Microsoft is abandoning one of its most contentious attempts to dominate the internet after rival technology companies banded together in opposition and consumers failed to embrace it.
The world's biggest software company said it would stop trying to persuade websites to use its Passport service, which stores consumers' credit card and other information as they surf from place to place.
There are now as many as 300,000 children under 18 years old presently serving as combatants in 40 per cent of the world's armed organisations (both non-state and state linked) and they fight in almost 75 per cent of the world's conflicts. An additional set of as many as 500,000 children serve in armed forces not presently at war.
While questions of differing cultural standards of maturity are sometimes raised, the youth in question cover a range considered underage both according to international law and by almost every state in its own legislation. Some 80 per cent of those conflicts where children are present include fighters under the age of 15 and 18 per cent of the world's armed organisations have used children of 12 years and under. The average age of child soldiers found by separate studies in Southeast Asia and Central Africa was just under 13.
The practice also differs from the past by including girls as well as boys.
Researchers at security software company Sophos found that 42 percent of all spam sent this year came from the United States, based on a scan by its researchers of a global network of honey pots--computers designed to attract spam e-mails and viruses.
Sophos said this is evidence that America's antispam legislation simply isn't working.
The tsunami struck Sri Lanka without warning, three hours after the earthquake that generated the tsunami. Within fifteen minutes, seismologists knew the tsunami was coming, and started making phone calls to their friends in the countries at risk, but in the Indian Ocean region's lack of the sort of pre-arranged tsunami-warming system that covers the Pacific made it impossible to get word to the people at risk, even though a few minutes' head start would have been the difference between life and death for thousands of them.
No doubt the lack of a warning system reflects culpable nonfeasance on the part of the governments involved. (Yes, my libertarian friends, in the presence of tsunamis we're all statists.)
But if you're an American seismologist and your problem is to get a tsunami warning to folks in Sri Lanka, India, and Burma within a couple of hours, surely calling people in those countries and hoping that the governments will be able to improvise a warning system must be the wrong way to go.
Why not call CNN, the Associated Press, and Reuters? They're in the business of putting out information, and they put it out in a way that gets directly to senior public officials as well as to lots of ordinary folks who might live on, or have friends or relatives on, the relevant coastlines.
I promise you, a phone call from the International Tsunami Information Center saying "There's just been a Richter 9.0 quake in Sumatra and a big tsunami will hit the following places at the following times" will receive the undivided attention of any newsdesk in the world.
JAKARTA (AFP) - Some 11,460 people were killed and thousands more were missing after a powerful earthquake triggered giant tidal waves that slammed into coasts across southern Asia, swallowing villages and wreaking death and devastation on beach resorts.
The quake, the fifth largest ever recorded measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale, struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, unleashing tsunamis that hit Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Indonesia, the Maldives, Myanmar and Malaysia.
Terrifying walls of water up to 10 metres (33 feet) high were reported across the Indian Ocean, roaring ashore with bewildering speed, sweeping people off beaches, flattening hotels and homes, uprooting trees and overturning cars.
A mere handful of big technology companies around the world stands to shrug off the industry's sluggish growth next year to record the sort of rapid expansion that once made the sector a magnet for growth-hungry investors.
It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From Heaven’s all gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.
Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever over its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!
For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet-bards foretold,
When with the ever circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.
But, there is another aspect to Firefox’s ascendancy—it is succeeding because of the commodization of information technology. If all we ask for is a simple mail client (calendaring is coming for Thunderbird), then Exchange, Groupwise, and even Domino have little allure. The difference for Domino is it’s extensibility as an application development platform. In the future, I expect the distribution of messaging/collaboration to shift into an hour-glass look. The commodity of general-purpose messaging will take the bottom-half, and the customizable, IM/email/integrated calendaring/VOIP platform will take the top half.
1.0 The Purpose of C&A
C&A applies to the General Support Systems (GSS) and Major Applications (MA) that are designed and implemented within an agency. As these systems are built or updated, C&A gives the agency assurances that the security features and components of their GSS or MA are going to be implemented and operated properly. Another reason to conduct C&A is that it provides a standard process for validating the security measures being designed into a system. Finally, C&A gives the organization’s senior management a formal way to evaluate and accept the risks of operating the system with the specific security measures proposed.
The Y2K phenomenon still lingers today, according to a series scheduled for airing on National Public Radio in early January. Among other things, the reporters who researched the Y2K story found that much of today's offshore outsourcing rage was jump-started by Y2K.
"The Surprising Legacy of Y2K," will broadcast on NPR's Marketplace segments on Jan 3, 4, and 5. The series features interviews with John Koskinen, President Clinton's Y2K czar, who said he was in a no-win position. If nothing happened when at the moment of truth he would be attacked for preparing for a hoax. But if the computers stopped, he would be blamed for the crisis.
"Stir." Has a deep radio voice. Drives a 1988 Cadillac Allante. Say's "I'm your 'idea' guy. Often wears shell necklaces and chokers with Aloha shirts buttoned halfway. His undergraduate degree is from SUNY New Paltz. Masters in organizational management of systematic models from Mercyhurst University in Erie. Doctorate in Education from University of Maine at Fort Kent. Has "authored" six books: "Interpreting Cloud Formations for Organizational Effectiveness;" "Revisionist Corporate Culture Germination;" "Coming of Age in the New Age Business Environment." His doctoral thesis was “Employment of Bio-Social Theory and Dialectical Behavior Therapy techniques to impact emotions, relationships, behavior, and cognition of targeted consumer markets.” Best known for his analysis that showed that the Snail Darter population in the Tennessee Valley Watershed was contributing to birth defects, bad teeth and inbreeding.
IPv6 is short for "Internet Protocol Version 6". IPv6 is the "next generation" protocol designed by the IETF to replace the current version Internet Protocol, IP Version 4 ("IPv4").
Most of today's internet uses IPv4, which is now nearly twenty years old. IPv4 has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning to have problems. Most importantly, there is a growing shortage of IPv4 addresses, which are needed by all new machines added to the Internet.
IPv6 fixes a number of problems in IPv4, such as the limited number of available IPv4 addresses. It also adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as routing and network autoconfiguration. IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a number of years during a transition period.
How long should an agency use a piece of software? Dan Bricklin, co-inventor of the first electronic spreadsheet program, thinks applications should last for centuries. Last summer, Bricklin wrote an essay about this idea called “Software That Lasts 200 Years,” which was widely discussed within the IT industry.
In IT circles, the notion of extending software longevity borders on heresy, given how companies thrive on rapid obsolesce and regular upgrade cycles. Still, Bricklin has argued, as electronic data becomes more central to our daily lives, the tools to manipulate that data are much like the roads, bridges and buildings we use every day. As such, he maintains, software should be commissioned and maintained in much the same way.
Bricklin knows a thing or two about software. In 1979 he co-developed VisiCalc while he was a student at Harvard Business School. Although Lotus 1-2-3 eventually eclipsed VisiCalc in the marketplace, Bricklin has continued to work in the field, both as a consultant and a software developer. In 1985 he formed his own company, Software Garden Inc. of Newton Highlands, Mass., which he still runs today.
Bricklin holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in business from Harvard University. Staff writer Joab Jackson interviewed Bricklin by phone.
Newsday's Monty Phan and James T. Madore report that two advertising forecasters predict notable gains for the industry in 2005, despite the absence of the presidential election and Olympics ad spending that helped drive this year's growth.
On May 28th last year, The Department of Defense issued its memo entitled "Open Source Software (OSS) in the Department of Defense (DoD)", which leveled the playing field for Open Source Software. As a result, to be used in the Federal government's market-based, heterogeneous IT environment, Open Source Software must provide best value for money, just like any other software product.
It is within this framework that The General Services Administration (GSA) and The Center of Open Source & Government are co-sponsoring a conference entitled Unlocking Innovation for the Business of Government to discuss the question, "How does Open Source provide an Innovative Solution for E-Government"
Standards-based portals are a must. If the product complies with portal standards, such as WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) and JSR (Java Specification Request)-168, and Web services standards (SOAP, WSDL), you're assured that third-party products will work with it and the applications you develop will work with your existing infrastructure.
Custom applications are the most difficult to include in a portal, but the most sought-after. In the past, developers had to learn platform-specific portal APIs. The massive push toward an SOA (service-oriented architecture) has let portal vendors embrace both Web services standards and portal-specific ones. With these standards, the vendors can offer technology that lets even nontechnical users build custom applications.
Indeed, the goal for many companies is to create complex portals that include composite applications without writing a line of code. Application developers can concentrate on business logic and functionality rather than learning platform-specific APIs or even coding new interfaces to existing applications.
THE dollar has been the leading international currency for as long as most people can remember. But its dominant role can no longer be taken for granted. If America keeps on spending and borrowing at its present pace, the dollar will eventually lose its mighty status in international finance. And that would hurt: the privilege of being able to print the world's reserve currency, a privilege which is now at risk, allows America to borrow cheaply, and thus to spend much more than it earns, on far better terms than are available to others. Imagine you could write cheques that were accepted as payment but never cashed. That is what it amounts to. If you had been granted that ability, you might take care to hang on to it. America is taking no such care, and may come to regret it.
Since the late 90s, when Microsoft crushed Netscape, the IT world has been waiting for someone to step up to the plate and take on Microsoft--Mozilla Firefox 1.0 browser has answered the call. And while Firefox holds but a fraction of the browser market it underdog status appeals to many.
According to LinuxInsider.com, Minnesota's own Haberman & Associates "recently joined a grassroots effort aimed at making the upstart Firefox browser a plausible alternative to Microsoft's market-dominant but problem-plagued Internet Explorer."
The proposition is very simple. Members of the cooperative network share jobs, opportunities, questions and observations with JOTW founder Ned Lundquist. He posts them on his e-mail newsletter and people respond. Boy do they respond. There are more than 7,600 subscribers, and more than 9,800 jobs have been posted since JOTW started in 2001.
CLEVELAND -- The CBS and NBC television networks are refusing to run a 30-second television ad from the United Church of Christ because its all-inclusive welcome has been deemed "too controversial."
The ad, part of the denomination's new, broad identity campaign set to begin airing nationwide on Dec. 1, states that -- like Jesus -- the United Church of Christ seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.
According to a written explanation from CBS, the United Church of Christ is being denied network access because its ad implies acceptance of gay and lesbian couples -- among other minority constituencies -- and is, therefore, too "controversial."
"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."
Similarly, a rejection by NBC declared the spot "too controversial."
"It's ironic that after a political season awash in commercials based on fear and deception by both parties seen on all the major networks, an ad with a message of welcome and inclusion would be deemed too controversial," says the Rev. John H. Thomas, the UCC's general minister and president. "What's going on here?"
Pension and benefit payments face disruption after what is being described as the biggest computer crash in government history left as many as 80,000 civil servants staring at blank screens and reverting to writing out giro cheques by hand in the latest blow to a hi-tech Whitehall revolution.
A week-long crisis in the giant Department for Work and Pensions created a backlog of unprocessed claims with up to 80% of the ministry's 100,000 desk machines disrupted or knocked out by a blunder during maintenance.
Engineers battling to fix the problem last night claimed 95% were functioning fully again as they prepared to reboot the entire network after offices closed to the public.
Alan Johnson, the work and pensions secretary, has ordered an internal inquiry into the role of Microsoft and the American contractors EDS, who run the ministry's network as part of a £2bn information technology deal.
The disruption is the latest in a line of government technology failures and follows last week's resignation of the head of the Child Support Agency, part of Mr Johnson's empire, after the disastrous introduction of an EDS system contributed to only one in eight parents receiving the correct amount.
We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.
Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, were at our side, all glory be Thine!
We all do extol Thee, Thou Leader triumphant,
And pray that Thou still our Defender will be.
Let Thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy Name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!
Peripheral Concepts' Network Storage Conference is accepting nominations for its 2005 awards program. The awards program recognizes outstanding achievements made by pioneering companies within the network storage industry. Any company, whether exhibiting at the NSC 2005 or not, meeting basic entry criteria may submit products for consideration. The submission deadline is December 15, 2004.
If any lessons or conclusions can be drawn from these tests at all, they are quite general:
* Spyware and adware can prove quite difficult to remove, even for dedicated anti-spyware scanners.
In the second and third group of tests, for example, one of the installed programs prevented the anti-spyware scanners from running on reboot, a common method used by anti-spyware scanners to remove stubborn spyware and adware that is currently in memory on a PC. As a result, some spyware and adware was not removed by the anti-spyware scanners during reboot that otherwise might have.
* No single anti-spyware scanner removes everything. (1) Even the best-performing anti-spyware scanner in these tests missed fully one quarter of the "critical" files and Registry entries.
* It is better to use two or more anti-spyware scanners in combination, as one will often detect and remove things that others do not.
* Where possible, users should become familiar with the use of HijackThis! in order to remove stubborn spyware and adware that standard anti-spyware scanners fail to remove. Less experienced users should know how to get help from the expert volunteers who provide free HijackThis! log advice and analysis at major anti-spyware forums.
* Prevention is always preferable to scanning and removal, and users should securely configure their PCs and install anti-malware protection to prevent the installation of spyware and adware in the first place.
* Moreover, users should learn to practice safe computing habits, which include avoiding web sites and programs of unknown or dubious provenance and carefully reading End User License Agreements and Privacy Policies.
Conflicting rumors abound regarding the outlook for NSF in the FY 05 appropriations process. As House and Senate negotiators attempt to put the finishing touches on an omnibus appropriations bill by Friday or Saturday, word comes that NSF will likely not fare well in the bill. GovExec.com reports that a bit of rule-bending employed by the Senate to "find" an additional $1.2 billion in funding in their version of the VA-HUD-Independent agencies appropriation bill, which includes funding for NSF, isn't acceptable to the House leadership or the White House budget office. So in order to stay within the budget cap, appropriators will have offset any increase in spending with funding from elsewhere in the bill.
In order to fund the President's lunar/Mars initiative at NASA, it appears other agencies in the bill will bear the brunt. GovExec.com reports that NSF is slated for a $60 million cut overall compared to the agency's FY 2004 funding level, but that "research funding" -- presumably the agency's Research and Related Activities account, which contains funding for NSF CISE -- will "remain frozen" at FY 2004 levels.
The discussion board at FreeRepublic.com, a prominent right-wing online forum, contains numerous posts from members advocating violence against NBC News correspondent Kevin Sites, who recorded and reported the close-range shooting by a U.S. Marine of an unarmed and wounded Iraqi insurgent.
Comments about Sites on Free Republic include:
* "Turn Sites over to the terrorist."
* "Fragamundo."
* "No need for anything overt. Unfortunate things happen in combat zones, and if the reporter fails to hear someone yell 'Sniper!!', well, c'est la guerre" [French for "that is war"].
* [In response to a post suggesting Sites's "life is in danger being around the Marines"]: "I would certainly hope so."
* "I hope the Marines advance and leave Sites behind...alone in Fallujah with his terrorist buddies."
* "I don't want the punk killed, I'd just like to see his hair mussed. Jaws wired shut for a few months, food through a straw, that kind of thing."
* "It's Kevin Sites who deserves to be held in contempt and who deserves the losing end of a bar fight."
* "I don't give a flying you-know-what about his safety."
BRUSSELS, Belgium - More than 100 journalists have been killed since January, making 2004 the most deadly year for journalists in a decade, an international media rights group said.
The slayings of three journalists in recent days in Ivory Coast, Nicaragua and the Philippines pushed this year's total to 101, the International Federation of Journalists said Friday.
"2004 is turning out to be one of the most bloody years on record," said Aidan White, the federation's general secretary. "The crisis of news safety has reached an intolerable level and must be addressed urgently."
The organization recorded 83 killings of media staff in 2003 and 70 in 2002. The most deadly year for journalists since the organization began compiling annual reports in 1988 was 1994, when 115 were killed, including 48 during the genocide in Rwanda.
This year's latest victim was Gene Boyd R. Lumawag, photo editor for the independent Filipino news agency MindaNews, shot in the head Friday by an unknown gunman while on his way to take a picture of the sunset in the southern town of Jolo.
But I want to recall the better part of Comdex. For years it was the place where companies showed off new technology, or at least bragged about what they were planning to sell. It was a place where industry luminaries showed up not just to flog products but also to roam the cavernous convention floors, looking at all the cool new stuff people were inventing.
I will miss a ritual I later adopted at the Consumer Electronics Show, which for many of us replaced Comdex as the most important show of the year. I'd walk the most distant parts of the show floor in the most remote pavilion, far away from where gigantic companies like Microsoft, Intel and others held forth, looking for interesting technology that the small fry -- unable to afford prime show-floor real estate -- had wanted us to see. I'd see genuine entrepreneurship in action, and always learned something.
The most popular type of portable antenna, is assembled by radiation elements, usually coaxial cable or copper coil, with injection-molded sleeve, typical material for the sleeve is polyurethane. The overall construction provides flexibility, durability, and style. Our portable rubber ducky antennas models operate from VHF/UHF Land Mobil frequency band up to 6 GHz.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency officials want ideas on using computational techniques to disrupt enemy leaders' decision-making processes.
DARPA officials want papers on the topic by Dec. 10. They will choose the best ones and ask the authors attend a meeting in late January 2005, according to a Nov. 10 notice on the Government Business Opportunities Web site.
IBM is expected to add its weight to the debate on open computing standards on Monday, backing European Commission proposals that all word processing and other office software used by governments across Europe be standardised and interoperable.
The move will put additional pressure on Microsoft to open up its proprietary Office software suite, or risk being excluded from orders by government departments across Europe.
The Commission has been pushing to ensure that all EU citizens can access public sector documents without being tied to a particular company or software system.
The Federal 100 recognizes individuals from government, industry and academia who significantly influenced how the federal government buys, uses or manages information technology. Federal 100 winners are recognized for their risk-taking, vision and pioneering spirit in the federal IT community.
New Communications Forum: Blog University is not a traditional conference. Rather, it is an interactive, international forum, comprising an extended, meaningful conversation and the sharing of ideas and theories about the future of marketing communications. The forum will also include an online component, beginning two months prior to the events, and continuing afterwards, giving attendees the ability to start learning immediately via the website, blog and wiki.
The Northern Virginia Chapter of ARMA, Intl. welcomes you to a one-day seminar designed to help you Partner with Information Technology Professionals in your organization to ensure your success and the success of your RIM Program.
Join Charles Dollar, Ph.D. as he helps us understand the implications of the Forrester Report recently released by ARMA, International and what we need to know about Information Technology to forge partnerships with the IT Professionals to manage electronic records and information.
In the so-called “platform wars,” Microsoft .Net and Java 2 Enterprise Edition have roughly equal market share and will continue to coexist, said Brian Lyons, chief technology officer of Number Six Software Inc. of Arlington, Va. “I was really surprised by how split the marketplace is,” he said.
Lyons contrasted the two Web services platforms yesterday at a conference sponsored by the National Capital Chapter of the Association for Information and Image Management.
The Office of Management and Budget has recommended that agencies choose one of the two for their e-government business initiatives and technology reference models.
The war in the Middle east is squeezing the Navy’s electronic government efforts, deputy Navy Department CIO Robert J. Carey said today at an Arlington, Va., conference sponsored by the National Capital Chapter of the Association for Information and Image Management.
Carey said the Navy’s seed-funding of e-business initiatives through an office in the Naval Supply Systems Command is “morphing under the huge bill for the fleet in the Persian Gulf. We recognize the need to seed things, nevertheless—to carve out money to advance corporate change.” He said the e-business office has returned $7 in savings for every dollar invested.
The overall problem, as I see it (and this is where, when talking to my friend, I started waving my arms a lot) is that the government is using the wrong sort of IT company to design and build these systems: they are fixated on the idea that when you need a large scale IT project, only a large scale IT company can possibly do the job. This leads them inexorably to the UK's big name consultancies - the likes of Anderson (or whatever they are calling themselves since the Enron embarrassment), Ernst & Young, Siemens Business Services, KPMG, Cap Gemini, or indeed my old nemesis Sema.
I'm convinced that this isn't necessarily the case, though. There are some extremely keen and talented analysts and programmers working for small IT companies in the UK, and these little firms are sleek, nimble and hungry... Unlike the big boys they don't expect £100,000 just to turn up to the first consultancy meeting, and with a complete lack of giant glass-walled office buildings and squadrons of overpaid managers in Mercedes, their idea of an outrageous fee is many orders of magnitude less than anything their more bloated cousins would ever contemplate. Furthermore, their staff usually take a far greater pride in their work than the faceless contract clones who end up employed by the big consultancies, and really care about delivering what they have promised, on time and in budget. Contract staff can leave behind their mistakes when they move to other projects or other companies - but if a small company is going to survive at all, it simply can't afford to make those sorts of mistakes in the first place, and this almost always shows in the overall quality of the systems that they produce.
If you witness a crime and are called to testify about it, you have two choices: do it or go to jail. When people in my profession receive that sort of invitation, though, they prefer a third option: telling the prosecutor to go pound sand. ...
The prosecutor has already met a stringent test designed to prevent the abuse of journalists. There are two other reasons that Miller and Cooper should testify: The crime is a serious one, and the public gained nothing from the revelation. If Miller and Cooper know the source of this illegal leak and refuse to tell, they are protecting a criminal who betrayed his country.
The FCW Media Group, producers of E-Gov Institute events and Federal Computer Week, is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the 6th Annual Knowledge Management Conference, to be held April 20-22, 2005 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. This is your opportunity to participate in the Knowledge Management 2005 Conference as a member of the faculty.
But there was a third set of communicators who employed a breathtakingly simple and successful procedure that Harvard terms the relationship-raising approach. Before making a request for change from their partner, they merely made mention of their existing relationship. They might say, "You know, we've been together for a while now" or "We're a couple; we share the same goals." Then, they'd deliver their appeal: "So, I'd appreciate it if you could find a way to change your stand on this one." Or, in the most streamlined version of the relationship-raising approach, these individuals simply incorporated the pronouns "we," "our," and "us" into their request.
The outcome? The relationship partners exposed to this technique shifted significantly in the requested direction (Oriña, Wood, and Simpson, 2002).
1. Control your introduction. Bring a copy of your bio and hand it to the moderator to introduce you. Don’t depend on what the moderator came up with. And, like in speeches, cut the sales pitch about your organization. To make your organization look good, be an informative panelist not a loudmouth braggart. ...
3. Tell the truth—especially when the truth is obvious. Most people expect panelists to lie when they encounter a tough question, so if you don’t lie, you establish credibility for your other answers. ...
7. Make casual conversation. You’re on stage, but act like you’re not. Simply make conversation with the moderator and other panelists. Don’t pontificate and don’t “make a speech.” Interact with the everyone (even the audience) in a casual way. ...
10. Provide a way to get in touch with you. Most panelists think this is masochistic: Why would I want to provide my contact info to an audience of hundreds of people? The answer is twofold: first, don’t flatter yourself—very few people will actually make contact with you; second, a small number of those who do will be valuable.
Ziff Davis Media eSeminars division is launching the Security Virtual Tradeshow bringing together the top security experts in the technology industry for a two-day online event focused exclusively on the most pressing IT security issues. Through a series of keynote presentations and interactive panel discussions featuring government officials, IT corporate executives and leading industry analysts, this event promises to educate you on the growing threats facing your IT systems and then supply you with action items to help you safeguard against any future attacks.
This virtual tradeshow will offer registrants an online platform to visit vendor booths and learn more about the latest security technology products and services, as well as provide an interactive forum to personally communicate with vendor representatives as well as the security experts that are participating in the panel discussions.
Svetlana Kalinkina is the former editor-in-chief of the popular Minsk business daily Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta (BDG), which endured years of legal and bureaucratic harassment from Belarusian authorities because of its critical reporting on various government abuses. Officials filed several civil and criminal lawsuits against the paper, seized print runs, threatened and detained journalists, and conducted politically motivated tax inspections. In early 2004, the post office and national state-run press distributor broke their contracts with the newspaper and refused to distribute it. A journalist from the newspaper also received several death threats via telephone. In addition, the Information Ministry aggressively harassed any printer that worked with BDG, forcing the newspaper to print in neighboring Russia. In January, the Information Ministry issued its third official warning to BDG, leaving the newspaper vulnerable to court-ordered closure. By September, government restrictions had drastically cut the newspaper's circulation, with only a handful of private vendors distributing the daily amid police harassment.
Alexis Sinduhije is the founder and director of Burundi's Radio Publique Africaine (RPA), which has defied government bans and intimidation to become one of war-torn Burundi's most popular radio stations. RPA was launched in early 2001 at a time when Burundi was seeking to end a devastating eight-year conflict between ethnic Hutus and Tutsis. The station has sought to promote peace by hiring both Hutus and Tutsis, including ex-combatants, to work on the editorial team. "I wanted to humanize relations between the ethnic groups in Burundi and set an example of former enemies working together to build peace," says Sinduhije. The station's courageous investigative reporting and grassroots approach to issues affecting ordinary Burundians has earned it the nickname "the People's Radio." RPA has achieved this in a region where many view private radio with suspicion because of the incendiary role that neighboring Rwanda's RTLM radio played in the 1994 genocide there.
In September 2003, authorities closed RPA, along with another private station, for airing an interview with a rebel spokesman. However, private stations announced that they would not broadcast any government news or statements for the duration of the ban, and this solidarity helped get the sanction lifted three days later. RPA's investigative reporting on sensitive issues such as human rights abuses and corruption has endangered Sinduhije and his staff. In February 2003, armed men broke into Sinduhije's house and murdered his security guard, but the journalist believes that the attackers meant to kill him. Despite the difficulties, RPA continues to delve into sensitive issues as it attempts to foster peace and reconciliation in a country racked by ethnic violence.
Aung Pwint, a documentary filmmaker, editor, and poet, and Thaung Tun, an editor, filmmaker, and poet better known by his pen name, Nyein Thit, were arrested separately in Burma in early October 1999 and have been imprisoned ever since. CPJ sources said they were arrested for filming independent video documentaries that portrayed the grim reality of everyday life in Burma, including footage of forced labor and hardship in rural areas. Aung Pwint worked at a private media company that produced videos for tourism and educational purposes, but he also worked with Thaung Tun on documentary-style projects. Their videotapes circulated through underground networks.
The ruling military junta had prohibited Aung Pwint from making videos in 1996 "because they were considered to show too negative a picture of Burmese society and living standards," according to Human Rights Watch. A notable poet, he has also written under the name Maung Aung Pwint.
The same year they were arrested, the two men were tried together, and each was sentenced to eight years in prison. Pwint was convicted of "illegal possession of a fax machine" and of "sending news" to banned Burmese newspapers. CPJ sources say that Pwint still plays an active role in defending press freedom from prison. Pwint's family has been severely impoverished as a result of his imprisonment, and Tun is reportedly suffering from a brain ailment as a result of his confinement.
Paul Klebnikov, an American journalist of Russian descent, was shot eight times by at least one assassin in a passing car when he stepped outside his office on July 9, 2004, in Moscow. He died shortly after arriving at a hospital, becoming the 11th journalist in Russia to be murdered in a contract-style killing since President Vladimir Putin took power in 2000. To date, no one has been brought to justice in any of the cases.
Klebnikov joined Forbes magazine in 1989 and rose to the position of senior editor specializing in Russian and Eastern European politics and economics before leaving the U.S.-based magazine to assume the editorship of Forbes Russia in 2004. Klebnikov launched the magazine in April 2004, believing that reforms were propelling the country toward greater transparency in business and politics. With his fluency in Russian and doctorate from the London School of Economics, Klebnikov was uniquely qualified to investigate Russia's business world. In his first editorial, Klebnikov wrote that Russian business had arrived at a "new, more civilized stage of development" and cited the launch of Forbes' Russian edition as evidence.
Forbes Russia attracted significant attention in May when it published a list of Russia's wealthiest people and reported that Moscow had 33 billionaires, more than any other city in the world. Publication of the list focused attention on Russia's richest people, many of whom are trying to keep a low profile. Klebnikov's book, Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia, was published in August 2001 and outlined the rise of one of the country's most powerful oligarchs.
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Finally, it is essential to note that this incident does not involve the intrusion into a confidential source relationship. A confidential source provides information to the press that is useful to the public. Such communications merit First Amendment protection because the information disclosed serves a legitimate public interest. The members of the administration who "outed" Valerie Plame (if indeed they did this) were not confidential sources. They were criminals whose very disclosure of the information was itself the criminal act. There is no First Amendment reason to protect or promote such communications. Even under the most expansive version of the confidential source privilege, such individuals are not entitled to protection because they are not blowing a whistle but directly and intentionally violating the law. If any member of the Bush administration told Judith Miller that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA operative, she should drop the claim that this unlawful act is protected by the First Amendment and, like any other citizen, report their criminal conduct.
