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LIMON CO (IFS) - SmithBit Magazine goes vocal. After years and years of writing about "nothing" and "everything", I get a voice on the web at the address above. It's just to long to memorize, but just copy the thing and put it in your favorites. I don't know what the first thing I will talk about, but I'm sure it will be of some interest to at least one person.

LIMON, CO (IFS) - I have a products bar code. Now What? First you have to get your products registered into the retail system. You can do it right here. Place your products barcode label, your product discription, the manufacturer's name and location, the written barcode number in a #10 envelope with your CHECK IN THE AMOUNT OF $10.00 FOR EACH PRODUCT made payable and MAILED to: Ken Smith, 1880 Circle Lane, Limon, CO 80828-9114. You will receive by return mail a certificate of product registration for each of your products. It's that easy. No fuss and no hassels. Ken Smith's SmithBits Magazine, has been around since 1967, when his journalism professor gave him the column in the college newspaper. Smith has continued the tradition for over 40 years.

In retail, there’s no bigger asset than the products you sell. And for manufacturers and retailers, the increased prevalence and organization of theft and fraud is making it increasingly difficult to protect them. And getting the upper hand on protecting those assets and reducing those losses can make significant difference to your bottom line.

According to the National Retail Federation, losses from retail theft are estimated at more than $30 billion.

Retail theft can be categorized in many ways. It can be as simple as someone pocketing a single product and walking out of the store, to gangs that have become extremely proficient in stealing large quantities of products, to the theft of products that are still in shipment. Often times, these products end up on Internet auction sites where the criminals turn those products into cash. Or the theft can be more “creative,” such as in the case of Claude Allen, former aide to President Bush, who was arrested in 2006 for attempting to “return” more than $5,000 worth of merchandise that he’d taken from the display shelf directly to the returns counter, using receipts from earlier purchases of those items. There are a host of products and technologies that work to prevent, or at least reduce, products from being stolen off the showroom floor. And some loss is inevitable. But there are those significant losses associated with other kinds of theft – theft coming from habitual criminals, as well as normally law-abiding people who think nothing of coming up with creative ways to “bypass the system.” And one thing they all have in common is that they involve the fraudulent return of products to the same or a different store. In fact, The National Retail Foundation reports that fraudulently returned products cost the industry more than $9.6 billion dollars a year.

Obama Surrendering Internet to Foreign Powers

By: Bradley A. Blakeman

Without the ingenuity of America’s brightest minds and the investment of U.S. taxpayer dollars, there would be no Internet, as we now know it today.

Now, the Obama administration has moved quietly to cede control of the Web from the United States to foreign powers.

Some background: The Internet came into being because of the genius work of Americans Dr.Robert E. Kahn and Dr. Vinton G. Cerf. These men, while working for the Department of Defense in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the early 1970s, conceived, designed, and implemented the idea of "open-architecture networking."

This breakthrough in connectivity and networking was the birth of the Internet.

These two gentlemen had the vision and the brainpower to create a worldwide computer Internet communications network that forever changed the world and how we communicate in it.

They discovered that providing a person with a unique identifier (TCP/IP)that was able to be recognized and interact through a network of servers would allow users to communicate with others.

The servers woulduse a series of giant receivers to recognize the identifier and connect networks to networks, passing on information from computer to computer in a seamless real-time exchange of information. This new process of communication became know as the "information super highway," aka, the Internet.

Now for the bad news: In an effort to show the world how inclusive, sharing, cooperative, and international America can be, the Obama administration set off on a plan to surrender control and key management of the Internet by the U.S. Department of Commerce and its agents.

The key to the control America has over the Internet is through the management of the Domain Name System (DNS) and the giant servers that service the Internet.

Domain names are managed through an entity named IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. The IANA, which operates on behalf of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is responsible for the global coordination of the DNS, IP addressing, and other Internet protocol resources.

In short, without an IP Address or other essential Internet protocols, a person or entity would not have access to the Internet.

For years, the international community has been pressuring the United States
to surrender its control and management of the Internet. They want an international body such as the United Nations or even the International Telecommunications Union, (an entity that coordinates international telephone communications), to manage all aspects of the Internet in behalf of all nations.

The argument advanced for those seeking international control of the Internet is that the Internet has become such a powerful, pervasive, and a dependent form of international communications, that it would be dangerous and inequitable for any one nation to control and manage it.

Just this past spring, within months of Obama's taking office, his administration, through the Department of Commerce, agreed to relinquish some control over IANA and their governance. The Obama administration has agreed to give greater representation to foreign companies and countries on IANA.

This amounts to one small step for internationalism and one giant leap for surrendering America's control over an invention we have every right and responsibility to control and manage.

It is in America's economic and national security interests not to relinquish any control. We are responsible for the control, operation, and functionality of one of the modern world's greatest inventions and most powerful communications network.

What better country to protect the Internet than the United States?

We invented it, and we paid for the research and implementation that made it
possible. We are the freest, most tolerant nation on earth, we believe in the
fundamental right of free speech, and we practice a free market of commerce and ideas.

America has always been against censorship and has shared its invention with the world without fee or unreasonable or arbitrary restriction. The user fee to operate on the Internet is not one paid to the U.S. government; a consumer pays it to private Internet companies, who provide access to the Internet through servers for their subscribers.

Look no further than China's recent move against Google to censor the
Internet, and you can envision what can happen when other nations less free
than the United States seek to control the Internet beyond even their own borders.

America needs to wake up. If we lose control over the management of the
Internet, we have given away one of our nation's greatest assets with nothing
in return to show for it.

The Obama administration's actions will set in motion a slow and complete takeover of the Internet by the United Nations or some other equally U.S.-hostile and unfriendly international body. And once it is gone, it will be gone forever.

The surrender of the Internet will spell disaster for our nation, financially, as well as for safety, security and our standing as a great power that values freedom and the free exchange of ideas and information.

As far as I am concerned, America is still the last best hope for a more
peaceful and prosperous world and our president should not be looking for
ways to weaken us. Rather, his job is to work to strengthen us and protect our nation's greatest asset our people's creativity and ingenuity.


Bradley A. Blakeman, who was a deputy assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001-2004, teaches public policy and politics and international affairs at Georgetown University.