NewsScan Daily, 6 February 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 6 February 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Pentagon Cancels E-Voting Plans
       Oops: Washington Post Forgets to Renew $35 Registration
       Nielsen to Get a Breakdown of TiVo Watching
       Software Winners and Losers
       Microsoft's "Penny Black" Would Make Spammers Pay a Price

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Mickey Wright

PENTAGON CANCELS E-VOTING PLANS
     Because of security concerns, the Department of Defense has canceled
plans to use an electronic voting system that would have been used by
Americans overseas to cast their votes next November; the system is called
Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE). Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said in a memo: "The department has decided not
to use SERVE in the November 2004 elections. We made this decision in view
of the inability to ensure legitimacy of votes, thereby bringing into doubt
the integrity of the election results." Wolfowitz goes on to say that the
system will continue to be used for testing and development purposes. Meg T.
McLaughlin, president of Accenture eDemocracy Services, says the decision to
continue testing the system will provide "an opportunity to demonstrate that
the Internet is viable, valuable and secure enough to use for filing
absentee ballots. We are confident that sending absentee ballots via the
Internet is just as secure and reliable as sending them by mail." (New York
Times 6 Feb 2004) 
http://partners.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/politics/campaign/06VOTE.html

OOPS: WASHINGTON POST FORGETS TO RENEW $35 REGISTRATION
     The Washington Post's washpost.com Internet address was shut down for
awhile yesterday because the company failed to renew its $35 annual
registration. [This can happen to the very best of organizations; it even
happened once to NewsScan.] The shutdown affected the ability of the
newspaper's journalists and other employees to communicate with the rest of
the world, but had no impact on the access to another Internet site,
washingtonpost.com, which the Post uses to provide access to its daily
newspaper. (Washington Post 6 Feb 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17148-2004Feb5.html

NIELSEN TO GET A BREAKDOWN OF TIVO WATCHING
     How do people actually use the TiVo digital video recording system?
What do they watch -- and how do they watch it? That kind of data will now
be given by TiVo to Nielsen Media Research, the TV ratings company, and will
shed light on this burning question: Are TiVo customers skipping
commercials? [Gasp.] Jack Loftus of Nielsen explains: "The issue here is
that the television industry has no idea how consumers' interaction with
TiVo and DVR technology affects their television viewing behavior. This
could affect future programming decisions and commercial placements. Insight
into how consumers use TiVos will be the first real solid information the
industry has on this kind of usage." Cotton Stevenson of Elsewhere
Advertising says the job of advertising is "to break through the clutter" by
being "intrusive in a way that doesn't offend but is also informative and
entertaining." [Take the Super Bowl ads... Please!] (San Jose Mercury News 6
Feb 2004) http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7880674.htm

SOFTWARE WINNERS AND LOSERS
     Statistics from The NPD Group, which collects marketing data, indicate
that declines in entertainment and educational software contributed to a
drop in overall PC software sales at retailers last year, whereas software
sales for video game consoles and portable hardware remained strong, as did
sales for programs that help people do taxes, manage their finances, and
keep their systems secure. Stephen Baker of NPD says, "Everybody talks about
how people don't protect computers, but they're buying anti-virus software
at a pretty healthy clip." (USA Today 6 Feb 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-02-05-software_x.htm

MICROSOFT'S "PENNY BLACK" WOULD MAKE SPAMMERS PAY A PRICE
     Microsoft's new "Penny Black" research project is named after an 1830s
stamp used in Britain that reversed the cost of postage to the sender,
rather than the original method of charging the letter recipient -- but the
Microsoft plan would go the other way, and force the sender of an e-mail to
incur some kind of cost. Microsoft also is aiming to raise the cost of
sending mass e-mail in other ways: it is suing e-mail marketers in New York
and Washington for sending massive e-mailings that that slow down the
Internet.  (Reuters/Los Angeles Times 6 Feb 2004)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-spam6feb06,1,379371.story?coll=la-he
adlines-technology

*****

FLASH CARD
     "A really great talent finds its happiness in execution." (Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: MICKEY WRIGHT
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American woman golfer Mickey Wright
( b. 1935), whose outstanding play on the LPGA circuit earned her an
uncontested place among the great female athletes of the 20th century. In a
26-year career that began in 1954 she won a record 82 LPGA tournaments,
including a record setting 13 in a single season (1963). She was the winner
of the LPGA Championship for the four years 1958, 1960, 1961, and 1963.
Twice, in 1963 and in 1964, the Associated Press named her Woman Athlete of
the Year. In the 1961 season, probably her best, she won three majors, the
LPGA, the U.S. Women's Open, and Titleholders. She was president of the LPGA
in 1964 and in 1976 she was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
     Wright was born on Valentine's Day 1935 in San Diego, California, and
given the name Mary Kathryn. Encouraged by her father, Wright started to
play golf when she was 12 years of age. She had a successful amateur career,
crowned by winning the U.S. Girls Amateur in 1952. She started to attend
Stanford University as a psychology major, but abandoned her college studies
in 1954 to play golf professionally. From the beginning she played well, but
her true potential was revealed in 1958 when she won both the US Women's
Open and the LPGA Championship.
     Wright was forced to take time off from golf from 1969 to 1973 because
of her foot and wrist problems. She came back well enough to win the
Colgate-Dinah Shore Winner's Circle Tournament, making a 25-foot birdie putt
on the final hole. She played her last tournament in 1980, followed by a few
appearances on the Seniors Tour, including the Sprint Senior Challenge,
which earned her $30,000 -- the biggest paycheck of her career. Wright was
the 1994 Honoree of the Memorial Tournament, a PGA Tour event founded by
Jack Nicklaus.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0878338136/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for Mickey Wright's "Play Golf the Wright Way" -- or look for it in your
favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to
adult literacy programs.)

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