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

NewsScan Daily, 17 March 2004 ("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"  
       HP Launch of Linux PCs in Asia
       Powell Reassures India About Outsourcing
       Phishing Scams 'Likely To Target Corporate Info Soon'
       The Phatbot Trojan
       Kazaa Rhumba

FEATURES        
       Flash Card  
       Worth Thinking About: The Joys of Joyce

HP LAUNCH OF LINUX PCs IN ASIA
     Hewlett-Packard has become the first major PC maker to offer to
consumers in Asia desktop computer lines running Linux -- a move that now
makes HP a serious threat to Microsoft's dominance in that part of the
world. (Japanese, South Korean and Chinese officials have long been worrying
that their countries are too dependent on Microsoft's Windows systems.) The
HP Linux computers will be distributed by Turbolinux and sold in 12 Asian
locations: China, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia,
Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. (AP/San Jose Mercury
News 16 Mar 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8199957.htm

POWELL REASSURES INDIA ABOUT OUTSOURCING
     U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has reassured India that the Bush
administration will not try to halt the outsourcing of high-technology jobs
to that country. Powell explained that American concerns about outsourcing,
as expressed in political complaints, were not surprising: "Outsourcing is a
natural effect of the global economic system and the rise of the Internet
and broadband communications. You're not going to eliminate outsourcing;
but, at the same time, when you outsource jobs it becomes a political issue
in anybody's country." David Wade, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, said
that Powell's remarks demonstrated that the Bush administration has "failed
to fight for American workers"; White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said,
"The secretary made clear in his remarks that we are concerned when
Americans lose jobs, and we are focused on creating jobs for American
workers, and the best way to do that is to open markets around the world,
including in India." (New York Times 17 Mar 2004)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/international/asia/17POWE.html

PHISHING SCAMS 'LIKELY TO TARGET CORPORATE INFO SOON'
     Phishing scams will continue to flourish but their focus will change:
they will increasingly target corporate information, the Asia-Pacific
vice-president of one of the world's premier security company says. Richard
Turner of RSA Security said the current rash of phishing scams was just the
proverbial tip of the iceberg and those who were perpetrating them would
turn to the more lucrative field of stealing business secrets. "Australian
businesses are rapidly opening their networks to remote users, be they
employees who want to work from home, customers or those from other
companies who share information. As soon as you do this, you need to apply
good policy to information systems and business systems," said Turner, who
has been with RSA for the last eight years. "Once this stage is reached, the
need to implement well-configured software becomes paramount, in order to
provide protection against unauthorised connections." (The Age, 16 March
2004) http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/16/1079199195657.html Rec'd
from John Lamp, Deakin University

THE PHATBOT TROJAN
     The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has alerted computer security
experts about the Phatbot Trojan, which snoops for passwords on infected
computers and tries to disable firewall and antivirus software. Phatbot,
which is a "Trojan horse" because it lets vandals take surreptitious control
of unsecured computers, has proved difficult for law enforcement authorities
and antivirus companies to fight against. Mikko Hypponen, director of the
antivirus software company F-Secure in Finland says, "With these P2P Trojan
networks, even if you take down half of the affected machines, the rest of
the network continues to work just fine"; security expert Russ Cooper of
TruSecure warns, "If there are indeed hundreds of thousands of computers
infected with Phatbot, U.S. e-commerce is in serious threat of being
massively attacked by whoever owns these networks." (Washington Post 17 Mar
2004) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A444-2004Mar17.html

KAZAA RHUMBA
     Fabian Toader, a programmer in Redmond, Washington, claims he wrote the
source code for the Kazaa file-sharing software while he was a freelancer in
his native Romania, and he is now suing the program's distributor, Sharman
Networks, for $25 million in compensation. Toader says, "Sharman has made
millions using my software. I just want to be fairly compensated for my
contribution." Sharma, whose home offices are in Sydney, Australia, says:
"The work done by Fabian Toader on early versions of the Kazaa Media Desktop
software was done under a work for hire agreement that expressly states that
Kazaa B.V. owned all rights to any work related to the development of the
software." A Sharman spokesman has called Toader's new lawsuit a "shakedown
effort." (AP/USA Today 17 Mar 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-03-17-coder-sues-kazaa_x.htm

*****  

FLASH CARD      
     "I have always felt that everybody on earth goes about in disguise."
(Sean O¹Faolain)  

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE JOYS OF JOYCE
     Though a life-long expatriate from his native Ireland, James Joyce
never really wrote about anything else. His later works ("Ulysses" and
"Finnegans Wake") are not easy reading, but his early short stories are
quite accessible. Here's the opening section of his story, "The Dead":
     Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly
had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on
the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat, than the wheezy
hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway
to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not to attend to the
ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that and had
converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies' dressing-room. Miss Kate and
Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after
each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and
calling down to Lily to ask her who had come.
     It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan's annual dance.
Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of
the family, the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were
grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane's pupils too. Never once had it
fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in splendid style, as long
as anyone could remember: ever since Kate and Julia, after the death of
their brother Pat, had left the house in Stoney Batter and taken Mary Jane,
their only niece, to live with them in the dark, gaunt house on Usher's
Island, the upper part of which they had rented from Mr Fulham, the
corn-factor on the ground floor. That was a good thirty years ago if it was
a day. Mary Jane, who was then a little girl in short clothes, was now the
main prop of the household, for she had the organ in Haddington Road. She
had been through the Academy and gave a pupils' concert every year in the
upper room of the Ancient Concert Rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to the
better-class families on the Kingstown and Dalkey line. Old as they were,
her aunts also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still
the leading soprano in Adam and Eve's, and Kate, being too feeble to go
about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in the
back room. Lily, the caretaker's daughter, did housemaid's work for them.
Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well; the best of
everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled
stout. But Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders, so that she got on well
with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that was all. But the only thing
they would not stand was back answers.
     Of course, they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then
it was long after ten o'clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his
wife. Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn up
screwed. They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary Jane's pupils
should see him under the influence; and when he was like that it was
sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Malins always came late, but they
wondered what could be keeping Gabriel: and that was what brought them every
two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel or Freddy come.
     'O, Mr Conroy,' said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him,
'Miss Kate and Miss Julia thought you were never coming. Good night, Mrs
Conroy.' 
     'I'll engage they did,' said Gabriel, 'but they forget that my wife
here takes three mortal hours to dress herself.'
     He stood on the mat, scraping the snow from his goloshes, while Lily
led his wife to the foot of the stairs and called out:
     'Miss Kate, here's Mrs Conroy.'
     Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them
kissed Gabriel's wife, said she must be perished alive, and asked was
Gabriel with her. 
     'Here I am as right as the mail, Aunt Kate! Go on up. I'll follow,'
called out Gabriel from the dark.
     He continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went
upstairs, laughing, to the ladies' dressing-room. A light fringe of snow lay
like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps on the toes of
his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking
noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a cold, fragrant air from
out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds.
     'Is it snowing again, Mr Conroy?' asked Lily.
     She had preceded him into the pantry to help him off with his overcoat.
Gabriel smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and glanced
at her. She was a slim, growing girl, pale in complexion and with
hay-coloured hair. The gas in the pantry made her look still paler. Gabriel
had known her when she was a child and used to sit on the lowest step
nursing a rag doll.
     'Yes, Lily,' he answered, 'and I think we're in for a night of it.'
     He looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping
and shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to the piano
and then glanced at the girl, who was folding his overcoat carefully at the
end of a shelf. 
     'Tell me, Lily,' he said in a friendly tone, 'do you still go to
school?' 
     'O no, sir,' she answered. 'I'm done schooling this year and more.'
     'O, then,' said Gabriel gaily, 'I suppose we'll be going to your
wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh?'
     The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great
bitterness: 
     'The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of
you.' 
     Gabriel coloured, as if he felt he had made a mistake, and, without
looking at her, kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his
muffler at his patent-leather shoes.
                           ***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140186476/newsscancom/ref=nosim
for Joyce's early short stories collected in "Dubliners" -- 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 2004. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.
***********************************************************