David Burd and Dr. Richard Shurtz, President of Stratford University, host Tech Talk, a program about computers and information technology.
     Links to selected programs are below. All programs are archived in RealAudio format. Just click on the RealAudio link below the date to listen. Older shows are archives as transcript summaries. You can listen live over the Internet by clicking ListenLive during show time.

• Computer Security and Information Assurance
  
  • Tech Talk Guest: Dr. Ron Ross
    • Senior Computer Scientist and Information Security Researcher, Computer Security Division (CSD), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
    • Director of the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), a joint NIST and NSA project.
    • Current areas of specialization include security testing and evaluation, security metrics, and information assurance.
  • NIST Computer Security Division (CSD) Research Areas
    • Cryptographic Standards and Applications
    • Security Testing
    • Security Research/Emerging Technologies
    • Security Management and Guidance
    • Outreach, Awareness, and Education
  • NIAP Continuity of IT Operations Conference
    • Conference Date: April 5^th
    • Conference Location: NIST, Gaithersburg, MD
    • Keynote: Newt Gingrich
    • Topics will include
      •  Lessons learned from 9/11 attacks
      •  Crucial need for Continuity of Operations Planning
      •  Challenges facing Federal agencies
      •  Familiarization with tools and resources
• Compaq-HP Merger
  • A loss of innocence
  • From backyard garage to boardroom
  • Walter Hewlett sues over HP strong arm tactics
• Wireless Revisited
  • Wireless Movement may be resisted by Telcos
    • Government action needed
    • Make bandwidth sharing explicitly permissible
    • Allow the deployment of souped up base stations
    • Release additional bandwidth for use by entrepreneurs
• APs in London are wide open
  • 5,000 AP located, most do not deploy any security
• Web Radio's Last Stand
  • Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is about to wipe out Internet radio
  • Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) , a body of the US Patent Office ruled
    • Internet-only radio must pay 14/100 of a cent per son, per listener for every streamed song
    • A station with 100 listeners, running 24/7 music would have to pay $2,000/month.
    • Much higher than the standard ASCAP and BMI fees
  • ASCAP and BMI fees cover the cost of playing the song.
  • DMCA fees cover the cost of distribution a digital copy.
  • Go to Save Internet Radio to help
• Courts Kill Resumption of Napster
  • On March 25^th, 9^th Circuit upheld the Federal ruling that ordered Napster to stay offline
  • Napster argued that is new system was 99% effective at enforcing copyrights
  • Napster is focusing on creating a paid online music service
  • Case is A&M Records v. Napster
• Mozilla Is Actually Getting to be Respectable
  • Mozilla Organization manages the project Website
  • Mozilla 1.0 is close to release (0.9.9 is actually out now, released March 11th)
  • Four years in the making.
  • AOL bought Netscape in 1998 and began the open source project then.
  • You can download it and give it a try. Getting good reviews.
  • May become AOLs default browser
  • Superior to previous commercial releases of Netscape based on earlier Mozilla builds
• Other News
  • Segway Auction for Human Transporter closes at $106,00
    • Top bidder Bruce Waldack, founder of Thruport Technologies
  • Gateway and Dell price battle (Gateway now lowest, but losing money)
  • ICANN embroiled in controversy
    • Many feel it is controlled by US corporate interests
    • Lawmakers may get involved
• Stratford News
  • Next Start is April 22^nd
  • Undergraduate Programs
    • Computer Programming, Computer Networking
    • Web Design, Security, Cisco, Windows 2000
    • Culinary Arts, Hospitality, Business Administration
  • Graduate Programs
    • E-business
    • Telecommunications

• Tech Talk Guest: Don Bailey
  • Setting up his own Community Wireless Internet Service
  • GeekSpeed Network
• HP-Compaq Merger is approved
  • Super Tuesday approval 9:1
  • Both stock drop
  • Expect layoff during merger
• Free e-mail will soon be history
  • MS sweeps Hotmail accounts to “encourage” users to pay
  • Yahoo tacks fee onto e-mail storage
  • Junk mail is causing everyone problem. Filters are not working
• Wireless ISP Movement
  • Last week we discussed Bill Wiecking, who is networking the Big Island
  • Strength of National Movement
  • National Trend for Public Access Points
    • San Francisco Bay Area, 257; Seattle, 154; New York, 107; Dallas, 105; Houston, 64; Austin, 34; Atlanta, 29; Phoenix, 22; Chicago, 21; Orlando, 20; Los Angeles, 17; Orange County, 17; Boston, 11;Philadelphia, 7; Cleveland, 6;Northern Virginia, 7
    • Global Access Wireless Database (www.shmoo.com)
      • Database of legitimate public access points
    • NetStumbler
    • How to discover unauthorized Access Points
    • Database of AP mappings
    • Award winning NetStumbler Software
    • Wirelessanarchy
      • Worldwide listing of wireless access groups
      • Much activity in Europe
      • US seems to be lagging begin
    • Freenetworks Consortium
      • Consortium of wireless network proponents
    • PersonalTelco Project
      • Community Networking consortium
  • Commercial Wireless Ventures
    • Boingo -- Subscription server for hotels, airport access.
    • Sputnik.com -- Bandwidth sharing and billing system
  • What is happening in this area?
    • NovaWireless Organization -- Primary wireless organization in Northern Virginia
    • Geekspeed Network -- Don Bailey's company
    • Atlantech Online -- T-1 provider recommended by Don
• Magnetic Strip on Driver’s License an Information Boon for Bar
  • Used by The Rack, a bar in Boston
  • Barcode includes name, address, birth date, other personal details, height, eye color, SSN
  • Scan 10,00 people per week
  • 40 States have bar codes
  • Privacy advocates alarmed by trend (beware of national ID card)
• Conference Update
  • FOSE Trends
    • Attendance up 30% over last year
    • Integrated solutions rather than products
    • Wireless making real inroads into government deployment
    • Security is big (non-disruptive technologies)
    • Clarke carves out security of IT budget (8% of 52B Federal budget)
    • Patrick Gelsinger, Intel CTO predicts Moore’s Law to continue to next ten years with atomic level device technology
  • National Information Assurance Partnership Conference
    • Conference Name: Continuity of Operations: Planning and Response in Today’s Environment
    • Keynote Address: Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of House
    • Date: April 5
    • Location: NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
    • Dr. Ron Ross will talk briefly about conference highlights next week
• Google News
  • Google Takes on Supercomputer Projects
    • Experiment now being conducted with 500 people
    • Sharing clock cycles using the latest toolbar version of Google
    • Folding@home project at Stanford to analyze genetic information
  • Latest example of distributed computer movement
  • Cancer Cures
  • Golomb Ruler
  • Seti At Home
  • Google Zeitgeist
    • Most searched terms
    • Winner and loser search term categories
  • GoogleWhacking
    • Finding the Perfect word combo (4, 5, or 6 words)
    • Get a single page only
• Stratford News
  • Health Fair at Potomac Mill Shopping Center
    • Saturday, March 23
    • Healthy Cooking Demos and IT Technology Advice
    • All day long, beginning at 10AM
  • Stratford Culinary Finalist in IACP Outstanding US Culinary School Competition
  • Next starts is April 22nd
    • Still time to enroll for Woodbridge for Tysons Corner
    • Admissions reps standing by now
  • New Equipment in IT Department this week
    • Cisco 7500 Router, fully loaded
    • Cisco 5503 Catalyst Switch
    • Five more sun servers
    • Five more Dell servers (1300, 2400, 4300)

• Tech Talk Guests
  • Mayi Canales
    • Deputy Chief Information Officer, Department of Treasury
    • Co-Chair, CIO Council E-Government Initiative
  • Bill Howell
    • VP, Post Newsweek Technology
    • Managing Director, FOSE
  • Federal Office Systems Expo (FOSE) is this week
  • Tuesday through Thursday
  • March 19^th through 21^st
  • CIO Council IT Initiatives
    • E-Government
    • Accessibility (Section 508)
    • Federal Architecture and Infrastructure
    • Interoperability and Security
    • Workforce and Human Capital for IT
  • Department of Treasury IT Initiatives
    • Recent work in wireless and security
    • Work environment in government and job opportunities
• Census Bureau Plan for Paperless 2010 Census
  • Door-to-door canvassing of 40 million households
  • Plan to by 500,000 wireless computing devices
    • GPS,Telecommunications,Maps, E-mail
    • Target price $100 (current price $500 to $600)
• Global Crossing Creating Havoc with the Market
  • Optical capacity trading discovered between Global, Worldcom, and Qwest is scrutinized
  • Telecom in freefall (Global, Worldcom, Sprint, Quest)
  • Stock option management called into question at Worldcom
  • New bidder for Global is at least from US
    • Fiber Optek Interconnect for NY
    • Competing with Hutchinson Whampoa and Singapore Telemedia ($750M)
• 25 States join the Team of 9 against Microsoft
  • Three more “friends of the court” briefs were filed on Friday, March 15
  • 25 additional states have rallied behind the other nine
  • States are trying to protect their sovereignty in anti-trust cases
• New Windows Filing system in the works
  • NT, 2000, XP, .Net and now something new
  • Total revamp of current filing system
  • .Net and Database technology is moving to the hard drive
  • Advanced database technology using XML will make retrieval much easier
  • Important for complete integration with .Net
  • Microsoft would be following Oracles lead in this matter
• W32/Gibe Malicious Worm In the Wild
• Delivered via Email
  • From: Microsoft Corporation Security Center
  • To: Microsoft Customer
  • Subject: Internet Security Update
  • Message: This is the latest version of the security update, the 7 March Cumulative Patch”…….
  • Attachment: q216309
• Impact
  • Installs backdoor GFXacc.exe
  • Sends itself to addresses found on host
• ICANN Makes Controversial Election Ruling
  • ICANN is Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
  • Annual conference in Ghana, Africa  is in an uproar
  • Board Chair rejected open election of Board Members
  • Recommended 5 government, 5 corporate, 5 ex-officio members
  • ICANN (and ISOC for that matter) are suffering the same problem as UN
• Great New Idea of the Week (Link requires free website registration)
• Point, shoot, translate into English
• Invented by IBM researcher, Dr. Haritoaglu
• Uses a color digital camera on wireless Palm.
• Provides realtime translation using remote language translation server
• Used for street signs, signs in grocery stores, etc.
• AOL Testing Netscape
  • Current beta software called Talon uses AOL 7.0 plus Netscape Gecko
  • It was supposed to be used for 7.0 release but was not ready
  • 7.0 currently uses IE
• Homebrew Wireless Network in Hawaii (Signs of a real movement)
  • Bill Wiecking is networking the Big Island single handedly
  • Set up 26 802.11b nodes, some with amplifiers for ranges up to 26 miles
  • Uses housetop antennas to cover 300 square miles
• EBays goes down 90 minutes
  • First outage since January, 2001
  • EBay gets 300 page views per day and delivers about 1.5GB of data per second
• Stratford News
  • Health Fair
    • Saturday, March 23
    • Potomac Mills Mall
    • Healthy Cooking Demos and IT Technology Advice
    • All day long, beginning at 10AM
  • ACF Awards Stratford Two Service Awards at annual awards banquet
    • Chef Professional Award
    • Outstanding Culinary Educator
  • New term starts this week
  • Still time to enroll for Woodbridge for Tysons Corner

• Compaq-HP Fiasco
  • Merger based on fixed stock percentage
  • $22B, 0.62HP shares traded for each Compaq share
  • Two weak hardware companies are not really stronger  to Much product overlap
  • Needed to merge with a services company like KPMG
  • Board and CEO are pitted against the Hewletts and the Packards
  • Walter Hewlett is a determined opponent
  • Stockholder vote set for March 19^th
  • FTC has ruled in favor of agreement
  • Institutional Shareholders voted in favor of merger
  • Market response is mixed
• Microsoft Still in the Hotseat
  • Sun Files Private Antitrust Lawsuit against MS seeking $1B in damages
    • Focusing on Java integration into IE and Windows
    • The baton has been passed from Netscape to Sun
  • DOJ Antitrust Case
    • Nine states score some points as they refine their position
    • Other trade groups voice concern over DOJ settlement
    • Balmer claims that the counter proposal would for Windows from the marketplace
    • Five Depositions have been released, posted at Department of Justice and on Microsoft Presspass websites
  • Xbox Scratches DVDs in units released in Japan. MS vows to replace defective units.
• PGP Dumped by Network Associates
  • PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy
  • Network Associates disbans the NAI PGP Group
  • Phil Zimmerman, PGP created, left Network Associates in February, 2001
  • Phil Zimmerman makes plea for Open Source PGP
  • Go to Open PGP Website if you want to contribute
  • Check out the PGP International Newspage for the latest PGP updates and dowloads (free)
  • Checkout the MIT Distribution Site for PGP software downloads (free)
• Netscape Navigator Snoops on Web Searches
  • Forwards information back to AOL
    • Search Term
    • IP Address
    • Navigator install date
    • Unique ID Number
  • AOL says it is for billing participating sites for traffic sent to them
  • Microsoft IE shown not to spy
  • Study based on Traffic Analysis by Newbytes
• How to Change a Spare Government
  • Another Satirewire Contribution
  • This one is funny!
• Security is Number Concern in 2002
  • Many jobs are available in this area
  • SANS Top Twenty List is a good place to start to learn. The top seven that apply to all systems
    • Default installs of operating systems and applications
    • Accounts with No Passwords or Weak Passwords
    • Nonexistent or Incomplete Backups
    • Large number of open ports
    • Not filtering packets for correct incoming and outgoing addresses
    • Nonexistent or incomplete logging
    • Vulnerable CGI Programs
  • Stratford is has an excellent graduate security course next term
    • Data Communications with Security Emphasis (CIS 580)
• Hacker Claims Worm Written to Combat Sexism
  • Seventeen year old girl wrote a worm in C-sharp
  • Target was Microsoft .Net Web Services Platform
  • Dubbed “Sharpei”
  • Hacker says she wrote to make a social point and to dispel the perception that there are not any female virus writers.
  • The worm is not in the wild and is considered to be low risk
  • Written to spread via Outlook e-mail and has a subject line that reads “Important: Windows Update.
• Senate and House  OK Tax Breaks for IT Purchases
  • Good to Tech
  • Upfront 30% write-off, with rest depreciated over five years
• Morpheus is back, but using Gnutella Network
  • Morpheus shut down February 26
  • Came back online March 1
  • Apparently Morpheus refused to pay licensing fee to Fast Track
  • Linked with Gnutella in of with the Fast Track network, that also powers KaZaa and Grokster
• Sony selling Linux kit for PlayStation2
  • Kit includes 40GB hard disk, Ethernet adapter, mouse, keyboard, and OS
  • Price $200. Shipping date: May 22, 2002
  • Target hobbyists who want to be game developers
  • Sony responded to petition signed by 9,600
• Tech Talk Mailbag
  • Getting rid of junk mail
  • Jimbo communicates again
  • Getting into web design
• Stratford News
• Next Start March 19^th
• Open House in Woodbridge Campus Today
• Graduate Level and Undergraduate Level

• All you wanted know about time
• Time Travel: The Basics
  • Time is relative (Einstein)
    • Speeding up time near a very heavy mass (or a black hole)
    • Slowing down time by going very fast (or a fraction of the speed of light)
  • Using a worm hole for time and/or space travel
• Time Loops (round trips in time) are paradoxical
• How Time Travel Will Work from HowStuffWorks (very readable)
• Time Travel in Einstein's Universe by J. Richard Gott
  
  • Passage of time is a feature of this universe
  • Using time travel to explore the beginning of the universe
  • Problems with causality (grandfather paradox)
• Time: A Traveler's Guide by Clifford A. Pickover
  • Interesting and very readable book
  • Covers many of the same points as Gott
• Time Standards for those of us in Flat Space
  • National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) maintains time standards
  • NIST Cesium Fountain Clock is current time standard
  • NIST Time servers provide atomic time updates over the Internet
  • Software available for automatic updating of computer clock
    • Public domain for Windows and Macintosh
    • Shareware and Commercial Software (my favorite is AtomTime)
    • Currently included in Windows XP
  • Using Radio Waves to update wall clock or wrist watch
    • WWVB -- 60Hz signal from Fort Collins, Colorado transmits data at 1bps
• Tausin-Dingell Bill passes the house
  • Defangs the Telecommunications Act of 1996
  • Baby Bells are getting rewarded for snubbing the law
  • Major House Proponent
    • House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman, W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, R-La.
    • He believes it is needed to make DSL competitive with Cable
  • Major Senate Opponent
    • Senate Commerce Committee Chairman, Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C
    • He calls bill "blasphemy," and is seeking to delay or  kill it.
  • Selected Corporate and Organization positions
    • Favored by Baby Bells -- Verizon, SBC Communications, BellSouth, Qwest (Connect USA)
    • Opposed by AT&T, Worldcom, Cable Companies, DSL Providers, Internet Service Providers (Voices for Choices)
    • Opposed by Internet Society (Press Release)
    • Opposed by Tech Talk
  • Checkout the political money trail
• Republican candidate for Governor caught spamming in California
  • Bill Jones called it innovative use of the Internet
  • Sent to addresses with ca suffix in error
  • Used address spoofing
  • Sent through an elementary school SMTP server in Chonnam, Korea
  • Highlights problem with offshore spamming companies
• FirstGov.gov gets facelift
  • Announced by Cheney in March 1 ceremony
  • Mantra is Three Clicks to Service
  • Site has three top categories (citizen, business, governments)
  • Facelift cost $350K
  • Cheney clicked a cardboard mouse to activate site
• Energy Secretary Uses Digital Signature
  • Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy, uses e-authentication to send proposal to President
    • Proposal is 9,500 pages (4 feet tall, weighing 80 pounds if printed)
    • 24 years of research on nuclear was storage
    • Also available on CD
    • Saved $1M in printing costs
  • VeriSign provided the digital signature technology
    • First cabinet official to use e-authentication
    • As a Senator, Abraham helped write the Electronic Signature and National Commerce Act that was signed into law on July 2000.
• Security Events of the Week
  • Britney Spears Worm discovered today in Europe
    • WBS/Britney-A and VBS-BridneyPic.A
    • Low risk, but high alert
  • Microsoft News
    • .Net Server release delayed
      • Part of Trustworthy Computing initiative
    • Will not ship in the first half of 2002
    • XP updates will continue however
• New York Times Network Hacked
• Adrian Lamo, who has previously hit Yahoo, Microsoft, Excite@Home
• Viewed employee records, including SSN
• Intel’s vision of the PC
  • Integrated 802.11b wireless
  • 3GIO to replace both AGP and PCI.
  • This will revolutionize PC design with wired connectivity
  • Noise and heat reduction
    • Liquid cooling, since diamonds are too expensive
    • Acoustics with air channeling to reduce noise
• Novell gets new leadership
  • Chris Stone rejoins Novell
  • Chris is a developer heart
  • Says Chris, “Buy some popcorn and watch Novell’s comeback plot unfold
  • Emphasis will be on the development environment
  • Look for strong support of Java2 Enterprise environment
• Stratford News
  • Next Start March 18^th
    • All program (Graduate and Undergraduate)
    • Great security class in the graduate program
  • Excellent meeting with ABE/CCA coalition this week
    • Bush administration is pushing education at all levels (elementary through adult)