Dave Howe flies to top of Sci Fi
Hammer steps back from day-to-day control
By JOSEF ADALIAN

Dave Howe has been beamed up to prexy of Sci Fi Channel, with longtime Sci Fi chief Bonnie Hammer stepping back from day-to-day control of the channel she helped build into a basic cable powerhouse.

I should have know a woman was involved in trying to ruin my shows.  Women are always trying to change couch potato geeks and trying to give them make overs so they can date their really ugly and fat friends so the good looking ones can get with the jocks!

Howe will now have direct oversight of Sci Fi's L.A.-based original programming department, which had previously reported to Hammer. He'll also control marketing, global brand strategy and the net's rapidly expanding digital domain.

Do you know what any of those words in that list mean?  If I were to make a guess I think they're saying they're going to bring in bull riding, a weekly Lifetime movie, and a makeover show.

Hammer will still be involved in Sci Fi, but she made it clear that the network was now Howe's to run.

"I've had my shot, and our team was able to take Sci Fi from basic obscurity to a No. 6 channel," Hammer said in an interview Tuesday. "I'm still going to be a part of the process, but far more distantly. It's time for someone else to have their fun and take it to the next level. I have tremendous faith in his abilities."

What does she mean she help to bring the show out of obscurity?  She was just lucky to work in a time when Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, and a bunch of other good shows came about.  See and she talks about having fun and "taking it to the next level".  What's that mean?  More reality shows and shows that have nothing to do with science fiction?  She probably though..."Hey guys...let's mess with these geeks...Wrestling and Reality Superhero shows!"

Promotion marks a rapid ascent for Howe, who joined the NBC U cabler six years ago from the BBC.Howe started at the net as exec VP of marketing and brand strategy. He was upped to g.m. in 2004 and has helped oversee the marketing and development of programming such as "Tin Man," "BSG" and "Eureka."

Really...how hard is it to market BSG?  Hey people...want to see the best show on TV?  Ya it even answers questions it brings up and has plot conclusions...unlike that homosexual LOST show....and it makes more sense than Heroes Season 2 did.

Howe worked with Hammer and original programming chief Mark Stern to reshape the Sci Fi brand, making the network more appealing to a non-geek crowd. Cabler ended 2007 with its best ratings and revenue since its launch.

WHAT THE F$!@*&^$&%%$@!k!!!  What's the point of having a station called the Sci-Fi Channel?  How many people flip to that channel, knowing what it is and say,....wow...I was not expecting Sci-Fi shows...I thought I could get some BLOODY WRESTLING to watch.  And "more appealing to a non-geek crowd"?  Is that why you have horrible B movies (I repeat myself) like MANsquito and Harpies and other shows that are just so bad that I can't even watch them (...ok I can watch them but half the time I think...ya know with the budget they could give me at least 1 more episode of Farscape or Dead Like Me or Firefly or John Doe).  That would be like me bringing a show to Lifetime that's a game show and it's to see how far a man can punch a pregnent woman...if you cause a miscarriage while wearing the Confederate flag...double your points!  How about having Food Network bring you a work out program with only skinny, good looking people?  How about forcing TNT to stop playing the same movie 4 times a day and ruining good movies like Shawshank Redemption?  How about Telemundo having English speaking programs to cater to our non-Mexican friends?  This just makes no sense.  Yes...they might need the money gained from such shows as wrestling...but hey...if they would stop making shows no one watches...they would save and make more money.

It also will no doubt increase speculation that Hammer could be poised for another promotion within the NBC U cable universe. She's overseen USA and Sci Fi for four years now, paving the way for major growth at both cablers. And with Jeff Gaspin promoted last year to a bigger gig within the conglom, there'd be room for a new exec to just focus on heading up all of the Peacock's cablers.

Yes...yes...go and ruin another great station.  How about making G4 TV even less like TechTV was?

"I'm a happy camper, and they treat me very well here," Hammer said of her NBC U bosses. "My assumption and my hope is that I will be around for a long time."

Howe identified several major immediate and long-term goals, most of which revolve around expanding the Sci Fi brand and building revenue streams not directly connected to the linear network.



"This brand has so much more untapped potential," Howe said. "My role is to really figure out how we take Sci Fi as a cable network and build it into more of an affinity lifestyle brand.

WTF does that even mean?   

"As things stand, we're primarily a cable TV brand," he added. "In five years' time, I'd love to be able to say that Sci Fi is no longer just a cable network but a category killer in videogames, mobile and the youth market."

Howe said that by the end of that five-year frame, he'd like to see one-third of Sci Fi's revenues coming from sources other than the cable channel. He also hinted that he's been having talks with sister company Universal Studios about launching a movie brand linked to the network.

"I'd love for there to be a Sci Fi Pictures label out there," he said, emphasizing that nothing was imminent.

Other priorities for Howe include:

    * International expansion. "At the end of 2007, Sci Fi was in 10 markets," he said. "By the end of 2008, we're hoping to be in 20 markets, and I think we might even surpass that."

    * Digital. Sci Fi launched a tech-themed site last year and has plans for more specialty offshoots of its Sci Fi.com hub. "You'll see us diversifying and spin off into more stand-alone websites," Howe said, identifying men 18-34 as the target of Sci Fi's digital love.

    * Replacing "Battlestar Galactica." Signature skein is preparing to exit, and Howe, working with Stern, is keen to find the next big scripted success for the channel.
     More than one option
         o (Film) Battlestar Galactica
         o (Tv) Battlestar Galactica
           Series Information, Seasons, Credits, Awards
         o (Tv) Battlestar Galactica
           Series Information, Seasons, Credits, Awards

Good job...let's just slaughter a shows that's waiting to die peacefully and with dignity...and let's just strip away its flesh so that it'll be picked clean and the fans can tare out their eyes with a rusty spoon.

"We just screened two pilots," Howe said. The WGA strike "has slowed us down, but it won't stop our growth in 2008."

Exec is also keen on continuing Sci Fi's expansion into unscripted series, pointing to the success of shows such as "Ghost Hunters."

Researchers Find Way to Steal Encrypted Data
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: February 22, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO — A group led by a Princeton University computer security researcher has developed a simple method to steal encrypted information stored on computer hard disks.

The technique, which could undermine security software protecting critical data on computers, is as easy as chilling a computer memory chip with a blast of frigid air from a can of dust remover. Encryption software is widely used by companies and government agencies, notably in portable computers that are especially susceptible to theft.

The development, which was described on the group’s Web site Thursday, could also have implications for the protection of encrypted personal data from prosecutors.

The move, which cannot be carried out remotely, exploits a little-known vulnerability of the dynamic random access, or DRAM, chip. Those chips temporarily hold data, including the keys to modern data-scrambling algorithms. When the computer’s electrical power is shut off, the data, including the keys, is supposed to disappear.

In a technical paper that was published Thursday on the Web site of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, the group demonstrated that standard memory chips actually retain their data for seconds or even minutes after power is cut off.

When the chips were chilled using an inexpensive can of air, the data was frozen in place, permitting the researchers to easily read the keys — long strings of ones and zeros — out of the chip’s memory.

“Cool the chips in liquid nitrogen (-196 °C) and they hold their state for hours at least, without any power,” Edward W. Felten, a Princeton computer scientist, wrote in a Web posting. “Just put the chips back into a machine and you can read out their contents.”

The researchers used special pattern-recognition software of their own to identify security keys among the millions or even billions of pieces of data on the memory chip.

“We think this is pretty serious to the extent people are relying on file protection,” Mr. Felten said.

The team, which included five graduate students led by Mr. Felten and three independent technical experts, said they did not know if such an attack capability would compromise government computer information because details of how classified computer data is protected are not publicly available.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which paid for a portion of the research, did not return repeated calls for comment.

The researchers also said they had not explored disk encryption protection systems as now built into some commercial disk drives.

But they said they had proved that so-called Trusted Computing hardware, an industry standard approach that has been heralded as significantly increasing the security of modern personal computers, does not appear to stop the potential attacks.

A number of computer security experts said the research results were an indication that assertions of robust computer security should be regarded with caution.

“This is just another example of how things aren’t quite what they seem when people tell you things are secure,” said Peter Neumann, a security researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.

The Princeton researchers wrote that they were able to compromise encrypted information stored using special utilities in the Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems.

Apple has had a FileVault disk encryption feature as an option in its OS X operating system since 2003. Microsoft added file encryption last year with BitLocker features in its Windows Vista operating system. The programs both use the federal government’s certified Advanced Encryption System algorithm to scramble data as it is read from and written to a computer hard disk. But both programs leave the keys in computer memory in an unencrypted form.

“The software world tends not to think about these issues,” said Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania. “We tend to make assumptions about the hardware. When we find out that those assumptions are wrong, we’re in trouble.”

Both of the software publishers said they ship their operating systems with the file encryption turned off. It is then up to the customer to turn on the feature.

Executives of Microsoft said BitLocker has a range of protection options that they referred to as “good, better and best.”

Austin Wilson, director of Windows product management security at Microsoft, said the company recommended that BitLocker be used in some cases with additional hardware security. That might include either a special USB hardware key, or a secure identification card that generates an additional key string.

The Princeton researchers acknowledged that in these advanced modes, BitLocker encrypted data could not be accessed using the vulnerability they discovered.

An Apple spokeswoman said that the security of the FileVault system could also be enhanced by using a secure card to add to the strength of the key.

The researchers said they began exploring the utilities for vulnerabilities last fall after seeing a reference to the persistence of data in memory in a technical paper written by computer scientists at Stanford in 2005.

The Princeton group included Seth D. Schoen of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, William Paul of Wind River Systems and Jacob Appelbaum, an independent computer security researcher.

The issue of protecting information with disk encryption technology became prominent recently in a criminal case involving a Canadian citizen who late in 2006 was stopped by United States customs agents who said they had found child pornography on his computer.

When the agents tried to examine the machine later, they discovered that the data was protected by encryption. The suspect has refused to divulge his password. A federal agent testified in court that the only way to determine the password otherwise would be with a password guessing program, which could take years.

A federal magistrate ruled recently that forcing the suspect to disclose the password would be unconstitutional.

Automated killer robots 'threat to humanity': expert
Feb 27 06:18 AM US/Eastern

Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.
"They pose a threat to humanity," said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain's Royal United Services Institute.

Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world -- from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones -- can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.

There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.

The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

It we are not careful, he said, that could change.

Military leaders "are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war," he said.


Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.

South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.

Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense's Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.

James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.

The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey.

Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. "I don't know why that has not happened already," he said.

But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.

"I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me," Sharkey said.

Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual.

But he is not convinced that robots don't have a place on the front line.

"Robotics systems may have the potential to out-perform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement," he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University last month.

The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information. "And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger," he added.

Nor is there any inherent right to self-defence.

For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.

Some are technical. Teaching a computer-driven machine -- even an intelligent one -- how to distinguish between civilians and combatants, or how to gauge a proportional response as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, is simply beyond the reach of artificial intelligence today.

But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remotely-controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.

Arkin points out that the US Department of Defense's 230 billion dollar Future Combat Systems programme -- the largest military contract in US history -- provides for three classes of aerial and three land-based robotics systems.

"But nowhere is there any consideration of the ethical implications of the weaponisation of these systems," he said.

For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems. "We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do -- and then get an international agreement," he said.