NewsScan Daily, 3 December 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 3 December 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        FBI Seeks VoIP Wiretap Capability
        This Number's Ready for Prime Time
        Sun Eyes New Markets
        HP Joins Internet Music Frenzy
        Spammers Target Anti-Spam Groups With E-Mail Worm

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Chuck Jones

FBI SEEKS VOIP WIRETAP CAPABILITY
The FBI and the U.S. Justice Department have filed a request with the 
Federal Communications Commission asking that current deliberations over 
the status of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephone calls take into 
consideration law officials' occasional need to eavesdrop on those calls. 
Exempting VoIP calls from federal wiretap provisions would "jeopardize the 
ability of federal, state and local governments to protect public safety 
and national security against domestic and foreign threats," wrote FBI 
deputy general counsel Patrick Kelley and Justice deputy assistant attorney 
general John Malcolm. Currently, such calls are difficult for law 
enforcement to intercept because the data packets are chopped up for 
transmission via the Internet backbone before they are reassembled at the 
other end. FBI and Justice want the FCC to declare VoIP telephony a 
traditional telecommunications service, which would subject it to federal 
laws requiring carriers or software companies "to develop intercept 
solutions for lawful electronic surveillance." Civil liberty groups say 
such efforts could eventually lead to efforts to outlaw powerful encryption 
technology that could be used to protect callers' privacy. "This represents 
a great threat to privacy and free speech," says a staff attorney at the 
Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The government has always banked on the 
fact that when it comes to electronic communications, there's always a 
middleman. But Internet telephony has the potential to make that middleman 
go away and make conversation a lot more secure from government 
eavesdropping." (Los Angeles Times 2 Dec 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-listen2dec02,1,1470578.story?coll=la-headlines-technology

THIS NUMBER'S READY FOR PRIME TIME
Michigan State University grad student Michael Shafer has succeeded in 
identifying the largest known prime number to date, using a distributed 
computer network of more than 200,000 computers located around the world. 
The new number is 6,320,430 digits long and is only the 40th Mersenne prime 
to have ever been discovered (Mersenne primes are an especially rare breed 
that take the form of 2-to-the-power-of-P, where P is also a prime number). 
Shafer was taking part in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) 
project, when the new number popped up. "I had just finished meeting with 
my advisor when I saw the computer had found a new prime. After a short 
victory dance, I called up my wife and friends involved with GIMPS to share 
the great news," said Shafer. (New Scientist 2 Dec 2003)
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994438

SUN EYES NEW MARKETS
Sun Microsystems is opening a new center in Scotland to test 
radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, in a move that signals the 
company's desire to expand beyond the back office. Up until now, Sun has 
best been known as a maker of servers used to power corporate networks and 
Web sites. Now the company is branching out, selling software designed for 
office desktops, for tracking retail sales in stores, and for downloading 
games and tunes to mobile phones. "This allows Sun to sell the whole 
ecosystem whereas previously we played into only one portion," says John 
Loiacono, VP of Sun's operating platforms group. (International Herald 
Tribune 3 Dec 20030
http://www.iht.com/articles/120022.html

HP JOINS INTERNET MUSIC FRENZY
Hewlett-Packard is diving into the online music fray with a branded 
Internet music store and a portable digital music player that will compete 
with similar offerings from Apple and Dell. HP, which ranks No. 2 in PC 
sales and No. 1 in printers, is the latest computer maker to aggressively 
expand their consumer electronics business in the face of stagnant PC sales 
and weakened corporate spending. In addition to the music venture, HP 
recently indicated it would soon start selling flat screen TVs, following 
in the footsteps of Gateway and Dell. (Financial Times 3 Dec 2003)
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1069493676868

SPAMMERS TARGET ANTI-SPAM GROUPS WITH E-MAIL WORM
Virus experts say a new worm, dubbed W32/Mimail-L, has been unleashed by a 
vengeful spammonger intent on paralyzing anti-spam groups via a crippling 
barrage of data -- a so-called denial of service attack. "It's the third 
Mimail variation to come after us, except this one is trying to do more," 
says Steve Linford, founder of the Spamhaus Project. The nasty worm comes 
as an attachment to an e-mail from "Wendy" who describes an erotic 
encounter and then offers photos. Clicking on the attachment launches the 
worm. In a new twist, a follow-up e-mail is sent to the infected user 
announcing that an order for a CD containing child pornography images will 
be sent to their mailing address. Virus experts say the impact of this 
latest worm has been minimal, compared with the problems caused by last 
summer's plague of viruses, "but what this shows is that there is more 
evidence that virus writers and spammers are now colluding," says Sophos 
senior technology consultant Graham Cluley. (Reuters 2 Dec 2003)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=AK2C1KNGSFTWSCRBAEZSFFA?type=technologyNews&storyID=3925183






*****

FLASH CARD
      "One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh 
before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good 
man." (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: CHUCK JONES
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Oscar winning movie animator 
Charles (Chuck) Jones (1912-2002), who created some of Hollywood's most 
famous cartoon characters including the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, and 
Pepe Le Pew. Jones was also a member of the animation teams that concocted 
the zany antics of the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and 
Elmer Fudd.
Winner of three Academy Awards for his Looney Tune films and a fourth Oscar 
for Lifetime achievement, Chuck Jones made more than 300 films during a 
career that lasted more than 60 years; along with Winsor McCay (creator of 
the first animated movie cartoon) and Walt Disney, he was among the first 
inductees into the Animation Hall of Fame. In contrast to the often 
sentimental world of Disney, Jones' cartoons possessed a wit and dark humor 
that appealed to adults as well as children.
      Born September 21, 1912 in Spokane, Washington, Jones grew up in 
Hollywood, where he worked with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as a 
child extra in silent comedies. After graduating from Chouinard Art 
Institute in Los Angeles -- now the California Institute of the Arts -- he 
drew pencil portraits and sold them for a dollar each on the street. In 
1932 he got his first job washing "cels" -- transparent sheets of celluloid 
-- in the fledgling animation industry. Four years later he became an 
animator for the Leon Schlesinger Studio, later sold to Warner Bros., where 
he was assigned to the team that made "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" 
cartoons. He directed his first animated film, "The Night Watchman," at age 
25. The six-minute cartoon used 5,000 animation drawings.
      Following the closing of Warner Bros' animation studio in 1962, Jones 
moved to MGM Studios where he brought his wit to their Tom and Jerry 
cartoons. He also directed Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," 
"Horton Hears a Who," "The Dot and the Line," "The Phantom Tollbooth," "A 
Cricket in Times Square," Kipling's "Rikki Tikki Tavi," "The White Seal," 
and "Mowgli's Brother." Later he established his own production company and 
went into business selling images from the cartoons he had created. Jones 
died of congestive heart failure at his home in Corona Del Mar, California, 
in 2002.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374526206/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Chuck Jones's "Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated 
Cartoonist" -- or look for it in your favorite library. (We donate all 
revenue from our book suggestions to adult literacy programs.) %%
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