When you restart your PC after the Trojan is installed, a professional and legitimate-appearing Microsoft window appears that warns, “Your copy of Windows was activated by another user.” It asks you if you want to “activate” your Windows copy, for which the spoofers will need your credit card information.

According to Symantec: “You can only choose only 'Yes' or 'No.' You can't run Task Manager or any other applications. If you choose 'No' your PC will be shut down immediately.” If you choose “Yes” you'll see this image.

Piracy of Windows is a real problem that Microsoft has responded to by ordering onto computers a practically-mandatory verification application. (Going on general principals, Tech Insider avoided running it for a while, but eventually succumbed to Microsoft’s insistence that the application be done.)

“This Trojan teaches us all a good lesson - Trust No One,” Symantec concludes.

The State Department began last month delivering the fingerprint scan systems to all visa issuing posts and expects to complete roll out of the hardware by the end of this year as part of its Biometric Visa program.

In March, Tony Edson, deputy assistant secretary of State for Visa Services, told the Senate Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce, Trade and Tourism that 10 fingerprints provide a greater number of data points and more accurate identification than the two fingerprint system.

Edson added that two fingerprint scans provide a limited amount of data, and yield a large number of “false positive” results, which can delay the visa process and inconvenience legitimate travelers.

James Ziglar, president of Cross Match Technologies, the company that is providing the department with the fingerprint scanning gizmos, told Tech Insider that it will not take any longer to scan 10 fingerprints than two fingerprints – about 15 seconds – thanks to improvements in the underlying software.

That may not provide much solace to foreign visitors to the United States, who view the fingerprinting process as an intrusion on their privacy. Thomas Hartung, editor of German travel magazine Travel One told the Los Angeles Times last month that he did not know of any other country that requires a 10 fingerprint scan and asked, "How would you feel as an American if you came to Germany and the first thing you were asked is to give all 10 fingerprints?"

Ziglar said his company has already delivered 200 of its 10 fingerprint scanners to the State Department, has another 400 on order and expects more. Edson said the department tested the 10 fingerprint scanners this year in London; San Salvador; Riyadh and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; and Asuncion, Paraguay. -- Bob Brewin

This is the second consecutive year the conference has been canceled due to an unexpected budget crunch, and Carroll said he has learned his lesson. “Next year we’re going to do it in February,” when the cash is still flowing, he said. -- Bob Brewin

It looks like soldiers' (and others') blogs may be around for awhile.

Wired today posted a response to the article from David Axe, the military editor of Defense Technology International magazine and a correspondent who has reported from Iraq and Lebanon since 2005, according to his bio page on his personal web site, War is Boring. Axe quotes from a memo the Army issued after Wired posted its original article:

In no way will every blog post/update a soldier makes on his or her blog need to be monitored or first approved by an immediate supervisor and operations security (OPSEC) officer. After receiving guidance and awareness training from the appointed OPSEC officer, that soldier blogger is entrusted to practice OPSEC when posting in a public forum.

And this from the same memo:

Soldiers may also have a blog without needing to consult with their immediate supervisor and OPSEC officer if the following conditions are met: 1. The blog’s topic is not military-related (i.e., Sgt. Doe publishes a blog about his favorite basketball team). 2. The soldier doesn’t represent or act on behalf of the Army in any way. 3. The soldier doesn’t use government equipment when on his or her personal blog.

If that seems obvious, consider that there exist competing schools of thought. Nicholas Carr started the debate on whether IT matters or not with his 2003 article "IT Doesn't Matter." Others later joined Carr, postulating that IT affects everyone equally. Others believe that it decreases competition because software homogenizes business processes.

But, according to the latest researchers, industries that have adopted IT have experienced greater concentration (“a smaller number of firms holding a high proportion of sales and market value”) and turbulence, which means that the market position of one firm could vary greatly from one year to the next. Both conclusions apply to “services and manufacturing sectors—publishers and insurers, as well as makers of autos and machinery, for example.”

The federal government, of course, doesn't have competitors. But federal technologists, and the IT contractors who sell to them, often struggle to explain why IT matters in government, as if the benefits of technology were self-apparent. The benefits aren't self-apparent. But these researchers present evidence that federal IT managers can draw on: IT changes things; it’s not neutral.

Hat tip: Joe McKendrick

Finnish handset manufacturer Nokia already sells a mobile phone with an integrated navigation device (for a hefty 700 euros – about $950), but “other top vendors are expected to follow shortly, hoping to make 2007 the breakthrough year for cell phone navigation,” Reuters reports. “Nokia, which bought into the navigation industry last year with the acquisition of German firm Gate5, rolled out a free Nokia Maps service in February, giving away maps and routing data while charging consumers for a turn-by-turn navigation service.”

But the database, middleware and application company is out to reassure customers, and investors, that the purchases were worth it. The company plans to launch in 2008 a new Java-based application suite called “Fusion” (from which it is taking the best of Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards functionality). But it won’t stop supporting the other brands’ software as stand-alone entities. That’s what Mark Johnson, Oracle Public Sector senior vice president, tells Tech Insider. He also promises no forced upgrades, a continued stream of enhancements, and no internally-competing application development teams.

Johnson says Oracle sees the most growth potential in selling middleware – application servers, service-oriented architecture and such. Applications come second, and databases, the technology that launched Oracle in the late 1970s, in third place. It makes sense – databases are a mature product.

But what about the big question: Who’s going to replace Oracle chief Larry Ellison, whenever he chooses to step down? Johnson notes that the Ellison has two co-presidents reporting to him, Safra Catz (also the chief financial officer) and Charles Phillips. Johnson has been at Oracle for 19 years.

The Marines have contracted with an outfit called Strategic Operations Inc. to train in an “Iraqi town” set up on a 20-acre movie set owned by Stu Segall Productions in San Diego, according to the April 2007 Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned newsletter, which made its way to our inbox.

Strategic Ops also has set up an Afghanistan/Iraq village at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, just north of San Diego, and the newsletter reports both sites “incorporate special effects that are designed to realistically replicate combat conditions, including simulated Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and Rocket-Propelled Grenade (RPG) explosions, gunfire, and role players with realistic wounds. Digital audio and visual systems are used to capture the training scenarios for later analysis."

The whole operation definitely is far more advanced than the “Combat Town” I trained in during the 1960s at Camp Pendleton, which consisted of a bunch of dilapidated buildings with the only role players being my fellow Marines, who could not believe they had to attack Combat Town one more time.

The Segall set in San Diego was originally built for production of the 1991 TV detective series “Silk Stalkings” and was supposed to represent Palm Beach, Fla. Only the movie business could recycle a place in California that was supposed to look like Florida into an Iraqi village.

Kevin Carroll, the Army's Program Executive Officer for Enterprise Information Systems, (PEO-EIS) told Tech Insider that due to the fracas over the Defense Department's 2007 supplemental spending bill – an issue way above his pay grade and ours – he has put his contractors on a “slow pay” schedule, either on a quarterly or monthly basis.

Spending on PEO-EIS programs, which provide the Army with all kinds of widgets and gizmos, ranging from computers to tactical network gear, is focused primarily on supporting deployed or about to be deployed units, such as the Maryland National Guard, Carroll said. “Stay back forces”, Carroll said, are going to have to wait for equipment until a supplemental budget is approved.

Carroll's grand plans to develop and field Enterprise Resource Planning systems to support the tactical Army have been put on hold due to the funding crunch, he added. But that might be a blessing in disguise. Commercial enterprises find that it sometimes takes almost as long to field an ERP system as DOD has been working on the Joint Tactical Radio System.

Federal prosecutors charged Leo John Yesvetz and Charles Marsala, who worked at the Tobyhanna Army Depot, an electronics maintenance facility in northeast Pennsylvania, with steering $7.8 million worth of work to Computer Giants during a four-year period ending in April 2005.

Marsala sometimes used government credit cards to make purchases from Computer Giants to avoid the bidding process.

Prosecutors did not say how much Yesvetz and Marsala received in bribes but said other contract fraud occurred at several other Defense Department facilities, including Fort Bragg, N.C., and Ft. Belvoir, Va.

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, introduced The Federal Agency Data Breach Protection Act (HR 2124), which would amend the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 to require "the executive branch establish procedures to be followed in the event of a data breach," according to a press release from Davis' office. The bill also would:

-- clarify the authority that an agency head could delegate to the CIO;
-- require agencies to establish data breach notification procedures consistent with OMB policies, procedures and standards;
-- authorize agencies to establish polices and procedures for accounting for all federal personal property assigned to departing employees; and
-- define sensitive personal information.

The bill is identical to one Davis introduced last year (HR 6163), which was incorporated into The Veterans Identity and Credit Protection Act and passed in September. That law requires the Veterans Affairs Department to promptly notify vets of data breaches, to centralize IT management and to report VA's adherence to federal information security standards.

This week, it puts NASA luminary Jesco Freiherr von Puttkamer (who has worked on everything from Apollo 11 to President Bush's Moon/Mars Exploration Vision) on the hot seat. A Nov.2, 1979, Christian Science Monitor article summarized his vision of the future:

By the late '80s or early '90s, a huge solar power satellite may be constructed to beam microwave energy to Earth. And after that, a natural step as Mr. Von Puttkamer sees it, will be space colonies built with nonterrestial material and using solar energy.

When Ontario government employees tried yesterday to call up the social-networking site Facebook, they were presented with an "access denied" message, the Toronto Star reports. "'The Internet web site that you have requested has been deemed unacceptable for use for government business purposes,'" the warning reads," according to the article.

However, Ontario has not blocked the other popular social-networking site MySpace. The Star reports about Facebook:

"The staff determined it's not as directly related to the workplace as we'd like it to be so we're restricting access to it," Phillips told the Toronto Star.

"Our IT ... people are pretty broadly familiar with the marketplace and they said, 'Here's a website that's going to be increasingly more popular for the OPS (Ontario public service). Is this an appropriate website to be spending time on?'" he said.

"It's the ministry making these decisions on trying to ... restrict access to ones that are inappropriate and then to anticipate where one may grow in popularity and we may end up with a lot of OPS time being taken (up) on it."

As a reminder, the Office of Management and Budget requires agencies to create a personal use policy for government equipment, including computers. It refers agencies to a document issued by the federal CIO Council, which states:

Federal employees are permitted limited use of government office equipment for personal needs if the use does not interfere with official business and involves minimal additional expense to the government. This limited personal use of government office equipment should take place during the employee’s non-work time. This privilege to use government office equipment for nongovernment purposes may be revoked or limited at any time by appropriate federal agency or department officials.

The laptop battery industry, now more safety conscious after reports last year of Sony-battery powered laptops exploding into flames, can’t pack much more power into their products, the article quotes industry experts. The laptop battery industry can increase battery power by about 7 percent a year, but “that's hard to stomach for an industry that has grown up with Moore's Law,” the article notes. Moore’s law states that computing power doubles about every 2 years.

The industry is trying to come up with alternative metals to the lithium battery, but the new batteries bring their own set of problems.

Welcome to Tech Insider’s Tip Thursday, in which we bring you practical computing tips and information.

This week: Check your computer for Windows vulnerabilities.

In all likelihood, you have some version of Microsoft Windows as your computer’s operating system. Windows, of course, requires regular security upgrades and it’s possible that you might have fallen behind. There’s no reason to, however. Windows should be set to automatically download daily updates. Go to Start, Command Panel, and click Security Center. Click on the Automatic Updates icon, and check the white box that says automatic.

But, it’s not a bad idea to check your current status, for which Microsoft has a handy analyzer that will scan your computer for vulnerabilities. You might want to check other computers’ vulnerabilities, too, for which you’ll need a machine’s Internet protocol address. The Microsoft Baseline Analyzer does require a software download.