SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGIES
Military puts MySpace, other sites off limits:
Lt. Daniel Zimmerman, an infantry platoon leader in Iraq, puts a blog on the Internet every now and then "to basically keep my friends and family up to date" back home. It just got tougher to do that for Zimmerman and a lot of other U.S. soldiers.

No more using the military's computer system to socialize and trade videos on MySpace, YouTube and nine other Web sites, the Pentagon says. Citing security concerns and technological limits, the Pentagon has cut off access to those sites for personnel using the Defense Department's computer network.

The change limits use of the popular outlets for service members on the front lines, who regularly post videos and journals. "I put my blog on there and my family reads it," said Zimmerman, 29, a platoon leader with B Company, 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment. "It scares the crap out of them sometimes," he said.

"I keep it as vague as possible," he said. "I'm pretty responsible about it. It's just basically to tell a little bit about my life over here" he said. He's regularly at a base where he doesn't have Defense Department access to the Internet, but he has used it when he goes to bigger bases. He'll have to rely on a private account all the time now.

Memos about the change went out in February, and it took effect last week. It does not affect the Internet cafes that soldiers in Iraq use that are not connected to the Defense Department's network. The cafe sites are run by a private vendor, FUBI

Also, the ban also does not affect other sites, such as Yahoo, and does not prevent soldiers from sending messages and photos to their families by e-mail.

Internet use has become a troublesome issue for the military as it struggles to balance security concerns with privacy rights. As blogs and video-sharing become more common, the military has voiced increasing concern about service members revealing details about military operations or other information about equipment or procedures that will aid the enemy.

At the same time, service members have used the Web sites to chronicle their time in battle, posting videos and writing journals that provide a powerful, personal glimpse into their days at war. "These actions were taken to enhance and increase network security and protect the use of the bandwidth," said Col. Gary Keck, a Pentagon spokesman.

The Pentagon said that use of the video sites in particular was putting a strain on the network, and also opening it to potential viruses or penetration by so-called "phishing" attacks in which scam artists try to steal sensitive data by mimicking legitimate Web sites.

"The U.S. Army's not going to pay the bill for you to get on MySpace and YouTube," said Maj. Bruce Mumford, of Chester, Nebraska, who is serving as the brigade communications officer for the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, in Iraq. Soldiers need to know what they can and cannot do, but we shouldn't be facilitating it."

Warnings of the shutdown went out in February, and allowed troops to seek waivers if the sites were necessary for their jobs. Often insurgent groups post videos, including ones of attacks or -- in some high profile cases -- of U.S. or coalition soldiers who have been captured or killed.

"I guess it's a good general policy," Zimmerman said about the ban on MySpace and YouTube." If people could be trusted not to break operational security, then they wouldn't need to have the policy."

If the restrictions are intended to prevent soldiers from giving or receiving bad news, they could also prevent them from providing positive reports from the field, said Noah Shachtman, who runs a national security blog for Wired Magazine.

"This is as much an information war as it is bombs and bullets," he said. "And they are muzzling their best voices."

The sites covered by the ban are the video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos and FileCabi; social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5; music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and live365, and the photo-sharing site Photobucket.

Geek Squad picks unlikely place for PC-hospital:
HILLVIEW, Kentucky - The top U.S. electronics retailer didn't pick Silicon Valley, India or another high-tech hub to build its hospital for personal computers. It chose the Kentucky countryside, known more for race horses and bourbon distilleries than geeks and microprocessors.

Geek Squad, the quirky PC service division of Best Buy Co., opened its 165,000-square-foot Geek Squad City warehouse just south of Louisville late last year with a goal of cutting the time it takes to repair and return PCs especially laptops. "This is all about giving the customer a better experience," said Michael Rodgers, Geek Squad City's "ambassador," or spokesman.

Computers with broken motherboards, hard drives with death rattles and virus infections begin streaming into the warehouse at 5 a.m. from a nearby UPS air hub in Louisville, one of the key reasons that the business was built here, said Wes Snyder, Geek Squad City's top manager, or "mayor." Snyder said the nearby city offered a tech-savvy work force. The state also offered tax benefits worth up to $9.3 million.

Inside the facility's sprawling repair room, PC parts and precision tools are spread over the rows and rows of desks where hundreds of computer techs -- Geek Squad's "agents" fix more than 2,000 laptops a day. More than 700,000 PCs will be repaired here this year, Rodgers said.

Laptops are the majority of personal computers sold nowadays, and the smaller and more advanced they get, the more complicated the repairs. The portable PCs also endure more abuse than their larger desktop cousins, getting dinged, dropped and splashed with coffee.

"They're getting down to where you need watchmaker tools and very special expertise. It's not just swapping out a disk drive anymore," said Richard Doherty, president of The Envisioneering Group, a research company. About half the laptops are repaired on the same day they arrive at Geek Squad City, but the average time is about three days, Rodgers said.

Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group research company, said the turnaround time is faster than any other computer retailer. "From a store perspective, I'm not aware of anyone else doing this," he said. Original or direct manufacturers, like Dell, can typically repair and return a PC in about that time, Enderle added.

Circuit City Stores Inc., Best Buy's main competitor in the electronics retail market, launched its own PC repair service, called Firedog, in October. It offers in-home and in-store service, similar to Geek Squad. Circuit City declined to comment on Geek Squad City.

"Oftentimes what an industry leader like a Best Buy does is force others people to kind of follow," said Samir Bhavnani, a research director with Current Analysis.

Most of the thousands of computers sent to Geek Squad City could not be fixed by employees at Best Buy locations, typically because the store didn't have the proper parts. Best Buy is considering shipping additional parts to the stores, but for now the computers go to the Kentucky warehouse, Rodgers said.

Swift repair time is crucial in an industry with customers who don't want to be away from their private files. "Laptops are very personal and people don't like a personal element of their life to be out of their reach for two or three or 10 days," Doherty said.

Some smaller, independent tech support companies forego shipping computers and have instead built their business around online troubleshooting services. HiWired.com, a small Massachusetts company, repairs computers with a remote screen-sharing technology, said Singu Srinivas, its co-founder. A typical service call costs from $75 to $100, he said.

"What we've found is 93 percent of problems can be actually solved remotely," Srinivas said, "because most of the problems people have these days are less, 'My key is stuck on my keyboard,' but more about, 'I saw a new piece of software on the Internet, and my PC was working fine before that, but now it's running sluggish."'

Srinivas said consumer computer service and repair is a $15 billion a year industry and growing. Geek Squad's pseudo-serious image -- high-tech culture with a dab of intrigue straight out of a 1950s spy novel is embraced by Geek Squad City's 600 employees, who carry titles like "counter intelligence agent" and "commissioner."

Founded in 1994 in Minnesota by Robert Stephens, the company began with house calls to customers with computer woes. Stephens sold it to Best Buy in 2002. Best Buy offers Geek Squad service packages that range from $29 to $299. They also fix computers not bought at its stores.

There are no customer walk-ins here, but employees still don the standard issue black-tie and pants with white, short-sleeved dress shirts. About 350 of the facility's workers are "agents" or computer technicians, most from nearby Louisville. Rodgers said the facility is already planning to hire another 350 workers.

Though it's been open since October, management is constantly streamlining methods. "I've never found a problem that somebody here couldn't fix," said Justin Meade, a 21-year-old who works at Geek Squad City. "We kind of relish in that."