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs known. (AP Photo/HO/Prof. Rodolfo Coria)
The find was reported in 2000 by The Associated Press. It is described in the latest issue of the journal Geodiversitas by paleontologists Rodolfo Coria of the Carmen Funes Museum in Plaza Huincul, Argentina, and Philip Currie of the University of Alberta in Canada. They oversaw the excavation of the dinosaur's remains about 15 miles south of Plaza Huincul from 1997 to 2001. Mapusaurus is estimated to have lived about 100 million years ago. Currie, in an e-mail, said it's hard to say how long the biggest specimen was because no complete skeleton was found. He estimated it may have measured about 41 feet from the snout to the tip of the tail. It may have been about a foot longer than Giganotosaurus, also found in Patagonia, but without a complete skeleton "you will never know," he wrote. The Field Museum in Chicago says its T. rex skeleton, Sue, is 42 feet long. Thomas Holtz Jr., a University of Maryland dinosaur expert, said that Mapusaurus clearly joins Giganotosaurus, T. rex and a huge African beast called Spinosaurus as among the biggest carnivorous dinosaurs. But he said it's impossible to know exactly how they rank in overall size. The fossil record is too fragmentary, and unlikely to capture the biggest individual of each species, he said. Spinosaurus was probably the longest species, but length is a poor indicator of overall size because tails can be shorter or longer without affecting a creature's weight very much, he said. Still, Spinosaurus was probably the biggest in overall bulk as well, he said. Coria noted the dig showed evidence of social behavior in Mapusaurus. The excavation found hundreds of bones from several Mapusaurus individuals but none from any other creature. That suggests the animals were together before they died, Coria said. Perhaps they hunted in packs, though there is no direct evidence for that, he said in an e-mail. Currie, in a statement from his university, speculated that pack hunting may have allowed Mapusaurus to prey on the biggest known dinosaur, Argentinosaurus, a 125-foot-long plant-eater. Holtz called the finding the first substantive evidence of group living by giant two-legged carnivores other than tyrannosaurs. It's not clear whether the animals cooperated in hunting, as wolves or lions do, or simply mobbed their prey or just gathered around after one of them made a kill, he said. "Mapusaurus" comes from the word for "Earth" in the language of the Mapuche tribe of western Patagonia, while "roseae" refers both to the rose-colored rock that yielded the specimens and to the name of a sponsor of the excavations.
By MALCOLM RITTER

San Francisco faces big shaker BBC News
Another magnitude 7.9 earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area would probably produce much stronger shaking than the catastrophic 1906 event of the same size. The wider region should also expect thousands of fatalities and economic losses in the billions. These conclusions are contained in two reports released to coincide with the 18 April centennial of the great quake that destroyed the city and killed 3,000 people. The studies will be discussed at a special conference this week. Scientists say the next big quake - a magnitude 6.7 or larger - will likely come within 30 years. The first study, When the Big One Strikes Again, was commissioned by conference organisers and provides an estimate range of the death and damage toll for Northern California if an earthquake similar to 1906 hit the region today.

The city was shattered, and what remained then went up in flames
The other study, produced by the US Geological Survey (USGS), shows how shaking intensity would change if the San Andreas Fault were to rupture in a different place to 1906. USGS scientists believe they have been able to reproduce the ground motion that occurred 100 years ago fairly accurately, making it a useful model to estimate the damage caused by the next big quake. "These studies allow us to model the shaking and fill in the big gap in the data," said Dr Greg Beroza, a geophysicist at Stanford University who helped create the USGS simulation. "We can apply the results to other large earthquakes."

Time differences
The conference-commissioned report was prepared by Charles Kircher, a private engineering consultant.

The chances of another big Bay Area quake have been assessed
One of its shaking scenarios suggests that out of the 10 million residents in 19 counties, a 7.9 earthquake could kill 1,800 and seriously injure 8,000 if it hit at night; and kill 3,400 and seriously injure 13,000 if it hit during the day.

Total economic losses could reach more than $120bn.
"Daytime casualties are typically higher than night-time, when people are in homes that are less susceptible to collapse than commercial buildings," said Dr Kircher. However, the proportion of night-time deaths is raised slightly in San Francisco itself, where older homes are more vulnerable to collapse. Roughly one quarter - 800 - daytime deaths and almost a third of night-time deaths- 574 - would be in SF city districts. The estimates are based on death by building collapse by shaking alone; not by fire, which could raise the death toll. Of the city's 400,000 residents in 1906, it is estimated that 3,000 died from both building collapse and the conflagration that swept the city immediately afterwards. While it was unlikely a fire that size would rage again, smaller fires were very possible, said Dr Kircher. "We expect fires to contribute significantly to the total loss," he added. Adding in the cost of damage due to fire and lifeline infrastructure - such as highways - could raise the economic bill to $150bn. And this does not include long-term economic impact, the sort experienced in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The total is 10 times the loss from the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, a 6.7 tremor on the San Andreas Fault centred in a mountainous region 100km (60 miles) to the south of San Francisco.

Steady improvement
Dr Kircher's study estimated loss to the area by using two 7.9 shaking scenarios that produced two sets of figures.

Click here to see a summary of the loss estimates
One set, expressed by the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale, is based on a re-evaluation of the actual ground shaking in the 1906 earthquake. (However, scientists do not expect the ground to shake exactly like it did in 1906.) The second set, referred to as M7.9, is based on a standard model of energy propagation from an earthquake occurring on the segments of the fault that ruptured in 1906; a sort of generic 7.9 quake. Death and damage estimates are lower in the MMI model than in the M7.9; 800 night-time and 1,600 daytime deaths for the region, and $90bn dollars in economic loss. While the population has increased 10 fold since 1906, when less than a million people called the greater San Francisco Bay area home, the number of fatalities does not increase proportionally in the recent estimates. "Our knowledge of earthquakes and how they affect buildings have advanced quite a bit and our seismic codes have been advancing," said Dr Beroza, "but we're still talking about thousands of deaths. Will the public say that's acceptable?" Dr Kircher said that an important finding of the study was that vulnerable buildings - un-reinforced masonry, older reinforced concrete and "soft-storey" - made up less than 5% of all buildings in the region but would kill more than half the people. "Fixing those buildings would cut our casualties in half," said Dr Kircher.

Moveable epicentre
The second USGS study to be presented to the conference offers scientists a re-creation of the 1906 shaking, and a how it might change if the fault ruptured other than where it did, 2km off the coast of San Francisco. The computer model draws on a new and highly detailed 3D geologic model of the Bay Area. While scientists do not know when the next big quake will come or where it will originate, they do say that a 7.9 quake is unlikely to mirror 1906. "There is no guarantee that the next big one will begin exactly where the last big one began," said Dr Beroza. "It will be different and may not start in the same place." In the USGS simulations, a rupture at the northern end of the San Andreas Fault, with the same amount of slip, creates the same or greater shaking for San Francisco as it did in 1906; while an epicentre at the southern end of the northern portion of the fault, near San Juan Batista, creates considerably stronger shaking for the city. This is due to variations in local geology and the fact that the energy from the rupture and seismic waves increase as they propagate toward the city. "Things could be worse for San Francisco itself with a rupture that begins south of the city, than it was in 1906 when the rupture began very close to it," said Brad Aagaard, a USGS research geophysicist who ran the simulations. This, ironically, makes the original 1906 quake, with its epicentre near the city, a best-case scenario for San Francisco if a 7.9 earthquake were to hit again. But increased shaking in one area means less shaking somewhere else. Moving the epicentre to San Juan Batista produces more intense shaking for San Francisco, but milder shaking in the Silicon Valley region. "The bottom line is that the next large event on the San Andreas Fault will differ in some ways from the 1906 earthquake," said Dr Aagaard. "We need to consider many scenarios in order to be prepared for such an event." The 100th Anniversary Earthquake Conference continues through to 21 April in San Francisco.
By Molly Bentley, in San Francisco

PBS considers putting shows online Yahoo! News
The Public Broadcasting System is considering making its television shows available on the Internet or portable devices like MP3 players, its new president and chief executive officer said on Monday. PBS is also weighing whether to partner with technology companies, in the same way that Walt Disney Co. has teamed up with Apple Computer Inc. to sell episodes of some of its ABC television network series on iTunes for downloading to iPods, CEO Paula Kerger said. "My goal in running PBS is that no matter what choice consumers in the digital age decide to do ... we recognize the need to make content available to any of those platforms, and right now we're moving in that direction," Kerger said at a luncheon sponsored by the Media Institute. She also pointed to PBS's archive of educational shows like "Nature," "Frontline" and other documentaries as a possible resource that could be accessed "anytime, anywhere." She said some PBS stations already make some shows available free on the Internet but that depends on broadcast rights, which can vary. She noted that PBS does not have the financial resources available to commercial broadcasters. "So I think we probably will look at partnerships," she told reporters after the speech. She said initial discussions were under way with possible corporate partners, but PBS was trying to figure out the right direction. Kerger pointed to podcasting already done by the "Newshour with Jim Lehrer," but noted that news largely has a limited shelf life. "I think we will not do a full flung leap into any one area. I think we'll start to experiment and I think we'll experiment along the product that seems to make the most sense," she said.
Reuters/VNU

Internet plays bigger role in life decisions: poll Yahoo! News
Nearly half of U.S. users of the Internet went online for help with major life decisions such as finding a college for their child or looking for a new place to live, according to a survey released on Wednesday. The results show that the Internet is becoming increasingly important to users in their everyday lives, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a non-profit group which conducted the survey. Some 45 percent of Internet users, or an estimated 60 million Americans, said the Internet helped them make big decisions or face a major moment in their life during the previous two years, the survey found. That was up from 40 percent of Internet users who answered the same survey questions in 2002. Specifically, the survey asked 2,201 adults last month if the Internet played a crucial or important role in making at least one of eight major life decisions. An estimated 21 million Americans turned to the Internet when seeking more training for a career, while 17 million used it to choose a school for a family member or to help another person with a major illness, the Pew Internet group said. Some 16 million Americans used the Internet when buying a car or making a major investment or financial decision, it said. An estimated 10 million Americans used the Internet when looking for a new place to live; 8 million when changing jobs; and 7 million when dealing with their own major illness or health condition, the survey said. "It seems likely that the convenience of broadband draws more users to the Internet to deal with some decision," the Pew Internet group said. However, better online content and more widely advertised web sites may also contribute to the rising use of the Internet with major life decisions, it said. The survey results were posted on the Internet at www.pewinternet.org.

Google to search inside business software programs Yahoo! News
Google Inc., the consumer Web search favorite, will help office workers dig deeper into business software programs and databases to find relevant information tidbits, the company said on Tuesday. Google is introducing a new version of its system to trawl for information locked inside an organization's key business systems, working with software makers including Oracle Corp., Salesforce.com and Cisco Systems. The Mountain View, California company seeks to answer criticism that its basic keyword system of searching for information on the public Web is too blunt an instrument to cut through complex office filing systems to find salient details. The new feature, known by the mouthful "Google OneBox for Enterprise," is built into boxes Google sells to businesses. They help create custom search systems for employees inside organizations or for consumers on the company's own Web site. "Google is becoming more and more savvy about what the enterprise needs in the way of search," said IDC analyst Sue Feldman, an expert in the enterprise search field. "It is taking commodity search, adding features, and making search more appealing" for business users, she said. While Google lacks the sophistication of systems that have long focused on the corporate search market -- from suppliers like Autonomy, Fast Search and Transfer and IBM -- Google is quickly making in-roads, Feldman said. Google plans to allow corporate customers to create company-specific searches where employees can use the familiar Google search box to locate information such as contacts or calendars, employee benefits, sales leads or purchase orders. "Over time Google has become a gateway for searching for all types of information," said Dave Girouard, general manager of the company's enterprise business. "We have been doing this on the consumer side for years," he said. Already, when a consumer goes to http://www.google.com and types in a query for certain types of information, Google analyzes the request to figure out if it may refer to, say, a song or airline flight times, the weather or stock prices. The seeming simplicity of Google disguises how different search terms whisk a user into entirely different databases. Similarly, office workers using the new business software search feature inside companies using a Search Appliance -- as Google's hardware product is known -- will be able to drill down and search for specific types of office documents. The move to customize how Google hardware searches inside popular software applications comes as the Search Appliance nears sales to its 4,000th customer, nearly double the 2,000 customers it counted in 2005's third quarter, Girouard said. A company could set up a hundred different categories of custom searches for documents inside their organizations, with specific queries targets to particular employee groups. Initial software partners include Cognos Inc. and SAS, suppliers of software used to uncover marketing trends in business databases along with Employease, an online supplier of employee benefits services but the scope of Google's effort is to embrace hundreds if not thousands of common software types. Google will promote use of the new search feature by providing open access to developers to download the software, create new applications and share them with other developers. In order to jump start use of its search software inside business, government and other private organizations, Google has worked with consulting partners such as BearingPoint and Persistent Systems to provide access to commonly used applications from SAP AG, Oracle's PeopleSoft, Microsoft Exchange and IBM's Lotus Notes.
By Eric Auchard

Secret rivers found in Antarctic BBC News
Antarctica's buried lakes are connected by a network of rivers moving water far beneath the surface, say UK scientists. It was thought the sub-glacial lakes had been completely sealed for millions of years, enabling unique species to evolve in them. Writing in the journal Nature, experts say international plans to drill into the lakes may now have to be reviewed. Any attempts to drill into one body of water risks contaminating others. "What this paper shows is that not only could you contaminate a lake, you could contaminate the whole drainage system," lead author Duncan Wingham, of University College London, told the BBC News website.

Time capsules
The sub-glacial lakes of Antarctica are regarded as "time capsules" of the period when the continent began to freeze over.

Vostok formed around 16 million years ago
Scientists believe any life they contain might shed light on extreme environments on other worlds, such as the ice-bound ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa. The presence of the drainage system may change current thinking on the chances of finding microbial life that has evolved "independently". "The notion that these things have been sitting in the lakes evolving for millions of years probably won't wash," said Professor Wingham. "I think the idea that they have an isolated biological environment where things have gone their own way will have to be re-examined." Professor Martin Siegert, of the University of Bristol, a co-author of the Nature study, said there would still be a very interesting microbiological story to uncover. "We have always thought of sub-glacial lakes as being distinct bodies isolated from each other," he said. "For at least some of these lakes, that won't be true but they will still be isolated from the atmosphere."

Time capsules
It was once thought the Antarctic continent was too cold for water to exist in liquid form beneath its frozen wastes.

• There are more than 150 sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica; Vostok is the biggest
• At 14,000 sq km, it is about the extent of Lake Ontario and is up to 500m keep in places.
• Overlying ice layers reveal a 400,000-year environmental record with microbes present throughout the core
• Many scientists consider Vostok to be a good model for the ecosystems that might exist on Jupiter's frozen moons

But since the 1960s, satellites and aircraft with powerful radar devices have discovered more and more lakes buried kilometres beneath the thick ice sheet. More than 150 have been detected so far, but they are expected to run into thousands. The largest underground body of water in Antarctica is known as Lake Vostok, which is 250km (155 miles) long, 40km (25 miles) wide and 400m (1,300ft) deep. The US space agency (Nasa) and the Russian academy of sciences are planning to break through the ice to sample the water for life. There are also proposals to explore and sample Lake Ellsworth in west Antarctica by a team involving 14 UK universities and research institutions, plus scientists from Chile, the US, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and New Zealand. Cynan Ellis-Evans of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK, said the idea of using a small lake away from Vostok to test methods would now have to be looked at again. "This paper indicates that lakes may well be connected at irregular time intervals and that even an apparently isolated lake can breach and transfer water hundreds of kilometres to other distant lakes so the contamination potential in relation to small lakes is greater than we'd previously thought," he said. But he said evidence from examining shorelines suggested larger lakes like Vostok were relatively stable. "I am of the view that Vostok and other similar large lakes have developed in isolation and so the interest from a biological viewpoint will remain high."

Satellite data
The latest research was carried out by scientists at the Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) at UCL, the University of Bristol and University of Cambridge. They took ultra-precise measurements of a region in East Antarctica - home to some of the oldest, thickest ice on the continent - using radars on the European Space Agency's ERS-2 satellite. The satellite found synchronous changes in the surface height at several locations hundreds of kilometres apart. "To find a whole section - 30km (18 miles) by 10km (6 miles) - had dropped vertically was a great surprise," Professor Wingham explained. "We then found another similar event 300km (186 miles) away, but that bit had increased instead of decreasing. "We were then left with the problem of explaining what was going on. Movement of water was the only mechanism conceivable."

Catastrophic flood
The scientists believe that every so often there are large flows of water from one lake to another along rivers the size of the Thames. Most of the time there is very little discharge, but if a lake over pressurises, a flood occurs that forces the water along the river to the next lake. "You could think of these things as flushing like lavatories every now and again," said Professor Wingham. It was once speculated that Lake Vostok, which contains enough water to supply London for 5,000 years, may have generated huge floods that reached the coast at some point in its history. The latest research raises the prospect that the same thing could happen again. "Currently, we don't know how full Lake Vostok is or the length of time it will take to fill," said Professor Siegert. "It might be thousands or even tens of thousands of years. Whether such a discharge could affect the ocean circulation around Antarctica is an open question at this stage." He said any discharge would probably take place over a period of months and would change sea level by less than a centimetre.
By Helen Briggs, BBC News science reporter

Niche Web networking sites chase MySpace ad dollars Yahoo! News
Social networking online isn't just for hip twenty-year-olds any longer, as a new wave of targeted Internet community sites build business models to attract larger audiences and more advertisers. The Internet will see a lot more targeted community launches in the coming months, both from start-up companies and established media businesses, rather than the general youth community sites that defined the sector such as MySpace.com, Facebook.com or Friendster.com, industry watchers say. At least two new sites were unveiled this week. Sisterwoman.com caters to women over 21 while JokeBox.com invites users to share jokes and other funny material. Like most social networking sites, both allow users to create and share blogs, pictures and videos with friends and the wider public. "You're going to see a lot of these kinds of sites in the next six to nine months, both start-ups and major companies," said Andrew Frank, an analyst at Gartner Research. Frank said that sites such as Sisterwoman would offer advertisers added value in reaching an audience that will be prepared to engage with marketers. The sector drew investor attention after News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million last July. In March, General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal said it planned to buy women's online network iVillage for $600 million. Sisterwoman launched on Wednesday after signing on ahead of time four major advertisers, including beauty-care line Neutrogena and cable network The Learning Channel. Sisterwoman is offering them the opportunity to sponsor services around which users can share their own photos, videos or other links. Founder Allie Savarino said advertisers were traditionally resistant to two-way conversations with consumers, which opens the gates on both positive feedback as well as criticism. "Now they realize they have no way of increasing their market share without it," Savarino told Reuters. "It is tied to the ownership that consumers have of your brand."

GROWNUPS WANTED
Sisterwoman and Jokebox are the latest in a new line of community sites hoping to build on the success of younger-skewing Internet networks but attract mainstream advertisers looking for other audiences. Jib-Jab Media, a company behind popular comic Internet films, also unveiled this week a site allowing users to share jokes and funny material. The company described JokeBox.com, which featured a prominent plug for Bud Light beer on its home page on Wednesday, as a hybrid of MySpace and cable channel Comedy Central. Sites aimed at adult consumers would appeal more to advertisers than MySpace, despite the youth network's huge popularity, said Eric Wheeler, chief executive of Internet media buyer Neo@Ogilvy North America, a unit of WPP Group. Advertisers are generally concerned over the commentary they may receive online, and even more wary of the freewheeling discussions of younger users. "Anytime you move away from buying a placement (in the media) to buying something that is live, it can get a little dicey for advertisers," said Wheeler. Adults are also more likely to recommend brands to each other on a regular basis and may be more receptive to advertiser messages, Savarino said.
By Yinka Adegoke

New search engine could boost Arab Internet usage Yahoo! News
A Saudi-German plan to launch a dedicated Arabic language search engine for the World Wide Web could revolutionize the moribund Arabic Internet market, a senior official in the project said. "Sawafi," planned for the last quarter of 2006, could also set a tough challenge for international search giants such as Google, MSN and Yahoo, which offer a basic Arabic search facility at present. "There is no (full) Arabic Internet search engine on the market. You find so-called search engines, but they involve a directory search, not a local search. There's nothing available for overall Internet search," Hermann Havermann, managing director of German Internet tech firm Seekport, told Reuters. "If you look at the international search engines, their functionality is non-existent. This market really lacks the support of an Arabic search engine," he said. Seekport unveiled the project with Saudi partner Integrated Technical Solutions in Riyadh this week. The company, Sawafi, is registered in the Gulf Arab business hub of Dubai. Sawafi is hoping to copy the success of local Chinese language search engine Baidu, which has made huge strides in a market with over 100 million Web surfers. Everything is to play for in the Arab world of 280 million people, where Internet penetration is low. There are also large expatriate Arab communities in Europe and North America. "There are only 100 million Web pages right now in Arabic, and that's nothing. It's only 0.2 percent of the total worldwide," Havermann said. Research commissioned from Dubai-based Internet researcher Madar shows the number of Arabic Internet users could jump to 43 million in 2008 from 16 million in 2004, Havermann said. According to Madar, 65 percent of Arab Internet users in 2005 could not read English, which accounts for 70 percent of the material on the Internet. Better search engines are key to a turnaround. "There is not enough Arabic content available on the Internet. But there's no motivation to put more Arabic content on the Internet as long as you don't have a system to find the content," Havermann said. Saudi Arabia, with an affluent population of 24 million, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates would be key places for winning online advertising to fuel Arabic search engines. "Search engines are dependent on income from advertising, and for this you need partners and marketing agencies. They are in Dubai," Havermann said. "On the other side, the Arabic user market is in Saudi Arabia." The Arabic online advertising market could grow to $150 million in 2008 from $10 million at present, he said.
By Andrew Hammond

World's digital divide is narrowing: study Yahoo! News
The digital divide is narrowing as citizens in emerging markets get online via computers and mobile phones, with some regions now on a par with developed nations, a ranking of Web-savvy nations showed on Wednesday. "Encouraging is the apparent narrowing of the digital divide," said the annual study published by U.S. computer company International Business Machines Corp. and the intelligence unit of British magazine The Economist. "This is particularly evident in basic connectivity: emerging markets are providing the vast majority of the world's new phone and Internet connections," the study found. Within China and India, regions such as Shanghai and Bangalore have almost the same level of Internet and mobile phone connections as developed nations, said Peter Korsten, European director at IBM's Institute for Business Value. "This is the first time we see a level playing field between developed and developing nations in terms of connectivity. It's up to governments to take advantage with education and other initiatives," he said. The survey looks beyond basic connections and also studies how the Internet is being used to improve productivity and reduce costs, including online access to public services. "Virtually all countries have improved their scores over the past year. The improvement is greater in the lower tiers of the rankings than at the top. As a result, the distance separating the best from the rest has declined," the study said.

HUGE DIFFERENCE
The difference between the world's Web-savviest nation Denmark and the least "e-ready" country Azerbaijan remains nevertheless huge, with respective scores of 9.0 and 2.9 out of a possible 10. India and China, including their less developed provinces, scored 4.25 and 4.02, ranking No. 53 and 57 respectively. Switzerland entered the top three, replacing Sweden which dropped to fourth place, while the United States held on to its No. 2 spot. Denmark remained No. 1 in taking advantage of the Internet, both connecting citizens securely over broadband and wireless networks as well as using its near ubiquitous hook-ups for Internet banking and government services such as tax returns. "E-procurement (for public services) is saving Danish businesses 50 million euros ($62.1 million) and taxpayers as much as 150 million euros per year. The rest of Europe is expected to follow Denmark's lead," the study said. Six nations in the top 10 are European, taking advantage of cheaply available broadband offerings and good education. The U.S., Australia, Canada and Hong Kong complete the top 10. In central and eastern Europe, the new European Union member states formed an upper tier while other nations lag far behind. Mobile phone penetration is ubiquitous, but fixed line Internet connections are not widely available, while the business and legal environment is weak. Overall, the region remains well behind the EU, North America and developed markets in Asia Pacific.
By Lucas van Grinsven, European Technology Correspondent

Big holes in net's heart revealed BBC News
Simple attacks could let malicious hackers take over more than one-third of the net's sites, reveals research. The finding was uncovered by researchers who analysed how the net's addressing system works. They also found that if the simple attacks were combined with so-called denial-of-service attacks, 85% of the net becomes vulnerable to take-over. The researchers recommended big changes to the net's addressing system to tackle the vulnerability at its heart.

Site seizing
When you visit a website, such as news.bbc.co.uk, your computer often asks one of the net's address books, or domain name servers, for information about where that site resides. But the number of computers that have to be consulted to find the computers where that site is located often makes sites vulnerable to attack by vandals and criminals, found Assistant Professor Emin Gun Sirer and Venugopalan Ramasubramanian from the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University. Professor Sirer told the BBC News website that, on average, 46 computers holding different information about the components of net addresses are consulted to find out where each dotcom site is actually hosted. But, he said, this chain of dependencies between the computers that look after the different parts of net addresses creates all kinds of vulnerabilities that clever hackers could easily exploit. "The growth of the internet has caused these dependencies to emerge," said Professor Sirer. "Instead of having to compromise one you can compromise any one of the three dozen." All the information gathered and analysed by the researchers has to be publicly available to keep the net's addressing system working. The research analysed information about almost 600,000 computers. The research also revealed that 17% of the servers that host the net's address books are vulnerable to attack via widely known exploits. "Because of these dependencies about one-third of the net's names are trivially compromisable by script kiddies," he said. One site vulnerable in this way was run by the FBI, said Professor. Sirer. Although the five computers that act as the first reference point for the fbi.gov domain were secure, one of the five that connect to these has yet to install a patch for a well-known bug. That computer was fixed after the Cornell team reported its findings to the FBI, but hundreds of thousands of sites suffer from similar problems. The most vulnerable net domain found by the survey was that of the Roman Catholic Church in the Ukraine. Criminals such as phishing gangs would be interested in re-directing traffic from well-known sites so they can grab key login and personal details that would help them de-fraud web users. If attacks via known exploits were combined with other attacks, said Professor Sirer, malicious hackers could open up enormous amounts of the net to attack. For instance, he said, hackers could use denial-of-service attacks to overwhelm the net address books that are secure. This could leave users' computers with no choice but to look up website names via compromised servers. By combining well-known attacks and denial-of-service attacks, 85% of the net's domains become vulnerable to take over, revealed the analysis. He said: "They could already be doing it and we would hardly ever know." The research had exposed a big problem that net administrators need to tackle, said Professor Sirer. Thought should be given to using a secure version of the system used to pass around information about net addresses. "The domain name system has been incredibly successful so far but it is showing its age," he said. "We need to re-think the entire naming infrastructure of the internet." The hierarchical structure of the net's address books could be replaced with a more resilient system, he said, that uses a peer-to-peer type structure that would be harder to compromise.
By Mark Ward, Technology Correspondent, BBC News website

Spacecraft seek climate clarity BBC News
Some of the gaping holes that exist in our understanding of the Earth's atmosphere will be answered by two new satellites launched on Friday. The Cloudsat and Calipso missions will study how clouds and aerosols (fine particles) form, evolve and affect our climate, the weather and air quality. Scientists say knowledge gaps in such areas severely hamper their ability to forecast future climate change. Different types of cloud, for example, can help cool or warm the planet. "We will be making the key observations that address this problem," said Dr Graeme Stephens, the Cloudsat principal investigator from Colorado State University, US. The US space agency (Nasa) satellites were launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1002 GMT, after a week of delays due to technical problems and unfavourable wind conditions. They have been put in a 705km (438 miles) circular, sun-synchronous polar orbit, where they will fly in formation just 15 seconds apart. The spacecraft are part of an Earth-observation constellation Nasa calls the "A-Train". Click here to see the A-Train constellation The Cloudsat spacecraft carries an extremely sensitive radar. It sends short pulses of microwave energy down into the atmosphere, and by recording the way these pulses are scattered back to the satellite obtains a picture of the structure and water content of clouds. "The strength of the return from the radar is actually directly related to the amount of water that's in clouds. Effectively, it allows us to weigh the clouds," explained Dr Stephens. "The time delay of the pulses means we can look at different levels and that gives us the profile of clouds."

Many sources
Calipso stands for Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite. It uses lidar, which fires pulses of shorter wave energy - in the infrared and visible part of the spectrum - down into the atmosphere to obtain a different, but complementary, set of data from Cloudsat's. In particular, Calipso is concerned with aerosols. These very fine particles are thrown up into the atmosphere by natural processes, such as volcanic eruptions, dust and sand storms, and even sea spray. Human activities, also, produce aerosols: through burning of forests; and industrial and vehicle emissions.

Cloudsat can weigh clouds
Aerosols take very complex forms, and contain a range of chemical compounds. They can be solid or liquid, or even solid material inside a drop of liquid. And their longevity is highly varied, with some aerosols lasting a few days and others hanging in the air for months. "The bottom line here is that to measure aerosols is very difficult; you need a variety of instruments," explains Dr Charles Trepte, Calipso project scientist from the US space agency's Langley Research Center. "Nasa and other agencies have been making measurements of aerosols from space for many years, but the problem is that they haven't been able to measure all the properties; and one thing they are missing is the vertical distribution of aerosols in thin clouds."

Different ways
Aerosols have a fundamental relationship with clouds by providing the nuclei on which cloud droplets can form. Clouds that form in clean air are made up of droplets that tend to get bigger because they form on fewer nuclei; and these clouds tend to rain more, too. Clouds that develop in dirty air form many more, but smaller, droplets. These clouds also look brighter.

Calipso looks at how aerosols interact with clouds
By picking apart these details, Calipso will help scientists understand the direct and indirect effects of aerosols on climate. "Directly, they can scatter sunlight back to space and have a cooling effect just by reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth system," said Dr Trepte. "They can also absorb solar radiation and warm the atmosphere, possibly alter circulations, change the thermal stability of the atmosphere and perhaps inhibit convection. "And then they have the indirect effects of changing cloud properties, allowing them to last longer, changing the amount of precipitation - either increase it or decrease it - and perhaps even dim or brighten clouds so that they have better or worse reflecting properties." The Cloudsat and Calipso missions have a number of objectives:

• Together, the satellites will provide the first statistics on the vertical structure of clouds. Scientists will be able to see clouds from their tops to their bottoms - like getting a CT scan of clouds from space
• Cloudsat and Calipso will give researchers the first indirect but validated estimate of how much clouds and aerosols contribute to the vertical distribution of atmospheric warming
• Cloudsat will provide the first global estimates of the percentage of Earth's clouds that produce rain
• Cloudsat will afford scientists the first vertically sliced picture of how much water and ice are in Earth's clouds
• Cloudsat will provide the first ability to detect snowfall from space
• Cloudsat will offer the first estimates of how efficiently the atmosphere produces rain from condensates
• Calipso will provide the first statistics on the global vertical distribution of aerosols and aerosol types
• Calipso will reveal for the first time how often "sub-visible" cirrus clouds - very thin clouds invisible to the naked eye - occur, and whether they change with the seasons

The new understanding obtained through the spacecraft will be fed into computer models, to improve their predictions. This should lead not just to better weather and air quality forecasts, but to reduced uncertainties in our expectations of future climate change. "A tiny, tiny fraction of the water on our planet is in clouds and yet that tiny, tiny fraction is what provides the fresh water on which humans depend," Dr Stephens said. "Clouds replenish our fresh water resources and yet we can't really tell you today how clouds will change under the pressures of global climate change." Cloudsat and Calipso join a fleet of other satellites - known as the A-Train - which are aiming to give a rounded picture of Earth's atmospheric and water systems. The spacecraft circle the planet on a path that takes them over broadly the same observation point in quick succession. The platforms carry different instrumentation to address specific questions.

• 1. Oco will launch in 2008 and head the train. It will measure the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere
• 2. Aqua will lag Oco by 15 minutes. It is collecting information about the Earth's water cycle - water in the oceans, the air and on the land
• 3. Cloudsat will allow for the most detailed study of clouds to date. It should better characterise their role in regulating the climate
• 4. Calipso views clouds just moments after Cloudsat has looked at them. Its primary interest is the way aerosols interact with clouds
• 5. Parasol is a French satellite that can distinguish natural from human-produced aerosols. It makes polarised light measurements
• 6. Aura also has a big European investment. It looks at atmospheric chemistry, and is producing remarkable global pollution maps

By Jonathan Amos, BBC News science reporter

Rhode Island embarks on wireless network Yahoo! News
America's smallest state is seeking to become its first to offer a wireless broadband network from border to border. Backers of Rhode Island's $20 million project say it would improve services and make the state a testing ground for new business technologies. It also comes at a time when Rhode Island's capital of Providence is stepping up efforts to lure business from Boston, about a 50-minute drive away, in neighboring Massachusetts, where office rents are among the nation's most expensive. The Rhode Island Wireless Innovation Networks (RI-WINs) should be fully in place by 2007, providing wireless connectivity throughout state, whose land mass of about 1,045 square miles is only slightly more than double the size of metropolitan Los Angeles. A pilot project involving state agencies, Brown University and businesses is to begin next month. The Rhode Island network is a hybrid of WiMAX and WiFi technologies that would deliver real-time connections at a minimum speed of 1 Megabit per second (Mbps), allowing users to download a typical Hollywood-length film in about 100 minutes. The system will be supported by 120 base antennas placed throughout the state. A few antennas, each about 3 feet to 4 feet in height, are being placed in Providence and Newport on the southern coast during the initial tests. So far, no state outside Rhode Island has sought to build a border-to-border network, said Bob Panoff, a private consultant and the RI-WINs project manager. While more cities are interested in becoming wireless, "there's no groundswell of consumer support for it," said Dave McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association (USIIA), which represents Internet companies. More than 80 U.S. cities have wireless networks, according to a study done in August 2005 by the association. But use has been sporadic, plagued by costs and sputtering technology, said Dave McClure, the association's president. Orlando, Florida, for example, removed its wireless network last year due to tepid use, McClure said.

FROM CLASSROOMS TO BEACHES
The project is being funded by public and private sources, and once fully operational, users would pay $20 per month or a membership fee based on annual usage, said Saul Kaplan, acting executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, a partner in the project. "We know the demand signals are there," said Kaplan. Officials said the network would support services including business, education, emergency, health care and port security. During the six-month pilot phase, for example, state health inspectors will test the system by entering data from restaurant visits into laptops and sending the information to the health department. Emergency workers will test sending patient information from an ambulance while en route to a hospital. Graduate students at Brown University, a partner in the project, will use the wireless network when teaching public school students. While the system is not being created for consumers, officials say it could have everyday applications, such as retrieving real-time information on the size of crowds at beaches or to access traffic information while driving. "A broadband border-to-border network would allow us to move information to the point of need, wherever it's needed," Kaplan said. Creators say a prime benefit of the network will be to draw businesses looking to use Rhode Island as a laboratory to test-market new technologies on a statewide, demographically diverse population. A study by the Rhode Island-based Business Innovation Factory, a private, nonprofit organization that launched RI-WINs in 2004, estimated the annual cost to operate the network at $5 million.
By Richard C. Lewis

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/us/30phy...r=1&oref=slogin

Science Panel Report Says Physics in U.S. Faces Crisis

By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: April 30, 2006
Physics in America is at a crossroads and in crisis, just as humanity stands on the verge of great discoveries about the nature of matter and the universe, a panel from the National Academy of Sciences concludes in a new report.

The United States should be prepared to spend up to a half-billion dollars in the next five years to ensure that a giant particle accelerator now being designed by a worldwide consortium of scientists can be built on American soil, the panel said. If that does not happen, particle physics, the quest for the fundamental forces and constituents of nature, will wither in this country, it said.

"That is a risky investment," Harold T. Shapiro, an economist at Princeton and the chairman of the 22-member commission, said Wednesday at a news conference in Washington.

But, Mr. Shapiro added: "It's the least risky path we could find. To stay where we are is equivalent to folding our cards."

Failure to build the machine, the International Linear Collider, in the United States, the panel said, would force American particle physicists to do their research in Europe, where a major machine is to come online next year, and other places, perhaps Japan.

The blow to American physics would erode the base of science and technology that has fueled innovation, provided intellectual and cultural inspiration and bolstered national security over the last century.

The collider recommendation, along with others, was in a new report, "Revealing the Hidden Nature of Space and Time, Charting the Course for Elementary Particle Physics." Among its other recommendations, the group said the United States should energetically pursue international collaborations in high-energy physics, expand programs in related fields of research like cosmology and underground experiments and take steps to make a long-term plan for particle physics research and then carry it out.

The report says: "The committee has concluded that the price the United States would pay by forfeiting a leadership position in particle physics is too high. Leadership in science remains central to the economic and cultural vitality of the United States."

The report comes on the heels of a widely publicized National Academy report last year, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," which is credited with spurring the Bush administration to propose increasing money for physical science in the president's most recent budget.

The International Linear Collider will shoot electrons and their antimatter opposites, positrons, at each other through a tunnel some 20 miles long.

Working in tandem with the Large Hadron Collider, another giant machine to begin operating at the European Center for Nuclear Research, CERN, outside Geneva, next year, the linear collider will enable physicists to explore "revolutionary new physics," probe the origins of mass and investigate the nature of the mysterious dark matter that dominates the universe, scientists say.

Dr. Shapiro said, "We concluded that this might be the most exciting moment in particle physics in a generation."

But just as things are becoming exciting in particle physics, support for such work in the United States has stagnated, and many large projects are closing down. Last winter, scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island kept a major experiment going only after James Simons, an investment manager and mathematician, raised $13 million for the laboratory.

The most powerful accelerator now operating, the Tevatron at the Fermi National Laboratory outside Chicago, is scheduled to shut down in 2010, leaving Fermilab with an uncertain future.

An even larger accelerator that would have been the world's largest, the Super Conducting Supercollider, under construction in Texas, was canceled by Congress in 1993.

The report was commissioned two years ago by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

Napster: Sample our service for free Yahoo! News
Digital music service Napster said Monday it would allow nonsubscribers to access complete songs and then play them, e-mail them to friends or add them to their blogs for free. Users can listen to every song in the Napster catalog five times each, after which they must either buy it or become a subscriber. Registration is required but asks only for user name, password and e-mail address -- no credit card is needed and no demographic information is requested. Napster chairman and CEO Chris Gorog said the move in no way indicates that the company is abandoning the subscription model. He said it actually was the opposite, and that by giving people immediate access to the music of their choice anywhere and at any time it gave them a way to learn more about what a subscription provides. "If the entertainment industry isn't focused on removing obstacles and delivering unlimited access on-demand legally, consumers will get it illegally," Gorog said. "The new Napster.com offers consumers a fantastic free music experience that is also the best possible introduction to the benefits of our paid subscription experience. We think it strikes a balance that both the industry and consumers will find tremendously exciting." Each selected song pops up in a player window that includes advertising and what the company calls NapsterLinks. These are buttons that let users send the song's link in an e-mail, post it to a blog or social-networking page, add it to an instant message or place it anywhere else that supports an HTML link, where everyone who sees it can also listen to it for free as long as they are registered. Other options in the pop-up player invite users to purchase the track outright, buy the complete album or subscribe to Napster. Free tracks are a 32K stream, but subscribers get a 128K stream. Gorog said significant amounts of original editorial content had been added, including biographies and discographies by Napster's own staff and an exclusive license agreement with the well-known Michael Ochs Archive of music photographs. There also is a new section called Narchive, designed to be "a people's history of music" where fans can post their own memories and comments along with photos, images of ticket stubs or anything else they wish. NapsterLinks work there, too. "We believe this will be a unique music destination, unlike anything currently on the Web," Gorog said. The free Napster does not require any download and works on PCs, Mac and Linux computers via Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape and Safari browsers.
By Chris Marlowe

Yahoo unveils new tech advice and shopping site Yahoo! News
Yahoo Inc. unveiled a shopping site for gadgets laced with plain-English advice by experts and user-contributed reviews, entering a market long dominated by tech-focused media firm CNet Networks Inc.. Yahoo! Tech (http://tech.yahoo.com), as the new Yahoo property is known, marks the latest move by the world's biggest Internet media company to reinvigorate or expand into areas such as travel, finance, automobiles, and now technology. Yahoo! Tech is set to offer hundreds of thousands of products with user product ratings and reviews through its Yahoo Shopping site, as well as question-and-answer guides and community features that exist within the wider Yahoo realm. The site aims to set itself apart from jargon-filled gadget enthusiast sites by focusing on how to make technology easier to understand, the executive-in-charge said. "What we are trying to do is to make it simple to choose and use the technology that is easiest to use," said Patrick Houston, general manager of Yahoo! Tech, a veteran journalist who, until a year ago was editor in chief of CNet. "We built Yahoo! Tech for people who might not have the time nor inclination to learn about bits and bytes," he said. The advice site draws heavily upon familiar Yahoo tools to help users search for and share information about prices and features with friends or family or other consumers. It is designed to serve as the anchor across the Internet media giant's network of sites for technology advertising, a lucrative category that is among the most popular online markets for advertisers. Already, big ad spenders Hewlett Packard, Verizon Wireless and Panasonic have signed up. Yahoo plans to target demographic groups like "moms," "boomers," "working guys" or the fashion-conscious, consumers looking for electronics in one of 19 categories, including computers, mobile phones, digital cameras and music players. The site has licensed reviews from the "Dummies" series of How-to books, Consumer Reports, PC World and PC Magazine. Yahoo! Tech is focusing now on the U.S. market and there are no imminent plans to expand into other countries, Houston said. Yahoo also plans to embed original video programming it is producing throughout the site. One weekly program to be featured on the site, called "Hook Me Up," gives consumers the chance to receive a "technology makeover" -- advice on what gadgets make sense in their lives from tech experts -- in three-to four-minute video episodes. Highlighting Yahoo's growing Hollywood connections, Michael Davies, the producer of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "Wife Swap," has been hired to produce the "Hook Me Up" show. "It is a challenge to CNet because it has been so dominant," said Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li. "But what Yahoo is offering is very different. There is plenty of room in the marketplace for both," she said. CNet shares suffered a 22 percent drop last week after it reported weak results and warned that it expected lower results for the rest of 2006, which it blamed on product delays by key vendors such as Microsoft Corp. and big video game makers. Financial analyst Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets in New York said in a note to clients last week that he was uncertain whether CNet was suffering merely a temporary setback or a long-term challenge to its advertising-based business. "CNet continues to lose revenue share to the larger portals as it has limited exposure to fast growing advertiser categories such as finance and consumer packaged goods," he said of the threat to CNet from Yahoo and other Web networks.
By Eric Auchard

Macs Are Virus Targets, Some Experts Warn Yahoo! News
Benjamin Daines was browsing the Web when he clicked on a series of links that promised pictures of an unreleased update to his computer's operating system. Instead, a window opened on the screen and strange commands ran as if the machine was under the control of someone — or something — else. Daines was the victim of a computer virus. Such headaches are hardly unusual on PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. Daines, however, was using a Mac — an Apple Computer Inc. machine often touted as being immune to such risks. He and at least one other person who clicked on the links were infected by what security experts call the first-ever virus for Mac OS X, the operating system that has shipped with every Mac sold since 2001 and has survived virtually unscathed from the onslaught of malware unleashed on the Internet in recent years. "It just shows people that no matter what kind of computer you use you are still open to some level of attack," said Daines, a 29-year-old British chemical engineer who once considered Macs invulnerable to such attacks. Apple's iconic status, growing market share and adoption of same microprocessors used in machines running Windows are making Macs a bigger target, some experts warn. Apple's most recent wake-up call came last week, as a Southern California researcher reported seven new vulnerabilities. Tom Ferris said malicious Web sites can exploit the holes without a user's knowledge, potentially allowing a criminal to execute code remotely and gain access to passwords and other sensitive information. Ferris said he warned Apple of the vulnerabilities in January and February and that the company has yet to patch the holes, prompting him to compare the Cupertino-based computer maker to Microsoft three years ago, when the world's largest software company was criticized for being slow to respond to weaknesses in its products. "They didn't know how to deal with security, and I think Apple is in the same situation now," said Ferris, himself a Mac user. Apple officials point to the company's virtually unvarnished security track record and disputed claims that Mac OS X is more susceptible to attack now than in the past. Apple plans to patch the holes reported by Ferris in the next automatic update of Mac OS X, and there have been no reports of them being exploited, spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said. She disagreed that the vulnerabilities make it possible for a criminal to run code on a targeted machine. In Daines' infection, a bug in the virus' code prevented it from doing much damage. Still, several of his operating system files were deleted, several new files were created and several applications, including a program for recording audio, were crippled. Behind the scenes, the virus also managed to hijack his instant messaging program so the rogue file was blasted to 10 people on his buddy list. "A lot of Mac users are in denial and have blinders on that say, 'Nothing is ever going to get to us,'" said Neil Fryer, a computer security consultant who works for an international financial institution in Britain. "I can't say I agree with them." Fryer, also a Mac user, said he has begun taking additional precautions over the past year to make sure he doesn't fall victim to an attack. He spends more time than in the past scrutinizing his security logs for signs of intruders, and he uses a firewall and additional security applications, just as he would with a Windows-based machine. Among the other signs Macs are a growing target:

• The SANS Institute, a computer-security organization in Bethesda, Md., added Mac OS X to its 2005 list of the top-20 Internet vulnerabilities. It was the first time the Mac has been included since the experts started compiling the list in 2000.
• This week, SANS updated the list to warn against flaws in Safari, the Mac Web browser, which the group said criminals were able to attack before Apple could fix it.
• The number of discovered Mac vulnerabilities has soared in recent years, with 81 found last year, up from 46 in 2004 and 27 in 2003, according to the Open Source Vulnerability Database, which is maintained by a nonprofit group that tracks security vulnerabilities on many different hardware and software platforms.
• Less than a week after Daines was attacked in mid-February, a 25-year-old computer security researcher released three benign Mac-based worms to prove a serious vulnerability in Mac OS X could be exploited. Apple asked the man, Kevin Finisterre, to hold off publishing the code until it could patch the flaw

. The Mac's vulnerability could also increase as Apple transitions to a product line that uses microprocessors made by Intel Corp., security experts said. With new Macs running the same processor that powers Windows-based machines, far more people will know how to exploit weaknesses in Apple machines than in the past, when they ran on the PowerPC chips made by IBM Corp. and Motorola Corp. spinoff Freescale Semiconductor Inc. "They have eliminated their genetic diversity," said independent security consultant Rodney Thayer. "The fear is that we're going to run into a new class of attacks." Bud Tribble, Apple's senior vice president of software technology, disagreed. "All the things we've been doing to make Mac OS X secure continue to be relevant on Intel," he said. Mac OS X, he said, is designed to be Internet safe out of the box, without the need for firewalls or additional security software. He praised Mac OS X for making it easy for users to automatically install security patches. He noted that the operating system was derived from FreeBSD, open source software that was built from the ground up to provide security for computers networked together. Since its origins in the early 1990s, the
Unix-based FreeBSD has continually been battle-tested by college students and computer security specialists. "The bottom line is we still feel more comfortable using a Mac than a (Windows) PC," said Alan Paller, director of research for SANS. But as Daines can attest, there are no guarantees. "We're all sort of waiting with bated breath to see if any problem will happen and the jury is still out," said Thayer, the independent security consultant. "I don't think you'll find a consensus."
On the Net: http://www.apple.com
By DAN GOODIN, AP Technology Writer

Death Of The Banner Ad? Forbes
Video game portal IGN announced Tuesday it will be doing away with banner ads as it steps up its advertising technology. Broadband penetration among readers of the popular gaming and entertainment network of Web sites prompted it to "kill" banner ads, the company said. It is by no means an end to the IGN's advertising-based revenue model, but rather a shift to fancier "sight-sound-motion" ads that employ newer technologies. "These consumers are more and more savvy, we can't offer a cookie-cutter solution to reaching users, it's not effective," said IGN's head of marketing David Tokheim, in an interview. "That's why we work loosely with advertisers to create unique ads and custom-made components." Tokheim highlighted a recent full-site ad commissioned by Ubisoft Entertainment, the maker of Splinter Cell, promoting the latest installment in the Tom Clancy franchise. The elaborate animated advertisement "took over" the whole Web site for a full day, said Tokheim. The cost? The IGN executive would only say, "Enough to keep us in business." Let's hope so. IGN was bought out by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. late last year for the hefty price tag of $650 million. Prior to that, IGN was owned by private equity firm Great Hill Partners. News Corp. has seriously ramped up its online media division, leading the surge in Internet acquisitions among the big media companies in the last two years. News Corp. snapped up MySpace.com last September for $580 million. MySpace.com and IGN are the two main components of the recently created Fox Interactive Media division. Only Time Warner with its America Online has a bigger piece of the Internet pie. The scramble to pick up online media properties hasn't lost momentum in 2006; NBC Universal announced March 6 it would acquire women's Web site iVillage for $8.50 per share, or about $600 million. The closest competitor to IGN looks to be CNET's Gamespot. While CNET Networks has been viewed as a potential takeover candidate, analysts see the current valuation as a bit expensive. Other smaller companies that have seen gains in share prices include PlanetOut and Canada's Kaboose. Most recently, Viacom said it will acquire privately-held online gaming firm Xfire for $102 million. Fox intends to attack the stranglehold Viacom and its MTV Networks division have on the 18 to 34 demographic. Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen said in an April 24 research report that the acquisition will enhance Viacom's ability to reach out to its core audience across all platforms. "Purchasing Xfire is consistent with Viacom's strategy of tuck-in acquisitions with a digital and/or international focus and we would expect similar acquisitions in the future," the analyst noted. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to branch out of software into online ventures. News surfaced recently that the Redmond, Wash.-based company will spin off its social networking project Wallop as a startup in what looks like an attempt to unseat Myspace.com. Microsoft is close to acquiring Massive, a company that places custom advertising directly into video games played online, in real time, according to the The Wall Street Journal. The price tag has been estimated to be from $200 to $400 million.
Peter Kang

US finance sector puts Web pricing in crosshairs Yahoo! News
The U.S. financial sector, a powerful force in Washington, may be gearing up to jump into a Capitol Hill fight over the future of the Internet and stop an effort it says could add billions in costs just to maintain current offerings. The issue is "net neutrality" -- a battle so far contained between high-speed Internet broadband operators and companies with online product offerings, such as Amazon.com. Broadband providers such as AT&T Inc., BellSouth Corp. and Verizon Communications want to expand from flat pricing and also sell tiers of service based on the speed, reliability and security of the bandwidth used. While those providers have said they would not block access to the open Internet, companies that sell products or services online want Congress to adopt stricter safeguards to ensure they are not pushed into a slower lane of the Internet if they do not pay more for dedicated network service. For the financial services sector, which is expected to spend $117 billion on information technology this year, tiered pricing could add billions more in expenses to maintain online banking services and other Web offerings, according to a memo circulating among financial services lobbyists. Those costs could hit the bottom line or be passed on to customers. But it's a fight the financial sector almost missed. "Net neutrality is an issue that (financial services) firms ignore at their peril," Philip Corwin, a partner at Washington law firm Butera & Andrews, wrote in the memo. "If the industry does not engage quickly, it may find that the matter has been decided without its input and that the fallout will affect the industry's cost structure and customer relations for years to come," he added. The net neutrality issue is embedded in a debate over legislation aimed at easing the path for phone carriers to get into the video business and compete with cable companies. Legislation has been proposed in the House and Senate, and is being considered in commerce, but not banking, committees. A Senate measure would require further study of the issue. A Republican-led bill moving through the House would preserve the ability to surf on the open Internet, but it does not specifically bar Internet service providers from charging new fees to assure reliable service to business users. Corwin argues that would give Internet service providers a green light to impose big new fees on financial companies. But phone companies on Tuesday told Reuters the issue has nothing to do with financial services, and action by Congress could hurt consumers and deter investment in new networks. "If anything is going to halt necessary investments in next generation networks it will be Congress dictating business models to companies," said AT&T spokeswoman Claudia Jones. "The finance community should be wary of wolves in sheep's clothing who are attempting to codify the status quo to their own benefit and to the detriment of consumers everywhere."

LATE-STAGE STRATEGY
Many in the financial services sector seem to have awakened late to the issue and are now trying to catch up. "I think it caught a lot of people off guard, honestly," said one bank lobbyist. The House is expected to consider its bill next week and the Senate Commerce Committee plans to mark up its legislation next month, but large differences between the bills could prevent any legislation from passing this year. The Corwin memo urged the financial industry to get the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee involved, which could slow the progress of legislation. It also said the industry should prepare bills and push their introduction to assure the continuation of flat high-speed Internet pricing for online financial services. While the financial industry has plenty of muscle, it may be too late for that strategy, some lobbyists said. Instead, they may wait for legislation to get to conference, where House and Senate negotiators work out their differences. In that environment of closed-door bargaining, banks and credit unions might be able to secure the net neutrality language they seek, lobbyists said. The National Association of Federal Credit Unions, America's Community Bankers, American Bankers Association and Independent Community Bankers of America, among other financial lobbyists, say they are monitoring the issue. But telephone carriers rejected the concerns. They said the legislation is about allowing phone companies to offer video and moving to tiered pricing so those who use little bandwidth do not subsidize those who use a lot. "Net neutrality is not about being neutral, it is about companies that benefit from selling video on the Internet and their potential advertisers looking to have the cost of the bandwidth they use paid by the consumer," said Bill McCloskey, BellSouth spokesman.
By Kristin Roberts

Microsoft may delay Windows Vista again -- Gartner Yahoo! News
Microsoft Corp.'s long- awaited release of the upgrade to its flagship Windows operating system will likely be delayed again by at least three months, research group Gartner Inc. said on Tuesday. The research note, released to clients on Monday, said the new Windows Vista operating system is too complex to be able to meet Microsoft's targeted November release for volume license customers and January launch for retail consumers. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company disagreed with the Gartner report and it was still on track to meet its launch dates. Vista is the first major overhaul of its operating system, which sits on 90 percent of the world's computers and accounts for nearly a third of Microsoft's total revenue, since Microsoft rolled out Windows XP nearly five years ago. Microsoft originally targeted a 2005 launch for the new Windows, then pushed the release out to 2006 before announcing in March that Vista would again be delayed to improve the product's quality. Gartner targets a Windows Vista release in the April-June quarter of 2007, nine to 12 months after Microsoft conducts a second major test, or "beta," release for Vista during the current quarter. "Microsoft still wants to get it out as soon as possible, but slipping from January to March is nowhere near as bad as slipping from shipping before the holidays to after the holidays," a group of Gartner analysts wrote in the report. Gartner said Windows XP took five months to go from a second test release to the start of production, but the magnitude of technological improvement in Vista is closer to Windows 2000, which took 16 months between the second test and production. Once production starts, it usually takes between six- to eight-weeks for PC manufacturers to load the operating system onto new computers, Gartner said. Microsoft shares were down 22 cents at $24.07 in afternoon trading on Nasdaq.

Intel to spend $1 bln to push Net in poor nations Yahoo! News
Intel Corp. said on Tuesday it plans to spend $1 billion over five years to promote Internet use and computer training in developing countries, the latest move in the No. 1 chip maker's effort to break into new markets. The program, which Intel has dubbed "World Ahead," aims to bring high-speed wireless Internet access to 1 billion people who can't now get online, while training 10 million teachers to use technology in education. "Decades of providing technology in growing volume and at decreasing costs have driven great gains for developing nations, communities and people worldwide, but there is still much to do," Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said in a statement. Otellini is expected to give details of the initiative at a technology conference in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday. The program includes Intel's ongoing effort to promote cheap PCs that it hopes will find enthusiastic buyers among schools and villages in developing countries, where most people cannot afford to buy their own personal computers. It also extends Intel's push to popularize a new wireless technology called WiMax. WiMax's fast speed and long range has led many companies and industry groups to think it is ideal for poorer regions. Intel, which makes the microprocessors that power the vast majority of personal computers around the world, has grappled with slowing growth in PCs as wealthy markets in the United States, Europe and Japan have become saturated. Shares of the Santa Clara, California-based company rose 4 cents to $19.53 in Nasdaq morning trade.

'Clear' human impact on climate BBC News
A scientific report commissioned by the US government has concluded there is "clear evidence" of climate change caused by human activities. The report, from the federal Climate Change Science Program, said trends seen over the last 50 years "cannot be explained by natural processes alone". It found that temperatures have increased in the lower atmosphere as well as at the Earth's surface. However, scientists involved in the report say better data is badly needed. Observations down the years have suggested that the troposphere, the lower atmosphere, is not warming up, despite evidence that temperatures at the Earth's surface are rising. This goes against generally accepted tenets of atmospheric physics, and has been used by "climate sceptics" as proof that there is no real warming. The new report, Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere, re-analyses the atmospheric data and concludes that tropospheric temperatures are rising. This means, it says, that the impact of human activities upon the global climate are clear. "The observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural processes alone, nor by the effect of short-lived atmospheric constituents (such as aerosols and tropospheric ozone) alone," it says.

Holes in the data
But there are some big uncertainties which still need resolving. Globally, the report concludes, tropospheric temperatures have risen by 0.10 and 0.20C per decade since 1979, when satellite data became generally available. The wide gap between the two figures means, says the report, that "...it is not clear whether the troposphere has warmed more or less than the surface". Peter Thorne, of the UK Meteorological Office, who contributed to the report, ascribes this uncertainty to poor data. "Basically, we've not been observing the atmosphere with climate in mind," he told the BBC News website. "We're looking for very small signals in data that are very noisy. From one day to the next, the temperature can change by 10C, but we're looking for a signal in the order of 0.1C per decade." The report shows up a particular discrepancy concerning the tropics, where it concludes that temperatures are rising by between 0.02 and 0.19C per decade, a big margin of error. Additionally, the majority of the available datasets show more warming at the surface than in the troposphere, whereas most models predict the opposite. For Fred Singer, of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a prominent climate sceptic, this suggests that the report's support for the concept of human-induced climate change is spin rather than substance. "The basic data in the report is quite OK," he said, "but the interpretation that's been given is different from what the data says. "In particular, [the authors] suppress the major result of the report; that data do not agree with models."

'No inconsistency'
Measuring tropospheric temperatures is far from a simple business. Satellites sense the "average" temperature of the air between themselves and the Earth, largely blind to what is happening at different altitudes. To compound matters, instruments on board satellites degrade over time, orbits subtly drift, and calibration between different satellites may be poor.

The study was financed from US federal climate research funds
Weather balloons (or radiosondes) take real-time measurements as they ascend, but scientists can never assess instruments afterwards; they are "fire-and-forget" equipment. Correcting for all these potential sources of error is a sensitive and time-consuming process. The report makes clear recommendations for the kind of infrastructure needed to produce higher-quality data and resolve remaining uncertainties. Key recommendations include:

• establishing reference sites for radiosonde measurements which would increase consistency between datasets
• making sure the operating periods of satellites overlap so instruments can be cross-calibrated
• observing factors such as wind, clouds, and humidity in the troposphere to make sure they are consistent with temperature data

Such observations could produce an unambiguous picture of tropospheric warming, removing discrepancies over the scientific picture and providing better data which can be used to improve computer models. "I would be reticent to say the report provides a clear answer," said Peter Thorne, "but I would say it provides a clear road-map. "But we do now have overlap between what is happening and what we believe ought to be happening."
By Richard Black, Environment Correspondent, BBC News website

Net censorship spreads worldwide BBC News
Repressive regimes are taking full advantage of the net's ability to censor and stifle reform and debate, reveals a report. Written by the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) pressure group the report highlights the ways governments threaten the freedom of the press. The report has a section dedicated to the internet and the growing roster of nations censoring online life. This censorship is practised on every continent on Earth, said the report.

Power play
Although the internet is changing the way the media works as blogs, chat forums and social networking sites turn passive consumers into active critics, it is not just citizens who are taking advantage of its technological power warned the report. Julien Pain - who heads the internet freedom desk at the RSF and was one of the report's authors, noted: "Everyone's interested in the internet - especially dictators". Mr Pain said the world's dictators have not remained powerless in the face of the explosion of online content. By contrast, many have been "efficient and inventive" in using the net to spy on citizens and censor debate.In many nations, the net used to be the only uncensored outlet and the place people turned to for news they would never hear about through official channels. However, noted the report, governments have woken up to the fact that the people they regard as dissidents are active online. Many are now moving to censor blogs and the last year has seen many committed bloggers jailed for what they said in their online journal. For instance, in Iran Mojtaba Saminejad has been in jail since February 2005 for putting online material ruled offensive to Islam. China was the nation that came in for most criticism for its efforts to monitor and censor the net. The RSF noted that net censorship in the country had undergone a significant shift in the last two years. Originally, said the report, China was only interested in monitoring political dissidence on the net. Now its scrutiny covers general unrest in its population - ironically something that has grown because the net makes it easier for people to communicate.

Jail term
China's success at censorship means it has effectively produced a "sanitised" version of the internet for its 130 million citizens that regularly go online. The wide-ranging scrutiny also means that it is the biggest jailer of so-called cyber dissidents. RSF estimates that 62 people in China have been jailed for what they said online. Net users have also been jailed in Egypt, Iran, Libya, the Maldives, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam. Where China has led, other nations are following and taking active steps to filter the net before it gets to their citizens. Zimbabwe is reportedly buying technology directly from China to beef up its censorship efforts. Many other nations, including Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Nepal, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam censor the net. Often this filtering involves stopping access to some types of sites, such as those showing pornography, but it can also involve blocking sites critical of governments or religions. Some nations, such as Turkmenistan, have banned home net connections and restrict people to using net cafes which, said the RSF, were much easier to control. Burma has banned web e-mail systems such as Hotmail and Yahoo mail and every five minutes screen grabs are taken of what people are looking at in net cafes. But criticism of the obstacles put before open net access was not limited to nations known for their repressive policies. The European Union was criticised too for its policy of leaving the decision on which sites to censor up to net service firms. This, said the RSF, created a "private system of justice" in which technicians take the place of a judge. The 153-page report also criticised Western firms for selling technology to repressive regimes to help them monitor what people do online. The report was produced to mark World Press Freedom Day.
By Mark Ward, Technology Correspondent, BBC News website

Court skeptical of FCC on broadband wiretap access Yahoo! News
U.S. telecommunications regulators on Friday faced tough questioning from a federal appeals court about whether the government can force broadband Internet service providers to give law enforcement authorities access for surveillance purposes. One of the three judges hearing the case called the government's rationale for the surveillance requirement "gobbledygook," and another also expressed reservations. "This is totally ridiculous. I can't believe you're making this argument," Judge Harry Edwards told the Federal Communications Commission lawyer. The issue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is a decision by the FCC in August requiring facilities-based broadband providers and those that offer Internet telephone service to comply with U.S. wiretap laws. The FCC has set a May 14, 2007 deadline for compliance. Authorities are concerned that the growth of Internet communications could allow criminals to circumvent wiretaps by using e-mail and Internet phone service instead of traditional telephone services. Private networks would not be subject to the wiretap requirements but those that are connected with a public network would have to comply with the law. The FCC decision prompted an appeal by universities and libraries. The groups, including the American Library Association and Association of American Universities, challenged the agency's authority to extend such requirements to high-speed Internet services. The groups challenging the decision note that the law contains an exemption for "information services." They say the FCC has long included broadband Internet in that category. Judge Edwards agreed. And he scoffed at the FCC's argument that broadband Internet services included a separate telecommunications "component" that made it subject to the wiretapping requirements. "Your argument makes no sense," Edwards told Jacob Lewis, an associate general counsel with the FCC. "I'm sorry I'm not making myself clear," Lewis said. "You're making yourself very clear. That's the problem," Edwards replied. One of the other two justices on the panel, David Sentelle, expressed more sympathy for the government's argument, especially regarding the idea of extending the surveillance requirements to Internet phone service. But Sentelle also sounded skeptical about the FCC's position on broadband services. The third judge, Janice Brown, did not question the lawyers.
By Peter Kaplan

Avoiding delays at a high-tech airport Yahoo! News
For Wesley Britton, signing up to have his irises scanned at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport was an easy decision. A structural engineer in the space industry, Britton passes through the bustling European hub four times a week, and being able to avoid long passport lines can often mean the difference between making or missing a connecting flight. "I actually go through the airport quite often, so this was worth it," Britton said, after spending about 20 minutes in Schiphol's Privium office to sign up for the service. Schiphol, at its peak, handles about 160,000 passengers per day, and is one of the world's most modern airports, with iris-scanners and a security scanner that would replace body searches, now being tested. There is also airport-wide wireless Internet access, countless flat-panel screens and, as it is close to the city, a live map online that tells nearby residents which runways are being used and what levels of jet noise to expect. Introduced five years ago, the high-tech Privium identity system allows travelers to record their passport information and unique iris patterns on a smart card. Then, with a quick scan of either eye to verify identity -- a method widely considered more secure than fingerprints -- an automatic gate opens and Privium members are whisked through immigration. Total time elapsed: 10 to 15 seconds. The iris, the colored area around the pupil that controls its size, contains several times more unique information than a fingerprint. Even identical twins have different irises, and the ID method can be used regardless of whether the user is wearing contacts or eyeglasses. Schiphol, as Amsterdam's airport and starting point for much of travel between Europe and the rest of the world, needs to adopt modern technology to keep the 44 million passengers it handles every year safe and happy, said Mirjam Snoerwang, an airport spokeswoman. "It's very fast and there's no possibility of fraud," said Snoerwang, who, like other airport employees, is required to use the iris scanning system to enter secure areas. The program costs 100 euros ($126) per year. For an extra 20 euros, Privium members can get priority check-in as well as priority parking.

NO MORE FRISKING
In addition to iris-scans, Schiphol is piloting another scanning system that is aimed at speeding up the process of checking a passenger's belongings. Airline staff and ground personnel at Schiphol must also have their bags and personal belongings checked, and are, in fact, scrutinized more carefully than many of the passengers. Instead of being frisked by a security guard, the subject can stand in a pod-like machine that uses non-harmful millimeter waves -- different from X-rays -- that can see through clothing and detect any suspicious objects. To deal with the potential embarrassment of having a body image displayed, all images are viewed in a separate room by security personnel who cannot see the subjects' faces. All images are discarded once viewed. "It is very quick, compared to being checked," said Coby Tetteroo, a KLM flight attendant on her way to work a domestic flight. About half of airline and ground personnel use the scanner, which will be piloted until the end of this week. The system is also being tested in Mexico City's airport and London's Paddington train station, with the goal being to ultimately roll it out to all travelers. That would relieve congestion at many airports -- especially in the United States -- where security and body checks were increased after the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. More than 30,000 have signed up for the Privium system, with a similar system being adopted at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
By Reed Stevenson

China to have 60 million bloggers by end of 2006 Yahoo! News
Blogging is booming in China with the number of bloggers expected to hit 60 million by the end of this year. China is the world's second-largest Internet market after the United States with more than 110 million users. A survey by Chinese search engine Baidu.com put the current number of blog, or Web log, sites at 36.82 million which are kept by 16 million people, the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday. The number of Chinese bloggers is expected to hit 60 million by the end of this year, Xinhua said, quoting a report on China's media industry by the prestigious Tsinghua University. Zhang Xiaorong, strategy development director of "Bokee," which was set up in 2002 and claims the biggest share of China's blogging market, said his company adds about 100,000 blogs a day. "The expected 60 million bloggers would account for more than half of China's 110 million netizens," Xinhua quoted Zhang as saying. The university report forecast the number of bloggers in China would hit 100 million by 2007. Xinhua did not elaborate. Although the industry has invested heavily in blogs, none of the blog service providers are making profits, the report said. A recent report by the Internet Society of China showed nine percent of bloggers write every day, 29 percent write once to three times a week, while 35 percent write four to six times a week, Xinhua said. The growing stable of e-scribes has attracted homegrown firms and foreign giants like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo Inc.. But the Communist Party's propaganda mandarins are obsessed with control and have closed down some outspoken blogs. Chat forums and online bulletin boards are routinely monitored for controversial political comments and sensitive words such as "freedom" and "democracy" are censored.