NewsScan Daily, 3 March 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 3 March 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Senate Bill Targets Spyware
        Filtering Technology Could Put an End to Illegal File-Swapping
        Electronic Voting Suffers Glitches
        AskJeeves Drops 'Paid-Inclusion' Listings
        Multiple Recipients Tend to Ignore E-Mail Requests

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Bogus Warning Messages
        Worth Thinking About: Feelings -- Oh-Oh Feelings

SENATE BILL TARGETS SPYWARE
      U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Barbara 
Boxer (D-Calif.) are backing a bill dubbed the "SPYBLOCK" Act, which would 
make it illegal to use the Internet to install software on people's 
computers without their consent, and would require companies that offer 
software downloads to provide more information about what the programs do 
and what information they collect. The bill also would require ads 
generated by spyware or adware programs to be clearly labeled as such. 
"Computer users should have the security of knowing their privacy isn't 
being violated by software parasites that have secretly burrowed into their 
hard drive," says Wyden. Spyware has been around for years, but as its 
sneaky code has reached out to touch more users, the tide of public 
sentiment has now turned against it. "The major concern here is user 
control and transparency," says Ari Schwartz, associate director for the 
Center for Democracy and Technology. "We've found that many consumers do 
not understand what they're getting themselves into when they download 
software." Some skeptics say this latest effort is likely to be every bit 
as effective as the preceding CAN-SPAM Act, which many computer experts say 
has done little to curb the deluge of spam flooding consumers' in-boxes. 
"If you apply the mailbox test, the spam law hasn't had a significant 
effect. It would be nice to see the spam law working as intended before we 
say we want to follow the same route with spyware," says one attorney. 
(Washington Post 2 Mar 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23307-2004Mar2.html

FILTERING TECHNOLOGY COULD PUT AN END TO ILLEGAL FILE-SWAPPING
      Audible Magic has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, touting the 
capabilities of its technology, which it says can block the swapping of 
copyrighted music. It works by identifying the "psycho-acoustical" 
properties of a piece of music -- essentially the computer equivalent of 
listening to the song itself -- which enables it to recognize all versions 
of a song, despite variations in recording qualities or other subtle 
differences. The company has attracted the attention of the Recording 
Industry Association of America, which is backing Audible's technology as 
one possible solution to illegal downloading. In past months, peer-to-peer 
executives have repeatedly told Congress that is technologically impossible 
or infeasible to install such filtering systems on their networks, but with 
the advent of Audible, some are backpedaling on those statements, saying 
that even if it works, mandating the use of such technology would be a 
mistake. Requiring filters "would amount to the anointment of a specific 
technology as the winner in what the (recording) industry has made a 
file-sharing war," says Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a 
file-swapping trade association. Eisgrau says his group has asked for a 
demonstration of the Audible Magic technology, and RIAA chief executive 
Mitch Bainwol says he's happy to oblige: "The peer-to-peer community has 
said they are serious about filtering. But they've said they can't filter. 
We're saying, well, the good news is that you can." (CNet News.com 3 Mar 2004)
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5168505.html

ELECTRONIC VOTING SUFFERS GLITCHES
      Voters in California, Georgia and Maryland reported problems with 
their attempts to cast electronic ballots, citing a frustrating mix of 
frozen screens, encoder problems and other malfunctions that caused delays 
of up to two hours and forced some voters to travel to other polling sites 
to cast old-fashioned paper ballots. Election officials blamed improperly 
trained poll workers, but critics say Tuesday's experience is just a 
harbinger of worse things to come next fall, when at least 50 million 
voters -- almost half of the expected voter turnout -- will use 
touch-screen voting systems. "Unless Congress deals with this problem 
immediately by requiring voting machines to produce a paper record voters 
can verify, we're going to have more of these occurrences each time we have 
an election, including this November," says New Jersey Rep. Rush Holt. "The 
only question is, how long it will take before voters lose faith in a 
system that they thought was being fixed?" (AP 3 Mar 2004)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040303/D812TSG00.html

ASK JEEVES DROPS 'PAID-INCLUSION' LISTINGS
      On the heels of Yahoo's announcement it's launching its own 
"paid-inclusion" program, AskJeeves is dropping its Index Express program, 
which enabled advertisers and Web site operators to pay for guaranteed 
inclusion in the company's search index. Company executives said the 
program adversely skews the search results delivered to users. "We've found 
it impacts the relevance of the results" for the users, says AskJeeves VP 
Jim Lanzone. "That's something we don't think is in the best interest of 
our users." The program is slated to shut down in about 30 days, when most 
of its remaining Index Express contracts expire. (Wall Street Journal 3 Mar 
2004)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107827881934145010,00.html (sub req'd)

MULTIPLE RECIPIENTS TEND TO IGNORE E-MAIL REQUESTS
      Ever wonder why those mass-mailed pleas for help usually fall on deaf 
ears? Greg Barron, the CLER Research Fellow at Harvard Business School, and 
his colleague Eldad Yechiam, a post-doctoral research fellow at Indiana 
University's psychology department, say that the more people listed as 
recipients of an e-mail help requests, the lower the response rate. This is 
mostly attributable to "diffusion of responsibility," where each recipient 
assumes that someone else will respond, says Barron: "The fundamental part 
of this dilemma is that the utility of not volunteering is higher than the 
utility of volunteering, assuming that someone else has volunteered. The 
key to making the dilemma (and the diffusion of responsibility) disappear 
lies in increasing either the cost of not volunteering (i.e., of shirking) 
or the personal gain from choosing to respond. The easiest way to do this 
is simply to designate responsibility. In this context it is interesting to 
note that responsibility literally means the ability to respond." Barron 
suggests individualizing each e-mail request (forget those undisclosed 
listservs) and bemoans the technological efficiency of most e-mail clients 
that make such individual requests cumbersome to produce. "That is not 
surprising since the need here, for the personal touch, is not 
technological but psychological." (Harvard Business School Working 
Knowledge 1 Mar 2004)
http://hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=3947&t=technology

*****

FLASH CARD
      "The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your 
physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing 
weary." (Thomas A. Edison)

BOGUS WARNING MESSAGES
      Bogus messages are being sent out from some impostors calling 
themselves "The NewsScan.com Team." They seem to be trying to get the 
recipient to open an attached file, which they say is password protected. 
The file is a Trojan of some sort, so do NOT open it. The file inside the 
ZIP appears to be connecting to a Web site, downloading something from it 
and installing it on your machine. The messages are sent from another 
e-mail server pretending to be coming from newsscan.com and there is no way 
to stop them. However, there is nothing preventing you (or us) from 
thinking bad thoughts about them.

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: FEELINGS -- OH OH FEELINGS
      Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, claims we can describe our feeling 
and yet not be able to explain them:
      "Given the ubiquity of feelings, one would have thought that their 
science would have been elucidated long ago -- what feelings are, how they 
work, what they mean -- but that is hardly the case. Of all the mental 
phenomena we can describe, feelings and their essential ingredients -- pain 
and pleasure -- are the least understood in biological and specifically 
neurobiological terms. This is all the more puzzling considering that 
advanced societies cultivate feelings shamelessly and dedicate so many 
resources and efforts to manipulating those feelings with alcohol, drugs of 
abuse, medical drugs, food, real sex, virtual sex, all manner of feel-good 
consumption, and all manner of feel-good social and religious practices. We 
doctor our feelings with pills, drinks, health spas, workouts, and 
spiritual exercises, but neither the public nor science have yet come to 
grips with what feelings are, biologically speaking.
      "One could study how the brain makes us move. One could study sensory 
processes, visual and otherwise, and understand how thoughts are put 
together. One could study how the brain learns and memorizes thoughts. One 
could even study the emotional reactions with which we respond to varied 
objects and events. But feelings were private and inaccessible. It was not 
possible to explain how feelings happened or where they happened. One 
simply could not get 'behind' feelings."
                          ***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0156028719 
/newsscancom/ref=nosim for Antonio Damasio's "Looking For Spinoza: Joy, 
Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain" -- or look for it in your favorite library. 
(We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy 
programs.)

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