There Goes The Internet!

VIGILANCE! VIGILANCE, Peeps

Cyber attacks pose an increasingly serious and costly threat to US government and commercial networks, a US general warned on Tuesday.

The attacks range from relatively simple attempts by teenagers to highly sophisticated cyber assaults, General John Davis, deputy commander of the joint task force for global operations, told AFP.

Although there were safeguards for military networks, attacks on commercial networks also were cause for concern, Davis said.

"Even the indirect threat is of concern to us because a lot of our systems in the military ride over the commercial infrastructure," he said.

The Pentagon several months ago was faced with "a particular worm that was concerning us that intruded into our military networks," Davis said.

Last year the Defense Department prohibited the use of external computer flash drives to counter a virus threat.

The Defense Department spent more than 100 million dollars in the past six months reparing the damage done by the cyber attacks, said Davis by telephone from a conference in Nebraska.

The money was spent on technology and technicians -- including contractors -- to respond to the cyber attacks, he said.

As an example, he said cleaning up a single affected computer cost between 5,000 to 7,000 dollars.

But Davis said it was crucial to invest in preventing the cyber attacks instead of spending money afterward.

"It would be a much wiser investment of resources to do that in a pro-active manner so we were preventing these things from being able to get into our networks."

Davis welcomed plans presented Monday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to fund an increase in cyber experts with stepped-up training efforts.

Under the secretary's recommendations, the Pentagon would aim to train 250 cyber experts a year instead of the current 80 students.

President Barack Obama has put a priority on cyber security and ordered an elaborate review of the issue.

A top US cybersecurity official quit last month, complaining in a resignation letter that US cyber protection efforts were flawed and dominated by the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA).

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Politics and The Net

We have noticed that some pols seem almost Internet averse. Same is true of the MSM, but that is certainly understandable.

There is certainly a group in the U.S. who despises the thought of information flowing to the masses, especially for free, well almost.

I read an article a few weeks ago that said that the U.S. is way behind other "first world nations" when it comes to Internet speed. Wish now that I had saved it.

Then I saw a blip somewhere about the amount of uploaded videos slowing things down. Does anyone believe that?

It does seem to us that there is already a tiering of the Net going on; an Internet caste system, of sorts.

Considering what a great, open country we think we are, we should have broadband in every household, at a very low cost, even if it has to be government subsidized.

Online Politics Offers Opportunities, Pitfalls

Smart Use of the Web Could Pay the Ultimate Dividend

Posted by Joe Erwin on 12.10.07 @ 01:18 PM

One of the most fascinating aspects of the current presidential campaign will be how candidates utilize the Internet to get their messages out -- and how their strategies work for and against them.

By the time next November rolls around, I believe we'll all be amazed at how much influence the web had on individual campaigns and, quite possibly, the final outcome. Howard Dean's widely lauded use of the web in 2004 will seem as outdated as "I Like Ike" buttons when it's all said and done.

I predict the savviest candidates will use the web in these three key ways during the campaign:

• Image Building: Without the time or space restrictions of traditional advertising, candidates will have unlimited opportunities to define who they are. Hillary Clinton's webisodes featuring husband and former President Bill Clinton are a deliberate effort to change perceptions of her as serious and calculating by positioning her as someone with a sense of humor who's in touch with the times.
  
  
• Platform Proliferation: There's only so much a candidate can do with 15-second sound bites on the evening news. The web, with its infinite number of specialized communities, affords candidates an unprecedented opportunity to deliver specific messages to highly targeted audiences. For instance, Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney, as well as Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards, have shared their thoughts with influential technology blogger Mike Arrington, ruminating on such issues as broadband access and taxing the Internet.
  
  
• Mobilizing the Masses: Ironically, the greatest impact the web may have on this election is fostering a return to old-fashioned politics. Remember the old block captains of yesteryear, who would literally go door-to-door in their neighborhoods stumping for candidates and dragging reluctant voters to the polls? The Internet is the most powerful word-of-mouth tool ever, and smart campaigners will effectively use that power to tap key opinion influencers who can get out the vote.

Interestingly, one of the greatest advantages of the Internet -- the ability to create true two-way dialogue -- could also prove to be its greatest danger. In this age of scripted town-hall meetings and carefully orchestrated media "availabilities," candidates may not be prepared for the withering scrutiny such open forums can invite.

Ultimately, I believe the most successful candidates will be the ones who embrace this interaction -- participating in online chats, conducting "no-holds-barred" exchanges with bloggers, even allowing unfiltered commentary on the their own websites. In the still-unproven world of online politics it's a giant leap of faith ... but one that could pay the ultimate dividend.

~ ~ ~
A former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Joe Erwin is president of Erwin-Penland, a 180-person full-service advertising and marketing agency in Greenville, S.C., that is part of Interpublic Group of Cos.' Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos.

1 Comment

You are correct, there is unlimited potential. But, the campaigns still aren't listening; they aren't changing their ways.

Political campaigns too often look at technology as the solution to their problems. But, it's not about the technology. When it comes to communicating with an ever-evolving audience, today's political campaigns and organizations have more than enough tools to get the job done -- blogs, podcasts, social networks, and much more. Yet they are still struggling to stay focused and execute their ideas, find a connection, and increase interest and participation in the political system. Instead of focusing on the technology, political campaigns must focus on making more and better information and experiences available to their audience, not creating more interesting ways for them to get that product.

I believe that as long as organizations focus either on the distribution mechanism – as the political industry seems to always do - they're missing a core element, which is that information and experience that audiences value. If, or when, the campaigns and candidates focus on creating more thoughtful, engaging, informative, relevant information and experiences, voters and citizens will re-engage.

Brian Reich
brian@themediarules.com

p.s. I wrote a book about this -- Media Rules!: Mastering Today's Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience (Wiley & Sons 2008). –Brian Reich, Cambridge, MA

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Europeans and Japanese Do It Better

Which means they are better at living their Democratic principles than we are. Our so-called "bastion of freedom," built on certain inalienable civil rights is a cruel joke.

The French Connections
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Monday 23 July 2007

There was a time when everyone thought that the Europeans and the Japanese were better at business than we were. In the early 1990s airport bookstores were full of volumes with samurai warriors on their covers, promising to teach you the secrets of Japanese business success. Lester Thurow's 1992 book, "Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe and America," which spent more than six months on the Times best-seller list, predicted that Europe would win.

Then it all changed, and American despondency turned into triumphalism. Partly this was because the Clinton boom contrasted so sharply with Europe's slow growth and Japan's decade-long slump. Above all, however, our new confidence reflected the rise of the Internet. Jacques Chirac complained that the Internet was an "Anglo-Saxon network," and he had a point - France, like most of Europe except Scandinavia, lagged far behind the U.S. when it came to getting online.

What most Americans probably don't know is that over the last few years the situation has totally reversed. As the Internet has evolved - in particular, as dial-up has given way to broadband connections using DSL, cable and other high-speed links - it's the United States that has fallen behind.

The numbers are startling. As recently as 2001, the percentage of the population with high-speed access in Japan and Germany was only half that in the United States. In France it was less than a quarter. By the end of 2006, however, all three countries had more broadband subscribers per 100 people than we did.

Even more striking is the fact that our "high speed" connections are painfully slow by other countries' standards. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, French broadband connections are, on average, more than three times as fast as ours. Japanese connections are a dozen times faster. Oh, and access is much cheaper in both countries than it is here.

As a result, we're lagging in new applications of the Internet that depend on high speed. France leads the world in the number of subscribers to Internet TV; the United States isn't even in the top 10.

What happened to America's Internet lead? Bad policy. Specifically, the United States made the same mistake in Internet policy that California made in energy policy: it forgot - or was persuaded by special interests to ignore - the reality that sometimes you can't have effective market competition without effective regulation.

You see, the world may look flat once you're in cyberspace - but to get there you need to go through a narrow passageway, down your phone line or down your TV cable. And if the companies controlling these passageways can behave like the robber barons of yore, levying whatever tolls they like on those who pass by, commerce suffers.

America's Internet flourished in the dial-up era because federal regulators didn't let that happen - they forced local phone companies to act as common carriers, allowing competing service providers to use their lines. Clinton administration officials, including Al Gore and Reed Hundt, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, tried to ensure that this open competition would continue - but the telecommunications giants sabotaged their efforts, while The Wall Street Journal's editorial page ridiculed them as people with the minds of French bureaucrats.

And when the Bush administration put Michael Powell in charge of the F.C.C., the digital robber barons were basically set free to do whatever they liked. As a result, there's little competition in U.S. broadband - if you're lucky, you have a choice between the services offered by the local cable monopoly and the local phone monopoly. The price is high and the service is poor, but there's nowhere else to go.

Meanwhile, as a recent article in Business Week explains, the real French bureaucrats used judicious regulation to promote competition. As a result, French consumers get to choose from a variety of service providers who offer reasonably priced Internet access that's much faster than anything I can get, and comes with free voice calls, TV and Wi-Fi.

It's too early to say how much harm the broadband lag will do to the U.S. economy as a whole. But it's interesting to learn that health care isn't the only area in which the French, who can take a pragmatic approach because they aren't prisoners of free-market ideology, simply do things better.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Kerry: Don't Hog The Airwaves

Amen!

Sen. Kerry: Open the Airwaves for a Better Internet

Sen. John Kerry joined the broad public movement for a better wireless Internet today when he urged the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that our airwaves be used to make the Internet “more competitive, affordable and widespread.”

Sen. Kerry: Don’t Let Them Hoard the Airwaves

Last week, the FCC was flooded with more than a quarter-million letters from people who urged the agency to use soon-to-be-available public airwaves to connect more Americans to an open, neutral and accessible Internet.

In a June 12 letter delivered to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, Kerry wrote: “Competition [in America] has been insufficient to drive the innovation that brings faster speeds, next generation applications and a richer, diverse and multifaceted Internet.”

Our Chance to Catch the World

In the letter, Senator Kerry cited recent reports showing the United States has fallen behind much of the world in broadband penetration.

“Nearly 60% of the country does not subscribe to broadband service — in large measure because it is either unavailable or unaffordable,” Kerry wrote. “The 700 MHz auction could put this country one step closer to achieving ubiquitous Internet access throughout America.”

Cheaper and Faster: An ad in Spain touting 20 megabits per second at 6 Euros ($8.02) a month

The failure of broadband services in the United States is due to a marketplace failure — where phone and cable companies provide access to more than 96% of residential high-speed Internet users.

“For years, we have heard that a third technology would emerge to compete head-to-head with DSL and cable modem,” Kerry wrote. “It has not yet materialized, and today Americans pay as much as 10 times more than broadband consumers in Asia and Europe. Worse still, competition has been insufficient to drive the innovation that brings faster speeds, next generation application and a richer, diverse and multifaceted Internet.”

An Open and Neutral Alternative

As the FCC considers rules to govern the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction,
SavetheInternet.com members have called upon the agency to set aside at least half of the available spectrum for open and nondiscriminatory Internet access.

This will guarantee new wireless innovators have the opportunity to enter the market in head-to-head competition with the big phone and cable companies.

Used correctly, these public airwaves could beam high-speed Internet signals to every park bench, schoolroom, workplace and home in America. Incumbent phone and cable companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast want to lock in their market dominance by hoarding spectrum and stifling cheaper alternatives to their networks.

The FCC: Choosing Between Telcos and the Public Interest

The FCC can either decide to open these airwaves to new competitors and innovation or let them be squandered by the same companies that now monopolize access.

The agency must create conditions that will foster a cheaper, more widespread alternative, Kerry wrote to Martin. “We cannot allow this spectrum to be hoarded by large companies who don’t intend to use it, which stifles innovation and the growth of competitive networks.”
“Dramatically expanding wireless broadband may not be the silver bullet that solves all of our broadband challenges,” he added. “But it will certainly be a big step in the right direction.”


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Internet Gaining Readers, Activists and Power

Published on Thursday, January 18, 2006 by the San Jose Mercury News (California)

Internet as Political Force Grows, Poll FindsShift Away from TV, Papers Continues
by Frank Davies

Candidates and those who run their campaigns have known for some time how the Internet has energized politics and reshuffled the old rules of how office-seekers, the media and the public operate. A survey released Wednesday about online activities and the 2006 election shows just how dramatic that shift has been.

Americans who received most of their political information online (15 percent) has doubled since the previous midterm election in 2002. And almost a third of the public -- 31 percent -- used the Internet during the 2006 campaign to get political news and discuss the election through e-mail.

Those findings came from a telephone survey of 2,562 adults, conducted for the Pew Internet and American Life Project between Nov. 8 and Dec. 4, and included interviews with 200 people who use cell phones only, to reflect the growing number of people without traditional land lines.
Spurred by greater broadband use, a growing number of Internet political activists -- about 14 million people, according to the survey -- are generating and sharing political content, including video clips that had a major impact on some races.

``There's a viral, grass-roots system for sharing information now that gets around the traditional gate-keeping function of the mainstream media,'' said Lee Rainie, director of the project for the non-partisan Pew Research Center, which reports on trends and attitudes.
A classic example from the 2006 campaign was the widely circulated video clip of Sen. George Allen, R-Va., disparaging a videographer for his rival's campaign, calling him ``macaca,'' an apparent ethnic slur. The clip circulated for days on the Web before newspapers and TV networks picked up the story. Allen narrowly lost to Democrat James Webb, and the ``macaca moment'' was a turning point in the race.

Age matters

One Internet analyst, John Palfrey, said a key finding of the Pew survey was how younger people interested in politics are relying on information online. Asked to list their two primary sources of election news, broadband users under 36 ranked the Internet (35 percent) behind television (57 percent), with newspapers at 18 percent.

For broadband users 51 and older, television ranked first with 73 percent, followed by newspapers (45 percent) and the Internet (17 percent).

``It's not a news flash about younger people, but it underscores the trend away from dependency on television and newspapers,'' said Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. ``This week it was no accident that Sen. Barack Obama announced his exploratory campaign for president in a high-resolution video on his Web site.''

The survey showed that mainstream news sites on the Web -- including those run by broadcast networks, newspapers and other periodicals -- dominated online activity, but that other sources are catching up.

Respondents were allowed to cite multiple sources of information, and as many as 60 percent of Internet users said they got information from local or national newspaper sites, network TV sites or large news portals such as Google and Yahoo News, which often link to mainstream news sites.

But 24 percent said they got news from issues-oriented sites. Another 20 percent said they got information from blogs, international news sites or candidate Web sites. And 19 percent said they used satirical sites, including ``The Daily Show'' and ``The Onion.''

The Pew survey also includes some intriguing data on a key question: Has better, wider online access boosted civic activism and helped democracy?

It certainly has helped fundraising. The survey found that 3 percent of Internet users contributed to a campaign in 2006, which Rainie said tracks the activity of the last two presidential campaigns, when John McCain (in 2000) and Howard Dean (in 2004) relied on donations online.

Next step: activism

The survey indicates that 11 percent of Internet users have become online political activists, defined as users who posted their own commentary to a newsgroup, Web site or blog, or posted or forwarded someone else's commentary, video or audio recordings.
And as broadband access grows and applications become easier to use, those activists are less likely to be older, white men with high incomes -- the traditional source of political movers and shakers -- Rainie said.

But Palfrey said the ``jury is still out'' on whether more people are engaged in civic activism because of the Internet, or whether it is transforming the way people organize.

"It may be too early to tell if that's a full-blown trend,'' he said.

The survey also indicated that for users interested in politics, the Internet is an echo chamber for their own attitudes and positions for many, but not all. In the survey, 64 percent of the activists said they use sites that share their point of view, or have no point of view, and 24 percent said they use sites that challenge their viewpoints.

At the same time, Palfrey said the Internet has the potential to broaden perspectives -- and possibly change minds -- because it is so easy to find diverse points of view, often discovered while searching for something else.

The Pew survey found that Democrats and Republicans rely on the Internet as a source of news about equally, but there's a difference in their preference for other news sources.

Democrats were more likely to cite newspapers and a broad range of broadcast and cable outlets for news. Republicans tended to favor Fox cable TV news and radio

© 2007 MercuryNews.com and wire service sources