NewsScan Daily, 11 December 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 11 December 2003 ("Above The Fold")
***********************************************************
NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization
making significant and sustained contributions to the effective
management and appropriate use of information technology. NSD is
written by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas, [email protected].
***********************************************************

"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Voter Information Up for Grabs
        Porn Purveyor Pleads Guilty
        Education Arcade Seeks to Merge Learning, Gaming
        Free Spam-Filtering Software for Nonprofits
        Scientists Bring Light to a Standstill

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Autobiographies

VOTER INFORMATION UP FOR GRABS
Unbeknownst to most citizens, state officials are selling their 
voter-registration information to political candidates, nonprofit groups 
and data collectors who then combine it with census data, purchasing 
histories, credit reports and magazine subscription lists in order to 
fine-tune their messages or marketing pitches to specific constituencies, 
such as pickup truck drivers who subscribe to "Soldier of Fortune" or SUV 
drivers who buy lacy underwear at Victoria's Secret. And while some states 
limit sales to political groups, 22 states lack any criteria restricting 
who may purchase the information. "Voters fill out these forms in good 
faith, thinking the information they're providing is needed for the purpose 
of administering elections," says California Voter Foundation founder Kim 
Alexander. "Then they get phone calls or a knock on the door from campaign 
strangers who have a list of their personal data." Alexander says the 
information requested by many states, such as Social Security numbers and 
mother's maiden names, could easily be used for identity theft. The 
situation has become especially troubling since Congress passed the Help 
America Vote Act last year, which required that states develop a 
centralized, statewide voter-registration database, making it possible for 
third parties to collect huge amounts of data very easily. Alexander says 
the reason there's been no outcry against the practice is that "the people 
who ultimately decide how voter data should be allowed to be used are the 
politicians… Politicians need to rein in the laws, yet they're the biggest 
consumers of data." (Wired.com 11 Dec 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,61507,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2

PORN PURVEYOR PLEADS GUILTY
John Zuccarini, of Hollywood, Florida, has pled guilty to 49 counts of 
using deceptive domain names to direct minors to nudity or other adult 
content, and to one count of child pornography possession. Prosecutors have 
recommended a three-year prison sentence with fines still to be determined. 
Zuccarini owned at least 3,000 domain names, most of which were misspelled 
versions of popular brands, such as www.dinseyland.com. (Wall Street 
Journal 10 Dec 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB10710805643821400,00.html (sub req'd)

EDUCATION ARCADE SEEKS TO MERGE LEARNING, GAMING
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has launched the Education Arcade 
initiative, aimed at exploiting the educational benefits of videogames. The 
project plans to harness the talents of scholars, international game 
designers, publishers, educators and policy makers to develop videogames 
that would be fully incorporated into existing curricula. "We want to lead 
the change in the way the world learns through computer and video games," 
says MIT professor Henry Jenkins. "Our mission is to demonstrate the 
social, cultural and educational potential of games by initiating game 
development projects. We will also be information public conversations 
about the broader and sometimes unexpected uses of this emerging art form 
in education." (Herald Sun 10 Dec 2003)
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,8101066%255E11869,00.html

FREE SPAM-FILTERING SOFTWARE FOR NONPROFITS
Mailshell Inc., maker of anti-spam software, is offering nonprofits and 
charities a holiday gift -- free one-year subscriptions to its $30 software 
product. "Nonprofits can't necessarily avail themselves of cutting-edge 
technologies," says Mailshell marketing VP Eytan Urbas. "These are people 
who are working hard, a lot of them don't make a lot of money, for things 
they believe in. It feels like the right thing to do to support that." To 
avail themselves of Mailshell's offer, nonprofits with a 501(c)(3) 
designation should sign up by Friday at www.stopspamtoday.org. (AP 11 Dec 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20031211/D7VC7IV81.html

SCIENTISTS BRING LIGHT TO A STANDSTILL
Physicists at Harvard University say they have managed to bring light to a 
complete standstill for a fraction of a second before sending it on its 
way. The research builds on work published in 2001 that described "storing" 
light pulses briefly when individual particles of light, or photons, were 
taken up by atoms in a gas. The new work actually stops the light pulse for 
a few hundredths of a second, says Harvard physicist Mikhail D. Lukin: "We 
have succeeded in holding a light pulse still without taking all the energy 
away from it." The research could allow scientists to use light particles 
for storing and processing data, and for highly secure communications 
transmissions. (AP/Edmonton News 11 Dec 2003)
http://www.canoe.ca/EdmontonNews/es.es-12-11-0067.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop." (Ovid)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
      Writer Paul Bowles suggested that the typical autobiography is more 
memoir than biography:
      "Since I started to write this book, I stay in Tangier for months on 
end, choosing, from among the vast number of fragments of memories 
unearthed, those which can serve my purpose. The fragments are being used 
to reconstruct, piece by piece, a sequential skeleton, taking care not to 
force in any part that does not fit. As I see it, this precaution implies 
making the effort to reserve judgment and the resolve to give a minimum 
importance to personal attitudes. Writing an autobiography is an 
ungratifying occupation at best. It is a sort of journalism, in which the 
report, rather than being an eyewitness account of the event, is instead 
only a memory of the last time it was recalled. Borges illustrates the 
situation with the story of his father's attempt to show him the 
untrustworthiness of memory; he lays a coin on the table and calls it the 
image itself. He puts a coin on top of the first one and calls that the 
first memory of the image. The next coin is the memory of that memory, and 
so on. Since this state of affairs is axiomatic, it follows that writing an 
autobiography is not the kind of work one would expect most writers to 
enjoy doing. And it is clear that telling what happened does not 
necessarily make a good story. In my tale, for instance, there are no 
dramatic victories because there was no struggle. I hung on and waited. It 
seems to me that this must be what most people do; the occasions when there 
is the possibility of doing more that that are becoming rare indeed."
                          ***
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0880012676/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for the Paul Bowles autobiography "Without Stopping"-- or look for it in 
your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations 
to adult literacy programs.)

SUBSCRIPTION INFO FOR NEWSSCAN DAILY:
      To subscribe or unsubscribe to the text, html, or handheld versions 
of NewsScan Daily, send the appropriate subscribe or unsubscribe messages 
(i.e., with the word 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the subject line) to 
the addresses shown below:
      Text version: Send message to [email protected]
      HTML version: Send mail to [email protected]
      NewsScan-To-Go: http://www.newsscan.com/handheld/current.html

TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT NEWSSCAN DAILY! Send them our little frog: 
http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html

***********************************************************
Please visit the site of RLG, the great organization that makes NewsScan 
Daily possible. (RLG has no influence over, nor any responsibility for, our 
editorial content.) Created in 1974 as the Research Libraries Group, RLG is 
a not-for-profit membership corporation of more than 160 universities, 
national libraries, archives, museums -- and other institutions with 
remarkable collections for research and learning. Its major initiatives are 
long-term retention of digital materials, resource sharing among member 
institutions, and improvement of researcher access to primary source 
material. RLG supplies online research resources worldwide. Visit RLG at 
http://www.rlg.org.

*********

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the TEXT version of NewsScan Daily, send an 
e-mail message to [email protected] with 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' 
in the subject line. To subscribe to our HTML version of NewsScan Daily, 
send mail to [email protected], with the word 'subscribe' as the 
subject. (Subscribing to the HTML version won't automatically unsubscribe 
you from the text version; please unsubscribe yourself as explained above.) 
Please note: To unsubscribe from an account to which you no longer have 
access, send mail to at [email protected].

*********

We call our news section "Above The Fold" to honor the tradition of the 
great "broadsheet" newspapers in which editors must decide which news 
stories are of such importance that they should be placed "above the fold" 
on the front page. The NewsScan Credo: Be informative, have fun, and get to 
the point! See http://www.newsscan.com/, and send us mail: John Gehl 
<[email protected]> and Suzanne Douglas <[email protected]>, or call 
770-704-7517.

*********

Get a free 6-week trial subscription to Innovation Weekly, an executive 
summary of trends, strategies and innovations in business and technology. 
Send mail to [email protected] with the word 'subscribe' in the 
subject line.

What customized news and information services do you need for your company? 
Get in touch with us at [email protected] or call 770-704-7517 to talk 
over the possibilities.

Copyright 2003. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.
***********************************************************