NewsScan Daily, 17 December 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 17 December 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        New Intel Chip Could Revolutionize Digital TV Market
        T-Mobile Teams with iPass on Wi-Fi Roaming
        Distance Education Gets the First Degree
        New Twist on Content Sharing
        'WMD' Treasure Hunt Leads to Pot of Gold

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: M.C. Escher

NEW INTEL CHIP COULD REVOLUTIONIZE DIGITAL TV MARKET
At next month's Consumer Electronics Show, Intel plans to unveil its latest 
contribution to digital entertainment -- a new class of semiconductors that 
analysts say will significantly boost the quality of large-screen digital 
televisions while lowering their price from current stratospheric levels. 
The new technology, known as liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS), could 
deliver thin, lightweight 50-inch TV screens for as little as $1,000 -- 
possible in time for the 2004 holiday season. "I think this brings Moore's 
law to digital television," says one analyst. Intel's technology, which is 
one of a number of competing LCoS technologies, uses a multitude of tiny 
electronic shutters that can alter the amount of reflected light, creating 
high-resolution rear-projection images that can rival today's high-end 
plasma and LCD displays. The Intel announcement is expected to give a 
much-needed boost to the high-definition television market, which is just 
beginning to take off in the U.S. (New York Times 17 Dec 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/technology/17chip.html

T-MOBILE TEAMS WITH IPASS ON WI-FI ROAMING
T-Mobile USA and iPass, two of the top U.S. wireless Internet access 
providers, have inked a Wi-Fi roaming agreement that will enable mobile 
workers to access the T-Mobile HotSpot network through the iPass virtual 
network. The move could spark broader adoption of Wi-Fi technology by 
corporations, which have lagged behind consumers in Wi-Fi use. Part of the 
reluctance on businesses' part has stemmed from security concerns, but they 
also have been waiting for the emergence of a nationwide service with broad 
coverage and enhanced reliability before jumping on the Wi-Fi bandwagon. 
"The Wi-Fi vision of both iPass and T-Mobile are in synch," says iPass 
chairman and CEO Ken Denman. "Both companies believe the addition of the 
T-Mobile HotSpot network to the iPass global Wi-Fi network of 
business-oriented venues represents a major step closer to the tipping 
point of Wi-Fi by the enterprise." (Financial Times 16 Dec 2003)
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1071251592815

DISTANCE EDUCATION GETS THE FIRST DEGREE
While well-respected distance education programs such as The British Open 
University have boosted online learning's reputation among the general 
public, there is still a lingering perception that online degrees just 
don't match up to a "bricks-and-mortar"-issued sheepskin. And such 
suspicions are reinforced by revelations such as the one recently printed 
in the Boston Globe concerning the purchase of such a degree by the chief 
of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health laboratory, says eLearn 
editor-in-chief Lisa Neal. According to the Globe, "Ralph Timperi began 
signing state e-mails in recent weeks with a notation indicating he held a 
doctorate" granted from Trinity Southern University -- a plausible-sounding 
name for an unaccredited online degree mill that solicits via e-mail. Neal 
notes that such short-cut programs ($499 will get you a degree in 72 hours) 
deliver the wrong impression for "people who need a degree for employment 
or who may not understand the time, effort and financial commitment 
typically required for a degree… If prospective students are to distinguish 
between legitimate and accredited online degree-granting programs from the 
bogus ones advertised through spam, we need better and more explicit 
measures of quality… Everyone benefits if prospective students understand 
accreditation and can evaluate the suitability of an online program before 
they enroll -- everyone except those 'schools' with something to hide." 
(eLearn Magazine Dec 2003)
http://www.elearnmag.org/

NEW TWIST ON CONTENT SHARING
As many universities rush to stock up on anti-plagiarism software and crack 
down on student downloading capacity, the University of Maine is taking a 
different tack. The university's Still Water media lab has established the 
Pool -- a collaborative online environment for creating and sharing images, 
music, videos, programming code and texts, where copyright concerns take a 
back seat. "We are training revolutionaries -- not by indoctrinating them 
with dogma but by exposing them to a process in which sharing culture 
rather than hoarding it is the norm," says Joline Blais, U. of Maine new 
media professor and Still Water co-director. "It's all about imagining a 
society where sharing is productive rather than destructive, where 
cooperation becomes more powerful than competition." A number of schools 
are experimenting with similar programs, notably the Creative Commons at 
Harvard and the Coalition for Digital Commons at Swarthmore, but open 
sourcing creative work is still considered a daring venture in today's 
highly charged copyright environment that pits "content" consumers against 
its creators. The Pool emphasizes distributed creativity, drawing from the 
model of distributed computing, where the value of the whole greatly 
exceeds the sum of the individual parts. "In 10 years we hope the paradigm 
will be so well-established as a social practice that the Pool will either 
be ubiquitous or unnecessary," says Blais. "We hope that the practice of 
cooperation will empower communities and individuals to the point where 
they can surpass the productivity and influence of corporations." 
(Wired.com 16 Dec 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,61585,00.html

'WMD' TREASURE HUNT LEADS TO POT OF GOLD
Computer programmer Shane Messer has used the U.S. military's extended hunt 
for "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq as inspiration for his new game, 
"Find Those Weapons: The Hunt for the Real WMD." The payoff? A solid gold 
trophy, a bag of cash and a barrel of oil. "I sat down and created a hunt 
with real documents off public domain sites and started putting the puzzle 
together over time and it became a very complex thing," says Messer. The 
game, which began shipping this week for $39.99, includes a booklet with 10 
clues plus a master clue; a map of Iraq; and a CD-ROM containing 3,000 
public documents, text transcripts and propaganda leaflets. Players will 
use the CD-ROM material to decipher the 10 clues, which are in the form of 
rhyming riddles. Those answers will help solve the master clue, which will 
lead the winner to the "WMD" prize. Messer has hidden replicas of the real 
trophy in 65 major U.S. cities and four in the U.K. Whoever finds a replica 
can trade it in on the real prize -- providing they can explain how they 
deduced the answer. Messer says if no one comes forward by Election Day 
2004, he'll donate the gold and oil to President Bush. Meanwhile, he says 
although the game is intended to provide entertainment, what he's really 
hoping is that he rakes in enough revenues to pay for law school. (AP 17 
Dec 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20031217/D7VG0QGO0.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Those Greeks and Romans, they are so overrated. They only said 
everything *first*. I've said just as good things myself. But they got in 
before me." (Winston Churchill)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: M.C. ESCHER
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Dutch graphic artist Maurits 
Corneille Escher (1898-1972), whose print-work became popular in the 
mid-20th century for its distinctive combination of realistic detail with 
bizarre optical and conceptual effects. He created eye-catching images by 
employing conflicting perspectives, repetitive interlocking figures, and 
spatial puzzles depicting impossible architectural constructions such as 
continuous waterfalls and endless staircases. Their perceptual and 
geometric complexity made his creations particularly interesting to 
cognitive psychologists and mathematicians. And the popularity of Escher's 
work with the general public was manifested by the mass reproduction of his 
images on coffee mugs, T-shirts, postcards and wall posters. The Dungeons & 
Dragons game is thought to have borrowed some of its design features from 
Escher's drawing style.
      Escher was born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. He attended both 
elementary and secondary school in Arnhem between 1912 and 1918. In 1920, 
he enrolled at the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts at Haarlem, 
where he learned woodcutting and made many sketches of landscapes and the 
plants and insects, which would appear in his later graphics work. In 1924 
he married Jetta Umiker, and they made their home in Frascati, just outside 
Rome. The couple had three children, and the family traveled extensively 
through France, Italy, and Spain, during which time Escher sketched 
subjects suitable for his woodcuts and lithographs. His first art works 
were realistic portrayals of landscape and architecture. Escher then began 
using unusual perspectives in his treatment of landscape and natural forms, 
and by 1937 he had adopted a printmaker style that combined a meticulous 
realism with paradoxical visual and perspective effects. He became a 
virtuoso at portraying unexpected metamorphoses of mundane objects, as is 
evident in his prints Verbum (1942) and Metamorphosis (1939-40). In his 
lithograph Relativity (1953) Escher created a visual paradox by combining 
three separate perspectives into a unified, coherent whole.
      By 1958 Escher had become famous. He had given the first important 
exhibition of his works and had also been featured in Time magazine. He 
began to receive important awards including the Knighthood of the Oranje 
Nassau, and was regularly commissioned to design art for dignitaries around 
the world. In 1964, however, he fell ill while delivering a series of 
lectures in North America. He was forced to cut back on his work, and 
gradually he turned inward and led a reclusive life. Escher took six months 
to complete his final graphic work, a woodcut, Snakes, which was unveiled 
in July 1969 and was notable for a design that moves off to infinity at 
both the center and the edges of the image. He died March 17, 1972 in 
Laren, Netherlands. One critic commenting on his life's work has written: 
"With his amazingly repetitive graphic illustration and unflinchingly 
control of size, shape, and shading, Escher draws like a human computer. 
One can only wonder what he might have done with today's graphics."

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0810967200/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for "The Magic of M.C. Escher" -- or look for it in your favorite library. 
(We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy 
programs.)

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