NewsScan Daily, 9 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 9 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       New Breed of 'Spackers' Eludes Antispammers
       VoIP is the New Gold Rush in Telecom
       VoIP Gets Reprieve From Regulation
       Telecom Convergence
       Don Tapscott on the 'Age of Transparency'
       Disney Wants to 'Scare the Heck Out of' Digital Pirates

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Harriet Moore

NEW BREED OF 'SPACKERS' ELUDES ANTISPAMMERS
Computer crackers have joined forces with spammers to devise new ways of
defrauding hapless Internet users. The latest technique enables spammers to
create Web sites that are virtually untraceable, making it impossible for
antispammers to shut down those sites by conventional means. Typical of the
scam is a group in Poland currently advertising "invisible bulletproof
hosting" for $1,500 a month, which provides its clients protection from
network sleuthing tools such as 'traceroute' and 'whois' by routing traffic
through thousands of hijacked computers (most of them home computers running
Windows and having broadband connections). The technique is effective.
"You're not going to have much success trying to follow IP addresses through
hacked hosts," says one security researcher. "About all you can do is follow
the money -- sign up for whatever it is they're selling and try to figure
out who's behind the whole thing." Fueling the new tactics is an influx of
"engineers who have been laid off or fired, and people who really know what
they're doing with networking and DNS," says Steve Linford, head of the
Spamhaus Project. "Hackers used to detest spammers, but now that spamming
has become such a big business, it's suddenly cool to be a spammer."
(Wired.com 9 Oct 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60747,00.html

VoIP IS THE NEW GOLD RUSH IN TELECOM
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is booming, and eventually may reshape a
telecom industry still reeling from its collapse in the late 1990s. To
respond to skyrocketing demand, some of the top names in telecom are testing
their own Internet offerings to ensure they're not locked out of the new
market. BellSouth is planning to offer VoIP service initially to businesses
in the Southeast, but eventually will market to residential and corporate
customers beyond its traditional turf. And Time Warner Cable early this year
launched a VoIP service that offers unlimited local and domestic
long-distance for $39.95 a month, while AT&T is quietly trying out a new
VoIP service in an undisclosed location. But experts warn consumers not to
hang up on traditional service yet. Most VoIP services have no independent
power source, rendering them inoperable during a power blackout, and
Internet glitches and regulatory hurdles will slow the transition from
old-fashioned phone service. Still, some industry experts are predicting
that VoIP will replace circuit-switched technology over the next decade.
"(VoIP) is like Pac-Man. Eventually, it will eat everything in its way,"
says Hossein Eslambolchi, president of AT&T Labs. (Wall Street Journal 9 Oct
2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106564603433992600,00.html (sub req'd)

VOIP GETS REPRIEVE FROM REGULATION
A federal judge in Minnesota has barred state officials from regulating
Vonage, which offers voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) telephone service,
as a traditional telecom firm. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission had
attempted to require Vonage to submit an official phone company application
listing prices and a 911 emergency plan, but Vonage argued it is actually a
data information service because it transports Internet data rather than
traditional voice traffic. (AP 9 Oct 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20031009/D7U2LEUO0.html

TELECOM CONVERGENCE
There are now about 125,000 high-speed phone line subscribers in the U.S.
able to view telephone caller ID information on their TV screens. How so?
Because those homes receive TV service over DSL, a development which has
allowed the cable and phone companies to begin offering essentially the same
services. As a result, the telecom industry has now become the business of
delivering information in the form of voice calls, Internet access and TV
programs. A Qwest executive boasts: "We provide everything a customer needs
to communicate, to be plugged into the rest of the world." (New York Times 9
Oct 2003) 
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/10/09/technology/circuits/09vide.html

DON TAPSCOTT ON THE 'AGE OF TRANSPARENCY'
In their new book "The Naked Corporation," technology gurus Don Tapscott and
David Ticoll say that a new "age of transparency" will revolutionize
business. (The book' has received the enthusiastic endorsement of industry
leaders such as Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, who has called the book
"brilliant," and Cisco chief CEO and President John Chambers, who says that
the two authors "show how trust--powered by broad corporate
transparency--isn't just about ethics, it is about success.") Tapscott and
Ticoll write: "If the bursting of the Internet bubble and the scandals of
2002 have told us anything, it is that the days of opacity in business are
over. Thanks to the Internet, whistleblowers, aggressive news media,
customers, trading partners, shareholders, and community activists are
gaining unprecedented access to information regarding corporate behavior,
operations, and performance‹from financial data, employee grievances, and
internal memos, to environmental disasters, product weaknesses,
international protests, scandals and policies.  Corporations are essentially
becoming naked and 'if you¹re going to be naked, you¹d better be buff.'"
("The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize
Business," Free Press)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743246500/

DISNEY WANTS TO 'SCARE THE HECK OUT OF' DIGITAL PIRATES
Disney executives think that Hollywood need to find digital locks on
entertainment content to bar people who don't pay. Chief Operating Officer
Bob Iger says: "I realize that there are a lot of concerns regarding privacy
in this regard, invading people's homes and their home PCs, but at some
point we've got to somehow ... scare the heck out of these people that they
could get caught." (USA Today 9 Oct 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techcorporatenews/2003-10-09-disne
y-and-tech_x.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
     "The better work men do is always done under stress and at great
personal cost." (William Carlos Williams)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: HARRIET MONROE
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American editor, critic, and poet
Harriet Monroe (1861-1936), who was the founder and long-time first editor
of Poetry Magazine, the highly respected journal that published both
established and new poets.
     Monroe is remembered less for her own work than for her efforts in
providing an influential forum for modern verse. She became a tireless
promoter of the work of such major modernist poets as T. S. Eliot, Ezra
Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams. Ezra Pound, who
corresponded with her from Europe, did much to direct the policy of the
journal and expounded the doctrines of imagism, impressionism, and vers
libre in its pages. The first issue of Poetry appeared in October 1912 at a
time of cultural ferment in America's Mid-Western region, the period to be
known later as the Chicago Renaissance. This provided Monroe with the
opportunity to publish the newly emerging locally colored poetry of Carl
Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, and Sherwood Anderson. Munroe
also made Poetry a vehicle for presenting new formalistic movements in
verse. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by the then-unknown T.S. Eliot
appeared in Poetry (1915), as did the experimental poems of Wallace Stevens,
Marianne Moore, D.H. Lawrence, and William Carlos Williams.
     Monroe was a native and lifelong resident of Chicago. Educated at the
Visitation Convent, Washington, D.C., she worked on various Chicago
newspapers as an art and drama critic while privately writing verse and
verse plays in the genteel tradition of the time. Her poetry and her
family's social connections brought her local recognition. Her heroic
"Columbian Ode" (1892) was recited at the dedication of Chicago's World's
Columbian Exposition, and her rhapsodic "Cantata," celebrating Chicago's
history, was sung at the dedication of the Auditorium Building (1889),
designed by the pioneer modern architect Louis Sullivan.
     Monroe's longtime ambition to found a review devoted exclusively to
poetry was achieved by securing the backing of wealthy Chicago patrons and
by inviting contributions from a wide range of contemporary poets. Monroe
edited Poetry until her sudden death, which occurred in 1936 while she was
traveling in South America. Her open-minded, inclusive editorial policy and
her awareness of the importance of the poetic revolution of the early years
of the 20th century made her a major influence in the development of modern
poetry. Her autobiography, "A Poet's Life: Seventy Years in a Changing
World," was published posthumously in 1938.

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0781282888/for Monroe's
autobiography -- or look for it in your favorite library. (We donate all
revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

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