another Breakthrough

RP hopes for another breakthrough with Sun global developer confab:
As the Philippines prepares to host a worldwide developers conference through Sun Tech Days this coming June 17 to 19, organizers are crossing their fingers that another brilliant and innovative idea would again pop up with foreign delegates in attendance.
IT veteran signs up as CICT consultant:
Dittas A. Formoso, an oldhand in the local IT industry, is finally hooking up with the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) -- not as a commissioner but as a consultant.
Symantec warns of new type of IM spam:
Symantec Corporation has announced the emergence of a new type of Instant Messaging (IM) spam, further exploitation of trusted brands, as well as the reemergence of spear phishing in its May 2008 State of Spam report.
Palace declares June as ICT month:
In an attempt to recognize the ICT sector as a major economic growth contributor, Malacañang has decreed the month of June 2008 and every year thereafter as National Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Month.
Cisco fortifies network resilience of top offshore services company:
Stolt-Nielsen Philippines, a top offshore services company and a pioneer in the aquaculture industry, has completely overhauled its network infrastructure and put in place technology from Cisco.
RP to host Ragnarok World Championships:
The Philipines will host the 2008 Ragnarok World Championships, the first time in the history of the event, which have been held traditionally in South Korea.
Level Up! brings online racing craze to RP:
Level Up!, the leading online gaming publisher in the Philippines, has always been at the forefront of successfully localizing the best online games from other countries to be played and enjoyed by Filipino gamers. Once again, the company has brought another game that will surely become a new craze in Internet cafes called Crazy Kart.
Strong growth projected in Asian online gaming:
SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — Revenue for the online gaming market in the Asia/Pacific region is expected to grow rapidly between 2008 and 2013, reports In-Stat. Key factors driving this growth include growing household Internet penetration, increased content development for online-specific games, and the unique experience that online gaming offers, the high-tech market research firm says.
World Cyber Games nat’l eliminations in full swing:
:Top local gamers are battling it out for coveted spots in the Philippine Team at the World Cyber Games (WCG) Philippine Preliminaries. With the Metro Manila eliminations concluding its three-week run at the Villman Gaming Zone over the weekend, the tourney hits key provincial cities on June 21 and 22 at SM Davao, and June 28 and 29 at SM Cebu.
Local firm ‘revives’ laser tag craze in Manila:
Hoping to offer a novel and unique way of simulating actual combat without the risk of injury, a Manila–based company has rolled out Lazerxtreme, its unique state-of-the-art laser tag game located at Market! Market! in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City.

things of the fast

Coke, Red Bull seek 10th wins:
Co-leaders Coca-Cola and Red Bull try to solidify their bid for outright semifinal berths as they battle separate opponents today in the season-ending Smart-PBA Fiesta Cup at the Araneta Coliseum.
Pacquiao supporters ready Pacman masks:
Manny Pacquiao shirts, jackets and bandanas are a thing of the past.
Warriors capture Filoil crown:
Paul Lee made The Arena in San Juan his personal playground yesterday, sinking five triples for a 20-point fourth quarter performance to lead University of the East to an 81-65 thrashing of San Beda College in the finals of the 2008 Filoil Flying V Invitational Cup.
Condes defends IBF crown:
Power will be the key when Florante Condes of the Philippines makes the first defense of his International Boxing Federation (IBF) minimumweight title against Raul Garcia of Mexico on Saturday night (Sunday morning in Manila) at the Estadio Arturo Nahl in the resort city of La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
UE, Ateneo clash for title:
University of the East and Ateneo de Manila clash for the title today in the Nike Summer League basketball tournament at the Philsports Arena in Pasig City.
Manila batters barge into semifinals:
Manila survived a late surge by a gritty Makati side as it hacked out a scary 9-8 victory yesterday to clinch the first of the two outright semifinal berths in Baseball Philippines Series 3 at the Rizal Baseball Stadium.
UE, UST jins shine in all-women tourney:
Unheralded Jessica Ballesteros and Jade Zafra rocked the recent Smart/Petron all-women’s taekwondo championships by winning a gold medal each in two classes where a couple of national training pool members were relegated to third place.

The Worms

A new way to protect computer networks
Jerry LiaoScientists may have found a new way to combat the most dangerous form of computer virus. The method automatically detects within minutes when an Internet worm has infected a computer network. Network administrators can then isolate infected machines and hold them in quarantine for repairs.
Ness Shroff, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Networking and Communications at Ohio State University, and his colleagues describe their strategy in the current issue of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.
They discovered how to contain the most virulent kind of worm: the kind that scans the Internet randomly, looking for vulnerable hosts to infect. "These worms spread very quickly," Shroff said. "They flood the Net with junk traffic, and at their most benign, they overload computer networks and shut them down."
Code Red was a random scanning worm, and it caused .6 billion in lost productivity to businesses worldwide in 2001. Even worse, Shroff said, the worm blocked network traffic to important physical facilities such as subway stations and 911 call centers.
"Code Red infected more than 350,000 machines in less than 14 hours. We wanted to find a way to catch infections in their earliest stages, before they get that far," Shroff said.
The key, they found, is for software to monitor the number of scans that machines on a network send out. When a machine starts sending out too many scans -- a sign that it has been infected -- administrators should take it off line and check it for viruses.
The strategy sounds straightforward enough. A scan is just a search for Internet addresses -- what we do every time we use search engines such as Google. The difference is, a virus sends out many scans to many different destinations in a very short period of time, as it searches for machines to infect.
Shroff was working at Purdue University in 2006 when doctoral student Sarah Sellke suggested making a mathematical model of the early stages of worm growth. With Saurabh Bagchi, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue, they developed a model that calculated the probability that a virus would spread, depending on the maximum number of scans allowed before a machine was taken off line.
In simulations, they pitted their model against the Code Red worm, as well as the SQL Slammer worm of 2003. They simulated how far the virus would spread, depending on how many networks on the Internet were using the same containment strategy: quarantine any machine that sends out more than 10,000 scans.
They chose 10,000 because it is well above the number of scans that a typical computer network would send out in a month.
"An infected machine would reach this value very quickly, while a regular machine would not," Shroff explained. "A worm has to hit so many IP addresses so quickly in order to survive."
In the simulations pitted against the Code Red worm, they were able to prevent the spread of the infection to less than 150 hosts on the whole Internet, 95 percent of the time.
A variant of Code Red worm (Code Red II) scans the local network more efficiently, and finds vulnerable targets much faster. Their method was effective in containing such worms. In the simulations, they were able to trap the worm in its original network -- the one that would have started the outbreak -- 77 percent of the time.
Anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of the time, it spread to one other network, but no further. The remaining 3 to 13 percent of the time, it escaped to more networks, but the infection was slowed.
In all cases, there was a dramatic decrease in the spread of the worm within the first hour. To use this strategy, network administrators would have to install software to monitor the number of scans on their networks, and would have to allow for some downtime among computers when they initiate a quarantine.
"You just keep trying to come up with techniques that limit a virus’s ability to do harm."
God Bless us all!

LOANS

By EDMER F. PANESA;House Speaker Prospero C. Nograles has felt relieved for some 50, 000 borrowers who have been delinquent in paying their housing loans with Balikatan Housing Finance Inc. after the company declared it is still open to negotiations and that foreclosure would be considered only as a last resort.
"This is good news. At least now, we have 50, 000 families who have been relieved from the constant threat of being ejected from their homes," Nograles said.
Nograles issued the statement following the assurance made by Federico Cadiz, president of Bahay Financial Services Inc. (BFS), to the House Committee on Housing and Urban Development, chaired by Oriental Mindoro Rep. Rodolfo Valencia.
BFS is an asset management and loan company engaged by Balikatan, a special purpose company jointly owned by the government’s National Home Mortgage Finance Corp. (NHMFC) and DB Real Estate Global Opportunities, to implement its mortgage servicing activities.
Based on House Resolution (HR) 604 filed by Nograles, the Valencia panel is conducting an investigation on the massive foreclosure of low-cost and socialized real estate mortgages sold by NHMFC to Balikatan, which threatened to throw out thousand of families from their homes.
Valencia said the Balikatan would first put priority on negotiations with the borrowers on workable solutions to settle their accounts.
"The BHFI assured the committee it will take into consideration all possible options so the borrowers would be able to amortize their restructured loans," Valencia said.
Nograles, author of Republic Act (RA) 8501 or the Housing Loan Condonation Act of 1998, has been pushing hard for a moratorium on all foreclosures of delinquent low-cost and socialized housing loans as most Filipinos are in dire financial situation due to the spiraling cost of goods and services worldwide.
"We have to be more compassionate especially at this time when most people can hardly afford to three square meals a day. We should not remove the roofs on their heads," Nograles said.
Nograles maintained that foreclosures of lowcost and socialized housing units will only push thousands of Filipino families back to the slums, thereby aggravating the country’s problem on the growing number of informal settlers particularly in urban areas.
During the initial hearing conducted by Valencia’s committee, the Alliance of Homeowners (AHomes) told lawmakers that the transfer of loan accounts from NHMFC to the BHFI was made without prior consultation from its members.
A-Homes also said that its members could not afford the high down payment and that their respective properties are now facing foreclosure proceedings.
Another homeowners group, Kapitbahayan, appealed that those affected should be allowed to restructure their loans and be given a lower interest rate on their loans. It also recommended the option for NHMFC to buy back the accounts.
The NHMFC clarified before the House panel that part of its disposition strategy for its non-performing loans under the Unified Home-Lending Program portfolio was to dispose of accounts classified as highly delinquent to be able to pay its financiers — the Social Security System (SSS), the Pag-IBIG Fund, and the Government Service Insurance System — which extended loans amounting to R42 billion.
It added that from 1988 to 2003, NHMFC paid its financiers some R40.4 billion but still had a balance of R53.2 billion, including interests.
Likewise, it entered into a joint venture with DB Global Opportunities (not Deutsche Bank as earlier reported) and formed the Balikatan to which it sold 52,000 accounts, translating to about R32 billion.
The projected collectibles from its 44 percent share in Balikatan would amount to R3.88 billion, the NHMFC added.
Earlier, Nograles, Parañaque City Rep. Eduardo Zialcita, and Muntinlupa City Rep. Ruffy Biazon separately filed House Bill (HB) Nos. 89, 411, and 1932, all seeking relief for borrowers with delinquent housing accounts.
All three bills seek to institute a re-structuring program for delinquent housing accounts with housing agencies and government financing institutions.
The three authors pushed for the restructuring and the condonation of all penalties and surcharges of delinquent housing loans.
They also sought to condone a reasonable portion of the accrued interests, make the remaining accrued interests a non-interest bearing principal, and impose a low six percent interest on the original principal

Agriculture

By EDU LOPEZThe issue on heavy farm subsidies in the developed world that has derailed the finalization of global trade rules under the World Trade Organization (WTO) since the Seattle debacle a few years back, may again stall ongoing talks.
Philippine agriculture attache to Geneva Jojo Lazaro, has disclosed that the biggest threat to the talks was a new law passed by the US Congress on farm subsidy.
The US congress has approved a farm subsidy law that gives to US farmers practically all the subsidies they enjoyed in the past, Lazaro said.
A negotiating bloc of developing countries led by the Philippines and India had demanded in past negotiations to make deep cuts in farm subsidies in Europe, the United States and Japan as a pre-condition to returning to the negotiation table.
In the eleventh hour during the last round of negotiations in Hong Kong last year, Europe made commitments to slash farm subsidies in European Union member-countries to save the WTO talks from total collapse. The US has not made similar commitments.
Meanwhile, on the negotiating table for non-agricultural market access (NAMA) that covers manufactured goods including fishery and forest products, senior trade negotiator Thomas Aquino shared that negotiators have approved the Swiss formula in tariff cuts on imports.
The Swiss formula, he assured, will be favorable to both Filipino exporters and domestic industries as it gives less developed countries like the Philippines flexibilities on tariff cuts depending on its offensive and defensive interests.
Domestic industries that compete with imported goods from neighboring countries have long been warning negotiators not to throw the country wide open to imports to allow them to fairly compete.
In the negotiation front on trade in services, Margarita Songco, NEDA deputy director general, said that several drafts have been solicited from seven groups of countries and were used in coming out with a draft agreement.
A consolidated draft was not approved due to some concerns raised by Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba