NewsScan Daily, 17 February 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 17 February 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Stolen Code Raises Security Concerns
        Authors In The News (Unintentionally)
        Payroll Cards Replacing Paychecks for Many U.S. Workers
        FTC Warning About Private No-Spam Registry
        Skilled Foreign Workers in U.S. Companies

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Super Bowl Half-Time Shows

STOLEN CODE RAISES SECURITY CONCERNS
      The distribution on the Internet of stolen source code for portions 
of Microsoft's Windows 2000 and Windows NT operating systems is raising new 
concerns among security experts. A former federal computer crime prosecutor 
says, "This raises real national security concerns. The fact that 
Microsoft's software is so widely available will have an impact across the 
computer security industry." Critics have often accused Microsoft of doing 
a poor job of protecting the security of its software from network vandals. 
A Microsoft executive's response to the latest theft was: "We take this 
seriously. It's illegal for third parties to post or make our source code 
available. From that standpoint we've taken appropriate legal action to 
protect our intellectual property." (New York Times 14 Feb 2004)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/technology/14soft.html

AUTHORS IN THE NEWS (UNINTENTIONALLY)
      A software glitch exposed the real identities of book reviewers at 
Amazon's Canadian Web site -- thereby revealing that some authors are in 
the practice of posting anonymous glowing reviews of their own work. 
[Surprise.]  ne defender of the practice is author John Rechy, who wrote a 
favorable review of his latest book, posting the review anonymously as "A 
Reader From Chicago." Rechy says: "That anybody is allowed to come in and 
anonymously trash a book to me is absurd. How to strike back? Just go in 
and rebut every single one of them." The glitch has since been unglitched. 
(AP/San Jose Mercury News 14 Feb 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7955264.htm

PAYROLL CARDS REPLACING PAYCHECKS FOR MANY U.S. WORKERS
      A number of U.S. employers are replacing traditional paychecks with 
payroll cards that employees can use to get money out of ATM machines (or 
use them as debit cards to make store purchases). The payroll cards are 
intended mainly for workers who don't have bank accounts, and some major 
employers -- such as Sears, McDonald's, Blockbuster and Domino's -- already 
use them. A survey by the American Payroll Association reports that over 
the course of the next year about half of all employers will be evaluating 
the benefits of payroll cards for their companies, but the new system also 
has its critics, and consumer advocate Ed Mierzwinski says, "We see payroll 
cards contributing to a second-class system of consumers. The companies are 
just trying to save money. Companies ought to leverage their power to force 
banks to offer affordable accounts."(USA Today 15 Feb 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techcorporatenews/2004-02-15-paycards_x.htm

FTC WARNING ABOUT PRIVATE NO-SPAM REGISTRY
      The Federal Trade Commission has cautioned computer users not to fall 
victim a Web site claiming to offer an e-mail version of the federal 
do-not-call registry. Despite the official-looking appearance of the site's 
URL, the "Do Not Email Registry" has no affiliation with the U.S. 
government, and is apparently a scam for collecting e-mail addresses on 
behalf of spammers. However, the site's operators say their registry serves 
"legitimate direct marketers" who want to make sure their mailings don't go 
to spam opponents. The e-mail addresses collected by the registry are made 
available to bulk mailers in an encrypted form allowing them to check for 
any overlap with their own mailing lists without seeing the actual 
addresses. (Washington Post 15 Feb 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41490-2004Feb14.html

SKILLED FOREIGN WORKERS IN U.S. COMPANIES
      A new cap on H-1B visas -- cutting by almost two-thirds the number of 
skilled foreign workers permitted to work in the U.S. -- is likely to put a 
real squeeze on this country's industries. Immigration lawyer Judith Golub 
predicts: "Come March, you're going to have companies feeling it very 
urgently." The cap will affect not only electronics experts, physicists, 
and computer programmers but also fashion models, game designers, doctors, 
occupational therapists, accountants, and others. Harris Miller of the 
Information Technology Association of America say: "The anti-immigrant mood 
and the anti-globalization mood inside Washington is as negative as I've 
seen it in my 25 years working in this field," and one unemployed American 
programmer complains, "There are plenty of qualified Americans who are 
dying to take these jobs." But Thom Stohler of the American Electronics 
Association warns that a restriction on foreign workers could backfire, 
resulting in companies setting up research operations overseas where they 
don't face restrictions on hiring. "Companies might decide if they can't 
get this visa, they'll hire them there and keep them there. Now this person 
is creating intellectual property in another country." (Los Angeles Times 
16 Feb 2004)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-visa16feb16,1,4187356.story?coll=la-headlines-technology

*****

FLASH CARD
      "All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, 
art would be ineffectual." (Honoré de Balzac)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: SUPER BOWL HALF-TIME SHOWS
      Back to the Future:
      If there'd been a Super Bowl in the late 19th century, what would the 
MTV-types of those days have done to make the half-time entertainment 
"edgy" and outrageous? No doubt about it, they'd have featured that hot new 
dance called the Viennese waltz. Historians Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin 
quote a German visitor to Austria who described Johann Strauss's waltzes as 
"an escape into the demonic":
      "African and hot-blooded, crazy with life... restless, unbeautiful, 
passionate... Strauss exorcises the wicked devils from our bodies and he 
does it with waltzes, which are the modern exorcism... capturing our senses 
in a sweet trance. Typically African is the way he conducts his dances; his 
own limbs no longer belong to him when the thunderstorm of the waltz is let 
loose; his fiddle-bow dances with his arms... the tempo animates his feet; 
the melody waves champagne-glasses in his face and the devil is abroad... A 
dangerous power has been given into the hands of this dark man; he may 
regard it as his good fortune that to music one may think all kinds of 
thoughts, that no censorship can have anything to do with waltzes, that 
music stimulates our emotions directly, and not through the channel of 
thought... Bacchantically the couples waltz... lust let loose. No God 
inhibits them."
      But there was no FCC back then to hold hearings.
                              ***
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1566631327/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for "Wittgenstein's Vienna" by Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin -- or look 
for it in your favorite library. [We donate all revenues from our book 
recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

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