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While some may contend that the primary role of college newspapers is to prepare students for work in the establishment press, school newspapers also serve a vital role in keeping the community informed. In fact, college newspapers have broken stories on many occasions that resonated in the mainstream press. Some of these stories may have never seen the light of day if it weren’t for the bold actions of determined college students and the newspapers these students control.

For students at Colorado State University, it appears the keys to their student-run paper, The Rocky Mountain Collegian, may soon be wrestled away and handed over to newspaper giant Gannett. According to a recent AP story, “Officials with The Coloradoan in Fort Collins met Tuesday with Colorado State University leaders to discuss a ’strategic partnership’ to run the campus paper.”

While it’s unclear at this time what a strategic partnership would look like, this isn’t the first time that Gannett has involved itself with a student newspaper. In August of 2006, a Gannett newspaper purchased FSView & Florida Flambeau, an independent publication that serves the student body at Florida State University. A year later, the University of Central Florida’s newspaper was also sold to a Gannett publication. Unlike those instances, the Collegian is run by the university and, as The Student Newspaper Survival Blog points out, “if a deal goes through with Colorado State University, it would be the first time Gannett gets involved in a student paper that had been run by a public university.”

The Rocky Mountain Collegian last made headlines in September of last year when the editorial board published a four word column that read, “Taser this - FUCK BUSH.” While the editorial may not have been particularly insightful, and certainly wasn’t nuanced, it is absolutely essential that the students be able to publish what they see fit. Despite any forthcoming promises not to interfere with the students’ editorial control, it seems doubtful that they’d allow such an incendiary column to run without any form of response.

Not surprisingly, students at Colorado University have expressed concern and outrage over the news that their paper may become affiliated with Gannett. Jeremy Trujillo, the paper’s newsroom manager, expressed concern that students were not invited to participate in Tuesday’s meeting, he told the Student Press Law Center, “I think the way it went down was somewhat shady. They should’ve had a representative from student media or the Collegian to at least provide insight about how this place operates on a daily basis.”

In Wednesday’s edition of the school paper, an editorial titled “Collegian is not for sale,” explains in no uncertain terms that the staff of the newspaper is opposed to any potential partnership with the corporate media outlet. “The Collegian is not for sale, not interested in a “strategic partnership,” a one-night stand or any other form of fraternization with corporate media. We prefer independence, and we’ll fight for it.”

The column also questions the college president’s willingness to contemplate such a venture. “Amid the secrecy, mistruths and rumors, one thing is certain: To our president, a businessman by trade, the CSU student voice has a price. And it’s a dish best served mum, in the final hour and while students are still trying to find their classes. … We’re students, representing students, working for students. Who do you work for?”

It’s comforts me knowing that the students at the Rocky Mountain Collegian will not take this advance by Gannett lying down, but their determination may not be enough to stave off the corporate interests.

The university has appealed to The Coloradoan to outline the advantages such a relationship would provide to its students and the school itself, but I think it’s far more important to assess what’s in it for the Gannett corporation and The Coloradoan. If The Collegian is already profitable, why share the profits with a major corporation when they can be spent on the university’s students? If the paper is relying on money from the school, what would be lost in the transformation toward a profitable enterprise?

I won’t speculate what changes the paper might undergo in the process, but it seems safe to say that both the paper’s independence and integrity may be compromised in the process, perhaps even the integrity of the school itself. The Rocky Mountain Collegian has operated as a part of the school for more than 100 years. Why change things now?

On Monday, Cryptography Research Inc. (CRI) opened a three-day workshop in San Francisco on the security of embedded system cryptography. The workshop is intended for developers and architects of secure embedded systems. Participants will be given smart cards and challenged to crack passwords using various demonstrated techniques.

“These are not theoretical attacks,” Benjamin Jun, vice president of technology at CRI, noting that his company published the first white paper on monitoring attacks during the 1990s.

The workshop’s primary focus will be on attacks to Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), a cryptographic algorithm that is now used to protect electronic passports, mobile communications, and even MP3 players. Jun said there are many ways for an attacker to monitor leakage. In the workshop, he said they will look specifically at Simple Power Analysis (SPA) and Differential Power Analysis (DPA).

“Almost every smart card you buy today is going to have countermeasures to Simple Power Analysis and Differential Power Analysis,” said Jun, however some newer implementations of ECC “do in fact leak information.” In particular he cited devices such as MP3 players and cell phones. These are devices that have not had 10 years of development, said Jun, and so some exhibit weaknesses found in early smart cards. The purpose of the workshop was to help developers avoid some common flaws.

Under SPA, an attacker can determine the passwords from simple patterns in the power consumption.

(Credit:
CRI)

To an observer, a power analysis looks something like an EKG. As the device processes the encryption algorithm, peaks and valleys display on the monitor; these ultimately correspond to 1s and 0s in a password. Thus, an attacker could look at the power consumption fluctuations emitted from a device and, based on the specific pattern of peaks and valleys, figure out whether the device used RSA, DES, or ECC for encryption. Knowing what algorithm was used, the attacker could then begin to figure out the password.

Under DPA, the attacker first guesses and then compares the guess against the actual result.

(Credit:
CRI)

Counter measures, said Jun, include increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. For example, if you want to have a private conversation, you could go to a large football stadium during a game, making it hard for someone trying to listen to separate our conversation from the surrounding noise. That’s amplitudinal noise.

The other kind of noise, said Jun, is temporal, which, to a computer, means stuttering the information over longer spaces. For example, if the data value was 8, the code might be expressed as 2 plus 6. More defense can be achieved by randomness, changing the way you express the data value of 8; maybe the next reference you say 12 minus 4, then 5 plus 3, and so on.

The workshop concludes Wednesday. For an overview of the concepts involved in a monitored attack, CRI provides a Flash tutorial on its Web site.

The first presidential debate is September 26, followed by a vice presidential debate on October 2. This marks the first time that the CPD has officially partnered with a Web property for debate coverage.

The social network has been officially sanctioned by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) to launch MyDebates.org, which will debut Wednesday. The site offers a downloadable app that will stream the presidential debates live, archive them for on-demand viewing (searchable and tagged, naturally), participate in polls, and track the candidates’ stances on issues.

News Corp.’s MySpace has the presidential debate stamp of approval.

Since the early days of the ‘08 electoral process, MySpace has been launching high-profile activism initiatives through “MySpace Impact,” a nonpartisan politics site. The social network has rolled out a register-to-vote contest geared toward indie bands, a citizen-journalism competition in conjunction with MSNBC, an NBC News-powered election site, and a series of polls. In addition, the site held a series of candidate “dialogues” in partnership with MTV.

MySpace, and social networks in general, were far more under-the-radar in the last presidential election cycle, so their potential impact on turnout, awareness, and election results remains unmeasured. But the site’s stereotype as a teen hub shouldn’t get in the way: MySpace says that four-fifths of its members are of voting age.

No doubt, that list is incomplete.

Orange, France Telecom’s mobile provider, will whisk the
iPhone into at least 10 more European, Middle Eastern, and African countries.

The deal with Apple, announced Friday, will bring the popular device later this year into Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Portugal, Egypt, and Jordan, as well as into unspecified countries in Africa and–back on the home side of the Atlantic–the Dominican Republic.

But announcement after announcement of foreign outreach keep popping up. Since late April, the list of target countries has frenetically expanded to include Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India, the Philippines, South Africa, Greece, Turkey, Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico.

Until recently the iPhone has been available in just a handful of countries outside the U.S., including the U.K., France, Germany, and Ireland.

The iPhone is becoming quite the world traveler.

John Brennan

(Credit:
Adobe Systems)

John Brennan, a senior vice president of Adobe’s Platform group, has left the company to join the middle-market effort of private-equity firm Silver Lake, called Silver Lake Sumeru.

Silver Lake Sumeru on Thursday said Brennan will work with the firm to improve performance of “established middle-market technology companies.”

One of the most prominent private-equity firms, Silver Lake has attracted other IT executives including former Sun Microsystems President Ed Zander, who later was CEO of Motorola.

An important executive in Adobe’s merger with Macromedia, Brennan had led Adobe’s Creative Suite product group, as well as development of platform technologies such as Flash, PDF (Portable Document Format), and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime).

Update: All gone. Sending them out to folks now–check your spam boxes.

Remember Brightkite, the social network meets microblogging tool we wrote about last week? The creators have been nice enough to grace us with 100 invites to give away to Webware readers. Just fill in the Wufoo form after the break and we’ll get one your way as soon as we can. Invites will be sent out once all 100 spots have been taken.

Heavy hitters in the renewable-energy business have scheduled a press conference on Tuesday to publicly lobby for long-sought policies, arguing that the industry and U.S. competitiveness are at risk.

But for all the high-powered pressure, prospects are not looking very good.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen called the policy uncertainty “really embarrassing.”

The renewable-energy industry has been thwarted at least two times in efforts to renew an existing federal tax credit for renewable-energy projects that is set to expire at the end of 2008. Projects include solar energy, wind, biofuels, and other renewable sources.

Called in to make a public case for renewing the investment tax credit and production tax credit at the press conference are: Credit Suisse Vice Chairman John Cavalier; energy venture capitalist Nancy Floyd from Nth Power; the head of GE’s renewable-energy financing division, Kevin Walsh; former California Energy Commissioner John Geesman; and Dan Reicher, director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, who is also co-chair of ACORE.

Meanwhile, President Bush is scheduled to address WIREC conference attendees on Wednesday morning.

The House earlier this month passed another bill which, like previous attempts, proposes paying for the tax credit by closing an existing tax incentive on oil and gas companies. The Senate has twice failed to pass the measure, and President Bush threatened to veto such a measure late last year.

Why? Because they are losing money.

ACORE sent a letter to Congress, signed by 500 “industry leaders,” calculating that 42 gigawatts of renewable-energy projects are in jeopardy because of the uncertainty around the investment tax credit and another production tax credit. That’s enough power for 16 million homes.

And at this point, industrialists appear to be getting downright irate over the prospect of that tax credit lapsing.

At an investor conference last month, Resch said that the solar industry is trying to create a coalition of utilities, homebuilders, and environmentalists to get a long-term set of financial rules in place. Worst case scenario is to try to get a one-year extension at the end of this year, he said.

Even the head of the Solar Energy Industry Association of America, Rhone Resch, predicted that paying for tax incentives by trying to pull back oil company tax breaks is unlikely to succeed.

The president signed an energy bill with large incentives for the production of biofuels, but at this point it’s unlikely he’ll have good news for renewable-power backers.

If the industry isn’t developed, “green collar” jobs will go to other countries, and American consumers may end up importing more renewable-energy products than they already do, ACORE argues.

The American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) organized the press conference, which will include well-known energy investors and business people from General Electric, Credit Suisse, Google, and clean-tech venture capital firm Nth Power. It will be held at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC), which is hosted by the U.S. government.

About time. Arsenal dominated the game, only looking exposed in the first 15 minutes when Milan threatened. The ref, appropriately enough, was wearing Milanese colors, making a series of terrible calls against Arsenal. The most egregious was giving Hleb a yellow card for diving, which apparently translates to “falling down under a tackle that took out his legs but none of the ball.” Shocking.

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It had to be Fabregas. Fabregas, who has stalled in the past few games reclaimed his claim to the throne with a brilliant last-ditch solo effort to blast the ball into the net from distance. Walcott then followed up in extra time to square the ball to Adebayor to put the match beyond doubt. Arsenal, the first English team to ever beat AC Milan at the San Siro.

At any rate, Arsenal are threw to the last eight. I hope we get another “big team.” We seem to do better against the big guns.

On paper, it sounds pretty good. You take the carbon dioxide pollution from paper production and transform it into a paper additive.

McLeish said that the main competitor to carbon recycling is carbon storage underground, an approach that has raised concerns over safety and costs.

“We believe that by focusing our efforts on the existing multibillion-dollar PCC industry, we will be well-positioned to be a major player in the even larger $400 billion CO2 mitigation market in the future. This strategy is in line with our corporate mission of enabling a carbon-neutral world by transforming CO2 into high value products, one industry at a time,” company CEO Derek McLeish said in a statement.

Calcium carbonate, or chaulk, is used in many many industrial processes. Precipitated Calcium Carbonate, or PCC, is used to add gloss or brighten paper.

Several routes are being pursued, including growing algae at power plants and making baking soda. Government research in the U.S. is focused on pumping carbon dioxide underground at power plants.

Carbon Sciences’ strategy is to start with the paper industry and then optimize its technology for power producers. It also envisions using its equipment at mining operations which can use calcium carbonate.

Technologies to recycle carbon dioxide waste are being seriously pursued. Large polluters, such as factories or power plants, are anticipating regulations to restrict their greenhouse gas emissions.

The company has developed a process that treats carbon dioxide gas with heat and pressure, then mixes it with other chemicals to produce calcium carbonate. For a video of the equipment in a solar-panel equipped van, click here.

Carbon Sciences on Monday announced that it intends to target its carbon recycling technology toward paper manufacturers.

Among the companies using Brightcove 3 are Showtime, Lifetime and FearNet. The platform serves 135 million visitors per month.

Some of what the new package offers is improved work flow for media companies, a video player that is easier to customize and greater bandwidth delivery, the company said in a statement.

Brightcove, the maker of online-video tools, released its new Brightcove 3 video publishing platform on Monday.