NewsBytes... More White House IT issues... and a concert violinist

I'm starting with the White House e-mail... but jump to the bottom of this item to read the story about whether if a concert violinist is in a busy subway station, does anybody stop and hear him. It's a fascinating read.... But first...

Yes, more on the White House's use of non-official e-mail for somewhat official work. The LAT this morning has this story:

GOP-issued laptops now a White House headache [LAT, 4.9.2007]
Democrats say a private e-mail system was used in violation of federal rules

WASHINGTON — When Karl Rove and his top deputies arrived at the White House in 2001, the Republican National Committee provided them with laptop computers and other communication devices to be used alongside their government-issued equipment.

The back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by the RNC, was designed to avoid charges that had vexed the Clinton White House — that federal resources were being used inappropriately for political campaign purposes.

Now, that dual computer system is creating new embarrassment and legal headaches for the White House, the Republican Party and Rove's once-vaunted White House operation.

The widespread use of private email accounts by some top White House officials is sparking a congressional probe into the practice and whether it violates a post-Nixon law requiring that White House deliberations be documented.

Broken Down [Time, 4.6.2007]
What the war in Iraq has done to America's Army--and how to fix it. A Time investigation

A Privately Funded Military Internet Program [WSJ, 4.9.2007]

Cisco Systems, satellite operator Intelsat and the Pentagon have teamed up on a program to provide high-speed Internet connections to military units that are in motion, The Wall Street Journal Reports. "The demonstration project requires private investors led by a fledgling private-equity fund to shoulder the entire cost of a networking system for directing messages," the Journal says. About $800 million is budgeted for the first installation on an Intelsat satellite already under construction, with hopes to raise more to pay for four similar projects. "We get to test something for a fraction of what it would cost" if the Air Force funded it, Mike Florio, the military's manager for the program, tells the Journal.

Early this year, Tech Notebook reported Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy thought business school ethics courses were a waste of time. When it comes to ethics, he said, "either you're born with it or you learn it from your parents." McNealy seemed to think corporate policies weren't going to do the trick either. Two Hewlett-Packard executives recently said they disagreed.

Outsourcing: Where's Uncle Sam?

Look What's Cooking in Mozilla's Lab

It's experimenting with ways to incorporate popular features, like social networking applications, into the Firefox browser

Young Scientists Design Open-Source Program at NASA

Jessy Cowan-Sharp and Robert Schingler set up CosmosCode to help NASA develop open-source software for space exploration.

NASA scientists plan to announce a new open-source project this month called CosmosCode -- it's aimed at recruiting volunteers to write code for live space missions, Wired News has learned.

The program was launched quietly last year under NASA's CoLab entrepreneur outreach program, created by Robert Schingler, 28, and Jessy Cowan-Sharp, 25, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Members of the CosmosCode group have been meeting in Second Life and will open the program to the public in the coming weeks, organizers said.

Pearls Before Breakfast [WP, 4.5.2007]
Joshua Bell is one of the world's greatest violinists. His instrument of choice is a multimillion-dollar Stradivarius. If he played for spare change, incognito, outside a D.C. Metro station, would anyone notice?