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for. 1.
Lawmakers back Tung's reform plan 2.
Kerry
plans $400m spree in Tsuen Wan redevelopment 3.
Government
agencies opt for Linux 4.
Porn-nappers hold names for ransom 5.
Web site helps US military catch terrorists 6.
Time to farewell the floppy and say thanks for the
flash memory
1. Lawmakers back Tung's reform plan Chief
Executive Tung Chee-hwa has passed the first hurdle in implementing his ministerial
system after Legco gave its initial seal of approval to the controversial package.
Lawmakers voted 34 to 19 yesterday to carry a motion supporting the ministerial
reform at the end of a nine-hour debate straddling two days. One member, David
Li Kwok-po, abstained. The vote has cleared the way for the Government to seek
Legco approval for $43 million in funding to create a new political tier of ministers
and transfer power to them next month. The new system, prompted by a series of
blunders including a piling scam in public housing, is scheduled to start on July
1 to coincide with Mr Tung's inauguration for a second term. Concluding a highly
charged motion debate, Secretary for Constitutional Affairs Michael Suen Ming-yeung
urged lawmakers to drop their opposition and back the proposals for the good of
Hong Kong. "It's essential to implement the accountability system as soon
as possible so that the accountable officials will better shoulder the responsibility
of their portfolios," he said. Amid worries that ministers hired from the
private sector might suffer conflicts of interest, Mr Suen offered to strengthen
an administrative code of conduct. The Government has also promised to require
the appointees to declare their political affiliations. Mr Suen said members of
the Communist Party and non-Hong Kong parties would not be barred from taking
office, but he stressed that ministers should not embarrass the Government or
breach their oath of allegiance to serve the SAR. He was adamant that there was
no need at the moment for a convention for ministers to offer their resignations
if the legislature passes a no-confidence motion in them. The Government, Mr Suen
said, would not rule out such a convention in future as long as it did not infringe
the Basic Law. Selina Chow Liang Shuk-yee, Liberal Party vice-chairman, said that
it would not be in Hong Kong's interest for legislators to keep on arguing over
the arrangements. She urged Mr Tung to finalise the ministers as soon as possible.
Civil servants elevated to the ranks of ministers should also abandon their mind-set
and brace for a change, she said. Tsang Yok-sing, chairman of the Democratic Alliance
for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), defended the system. "What is the
problem of Mr Tung working with a group of officials who share similar beliefs
with him? "I am sure the Democrats share the same beliefs among themselves,"
Mr Tsang said. Following Mr Tsang's speech, Democrat Yeung Sum jokingly said Mr
Tung should appoint Mr Tsang as a quasi-minister. "His speech was so good
I think the policy secretaries would not be as brilliant as him," he said.
An amendment to tie the system with universal suffrage, moved by the Democrats'
Martin Lee Chu-ming, was scuttled by a united front of pro-government groups including
the Liberals, the DAB, the Progressive Alliance and the Breakfast Club of non-affiliated
legislators. Mr Suen said the reforms must go ahead regardless of the pace of
introducing democracy, which is prescribed by the Basic Law. Insisting the two
are separate issues, he said the Democrats' call for universal suffrage would
only delay the much-needed reform. He also rejected suggestions that Mr Tung would
become more powerful, saying the new system could not give the Chief Executive
more power than stipulated in the Basic Law. [Source:
SCMP, 31 May 2002] 2.
Kerry plans $400m spree in Tsuen Wan redevelopment
Kerry Properties plans to invest up to HK$400 million to redevelop an industrial
site in Tsuen Wan into residential apartments. Chu Ip-pui, executive director
of Kerry Real Estate Agency, said Chung Nam Industrial Building was acquired for
HK$120 million and provided 200,000 square feet of floor area to develop for residential
use. He said the group paid a premium for conversion of land use. The site is
near Tai Wo Hau MTR Station and spans about 40,000 sq ft. "We intend to invest
HK$350 million to HK$400 million to build one or two apartment blocks up to 50
storeys high. Flat sizes will range from some 400 sq ft to 900 sq ft," he
said. "We might consider extending the development scale by applying for
adjoining government land with up to 40,000 sq ft to combine with the site."
Mr Chu expected the development could be released for sale in the second half
of 2004. Meanwhile, the group intends to release a joint-venture residential development
with Sino Land in Sham Tseng for sale in the second half of this year. The project
provides 210 units ranging from 850 sq ft to 1,400 sq ft and could generate HK$1
billion, Mr Chu said. In the past five months, the group cashed in HK$1.6 billion
from property sales, with proceeds of HK$1 billion from luxury residential project
Constellation Cove in Tai Po. Another 15 houses ranging from 3,240 sq ft to 3,960
sq ft will be leased at an average rental of HK$30 per sq ft. [Source:
SCMP, 31 May 2002] 3.
Government agencies opt for Linux
Linux, the open-source operating system with an outsider mystique, is now proliferating
on powerful government computer systems in the United States and abroad, and the
tech industry's giants are increasingly providing support. At a Tokyo trade show
last week, IBM was announcing the sale of more than 75 Linux-based computer systems
to US agencies, including the air force, the defence, agriculture and energy departments
and the Federal Aviation Administration. Overseas, Linux systems help keep order
in Germany's parliament as well as China's post office, France's culture, defence
and education ministries and other federal agencies in Europe and Asia. Dan Kusnetzky
of research firm International Data Corp (IDC) said: "It's an interesting
trend and we're seeing a lot of organisations which are very interested in open-source
software in general and Linux in particular." Unlike most commercial software,
the underlying code in open-source software is free and benefits from continual
scrutiny and improvements made by a community of programmers. Proponents say this
makes Linux more stable and secure than, say, Microsoft products - a claim Microsoft
and others dispute. Hewlett-Packard (HP) recently sold its second Linux system
to the US Department of Energy - a US$24.5 million computer said to be the world's
most powerful Linux configuration. The energy department will use the machine
for biological and environmental research. According to Red Hat, which sells a
popular version of Linux software and tools, the European Commission is also running
its software, along with ministries in Germany. Now that adoption of Linux was
being pushed by IBM and HP, the once-renegade operating system had gained a gleam
of respectability, said James Lewis, a technology analyst at the Centre for Strategic
and International Studies, who helped formulate the Clinton administration encryption
policy. Until recently, Linux filtered into US government computers through system
administrators who installed it because it was cheap. But experts say increasingly,
agencies are willing to pay for high-performance hardware tailored to Linux. Linux
has made little headway in the desktop operating system market dominated by Microsoft
because of incompatibilities with popular Microsoft applications used by people
daily. However, Linux was now the world's No 2 server operating system, with about
27 per cent of the market behind Microsoft's various Windows systems, which ran
more than 40 per cent of servers and most desktop computers, IDC said. Mr Kusnetzky
said it was most appropriate for certain maths-intensive supercomputing applications
as well as Internet servers and closed networks that tied together many branch
locations such as a bank's. The software also appears to be winning friends among
military and intelligence agencies. A study completed for the Pentagon by Mitre
last week identified 249 US government uses of open-source computer systems and
tools, with Linux running on several air force computers, along with systems run
by the Marine Corps, the Naval Research Laboratory and others. The report recommended
further use of open-source computing systems, on the grounds that they were less
vulnerable to cyber attacks and far cheaper. Microsoft has lobbied the Pentagon
against certain versions of open-source software, claiming government research
into the software is subsidising its competitors. Microsoft spokesman Jon Murchinson
said: "We have had discussions voicing our concerns." At the US Air
Force Seek Eagle office at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida - the office charged
with certifying that bombs and missiles can be safely carried and released by
US aircraft - researchers are using a high-performance IBM Linux system to model
weapons' trajectories. Steven Standley, an aerospace engineer working on the project,
said the air force unit bought a 64-processor IBM Linux computing cluster, along
with three years' technical support, for US$130,000 - far less than the US$750,000
Silicon Graphics system it replaced. IBM said military and intelligence agencies
in the US, Canada, Germany, France, Britain, Spain, China and Singapore had purchased
its Linux systems. The US National Security Agency offers its own security-enhanced
Linux software for free download from its Web site. Steve Solazzo, vice-president
for Linux marketing and sales, said that with so many software developers tinkering
with Linux's open code, new versions of the software were always improving. "Linux
is maturing very quickly, adding features and functions incredibly fast,"
he said. [Source:
SCMP, 31 May 2002] 4.
Porn-nappers hold names for ransom
Harvard student Ben Edelman was searching on the Internet for a bicycle repair
shop but stumbled instead on to Tina's Live Webcam, a hardcore pornography site.
There was no mistake: Mr Edelman had clicked through to www.bicyclebill.com but
the Web site registration of the local bike shop had expired and was quickly grabbed
by the Canadian operator of the explicit Web site. Mr Edelman did not take matters
lying down: he investigated and found that Domain Strategy of Montreal, which
operates the Webcam porn site, had snatched up more than 4,000 expired domain
names. "This rubbed me the wrong way," Mr Edelman said. "It inspired
me to see what Tina's Live Webcam was up to." The phenomenon, dubbed "porn-napping",
has happened to churches, schools, local governments and others that fail to renew
Web site registrations. The new owners generally offer to sell the names back
to their original owners - for anything from US$500 to US$2,000 - in what could
be a lucrative strategy but what some call extortion or blackmail. In the meantime,
hijacked addresses continue to direct users to porn or gambling sites, or to pages
that simply say "this domain for sale". Art Wolinsky, a New Jersey consultant
who operates the Online Internet Institute, said "some people would absolutely
call it blackmail but it's not illegal. If you don't re-register a name it becomes
available" to anyone who wanted to buy it. Registering a domain name normally
costs about US$35 but some registrars offer discounts putting the price at less
than US$10. Web site "hijackers" often sell the names back at about
US$550 - just less than the US$600 that would have to be paid for dispute resolution
by Internet governing authorities. Mr Wolinsky said about 40,000 expired domain
names were grabbed by porn-nappers or others under a loophole - since closed -
that allowed someone to return a site for a refund after five days. This allowed
the new owners several days to negotiate a sale with the original owner. He said
paying off the porn-nappers could encourage further hijackings but for some the
cost was lower than hiring a lawyer to get the name back. "The best advice
is not to put yourself in that position, to re-register the name," he said.
David Burt, a spokesman for N2H2, an Internet filtering company, said porn-napping
came to his attention because the firm noticed sexually explicit content on some
previously innocuous Web sites - operated by the Cape Cod History Society and
the International Lutheran Women's Missionary League, for example. "Most
of these sites are schools, churches and civic organisations that don't have their
name trademarked" and thus would have a tougher time making a case to get
the name back. "What I find most disturbing is that a lot of these links
are put into sites for children, so a child can click on that and be exposed to
hardcore porn." Other victims include a United States Navy recruiting site
taken over by a "free porn" Web site; and the city government site of
Bensalem, Pennsylvania, taken over by Max Kopisov of Ekaterinburg, Russia, which
directs users to a German-owned porn site. Mr Burt said some of the porn-nappers
had been traced to places such as Armenia and South Korea, making it more difficult
for US organisations to sue them. Internet Corp For Assigned Names and Numbers
(Icann) spokeswoman Mary Hewitt said there were no statistics on the numbers of
hijacked Web sites but the group had received many complaints. Ms Hewitt said
the practice was not illegal but some authorities, notably in the US, could prosecute
someone for blackmail if they could prove a site was registered with that intent.
Icann, the organisation governing Internet addresses, was studying a proposal
to give Web site owners a 30-day grace period before expired domain names were
opened up to new buyers, Ms Hewitt said. Mr Edelman recommended a 90-day grace
period that would keep expired names out of the hands of resellers. "The
right policy lets the original registrant get the domain name back," he said. [Source:
SCMP, 31 May 2002] 5.
Web site helps US military catch terrorists
The war in Afghanistan is going online. A drab tent under the Afghan sun hides
a hi-tech war room that soon will become the nerve centre of the campaign. Inside,
banks of tables are lined with soldiers bent over laptops. They look up at computer
maps of Afghanistan projected on large screens illuminating the dim interior.
All are logged on to the Tactical Web Page, a secret, secure Web site being used
in combat for the first time, through which American commanders at Bagram air
base and in the United States can direct the fight in Afghanistan. The system
collects all information and communication in one place. Commanders confer in
chat rooms and pass on orders; messages scroll across the screen, alerting developments
from the field; maps show friendly and enemy positions. The tent - actually a
honeycomb of tents linked by narrow passages - is the headquarters from which
Lieutenant-General Dan McNeill will work when he takes command of Bagram air base,
north of Kabul, today. Knowledge management officer Major Keith Hauk said: "The
rule here is that you can reach any critical information within two clicks of
the mouse." With wary looks, soldiers at work in the tent closed their laptops
as journalists passed by on a tour of the facility. A copy of the Web site, stripped
of sensitive information, was projected on to one of the main tent's large screens.
The command staff is confident that the site is secure from hackers, shielded
behind intrusion detectors and firewalls on its own local area network. Lieutenant-Colonel
Bryan Dyer said: "There have been a few instances when unidentified computers
have tried to get in, in which case we throw up additional firewalls." General
McNeill takes over the coalition campaign in Afghanistan at a time when the hunt
for al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters has grown more complicated. Many fighters are
thought to have fled to Pakistan; those still in Afghanistan are believed to be
operating in small groups. US and other troops have been scouring eastern Afghanistan
for infiltrators. "These are great tools. But it serves one purpose, to reduce
the complexity [of fighting the war]," General McNeill said, surrounded by
the computer wizardry. "The sharp point of the spear [is] the soldiers, sailors,
airmen and marines who . . . are taking the fight to those who would wage a terrorist
war throughout the world." General McNeill's station in the war room is in
the centre of the first table in front of the projection screens. Behind it are
five rows of tables rising up like a stadium where "watch groups" monitor
the action. Commanders in the field send information up through the Web site,
and orders flow back to them. Generals at Central Command in Florida - which runs
the US military in the Middle East and Central Asia - can also log on. Colonel
Dyer said: "[With all sides logged on] the boss can point out items on the
map with his subordinate commanders to draw up plans without everyone having to
be in one place." The maps on the Web site and the tent screens can track
all flights through the region. Icons point out US and allied troops, as well
as enemy positions. The network replaces the old system of paper maps and radio
communications - though these are on hand in case of breakdown. Major Hauk said:
"A computer with a bullet in it is just a paperweight. A map with a bullet
in it is still a map." [Source:
SCMP, 31 May 2002] 6.
Time to farewell the floppy and say thanks for the flash memory
It is safe now to throw out all your floppy disks and bid farewell to the venerable
floppy disk drive. The 3.5-inch disk drive has been surprisingly hard to kill.
Originally, one diskette could contain only 1.44 megabytes of data, and when Iomega
introduced the 100MB Zip drive, it did nearly kill the floppy. Zip drives became
so popular they were integrated in personal computers from Dell and NEC. Then,
Panasonic introduced the super floppy with a capacity of 120MB that gave the technology
a second lease of life. But both the Zip and the super floppy cannot cope with
the kind of data capacities we deal with daily - from e-mail to PowerPoint presentations
to huge PDF and Jpeg files. That is why Apple took the first step and did not
build a floppy disk drive in its iMac. Like many people I know, I have survived
the past four years without a floppy drive. With a broadband Internet connection,
I can forward all the files I need to work on to an online destination such as
Yahoo! briefcase. To back up my hard drive, there are a multitude of options from
Iomega one-gigabyte Jaz drives to external hard disk drives that go up to 50GB.
Most people, however, might still need or prefer a high-capacity removable storage
option. A CD-RW drive is still a good option even though combo drives that record
on CDs as well as DVDs are slowly becoming a standard in top-end PCs. Hewlett-Packard
(HP) two weeks ago in Hong Kong launched internal and external DVD+RW, DVD+R and
CD-RW combo drives. You can connect the drive to your PC via USB or IEEE 1394.
The internal drive costs HK$3,999 and the external HK$4,999. Now, we all know
that the DVD recording standards battle is making everyone a little confused about
the differences and whether they should wait for a while longer or bite the bullet.
I say bite the bullet. HP, Verbatim, Philips Electronics, Ricoh, Sony and Yamaha
were the developers of CD-R and CD-RW technology and that has become a standard.
Chances are they will get their way with DVD+RW. It makes sense for DVD+RW to
win out because of its backward compatibility - DVD+RW discs written on a DVD+RW
recorder can be read and played on the vast majority of existing and future DVD
video players and DVD-Rom drives. Dell and Thomson Multimedia recently joined
the DVD+RW camp. Another removable storage option to consider is flash memory
cards. A multitude of readers and flash memory-based products were released late
last year and prices have come down considerably for these once pricey storage
items. While standards are again an issue here, if you are merely using flash
cards for data transfer as you would a floppy disk, then you do not have to fret
about the different formats. SanDisk has a USB product called the Cruzer which
is about the size of a pager and takes SD cards. Another great flash-memory option
is a tiny USB flash disk which is about the size and weight of a plastic cigarette
lighter and has basic password protect security. It costs about HK$1,000 for a
256MB flash disk. Then you have a multitude of USB-based flash card readers that
are worth buying especially if you own portable devices that take flash cards
such as a digital camera, hand-held computer or MP3 player. As more portable devices
take flash cards, the days are numbered for floppy disks and Zip drives. Gartner
Group estimates that by 2004, each person would own at least three portable devices
which could be a digital camera, a PDA, an MP3 player, a cell phone or a multi-function
watch. Every one of those devices will probably have slots to take flash memory
and the data recorded will need to be read or uploaded to a computer. [Source:
SCMP, 31 May 2002] |  |
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