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Competitiveness
Appropriations Next Hurdle For Competitiveness Bill
by Heather Greenfield
In a year when domestic spending budgets are tight, leaders of the effort to pass the House and Senate competitiveness legislation last week are nevertheless optimistic about the next step -- getting the funds appropriated.
The Senate approved H.R. 2272, Friday and President Bush is expected to sign it. House Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., who led negotiations to reconcile the bill with the Senate's version, S. 761, predicted, "We'll see the president have a big grin on his face in August or September" and point to it as "an example of bipartisan success."
The bill authorizes $43 billion over three years to boost math and science education and increase federally funded basic science research.
If the funding gets through the appropriations process, it would put the National Science Foundation, the National Institute for Standards and Technology and the Energy Department's science office on track to double their research funding over the next seven years.
Both Bush's American Competitiveness Initiative and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Innovation Agenda called for basic research funding to these agencies to double, but over a slightly longer time period.
The Senate passed the bill via voice vote and the House approved it 367-57, showing strong support among both Republicans and Democrats.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who managed the bill on the Senate floor, says the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., were the lead co-sponsors is a good sign that funds will be appropriated.
Alexander said the Senate Budget Committee has already "made room" for the extra money needed for basic research and math and science education.
He agreed there would be "back and forth between the Senate, House and the president on money, but there's not a higher priority for the Senate and also the House."
Gordon agreed, saying, "It's a very high priority for the speaker." Pelosi represents a San Francisco-based district just north of Silicon Valley.
Not taking any chances, the Computing Technology Industry Association sent a letter to President Bush Friday after the vote, urging him to sign the bill, noting its widespread support. "Across every segment of our membership -- businesses large and small -- there is near unanimous support for H.R. 2272," wrote public policy director Roger Cochetti.
Tech associations, which had begun lobbying for appropriations for the bill before it even passed, plan to turn up the volume on that effort now.
"We're going to have to work on the Appropriations bills to ensure a lot of this stays intact," said Josh Ackil, lobbyist for the Information Technology Industry Council.
"The major obstacles are the ones facing virtually all domestic spending programs -- the pay/go rules and the overall fiscal restraints," said Susan Traiman, public policy director at the Business Roundtable. "We're going to have to continue to make the case for why these particular initiatives need to be at the top of the priority list."
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Budget
Advocates Say Tech Education Remains Underfunded
by Aliya Sternstein
Congressional funding bills for the Education Department include many pet projects aimed at science and math education and instructional technologies, but nationwide technology programs are still underfunded, education advocates say.
"The large number of STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics education] and education technology-related earmarks suggests ... great interest in improving teaching and learning in this area across our educational system" and the need for federal investment, said Mark Schneiderman, education policy director at the Software and Information Industry Association.
At the same time, Schneiderman said it is "frustrating" that the interest shown by Congress "has not better translated into renewed funding for the [federal educational technology program], which supports many of these activities and purposes, but which has seen its funding cut."
For the past three years, President Bush has proposed slashing the technology program created by the landmark No Child Left Behind law, which awards state grants for high-tech equipment, curriculum development and teacher training partly to ensure that students become technologically literate. The House and Senate appropriations committees have recommended funding the program at $272 million -- an increase over the president's zero-dollar request but significantly less than the fiscal 2004 $692 million appropriation.
Mary Ann Wolf, executive director at the State Educational Technology Directors Association, noted that there are multiple earmarks allocated for school-level educational technology, including integrating technology into the classroom, innovation, media literacy and Internet safety, and providing access to remote educational opportunities.
"This certainly emphasizes that for several states and members of Congress, educational technology is critical," she said. "We encourage Congress to look at these programs and recognize that this need is pervasive throughout the country."
To accomplish the demonstrated benefits of technology, "programs are needed across the states that encourage the systemic use of technology to improve our education system and ensure that all students have these opportunities," Wolf added.
Both chambers recommended flat funding, at $8.7 million, for a science and engineering program that gives grants to minority-serving institutions for equipment, curriculum development and advanced faculty training.
Yet, the Business-Higher Education Forum and STEM Education Coalition are "extremely appreciative" of an amendment added by Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., that would increase funding for math and science teacher training by 8.6 percent, said Justin Wellner, the forum's associate director of policy and programs. This math and science partnerships program, which was set to receive the same funding in fiscal 2008 as this year, would get $15.7 million under the revised language.
The Senate report stated, "The committee continues to support the fully integrated use of technology in schools and urges the department to continue evaluating the use of educational technology and its impact on achievement over the long term."
Schneiderman said the Senate appears to back SIIA's view that a recent federal study on instructional technology, which concluded software had no significant effect on academic performance, was incomplete because, he said, it "examined only short-term technology impact after one year."
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Intellectual Property
Dolby-Lucent Audio Patent Battle Continues
by Andrew Noyes
The latest chapter in a long-standing patent feud between audio-compression giant Dolby Laboratories and Lucent Technologies, now part of Alcatel, unfolded on Monday before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.
The legal battle centers on Dolby's widely used AC-3 technology, also known as Dolby Digital. The court first dealt with the case two years ago, siding with Dolby, but the parties returned to fight over hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of attorney fees.
Lucent unsuccessfully sued Dolby in a federal district court in California over the rival's process and means for encoding and decoding audio signals. In turn, Dolby sought a ruling that its patented product, which is used by digital videodisc manufacturers and movie theaters, was valid.
After the case was voluntarily dismissed, the district court granted attorneys' fees to Dolby for only the portion of the case pertaining to the use of AC-3 in cinemas, but the company wants Lucent to pay for its lawyers' work in the consumer arena as well.
Lucent tried to make the litigation "as difficult and as protracted for Dolby and the court as possible," Dolby attorney Jeffrey Fisher told a three-judge panel. He also accused the firm of "threatening and harassing" Dolby's customers and said his client deserves more money as a result.
But Lucent's lawyer, John Desmarais, asked the appellate panel to reject the lower court's award of attorneys' fees in full. He argued that Dolby never made it clear that AC-3 technologies were any different in the consumer and cinematic sectors.
A separate appellate court panel heard oral arguments on Monday in PostX Corp. v. Secure Data in Motion. The case involves the legitimacy of a PostX patent that covers a component of its secure messaging technology and a pending antitrust claim by the rival firm.
A San Francisco-based jury ruled in favor of PostX in March 2006 and awarded the e-mail encryption firm $450,000 in damages. PostX was then sold to competitor IronPort, which was acquired by Cisco Systems.
John Cooper, attorney for Secure Data in Motion, also known as Sigiba, argued that the lower court erred because PostX did not engage in a proper pre-filing investigation. Such an effort is necessary to establish that a claim has probable cause, he said.
Cooper also argued that PostX conspired with a shareholder on a sham patent case to harm Sigiba but the three-judge panel had its doubts. Chief Judge Pauline Newman, Alan Lourie and Sharon Prost spent much of the hearing questioning the antitrust assertions.
PostX attorney George Sirilla contended that "it's not what the defendant thinks about the case, it's what the court thinks" and in this instance the court ruled in his client's favor.
Meanwhile, the appeals court also heard a challenge to a Library of Congress book cataloging program, on appeal from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Fledgling publisher Overview Books sued the agency for reportedly treating self-published authors as "second class citizen[s]."
The suit, brought on behalf of Brooklyn-based author Lev Tsitrin, seeks $500,000 in damages and demands changes to alleged "discriminatory rules of eligibility" for a program that alerts public libraries and bookstores of forthcoming titles.
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Environment
EPA Delivers Data Center Report To Congress
by Winter Casey
The federal government can lead the way in improving the energy-efficiency of data centers by changing the way it designs and operates its own facilities, according to a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to Congress released Friday.
"The government should commit to: publicly reporting the energy performance of its data centers once standardized metrics are available, conducting energy efficiency assessments in all its data centers within two to three years, and implementing all cost-effective operational improvements," the report stated.
The study also recommended that government and industry work together "to develop an objective, credible energy performance rating system for data centers."
Lowell Sachs, a manager of government affairs at Sun Microsystems, said in a statement that the government could help by pushing "for more accountability between those who make the IT purchasing decisions for federal offices and those who ultimately pay the bills."
A data center, according to Jon Weisblatt, senior manager of enterprise marketing at Dell, is generally a large room or building where a company's computing infrastructure is located. Every business and government institution has a data center of some size, he said.
During the past five years, a jump in demand for computer resources has resulted in an increase in data centers and an estimated doubling in the amount of energy they consume, according to the EPA report. "There is significant potential for energy-efficiency improvements in data centers," the report found.
However, the issue has been plagued by the difficulty in defining "energy efficiency for a complex system such as a data center or a server." Sachs said "more consistent data about actual energy use and savings" needs to be made available.
The report recommended that the federal government collaborate with other stakeholders on a comprehensive research and development program to develop technologies and best practices for energy efficiency in data centers.
Meanwhile, a number of large tech companies have announced changes to their data center practices.
Weisblatt said Dell has consolidated more than 24 data centers into two primary facilities. This move has resulted in the centers using less energy, with corresponding cost savings, and has reduced the company's computing footprint.
Last year, Hewlett-Packard said it planned to consolidate its 85 data centers worldwide into six larger centers located in Atlanta, Houston and Austin, Texas. The move was expected to reduce the company's IT spending by approximately $1 billion over time.
Microsoft said it is focused on maximizing energy and design efficiencies in its data centers. The company's data center in Quincy, Washington, is designed to leave a minimal carbon footprint and uses hydropower as its primary source of energy.
Weisblatt said the possibility of data center legislation or setting standards for energy efficiency has been given attention on Capitol Hill. However, a bill could potentially result in systems that over time could consume more energy or be inefficient, he said. Lowell said a provision in one bill, H.R.3221, taps into innovation and progress already being made in the private sector.
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Cyber Security
Expert Says Cyber Attacks Remain Easier Than Defense
by Winter Casey
It is easier to launch cyber attacks than to defend against them, an academic expert said during a presentation on international cyber security Monday at the Hudson Institute in Washington.
Technology enables small numbers of people to torment much larger numbers, and the computer users placed on the defensive often do not know how to protect themselves, said Seymour Goodman, a professor at the College of Computing and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He said the weapons cyber warriors employ were not anticipated by some.
Some countries, such as Africa where almost no information security exists, are defenseless against cyber attacks, noted Goodman. As a result, these countries "can be a danger to themselves and everyone else," he said.
Goodman, who teaches computing and international affairs, said that most of the Web sites terrorists set up are not illegal in the countries where the target audience is located or in the countries where the sites are being operated. Many of these sites are located in Western countries, he said, where posting explicitly hateful material is often not against the law.
However, Goodman said some in the intelligence community believe finding these sites can provide useful information. If they are shut down, they will only move to another location on the information superhighway, he said.
Cyber security has a very underdeveloped system of justice, Goodman noted.
According to Goodman, the international environment for civil aviation might be the most relevant model to cyber security. The International Civil Aviation Organization is made up of 189 countries. The United Nations and non-governmental organizations are also involved in civil aviation.
Goodman noted that he does not believe a 1997 cyber crime treaty, calling for cooperation in the investigation and prosecution of computer crimes, will ever be universally accepted.
There are currently 1.3 billion Internet users worldwide and 200 countries with top level domain names, he said. The only technology growing faster than the Internet is cellular technology, said Goodman.
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Labor
Labor Advocates Back Unions For Bloggers
by Aliya Sternstein
Some labor advocates say the blogosphere deserves entry into organized labor, as e-writers increasingly face the same workforce issues as freelance writers in the print world.
Jonathan Tasini, executive director of the Labor Research Association and former president of the National Writers Union, said on Monday that bloggers "could in fact" join the writers union.
"Organizing writers is really no different than organizing bloggers," said Tasini, who was invited to speak about a union for bloggers at the Yearly Kos Convention late last week. "It should be easy to organize this group at one level because you can reach people in a relatively low-cost way; you can design a survey and post it on a variety of Web sites."
He suggested that bloggers from every genre get together -- "and I mean that metaphorically" -- and create an online survey containing the points raised at the Yearly Kos Convention and circulate it through the blogosphere.
The topics broached at the panel ranged from professional support -- such as obtaining credentials to cover Congress -- to economic concerns, like getting paid, and legal issues surrounding digital rights.
In Tasini et al. v. The New York Times et al. , the writers union successfully sued The New York Times Co., Newsday Inc., Time Inc., Lexis/Nexis, and University Microfilms Inc., for copyright violation regarding the electronic reuse of work produced and sold on a freelance basis.
"That's an example of something that a collection of people might face that they couldn't confront alone," Tasini said.
"My personal opinion is that any blogger should be part of this union," Tasini added. With access to health insurance and getting paid, "there is no difference between someone who blogs on gardening versus someone who blogs on the presidential election."
Tasini noted a lot of enthusiasm among the 25 or so attendees of last Thursday's session at the Yearly Kos Convention. "Now, the question is, is that core going to follow through?"
Panel speaker John Erhardt, managing editor of the Colorado political blog Squarestate.net, said in an interview that when a class of workers has "no benefits and gets paid nothing or slightly more than that for work they so obviously excel at ... how can we not form an organization to change the standards of living for the very vital work?"
Thursday's session was meant to figure out the best structure for organizing bloggers nationally and locally, he said, adding, "I don't know which would work better, directly joining the NWU, setting up something similar but specialized, or forming an organization that is not affiliated with a traditional labor union."
Erhardt likened unionizing to the practice of blogging.
"[It] must be done in a manner that's productive," he said. "If we just keep talking, we've done nothing. That's the point about blogging. It's just one tool in an activist's arsenal for political change. It works well, but only when combined with traditional organizing, block walking, fundraising, and other general community efforts."
However, Erhardt would prefer the organization not set blogger standards, as "there's no place for me to say how a blogger should write his piece."
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On The Download
Political Campaigns Finding Facebook Applications
by Shira Toeplitz
One afternoon in June, graduate student Fred Stutzman took it upon himself to create an application for John Edwards' presidential campaign on the popular social networking Web site Facebook.com.
The 29-year-old North Carolina graduate student, who occasionally blogs about politics and technology for TechPresident.com, took what he called "maybe a day" to develop the now 700-user strong online program.
"You don't need to be tremendously skilled to develop these apps, and Facebook did that on purpose," Stutzman said. "They want these things to be simple. They want the barrier to entry to be low."
But Stutzman's Edwards application is not the first nor the most popular of its kind. The Obama '08 application boasts more than 20,000 users and launched almost immediately after Facebook opened up its application tool to outside developers in late May of this year. But more than two months later, Obama is the only presidential campaign to have an official Facebook application.
"If I can write one of these things in a day, it seems a little strange that Obama's campaign is the only one to put out an application," Stutzman added.
Since Facebook added the feature, more than 2,000 applications have been built for Facebook, including almost 100 political programs currently available on the site. And according to those same company statistics, more than 75 percent of users have added at least one application.
Most political fundraising experts know better than to try targeting college students -- the audience most often associated with Facebook.com -- for campaign donations. But as Facebook's audience approaches more than 33 million active users, the fastest growing demographic on the site is the over 25 crowd, according to the company's statistics. Currently more than half of Facebook.com users are out of college, making it ripe for raising campaign dough and seeking a more reliable voting bloc.
"First, it's about going where people are on the Internet, not about expecting them to come to you," said Justin Hamilton, deputy chief of staff to Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and the force behind the Facebook application MillerTV. "Second it's about who'll you'll find when you get there. Most of the recent demographic growth at Facebook is the 35 and older set. The idea that this is just a bunch of teeny boppers is wrong."
But even if numbers are dwindling, is it time- and cost-effective for campaigns to create these applications, especially if they only attract less than 1,000 users? The answer is likely yes -- but mostly because the initial cost and set-up time are low. All of the developers interviewed for this story said it only took a couple of days to create their application.
Alex Williams of Splashcast, who created the TV player for MillerTV, said the application took about four to five business days to create. He called the price tag "very affordable" in that it's unlikely to cost more than $2,000 to put together a Facebook application similar to MillerTV. Williams explained that there's typically a base fee, plus the number of users the program receives -- but the first 1,000 users are on the house. (MillerTV is still very much under that cap, by the way, with 119 users.)
But despite a low start-up fee, campaigns remain slow to catch on to the feature. The other presidential application besides Obama and Edwards are Students For Mitt and Rudy 2008. The latter was created by a fan of the Republican candidate, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
The developer of Rudy 2008 is Christopher Corbett, a 30-year-old technical consultant for TalkSpam.com and a Giuliani supporter based in Springfield, Mo. Corbett picked up on the idea after seeing Obama's application.
Though he said he's had contact with Giuliani's campaign, he said he was not paid for his work -- about 12 hours worth of his time -- that has collected about 700 users. And despite professing his loyalty to Giuliani, Corbett confessed that his motivations weren't entirely altruistic.
"As a developer, I'm just trying to showcase myself a bit," he said.
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Correction
In Friday's PM Edition, Tech Daily reported that the House started its August recess early due to dysfunctional voting machines. The House did temporarily recess, but later reconvened and did not begin the recess until early Sunday.
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Today's Feature:
Issue of the Week
Change is in the air when it comes to Internet search providers and user data protection.
Every Monday, read the Issue of the Week by the Technology Daily staff.
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E-briefs
Intellectual Property: After re-examining claims in the TiVo patent for digital video recording, which has fueled a high-profile lawsuit against EchoStar Communications, the Patent and Trademark Office issued a ruling last week rejecting 23 of the claims and confirming the rest, intellectual property newswire IPLaw360.com reported. The PTO's decision does not end the inspection, Foley & Lardner attorney Harold Wegner said in an e-mail. According to the patent expert, it will likely take the agency at least one more year to finish its work and an appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is probable. The case began when TiVo alleged that the Dish Network operator infringed on its patent. A Texas jury agreed in April 2006, awarding TiVo nearly $74 million. The Supreme Court in December decided not to hear the patent case.
Intellectual Property: A man was sentenced to two years in prison in federal court for the unlawful sale of copyrighted videogames, the Justice Department said late last week. Timothy W. Hall was also ordered by the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia to pay a $1,200 fine and serve a term of three years of supervised release. Hall, of Mount Vernon, Ill., pleaded guilty on May 8 to one count of criminal copyright infringement for distributing hundreds of thousands of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works on his Web site. On his site, www.morbidbackups.net, he advertised the sale of hundreds of videogames on recordable compact discs. He said he was paid more than $266,000 for the reproduction and sale of the works from 2001 until the fall of 2006. According the department, Hall completed thousands of transactions with individuals in the Eastern District of Virginia, receiving more than $3,000 in revenues from those sales.
Intellectual Property: The National Music Publishers' Association has joined a copyright infringement lawsuit against video-sharing site YouTube and parent company Google that was filed earlier this year by the United Kingdom's Football Association Premier League. The trade group is "very concerned about YouTube's approach to copyright," NMPA President David Israelite said in a Monday press release. Others added to the proposed class-action include the Finnish Football League Association, Britain's Rugby Football League, Knockout Entertainment, Seminole Warriors Boxing, X-Ray Dog Music, investigative journalist Robert Tur and author Daniel Quinn. Premier League spokesman Dan Johnson said he was "pleased to see so many other copyright holders joining us in what we are trying to achieve" and said the defendants' "callous and opportunistic business model... must and will be stopped." Law firms Proskauer Rose and Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann were also appointed counsel to the plaintiffs on an interim basis by the New York judge handling the case.
Campaigns: The daughter of Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani has signaled she's backing Democrat Barack Obama for president, the AP reported Monday. According to her Facebook profile, Giuliani's 17-year-old daughter, Caroline, belonged to Obama's Facebook group, "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)." She left the group Monday morning after the online magazine Slate sent an inquiry. Her profile can be viewed by Facebook users who have access to New York City's Trinity School or Harvard University networks. Caroline, who is Giuliani's daughter with his second wife, Donna Hanover, recently graduated from Trinity and will attend Harvard in the fall. Slate posted a screen shot of her profile, which uses a slightly different last name. She lists herself as having liberal political views. Neither the Giuliani nor Obama campaigns had any comment on Caroline's political preference.
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