NewsScan Daily, 31 March 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 31 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"  
       Advocate Loses Suit Against Airline ID Requirement
       Pentagon Ends Test of Internet Voting
       Salaries Jump Downunder As Recovery Kicks In
       The Outsourcing Paradox
       Staying Clean on the Internet

FEATURES        
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Melanie Klein
       Mailbag: The World As We Find It

ADVOCATE LOSES SUIT AGAINST AIRLINE ID REQUIREMENT
     John Gilmore, a privacy advocate with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, has lost a federal lawsuit he'd filed after he'd been denied
entry to a Southwest Airlines flight for refusing to show identification
prior to boarding. Judge Susan Illston ruled that that a request for a
passenger's identification does not violate that passenger's Fourth
Amendment rights, and rejected Gilmore's claims that the somewhat vague
regulations violated due process. But Gilmore could still find good news in
the dismissal of his lawsuit: "Judge Illston confirmed I do have standing to
challenge but said, 'You're in the wrong court.' I need to go to the court
of appeals. I will continue working on the issue. This isn't the end."
(AP/San Jose Mercury News 30 Mar 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8312947.htm

PENTAGON ENDS TEST OF INTERNET VOTING
     The U.S. Department of Defense has decided to terminate its $22 million
pilot project designed to test Internet voting for 100,000 American military
personnel and civilians living overseas. Because of concerns about the
security of online voting, the department had already decided not to allow
Internet ballots to be counted in the presidential election, and has now
decided to scrap the whole project -- at least for the discernible future. A
Pentagon spokesman says: "It's not that it's never going to go in test mode.
It's that right now we're not going to do it. We have to step back and look
at everything that we've done for two or three years in this thing. But
right now we're not going forward." (AP/Washington Post 30 Mar 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37319-2004Mar30.html

VANDERBILT CREDITED FOR INTERNET MARKETING RESEARCH
     The marketing faculty of Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School
of Management has been ranked with MIT among the top two institutions in the
nation for research citations. The evaluation was conducted by Academic
Assessment Services, an independent research organization that tracks
citations of articles written by business school faculty members and
analyzes the impact of those citations on the work of other scholars.
(Incidentally, the faculty members who received this recognition include
Professor Donna Hoffman, a long-time friend of NewsScan.) Hoffman and
Professor Thomas P. Novak last year were awarded a grant by the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation to establish the Vanderbilt University Sloan Center for
Internet Retailing at the Owen School. http://www.owen.vanderbilt.edu.

SALARIES JUMP DOWNUNDER AS RECOVERY KICKS IN
     The salaries of information technology professionals in Australia have
emerged from their slump of a year ago to rise by up to 5% on average in
2004, according to Michael Page Technology's 2004 Salary Survey. The survey
indicates that salaries are rising in "skill-short" areas, such as customer
relations management (CRM), security and business intelligence. A year ago,
permanent salaries fell an average of 5% and contractor rates were down 19%.
Job vacancies were close to 50% higher this year for permanent roles. (The
Australian 30 Mar 2004)
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,9122657%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,
00.html (Rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin University)

THE OUTSOURCING PARADOX
     A report prepared for the Information Technology Association of America
(ITAA) by Global Insight predicts that the continuing business trend of
outsourcing white-collar jobs to low wage countries will ultimately lower
inflation, create jobs and boost productivity in the U.S. Although the
researchers believe that demand for U.S. software engineers will shrink
through 2008, ITAA is emphasizing that outsourcing has damaged the job
market far less than the dot-com meltdown of early 2000, when Internet
startups, telecom companies and other companies eliminated as many as
268,000 positions. ITAA president Harris Miller says, "The myth is that
we've started this long decline into the midnight of the technology work
force. This report shows that, assuming the recovery continues, the number
of IT jobs will actually increase." (AP/Los Angeles Times 30 Mar 2004)
http://tinyurl.com/yunzp

STAYING CLEAN ON THE INTERNET
     Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is testing a system (called e-Suds)
that sends e-mail to students when their laundry is done and lets them log
on to an Internet site to check the status of machines. USA Technologies,
which developed the system, plans to install e-Suds at several other
colleges this summer, although some young students at CMU, as high-tech as
it is, continue to believe in the ancient faiths, and at least one CMU
student says: "I'll probably just keep using my watch." (AP/USA Today 30 Mar
2004) http://tinyurl.com/yth2g

*****  

FLASH CARD      
     "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop
playing." (George Bernard Shaw)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: MELANIE KLEIN
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the child psychoanalyst Melanie Klein
(1882-1960), who is best known for her invention of "play therapy" as a
peculiarly suitable technique for diagnosing and treating the psychological
problems of children.
     Klein modified Freudian analysis to expand the importance of the
mother's role and the significance of preverbal communication. She
introduced the concept of "breast envy" and succeeded in extending
psychoanalysis to include childhood years earlier than those investigated by
Freud himself. She used her observations of free play to gain insight into a
child's unconscious fantasy life, enabling her to psychoanalyze children as
young as two or three years of age. Another feature of her practice was
success in analyzing personality origins in terms of paranoid-schizoid and
depressive patterns.
     Klein was born Melanie Reizes, the youngest child of a dental surgeon,
in Vienna, Austria. Her early plans for a medical career were abandoned when
she married at age 21. The marriage did not turn out to be happy, although
the couple had three children. In the years leading up to World War I Klein
underwent psychoanalysis in Budapest with Sandor Ferenczi, a close associate
of Freud. One outcome of her analysis was the desire to become an analyst
herself. Ferenczi encouraged Klein to concentrate her practice on the
psychoanalysis of young children. In the year 1919 she published her first
paper about her work with young children. Two years later she went to work
with Karl Abraham at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, where she
conducted a practice until 1926. Then she moved to London, where she would
remain for the rest of her life, earning a prominent place in British
psychoanalytic circles.
     In her work with children, Klein employed the observation of free play
because she believed that play could reveal the child's way of controlling
anxiety. She used her work with adult patients to clarify and extend her
ideas on infant and childhood anxiety. Klein's two major publications about
her theories and techniques were the 1932 book, "The Psychoanalysis of
Children," and the 1957 work, "Envy and Gratitude." A final work, published
posthumously in 1961, was "Narrative of a Child Analysis," which was largely
based on detailed notes she had prepared in 1941.
     Although Klein's work was rooted in that of Freud, she has been
credited with original and somewhat unorthodox amplifications of Freudian
theory, which had little to say about Klein's challenging patients --
children too young to verbalize their feelings.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0029214815/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for "The Selected Melanie Klein" (ed. Juliet Mitchell) -- or look for it
in your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book
recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

DUMB OR DUMBER?
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=10271
     So Marc Andreessen calls the desire of some members of Congress to
restrict the use of offshore labor "the silliest, dumbest thing I've ever
heard of in years. It's just nuts." Dumber still would be any company which
has most of its production and most of its customers offshore but would
continue to keep its headquarters in the USA and pay taxes there. (Terry
Conboy)  

LET AULD COMPUTING BE FORGOT
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=10303
     Mark Gibbs hit this one dead-on. Until recently I received all messages
sent to any email address @arfunk.com -- including non-existent ones. (Hey,
it *is* my domain after all.) Over the past year some spammers have been
sending out messages with forged "From:" headers that indicate the message
came from someone @arfunk.com, when nothing could be further from the truth.
I was getting over 600 bounce messages each day, in reply to spam sent to
non-existent addresses at other domains, before I turned-off the "catch-all"
email feature at my domain.  And if 600 went to non-existent email
addresses, how many more went to real addresses?  All those recipients must
think my domain sent out the spam. I ended up adding a disclaimer to the top
of my web site because of this problem.  I've even received spam, both at
home and at work, that was forged to indicate it had originated from my
domain. There are days I miss the old Internet, with its limits on
acceptable use, lack of commercial anything, and even text-based interfaces.
(Andy Funk)  

SOME FAVORITE KETTERING QUOTES
Re: 
http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=honorary_subscriber&id=764
     Thank you for the info on Charles Kettering. I have come across his
quotes and not known much about him, but loved his quotes, especially this
first one. People are very open-minded about new things -- as long as
they're exactly like the old ones. Knowing is not understanding. There is a
great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about
something and not really understand it. The world hates change, yet it is
the only thing that has brought progress. The only difference between a
problem and a solution is that people understand the solution. You can't
have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
(Seena Sharp)  

HORSE MANURE
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=10304
     I disagree with Luis Claudio Silva¹s comment that Charles F. Kettering
deserves blame rather than praise for his part in inventing leaded gasoline
and Freon. At worst these inventions are a mixed blessing, rather than the
unmitigated evil that Silva claims. Without denying the problems that
resulted from the widespread use of Kettering's inventions, it's only
reasonable to recognize the benefits they brought. For example, when
automobiles replaced horse drawn transportation in cities, they removed a
major health risk and pollution source: horse manure. I¹m not joking... T.W.
Brands' biography of Theodore Roosevelt blames airborne powdered horse
manure for respiratory problems that plagued many city dwellers in TR's
time. The point is that "progress" is driven by the desire to solve one set
of problems, and it will generally create another set of problems -- thus
engendering the need for more progress. It's a self-sustaining cycle that
one of my anthropology professors called "technological driven-ness."
Although we might be tempted to swear off progress altogether, I doubt that
we'd really want to return to the set of problems that went along with the
status quo before Kettering. (Greg Farman)

LIFETIME COST ANALYSIS
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=10299
     The piece on "100 Year Domain Service" reminds me of the time back in
the late '80s when I was the President of the San Diego Computer Society.
The Board thought it was a good idea to have a Life Membership when most of
the membership fees were needed to support the monthly newsletter. I
disagreed, but was outvoted. At that time yearly membership was $25 or $30,
so I signed up for the Life Membership at $150 to demonstrate that they had
put a money loser in place. I got more than my moneys worth of newsletter
issues, but they haven't published a newsletter for several years now and
for the last few years of printed publication the newsletter was free to the
public, even after they raised Life Membership to $1000. (Bob Schuchman)

MUMFORD'S CONTRIBUTION TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Re: 
http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=honorary_subscriber&id=760
     I would just like to say that Mumford's "Technics and Civilization" is
the one book I make sure is on the reading list of all of the students who
work with me on information technology, because even though there is not one
sentence in it about this technology, I believe that Mumford still has the
most sophisticated, multi-dimensional perspective on technology and its
manifold intertwinements with society, history, economics, politics,
culture, art, the environment, and the self of any writer or thinker I have
encountered. I think that someone who has absorbed Mumford's perspective is
more likely to think in an adequately complex and multi-dimensional way
about information technology than someone who hasn't. (Jeremy J. Shapiro)

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.
***********************************************************