Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the "official" beginnings of what is now the Internet. On that day, in 1969,  wrote Dr. Leonard Kleinrock in Volume 2 (page 305) of his two-volume set "Queueing Systems":

"... the embryonic one node network (!) came to life when the first packet-switching computer was connected to the Sigma 7 computer at UCLA. Shortly thereafter began the interconnections of many main processors (referred to as HOSTs) at various university, industrial, and government research centers across the United States."

Thus was born the ARPANET.

An AP story marking the anniversary says that Dr. Kleinrock (and no doubt J.C.R. Licklider, Larry Roberts, Wesley Clark, Paul Baran, Thomas Marill, Charles Herzfeld, Bob Taylor, and the many others involved in its beginnings) never envisioned that the ARPANET would evolve into what it has today. What began as a way to openly and freely exchange information among scientists and engineers became all that and more.

For instance, a story in Fast Company last week noted that Internet users in the US watched some 21.4 billion videos in July and the average online video viewer watched 8.3 hours of video.

Also in July, the video game company Electronic Arts proudly announced that its Battlefield 1943 customers had killed more than 43 million enemies in just one week:

“"Watching and participating in this non-stop multiplayer action has been a real treat for us and we can't believe how fast our fans reached 43 million kills. We can now truly say that we have set a new standard for what can be done in the downloadable games category and gamers recognize the endless value that Battlefield 1943 provides for just $15." 

In a New York Times story last week, Google says that it now lists some 330,000 Web sites as being malicious, over double the150,000 a year ago.

And a story last month in the London Daily Express discussing the various Internet (and other technology) related injuries people now have that they didn't have 40 years ago. The paper says that some 5 million staff days are lost per year in the UK due to Internet surfing related injuries.

How the Internet will evolve over the next 40 years is anyone’s guess (and feel free to make a prediction), but we should give some special thanks to those in ARPA who decided to fund the effort, the universities and government labs who built it out, and others in government who were wise enough to let it grow freely, those 40 plus years ago.

Along with the birth of the Internet, the ATM machine also made its US debut 40 years ago tomorrow in a branch of Chemical Bank (now Chase) in Rockville Centre, N.Y.

(The world's first ATM machine was installed in late June of 1967 in a branch of Barclays Bank in Enfield, north London.)

Today, there are some 1.7 million ATMs world-wide, including some in South Africa that will pepper spray you if it thinks you are trying to blow it up.

According to this story at WXII12.com, that while Chemical Bank customers seemed to like the ATM,

"... Chemical Bank managers weren't initially enthralled. 'If this new service proves to be of sufficient interest and benefit to our customers, additional installations will be made at other offices,' they noted coolly in 1969's annual report."

However, management seems to have kept its reservations to itself, as it advertised the new ATM this way:

"On September 2, 1969, our branch will open its doors at 9:00 a.m. and we'll never close again!"
 

The alleged "mastermind" behind the largest identity theft case in US history, Albert Gonzalez, 28, has agreed to plead guilty, according to several news reports.

Gonzalez, who is currently in jail, has agreed to plead guilty to 19 federal counts in Massachusetts, with the charges in New York being dropped. He still has charges pending against him in New Jersey.

Gonzalez allegedly helped steal 130 million credit and debit card numbers. He faces 15 to 25 years in prison on the Massachusetts charges alone.

While a large theft, a 2009 Verizon Corporation report said that in 2008 there were 90 confirmed security breaches that resulted in some 285 million compromised records worldwide. So, anyone expecting that the break-up of this id theft ring is going to make a huge dent in reducing identity theft and resulting fraud is likely to be disappointed.

In other security related news, a judge has thrown out three of the four felony charges against Terry Childs, a former San Francisco city computer engineer who was accused in July 2008 of commandeering San Francisco's computer network last year and altering it to deny access to top city administrators.

According to this story in ComputerWorld,

“The charges that were thrown out relate to allegations that Childs quietly placed three modems on a San Francisco city network to have backdoor access to the city network. In dismissing the charges, Judge Kevin McCarthy ruled on Friday that there was insufficient evidence to show that Childs had placed the modems on the network with malicious intent.”

However, a fourth charge, that Childs illegally refused to hand over the passwords to the system to city administrators, was allowed to stand. If convicted, Childs could face 5 years in prison. He has been in prison since last July.

A trial date will be set soon.

Finally, the US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was reportedly a victim of id theft the old fashion way when his wife’s purse, containing her Social Security card, the family checkbook, her credit cards and her IDs, was stolen. Within days, someone was using the checks to withdrawn money from the Bernanke’s checking account.

As it turned out, the Bernanke’s were caught up in a sophisticated id theft ring which hired pick pockets to snatch people's purses and wallets, and then use the information to try to access the victims' bank accounts. The ring was broken up by authorities but only after it stole over $2 million;  key members of the id theft ring have been convicted and sent to prison.  

There was a news item in today’s Washington Post on the continuing problems at the Prince George's County schools in Maryland.  As I mentioned a few days ago, problems with its new automated student scheduling software SchoolMax left what was said at the time to be hundreds of students without their classroom schedules at the start of the school year.

Since then, it has turned out that it wasn’t hundreds but some 8,000 of the school system’s students who were without their class schedules, and as of today, 1,900 still don’t have them.

What is more interesting is that the school system administrators knew about the problems throughout the summer, but had not developed a back-up plan or bothered to inform parents about the problems.

The school’s superintendent made a big show of being outraged over the problems on Monday - "unacceptable and inexcusable"  is what he called the situation - but there are now questions whether this outrage was all just for show.

The Post says the school superintendent claimed at a Board of Education meeting last night that he did not know of the problem until Monday when students started school, yet the school system's chief information officer said everyone knew there were going to be major problem on the first day of school.

Board of Education officials basically implied that either someone was lying, or that there is a communication problem among senior school administration officials.

SchoolMax officials, according to the Post, are puzzled by PG County’s troubles.  The Post says that:

"Jerry Canada, general manager for the school division of Harris Computer Systems, the Canadian company that owns SchoolMax, said other clients who use the system have not experienced similar scheduling problems. Nor have they seen difficulties like those that plagued Prince George's last year, which included mistakes on report cards."

The Post says that SchoolMax has had a mixed record with school systems using its software for scheduling. The Post said that school officials in Fremont, Calif., and Middletown, R.I., liked the system, but that Albuquerque and Richmond County, Ga., had also problems with class scheduling.

Insufficient training apparently was a problem in Albuquerque, and was given as a reason for PG Country problems last year when SchoolMax was introduced into the school system.  From the news reports, training and software issues seem to have combined to cause the current problems in PG County.

This whole episode is a classic case of how not to introduce new software into an organization.

Prince George’s County School system in Maryland has a total of 140,000 students, and is the 18th largest school district in the US.

The Wall Street Journal had a story today about how state tax/revenue agents are mining social media sites like FaceBook and MySpace looking for tax cheats.

The story says that revenue agents in Minnesota, Nebraska and California have been able to collect thousands of dollars in owed taxes by checking what people post on social media sites and then checking that against what they say on their tax forms. For instance, agents in Nebraska collected unpaid taxes from a deejay when they found out via his MySpace page that he advertised working a big public party but hadn't paid the required taxes on that income as he should have.

I know from personal experience that county tax agents in Virginia regularly review what is posted on company web pages against company tax forms.

Tax agents can only use publicly posted information, and cannot "friend" someone to get information, the WSJ says.

The WSJ story also says that the US Internal Revenue Service declined to comment on whether it used social media to pursue delinquent taxes or to conduct audits.

Given the tough economic times and the US government's voracious need for cash, I'd be highly surprised if they didn't.

What would you do if you opened up a letter from your doctor telling you had a fatal disease, and then later found out that you didn't? And how would you feel, both before and after the letter?

Well, a number of US veterans and their families have found out.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is apologizing to over 1,000 veterans who had received a letter incorrectly implying they had ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. The letter sent informed the veterans (or their surviving spouses or children) of the benefits as ALS sufferers they were entitled to receive from the VA.

ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), as described by the ALS Association,

"is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed."

Unofficial sources said that the incorrect letters were the result of a disease "coding" error, although it sounds more like human error than a software programming error.

Many of the veterans receiving the letter were suspicious of the letter, and some even went for second opinions which cost them thousands of dollars in medical bills for testing confirming they did not have ALS

So, out of curiosity, how would you react to receiving such a letter, or as happened to friends of mine, receiving a letter telling them they had contracted hepatitis when they had not?

There was another story yesterday concerning the use of CCTV cameras that populate the UK landscape and their effectiveness in crime fighting, this time appearing in the London Daily Telegraph.

The Telegraph says that the Metropolitan Police admit that only one crime per year is solved for every 1,000 CCTV cameras installed in the UK. There are over 1 million such cameras in London alone, and over 4 million across the UK. The Telegraph notes that Britain, with 1% of the world's population has over 20% of the world's CCTV cameras in operation.

The crime stat information comes from a Metropolitan Police internal report obtained through a Freedom of Information request. The internal report also says that London residents, after being told by the police that they were likely to be seen on 300 cameras per day, were losing confidence in the police when the police, as they are often quick to do,  say that there is no CCTV video footage of a crime.

In addition, the Met report says that increasing numbers of citizens are complaining that the police investigating a crime don't even bother to look at the CCTV videos that do exist, further eroding public confidence in the police.

In another Telegraph story today, it is estimated by UK CCTV experts that nearly half the cameras capture such poor quality video that they are worthless in court.

(There is a UK government study going on to try to find out exactly how many closed-circuit TV cameras that have been installed in the UK, work and can provide usable pictures.)

A leading British barrister also made the point in the article that the proliferation of CCTV cameras has done little to deter crime.

John Bromley-Davenport, a criminal QC in Manchester, told the Telegraph:

“Cameras can, occasionally, provide evidence, although the quality of film is frequently so poor as to be worthless. But they do nothing to deter criminals; the large number of crimes, committed in the full view of cameras, provide eloquent testimony to that.”

However, a UK Home Office official, in rebutting the criticism, said CCTV cameras are useful because they:

"help communities feel safer."

Hmmm, I guess the solution then is to double the number of installed CCTV cameras; they may not be effective crime fighters, but Londoners and other UK citizens no doubt will feel doubly secure knowing the cameras are there.

Last week, US Vice President Joe Biden announced the availability beginning October 1 of government grants totaling $1.162 billion which are to begin creating the infrastructure needed to help hospitals and other health care providers implement and use electronic health records. The grants, the White House press announcement says, will be funded by (and are defined within) the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and will be used to help health care providers qualify for new incentives that will be made available in 2010 to doctors and hospitals that "meaningfully use" electronic health records.

The Recovery Act provides Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments to eligible providers, such as physicians and hospitals, in order to increase the adoption of EHRs. To receive the incentive payments, however, these providers must demonstrate that they are using meaningfully a certified EHR system.

Trouble is, meaningfully use, although defined as a requirement in law, isn't currently defined in any meaningful way (the ARRA says, "using certified EHR technology in a meaningful manner, which shall include the use of electronic prescribing") and won't be initially defined until late this year.

The term "meaningfully use" itself is ambiguous ("meaningful" to whom - the government, doctors and or patients, and is does it primarily concern functionality within a certified EHR or how that functionality is used?) but ultimately seems to be, according to the Health IT Policy Committee, that EHRs are "linked to achieving measurable outcomes in patient engagement, care coordination, and population health."

Vice President Biden said at the announcement, that

"With electronic health records, we are making health care safer; we’re making it more efficient; we’re making you healthier; and we’re saving money along the way. These are four necessities we need for healthcare in the 21st-century."

The grants that were made available include:

• * $598 million in grants to establish approximately 70 Health Information Technology Regional Extension Centers, which will provide hospitals and clinicians with hands-on technical assistance in the selection, acquisition, implementation, and meaningful use of certified electronic health record systems.   
• * $564 million in grants to States and Qualified State Designated Entities (SDEs) to support the development of mechanisms for information sharing within an emerging nationwide system of networks. 

According to the White House, the 70 Health Information Technology Regional Extension Centers will be set up through a competitive process and serve a defined geographic area with at least 100,000 primary care providers. The law requires that Regional Centers be affiliated with a U.S.-based, nonprofit institution or organization, or "an entity thereof." The Regional Centers will support health care providers with direct, individualized and on-site technical assistance in:

• Selecting a certified EHR product that offers best value for the providers’ needs;
• Achieving effective implementation of a certified EHR product;
• Enhancing clinical and administrative workflows to optimally leverage an EHR system’s potential to improve quality and value of care, including patient experience as well as outcome of care; and,
• Observing and complying with applicable legal, regulatory, professional and ethical requirements to protect the integrity, privacy and security of patients’ health information.

Sounds wonderful.

Yet, as noted here earlier this year by Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, many of the currently available EHR systems

"are neither user-friendly nor designed to meet HITECH’s ambitious goal of improving quality and efficiency in the health care system."

Furthermore, the number of certified EHR systems available for purchase has been falling steadily since the certification process was started in 2006.

In addition, the implementation failure rate for EHR projects run between 35% and 50% (some estimate it to be 73%), and that nearly 20% are de-installed after being installed. 

Looks like the Health Information Technology Regional Extension Centers have quite a bit of work cut out for them, assuming they can find knowledgeable and experience people to support them.

I also am going to be interested to see exactly what these so-called "mechanisms" are going to be which allow "information sharing within an emerging nationwide system of networks." 

The idea seems to be to have the states (or groups of states) create health information exchanges (HIEs) that are secure, private and interoperable. How different HIEs using different info-exchange "mechanisms" and different security/privacy requirements are supposed to interoperate seamlessly is anyone's guess, however.

There is no data that I know of that discuss success/failure rates for HIEs. I guess this is a $564 million opportunity to determine one.

In an unexpected ruling, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the 2007 summary judgment decision by Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah that found that Novell owned the Unix and Unixware copyrights, according to a news report in ComputerWorld.

An understandable to a non-lawyer explanation of the 2007 summary judgment can be found here.

The 10th District ruling has the background details of how this all came about over the past six years, for those who are interested. The ComputerWorld article gives a nice but shorter summary.

The result of the 10th District Court ruling is that there will now be a trial to determine whether the SCO Group or Novell owns Unix.

In an article in the Salt Lake Tribune, SCO Group CEO Darl McBride was likely to renew its lawsuit for $1 billion against IBM and Novell, as well as seek licensing fees from companies that run Linux.

For its part, Novell said:

" Novell is carefully studying the decision of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. We are eased that the decision affirmed the district court’s monetary award of approximately $3M from SCO to Novell. On other issues such as ownership of the UNIX copyrights, on which SCO’s claims against Novell, IBM, and Linux users depend, the Court remanded the case for trial. Precisely what will happen next in the lawsuit remains to be seen, especially in light of the pending SCO bankruptcy and the recent court decision to appoint a Chapter 11 Trustee to take over the business affairs of the company."

"Novell intends to vigorously defend the case and the interests of its Linux customers and the greater open source community. We remain confident in the ultimate outcome of the dispute."

Middle and high school students in many of Maryland's Prince George's County schools started the school year yesterday without their class schedules because of a problem with the school system's new computer class scheduling software, according to the Washington Post.

The scheduling problem appeared to hit "elective" classes more than mandatory classes, the Post said. Hundreds of students were affected. Many spent all day in classrooms, cafeterias, auditoriums and gymnasiums waiting for class schedules that never appeared.

Prince George's Country spent $4.1 million installing SchoolMax in August 2008, which the company website says,

"makes keeping track of student information more accurate and easy to access."

However, according to a Post story in March of this year, PG County's SchoolMax system even then was:

"plagued with errors ... leading to botched schedules, an over-count of students and report cards that were delayed or, in some cases, simply wrong."

From August 2008 to March of this year, the Post said the SchoolMax system had crashed 4 times. In addition, the Post wrote,

"Errors led to the duplication of 3,600 student identification numbers in the 128,000-student system; almost 300 were double-enrolled, leading to an inaccurate count of the student population. The delivery of report cards was delayed last semester, and some students have found they've gotten E's instead of A's. There have been problems doing things as straightforward as printing an alphabetical directory of students."

Country school Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. was quoted in yesterday's Post story as saying,

"I don't know if it was a technical issue, with schedules just being dropped, or if they were put in incorrectly.We have every available body that can work on schedules working on schedules. . . . I expect this to be resolved by the end of the week."

Superintendent Hite also said that the situation "unacceptable and inexcusable."

Last March PG country school system's chief information officer blamed the mess on lack of training that led to data entry problems. After a year of the system in place, it is a bit hard to use that excuse again.

Another news report today says that the problem has not been resolved, and that the school system IT department and SchoolMax officials don't know when it will be.