These traditional Japanese-style keyboards are a class apart from the grey or white boringness of the average keyboard. As well as looking different, and neat these devices are even handmade for that extra “creative” touch. The gold one’s damn attractive and would look cool on many a desk: but not the green “kara kusa” one… that just looks like a typing nightmare. That attractiveness costs, mind you, as they’re available for $154.90. Except the gold “Zip-Ang” one, which is a whopping $214.21. [Akihabaranews]

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TAKEN FROM /gizmodo.com

Handwriting seems to have lost some of its attraction over the last years. Nobody writes beautiful handwritten letters, and uses digital means of communication with smileys, abbreviations and standard lettering instead. And that’s a pity. Since handwriting is unique, it has a tremendous expressive power a standard lettering isn’t able to achieve.

More than that, handwritten text can be incredibly gorgeous. In fact, there is nothing more valuable than a beautiful handwritten letter sent to your beloved ones. And this post attempts to prove just that.

In the overview below you’ll find excellent examples of beautiful handwriting, creative lettering and professional calligraphy. It’s really amazing to see what one can create out of simple letters drawn with a pencil on a small piece of paper.

For further typographic inspiration you can browse through our previous posts

• Breathtaking Typographic Posters showcases over 50 breathtaking typographic posters designed by artists across the globe. We feature Oriental, Iranian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Russian typographic posters.
• Typography in Motion with excellent examples of typography embedded into movies and videos,
• Hand-Drawing Style in Modern Web Design demonstrates excellent examples of hand-drawing style in modern web design.

Calligraphy

1800s Lettering Sketchbook:Journal 14
Beautiful calligraphy from 1800s.

Experiment with photographic paper_03
Written by Marina Marjina, a type designer and letterer from Russia.

 TAKEN FROM www.smashingmagazine.com

It is the tallest man-made structure in the world – and it is still growing.

When complete next year the Burj Dubai will stretch half a mile into the sky over the United Arab Emirates, taller than three Canary Wharf towers balanced on top of each other.

Already 2,200ft tall, and the result of 22million man hours of labour, the Burj is the pinnacle of skyscraper engineering.

Scroll down for more…

When complete next year the Burj Dubai will be taller than three Canary Wharf towers balanced on top of each other

This £2 billion marvel, designed by American architect Adrian Smith, is packed with technological innovations, including double-decker lifts that can carry 42 people at a record-breaking 40mph to the observation platforms, robotic window-cleaning platforms and a system of pipes to collect condensation from the windows.

It will provide about 15million gallons of water per year – equivalent to nearly 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Scroll down for more…

The Burj will be the height of luxury. Some of the space will be used for offices but the lower 37 floors will house the world’s first Armani Hotel

The water will be pumped into the site’s irrigation system for use on the landscaped areas.

Because of its size – more than 6,000 miles of girders, enough to stretch a quarter of the way round the world, have gone into making its 160 floors – evacuation in a fire could be too slow.

Therefore pressurised air-conditioned refuges to allow heat or fumes to escape are situated on every 25th floor, the stairwells are fireproofed and there is a special lift for firefighting equipment.

The Burj will be the height of luxury. Some of the space will be used for offices but the lower 37 floors will house the world’s first Armani Hotel.

There are also 700 private apartments, and residents will be able to swim in an outdoor pool on the side roof of the 78th floor.

The Y-shape plan of the tower, copied from Islamic designs on mosque roofs, maximises views of the Persian Gulf.

taken from www.dailymail.co.uk

NASA employees have used government credit cards to ring up iPods, video games and even clothes from the agency’s own gift shop, while at other times using the cards in ways that sidestep competitive bidding rules, federal documents and a Chronicle review of agency records show.

The review comes at a time when Congress is considering tightening purchase card regulations across government, after a federal report last month that found widespread abuse in government credit card programs, including charges that did not follow policies to prevent waste and fraud.

Internal investigations have for years uncovered similar problems within NASA, which has long been criticized for poor financial management, even as the agency has pleaded with Congress for billions of dollars to fuel new manned missions into space.

“We should be outraged. Everybody should be,” said U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Stafford, whose district includes Johnson Space Center. “Clearly we have not done enough.”

The Houston Chronicle analyzed 451,000 charges, totaling more than $265 million, made on NASA purchase cards between January 2004 and July 2007. The newspaper also reviewed audits, internal reports and other documents related to card use. Among the findings:

•NASA employees have made numerous charges for seemingly personal items, including custom-engraved iPods and a Christmas tree. About $270 worth of T-shirts and hats purchased from a NASA gift shop were justified by one cardholder as “safety attire,” and one former civil servant pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges last year after spending more than $157,000 on things including jewelry, electronics and an air conditioner for her home.
•When doing NASA business, most cardholders are allowed to spend only $3,000 per transaction, but many exceeded that limit by splitting more expensive purchases into smaller chunks. Some purchases were so large that they may have violated federal competitive bidding rules.
•NASA auditors have pointed out purchase card abuses in no fewer than five internal reports since 1997.
Space agency procurement officials said they are aware the purchase card program, with its massive volume of transactions, has at times fallen victim to waste and fraud.

More than 3,200 NASA employees used a purchase card at some point between 2004 and mid-2007, agency data show. Charges made on the cards are reviewed and paid directly by the government, not as reimbursements to the cardholder.

Some disciplinary action

At least 160 cases of card abuse were referred to NASA investigators during fiscal years 2007 and 2008, with 25 resulting in disciplinary action.Bill McNally, the space agency’s assistant administrator for procurement, said NASA intends to review its card policies by mid-summer in response to a recent White House memo instructing agencies to cinch up internal controls over purchase card programs.

“We are always looking at ways to improve our processes and procedures,” McNally said. “Unfortunately, if people try to get around those, (abuse) can happen.”

Credit card misuse is not unique to the space agency. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, reported last month that employees across government spent extensively on apparently personal transactions during 2005 and 2006.

Lawmakers were quick to decry the waste.

Lampson, who has crusaded to increase federal funding for NASA, characterized improper spending as an affront to the majority of space agency employees and called for harsh punishments.

“The fact that there are a few bad eggs … doesn’t mean the agency is not worthwhile,” said Lampson, who sits on the space and aeronautics subcommittee that oversees NASA. “We let (violators) off. There needs to be jail time.”

One of the most blatant cases of abuse occurred at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where a former employee pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges and went to federal prison last year after a $157,000 spending spree was uncovered by NASA investigators.

Court documents show that the employee, Elizabeth Ann Osborne, used her purchase card to ring up thousands in personal items including clothing, jewelry and electronics between 2001 and 2005.

Among other purchases, she spent $2,000 to install a new air conditioner at her Florida home, more than $51,000 on Wal-Mart gift cards and groceries and at least $13,000 on electronics from Best Buy.

The NASA records provided to the Chronicle do not explain justifications for the purchases, or even the specific items bought. Most of the transactions were made to vendors that appear to sell legitimate business items.

Other transactions, though not necessarily inappropriate, ranged from the curious to the bizarre, including thousands spent at hunting and fishing retailers, paintball courses, pet stores, video gaming services and Web sites that sell karate gear.

At times, the records show even apparently legitimate charges have run afoul of requirements to bid high-dollar projects competitively.

Federal employees are allowed to use their cards only for what the government considers small purchases. Until September 2006, the limit was $2,500; now the cap is $3,000. Larger purchases are supposed to be shopped around to ensure taxpayers are getting the best deal.

However, the Chronicle found about 4,600 cases, totaling nearly $20 million, in which a NASA employee exceeded those limits by swiping their card multiple times for the same company on a single day.

Although most of those purchases appear to be with vendors that likely do legitimate NASA business, outside experts say that splitting charges may result in unnecessarily high bills to taxpayers.

Avoiding competitive bids?

Among the transactions questioned by NASA investigators last year were 393 charges to a graphics support vendor totaling more than $235,000 — so much money that not bidding the purchases competitively may have been illegal, documents show.”That should send up a red flag,” said Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, a government watchdog organization. “You have to ask: Is somebody trying to get around competitive requirements?”

NASA officials contend that purchase cards save the agency millions. By allowing approved employees to make their own small purchases without going through red tape, the agency can be more productive, McNally said. Along with card benefits such as rebates, NASA estimates it saved more than $8 million last year.

“It’s not as loose as people make it out to be,” said Fred Lees, a George Washington University federal contract law professor who worked for NASA until the mid-1980s. “Once (cardholders) get trained and educated, they won’t be doing things like that.”

Bill would strengthen rules

Still, studies of card use at NASA have revealed problems for more than a decade. One internal audit in 2003 recommended nine changes to the purchase card program — most of which advocated further training and reviews of cardholders but stopped short of calling for further discipline.A follow-up audit in 2007 found that, although those recommendations ensured cardholders were trained and their purchases reviewed, they did little to prevent them from buying inappropriate items.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, would require agencies to establish safeguards and punishments designed to prevent waste in government credit card programs. It passed through committee last month and awaits approval by the Senate.

Days after last month’s Congressional report on card abuse, Lampson signed on as a co-sponsor to a companion bill in the House. Local Reps. John Culberson, Michael McCaul and Ron Paul, all Republicans, are also co-sponsoring the measure.

“We don’t have adequate strengths within the (card) program to hold people accountable,” Lampson said.

TAKEN FROMwww.chron.com

The bounceback e-mail messages come in at a trickle, maybe one or two every hour. The subject lines are disquieting: “Cyails, Vygara nad Levytar,” “UNSOLICITED BULK EMAIL, apparently from you.”

You eye your computer screen; you’re nervous. What’s going on ? Have you been hacked? Are you some kind of zombie botnet spammer?

Nope, you’re just getting a little backscatter — bounceback messages from legitimate e-mail servers that have been fooled by the spammers.

Spammers like to put fake information in their e-mail messages in order to sneak them past e-mail filters. Because e-mail filters now just delete messages that come from nonexistent domains, the spammers like to make their messages look like they come from real e-mail addresses. That means, if your e-mail address has been published on the Web somewhere, you’re a prime candidate for backscattering.

The spammer finds your address, or sometimes even guesses it, and then puts it in the “from” line of his messages, sending them out to hundreds of thousands of recipients. When the spam gets sent to an address that is no longer active, it can sometimes be bounced back … to you.

Although Sophos estimates that backscatter makes up just two percent or three percent of all spam, antispam vendors say these messages are on the rise lately.

Users often think that the backscatter may be a sign that their computer has been hacked and is sending out spam messages, said Brad Bartman, a global support manager with Text 100, a public relations consultancy. “They look at it and they’re like, ‘Whoa, is my PC infected with a virus?’” he said.

Backscatter rarely hits more than one or two employees at the same time, so it isn’t particularly disruptive. But it does worry users, he said. “It’s mostly a psychological thing.”

With their e-mail addresses widely circulated on press releases, Text 100’s PR specialists are the ideal candidates for backscatter.

Because backscatter comes from legitimate mail servers, it can cause special problems. In fact, some security researchers believe that the spammers have been intentionally sending messages that will be bounced back as a way to sneak around spam filters. That’s because some mail servers bounce back the original message as part of their notice.

Dan Wallach, like Text 100’s Bartman, was hit with a flood of backscatter messages earlier this week. Wallach, an associate professor with Rice University’s Department of Computer Science, said that many of the messages he received contained links to suspicious executable files hosted on different Web sites.

“I’ll bet that some spammer is rationally thinking ‘error messages! Maybe I can get my message through via error messages!’” Wallach said in an e-mail interview. “They don’t need many responses before this sort of tactic could be considered to be a success.”

At its worst the phenomenon can even wipe Internet servers off the map.

Last month, Stephen Gielda, president of Packetderm, upset a fraudster who was trying to use his anonymous Internet service. Soon his servers were inundated with a tidal wave of backscatter messages. At one point, he was being hit by 10,000 bounceback messages per second, enough to throttle the server’s Internet connection.

Gielda had to take his site off-line for five days as he waited for the problem to abate. “I’m used to backscatter, but I’d never seen it at this level before,” he said.

While backscatter is extremely hard to filter out, it is a problem that can be fixed.

Backscatter comes in three varieties: messages from mail servers, saying that there is no such user available; “out of office” automated reply messages; and so-called challenge-response messages, which tell the sender that his message will be delivered only once he responds to the bounceback and confirms that the e-mail is coming from a legitimate address.

Security experts say that people should simply stop using these last two types of bounceback messages.

As for “no such user” bouncebacks, that can be fixed too. There are a few e-mail standards that could help with the problem: Variable Envelope Return Path(VERP) and Bounce Address Tag Validation (BATV), for example.

But the problem would largely disappear if server administrators configured their mail servers to immediately reject mail that is sent to nonexistent users, rather than accepting it and then bouncing it back to the faked addresses. Some ISPs (Internet service providers), AOL for example, have done this and have largely eliminated their role in the problem.

If there is spam in the backscatter message, antispam software should filter it out, but if a message has an ambiguous subject line, like “Hey” and the spam message stripped out, the backscatter will look like a legitimate bounceback and is probably going to get through, said Dmitry Samosseiko, manager of Sophos Labs Canada.

“This is a serious problem that is hard to deal with, to be honest,” he said. “We can blame spammers for causing the issue in the first place, but it exists because of the mail servers that are not configured to deal with spam.”

TAKEN FROM www.pcworld.com

When words just aren’t enough, German technology developers think they may have just what everyone needs: a smell-phone.A German syndicate announced this week that it has patented a chip for sending scents via text and multimedia messages.

A spokesperson from mobile services company ConVisual told reporters at The Local that people could send the smell of the ocean breeze through cell phones from vacation spots or mark special occasions by sending an aromatic two-dimensional bouquet.

Developers have been working on the chips for eight years, and they could be released to market by 2010, according to a report in the Berlin-based, English-language news site.

About 100 scents will be available on the chips, but consumers will need special phones to use them. Developers are seeking partnerships with mobile phone companies for marketing and distribution.

So far, researchers have worked on floral and other enjoyable scents, but the possibilities are endless.

Fortunately, people with scent-enabled mobile phones will be able to reject messages.

In announcing its patent, the German syndicate said that Japanese company NTT Communications’ external scent atomizer for mobile phones has shown that “scent technology is increasingly attractive.” In the United States, Motorola obtained a patent for smell-releasing phones and explained that the device would “fill a need” and “address problems” of on-the-go consumers who miss the nice fragrances they enjoy from plug-in devices at home.

Soon, maybe those consumers won’t have to worry when they go as far as Berlin and pick up a handy device that works there — if the folks at ConVisual and those working with them from the Institute of Sensory Analysis and Marketing Consultancy have their way.

TAKEN FROM /www.eetimes.com/news

Sun xVM VirtualBox is an X86 virtualization software package originally developed by German software company innotek GmbH. As such it is an application installed on an existing host operating system; within this application, additional operating systems, each known as a “Guest OS”, can be loaded and run, each with its own virtual environment. For example, several Linux distributions can be “guest” hosted on a single virtual machine running Windows XP as the “Host OS”; likewise, XP and Vista can run as “Guest OS” on a machine running Linux as the “Host OS”, and so on.

Supported host operating systems include Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp (experimental OSE builds), Windows, and Solaris/OpenSolaris.

Supported guest operating systems include FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, OS/2 Warp, Windows and Solaris.

The application was initially offered under a proprietary software license. In January 2007, after several years of development, VirtualBox OSE (Open Source Edition) was released under GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. Currently, there is a proprietary version, VirtualBox, which is free only for personal or evaluation use, subject to the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL) and an Open Source Edition(OSE), VirtualBox OSE, which is free for commercial and private use, subject to Copyleft and other requirements of the GPL license.

Compared with other established commercial virtualization software such as VMware Workstation and Microsoft Virtual PC, VirtualBox lacks some features, but in turn provides others such as running virtual machines remotely over the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), iSCSI support and USB support with remote devices over RDP and also Has Seamless Desktop Integration which no other Virtualization Solution has!

VirtualBox supports Intel’s hardware virtualization VT-x and has experimental support for AMD’s AMD-V, but does not use either of them by default.

According to a 2007 survey by DesktopLinux.com, VirtualBox is the third most popular software package for running Windows programs on Linux desktops.
VirtualBox 1.6 is a major update, incorporating over 2000 improvements. Among the highlights:

• Solaris and Mac OS X host support
• Seamless windowing for Linux and Solaris guests
• Guest Additions for Solaris
• A webservice API
• SATA hard disk (AHCI) controller (
• Experimental Physical Address Extension (PAE) support
• In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:
• GUI: added accessibility support (508)
• GUI: VM session information dialog
• VBoxHeadless: renamed from VBoxVRDP
• VMM: reduced host CPU load of idle guests
• VMM: many fixes for VT-x/SVM hardware-supported virtualization
• ATA/IDE: better disk geometry compatibility with VMware images
• ATA/IDE: virtualize an AHCI controller
• Storage: better write optimization, prevent images from growing unnecessarily.
• Network: support PXE booting with NAT
• Network: fixed the Am79C973 PCNet emulation for Nexenta guests
• NAT: improved builtin DHCP server (implemented DHCPNAK response)
• NAT: port forwarding stopped when restoring the VM from a saved state
• NAT: make subnet configurable
• XPCOM: moved to libxml2
• XPCOM: fixed VBoxSVC autostart race
• Audio: SoundBlaster 16 emulation
• USB: fixed problems with USB 2.0 devices
• MacOS X: fixed seamless mode
• MacOS X: better desktop integration, several look’n'feel fixes
• MacOS X: switched to Quartz2D framebuffer
• MacOS X: added support for shared folders
• MacOS X: added support for clipboard integration
• Solaris: added host audio playback support (experimental)
• Solaris: made it possible to run VirtualBox from non-global zones
• Shared Folders: made them work for NT4 guests
• Shared Folders: many bugfixes to improve stability
• Seamless windows: added support for Linux guests
• Linux installer: support DKMS for compiling the kernel module
• Linux host: compatibility fixes with Linux 2.6.25
• Windows host: support for USB devices has been significantly improved; many additional USB devices now work
• Windows Additions: automatically install AMD PCNet drivers on Vista guests
• Linux additions: several fixes, experimental support for RandR 1.2
• Linux additions: compatibility fixes with Linux 2.6.25

TAKEN FROM www.ubuntu-unleashed.com 

Microsoft’s dramatic decision this weekend to withdraw its offer for Yahoo and not pursue a hostile bid raises a whole host of questions. What happens to Yahoo now? What happens to Microsoft? Or is this just a tactic to drive down the price of Yahoo’s shares so that Microsoft can go hostile with a lower offer? And if the deal really is dead, does Steve Ballmer need to start looking for a new job?

This last question may not be so hypothetical. Ballmer has been the big driver behind this deal at Microsoft—some would say to the point of obsession. After the disaster that has been Windows Vista (Microsoft’s core product), Ballmer may have realized he needed to redeem himself in the eyes of Microsoft’s board. And the “transformative” deal with Yahoo was the way he was going to do it.

One reading of Ballmer’s obsession with the deal is that he felt his job was on the line if he didn’t get it done. According to one secondhand account that leaked to us yesterday before the deal was called off, over the past week Ballmer increasingly has been “yelling and screaming at employees for almost no reason” and is being “more of a tyrant than usual.” One executive on the Microsoft deal team supposedly made a comment about “not having to worry about Ballmer anymore” if the Yahoo deal fell through. What the exec didn’t know, though, was that Ballmer was in earshot, and he screamed back that the deal would go through and that he wouldn’t let the board “crucify” him.

As things stand, the fact that Ballmer was not able to close the deal could put his job in jeopardy. The big questions are: If he really does walk away, can he put this distraction behind the company? Or is it too late for Ballmer? If Microsoft’s board loses patience with him, it might have to ask Blll Gates to temporarily come back as CEO until it finds a replacement. After all, Ballmer has already made a strong and convincing case for why Microsoft needs Yahoo to make its online and advertising strategy work (it needs the scale of Yahoo’s display and search advertising inventory to compete with Google). It is not clear how it can achieve its objectives on its own or through other acquisitions.

Maybe Ballmer backed down because he realized the deal was becoming too big of a distraction and he didn’t want to drag it out further given Yahoo’s continued resistance. (And save his job in the process). Or perhaps he thinks he can still get it done by making Yahoo’s stock price collapse and come back with a hostile offer. (After all, if you are going to go hostile, you’d want to drive down the stock price of the target company to make your offer look even more attractive to shareholders). We’ll find out later this week.

TAKEN FROM /www.techcrunch.com

Sun Microsystems is getting ready to talk about its cloud computing efforts, including some kind of a deal with Amazon for its Amazon Web Services, according to CEO Jonathan Schwartz, who delivered a short keynote at Startup Camp in San Francisco. Startup Camp is an adjunct event to the JavaOne Conference that kicks off later this week.

Following his keynote, I got on stage with Schwartz and asked him a few questions. I queried him about Sun and its cloud computing efforts, given that it was nearly a decade ago that then-CEO Scott McNealy started talking about how “the network is the computer.” In response, Schwartz said they have some interesting news coming out later this week. He refused to give the details, but he seemed pretty excited.

When I asked him about Sun — and cloud computing especially — in light of the recent trend in which startups now have more of an affinity with Amazon Web Services than Sun, Schwartz replied with a question: “Do you think it would make sense for us to partner with Amazon to offer free info on the cloud?” I guess, I said. “Then you’ll be paying attention to the announcement we make tomorrow with what we’ll be doing with Amazon.”

He pointed out that Amazon has done a great job of evangelizing the whole notion of cloud computing, and of bringing infrastructure as a service to startups. “Amazon knocked the ball out of the park,” he said. For Sun, the opportunities are with mid-size and large corporations — banks, pharma and financial companies — that need to build their own clouds because they cannot use Amazon type on-demand computing due to certain legal and regulatory limitations.

Schwartz said that startups are important for his company, because as they grow they create demand for Internet data centers, which ultimately boosts demand for his company’s products: hardware. When I was asking him questions, at one point he admonished me for thinking of Sun as a server company. Sorry Jonathan, I can’t be blamed, having followed Sun for such a long time, for thinking that way!

He pointed out that Sun means different things to different people. To web developers, Sun is MySQL; for teens it is the Java logo before they start playing a game on their mobile phones; for the high-performance computing community, Sun is Lustre. In the end, all of these efforts, including the company’s backing of the open-source and free software movements, are meant to drive sales of more hardware, Schwartz explained.

I think it’s part of the challenge Sun faces as a company, because it’s hard to outline the new complexity of Sun to Wall Street. The explanation becomes harder to explain in light of financial results that were, well, light, and led to 2,500 people getting the pink slip.

When I asked him about that decision and how it weighed on him, Schwartz turned the question back on me. My response, I suppose, as a capitalist, is that tough decisions come as part of doing business. That kind of attitude, Jonathan said, leads to sweatshops and doesn’t result in lasting cultures. “We are a company whose assets go home every night.” I think this one time, he gets to have the last word!

TAKEN FROM gigaom.com

LOS ANGELES — The wiretapping trial of Anthony Pellicano, the accused sleuth to the stars and irrepressible eavesdropper, has offered much fodder for celebrity watchers over its two-month run, including courtroom cameos by the comedians Chris Rock and Garry Shandling.

Skip to next paragraph

George Wilhelm/The Los Angeles Times, via Associated Press

Anthony Pellicano, above, the ex-private eye on trial in a Hollywood wiretapping case.

 

But the trial, which went to the jury last week, offered arguably more for people who enjoy talk of encryption software, code-wiping booby traps or the low-tech secrets of phone company networks. It has brought into focus some startling technological revelations, provoked intriguing questions and even taught some lessons to technophiles — criminally inclined or not. Here, through various witnesses, are a few of the disclosures:

Wiretapping is really, really easy. And not just for the government. Anyone sitting in on the Pellicano trial (and staying awake during the telecom testimony) could walk away ready to intercept phone calls after a quick stop at RadioShack for less than $50 in equipment.

Amateur spooks and crooks need only to learn which pair of wires, known as a cable pair, is associated with someone’s phone number to tap it. The wires can be found in a curbside neighborhood “b-box,” if you don’t have the passkey to a central office. (Mr. Pellicano routinely had photographs taken of the b-box nearest to a subject’s location. But prosecutors said he also had an accomplice visiting phone company central offices late at night.)

Every phone company service technician is given copies of two keys that can open nearly all of Southern California’s b-boxes, and retired technicians apparently keep them. Many boxes are not locked at all. Central offices, which can be entered by technicians at all hours, are also often unsupervised.

Not to get all paranoid on you, but. … All Mr. Pellicano needed to carve a niche as a “private ear” was the help of one popular phone company worker. Prosecutors say a field technician from SBC Communications (now AT&T), Rayford Turner, who was a bit of a ladies’ man, prevailed upon a small group of middle-age female SBC dispatchers to give him whatever data he requested: toll records, cable pairs, names, phone numbers and so on. They continued to do so long after he retired.

One of his abettors said that she tried to cover her tracks by typing “ERR” in an SBC database, to suggest she had accidentally pulled up the wrong customer’s records. But other confidential databases did not record any electronic footprints, and still don’t, five years later, according to testimony.

Though its defenses were easily breached, the phone company apparently was not prepared to help prosecute illicit wiretaps. The tap that became Mr. Pellicano’s undoing was found by a service technician at a central office. But after removing it, she threw it out without tracing where the wires led — leaving jurors, five years later, to use their imaginations.

Phone “sweeps” offer false security. There are many companies that offer wiretap detection services. But these services are meant to pick up devices on the premises of the target. If the tap is elsewhere, they are useless. When Mr. Pellicano wanted to hear the calls of someone who lived outside his area code, prosecutors say, he rented an apartment nearby and had Mr. Turner run the duplicated phone line into it. There it would be plugged into a Macintosh computer that would record a new digital audio file each time the subject’s receiver was lifted off the hook.

But when the phone to be tapped was near Mr. Pellicano’s offices — say, on Rodeo Drive — the detection became easier. Prosecutors say a special set of undocumented phone lines ran directly from the mainframe of the phone company’s Beverly Hills central office to a phone closet across the hall from the entrance to Mr. Pellicano’s offices and then to a bank of computers in a locked “war room” inside. These lines allowed Mr. Pellicano to monitor calls across Beverly Hills without even stepping outside.

For all his wiretapping prowess, however, Mr. Pellicano could not tap cellphones — a glaring deficiency in Los Angeles, where many people get as much work done in their cars as in their offices.

All the king’s horses cannot beat Serpent. In the 1990s, Louis Freeh, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the time, warned that new encryption technology would help cybercriminals elude detection and prosecution. Libertarians and technology adherents countered that this was a small price to pay for privacy and the security of e-commerce.

The person who programmed Mr. Pellicano’s wiretap software was a college dropout named Kevin Kachikian, a quirky self-taught man who took the stand last month wearing white socks and sandals and insisting he thought Mr. Pellicano was only beta-testing the system.

His software incorporated an encryption algorithm, Serpent, that the government’s code-breakers have not been able to crack. Serpent, which can be downloaded free, was a mere runner-up in 1997 in a competition for a new national encryption standard, but experts say its 128-bit key would require trillions of years for all the computers in the world to crack.

The F.B.I. seized hundreds of digital audio files from Mr. Pellicano’s computers in 2002. Scores have never been decrypted by the agency. So Serpent proved as impregnable as advertised — and some evidence, as Mr. Freeh predicted, might never be recovered.

Even Serpent cannot guard against human error. During the ’90s encryption debate, privacy advocates said that law enforcement would still be able to catch the bad guys by figuring out their passwords through other means, like burglary, bribery, blackmail or guesswork.

Indeed, the F.B.I. decrypted scores of Mr. Pellicano’s recordings after noticing that some of his pass phrases were written into the software’s source code itself — a rookie mistake, cryptology experts say. Several incorporated the word “omertà,” Italian for the Mafia’s code of silence. Another password, required to avoid setting off an irreversible “wipe” of the wiretapping software and any audio files, was the given name of Pellicano’s son, Luca, who is said to have been named for Luca Brasi, the “Godfather” hit man.

These discoveries let prosecutors listen to recordings in which Mr. Pellicano bragged about his wiretapping ability and vowed that no one on earth would ever learn of it — proving that a code of silence is not too useful if you never stop blabbing about it.

TAKEN FROM www.nytimes.com