- Go to Yugoslavia's B92 radio station on the Internet
- Old Soldiers
- American Indian Trust Funds
- Cronyism blamed for CEO paychecks
- The trouble with Windows
- Eight cent Tax on Meat Proposal
- Internet Hate
- War on the Net
- A better way to advertise online?

- Suspect arrested in Melissa virus case
- Company Offers To Pay Web Surfers
- Web Management Co. Raises Feds' Ire
- States, Feds Create `Cyberforce'
- CERT/CC Advisories 1988-1999
- World Wide Woman
- Believe it or not...
- Web sites change political forum

(Real Audio Enabled)

Noah goes to the United States Soldiers and Airmen's home here in Washington DC to talk to three elderly vets about U-S involvement in Kosovo. They are John O'Donnell, William Woods and Fay Steel. Their feelings on the matter are quite strong - but not uniform. A combination of believing that if we are going in - we should "go in to win." But one of the men feels strongly that it is a civil war and that we have no business getting involved.

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NPR's Barbara Bradley reports that American Indian claims against the federal government for mismanaging their assets could run into the TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars. The mismanagement has meant that many of these Indians have lived in poverty over the years, despite the fact that oil wells on their land pump around the clock. The government, which admits that the Indians' assets have been mismanaged, will have a hard time defending itself against even a huge claim because so many records have been lost or destroyed.

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(AP) - Carnival Corp. CEO Micky Arison sits on the compensation committee that created his nearly $6 million pay package. The CEO of Hillenbrand Industries and his uncle serve on a company compensation committee. Conflicts of interest like these are too common across Corporate America, the AFL-CIO complained Wednesday in a report that blames cronyism for helping fuel skyrocketing executive paychecks. In part due to spiraling stock options, the average CEO of a major corporation made $7.8 million, or 326 times more than the $24,000 earned by a typical American factory worker in 1997 - a trend that is drawing mounting ire. In Germany, in contrast, the average CEO makes just 25 times the average worker's wage, according to the AFL-CIO. Even the inscrutable Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan took an unusual poke at executive compensation, saying in February that a lot of CEO pay is "not directed to the value they are producing for their shareholders, who are paying the ! bill." Naming friends, relatives and business partners to compensation committees helps fatten pay stubs, many believe.

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This was taken off the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) website where they are trying to push a bill through Congress to tax meat?

It is time for an excise tax on meat. More than eight billion animals are slaughtered every year for food in the United States alone. The companies that raise and kill animals for food represent a multibillion dollar industry, and the U.S. government has been giving them tens of billions of dollars in price supports and subsidies every year. It is unfair that the 26 percent of Americans who are decreasing their meat intake, and the 6-7 percent who identify themselves as vegetarians, are forced to pay the costs attributable to other people's behavior.

Our proposal entails an 8 cents per pound excise tax on meat, paid in the same way that the gasoline, tobacco, and alcohol taxes are paid, so that the tax is figured into the retail price. Each American buys roughly 226 pounds of meat per year. The United States, cumulatively, consumes 82.30 billion pounds of animal flesh. In 1994, a tobacco tax of 24 cents per pack generated 5.7 billion dollars. An alcohol tax of 7 to 10 dollars per gallon of grain alcohol (depending on type) generated 7.6 billion dollars. Federal excise taxes, in total, generated roughly 57 billion dollars. With an 8 cents per pound meat tax, revenue generated would be roughly 6.6 billion dollars.

Meat prices would go up only a few cents per pound, as part of the tax would be absorbed by the corporations, and part of the tax would be passed on to consumers, as demonstrated by the gas, tobacco, and alcohol taxes. The average American could expect to pay about 15 dollars in meat taxes, while vegetarians would pay nothing. However, our assumption is that as people learn about the health and environmental consequences of eating meat, consumption would slowly fall, thus lowering the price per person of the tax, and alleviating some of the health and environmental impacts of raising animals for food.

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October 21, 1997 -- The Anti-Defamation League released a report today on what it calls the dark side the Internet. It says the World Wide Web is a powerful new tool for groups that want to spread messages of hate and extremism. NPR's Kathleen Schalch reports the study says the Internet offers racists, anti-Semites, and anti-government extremists, another way to recruit new members and spread misinformation - particularly to young people.

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NPR's Margot Adler reports the internet has changed the way the world is learning about armed conflicts. The BBC, Yugoslav radio from Belgrade, and other networks are available in cyberspace. Radio B92, a private radio station in Belgrade that was banned when the NATO air strikes began, is still broadcasting over the 'Net.

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As merchants begin to sour on banner ads as a method of reaching consumers online, affiliate programs are taking off.

The programs, which allow companies to set up shop on sites all over the Web, offer more bang for the buck than traditional advertising methods, since companies only have to pay if the placements generate sales.

Bookseller Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) is widely credited with starting the trend, and has signed up thousands of affiliates. Those affiliates promote Amazon's wares on their own sites. If a customer clicks through to Amazon and makes a purchase, the affiliate gets a percentage of the sale.  The scheme has proved so popular, that companies like Be Free and LinkShare have started affiliate networks, essentially outsourcing the process for retailers and giving prospective affiliates a central place to sign up for multiple deals.

Are banner ads' banner days over?

Sites fight to keep banner ads effective

Individual Investor's online advertising jumps

The networks have caught the attention of some big players. Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL) recently said it would work with LinkShare to set up an affiliate program of its own, starting with around 50 Web sites.  "It's lead generation. It's been proven to work, and we're excited about using it," said Dell spokesman Dave Dix. "We're trying to grow very aggressively in all areas, and this helps us to reach more consumers."

It's also performance-based, something a company like Dell doesn't receive with a standard banner ad or sponsorship deal. That's what makes this type of deal attractive to major retailers, analysts said, and why more can be expected to begin signing up.

Affiliate programs growing
A Jupiter Communications survey of leading Web sites last December found that only 16 percent of travel, financial services and retail sites had affiliate programs. But Jupiter analyst Ken Cassar said that "that number will and should be higher when we come back," next year.

"With a traditional ad on [television] you're buying real estate -- a block of time. But you don't know how many people will show up, or how many respond positively," he said. "[Banner ads eliminate] the risk that no one shows up, because you only pay for those that see the banner, but there is still the risk they may not respond positively. An affiliate program eliminates the rest of that risk, you only pay for performance."

So is there a downside? Well, for one, consumers could rebel against sites clogged with dozens of buttons and banners flogging products, the same way some reject sites loaded down with ads.  And affiliate sites may find that the programs become one-shot deals. Consumers may just go directly to the merchant the next time they want to buy something, said Kate Delhagen, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.  But Delhagen said that despite those issues, the programs should become even more popular, especially since companies like BeFree and LinkShare can handle the workload.

Big names joining
LinkShare says it had already signed up more than 150 merchants, including big names like The Disney Store Online and 1-800-Flowers. And Be Free has gathered names like BarnesandNoble.com and GeoCities into its fold.  On average, affiliate programs generated 17 percent of sales, Cassar said. But that number should rise as companies get more adept at managing the programs, he said.

"Companies will shift ad dollars toward more performance based means," he said.

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David L. Smith, 30, of Aberdeen was arrested Thursday night at his brother's house in nearby Eatontown, said Rita Malley, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Peter Verniero.   Officials said Smith was a network programmer for a company that did subcontracting for AT&T Corp. The company's name was not immediately available.  Smith has been charged under state law with computer theft, wrongful access to a computer system and criminal conspiracy. The conspiracy charge leaves it unclear whether others were involved. Under new Jersey law only one person needs to be involved to face conspiracy charges. Those charges could carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $150,000 fine.   Smith may also face more charges under federal law, New Jersey officials said.   Smith was released this morning on $100,000 bail, according to a spokeswoman.

'Gumshoe work'
Smith originated the virus from his apartment in Aberdeen, Malley said. She said the virus is named after a topless dancer from Florida, where Smith used to live.

Smith was snared with the help of America Online technicians, and a computer task force composed of federal and state agents, Malley said.  State Attorney General Verniero said authorities found Smith through "good old-fashioned gumshoe police work,'' canvassing neighborhoods and identifying other family members who led them to Smith's brother's house. Verniero would not release the brother's name.

Smith cooperated with authorities when they arrived to arrest him, Verniero said.  New Jersey officials also hinted that Smith is not connected to VicodenES, the handle of a hacker who has been considered a source of the code.

Melissa appeared last Friday and spread rapidly around the world on Monday like a malicious chain letter, causing affected computers to fire off dozens of infected messages to friends and colleagues and swamping e-mail systems.  It disrupted the operations of thousands of companies and government agencies whose employees were temporarily unable to communicate by e-mail.

Michael Vatis, a federal prosecutor and director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center based at FBI headquarters, had said earlier this week that the author of a virus can be charged with a felony computer crime carrying a term of up to 10 years and a fine of up to $250,000.

AOL helped
Smith was snared with the help of America Online technicians, and a computer task force composed of federal and state agents, Malley said.  Earlier this week, experts had said there were clues that the virus writer had distributed the virus using an account stolen from America Online 15 months ago.

Several antivirus software makers, including McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro and Sophos, posted patches on their Web sites that detect and reject the Melissa virus.   It comes in the form of an e-mail, usually containing the subject line ``Important Message.'' It appears to be from a friend or colleague.

Smiley face
The body of the e-mail message says, ``Here is that document you asked for ... don't show it to anyone else'' with a winking smiley face formed by the punctuation marks ;-).   Attached to the message is a document file. If the user opened that file, the virus dug into the user's address book and sends infected documents to the first 50 addresses.

Reporting contributed by the Associated Press, Margaret Kane and Rob Lemos of ZDNN and Alex Wellen of ZDTV.

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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP), Mouse potatoes, rejoice. A new company is offering Web surfers 50 cents an hour for their time online.  In exchange for the loot, the Internet users must allow a bar of advertisements to move across the bottom of their screen.   AllAdvantage.com plans to launch the service Tuesday. Members, who sign up for free, earn money anytime they are online and displaying the so-called viewbar, which opens automatically whenever their browser is launched.

They can make up to $20 a month (that's 40 hours online) and 5 cents an hour when people they referred are browsing online. AllAdvantage.com, based in Los Altos, Calif., is run by Jim Jorgenson, who co-founded Discovery Zone children's indoor playgrounds. ``The great thing is that our members can use the Internet the same way they always have, but now they get paid for it,'' said Jorgenson. He said the company will not sell, rent or exchange identifiable personal information about members.

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WASHINGTON (AP), The government-selected company that assigns most of the world's Internet addresses made a surprise move to steer customers of an important Web directory to its private commercial site, and the government wants to know why. ``We're very concerned,'' Becky Burr, administrator with the Commerce Department, said Tuesday. ``This was undertaken without consultation with the United States government.''  People trying to visit the popular ``Internic'' directory, which checks the availability of a new Web address, are unexpectedly being swept automatically instead to the home page for Network Solutions Inc., which offers to register Internet addresses with the com, net or org suffixes for $119.

The government, in the middle of largely ending its own management of the Internet, is upset because the information directory has traditionally been considered a community resource, like a giant telephone book for the Web, and because it owns Internic as a registered trademark.  ``Our view is, this information has been freely available to the Internet community for a long time,'' Burr said. ``If there is some reason to change that, we need to be consulted.''  The information is still free, but one generally must go through the commercial Web site to see it.

The unexpected change that occurred overnight last Friday infuriated some Internet groups. It illustrates the difficulty the government is having giving private industry the job of running the worldwide computer network, which is becoming the most crucial communications medium for the digital age.  Hundreds e-mailed the Commerce Department to complain. ``We're entering a very uncertain period,'' said Jay Fenello, president of Iperdome Inc., an Internet company. ``There are serious questions about how this transition will move forward. This is just a symptom of that.''

Network Solutions, based in Herndon, Va., has enjoyed a lucrative, exclusive government agreement to register most of the world's addresses since 1993. The company has registered more than 4 million Web sites and had $93.7 million in sales last year. Its decision last weekend to quietly steer visitors from Internic to its own site comes just days before a new Internet organization selects five companies that will compete with Network Solutions in assigning Web addresses. ``They're trying to get as much visibility with customers as they can for as long as they can,'' complained William Walsh of Fresno, Calif., who runs DSO Net, another Internet company.  ``They're going to brand their registrar service as the Internic before there are even other registrars that could compete,'' Walsh said. ``It may be legal, but it speaks of ethical problems.''

A spokesman for Network Solutions, Chris Clough, said the Internic information directory is legally a customer list owned by his company. He said the company decided last weekend to consolidate several Web sites it maintained, including Internic, to anticipate changes in how the Internet will be managed. The California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, has assumed most of the management responsibilities for the Internet from the U.S. government. The group is expected to select five new Web registration companies worldwide next week.  Neither ICANN's president, Michael Roberts, nor chairwoman, Esther Dyson, responded to telephone calls and e-mail seeking comment.

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WASHINGTON (AP), To fight Internet investment scams, state regulators are going undercover online and federal authorities have a ``Cyberforce'' that does electronic surveillance.   Both sides, however, face a daunting task in combating growing instances of Internet fraud with limited resources, top officials said Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on investigations.

``We're going to continue to be vigilant,'' promised Richard Walker, the Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement director. He acknowledged, though, that with 850 attorneys and other enforcement employees nationwide to pursue all types of financial fraud, ``We are certainly challenged, if not strained.'' The mushrooming use of the Internet by financial con artists has forced the SEC to take resources away from other fraud areas, Walker said. The other areas would include conventional stock manipulations and insider trading.

In addition, the top cop for the SEC said the commission is examining the advertisements of electronic day-trading firms to see if they make unrealistic promises to investors. The firms sell training courses and special software programs to ordinary investors who want to try the risky, lightning-speed practice of day trading, exploiting small price movements in stocks to make a profit.

The agency last July set up a ``Cyberforce'' of 125 people who pore through the Internet on the lookout for fraud.  Because the Internet is everywhere, unscrupulous stock promoters anywhere in the world can cloak themselves in anonymity and entice thousands of investors ``with the click of a mouse,'' noted Sen.  Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the investigative panel.  Ms. Collins said she would consider drafting legislation designed to help securities regulators in fighting online fraud. Stocks now can be promoted fraudulently in Internet junk mail, online newsletters, electronic ``chat rooms'' and Web sites. Promoters don't have to give potential investors the hard sell over the telephone in unsolicited calls.

The rapid growth in online securities fraud ``could ultimately place a significant burden on the regulators' limited investigative staff resources and thereby limit the agencies' capacity to respond effectively,'' congressional investigators concluded in a new report released by the subcommittee.  Compounding the problem, the SEC has been losing many of its enforcement attorneys in recent years to the more lucrative private sector.

State securities regulators also are feeling the pinch.  ``There will never be enough regulators to keep the online world free from fraud and abuse,'' testified Peter Hildreth, president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, which represents the state authorities.  State regulators, unlike their federal counterparts, have the authority to go undercover to detect fraud on the Internet. They can establish e-mail addresses to go ``shopping'' for fraudulent stock solicitations in pursuing enforcement cases.  SEC attorneys and aides are required by federal privacy laws to identify themselves on the Internet.

That's a ``limitation,'' Walker said. He added, however, that a great deal of fraudulent activity had been discovered through electronic surveillance, as opposed to participation.  In October, the SEC made the first-ever nationwide sweep against stock touters on the Internet who failed to disclose they were paid to make the promotions. The agency filed fraud charges against 44 people and companies, following up in February with charges against another nine people and four firms.

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CA-99-04-Melissa-Macro-Virus.html

March 27, 1999 - At approximately 2:00 PM GMT-5 on Friday March 26 1999 we began receiving reports of a Microsoft Word 97 and Word 2000 macro virus which is propagating via email attachments. The number and variety of reports we have received indicate that this is a widespread attack affecting a variety of sites.

About the CERT/CC

The CERT Coordination Center is part of the Survivable Systems Initiative at the Software Engineering Institute, a federally funded research and development center at Carnegie Mellon University. We were started by DARPA (the Defense Applied Research Projects Agency, part of the U.S. Department of Defense) in December 1988 after the Morris Worm incident crippled approximately 10% of all computers connected to the Internet.

Originally, our work was almost exclusively incident response. Since then, we have worked to help start other incident response teams, coordinate the efforts of teams when responding to large-scale incidents, provide training to incident response professionals, and research the causes of security vulnerabilities, prevention of vulnerabilities, system security improvement, and survivability of large-scale networks.

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Republicans all fret about their "gender gap," but Elizabeth Dole seems to be doing something about it. Her new Web site, the Elizabeth Dole for President Exploratory Committee has a distinctly feminine tinge: its pages are purple, its edges rounded, its tone chatty. The site even refers to her in first-person. There's an "About Elizabeth" section featuring a wedding picture as well as a shot of her nuzzling with Bob Dole. You can wallpaper your desktop with her face or click a button to "Get Elizabeth's Free Email Newsletter!" Viewers can also read through her March 10 address, during which she launched an exploratory committee that could lead to a run for president in 2000, or tour the "Press Office" to "find out what the papers & electronic media are saying about Elizabeth." (Though suspiciously absent is the front-page New York Times story from March 11 that said Dole "has been known to burst into tears over unflattering press.")

So do women find this a site for sore eyes? We checked in with Jessica Helfand, the graphic designer behind word.com and discovery.com, who found the typography elegant but the font — especially the capital "E" in Elizabeth — "more theatrical than political... looks like it was lifted from a wedding invitation or a socialite fund-raiser." She notes that Dole uses the site to touch on issues (such as refurbishing the military and lowering taxes). "It seems like these 'feminine' touches, if that is indeed what they are, are intended to soften the message. Makes me wonder if the White House... released reports about air strikes in Kosovo using soft color palettes and specifying italic fonts, would it soften the blow to the American people?" — B. J. Sigesmund

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A flight simulator in MS Excel 97 (courtesy: Integra Microsystems, Bangalore, India)
Ever wondered why Microsoft applications seem to become slower and fatter with each new release?  Apparently the constant rain in Redmond has driven Bill's engineers to obsessive flights of fancy. Below you will find the instructions on how to Access a little flight simulator that was inexplicable hidden by precipitation-maddened programmers deep inside Excel 97...

1) In Excel 97, open a new blank worksheet
2) Press F5 and type X97:L97 in the "Reference" Box, then click OK.
3) Now hit your tab key once (you should end up on cell M97
4) Press "Ctrl" and "Shift" while clicking once on the "Chart Wizard" icon (the one at the top with the blue-yellow-red bar chart)

Welcome aboard! After a few moments you should be flying. Steer with the mouse, accelerate and decelerate with the left and right mouse buttons respectively, and look for the monolith with the programmer credits. You can exit the screen by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc.

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Depending on which Internet site you click, Republican Gov. George W. Bush was a successful businessman before entering politics or a lucky guy who got help from his father's friends. It's all part of the uncharted new world of Internet politics - World Wide Web sites that range from the official and flattering Bush Presidential Exploratory Committee to the clearly unflattering Bush Jr.'s Skeleton Closet. The Internet provides a lightning-fast, free-for-all forum that the Republican governor both uses and criticizes. "I don't believe in spreading malicious gossip and garbage," Bush said when asked what he thought of some Web sites that disseminate derogatory - and not necessarily accurate - items. Bush is a popular Web topic. The governor himself is behind three of them. There's one for his state office. He had a second for his re-election campaign. In the hours before he officially announced his presidential exploratory committee March 7, the committee's Web site was up and running. It carried a live "webcast" of his speech.