NewsScan Daily, 16 April 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 16 April 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Apple Computer: The Music Company
       E-Filing Took the Long-Lines Fun Out of Tax Day
       3d Searching
       Worldwide Growth of PC Sales
       'Glanceable Technology'

FEATURES        
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: A.C. Gilbert
       Safe & Sound In The Cyber Age: On the Road Again, Again

APPLE COMPUTER: THE MUSIC COMPANY
     Apple's profits nearly tripled in its second quarter, largely because
of continued strong sales of the iPod portable music player. Apple chief
executive Steve Jobs said, "We feel great. We sold a lot of Macs, but we've
sold more iPods in the quarter than all the Macs put together." But Apple is
resisting a proposal from RealNetworks suggesting the two companies form a
tactical alliance in the digital music business. Industry analyst Richard
Doherty of Envisioneering says: "Real understands how incredibly powerful
the Microsoft music initiative will be. I don't think that Jobs understands
this. He doesn't realize how big the juggernaut is about to get." And
RealNetworks chief executive Rob Glazer is stunned to find Steve Jobs so
adamant about keeping Apple systems proprietary: "Why is Steve afraid of
opening up the iPod? Steve is showing a high level of fear that I don't
understand." (New York Times 15 Apr 2004) http://tinyurl.com/3ch8y &
http://tinyurl.com/2xgz5

E-FILING TOOK THE LONG-LINES FUN OUT OF TAX DAY
    IRS official Sam Serio said yesterday, "I haven't seen a line all day.
In all prior years, I have seen 200 to 300 people." Serio says that 51.8
million out of 89.4 million federal tax returns were filed electronically, a
12% increase over last year. (Washington Post 16 Jul 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16353-2004Apr15.html

3D SEARCHING
     Researchers have developed new search engines that can mine catalogs of
three-dimensional objects such as airplane parts or architectural features.
For example, Purdue University professor Karthik Ramani created a system
that can find computer-designed industrial parts, and Caterpillar Inc.
engineer Rick Jeff says of Ramani's technology: "If you've got to design a
new elbow for an oil line, more often than not, we have a plethora of
elbows"; Jeff says the problem has been that each has to be examined
separately -- a tedious task "that isn't even performed that often, because
it isn't feasible or practical... It seems like there's ever-greater demands
for speed in product development, and it's those kinds of breakthroughs that
are needed to keep up. This would really just add to the efficiency."
Professor Ramani says happily: "I think this is the beginning of the
information age." (AP/San Jose Mercury News 16 Apr 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8441476.htm

WORLDWIDE GROWTH OF PC SALES
     Market research firms Gartner and IDC both say that worldwide PC
shipments continued double-digit growth this quarter as more businesses
replaced their older machines. The two firms use slightly different
measurement methods and yield slightly different results. IDC's figures
indicate that 45.3 million units were shipped in the first three months of
2004, representing a 13.4% increase from the previous year. The top five PC
makers were Dell (18.6 market share) and Hewlett-Packard (15.6%), followed
by IBM, Fujitsu and Acer. (Acer replaced Toshiba for fifth place.) In the
U.S., the top five vendors for the quarter were Dell, HP, IBM, eMachines,
and Gateway. (AP/USA Today 16 Mar 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2004-04-16-pc-sales_x.htm

'GLANCEABLE TECHNOLOGY'
     Here's a good example of glance able technology: the Orb, a globe which
follows activity on the stock market and lights up accordingly, so that it
glows green when the market's up, red when it's down, and yellow when it's
unstable. The Orb was created by Ambient Devices, and is based on ideas that
came out of the Media Lab at MIT. Ambient Devices president David Rose
explains: "It's based on our brain's natural ability to process many streams
of information in parallel. Our perceptual system is great at
multiprocessing hundreds of peripheral cues every second. We do it without
even trying. Today's computer interfaces completely ignore this." Glanceable
technology is a form of the "ubiquitous computing" concept pioneered by the
late Mark Weiser, former chief technologist at Xerox's Palo Alto Research
Center, who wrote: "Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual
reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated
world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the
world with people." Rose predicts: "Once people are aware how easy and
delightful it is to have these information devices in their lives, it will
become second nature." But the Orb originally cost $300, and Rose says: "The
price needs to get down to sort of like the clock range before people would
have more than a few around their house." (AP/Los Angeles Times 16 Apr 2004)
http://tinyurl.com/2wn3d

*****  

FLASH CARD 
     "The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this:
Decide what you want." (Ben Stein)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: A.C. GILBERT
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the toy manufacturer A. C. (Alfred
Carlton) Gilbert, who is best known for inventing the Erector Set.
Introduced at the 1913 Toy Fair in New York City, Gilbert's Erector Set was
the first construction toy to include girder-like parts that replicated
structural elements in actual use by builders. The Erector Set sold well,
with more than 30 million being purchased in the following fifty years.
     The Erector Set was not Gilbert's only successful toy. Over the years,
he manufactured the American Flyer model train sets, a glass blowing kit, a
variety of chemistry and microscope sets, an "Atomic Energy Lab" complete
with real radioactive particles and a working Geiger counter, and his first
toy product, the Mysto Magic Exhibition Set.
     When he died in 1962, A. C. Gilbert had acquired 150 patents for the
inventions that went into his products, which should be described more as
learning tools than just "toys." Gilbert always intended his products to
improve the minds of the children that found them fun to play with.
     Gilbert was born in Salem, Oregon in 1884. As a boy he loved to perform
magic tricks, becoming good enough to once have matched a professional
magician trick for trick. He was also a good athlete: in high school as a
wrestler and a member of track and field team; in college, he was a football
star. More importantly, he was a brilliant student, who was accepted into
the Yale Medical School, where he put his skills as a performing magician to
earn money for his tuition.
     In 1908, he went to London, England, to compete in the IV Olympiad,
winning the gold medal in the pole vault. In 1909, he finished medical
school, but decided not to practice medicine but to pursue his interest in
magic by founding the Mysto Manufacturing Company to sell magic kits for
kids. Soon his flair for invention found expression in the creation of a
children's construction kit that was not just a toy but an assemblage of
metal beams with evenly spaced holes for bolts to pass through, screws,
bolts, pulleys, gears and eventually even engines. Advertised as the "Mysto
Erector Structural Steel Builder" in 1913, the Erector set quickly began to
make its appearance in the nation's living rooms, as children and their
parents set to work building miniature skyscrapers, bridges and railways.
     As a leading manufacturer of construction and scientific toys, Gilbert
became the founder and the first president of the Toy Manufacturers
Association of America. His New Haven-based A.C. Gilbert Company became, by
1941, the world's largest toy manufacturing company. Probably no toymaker's
name in history is better known.
     In 1941 he opened the A.C. Gilbert Hall of Science on New York's 5th
Avenue, as the embodiment of his vision of toymaking. There, at the touch of
a button, trains move, electromagnets grab iron, ferris wheels turn. He
intended it to be a model of the ideal classroom for the age of science and
technology -- a vision not yet quite realized by the nation's educational
establishment.
                   
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0142003530/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for a biography of Gilbert by Bruce Watson -- or look for it in your
favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to
adult literacy programs.)

SAFE & SOUND IN THE CYBER AGE: ON THE ROAD AGAIN, AGAIN
             by Chey Cobb and Stephen Cobb
     This column continues where the last one left off, with our intrepid
business travelers attempting to protect their data while on the road. The
previous column included tips on protecting your notebook computer when
dining with clients and other situations where you might be tempted to put
your computer in the trunk of your rental car, whence it may be filched by a
felonious observer--a fate that befell the CEO of a computer security
company some years ago.
     Speaking of computers being stolen from CEOs and security personnel,
you might recall the case of Qualcomm CEO Irwin Jacobs. In September of
2000, he left his computer on a podium in the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency
in Irvine, California, when he stepped a few feet away to talk with a group
of journalists. This was right after he had used the computer to present
Powerpoint slides to about 90 members of the Society of American Business
Editors and Writers, at an event sponsored, in part, by Irvine-based
computer security company Rainbow Technologies. Fifteen minutes later there
was no sign of the IBM notebook, which contained "proprietary information
that could be valuable to foreign governments."
     You may also recall several embarrassing incidents in 2000 in the UK.
In May of that year the Times reported that a thief snatched a naval
intelligence officer's laptop computer after following the officer onto a
train at Paddington (the laptop contained "specifications for the next
generation of fighter aircraft and details of how they can be controlled
from the ground"). Two months earlier, according to the Times, a laptop
belonging to an MI5 officer was snatched at the same station when he put it
down to buy a ticket (the computer contained "details of the Northern
Ireland peace deal").
     What you won¹t see in the papers are the thousands of unreported
incidents like this one, which involved a friend of ours, himself a security
expert. He was on assignment in the IT department of one of the world's
largest financial services companies, located in an controlled-access
building. He walked about 20 yards from his assigned booth to the employee
kitchen for some coffee. When he returned his laptop was gone and was never
recovered.
     Perhaps the most 'venerable' laptop theft in our case file dates back
to 1985 and the very first "laptop" computer, the groundbreaking
Hewlett-Packard 110. A former colleague was manning a booth at a computer
show where his employer, an HP dealer, was proudly exhibiting this new
wonder of the age together with another wonder, the first LaserJet printer.
As the colleague was explaining the benefits of the printer to none other
than the local bishop, a man walked up to the booth, picked up the HP 110
and ran off. At which point the colleague exclaimed "What the [expletive
deleted]! Sorry father. But that [expletive deleted], sorry father, is
stealing our [expletive deleted] computer! Sorry father, but I have to go
now." At which point the colleague ran after the thief in a futile attempt
to catch him. 
     The point of these stories is to bring home the fact that notebooks do
get stolen, particularly if they are not closely guarded. Your strategic
response to this reality needs to address two aspects: prevention and
recovery. First, do what you can to prevent theft of your notebook. Second,
do what you can to minimize the fallout, should theft occur anyway. Here,
thinly disguised as a list of actionable items, is a prevention plan:
     * Keep your notebook with you at all times.
          -Never place it in checked luggage.
          -Never leave in unattended, e.g. on a podium or in a conference
room.
          -Never let it out of your sight at airport security checkpoints.
     * If you must leave your notebook unattended, lock it up or hide it.
           -Use the hotel room safe (but only after you have made sure the
safe
               works properly).
           -If there is no safe in your room, and you have to step out, and
you
               don't want to take it with you, place it between mattress and
box 
               springs (but not while it is still running).
           -Don¹t leave it plugged in, turned on, in front of hotel room
window 
               with the drapes open.
           -Disguise the fact that you are out of your room by placing the
'Do Not 
               Disturb' sign on the door and leaving the TV tuned to
something not
               too loud, like CNN Headline News.
     * Make life harder for thieves
           -Carry the computer in a bag with a strap that will make it
harder for
               someone to snatch.
           -Don¹t let others see you place it in the trunk of your car.
           -Chose a bag that doesn't shout "computer bag."
           -Consider a motion detector alarm and/or cable lock.
     These items address physical prevention. There is also logical
prevention, that is, preventing a thief who succeeds in getting your
computer from getting at the information it contains. We will address this
topic in a future column.
     As to your recovery plan, realistically, you should focus on getting by
without the computer. This means backing up essential information. Here's on
regimen to consider:
     A. Synchronize the notebook hard drive with a removable hard drive
before a trip (essentially making a backup of the entire drive).
     B. Store removable hard drive in a safe place.
     C. Store 'active' documents on removable media, such as a memory stick
or USB flash drive.
     D. Take the removable media out of the drive when not in use, and store
on your person (not in the computer bag).
     Steps A and B mean that when you get back home you can re-create the
old system on a replacement machine. Steps C and D mean that documents you
change while you are on the road will survive theft of the notebook.
     [Chey Cobb, CISSP, the author of "Cryptography for Dummies" and
"Network Security for Dummies," is a former senior technical security
advisor to the NRO. She can be emailed as chey at aug dot com. Stephen Cobb,
CISSP, is the author of "Privacy for Business" and can be emailed as scobb
at cobb dot com.]

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