may the force be with you

A reporter takes Honda Motor Co.'s FCX fuel-cell vehicle for a test spin at the automaker's headquarters in Tokyo. KAHO SHIMIZU PHOTO

A recent announcement by Honda Motor Co. to lease a fuel-cell vehicle to an individual driver and the government's approval last month of fuel-cell vehicles developed by Honda and Toyota Motor Corp. marked significant steps in their 10-year-plus quest.

Experts and industry officials say widespread use of the dream vehicle in the near future is no longer a fantasy, but at the same time they point out that automakers need to clear the remaining hurdles as soon as possible to keep up the momentum.

Last week, American Honda Motor Co. signed a two-year leasing contract with the family of Jon Spallino in California to use its FCX fuel-cell car for $500 a month, making Honda the first automaker in the world to deliver its FCV to an individual customer.

Honda's and Toyota's pollution-free FCVs in mid-June became the first to receive motor-vehicle type certification from the Japanese government, paving the way for mass production and marketing.

"By having individual customers drive in a real-world situation, the carmakers will be able to get feedback, which will be used" to further improve the technology, said Hisashi Ishitani, a system and control engineering professor at Keio University.

"It shows that FCVs can drive like a conventional car, and now they have entered the stage for further technological improvements," he said.

FCVs are powered by electricity generated through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, releasing water vapor as a byproduct.

All new vehicles have to gain approval from the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry for public sale. Gaining the motor-vehicle type certification means the FCVs have cleared the government's safety and environmental standards.

Before that, the two automakers had to gain approval on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis, meaning their use was limited to registered parties for the purpose of testing on public roads.

The safety standards mainly center on the technology to prevent leakage of high-pressure hydrogen during collisions and to ensure passenger safety in terms of the cars' electrical systems.

Once its hydrogen tank is filled, Toyota's new FCHV can travel up to 330 km, compared to the 300 km of the previous model, released in 2002, and it has 12.5 percent more output from the motor at 90 kw.

Honda's FCX meanwhile has a range of 430 km and a 80-kw motor output.

Having gained certification, Toyota will start leasing its remodeled FCHV fuel-cell hybrid vehicles this month, mainly to government offices and municipalities for a monthly fee of 1.05 million yen over a 30-month period.

Apart from the Spallino family, Honda has already leased 19 FCX fuel-cell cars mainly to government offices and municipalities in Japan and the U.S. since December 2002 for 800,000 yen a month.

Toyota has leased 16 FCHV in the two countries since December 2002.

Their lease prices reflect the two carmakers' strong wish to attract customers.

"Because the FCVs are so expensive, it will be unrealistic to set the price based on trying to break even," said Yozo Kami, an executive chief engineer at Honda R&D Co. He added that even if it doesn't pay, the pricing reflects Honda's emphasis on promoting its FCVs.

But neither automaker has decided yet to lease their FCVs to individual drivers in Japan.

Honda officials said it is easier for the automaker to start leasing in the U.S. because there are more hydrogen gas installations there than in Japan.

Currently, only 13 hydrogen gas stations exist throughout Japan, compared with about 15 in California alone, which is one of the most advanced U.S. states in terms of hydrogen installations.

There are also many hurdles that must be cleared before the environment-friendly vehicles truly find their way to ordinary drivers, experts say.

One is the high cost of building the hydrogen-fed vehicle, which is reportedly more than 100 million yen.

"To make (FCVs) able to compete against conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, we have to slash prices to at least 1/100th of the current levels," said Honda's Kami. "But the prospect of this kind of price reduction is far from certain."

Yet at the same time Kami feels a sense of urgency about lowering the cost, saying that if automakers are unable to market FCVs at 3 million yen to 4 million yen by 2020, fuel-cell technology will be a failure in terms of marketability.

Toyota officials agree with that time frame but are not that optimistic.

"An FCV is the closest to what we believe is the ultimate clean car," but widespread use by individual drivers means that its price, convenience and performance should equal that of conventional gasoline-powered cars, said Toyota spokeswoman Yurika Motoyoshi. "Reducing costs to the level of several million yen is quite difficult."

Keio University's Ishitani said the automakers will not be able to slash prices without another technological breakthrough.

Ishitani said the metals, including platinum, used as catalysts in the stack of fuel cells are too expensive and finding ways to significantly reduce their amount is one major task that must be overcome.

"Simply putting the current FCVs into mass production will not allow automakers to reduce prices," Ishitani said.

source:http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nb20050707a3.htm

# posted by dark master : 7/09/2005 04:31:00 PM  0 comments

Wired magazine, the bible of the tech set, may have its finger on the pulse of all that's cool. But the San Francisco publication has been using decidedly uncool tactics when it comes to getting some people to renew their subscriptions.

San Francisco resident Bob McMillan discovered this after choosing to allow his longtime subscription to lapse late last year. "I like the magazine, " he told me. "I just didn't have time to read it anymore."

First came the usual letters warning McMillan, 36, that his subscription was up and that he wouldn't get any more copies of Wired unless he ponied up some cash.

Then Wired's correspondence took a different turn.

In May, McMillan received a letter from North Shore Agency, a leading debt-collection firm. The letter, headed "Please Respond," said he owed $12 for his Wired subscription.

"Our objective is to clear your bill quickly and fairly," it said. "Your payment will reinstate your subscription."

A more assertive letter from North Shore, headed "Request for Payment," arrived last month. "You must realize that we want you to resolve your account in the amount of $12," it said.

Then, the other day, a third North Shore letter arrived, headed "Account Status: Delinquent."

"Your account appears as delinquent on our client's files," it warned. "This professional collection agency continues collection activity on your debtor account."

The letter added, ominously: "Respond to this letter or continued collection efforts may follow."

McMillan had ignored the first two letters. Now, however, he's worried that Wired/North Shore will take some legal action that will decimate his credit rating.

"I'm very angry," he said. "This isn't a real debt. It seems like they're just trying to trick me into renewing my subscription."

Other subscribers

Turns out McMillan isn't alone in feeling strong-armed by Wired. A Google search turns up others who say that they, too, allowed their subscriptions to expire and then received scary letters from North Shore.

In each case, the erstwhile Wired readers were told that they had an "open balance" of $12 and that "this is an attempt to collect a debt."

In each case as well, the recipients were told that paying the $12 would result in a renewed subscription.

"Since when is letting a magazine subscription expire a debt?" one person asked online. "This guerrilla marketing technique is unethical in my book."

Said another: "Talk about a low way to get subscribers. This is bottom- feeding. Magazines used to offer you incentives. Now they threaten to louse up your credit rating if you don't re-up, and NOW."

So what does have Wired have to say?

When I first contacted Joe Timko, the magazine's consumer marketing director, he acknowledged having received complaints from readers about being hassled by North Shore. "It's something we're investigating," he said.

Timko insisted that it isn't Wired's policy to use a collection agency to muscle people into renewing their subscriptions.

"We don't do that," he said. "Or at least that's not our intention."

I asked a North Shore spokeswoman to comment on the matter. She never called back.

Longstanding relationship

In any case, Wired has been using North Shore for a number of years. I found some online gripes about the North Shore letters dating back to 2002 (and you can see one of the firm's letters for yourself at http://urbanideas.com/images/nsa.jpg).

I spoke with Timko again on Thursday. This time, he offered an explanation for what was happening: From time to time, Wired sends direct-mail solicitations to people offering discounted subscriptions.

But if you read the fine print of these offers, they say Wired will assume you want to remain as a subscriber until you tell the magazine otherwise, and that you'll automatically be sent an invoice each year for another $12.

This is common enough among newspapers. The Chronicle, for example, will keep sending out papers (and bills) until a subscription is canceled.

But most magazines require readers to renew their subscriptions every one or two years.

Timko said he checked his files and found that McMillan's subscription had an automatic-renewal clause. He suspects that most of the people who lodged online complaints were in a similar position.

For his part, McMillan said, he couldn't recall being told about an automatic yearly renewal of his subscription. "I had no idea that was the case, " he said.

Collection procedure

Wired's Timko said the magazine typically sends out a half-dozen or so letters reminding people to send in their $12. Then North Shore is brought in for an additional three letters.

The collection agency was intended solely to spook people into responding. Timko said North Shore wasn't authorized to take legal action against Wired readers.

"We're not going to do that to people," he said. "This was just another effort to collect an unpaid subscription."

Now, Timko said, Wired will rethink the whole thing. He said the magazine will reconsider the practice of automatic renewals and will no longer pass along readers' names to North Shore.

In fact, he said Wired will likely end its relationship with North Shore.

"It's probably something we shouldn't have done," Timko said of using the collection agency to pressure readers. "It's not something we want to continue. "

I arranged for McMillan and Timko to speak with one another. McMillan told me afterward that Timko apologized for the North Shore letters. McMillan said he was also offered a free subscription to Wired.

"I turned it down," he said. "I still don't have time to read it. But in the back of my mind, I have to wonder what might happen the next time it runs out."

source:http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/08/BUGF1DKKFM1.DTL

# posted by dark master : 7/09/2005 04:23:00 PM  0 comments

Those are exactly the kinds of things you can do with the backpack below. Its secret ingredient: the Junxion Box. Plug a cellular-network card into the book-size open-source-based device, and voilà—instant Wi-Fi hotspot, with speeds averaging around 700 kilobits per second. To power the box, I wired it to a 1.2-amp-hour battery and dropped both into the Voltaic Systems backpack, which has a built-in solar charger. Now I can surf for as long as three hours without being tethered to anything but a cell signal. The project isn’t cheap, but prices for the components and service are sure to come down in the next year or so. In the meantime, you can find me in the hills around Southern California. I’ll be the one surrounded by PSP-packing hikers.

See more photos of the backpack here.

Parts List
• Junxion Box wireless gateway $700; junxionbox.com
• Verizon Wireless EV-DO PCMCIA card $100; verizonwireless.com
• Voltaic Systems solar-charging backpack $230; voltaicsystems.com

These parts are available at any electronics store:
• 12-volt battery with spade terminals, 1.2 or higher amp-hour $15
• Male DC power plug, size M $5
• 18-gauge wire, black and red $5
• Female insulated quick-disconnect connectors, crimp-type, sized for battery spade terminals $3
• In-line fuse holder $7
• 20-amp fuse 50 cents

Credit: Illustration by Josh Mckibillo

Instructions
1) Plug in your EV-DO card and set up the Junxion Box to automatically assign TCP/IP addresses using DHCP, and disable the authentication splash page.

2) To build the power-adapter cable, cut a length of red wire and a length of black. Strip one end of each wire and crimp a spade terminal connector onto each.

Strip the other end of the red wire, and solder it to one end of the fuse holder. Wrap the connection in electrical tape. Take apart the male DC power plug. Solder the end of the black wire to the negative terminal of the plug and the red wire to the positive. Wrap the exposed positive connection in electrical tape, and reassemble the power plug. Install a 20-amp fuse.

3) Connect the Junxion Box cigarette-lighter adapter to the backpack “power out” plug.

4) Connect the battery cable to the “battery” plug on the backpack’s charge controller.

# posted by dark master : 7/09/2005 04:21:00 PM  0 comments

They're not just after your credit card or Social Security numbers.

Fueled by the ease of online commerce, snoops are on the trail of other personal information, too. One of the hottest markets: records of phone calls, especially from cell phones.

A tool long used by law enforcement and private investigators to help locate criminals or debt-skippers, phone records are a part of the sea of personal data routinely bought and sold online in an Internet-driven,

I-can-find-out-anything-about-you world. Legal experts say many of the methods for acquiring such information are illegal, but they receive scant attention from authorities.

Think your mate is cheating? For $110, Locatecell.com will provide you with the outgoing calls from his or her cell phone for the last billing cycle, up to 100 calls. All you need to supply is the name, address and the number for the phone you want to trace. Order online, and get results within hours.

Carlos F. Anderson, a licensed private investigator in Florida, offers a similar service for $165, for all major telephone carriers.

"This report provides all the calls with dates, times, and duration on the billing statement," according to Anderson's Web site, which adds, "Incoming Calls and Call Location are provided if available."

Learning who someone talked to on the phone cannot enable the kind of financial fraud made easier when a Social Security or credit card number is purloined. Instead, privacy advocates say, the intrusion is more personal.

"This is a person's associations," said Daniel J. Solove, a George Washington University Law School professor who specializes in privacy issues. "Who their physicians are, are they seeing a psychiatrist, companies they do business with . . . it's a real wealth of data to find out the people that a person interacts with."

Such records could be used by criminals, such as stalkers or abusive spouses trying to find victims.

Unlike Social Security numbers, which are on many public documents that have been scooped up for years by data brokers, the only repository of telephone call records is the phone companies.

Wireless carriers say they are aware that unauthorized people seek to get their customers' call records and sell them, but the companies say they take steps to prevent it.

"There are probably 100 such sites" known to security officials at Verizon Wireless that offer to sell phone records, said Jeffrey Nelson, a company spokesman, who said Verizon is always trying to respond to abusive practices. He said that the company views all such activity as illegal and that "we have historically, and will continue to, change policies to reflect the changing nature of criminal activity," though he declined to be specific.

Mark Siegel, a spokesman for Cingular Wireless, said his company constantly is on guard against people trying to get at customer information. But he called the acquisition of call records "an infinitesimally small problem" at his firm.

Some experts in the field aren't so sure.

"Information security by carriers to protect customer records is practically nonexistent and is routinely defeated," said Robert Douglas, a former private investigator and now a privacy consultant who has tracked the issue for several years.

Experts say data brokers and private investigators who offer cell phone records for sale probably get them using one of three techniques.

They might have someone on the inside at the carrier who sells the data. Spokesmen for the telephone companies said strict rules prohibiting such activity make this unlikely. But Joel Winston, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission's Financial Practices Division, said other types of data-theft investigations have shown that "finding someone on the inside to bribe is not that difficult."

Another method is "pretexting," in which the data broker or investigator pretends to be the cell phone account holder and persuades the carrier's employees to release the information. The availability of Social Security numbers makes it easier to convince a customer service agent that the caller is the account holder.

Finally, someone seeking call data can try to get access to consumer accounts online.

Telephone companies, like other service firms, are encouraging their customers to manage their accounts over the Internet. Typically, the online capability is set up in advance, waiting to be activated by the customer. But many customers never do.

If the person seeking the records can figure out how to activate online account management in the name of a real customer before that customer does, the call records are there for the taking.

Federal law expressly prohibits pretexting for financial data -- which at one time was a primary means of stealing credit card and other account information -- but does not cover telephone records, which are covered by a patchwork of state and federal laws governing access to personal information.

Some privacy advocates argue that the federal pretexting law needs to be broadened.

At the very least, "there need to be audit trails to detect employee access to this personal information and a data retention schedule that mandates deletion of records" after a certain period of time, said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, West Coast director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The center filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission yesterday against one data broker, Intelligent e-Commerce Inc. of Encinitas, Calif., saying it misrepresented its right to obtain the information. The firm, which operates the Web site http://www.bestpeoplesearch.com , advertises a variety of personal data for sale, including cell phone records.

The company, which says on its Web site that it uses a licensed private investigator to get the information, said through its lawyer that it seeks to comply with all local, state and federal laws. Attorney Larry Slade said he does not know how the company acquires the phone records.

Phone companies view all these tactics as illegal, even if they are used to help track down criminal activity. Instead, carriers say, they require court orders before releasing customer records.

If someone uses pretexting to gain access to records, "these people are acting criminally, posing as someone they are not," Nelson said. He added that Verizon is preparing legal action against one data provider.

The FTC views pretexting as a deceptive practice even without a specific ban on its use for telephone records, Winston said.

But he said the agency has never taken such a case to court and does not know how widespread the problem is. He said the FTC must focus its resources on the practices of data thieves that can cause the most damage to large numbers of consumers, such as financial fraud.

Many of the vendors of call records are unregulated data brokers, such as Data Find Solutions Inc. of Knoxville, Tenn., which operates Locatecell.com. Company officials did not return calls seeking comment.

At the Florida office of private investigator Anderson, a man who answered the phone and identified himself only as Mike said, "I don't really think we're going to reveal our sources" of phone records. "There's a lot of ways of doing it."

At Reliatrace Locate Services of Wisconsin, a man who declined to give his name said only that his firm buys the data from another firm.

There is active debate within the private investigator community about the propriety of getting phone records. In at least one online discussion group for the industry, some members defended the practice as legitimate while others said it was illegal, according to transcripts provided to The Washington Post.

"I do not know of any legal way to obtain a person's telephonic history," Robert Townsend, head of the National Association of Legal Investigators, said in an interview. Townsend added that he thinks only a small minority of licensed investigators engage in the practice of acquiring and selling the data.

source:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070701862.html

# posted by dark master : 7/09/2005 04:17:00 PM  0 comments

The Bank of England, the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority switched on a secure section of their Financial Sector Continuity Web site to talk to major banks in the City of London's financial hub about how they were coping.

A Bank of England spokeswoman said this was the first time the secure site had been used in an actual crisis situation since its creation in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

"In the light of yesterday's events, the tripartite authorities (Treasury, Bank of England and FSA) have activated the contingency part of the Web site," they said on Friday.

The Web site has a secure section in which the authorities can communicate directly with big banks that are key to the stability of the international financial system.

The City of London's financial markets, where currencies, stocks, bonds and commodities worth trillions of dollars are traded daily, kept going despite disruption from Thursday's bombings on a London bus and underground trains, which killed more than 50 people and injured hundreds.

"Contingency planning by banks has increased considerably in last three years, post Sept. 11, and what yesterday shows is that the planning has worked," said David Key, crises management practice leader at Control Risks Group, which advises many banks on crisis and security management.

PLANS IN PLACE

Swiss financial services group UBS, for example, briefly evacuated its building on Liverpool Street, which houses bond and currency desks, but contingency plans ensured trading was not affected.

Japanese bank Nomura did not have to evacuate staff to any of its three disaster recovery sites in London, but a well-rehearsed plan was put into effect, coordinated by an emergency response team, which held meetings every hour.

Nomura security staff were alerted to the bombs by text, pager and e-mail messages sent by London's police service. A complete roll call of staff was taken, and a helpline for family and friends set up. On Friday, the bank was operating with about half its usual staff, with people being told they need not come in if they did not feel comfortable doing so.

The Corporation of London, the body that runs the City, and City of London police also have an Internet communication system that was used on Thursday to pass on advice to banks and other firms in the "Square Mile", the European hub for some of the world's biggest financial services firms.

Banks have long had plans for such attacks and routinely monitor code levels put out by intelligence services and the police. Chairmen of several big banks, for example, plus their security chiefs, had a briefing with intelligence services about four months ago, one bank source familiar with the matter said.

"Banks' internal security teams have got better and more sophisticated as they have invested in best practise," Key said.

"There has also been a move away from the traditional focus on security towards risk management, or understanding the threat and developing resilience," he said.

CONTINGENCY

The City of London is no stranger to bomb attacks.

In 1992 many firms suffered devastation from a huge car bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army outside the Baltic Exchange in the heart of the area. A year later, an IRA truck bomb ripped through buildings around Bishopsgate.

Clarkson, a 150-year-old ship-broking firm, was badly hit in both these IRA attacks, and its offices are now by the river Thames, away from the City's centre.

"We now have very strong security measures, disaster recovery and back up," Steve Deasey, Clarkson's company secretary, said. "We've been through two disasters, so we are geared up for it."

Clarkson has an offsite back-up system operated by a third party. Brokers can also trade from home, and many were doing so on Friday, the company said.

Aviva, Britain's biggest insurance company, also had its head office tower badly damaged by both IRA bombs. The company has disaster-recovery systems, which include evacuating the building or "invacuating" to safe areas in the basement.

"We have a management team drawn from a number of departments who meet and hold regular practices," an Aviva spokeswoman said. "Yesterday we took advice from the City police and closed the exits in the building and staff stayed inside."

Many banks have set up back-up systems outside the City for use in an emergency, and some were activated on Thursday.

Some firms have even looked into facilities offered by an Essex farmer, who owns what was once a nuclear bunker for London. The farmer, Mike Parrish, says banks have looked into using it for computer back-up, storage and as an emergency office in the past and he expects more enquiries going forward.

Individual places in the bunker, which is nearly 100 feet below ground near the Essex village of Kelvedon Hatch, east of London, cost 30,000 pounds ($52,000) each, while banks wanting to use it could be charged "in the millions".

source:http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1835190,00.asp

# posted by dark master : 7/09/2005 04:15:00 PM  0 comments

Scientists at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) said their work centred on two molecules from bromelaine, an extract derived from crushed pineapple stems that is used to tenderise meat, clarify beers and tan hides.

One of the molecules, CCZ, stimulates the body's immune system to target and kill cancer cells, the other, CCS, blocks a protein called Ras, which is defective in 30 percent of all cancers.

QIMR researcher Tracey Mynott said her team had set out to find why the enzyme-rich bromelaine crush had such strong effects on biological material.

"In searching for these components, we discovered the CCS and CCZ proteins and found that they could block growth of a broad range of tumour cells, including breast, lung, colon, ovarian and melanoma," Mynott said in a statement.

While clinical trials are a long way off, Mynott said the research had huge potential.

"The way CCS and CCZ work is different to any other drug in clinical use today," she said. "Therefore, CCS and CCZ will represent a totally new way of treating disease and potentially a whole new class of anti-cancer agent."

QIMR has launched a two-year study to examine the safety of the treatment and means of securing a reliable source of CCS and CCZ. If it succeeds it will seek a commercial partner to develop a drug that could be used in human clinical trials.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050707/hl_afp/scienceaustralia

# posted by dark master : 7/09/2005 04:12:00 PM  0 comments