At age 22, Patricia West already has her small-business model fully launched. She's done her market research, knows how to advertise online and has a competitive rate structure. There's just one problem: She works in the world's oldest profession, which is illegal.

Sure, it's way more boring to frame escorting just like any other work-from-home freelance gig, but it's increasingly the case. It's a great strategy, PR-wise. Everyone gets worked up over the idea of sassy streetwalkers arguing over who owns which corner. But really, how could San Francisco voters get seriously up in arms over prostitutes clocking overtime hunched over their laptops at Ritual Roasters, answering email?

(Photo by St. James Infirmary)

• Childs is said to have access to email, 311 service, and law-enforcement applications. He only had the power to block network access to these apps, not to log into them.
• Childs had a list of 150 VPN groupnames and passwords. These were part of his job, not something he'd stolen. Ironically, these passwords were entered into court documents, making them publicly-accessible information.
• When Childs was arrested, he had documentation of the city network, including configurations, maps, and diagrams of the FiberWAN and possibly other networks in his possession. Again, knowing this info is part of his job.
• He had configured some number of routers to disable password recovery, but did not write the device configurations to flash memory on some number of routers. This would cause them to fail if power-cycled. City officials claim this was a "booby trap" designed to disable their data center at One Market Street during a forthcoming planned power outage. I think they're giving him too much credit for plan-within-plan cleverness here. Disabling password recovery is a standard security procedure for routers. More likely Childs just forgot to save to flash.

You can read a longer, wonkier takedown of the city's claims at IT World.

The most damning charge, technically speaking, is that Childs had several modems hooked up to computers in his workspace. It appears that he used these modems to access the network remotely without leaving an audit trail back to himself.

What an amateur.

The Childs case backs up a point I've been making to clients for years. City officials have admitted — in public! — that "not only was Childs the only admin, he was always on call, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. As the only admin with the knowledge and access to the FiberWAN, he had no help. During the past few years, the DTIS staff has been significantly reduced due to budget cuts, keeping the city dependent on a sole admin for its core network."

Overwork your techs and bad stuff will happen. Maybe Childs is happy to be in jail. He can get some sleep there.

(Photo by Robert McMillan)

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom may be known nationally as the patron saint of gay marriage, but back home, Newsom has built his career on things like buying fleets of hybrid vehicles and installing windmills near the Golden Gate Bridge.

Small problem — as Curbed SF points out, Newsom has never built a windmill or anything else energy-related anywhere near the Golden Gate Bridge. Not that such considerations would quell admiration from right-coast hacks looking to promote handsome, young politicians for the benefit of the party machine.

If you live in New York, you might think San Francisco's Gavin "Gavvy-gav" Newsom is some sort of John Lindsay-handsome but Michael Bloomberg-effective miraculous wonder. He married the gays! And instituted universal healthcare! And tans his hot bod with solar panels! It's okay, we understand — you guys have never had as firm a grasp on left-coast reality as you thought you did. In truth, Newsom's administration has failed on such basic points as violent crime, public transportation, and affordable housing.

While local New Yorker correspondent Tad Friend chewed on Newsom's presentation hook, line and sinker, even he can't be entirely blamed. The regional press corps has been filled with unapologetic boosters since the gold rush days. With Nancy Pelosi, our local political machine's grand inquisitor, running the House of Representatives, it's only natural that we press a lanky golden-boy type upon you poor suckers statewide. For my sake and yours, however, don't believe the hype.

Gavvy-gav was, and is, a ditzy jock who just happened to be related to somone endeared to the Getty oil fortune. As a perennial ringer for upwardly mobile softball teams otherwise stacked with the obliged noblesse, he rose quickly from above the muddied ranks of local activists and condo association street fighters. Picking topics which cost him little political capital locally while presenting them as daring moves nationally, Newsom has cemented the perception of his position firmly between the socially center-left and economically center-right.

Which, honestly, is about the perfect balance for the pot-smoking, free-market and gay-loving populace which forms his constituency. Still, it's no frame to hang an Obama-level cult of personality on. Newsom's feather-light shoulders and uncannily cheery countenance really can't take the weight of serious responsibility. Take pity, east coasters, and please don't bother to burden him with it.

(Photo by Franco Folini)

Yes, that Steven Brill — the one who founded CourtTV, Brill's Content and dotbomb casualty Contentville. VIP largely arose from Brill's contention that a private company institute a national ID program in his Newsweek column, where according to Slate:

Brill had the keen insight that it would take an outsider to make the security pass happen. He had no faith that the government could pull off something like it.

Now the Trasportation Security Administration has grounded Clear from signing up new customers until more robust data encryption is put into place. (Photo by Getty/David Paul Morris)

Allison's sort-of ex, Digg cofounder Kevin Rose, said he was buying Google. Surely not for Knol, Google's weak attempt at taking on Wikipedia — at launch, its search engine didn't even work. Jackson, come back and help us make sense of this crazy business! (Photo by Jason Calacanis)

Infoworld has an insider report on the tech side of the story from another San Francisco IT staffer. The Chronicle report by Matier & Ross is more people-oriented:

A team of code crackers brought in from Cisco Systems had been working around the clock to try to decipher Childs' codes, but with only marginal success.

"It wasn't cheap and I just couldn't see us keep spending that kind of money," Newsom said.

Then, out of the blue, Childs' lawyer, Erin Crane, called the mayor's office Monday afternoon, offering a jailhouse meeting.

Childs, according to the lawyer, was ready to give up the codes - but only to the mayor, who had gone out of his way in his public comments not to portray Childs as some sort of monster.

Newsom didn't hesitate. Without asking the city attorney for an opinion or giving a heads up to police or the district attorney, he was at the Hall of Justice in half an hour.

With Crane by his side, Childs told Newsom about the computer system he'd set up and how all the current problems sprang from a series of misunderstandings.

Crane didn't let him go on for too long, and Childs got to the business at hand, asking for a pen.

He then wrote out a very long computer code.

"This better be right," Newsom said.

"It is," Childs assured him, but asked the mayor to deliver it in person to the Cisco specialists — not to the city's computer brass.

Newsom took the code to the city computer center and gave it to a Cisco techie, who found that it didn't work — prompting a call-back to Crane.

"He said you would be calling and you would be upset," the lawyer said. "He forgot to give you the protocols to go along with the code" — and she read the accompanying computer prompters to the mayor over the phone.

By Tuesday morning, the system was back in the hands of the city.

(Photo by AP/Eric Risburg)

Here we go again. New graffiti on the sidewalk at 18th and Dolores claims nothing short of "Mission Exploitation" by Google employees. A decade ago, the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project posted flyers urging Valencia Street's self-styled "artists" to vandalize luxury cars. Some did. In 2008, most Web 2.0 workers aren't rich enough to draw the righteous anger of their slightly-less-privileged neighbors. Except for Googlers who dare move into the city's youth-culture ghetto between Cesar Chavez and Market.

The company's unparalleled success sparks rage in the hearts of permalosers who never, ever want to look at anyone whose career is doing better. Somewhere under the sheer jealousy is a legit issue: San Francisco was once a low-rent haven for hippies and a sanctuary for political refugees from all over the world. Dotcom money and disingenuous "live/work" lofts — I signed a contract declaring I was an "artist" to move into one in 2003, enabling the loft's developer to collect $2,700 a month without paying local school taxes — helped drive SF's cost of living higher than much of New York.

But the antiyuppies aren't playing straight, either. Progressive economist Paul Krugman has cited rent control as a major contributor to San Francisco's housing shortage. No one ever quotes him on that. Instead, if Google keeps growing, expect a resurgence in white-on-white carbashings and hatemongering handbills. O cool, grey city of love! (Photo from San Francisco Wiki)

A tipster snapped this late-night shot of Apple's Union Square store being overhauled. You — yes, you waiting in line with your old iPhone — send us photos of the results when the store opens at 10, willya? Separately, we've been told that Apple Store employees at the San Francisco flagship cut off would-be buyers who arrived after 5:30 p.m. Shoppers timed the morning line at 2.5 hours yesterday. That's even more time than I spend watching my BlackBerry reboot.

The most shocking sight at yesterday's SF Pride parade wasn't the contingent of marching Googlers. It wasn't the Yahoo booth handing out temporary tattoos. It was the total absence of other tech companies, small or large, from what should have been a cheap and easy opportunity to build brand goodwill among the estimated one million attendees. Hello, Microsoft? Valleywag reporter Melissa Gira Grant helped build Float 183 for two nonprofit sponsors.

One hurdle is the huge price difference between fees charged to nonprofit corporations versus their openly for-profit counterparts — making money is the last taboo in this town. I haven't been able to get the numbers, but if the only company floats are from the likes of Clear Channel and Macy's, there's clearly room to make the event more affordable for startups. Come on, Web 2.0 marketers, negotiate something for next year. Also, be sure to put your logo up there as high and big as possible, so we needn't stand on tippytoes to see it.

If you don't live in San Francisco, here's the wrapup: 2008's gay-and-everything-else pride parade was nothing like The Onion's parody. As Americans have become more tolerant, SF Pride has backed off from the giant-penis aesthetic meant to "freak the breeders" or whatever. It's now tame enough that Yahoo's "Purple with Pride" slogan was one of the few dirty double entendres among blocks and blocks of sweater-bear family values statements.

The most conspicuously outsized demographic marching yesterday? Christians. Lots of 'em. Specifically, Christians willing to skip over Paul's admonishment against the Gays (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) in favor of a quote from the Big Guy himself: "Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." RTFM, people.

(Photo by Melissa Gira Grant)

Philadelphia was a particularly interesting choice because it's the corporate home of Comcast. Here in San Francisco, the plan to build a citywide wireless network was initially opposed by the telco giant, along with AT&T, as the two companies feared it threatened their duopoly. Turned out they had little to be afraid of — between Comcast's influence in City Hall and villainously-coiffed God-mayor Gavin Newsom's inability to understand the political process beyond publicity, the combined powers of Google and Earthlink couldn't get anything done (and publicly mocking political opposition certainly didn't help).

Wi-Fi is simply bad technology for large-scale wireless connectivity. The microwave spectrum the technology uses can't cover large distances omni-directionally, and everything from humidity to trees interrupt the signal. And those problems are compounded by the difficulty in building a network infrastructure to feed all those access points with enough bandwidth to satsify thousands of users at any given time. Again, expanding fiber optic networks makes much more sense, because a bunch of wireless routers in a mesh network does you no good unless they can actually connect to an Internet backbone at dozens if not hundreds of points.

Having lived in the Bay Area since the turn of the century, I've actually noticed a decrease in Wi-Fi availability, mostly thanks to individuals who've started to lock down their access points and businesses that have tired of freeloaders. By the time Philadelphia and San Francisco were busy trying to build out citywide systems, the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard was already getting old, while cell network provides were introducing 3G data connections. Politics doomed such projects from the start, and now obsolescence will finish them.

What was once the technological pride of Phildelphia is now a failed dream on its last legs. Meanwhile, I can't get a fiber optic connection if I wanted one (and I do, desperately). Had we been listening to San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano instead of mayor Newsom years ago, maybe San Franciscans would be getting the true broadband speeds countries in Asia and Europe enjoy. (Photo by Bob Jagendorf)

(Photo by Kevin Krejci)

Testing is still underway to identify the specific virus in question, but they believe it to be the Norovirus, a common cause of the "stomach flu", which can cause temporary flu-like symptoms for up to 48 hours.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) was notified on Wednesday May 7, 2008, of several persons that became ill after attending or working at conferences at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from April 30, 2008 through May 8, 2008. The SFDPH is working with the organizers of the meeting facilities to make cleaning recommendations and to confirm the cause of the illnesses. The ill attendees/workers are suspected to have a viral illness called Norovirus. Noroviruses are a common cause of the "stomach flu," or gastroenteritis (GAS-tro-en-ter-I-tis).

What are the symptoms of illness caused by Noroviruses?
The symptoms of norovirus illness include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and some stomach cramping. Sometimes people also have a low-grade fever, chills, headache, muscle aches, and a general sense of tiredness. The illness often begins suddenly and the infected person may feel very sick. The illness is usually brief, with symptoms lasting only about 1 or 2 days.

Are Noroviruses contagious?
Noroviruses are very contagious and can spread easily from person to person. Noroviruses are found in the stool or vomit of infected people. People can become infected with the virus in several ways, including:

• Eating food or drinking liquids that are contaminated with Norovirus;
• Touching surfaces or objects contaminated with Norovirus, and then placing their hand in their mouth;
• Having direct contact with another person who is infected and showing symptoms (for example, when caring for someone with illness, or sharing foods or eating utensils with someone who is ill).
• Persons suspected of being ill with Norovirus should abstain from attending or working at any Moscone Center conferences until 48 hours after symptoms have resolved.

How can Norovirus infections be prevented?

• Frequently wash your hands, especially after using the toilet and before eating or preparing food.


• Carefully wash fruits and vegetables, and steam oysters before eating them.


• Thoroughly clean and disinfect contaminated surfaces immediately after an episode of illness by using a bleach-based household cleaner.


• Immediately remove and wash clothing or linens that may be contaminated with virus after an episode of illness (use hot water and soap).


• Flush or discard any vomit and/or stool in the toilet and make sure that the surrounding area is kept clean.


• Persons who are infected with Norovirus should not prepare food while they have symptoms and for 3 days after they recover from their illness.

Information on more Frequently Asked Questions on Norovirus can be viewed on the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) website at http://www.sfcdcp.org/norovirus.cfm

The days where I had a little dollop of gel are gone. I'm using quarter of a bottle at a time and I'm not proud of it. And I know that I need help!

The address has been a staple of local high society since at least 1922. It also pops up The Other Side: An Account of My Experiences with Psychic Phenomena, by James A. Pike — leading some credence to suggestions that the location may be cursed.

For instance, the place was owned and occupied by local shipping magnate John Traina and romance novelist wife Danielle Steele. But until 1981, Traina lived there with wife Diane "Dede" Traina — until, in a much-publicized series of divorces and weddings, Ms. Traina ended up with dairy magnate Al Wilsey and Mr. Traina ended up with Steel — leaving Wilsey's wife Pat Montandon in the lurch. Much of this was eventually recounted in Sean Wilsey's memoir Oh for the Glory of It All.

In 1989 the Traina-Steels put the house on the market for $5.5 million, and Hayden purchased the place in 1990. In the ensuing decade, Hayden managed to bury himself in up $38 million in debt tied to worthless Critical Path stock loaned by personal bankers and investment managers Robertson Stephens. By 2002 Hayden was accusing the bank of mismanaging his assets as the company moved to foreclose on the property while itself being put up for sale. Nonpayment of rent and taxes has since become a pattern of Hayden's.

I'm not sure which would be the more ill-starred investment — buying the possibly haunted house or investing in Hayden's latest venture, a resort community for the ultra-rich.

• Pick a popular, if quixotic, issue: Everybody loves renewable energy, and everyone hates global warming. A few solar panels will do little to change anything except the Hair Apparent's chances for statewide office.
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• Run it through a minion with political ambition: Even though city assessor and Gavster appointee Phil Ting's job doesn't include proposing environmental spending legislation, its his proposal. If it works out, he's got something to sell voters in a run for mayor, and if not, he takes the fall.
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• Suggest that it will help hardworking people: Never mind that this amounts to grants to people who own property in one of the most valuable real-estate markets in the country. These are, in the Newsomverse, homeowners and small businesspeople struggling to make ends meet.
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• Fast-track it to skirt public review: The time to find solutions to global warming is now, not after careful research, competitive bidding and public comment. If anyone questions the process, suggest that they aren't "creative" or "visionary."
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• When all else fails, blame your failure on democracy: Sure, our duly elected public officials are politicians, and therefore should expect politics to be part of the program. So when the Board of Supervisors delay your plan because it has no provisions for funding, don't take responsibility, blame them for petty political opportunism.

(Photo by Kevin Krejci)

• Sugarlump: At 24th and Bryant, it's not on the fancy side of Mission, but it's packed with thrifted mid-century design furniture and has lots of available seating and power outlets. Plus, the Taqueria San Francisco burritos are better than those at yuppified Papalote, and the Tortas Picayudos are to die for.
• Caffe Roma: This North Beach locale is a haven for local politicos. Just this morning hunky god-mayor Gavin Newsom dropped by to put his hair on a morning segment with local gossip columnist Phil Matier. Couldn't care less about the likes of Newsom, former state assembly candidate Joe Alioto Veronese or supervisor Aaron Peskin? Then come hang out with Valleywag — we're regulars, too.
• Blue Bottle Cafe: Located near SoMa and the Financial District, it's arguably the best coffee in The City. There's no free Wi-Fi inside, and the limited seating and noisy space aren't optimal for working. But there is Wi-Fi in Mint Plaza, along with plentiful outdoor seating for blogging al fresco. Though the Times Dining & Wine section may have ruined it already.
• Piccino: This small corner cafe in the Dogpatch off Muni's T-Third Street line also serves Blue Bottle, and will also prepare it in individual drip portions. Plus they have good food and outdoor seating. A favorite amongst the vaguely employed contractors at the Hat Factory, another trend the Times is behind.

Have suggestions for the reporters at the Times technology section? Leave 'em in the comments. (Photo by Bill S)

The secret? Piggybacking on the existing, municipally owned fiber-optic infrastructure and connecting to the Internet backbone through the Internet Archive's switches. Yes, the same municipal infrastructure that Google openly mocked last April. Three cheers for actual altruism, and not profit-seeking self-interest marketed as altruism! (Photo by AP/Ben Margot)

"I want to make sure it works in San Francisco, and once we improve it here, try to make a strong argument across the state." Newsom is discussing cap-and-trade pollution policies, but sure sounds like he's simultaneously making a case for statewide office.

In the summer of 1968, running for reelection, I attended the endorsement evening sponsored by an early gay group called Society for Individual Rights. Identify yourself as a gay person back then and you could lose your job. Teachers, police officers, firefighters, nurses, lawyers who were gay couldn't afford to join groups like SIR. But I wanted endorsements and believed in people being able to live unhindered lives.

Every candidate closed by saying, "And I will vote to enact the model penal code" — a sweeping revision of California's general penal code. Each time, the place would go ripshit crazy with applause. One of its modifications would remove criminal penalties for certain sex acts like oral copulation or anal intercourse between consenting adults. But the model penal code would involve more than 400 changes to California law. No bill that contained 400 changes was going to pass. So the pols who were up there promising weren't telling the whole truth, and they weren't really intent on solving the problem. When I rose to speak, I said, "You are interested in one section of the code only. Why don't we just move to eliminate the criminal penalties for sex acts between consenting adults?" The place really went crazy.

When decriminalization finally became law eight years later, it wasn't because there was a grand consensus. No, passing the bill required one of the most daring — and fun — political capers I ever was involved in. It wasn't all political opportunism. The legislation also emerged from a sense of outrage. My outrage. The penalties didn't affect just gays; they affected everyone. You couldn't hold a teacher's license, be a member of the bar, or hold a nurse's license if you had run afoul of this law. I represented a woman who was a passenger in a car being driven across the Golden Gate Bridge by her boyfriend. She was performing a sex act on him. The toll taker noticed and called the police. The woman lost her license as a teacher. In another case, a San Francisco man lost his professional license and livelihood because he was making out in his apartment one night with his boyfriend when a neighbor observed. To witness the scene, she had to climb up on the toilet seat in her loo, stretch to peer out a window, and then down into the window below. The guys were busted for crimes against nature.

So every year, we kept introducing the bill. By 1975, I could envisage a good result. So we went for it. George Moscone, presiding in the senate, figured out a daring way to get the bill through that house, where we figured we could get a vote of twenty for and twenty against. Like the early candidates who promised to support the reform of the entire penal code while realizing the promise was an empty gesture, many senators who were voting for the bill were actually hoping it would die in a tie.

The bill would only pass if Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally broke the tie. We had to get senators to believe that would never happen. So Moscone, Dymally, and I arranged for the lieutenant governor to be on a well-publicized trip to Colorado. On that day, we brought the bill up for a voice vote in the senate [a vote in which it is not recorded who voted yea or nay]. To get the twenty pro votes, I had to convince another black, Nate Holden, to give me a commitment that if I needed his vote I could count on it. I couldn't tell Nate what the real deal was until the vote was twenty to nineteen.

After a morning of ferocious debate, people were frothing! When the vote came to twenty and twenty, Moscone did what no one expected: He locked the senators in their chamber. No one could leave. He instituted some parliamentary maneuvers to make it almost impossible for senators to change their votes. Dymally was summoned from Colorado. In those days, there were no private jets available to us. So we had to get Dymally on a commercial flight from Denver to San Francisco. Then the Highway Patrol would helicopter him into Sacramento. It took five hours.

At 7:30 p.m. Dymally entered the chamber, voted yea, and broke the tie. Sexual acts between consenting adults in California were decriminalized. In that same month, Moscone and I passed legislation to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Then we improved welfare benefits. None of these great social improvements would have come about unless some of us were willing to use old-fashioned skill and political daring. No progress ever takes place unless you're also willing to be tough and canny.

You'll hardly recognize a scrawny Sean Penn in full facial hair and denim as gunned-down gay city supervisor Harvey Milk. Also caught in this fan footage: Emile Hirsch as gay activist Cleve Jones, and San Francisco's Castro Street as its former self, before the Straighty McStraights bought everything.

Supervisor Peskin called my home telephone at 8:45 p.m. I was putting my daughter to bed. I was not expecting his call. In my estimation, the Supervisor had been drinking because his words were not clear. Within minutes, the Supervisor began yelling at me. He then stated that he "didn't have time for this" and would be hanging up, which he did abruptly. I called him back. He began to yell at me, stating that he would be "going after" me. When I asked him how dare he interrupt my time with my child only to hang up on me, he screamed that he is a Supervisor and I am only a department head and he has a superior right to speak with me how and when he pleases. He again hung up on me.