'Black Prince' dances into history

Saturday June 08, 2002 10:48 p.m. ET

DAEGU, South Korea (AP) -- His girth has thickened and his step has slowed. But the Black Prince is dancing his way into sporting legend like no other South African before him.
    South African coach Jomo Sono performed the self-described Jomo Dance -- a unique combination of shuddering flesh, thrusting hips, air punches and flexed muscles -- when his squad clinched its first ever World Cup victory against Slovenia on Saturday.
    Sono longs to perform his Jomo Dance again if South Africa secures a draw against Spain on Wednesday and defies the odds as Group B outsider to clinch a berth in the competition's second round.
    "If we get a draw against Spain I'll do my Jomo Dance, lots of them," he guffawed after South Africa's 1-0 victory over Slovenia.
    Whatever the result -- and whatever the dance -- Sono's place in the South African history books is assured.
    He took over as coach from Portugal's Carlos Quieroz in March when the squad was divided, demoralized and defeated by lowly Mali in the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations.
    Through a combination of coaxing, cajoling and sheer commanding, Sono licked Bafana Bafana - The Boys -- back into shape.
    He brought in talent from South Africa's domestic league, including his own team Jomo Cosmos, to water down the domination of European-based players. At the same time he instilled new confidence in talent like Quinton Fortune, who spent much of his time with Manchester United on the bench but who scored a last minute penalty in South Africa's 2-2 draw against Paraguay and set up the winning goal against Slovenia.
    "The team was down in Mali, down, down, down," said Sono after Saturday's victory. "I've done a pretty good job lifting up the spirit of the players," he said.
    "The team was divided into groups and I tried to make them believe in themselves that we are all South Africans, no matter what our color, we are all South Africans."
    "And they are starting to believe."
    In a country still scarred by apartheid, Sono is insistent that black, mixed race and white players should blend and mix both on and off the field. He doesn't want to interfere in personal friendships and antagonisms, but at least they shouldn't be dictated by color, he maintains.
    His multiracial mix of assistants and advisers echoes that philosophy.
    Above all, he insists, players must feel free and enjoy their game. When they "dance" they score goals, he says.
    "Jomo brings what the players need," said captain Lucas Radebe after Saturday's win. "There's nothing complicated about him. You just go there and enjoy the game and play normal football," said Radebe, who has been capped 69 times and witnessed a long procession of coaches since South Africa rejoined world sport 10 years ago after ending its policy of racial discrimination.
    During the apartheid era, Sono was South Africa's outstanding top player. He started with the Soweto club Orlando Pirates and went on to play for New York Cosmos, Atlanta Chiefs, Colorado Caribous and Toronto Blizzard in the now-defunct North American soccer league.
    His father, Eric, played with the Pirates, and his son -- also Eric -- is a South African under-20 international.
    He set up his own team Jomo Cosmos 20 years ago -- although he has yet to win any major distinctions with it - and was caretaker coach of the national squad for a brief period in 1998.
    He invented the Jomo Dance for the occasions when his club won.
    To this day, Sono is described as one of South Africa's best ever players and still retains his title as the Black Prince for his majestic qualities on pitch.
    Now 46 years old and weighing in at around 130 kilograms (estimates vary), he prefers to stand on the touchlines rather than race around with his team on the field - although he did a brief victory run after Saturday's victory.
    But his self-deprecating humor, one-line jokes and booming laugh is as lightning as ever.
    Asked at a press conference about the problems of the heat in Daegu, he quipped that South Africa had applied to the sports governing body FIFA to use caps and umbrellas against the sun.
    And what would happen if there was a plague of locusts, came the query.
    "We duck. They fly," came the reply.
    And what about the South African player's speed. Why do they sprint so fast?
    "That's what we do back home, we run in the jungle."

Explorers find lost Inca town in Peru
June 6, 2002 Posted: 1:08 PM EDT (1708 GMT)

LONDON (Reuters) -- British and American explorers have found a large Inca town
that was lost for more than 400 years after hacking their way through the dense
jungles of Peru.
    "This is the biggest thing I have come across in 20 years working in the area,"
said the team's co-leader Hugh Thomson, a fellow of Britain's renowned Royal
Geographical Society.
    "It felt like a once in a lifetime experience when we found it," he told Reuters
by telephone from Bristol in southwest England.
    Working on a tip from a local mule driver and their own knowledge of the area,
the four-man team spent three weeks hacking through forests of the Peruvian
interior with machetes.
    There, completely overgrown and at the bottom of a valley carved by the Rio
Yanama river 1,850 metres (6,069 ft) above sea level, they found the ancient
city at a site called Cota Coca.
    "It was a very privileged moment. This is a very substantial settlement, but you
can pass within 10 feet (3 meters) of a ruin in the jungle and not know it is
there," said Thomson who led the expedition with Gary Ziegler.
    "Getting there through the jungle is very hard work. The steep valleys combined
with the Amazon cloud forest vegetation are a pretty impenetrable mixture."
    The Cota Coca valley is about 100 km (60 miles) west of the ancient Inca capital
Cusco.

Stone structures
But Thomson said he and his co-leader calculated they had probably scaled more
than the height of Mount Everest during the mountainous trek because of the
undulating terrain.
    The team's report said a preliminary survey showed that Cota Coca contained at
least 30 stone-built structures, including a 75 ft long meeting hall, grouped
around a great central plaza.
    The Incas once ruled a vast swathe of South America stretching from Colombia to
Chile.
    The team said the town was probably built during the Inca's retreat from
treasure-hunting Spanish invaders and abandoned after the Conquistadors captured
and executed the last Inca leader Tupac Amaru in 1572.
    The town lay undiscovered for centuries because of the rapid growth of the
jungle.
    Thomson said Cota Coca -- probably named after the Inca habit of growing large
numbers of coca plants in the area -- had developed its own semi-tropical
climate because of the high wall of the river valley.
    He said there was no indication why the town had been abandoned and forgotten.
There was no evidence of battle or looting and the Incas appeared to have simply
withdrawn from the area after the death of Tupac Amaru.
    "After finding Cota Coca we will be going back to the area to search for more
ruins," Thomson said. "If this settlement is there, there could well be others."

from cnn.com:

County issues thousands of anti-radiation pills
June 8, 2002 Posted: 10:03 PM EDT (0203 GMT)

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, New York (CNN) -- A suburban New York county Saturday handed out thousands of pills meant to give residents limited protection from radiation in case of disaster at a nearby nuclear power plant.
    Westchester County officials are giving out free potassium iodine tablets, known as "KI," to anyone who lives within 10 miles of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, about 35 miles north of New York City. About 140,000 people live in that 10-mile radius.
    People lined up outside a Yorktown Heights school to pick up the pills, which can prevent thyroid cancer, if taken within 24-hours of a nuclear exposure. The pill works by preventing the thyroid gland from absorbing radiation.
    Officials said the pills would protect people long enough for them to be evacuated from the area, but they warn that it is not a panacea. Westchester County spokeswoman Victoria Hochman told The Associated Press that 2,617 people had picked up 10,533 KI pills by the end of the day Saturday.
    "These are not protecting against everything in a nuclear accident. I think that is really important to emphasize," said Dr. Loren Wissner Greene, a thyroid specialist at New York University Medical Center. "What it does do is decrease the ability of the thyroid gland to pick up this radioactive iodine, which can cause a high instance of thyroid cancer, especially in young children."
    Indian Point's owner, the New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., says that its plant is designed with multiple safety systems, and the prospect of an accident that would threaten the public is "unlikely."
    Joseph Ruffino, who brought his two young daughters to pick up the pills, said the whole thing was kind of surreal.
    "It's hard to believe this is your daily reality these days, but it is," he said.
    The pill giveaway also attracted anti-nuclear activists who said the only way to protect the community is to close the plant.
    Ruffino said he had much more respect for the protesters now than he did in the past.
    "I looked at them very differently, no doubt about it," he said.
    New York State received 1.2 million pills to give to people who live near the plant. Twelve other states that have nuclear reactors have also requested the pills from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Maryland and Vermont were the first states to give them out, The Associated Press reported.
    Dozens of pharmacies in the county are selling the pills to people who live more than 10 miles from the plant, according to the county's Web site.

From the June 10, 2002 issue of New York Magazine.
 

Facing the Music

Rock stars and music-industry execs once ruled the earth, but now -- in terms of size and profit margins -- the music industry is becoming the book business (minus the literacy).

BY MICHAEL WOLFF

Hemingway had rock-star status (and even impersonators). Steinbeck was Springsteen. Salinger was Kurt Cobain. Dorothy Parker was Courtney Love. James Jones was David Crosby. Mailer was Eminem. This is to say -- and I understand how hard this is to appreciate -- that novelists were iconic for much of the first half of the last century. They set the cultural agenda. They made lots of money. They lived large (and self-medicated). They were the generational voice. For a long time, anybody with any creative ambition wanted to write the Great American Novel.
    But starting in the fifties, and then gaining incredible force in the sixties, rock-and-roll performers eclipsed authors as cultural stars. Rock and roll took over fiction's job as the chronicler and romanticizer of American life (that rock and roll became much bigger than fiction relates, I'd argue, more to scalability and distribution than to relative influence), and the music business replaced the book business as the engine of popular culture.
    Now, though, another reversal, of similar commercial and metaphysical magnitude, is taking place. Not, of course, that the book business is becoming rock and roll, but that the music industry is becoming, in size and profit margins and stature, the book business.
    n other words, there'll still be big hits (Celine Dion is Stephen King), but even if you're fairly high up on the music-business ladder, most of your time, which you'd previously spent with megastars, will be spent with mid-list stuff. Where before you'd be happy only at gold and platinum levels, soon you'll be grateful if you have a release that sells 30,000 or 40,000 units -- that will be your bread and butter. You'll sweat every sale and dollar. Other aspects of the business will also contract -- most of the perks and largesse and extravagance will dry up completely. The glamour, the influence, the youth, the hipness, the hookers, the drugs -- gone. Instead, it will be a low-margin, consolidated, quaintly anachronistic business, catering to an aging clientele, without much impact on an otherwise thriving culture awash in music that only incidentally will come from the music industry.
    This glum (if also quite funny) fate is surely the result of compounded management errors -- the know-nothingness and foolishness and acting-out that, for instance, just recently resulted in what seems to be the final death of Napster.
    But it's way larger, too. Management solutions in the music business have, rightly, given way to a pure, no-exit kind of fatalism.
    It's all pain. It's all breakdown. Music-business people, heretofore among the most self-satisfied and self-absorbed people of the age, are suddenly interesting, informed, even ennobled, as they become fully engaged in the subject of their own demise. Producers, musicians, marketing people, agents . . . they'll talk you through what's happened to their business -- it's part B-school case study and part Pilgrim's Progress.
    Start with radio.
    Radio and rock and roll have had the most remarkable symbiotic relationship in media -- the synergy that everybody has tried to re-create in media conglomerates. Radio got free content; music labels got free promotion.
    Radio's almost effortless cash flow, and mom-and-pop organization (there were once 5,133 owners of U.S. radio stations), made it ripe for consolidation, which began in the mid-eighties and was mostly completed as soon as Congress removed virtually all ownership limits in 1996. A handful of companies now control nearly the entirety of U.S. radio, with Clear Channel and its more than 1,200 stations being the undisputed Death Star. (Clear Channel is also one of the nation's major live promoters, and uses its airtime leverage to force performers to use its concert services, as Britney Spears and others have charged.)
    Radio, heretofore ad hoc and eccentric and local, underwent a transformation in which it became formatted, rational, and centralized. Its single imperative was to keep people from moving the dial -- seamlessness became the science of radio.
    The music business suddenly had to start producing music according to very stringent (if unwritten) commercial guidelines (it could have objected or rebelled -- but it rolled over instead; what's more, in a complicated middleman strategy of music brokers and independent promoters, labels have, in effect, been forced to pay to have their boring music aired). Format became law. Everything had to sound the way it was supposed to sound. Fungibility was king. Familiarity was the greatest virtue.
    Once Sheryl Crow was an established hit, the music business was compelled to offer up an endless number of Sheryl Crow imitators. Then when the Sheryl Crow imitators became a reliable radio genre, Sheryl Crow was compelled to imitate them. (Entertainment Weekly, without irony, recently praised the new Moby album for sounding like his last.)
    But then, just as radio playlists become closely regulated, the Internet appears.
    "Suddenly there was another distribution avenue offering far greater product range," notes my friend Bob Thiele, who's been producing, writing, performing, and doing A&R work in L.A. for twenty years (and whose father was Buddy Holly's producer), and who, in my memory, never before talked about avenues of distribution. "And then, before anyone was quite aware of what was happening, file-sharing replaced radio as the engine of music culture."
    It wasn't just that it was free music -- radio offered free music. But whatever you wanted was free (whenever you wanted it). The Internet is music consumerism run amok, resulting not only in billions of dollars of lost sales but in an endless bifurcation of taste. The universe fragmented into sub-universes, and then sub-sub-universes. The music industry, which depends on large numbers of people with similar interests for its profit margins, now had to deal with an ever-growing numbers of fans with increasingly diverse and eccentric interests.
    It is hard to think of a more profound business crisis. You've lost control of the means of distribution, promotion, and manufacturing. You've lost quality control -- in some sense, there's been a quality-control coup. You've lost your basic business model -- what you sell has become as free as oxygen.
    It's a philosophical as well as a business crisis -- which compounds the problem, because the people who run the music business are not exactly philosophers.
    "They're thugs," says a former high-ranking music exec of my acquaintance, who is no shrinking violet himself.
    Such thuggishness, when the business was about courting difficult acts, enforcing contracts, procuring drugs, paying off everyone who needed to be paid off, may once have been a key management advantage. But it probably isn't the main virtue you're looking for when you're in a state of existential crisis. Being street-smart is not being smart.
    In a situation of such vast uncertainty, with the breakdown of all prior business and cultural assumptions, you don't necessarily want to have to depend upon, say, Tommy Mottola to create a new paradigm.
    For a long while, the management response at the major labels had a weird combination of denial and foot stamping: putting Napster out of business-then sort-of/sort-of-not buying Napster -- all the while being told by everybody who knows anything about technology that, no matter what the music industry does, or who it sues, music will be, inevitably, free. Duh. There is, too, a management critique -- perhaps most succinctly put by Don Henley in his now-famous post-Grammy letter wherein he quoted Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles: "Gentlemen, gentlemen! We've got to protect our phony baloney jobs!" -- that sees record labels as generally engaged in the usual practice of ripping off anyone who can be ripped off while remaining oblivious to the fact that Rome is burning.
    But for the most part, denial, and even the reflex to just keep squeezing the last dollar until there is nothing left to squeeze, is passing (labels have even recently awoken to the problems of dealing with the radio behemoths and are frantically, and way too late, trying to find reasons to sue the radio guys and gain back a little leverage).
    I had a very nice sushi lunch in the Sony dining room the other day where I heard about the generally gallows mood at Sony Music. The recent past was very bad; the future was likely to be worse. All money earned from here on in would be harder to earn. This felt like acceptance to me: We simply don't know what to do.
    The truth is, there might not be anything much to do.
    Here are the choices:
    If you're providing free entertainment, which is obviously what the music business is doing, then you have to figure out some way to sell advertising to the people who are paying attention to your free music. But nobody seems to have any idea how that might be done. Or you can provide stuff that's free, and use the free stuff to promote something else of more value that people, you hope, will buy -- now called the "legitimate alternative." (Putting video on the CD is one of those ideas -- though, of course, you can file-share video too.) Or sell the CD at a level that makes it cheap enough to compete with free (free, after all, has its own costs for the consumer).
    It's a spreadsheet solution. There will continue to be a market for selling music, however diminished -- but it will have to be cheaper music. Margins will shrink even more. Accordingly, costs will have to shrink. Spending a few million to launch an act will shortly be a thing of the past. (The formal catalyst of the beginning of the end of big development costs may be the Wall Street Journal's story a few months ago that precisely accounted for the $2.2 million launch costs of a singer named Carly Hennessy, who went on to sell 378 CDs.) A&R guys making half a million are also history (in the future, they'll start at $40,000 and max out at $150,000). And no more parties.
    And then there is the CD theory. This theory is widely accepted -- with great pride, in fact -- in the music industry. It represents the ultimate music-biz hustle. But its implications are seldom played out.
    The CD theory holds that the music business actually died about twenty years ago. It was revived without anyone knowing it had actually died because compact-disc technology came along and everybody had to replace what they'd bought for the twenty years prior to the advent of the CD.
    The music business, this theory acknowledges, is about selling technology as much as music. From mono to stereo to Walkman. It just happens that the next stage of technological development in the music business has largely excluded the music business itself.
    The further implication, though, might be the more interesting and painful one: You can't depend on just the music.
    Rock and roll is just an anomaly. While for a generation or two it created a go-go industry -- the youthquake -- it is unreasonable to expect that anything so transforming can remain a permanent condition. To a large degree, the music industry is, then, a fluke. A bubble. Finally the bubble burst.
    But not with a pop. It's an almost imperceptible, but highly meaningful, alteration in context. Alanis Morissette becomes Grace Paley. Bono becomes John Hersey. Fiona Apple is Joyce Carol Oates. Moby is Martin Amis.
    This is not so bad.
    And best of all, our children -- all right, our grandchildren -- won't want to become rock stars.

Ralph Nader urges NBA to review officiating

San Francisco Chronicle Staff Report
Wednesday, June 5, 2002

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader and the League of Fans, a sports-industry watchdog, sent a letter to NBA Commissioner David Stern on Tuesday urging a review of the officiating in the aftermath of the "notorious" refereeing in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals between the Kings and the Lakers in L.A.
    "At a time when the public's confidence is shaken by headlines reporting the breach of trust by corporate executives, it is important, during the public's relaxation time, for there to be maintained a sense of impartiality and professionalism in commercial sports performances," the letter said. "That sense was severely broken . . . during Game 6."
    The Lakers shot 27 free throws in the fourth quarter and scored 16 of their final 18 points at the foul line in a 106-102 victory. Lakers guard Kobe Bryant's elbow to Mike Bibby's nose that was not called a foul with less than 20 seconds left "prompted many fans to start wondering about what was motivating these officials," the letter said. "Unless the NBA orders a review of this game's officiating, perceptions and suspicions, however presently absent any evidence, will abound," the letter continued.
    "Your problem in addressing the pivotal Game 6 situation is that you have too much power. Where else can decision-makers (the referees) escape all responsibility to admit serious and egregious error and have their bosses (you) fine those wronged (the players and coaches) who dare to speak out critically? . . . A review that satisfies the fans' sense of fairness and deters future recurrences would be a salutary contribution to the public trust that the NBA badly needs."

Georges, swimming with assorted humans last month.

from CNN:

Amorous dolphin targeting swimmers
June 4, 2002 Posted: 8:04 AM EDT (1204 GMT)

WEYMOUTH, England -- Swimmers are being warned to stay away from a "sexually aggressive" dolphin that has made its home at a popular tourist resort on the English south coast.
    Georges the male bottlenose has become a tourist attraction since arriving in Weymouth harbour, Dorset, in April. Thousands of people have gone out in boats to watch him and swim with him.
    But the 10-year-old, 400 lbs (180 kg), dolphin became the cause for concern last month when his behaviour suddenly became erratic.
    He appeared to be trying to harm himself by swimming into boats' propellers and began showing an unhealthy interest in divers.
    Such was the concern that Ric O'Barry, who worked as a trainer on the U.S. TV show "Flipper," was called in to try to get Georges to swim out to sea.
    But attempts to lure Georges away from the busy harbour and return him to a secluded area near Cherbourg, France, where it is thought he originated, failed.
     Now experts have warned swimmers to avoid him, the Press Association reports.
    O'Barry, who works with the World Society for the Protection of Animals, said: "Georges's well-documented sexual aggression poses a real threat to the thousands of swimmers who will be descending on Weymouth over the summer."
    He told the London-based Times newspaper: "This dolphin does get very sexually aggressive. He has already attempted to mate with some divers.
    "When dolphins get sexually excited, they try to isolate a swimmer, normally female. They do this by circling around the individual and gradually move them away from the beach, boat or crowd of people."
    O'Barry said the dolphin would get very excited and rough before trying to mate with a swimmer, possibly causing them to drown.
    The WSPA wants to relocate Georges to France because it is illegal there for people to swim or dive with a dolphin and it would be possible for a French group of experts, the Cetacean study group, to continue monitoring him.

Wild About Wi-Fi
Rising from the grass roots, high-speed wireless Internet connections are springing up everywhere. Tune in, turn on, get e-mail. Sometimes for free.
By Steven Levy and Brad Stone
NEWSWEEK  (June 10 issue)
 

Pete Shipley’s dimly lit Berkeley home has all the earmarks of a geek lair: scattered viscera of discarded computer systems, exotic pieces of electronic-surveillance equipment and videos of the BBC sci-fi “Red Dwarf” show. But among the hacker community, Shipley, a 36-year-old freelance security consultant, is best known for his excursions outside the home—as a pioneer of “war driving.”
    BREATHE EASY: this isn’t a “Sum of All Fears” kind of thing. War driving involves roaming around a neighborhood looking for the increasingly numerous “hot spots” where high-speed Internet access is beamed to a small area by a low-power radio signal, thanks to a scheme called Wireless Fidelity. Imagine your computer as a walkie-talkie, but instead of talking, you’re getting high-speed Internet access. Wi-Fi, as it’s generally called (propellerheads call it 802.11b), has unexpectedly emerged as the wireless world’s Maltese Falcon, something truly lustworthy and, once possessed, impossible to let go of.
       Two million people use it now, a number expected to double by next year, according to Gartner, Inc. And International Data Corp. predicts that public hot spots will jump from a current 3,000 to more than 40,000 by 2006. Consumers use Wi-Fi to establish wireless networks in their homes; businesses adopt it to untether employees from desktops, and techno-nomads celebrate its presence in cafes (from Starbucks to Happy Donuts), airports and hotel lobbies. (Next on the docket: airplanes.) It seems that moving megabytes on the move is almost mystical, like an out-of-body experience. “Once you are untethered from a wall it becomes like candy; it’s a really insatiable appetite,” says Michael Chaplo, the CEO of one Wi-Fi start-up. “You just want it everywhere.” Like the early Internet, Wi-Fi is a jaw-dropping technology with unlimited promise. Also like the Internet, it opens up a rat’s nest of security woes.
       There’s nothing like a war drive to expose both sides of this cutting-edge sword. Shipley Velcroes two weird-looking antennae to a NEWSWEEK reporter’s car, and connects them to a Lucent wireless card plugged into a Fujitsu Tablet PC. He boots a program called Net Stumbler, which transforms the system into a sniffing machine, capable of detecting Wi-Fi networks with the reliability of a drug beagle, and we’re off. Almost instantly, the rig starts finding networks—16 of them within the first three blocks (last year Shipley was getting just two). Turning toward the campus, name after name of wireless setups scroll by, some set up by corporations, some by ... well, who knows? Cal Bears Network ... V Street Network ... Henry Household. About half of the more than 200 networks he finds are unprotected by encryption or access control, meaning that anyone passing by could potentially grab the data. Or a freeloader could plant himself in front of the network owner’s house and send out thousands of spam e-mails, leaving the owner to take the heat.
        This is not just a West Coast phenomenon: a war-driving security specialist in Omaha, Neb., recently found 59 hot spots, 37 of them unprotected. And on a war walk through New York’s Greenwich Village last week, NEWSWEEK found more than 50 hot spots in a quarter-hour. A disturbing security situation—in effect, it’s like opening a drive-in window to an otherwise firewall-protected network—but also an exhilarating opportunity. Without knowing exactly who was beaming out the broadband, it was possible to stand on a random street corner and grab sports scores and e-mail. The Internet was in the air.
        That’s only one irony in the Wi-Fi revolution: while most of the tech industry gripes about how hard it is to provide high-speed Internet access, seemingly out of nowhere a technology has emerged to do just that, at low cost or even for free. And without those nasty wires! The secret of Wi-Fi comes from its mongrel origins. Wireless technology is actually a kind of radio, and different devices run on different frequencies on the radio bandwidth. Some portions are hotly contested, and governments reserve their use for favored parties: in some cases, like cellular phones, firms pay billions to use portions of the spectrum. No one pays a penny for Wi-Fi, which springs from a semi-orphaned frequency range formerly known as the Industrial, Scientific and Medical Band, designated for humble appliances like cordless phones and microwave ovens. (It’s around 2.4 gigahertz, for those keeping score at home.) This junk spectrum is unlicensed, meaning that as long as you keep the power low, no one limits your activity. This freedom appealed to computer people, who see it as an open invitation to innovate and experiment. As a result, cool things keep happening with Wi-Fi.
       A lot of this still goes on among the geek set. For instance, Rob Flickenger, author of “Building Wireless Community Networks,” has gained renown for designing a long-range $6.45 Wi-Fi antenna housed in a Pringles potato-chip can. (It’s been recently outperformed by an antenna made out of a Big Chunk beef-stew can.)
       But even as the wireheads build their toys, serious companies sense big money. Things really began to take off three years ago when Apple adopted Wi-Fi for its home-networking AirPort device. Simply plug your Internet cable into the flying-saucer-shaped gizmo, and your Macs (if equipped with a $99 wireless card) instantly become wireless Net machines. Last year Microsoft rolled out its new Windows XP operating system with built-in Wi-Fi support: every time an XP user with a wireless card gets within sniffing range of a network, a little dialogue box pops up and asks if he or she wants to hook up. And this year IBM began shipping ThinkPad computers with Wi-Fi built in.
    Dozens of start-up companies hope to ride the Wi-Fi wave. Boingo wants to be at the center of a sprawling Wi-Fi archipelago. It offers customers service at hundreds—one day maybe millions, dreams CEO Sky Dayton (who earlier founded Earthlink)—of hot spots signed on to the Boingo system. In return, Boingo handles the billing and kicks back part of the user fees. A company called Joltage provides software to turn hot spots into instant mini-Internet service providers. Other firms are working to go beyond hot spots to larger “hot zones,” like WiFi Metro, which has placed antennas in Palo Alto and San Jose, Calif., to blanket six-block areas in a single network. Going a step further are companies attempting “mesh networks” to create hot regions. For instance, a company called SkyPilot wants to Wi-Fi the suburbs by hopscotching bandwidth from computer to computer: sort of a Napster approach to connectivity.
        While entrepreneurs envision hot spots in their bank accounts, some people are organizing on the principle that connectivity in the air should be as free as the breeze. In more than 50 cities and towns, community-based network groups are setting up regions where people are encouraged to partake of free wireless Internet. NYC Wireless has more than 60 “guerrilla installations,” including Tompkins Square Park in the East Village. In Pittsburgh, you can Web-surf for free in Mellon and Market Squares.
         Traditional broadband providers cry foul when users take their cable modem or DSL connections and beam them to friends, family and passsers-by through Wi-Fi networks. “It constitutes a theft of service per our user agreement,” says AT&T Broadband’s Sarah Eder. But at least one very important observer doesn’t buy that. “I don’t think it’s stealing by any definition of law at the moment,” says FCC chairman Michael Powell. “The truth is, it’s an unintended use.”
       Wi-Fi’s success has already made some telecom companies like Nokia and Nextel realize that their future lies in complementing, not competing, with Wi-Fi. The new vision involves a hybrid scheme where people would do heavy-duty computing in low-cost, high-activity Wi-Fi hot zones, and then, when they drove out to the desert, or visited North Dakota, they’d stay connected, using a more costly (licensed bandwidth) 3G-cellular network. Performing this trick without fiddling with the computer—a so-called vertical handoff—is “the holy grail,” says AT&T researcher Paul Henry. “It would mean that wherever you were, the Internet would be there, too.”
       This would require superior security software. But it will take some effort from users. The current form of protection, an encryption code called WEP, is far from perfect, but a lot of people don’t even bother to turn it on. Nonetheless, experts assume that, like the Internet, Wi-Fi will manage to increase—if not perfect—its security so that problems won’t stunt its growth.
        No matter who provides the signal, the Wi-Fi revolution is now moving to a fascinating stage, where the medium affects behavior. Putting wireless nets in businesses has affected culture in places like Microsoft and IBM, where people trundle into meetings with laptops, pull up relevant information on the spot—and surf the Net if they’re bored. An in-house video at Cisco Systems tells the tale of an engineer who discovered a toilet-paper shortage in the men’s room—and was able to order more online while maintaining his position.
       And when the Internet is ultimately everywhere, imagine the effects on journalism when, as tech columnist Dan Gillmor has speculated, hundreds of witnesses to a local disaster have the ability to capture and send out instant digital photos and videos.
       All that from junk spectrum? Hard to believe. But not too long ago surfing the Internet seemed as weird as, well, war driving.

(above) This past unday, Emmanuel Church, Greater of Manchester, England,
opened its doors to worshippers and World Cup fans.

Magic of the Cup
Muti, marabouts, and witch doctors - all bad for game's image

Sunday February 10, 2002
The Observer

A semi-final that featured three shots hitting the woodwork, three red cards, a missed penalty, three goals and several on-field punch-ups would normally have made all the headlines, but not last Thursday.
    All the above happened in the first semi-final of the African Cup of Nations, when Senegal surprised Nigeria by winning 2-1 in Bamako's Stade Modibo Keita, but the game was utterly overshadowed by events before kick-off a few miles across town at the Stade du Mars 26, where Cameroon were preparing to take on the host nation, Mali, in the second semi-final.
    As Alassane Diao was scuffing the winner seven minutes into extra-time for the Lions of Senegal, the Cameroon coach, Winfried Schafer, and his assistant, Thomas Nkono, found themselves being arrested by Malian police, ostensibly for trying to place a magic charm on the pitch before the game.
    For the Confederation of African Football, for whom this tournament is their global showpiece, the incident could hardly have been more embarrassing. Schafer - banned from the bench today for abusing a match commissioner - diplomatically played down the incident, but CAF are desperate to throw off the Third World image that they believe was a major factor in the decision not to award South Africa the 2006 World Cup.
    'We are no more willing to see witch doctors on the pitch than cannibals at the concession stands,' a CAF spokesman said. 'Image is everything.' But belief in traditional religions still exists, nowhere more so than in Senegal, where many attribute the rapid rise of French coach Bruno Metsu's side as much to the work of marabouts - the heads of local Islamic brotherhoods who effectively act as intermediaries between believers and Allah - as to their coach's tactical nous.
    Two years ago in the Nations Cup quarter-final in Lagos, Senegal, having taken an early lead, looked to be holding on when, 15 minutes from time, a former official of the Nigerian FA raced on to the pitch and seized a 'charm' that had been lying in the back of the Senegal net. Senegal protested, but to no avail, and Nigeria went on to score twice and win. The official was subsequently banned, but his action was seen as hugely significant in Nigeria's progress. This time around, Senegalese journalists insist they saw a marabout smearing goalkeeper Tony Sylva's post with an ointment ahead of the Lions' 1-0 victory over Zambia in the group stages. Sylva went 448 minutes without conceding a goal.
    Freddie Saddam is widely recognised as being South Africa's most loyal fan and his trip to Mali was financed by the South African FA. 'I didn't used to think anything of muti [fetishism],' he says, 'but now I know it to be true.' He is in no doubt that the dearth of goals in Mali - 47 in 30 games before yesterday's third-place play-off - is down to the influence of the witch doctors. 'It is not normal,' he says. 'If you are a goalkeeper, maybe you put an elephant tooth in your boot to make you big and strong. How do you score past a man who is like an elephant?'
    Elephant teeth are readily available at the fetish market just south of the Stade Modibo Keita, a bargain at 2000CFA a pop (£2). A monkey's head costs 2,500CFA, a cayman's head 7,500 and porcupine quills 5,000 a bundle. Last August African Soccer magazine ran a 10-page investigation into witchcraft in football, detailing animal sacrifices, self-mutilation, casting of spells, lucky charms, odious concoctions and a one-hour delay at an international match while teams argued about who would be first to step on to the pitch.
    One South African player recalls: 'There was a time when things weren't going well for our team [one of the biggest in the country] and a director put us all on a bus out into the bush. They cut the top off this big termite mound, dug all the earth from inside and poured this muti mixture in. We all had to bathe naked in it and walk back to the bus without walking backwards at any time.' Results improved. Mamadou, the fetishism store-owner in Bamako, is unsure about what each item does, though he insists 'many, many footballers' go to his store.
    'I am just the pharmacist, not the doctor,' he says. Adama Dore, though, is an expert. He is a magic-man from a village just outside Bamako, who deals with 30-40 customers a week. His son, Aboubaka, is a promising youth player for French side FC Paris - a rise, Dore insists, that has been much aided by his magic.
    Dore also claims that France's World Cup victory four years ago, far from resulting from the defensive pairing of Marcel Desailly and Laurent Blanc, the skills of Zinedine Zidane or the pace of Thierry Henry, was largely down to the spells of Aguib Sosso, a Malian witch-doctor who died two years ago. Dore and Saddam both feel it is unfair that the CAF should have decided to ban the muti-men. 'Will they ban Catholic players crossing themselves?' Saddam asks, spittle flying from the wide gap between his front teeth. 'Will they shut the chapel at Barcelona? If you believe, muti makes you stronger.'
    The editor of African Soccer, Emmanuel Maradas, says football only reflects the society in which it exists. But it is embarrassing for the image of the game in Africa, he believes, that so much time and money is devoted to witchcraft.
    Whatever they believe in, mental strength is something Senegal have in abundance, as they proved in the semi-final when they put behind them the first-half dismissal of Birahim Sarr to overcome Nigeria. El-Hadji Diouf, twisting, turning and full of tricks, is their undoubted star, but he is aware of just how important the team ethic is.
    'I know that everyone in Senegal says El-Hadji Diouf is the star of Senegalese football, but I don't agree, because the real star is the group and the solidarity within the group,' says the Lens striker. That sense of unity, born of the fact that nearly the entire squad are based in France, has been carefully nurtured by Metsu, whose laissez-faire approach to discipline has had its critics, but has, thus far, undeniably worked. His counterpart this afternoon could hardly be more different.
    Schafer knows he was appointed largely to be as stereotypically German as he could be. 'I have never doubted the individual ability of my players, but when I took over they lacked self-belief, tactical discipline and organisation,' he explained. They have those qualities now. Cameroon in Mali have been dull, muscular and brutally efficient. They are yet to concede a goal in the tournament, are top-scorers with nine, and appear to be peaking at the right time - if a little too reliant on the dead-ball skills and assists of Real Madrid's Geremi. Even without the injured Patrick Mboma, the Cup's joint top scorer with three goals, they turned in their best performance in the competition in the semi-final. Mboma is fit again today.
    Should Cameroon repeat their triumph of two years ago they will become the first side since Ghana in 1965 to retain the African Nations, a hiatus Schafer sees as a challenge rather than a burden. 'Cameroon have never before done well as defending champions,' he said. 'They have never done well in a World Cup year: this is simply another hurdle to overcome.' Dore, though, is backing Senegal. 'I have seen that a West African side will win,' he says.
    Schafer overcame the riot police; it remains to be seen whether German single-mindedness can overcome Dore's metaphysics.

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