NewsScan Daily, 23 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 23 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Senate Votes to Can Spam
        Craig Barrett's Crystal Ball Sees Double
        Sony Looks for Ways to Get Smarter
        Very Personal TV Possible Via the Phone Line
        Computers May Be Bad for Your Health

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: James Cagney
        Mailbag: The World As We Find It

SENATE VOTES TO CAN SPAM
The U.S. Senate has unanimously approved the "Can Spam" bill, sponsored by 
Sens. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), which would ban the 
sleaziest techniques used by spammers to spew out millions of junk e-mail 
messages each day. Under the provisions of the bill, senders of unsolicited 
e-mail would be prohibited from disguising their purpose by using a fake 
return address or misleading subject line, and would no longer be allowed 
to harvest e-mail addresses off the Web to bulk up their lists. In 
addition, junk e-mail would be required to include a legitimate "opt out" 
function that recipients could use to get off lists. A provision proposed 
by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) authorizes the Federal Trade Commission to 
establish a "do-not-spam" list, similar to the recently implemented 
"do-not-call" list that blocks telemarketing calls. "Kingpin spammers who 
send out e-mail by the millions are threatening to drown the Internet in a 
sea of trash, and the American people want it stopped," said Wyden, who 
urged foreign countries to adopt similar measures. (AP 23 Oct 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/2031023/D7UBQISG0.html

CRAIG BARRETT'S CRYSTAL BALL SEES DOUBLE
Intel CEO Craig Barrett says the company's next-generation chip technology 
-- code-named Vanderpool -- will allow users to partition the processor 
inside their computer, creating multiple virtual machines inside the 
microprocessor. "It will certainly give users a lot of flexibility to have 
different profiles on the same machine. If people use it for multiple OSes, 
running in sync on the same processor, it opens up a lot of different use 
models, and perhaps competitive models in the marketplace. If you are able 
to, say, have two OSes running simultaneously, you won't have to rely on a 
single OS for everything. So you could have Mac OS and Longhorn 
[Microsoft's next version of Windows] on the same system, using Longhorn 
for business stuff and MacOS for personal stuff. But first you'd need to 
convince Steve Jobs that it's a great idea." (CNet News.com 22 Oct 2003)
http://news.com.com/2008-1006-5094780.html

SONY LOOKS FOR WAYS TO GET SMARTER
Sony is working on ways to extend its smart card payment system -- dubbed 
Edy for "euro, dollar, yen" -- to cell phones, allowing customers to pay 
train fares, pick up the restaurant tab and pay for their dry cleaning via 
their cell phones. A Sony spokesman acknowledged the company's efforts to 
migrate its FeliCa smart card technology over to the wireless realm but was 
close-mouthed about the details: "We're looking into the possibility of 
integrating FeliCa into mobile phones but beyond that we don't wish to 
comment." Currently, about 2.7 million Edy cards are in circulation. 
(AP/Los Angeles Times 22 Oct 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology13oct22,1,1805345.story?coll=sns-ap-toptechnology

VERY PERSONAL TV POSSIBLE VIA THE PHONE LINE
Cable companies have been aggressively encroaching on telecoms' traditional 
turf, rolling out voice service plans to go along with their cable and 
Internet offerings. But now the phone companies are fighting back with 
video content services of their own. "Any telephone company that doesn’t 
consider the cable providers a real threat is missing the boat," says Brent 
Groome, head of customer relations at Horry Telephone Cooperative in South 
Carolina. Horry's using VDSL, or very high bit-rate DSL, to offer its 
customers television programming and broadband Internet access along with 
their phone service. Qwest Communications, which has offered TV over VDSL 
in Phoenix and Denver since 1997, is promoting a $99.97 a month plan for 
all three services. Cable and VDSL technologies are similar in that they 
both feed a stream of digital data through a fiber-optic line to a 
centralized neighborhood system, where the signal branches off to 
individual homes via coaxial cable or standard phone lines. But while cable 
networks are continually broadcasting every channel to every home, VDSL 
creates a dedicated connection, streaming only the channels that users have 
selected. This difference could allow VDSL carriers to insert personalized 
advertising, says In-Stat/MDR analyst Michelle Abraham: "A restaurant might 
want to advertise only to homes within a five-mile radius, which is 
possible with this." (New York Times/Siliconvalley.com 23 Oct 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/technology/personal_technology/7082777.htm

COMPUTERS MAY BE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH
Nine out of 10 computer users are stressed out by such regular occurrences 
as performance slowdown, spam overload and lost files, and the time wasted 
fixing problems just makes it worse, according to security firm Symantec. 
Anger management experts say computer stress must be alleviated before it 
affects productivity and human-to-human interactions. "If you are suffering 
from stress, the best thing to do is to breathe deeply, and remind yourself 
to keep your cool," says Mike Fisher, of the British Association of Anger 
Management. The top five stress triggers, according to Symantec, are: 1) 
Slow performance and system crashes; 2) Spam, scams and e-mail overload; 3) 
Pop-up ads; 4) Viruses; and 5) Lost or deleted files. Men tend to freak out 
over viruses, spam and general information pollution, while crashing 
systems and sluggish performance really irk women. More than a third of 
both sexes will resort to extreme behavior during computer-related 
meltdown, including violence, swearing, showing and desperately hitting 
random keys. The good news is that 40% will actually try to fix the 
problem, often asking someone else for help. Symantec's Kevin Chapman 
suggests a few ways to reduce the potential for problems: "For example, 
don't download lots of large files and applications, and remove the clutter 
left behind by long periods on the Internet. To avoid spam, don't sign up 
for lots of mailing lists, and if you do receive spam-mail, never reply to 
it asking to be removed from the list as this will confirm your e-mail 
address." [Eds. Note: NewsScan never, ever shares your e-mail addresses 
with *anyone*, so we hope you'll stay on *our* list.] (BBC News 23 Oct 2003)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/3204719.stm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "You dirty, double-crossing rat." (Jimmy Cagney, in "Blonde Crazy")

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: JAMES CAGNEY
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the fast-talking Irish-American film 
actor Jimmy Cagney (1899-1986), who used his versatile talents to play 
memorable roles in a long list of musicals, comedies, dramas and crime movies.
      Cagney first achieved fame in Hollywood as a cocky gangster in 
"Public Enemy" (1931) and for several years thereafter he was cast as a 
sneering, explosive criminal in a series of crime movies. The persona he 
created in his early years at Warner Brothers is well known and often 
mimicked. In time he broke away from the criminal stereotype and employed 
his energetic, cheerful personality in comedic and dramatic roles. As a 
talented song-and-dance man, Cagney won the 1942 Best Actor Academy Award 
for his dynamic portrayal of showman George M. Cohen in "Yankee Doodle 
Dandy" (1942).
      The son of an Irish bartender, Cagney grew up in the rough Lower East 
Side of New York City. He married in 1922 and toured in vaudeville as a 
song-and-dance man with his wife Frances before he starred opposite Joan 
Blondell in the Broadway productions that brought him to Hollywood to 
perform in "Sinner's Holiday," the movie version of the 1929 Broadway 
musical "Penny Arcade." After his role in "Public Enemy" made him a star, 
he went on to fill the Hollywood screen with some of its most memorable 
moments.
      No actor was better at being bad, ill-treating women (shoving half a 
grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face remains a classic scene), machine-gunning 
speakeasies, and breaking out of jails. But he played other roles equally 
well: the fast-talking theater producer in "Footlight Parade" in which he 
danced; Bottom in an elaborate production of "Midsummer Night's Dream"; a 
prison governor in "Mayor of Hell"; a cocky race driver in "The Crowd 
Roars"; an airline pilot in "Ceiling Zero." In some of his films he was 
teamed with such other Hollywood notables as Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, 
Edward G. Robinson, and George Raft. Other roles that demonstrated the 
range of his acting talent include: the naïve dentist in "Strawberry 
Blonde"; the eccentric captain of a World War II cargo ship in "Mr. 
Roberts"; his Lon Chaney impersonation in "The Man of a Thousand Faces"; 
the frenetic Coca-Cola executive in Billy Wilder's film "One, Two, Three."
      Cagney retired in 1961 to breed horses and cattle in upstate New 
York, but he did return 20 years later at age 82 to play the feisty police 
commissioner in "Ragtime." In 1974 he was the recipient of the American 
Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. In 1984 he was awarded the U.S. 
Medal of Freedom, and in the same year he starred as an aging boxer in the 
television movie "Terrible Joe Moran." His autobiography "Cagney by Cagney" 
was published in 1975.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6305225761/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for the DVD version of the movie "Mister Roberts" -- or look for it in the 
media center of your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book 
recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

EDITING, NOT CENSORSHIP
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9420
      You recently published a mail item re Amazon.com's censorship --i.e., 
suppression--of negative reviews submitted by its subscribers. I decided to 
follow up on the accusation by communicating with Amazon. I received the 
following response to my inquiry. Given some of the (I would characterize 
them as negative) reviews that remain on their site, those that were 
censored might have been "entertaining" indeed: "Thanks for writing to us 
at Amazon.com. I apologize for the delay in responding to your e-mail 
message. Please be assured that all of us here are working very hard to 
provide a thorough, personal answer to each of our customers as quickly as 
possible. Our disclaimer that reviews become our property allows us to have 
free range on posting them or not posting them. We never censor reviews 
inappropriately or change the tone of comments, but we do reserve the right 
to delete or edit inappropriate comments that fall outside our review 
guidelines. You'll find our review guidelines posted here: 
http://www.amazon.com/o/tg/browse/-/508094/ Thanks again for your interest 
in Amazon.com. Joe Gunderson, Amazon.com Customer Service." (Mark Barnett)

AMAZON'S EDITORIAL GUIDELINES FOR REVIEWS
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9420
      I work at Amazon as a software engineer in the group responsible for 
customer reviews. I can absolutely guarantee you that we understand the 
importance of honest feedback. We vehemently agree with your reader: honest 
reviews support sales best. We want people to make informed buying 
decisions, so they will be satisfied with their purchase, and buy from us 
again. That said, it is absolutely true that we remove some customer 
reviews; but in all cases, the goal is to ensure that the reviews provide 
honest value to the customer. So we remove reviews that are judged to be 
inappropriate: they may contain inappropriate language (e.g., words you 
can't say on television); they may not discuss the product, but rather some 
other private agenda (e.g., personal attacks and/or arbitrary political 
views); or they may appear to contain deliberate misrepresentations.
      We have authors who believe they can help their sales by anonymously 
posting glowing reviews of their books, or critical reviews of competitors' 
books. There are some gleeful youth who think it is funny to conflate 
religion and sexuality. We purge shills, campaigns, and other fraudulent 
reviews when we detect them. Critical, glowing, or ambivalent reviews are 
treated alike; what matters is honesty and usefulness to the customer. In 
this specific case, I took a look at the reviews that have been suppressed. 
As it turns out, far more positive reviews have been suppressed 
than  negative (by a ratio of approximately 20-1).
      Frankly, it does not appear that the suppressed reviews would have 
had any real value to the consumer, particularly given a pool of 1700 
reviews. In general, of course, all of this moderation requires judgment, 
and it is possible that we'll make mistakes. If a reader suspects that a 
review has been suppressed erroneously -- or, hell, has any issues at all 
-- please contact Amazon's customer service. We try pretty hard to make 
things like that right. (Don Schneider)

HOW MUCH PLAY TIME DO MANAGERS GET?
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9433
      With regard to " Workers Playing on the Net," I can imagine a 
backlash when managers learn that some workers spend an average of 3.4 
hrs/week on non-work-related web surfing. It's too bad the survey didn't 
also examine the amount of time workers spend on other non-work-related 
activities. Between chatting in the cubicles, personal phone calls, charity 
drives, daydreaming, smoking breaks, sports-pools, coffee breaks, water 
cooler conversations, toilet breaks, political maneuvering and lobbying, 
it's a wonder any work gets done at all. Web access is not a real problem, 
it is merely a symptom of what some consider to be a problem -- our innate 
human desire for variety. Removing a worker's web access will not increase 
productivity by 3.4 hrs/week; it will simply force the worker to seek other 
diversions. While corporations might be money making machines, workers are 
still human. I would dearly love to know how much time *managers* spend on 
non-work-related surfing! (Louis Jezsik, Montreal)

WEAVE IT, AND THEY WILL FIND IT WOVEN
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9437
      Shouldn't that be "Challenge to the web woven by Microsoft"???  (I 
enjoy your newsletter, and, obviously, I read it quite carefully.) (Thomas 
Wick)

MICROSOFT OXYMORON
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9434
      "Microsoft standards"? Is this some kind of oxymoron? :) (Paolo Amoroso)

MARRIAGE TODAY... OFF TO THE RACES!
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9431 
and http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9432
      With a Flash Card from Ira Gershwin ("... But oh!  If we call the 
whole thing off, then we must part.  And oh! If we ever part, then that 
might break my heart!") and a Worth Thinking About on "The Divide Between 
the Sexes" by Andrew Hacker all I can say is: You guys asking for it or 
what? ;-).  Mr. Hacker's hellish portrayal of marriage today is an 
interesting juxtaposition to Gershwin's. In the end, "breaking my heart" 
causes a lot of compromise in marriage, which makes my daughter's (one year 
old) marriage look quite different from my parents' (at 60+.)  However, 
they both contain both hell and heaven. Somehow, they do endure, and the 
race goes on... (Gerry Visel)

YOU SAY JIF AND I SAY GIF, LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF!
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9431
      "You say eether and I say eyether. you say neether and I say nyther. 
Eether, eyether, neether, nyther: let's call the whole thing off!..." Boy, 
couldn't we waste some wonderful time coming up with technical versions of 
this?  "Jif" vs. "Gif"?  "Mac-ufee" vs. "Mc-aff-ee"?  Let the games begin!" 
(John L.Beck)

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