> From: “Meltsner, Kenneth”
> Date: Tue Sep 23, 2003 8:18:04 PM US/Pacific
> To:
> Subject: if there’s ever a Nuerenberg trial for food crimes, here’s a
> candidate….
>
> I’m appalled, and I’m living in Wisconsin — I thought nothing could
> surprise me in the fried/cheese-bearing foods category…
>
> Ken
>
> September 23, 2003
> Cheeseburger and Fries, Wrapped Up in One
> By TANIA RALLI
>
> If the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has its way, beef will
> not be just for dinner anymore.
>
> Looking to emulate the success of Chicken McNuggets and fried
> mozzarella sticks, the group is hoping to inject some red meat into
> the American snack food diet with cheeseburger fries. The fries, which
> look like a squat version of standard French fries, are made of a
> meat-and-cheese compound that tastes — as the name suggests — like a
> cheeseburger.
>
> Breaded, then deep-fried and served with ketchup or barbecue sauce,
> cheeseburger fries have found their way onto menus in several states
> including Nebraska, Minnesota and Texas since June. There is also a
> version being made available to public school cafeterias.
>
> “The challenge is getting people to think of other ways to eat beef,”
> said Betty Hogan, director of new product development for the
> association.
>
> Beef, mostly in the form of hamburger, still dominates the menus of
> fast-food restaurants and bars across the country. But even the
> enduring popularity of the hamburger is not enough to counteract the
> long-term decline in national beef consumption. Twenty years ago
> Americans ate 77.1 pounds of beef per capita and 51.3 pounds of
> chicken. In 2001, the figures were 66.2 pounds of beef per capita and
> 75.6 pounds of chicken.
>
> That reversal took place in part because of the popularity of
> McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets, which were introduced in 1983, altering
> the public’s perception of chicken by turning it into a quick and
> convenient food. Beef was still largely relegated to the evening meal,
> and the National Beef Council’s popular slogan — “Beef: It’s What’s
> for Dinner” — seemed out of step when fewer families were sitting down
> to dinner together.
>
> Looking for other avenues into the American diet, the beef industry
> noticed that restaurants sell over 900 million portions of chicken
> strips and fried cheese sticks, many of them as appetizers.
>
> “You just don’t see beef-based appetizers,” Rob McLaughlin, vice
> president for product management at the Advance Food Company in Enid,
> Okla., which is manufacturing cheeseburger fries.
>
> The fries themselves are surprisingly light, weighing only about one
> ounce each. The meat, so that it holds together, is firm like a
> meatball. And while the taste is not distinctly beef, biting into one
> does impart the lingering flavoring of processed cheese.
>
> Steve Mason, owner of the Brass Rail restaurant in Beatrice, Neb.,
> said he served five fries in a portion and charged $2.95. “They’re
> very profitable,” he added.
>
> Like most bar snacks, cheeseburger fries pack quite a dietary wallop.
> Each individual fry has about 75 calories and four grams of fat. The
> fries for schools have less beef per serving but still have about 60
> calories and, in fact, more fat — a total of 6 grams — in each fry.
> And nobody eats just one.
>
> Developing a beef-based snack was a process that took about two years.
> According to Dr. Tony Mata, the technical coordinator of the
> association’s research and development branch, the final shape of
> cheeseburger fries was almost an accident. “There’s an interesting
> twist to how this product came about,” he said. “We were actually
> working on a cheeseburger by the slice.”
>
> The idea had been to manufacture precooked patties that tasted like a
> cheeseburger by combining ground beef and cheese.
>
> “It was supposed to have the same dimension of a regular hamburger
> patty,” Dr. Mata said. The consumer would simply heat the burger in a
> pan or microwave, place it in a bun, and dress it like a regular
> burger.
>
> “It looked good on paper,” Dr. Mata said. “Then we tried it at the
> laboratory, and the initial appeal was horrible.”
>
> Dr. Mata and the development group decided to rework the product,
> changing its shape, adding batter and bread and dropping it into the
> deep fryer.
>
> The new prototype was tested in Evanston, Ill., at the Keg of
> Evanston, a popular bar near Northwestern University. Satisfied with
> the response, the association enlisted a food scientist, Steve Moore,
> who is known in the business for his expertise in developing breaded
> coatings. In the past Mr. Moore worked on breading projects like onion
> rings, jalapeño peppers, seafood and even French toast sticks (in
> effect, adding breading to bread).
>
> “I started the project by putting a variety of flavors together with
> coatings,” Mr. Moore said about the cheeseburger fries.
>
> He likened the coating process to walking a tightrope, since the
> moisture of the meat and cheese must be carefully controlled for the
> breading to adhere. Otherwise, when the product is deep-fried, the
> heat of the oil will produce enough steam to blow off the breading.
>
> “You always follow wet by dry,” he said. So, before the meat and
> cheese could be battered and breaded, the shaped mixture had to be
> coated in a fine flourlike substance called predust to dry the surface
> of the moist mixture.
>
> Picking the right cheese was also an issue. Mr. Moore tested
> everything from premium sharp cheddar cheese to processed American
> cheese.
>
> “We didn’t want it so cheesy that we overwhelmed the beef flavor,” he
> said.
>
> “When people bite into it, you want them to get the wow effect: `Wow,
> this tastes just like a cheeseburger,’ ” Mr. Moore said.
>
> After testing different types of cheeses, Mr. Moore settled on a
> processed restricted-melt cheese, meaning that it is manufactured to
> withstand high temperatures.
>
> “Some cheeses are so restricted melt that we bit in and it looked like
> little yellow pieces of plastic,” he said.
>
> He created three flavor profiles. The first tasted like plain beef
> with salt and pepper. Then he made a prototype mimicking the flavor of
> beef fried on a flat-top grill, as at McDonald’s, and another that
> suggested a charbroiled flavor, like a Burger King hamburger.
>
> Tasters like the charbroiled flavor, but said it did not make sense to
> have something like that also taste deep-fried.
>
> “It’s hard to please everyone,” Mr. Moore said.
>
> When Advance Food began producing the cheeseburger fries at the
> beginning of the year under license from the cattlemen’s association,
> the company limited distribution to the central states but the product
> is now available across the country.
>
> “We think that we will sell about a million dollars’ worth this year,”
> Mr. McLaughlin said.
>
> All this, of course, pleases the National Cattlemen’s Beef
> Association. “We want beef in dessert if we can get it there,” Ms.
> Hogan said.
>
> Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
>

> From: Jeffrey Kay
> Date: Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:20:55 AM US/Pacific
> To: FoRK
> Subject: Verisign’s Domain Redirects
>
> Seems like DNS is in trouble yet again. This is a pretty interesting
> issue.
> One could argue that managing a root gTLD server is a public trust and
> Verisign is violating that trust.
>
> — jeff
>
> VeriSign stands firm on domain redirect
> Last modified: September 22, 2003, 6:07 PM PDT
> By Declan McCullagh
> Staff Writer, CNET News.com
>       
>
> VeriSign said Monday that it would not abandon its decision to point
> unassigned domain names at its Web site, but representatives did say
> the
> company would form a technical committee later this week to look into
> the
> problems caused by the change.
>
> During the last week, criticism has steadily grown over VeriSign’s ”
> SiteFinder ” service, which has caused problems for network
> administrators
> and confused spam-blocking utilities. A number of Internet standards
> bodies
> and administrative groups have asked the Mountain View, Calif.-based
> company–which enjoys a government-granted monopoly over the .com and
> .net
> registry–to stop, and a second lawsuit seeking an injunction against
> the
> practice was filed Monday.
>
> On Monday, VeriSign spokesman Tom Galvin said SiteFinder would remain
> in
> place because “we think the technical review committee is the
> appropriate
> mechanism before making any long-term decisions about the service.” The
> committee members who will be chosen by VeriSign and will report to the
> company will be announced later this week, Galvin said.
>
> “All indications are that users, important members of the Internet
> community
> we all serve, are benefiting from the improved Web navigation offered
> by
> Site Finder,” VeriSign Vice President Russell Lewis said in a Sunday
> letter
> to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
> “These
> results are consistent with the findings from the extensive research we
> performed.”
>
> ICANN is the nonprofit organization that oversees Internet domain
> names. On
> Friday, the group asked VeriSign to pull the plug on its “wildcard”
> redirection service.
>
> Since then, ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee has
> published
> a more-detailed critique of the technical problems caused by VeriSign’s
> move. The committee–which includes a VeriSign representative–said it
> would
> hold a public meeting in the Washington, D.C., area on Oct. 7 and has
> asked
> for feedback to be sent to secsac-comments [at] icann [dot] org.
>
> “VeriSign’s change appears to have considerably weakened the stability
> of
> the Internet, introduced ambiguous and inaccurate responses in the
> (Domain
> Name System), and has caused an escalating chain reaction of measures
> and
> countermeasures that contribute to further instability,” the
> committee’s
> critique said. “VeriSign’s change has substantially interfered with
> some
> number of existing services which depend on the accurate, stable, and
> reliable operation of the domain name system.”
>
> VeriSign’s new policy is intended to generate more advertising revenue
> from
> additional visitors to its network of Web sites. But the change has
> had the
> side effect of rewiring a portion of the Internet that software
> designers
> always had expected to behave a certain way. That can snarl antispam
> mechanisms that check to see if the sender’s domain exists, complicate
> the
> analysis of network problems and possibly even pollute search engine
> results. Because VeriSign will become a central destination for
> mistyped
> e-mail and Web traffic, its move also raises serious privacy questions.
>
> On Monday, domain name registrar Go Daddy Software filed a lawsuit in
> federal district court in Arizona seeking to halt the SiteFinder
> redirection. “VeriSign has hijacked this entire process,” Bob Parsons,
> president of Go Daddy, said in a statement. “When the user is sent to
> VeriSign’s advertising page, VeriSign gets paid by the advertiser when
> the
> user clicks a link to get off the page, to the tune of $150 million
> annually, as estimated by VeriSign.”
>
> It appears to be the second lawsuit filed in response to VeriSign’s
> move.
> Popular Enterprises, the parent company of search provider
> Netster.com, sued
> VeriSign over the SiteFinder redirection last week, alleging antitrust
> violations, unfair competition and violations of the Deceptive and
> Unfair
> Trade Practices Act.
>
> Also in response to VeriSign’s move, the well-respected Internet
> Architecture Board published on Saturday a document titled
> “Architectural
> Concerns on the use of DNS Wildcards,” referring to the domain name
> system.
> It says the danger of “wildcard records is that they interact poorly
> with
> any use of the DNS that depends on ‘no such name’ responses.”
>
> jeffrey kay
> weblog pgp key aim
> share files with me — get shinkuro —
>
> “first get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure” —
> mark
> twain
> “if the person in the next lane at the stoplight rolls up the window
> and
> locks the door, support their view of life by snarling at them” — a
> biker’s
> guide to life
> “if A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y plus Z. X
> is
> work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.” — albert einstein
>
>
>

Putting a lid on broadband use By John Borland Staff Writer, CNET News.com http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5079624.html

Earlier this month, a Philadelphia Comcast broadband subscriber got a letter from his service provider, telling him he’d been using the Internet too much.

Keith, who asked to keep his full name private, said he’d subscribed to the service for four years and never had a complaint before. Now he was being labeled a network “abuser.”

Worse, he said, Comcast refused to tell him how much downloading was allowed under his contract. A customer service representative had told him there was no specific cap, he said, adding that he might avoid being suspended if he cut his bandwidth usage in half. But even then, the lack of a hard number gave Keith no guarantee.

What’s new: Cable Internet service subscribers are quietly capping the volume of downloading they allow their subscribers to do. So far, it’s only affecting the heaviest users.

Bottom line: As broadband providers strive for ever-speedier and economical service–and bandwidth-hogging features such as video on demand become more popular–these caps may become more common. And they may affect digital subscriber line (DSL) providers as well.

“I don’t mind restrictions, but how can Comcast expect users to stick to a limit when they don’t say what the limit is?” he said. “If they’re going to impose limits, that’s one thing, but at least tell us what they are.”

Keith isn’t alone in his newfound position under the Internet service provider (ISP) microscope. Other high-volume Comcast subscribers have been getting letters since late summer warning them of overuse. A few others have even had their service suspended after the first warning. Comcast spokeswoman Sarah Eder said that its new enforcement policy was barely two months old.

As Keith and other frustrated users found, the company’s warnings to subscribers were not triggered by any “predetermined bandwidth usage threshold,” Eder added. Only about 1 percent of subscribers received letters, which were based on having exceeded average usage patterns rather than a specific number, she said.

For now, this quiet imposition of usage caps affects only a tiny fraction of extraordinarily high-volume users. But it goes to the heart of the competitive decisions cable and telephone companies are making as they struggle for broadband dominance . Comcast in particular is working to provide ever-increasing download speeds , and as result it is struggling to contain busy file swappers and others who are putting stress on their networks.

It is not something the broadband providers are eager to talk about. Even as Comcast sends out letters to its customers targeting high-volume users, the company bristles at the notion that the policy is a cap.

It’s easy to see why: As cable and DSL companies race to bulk up on subscribers, companies tagged as “bandwidth cappers” could be at a disadvantage. The problem is particularly awkward for cable companies, which have tried to avoid a price war with the telephone companies by promising better quality of service.

“The industry is leery of explicit caps, because even people who don’t come anywhere near the caps feel like something is being taken away from them,” Jupiter Research analyst Joe Laszlo said. As consumers grow more used to broadband services and begin understanding what to expect from their connections, companies “can’t claim their service is unlimited if there is some kind of informal limit,” Laszlo added.

Hard caps and fuzzy ones Different ISPs are taking widely different approaches to this issue, although caps seem for now to be limited to the cable companies.

Cox Communications started phasing in hard usage limits in February, and now a majority of that company’s subscribers are limited to downloading 2 gigabytes a day–the equivalent of about two compressed feature-length movies or about 400 MP3 songs. AOL Time Warner’s Road Runner cable modem service has no caps yet, although sources say the idea is being discussed internally.

Comcast’s policy has proven most controversial. The company’s terms of service say only that users cannot “represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an unusually large burden on the network.” According to a spokeswoman, the company began sending notes about two months ago to the top 1 percent of the heaviest users–people who collectively use about 28 percent of the company’s bandwidth–telling them they were violating their terms of service.

Eder said there was no specific line crossed by these subscribers, but she added that some of those people were downloading the equivalent of 90 movies in a given month.

Comcast customer Keith, a British immigrant, said he used his cable modem service to watch the BBC, have video conversations and trade DVD-quality home movies with his family in the United Kingdom.

Comcast defended the policy of having the unstated–but still enforceable–limitation on bandwidth use, saying that any hard cap would have to change in any case as high-bandwidth applications such as video on demand became popular.

“The Internet is growing, and there are more broadband applications every day,” Eder said. “If we were to set an arbitrary number today, we could be changing it tomorrow.”

Both Cox and Comcast have a policy of sending warning letters to subscribers before suspending or terminating service. No subscriber would be affected without substantial warning, spokespeople from both companies said.

Some smaller cable companies are imposing much lower caps. Alaska’s GCI Cable , for instance, limits its subscribers to transferring just 5 gigabytes a month.

Telephone companies offering DSL service in the United States say they have no limits in place for their users, unlike Canadian, British or Australian counterparts that routinely cap their subscribers’ usage. Verizon Communications and SBC Communications, the largest DSL providers in the United States, both said their services remain unlimited.

“The customers buy the lines,” SBC spokesman Michael Coe said. “We make whatever bandwidth they need available to them.”

There’s a limit The caps are a small but crucial part in the latest round of skirmishing among broadband companies over price and features. Cable companies have had a lead in the consumer market for years, but they’re now nervously watching telephone companies’ DSL services–particularly co-branded offerings like the SBC Yahoo service–start to close the gap.

Both sides are trying to figure out how best to attract and then support the mainstream dial-up Internet audience, which is finally starting to come to broadband in droves.

DSL companies have brought deeply discounted prices into their arsenal. It’s now rare not to see a $29.95 per month offer from the likes of SBC or Verizon, and that’s helping bring subscribers in quickly. The cable companies, on the other hand, tout faster download speeds and Web surfing than the average DSL connection provides, and they are working to make their networks even faster.

Comcast, leading the way, has promised to double the average Net surfer’s top speeds, from 1.5 megabits per second to 3 megabits per second, and to get even faster in future years. Analysts say the drive to keep very high-volume users under control is necessary if the company is to reach this goal economically.

Most broadband subscribers use their service for some music or video downloading, to send and receive digital photos or for other high-bandwidth applications. But ISPs say that a tiny percentage of people are using an enormous percentage of their total bandwidth. According to Comcast, just 6 percent of subscribers use about 78 percent of the company’s bandwidth.

Cable networks are particularly susceptible to the dangers of this imbalanced usage, because all the homes in a given neighborhood share access to the same local network. One extremely high-volume user can therefore have a Net-slowing impact on his neighbors.

Nor are DSL companies exempt from this issue, despite their rhetorical distain for caps today. Even if their subscribers don’t share their local wires, DSL uploads and downloads do wind up merging into a shared network a little farther upstream, and so heavy users can wind up having a negative impact on others’ speeds.

For this reason, some analysts think that bandwidth usage caps will ultimately be a far more common part of the Net’s daily life, particularly at the lowest tiers of service.

“It’s partly just so the economics make sense,” Jupiter’s Laszlo said. “If you’ve got someone downloading 60 gigabytes a month and paying $29.95, it’s hard to make it work.”

Related News Broadband adoption skyrockets worldwide   September 16, 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5077230.html

Comcast: Faster downloads by year’s end   September 8, 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5072641.html

Survey: Users want DSL but can’t get it   August 6, 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1023-5060701.html

Endless summer of DSL discounts   July 7, 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1034-1023465.html

Get this story’s “Big Picture”

September 21, 2003

Waiting For Spielberg By MATTHEW ROSE

Unlike most urban legends, the one about the Iranian exile stuck at the Paris airport for 15 years is true. Surrounded by a mountain of his possessions near the Paris Bye Bye lounge at Terminal 1 in Charles de Gaulle International Airport, Merhan Karimi Nasseri is still there after all these years — a celebrity homeless person.

Planted on the 1970’s red plastic bench he calls home, and surrounded by stacks of newspapers and magazines, Nasseri, also known as Alfred or ”Sir, Alfred” (title and comma appropriated from a mistake in a letter from British immigration), has organized his life’s belongings into a half-dozen Lufthansa cargo boxes, various suitcases and unused carry-on luggage. On a nearby coffee table spotted with aluminum ashtrays, Nasseri’s universe includes a pair of alarm clocks, an electric shaver, a hand mirror and a collection of press clippings and photographs to establish his present and his recent past. He seems both settled — and ready to go.

To the pilots, airport staff, fast-food merchants and millions who have passed through the terminal on their way to somewhere else, the 58-year-old Nasseri has become a postmodern icon — a traveler whom no one will claim. Little do they know that he is on his way to becoming a Hollywood icon, too. Inspired by Nasseri’s intriguing tale of lost identity, bureaucratic limbo and persistence, Steven Spielberg has bought the rights to his life story as the basis for the new Tom Hanks vehicle, ”The Terminal.”

”I realize I am famous,” Nasseri says in his soft, almost giggly voice, a gravelly mix of his native Persian, the airport French he’s picked up from the loudspeakers and the cigarettes he’s always smoking. As if to prove his fame, he pats a briefcase stuffed with his press clippings. ”I wasn’t interesting until I came here.”

Nasseri’s story is difficult to piece together. Over the years, he has claimed many things about his origins. At one time his mother was Swedish, another time English. Nasseri’s effectively reinvented himself in the Charles de Gaulle airport and denies these days that he’s Iranian, deflecting any conversation about his childhood in Tehran. (”He pretends he doesn’t speak Persian,” his longtime lawyer, Christian Bourguet, says. ”He was interviewed by Iranian journalists and made believe he didn’t understand.”) When we first met two years ago, he insisted that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was attempting to locate his parents in order to establish his identity. But a spokeswoman for the agency dismissed the assertion as ”pure folly.”

Early on in his saga, Nasseri maintained that he was expelled from his homeland for antigovernment activity in 1977. According to a number of reports, Nasseri protested against the regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi while a student in England, and when he returned to Iran, found himself imprisoned, and shortly thereafter exiled.

He bounced around Europe for a few years with temporary refugee papers, alighting finally in Belgium, where he was awarded official refugee status in 1981. He traveled to Britain and France without difficulty until 1988, when he landed at Charles de Gaulle airport after being denied entry into Britain, because, he contends, his passport and refugee certificate were stolen in a mugging on a Paris subway. Nasseri could not prove who he was, nor offer proof of his refugee status. So he moved into the Zone d’attente, a holding area for travelers without papers.

He stayed for days, then weeks — then months, then years. As his bizarre odyssey stretched on, Bourguet, the noted French human rights lawyer, took on the case, and the news media piled on. Articles appeared around the world, and Nasseri became the subject of three documentary films. (Oddly, apparently none of his friends or relatives have attempted to contact him.)

ike any number of Samuel Beckett characters, Nasseri has redefined the concept of waiting. But he remains busy, and during office hours when he’s not meeting filmmakers or members of the press, he collects McDonald’s soda tops and endlessly considers his situation in a sprawling, 1,000-plus-page diary that chronicles his journey to nowhere. These rambling handwritten notes recount his encounters with just about everyone he’s met, reporting faithfully everything from the details of his paper chase to some of the witty things he’s said (”I’m not Henry Kissinger”). Nasseri also asks most visitors to sign his journal.

An effete, balding man, Nasseri is well groomed (he washes daily in the men’s room and sends his donated Marks & Spencer clothes to the dry cleaners) with finely manicured fingernails. He smokes compulsively and is forever reaching for his pouch of Pall Mall rolling tobacco. At one point during our interview he coughs, adding with his characteristic sly humor, ”Maybe I caught SARS here in the airport.”

In an eerily Warholian relationship, Nasseri’s closest neighbors at the airport are a photo booth and a photocopy machine. Unlike most movie types, Nasseri does not have a cell phone, and he eats regularly at the McDonald’s in the food court 100 feet away. (”I like the fish,” he says.) The only green in his immediate environment is, ironically, the Sortie (Exit) sign.

In the Spielberg film, which begins shooting this month, Hanks is transformed into a refugee whose country disappears in a diplomatic wink of an eye. As chaos ravages his homeland, Hanks is rendered stateless, his passport turned into an eBay collectible. He’s grounded: a stranger in a strange New York airport. But Hanks is cured of his airport disease and soars to new heights (and, who knows, perhaps another Oscar), thanks to the Hollywood bombshell Catherine Zeta-Jones, who plays Hanks’s love interest, a flight attendant. Nasseri has had no such luck with the ladies and complains that there are no nightclubs in his airport. ”There’s no pleasure,” he says.

While Bourguet confirms that Spielberg’s company, DreamWorks, has in fact bought the rights to his client’s life story, Spielberg himself would not discuss ”The Terminal,” its plot nor Nasseri’s contract. Marvin Levy, a DreamWorks spokesman, confirms that a financial agreement was signed. However, he cautions, ”Mr. Nasseri’s story was an inspiration for the original treatment for ‘The Terminal.’ The film is not his story.”

Rumors of a $275,000 fee for the rights to Nasseri’s life story and certain consulting duties have circulated. ”It’s less than $1 million,” Bourguet says, adding that the money hasn’t changed the predicament of his client. ”While he became a bit richer, Alfred is extremely paranoid and confused.”

Certainly, Nasseri may well be one of the only people on the planet not to have seen a Spielberg production. Asked what he thinks of Hanks, Nasseri replies straight-faced, ”Is he Japanese?”

Regardless of whether Hanks manages to capture the refugee’s deadpan delivery, the Hollywood retelling of Nasseri’s odyssey will undoubtedly include a first-class ticket to the American dream.

Nasseri’s real-life ending, however, is still up in the air.

”Alfred himself will have trouble leaving the airport,” says Glen Luchford, a fashion photographer cum director whose 2001 mockumentary, ”Here to Where,” attempted just such a scenario, with the director, played by Paul Berczeller, failing to tempt Nasseri beyond the concrete gardens of Charles de Gaulle.

”Alfred has to accept that he’s free,” Luchford says sadly. ”But with freedom comes responsibility. He represents people’s worst fears — the idea they might be procrastinating all their lives and end up being rooted to the spot.”

asseri cannot be forcibly moved or repatriated. He is protected by a number of international refugee statutes. According to Bourguet, he is legally free to leave the airport. All Nasseri has to do is sign the identity papers the French provided him in 1999. But the papers identify him as Iranian and don’t recognize his adopted name of Sir, Alfred. And so he can’t — or won’t- sign them: a testament to either patience, or madness.

Nasseri is doubtful about attending the premiere of ”The Terminal,” although his face lights up at the prospect. ”I would probably have technical problems with my papers in Los Angeles,” he says, before adding that he’ll likely leave the airport ”in September or October.”

If he does decide to finally exit the departure lounge, Nasseri could go to any number of places in the world. He says Florida has invited him, and, yes, why not New York, when ”I take over DreamWorks”? (The company is based in California.) And what of the plastic red bench, which has served as his de facto home for the last 15 years and must by now be a collector’s item?

”I’ll take it to DreamWorks,” he says with a smile. ”And send it by FedEx .”

Matthew Rose is a writer and artist living in Paris.

> Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 21:01:30 -0400
> Subject: Article: High-Tech Heroin
> From: Richard Forno
>
> High-Tech Heroin
> Richard Forno
>
> (c) 2003 by Author. All Rights Reserved.
> Permission granted to redistribute this article in its entirety with
> credit
> to author.
>
> Dostoevsky once wrote that “in the end they will lay their freedom at
> our
> feet and say to us, ‘Make us your slaves, but feed us.'” His prophecy
> is
> relevant when examining the modern Information Age — a dark,
> corporate-controlled society predicted by such artistic legends as
> Bruce
> Sterling, George Lucas, Ridley Scott, and William Gibson ­ and is the
> focus
> of this article.
>
> We want to be part of this information environment and feel more
> empowered
> with each new gadget, service, or digital connection in our lives. The
> concept of “information everywhere” provides instant gratification to
> satisfy our needs for books, music, porn, and digital interaction with
> others through web searches, e-commerce, wireless, instant messaging,
> e-mail, and streaming content over broadband. High-speed links enable
> organizations to operate around the world at light speed and conduct
> business on a twenty-four hour clock. The sun never sets in the
> Information
> Age; we are always plugged into the global matrix of the information
> domain.
> We’re addicted to it and constantly awash in a sea of electronic
> stimuli.
>
> Yet as we rush to embrace the latest and greatest gadgetry or high-tech
> service and satisfy our techno-craving, we become further dependent on
> these
> products and their manufacturers ­ so dependent that when something
> breaks,
> crashes, or is attacked, our ability to function is reduced or
> eliminated.
> Given the frequent problems associated with the Information Age –
> loosing
> internet connections, breaking personal digital assistants, malicious
> software incidents, or suffering any number of recurring problems with
> software or hardware products, we should take a minute to consider
> whether
> we’re really more or less independent – or empowered – today than we
> think,
> knowing that how we act during such stressful periods is similar to a
> heroin
> junkie’s actions during withdrawal.
>
> Technology, like gambling and heroin, is addictive. We’re driven or
> forced
> into buying new gadgets and constantly upgrading our technology for any
> number of reasons, both real and perceived, and feel uncomfortable
> without
> our latest “fix.” Corporations love this because once we accept and
> begin
> using their products or services, the dependency is formed and they
> essentially own our information ­ and subsequently, society and us.
> Their
> proprietary lock on our collective information means they can force us
> to
> spend money and upgrade on their schedule and not when we truly need –
> or
> can afford – to do so, regardless of whether or not we need the latest
> features, and regardless of the consequences that may haunt us down the
> road.
>
> But unlike many other industries from the Industrial Age and the heroin
> dealers, high-tech corporations are in a unique position to determine
> – and
> force – us addicts to spend money while relinquishing our rights to
> seek
> recourse for damages arising from their faulty products no matter what
> pain
> we must endure during our period of indentured servitude and addiction
> to
> their problematic technologies. In some cases, particularly in
> mainstream
> operating systems, software, and internet-based services, it’s one step
> short of blackmail. We all certainly can’t go cold turkey very easily,
> although some may try and succeed.
>
> To make things worse, government practically has outsourced the
> oversight
> and definition of technology-based expression and community
> interaction to
> for-profit corporations and secretive industry-specific cartels (e.g.,
> the
> MPAA, RIAA, SIA, BSA, ICANN) who have wasted no time in rewriting the
> rules
> for how they want our information-based society to operate according to
> their interests, not ours. At times, you might even say we’ve
> voluntarily
> imprisoned ourselves under the control of profit-seeking wardens who
> have
> little if any real oversight or accountability for their actions. Our
> high-tech heroin dealers are not only promoting and profiting from
> their
> product but developing the laws and methods to govern and regulate its
> use
> while protecting themselves from any negative side-effects and ensuring
> their revenue stream.
>
> Whether it is our ability to share available creative products
> according to
> existing laws, bring to market new creative works, establish an
> identity in
> cyberspace, or otherwise exchange digital information, these groups –
> with
> well-funded (read: purchased) government approval – have declared
> themselves
> the overlords of their industry-specific fiefdoms that comprise the
> Information Age. Each industry and vendor wants to assert their
> proprietary
> technical and legal authority over who does what, when, how, and under
> what
> conditions with their products and services, even if their profiteering
> desires are incompatible with our law-abiding ones. And if their
> efforts to
> maintain law and order according to their proprietary technical
> standards or
> legal trickery fail, they can always turn things over to the federal
> government for action as a backup plan.
>
> Combining these perverts of profit with the fickle, often-ignorant
> nature of
> our elected lawmakers has produced an Information Age where the rights
> and
> abilities of the individual don’t matter. Neither does facilitating
> society’s evolution by allowing it to take maximum advantage of
> technology’s
> capabilities for its collective benefit. Or reality. Today, what
> matters is
> only how much money and freedom people are willing (or forced) to pay
> (or
> sacrifice) to their corporate masters for the privilege of living
> within the
> various information-based fiefdoms provided for them to generate
> revenue.
>
> The Information Age will not be remembered by the fun, high-flying and
> overwhelmingly feel-good Dot Com days despite the ongoing presence of
> Dot
> Com-developed technologies. Rather, the Information Age will be
> remembered
> as a period when 12-year old girls from New York slums, senior
> citizens, and
> innovative college students are harrassed by greedy cartels seeking to
> scare
> their future customers into submission; when the profit goals of
> high-tech
> vendors determine how client businesses and people are organized and
> interact; when everyone is presumed a potential criminal until proven
> otherwise according to oppressive industry-defined criteria; when a
> once-awesome revolution in global communications became converted into
> a
> cesspool of unsolicited and offensive marketing messages; when knowing
> how
> to do something that’s illegal is just as illegal as actually doing
> something that’s illegal; when the legal protections over freedom of
> speech
> are trumped to preserve corporate secrets or marketshare while hiding
> vulnerabilities that endanger the public; when our lives are monitored
> and
> dissected by marketing firms looking for the best way to sell us
> things we
> don’t need or want; and when technology’s promise and alluring
> capabilities
> are used to surreptitiously entrap and willingly imprison members of
> the
> information-age society instead of truly empowering them.
>
> Dostoevsky was way ahead of his time.
>
> # # # #
> Richard Forno is a security technologist and author of “Weapons of
> Mass Delusion: America’s Real National Emergency.” His home in
> cyberspace
> is at http://www.infowarrior.org/.
>
>
>
>
>

Don’t get me wrong — it’s not that AOL is worthless… but it is clear that it was never worth 75 billion dollars. Steve Case build AOL into a 75 billion dollar parasite and, as the internet bubble ventured well beyond irrationality, he searched for a host onto which to attach that parasite. Now, as the Steve Case love potion wears off, Time Warner realized the disease and is masking the symptoms. Time Warner should have bought AOL for $50 Million. That’s it.

-Ian.

> From: Tom
> Date: Wed Sep 17, 2003 9:08:13 PM US/Pacific
> To: fork [at] xent [dot] com
> Subject: Time Warner Sues Apt. Over Wireless Theft
>
>
> Time Warner Sues Apt. Over Wireless Theft
> By Harry Berkowitz
> Staff Writer
>
> September 15, 2003, 7:00 PM EDT
>
> Cable theft has evolved into piracy of high-speed Internet access, Time
> Warner Cable of New York claims.
>
> The cable company Monday sued iNYC Wireless and London Terrace Towers,
> a
> large apartment complex in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, saying
> they
> rerouted and resold Road Runner access without permission.
>
> They did so with the help of high-powered wireless-fidelity, or Wi-Fi,
> transmitters spread through the apartment complex, Time Warner Cable
> said in
> the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
>
> “iNYC’s theft and resale has unjustly renriched iNYC,” the suit claims.
> Customers of iNYC did not know about the illegal activity, the suit
> says.
>
> Jeff Schwartz, a lawyer for the London Terrace board of directors,
> said,
> “London Terrace knows nothing about this and denies any wrongdoing.” A
> call
> to iNYC was not returned.
>
> Time Warner Cable said iNYC Wireless reached a point where it stopped
> paying
> Verizon Communications for Internet access over T1 connections and
> started
> tapping into Road Runner lines in the apartments of some building
> superintendents. Many of the superintendents were getting complimentary
> service from Time Warner.
>
> The service called iNYC Wireless, based in Brooklyn, charges $39.99 per
> month and a one-time fee of $150 for its Wi-Fi receiving card. It
> distributes the service wirelessly over high-powered transmitters and
> amplifiers in buildings.
>
> Time Warner Cable, which has 300,000 Road Runner customers in New York
> City,
> charges $44.95 to $59.95 per month and connects through cable modems.
>
> On its Web site, iNYC says it focuses on adding “smart building
> functions
> that will grow out of our relationships with building staff, ownership
> and
> residents.”
>
> Copyright 2003, Newsday, Inc.
>
> Nigel Ballard
> nigel [at] joejava [dot] com
> www.joejava.com
>

—- http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030916/ZNYT01/309160363

SBC Won’t Name Names in File-Sharing Cases*

By SETH SCHIESEL New York Times September 16, 2003

* • Discuss this story <to turn over the names of their customers who are otherwise known only by the murky screen names and numeric Internet Protocol addresses used in cyberspace.

September 10, 2003 A Letter to President Bush By  Tom Steinert-Threlkeld

Dear President Bush:

You probably don’t know Joel Phagoo. He is a 21-year-old college student who decided to go fishing in New York’s Jamaica Bay with his kid brother and a cousin. They ended up washing up just off Runway 4 Right at JFK International Airport, after the weather turned.

They wandered about the tarmac for an hour, then turned themselves in to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police.

These were innocents. But their ability to move freely beneath the underbellies of jumbo jets just goes to show: Two years after the worst terror attacks on United States soil, repeat events are all too easy to envision.

An evildoer can still load explosives into a 20″ rolling travel case and ride into a major train station in any large metropolis—and blow it up. Shoulder-mounted missile launchers can, without much trouble, take down airplanes from the visitor center at the south end of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport or, as Joel Phagoo discovered, Runway 4 Right at JFK. A kayak could do the trick at the Port of Oakland, right beneath Ray Boyle, the man in charge of securing the fourth most-active seaport in the United States.

We’re all thankful that there hasn’t been a repeat of the twin towers tragedy. But is it understating the case to say not enough has been done in the 730 days that have passed to make our people feel safe again?

Creating a permanent solution starts at home.

First, there must be economic security. Unless this country continues to prosper, there won’t be the wealth necessary to finance safety anywhere inside our borders. Or to pick up the tab of occupying foreign nations.

That means applying the greatest fortune of this country, its intellectual assets, to the task at hand. Just like presidents before you, create a clear objective and mission for the smartest minds we call our own. World War II put them to work solving the mystery of atomic fission. The Cold War put them to work transporting humans to the moon. This war on terror should put them to work on not one but two projects that our core competency—the creation, deployment and operation of information systems and advanced technology—can solve.

Energy: There has not been a serious attempt to wean this country from its dependence on petroleum-based fuels since the Carter administration. Just think what could have been accomplished by now, if we had kept up research, testing and development of natural, renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind and water power, and if we had made up our minds and stuck with it? Or if a willing citizenry had just been called on to conserve? We would reduce the stress on our deteriorating electricity grid. And, if we could just reduce our dependency on oil by 20%, we wouldn’t need Saudi Arabia. Then you could really prosecute a war on terror.

Physical Security: We’ve made it possible to ride in airplanes at 600 mph and still talk on the fly to someone speeding down a highway at 70 mph—and we curse if the call breaks apart. We’ve made it possible to know exactly when every can of soup moves out of a Wal-Mart SuperCenter, but we can’t tell when a college student like Joel Phagoo docks at one of our busiest airports. Now, we better figure out how to create invisible fences—permeable and impermeable—that guard against unauthorized humans, at our borders, airport grounds and other open, but vital spaces.

Apply technology intelligently. A good first step would be to challenge and properly fund our scientists and information technologists to devise the analytical systems that finally figure out how photovoltaics, fuel cells and the air itself can effectively free us from the addiction to oil that colors all our military and economic policies. A second step would be to challenge software and hardware developers to figure out what combination of low-cost antennae, sensors, transmitters, repeaters and other systems are needed to provide real security at all public and private places, without taking away privacy.

If running Iraq as a 51st state is worth $4 billion a month, just imagine what a similar investment could produce if it brings both true economic and physical security to this remarkable nation, and keeps our greatest resource, our brains, at work, on our shores.

Mr. President, this is what we are fighting for.