NewsScan Daily, 23 April 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 23 April 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       China Postpones Wireless Plan
       India Implements E-Voting
       Md. Group Demands Paper Backup for E-Votes
       California Panel Nixes Diebold Voting Machines
       Flaws Found in Symantec Products
       AMD Creates Design Center in India

FEATURES        
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: Fantasy Ideology

CHINA POSTPONES WIRELESS PLAN
     The Chinese government has decided to postpone indefinitely a plan that
would have imposed its own standard for wireless technology. The decision is
effectively a concession to objections by U.S. companies that the Chinese
plan imposed an unfair trade barrier. U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald L.
Evans said of the Chinese decision: "It is certainly a landmark day -- a
fruitful day in the relationship between the United States and China. Our
exports to China are growing faster than exports to any other country in the
world." The AFL/CIO had filed a trade complaint last month asking that the
government punish China for allegedly gaining a commercial advantage in
trade through violating workers' rights, but a Chinese official said the
complaint is groundless and that the American labor leaders will be invited
to visit China and investigate the situation for themselves. (New York Times
22 Apr 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/22/business/worldbusiness/22trade.html

INDIA IMPLEMENTS E-VOTING
     For decades, millions of illiterate Indians voted by pressing their
thumbprints on ballot cards. This year, they'll just press a button -- and
so will everyone else. India's general elections, which began Tuesday, are
set to make the world's largest democracy also the world's largest user of
computerized voting machines. This year, in a staggered vote that runs
through May 10, India's 660 million registered voters will be able to
exercise their franchise on one of approximately 1 million computerized
voting machines in an electronic, ballot-less election. The change in India
is having a deep impact on politics. Supporters say it's also good for the
environment in a country trying to save its vanishing forests. More than
8,000 tons of paper, made from approximately 16 million trees, has been used
to print ballots for past federal elections. (The Australian 22 Apr 2004)
http://tinyurl.com/366ly (Rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U)

MD. GROUP DEMANDS PAPER BACKUP FOR E-VOTES
     A voter advocacy group in Maryland is suing that state's Board of
Elections to prevent the use of touch-screen voting machines until a paper
record is installed as auditable backup for the system. At present, the
state's Diebold voting machines are not set up to produce a paper record of
each individual vote. Linda H. Lamone, the state elections administrator,
says that  paper records are unnecessary because the Diebold system is
equipped to preserve votes in its memory: "It's stored in two different
locations. If we have battery failure, it still doesn't lose votes." She
also said: "It's going to be next to impossible for anyone to gain access to
manipulate the election. If anyone tries it, we're going to put them in
jail." (Washington Post 22 Apr 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35149-2004Apr22.html

CALIFORNIA PANEL NIXES DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINES
     California's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel has recommended
discontinuing the use of 15,000 its Diebold touch-screen voting machines,
saying that the systems had malfunctioned in the state's March primary
election in March and caused many voters in San Diego County to be turned
away. (AP/USA Today 22 Apr 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2004-04-22-panel-dings-diebold_
x.htm

FLAWS FOUND IN SYMANTEC PRODUCTS
     The security firm eEye Digital Security has discovered four more
critical vulnerabilities in three Symantec products and released basic
details about them in its upcoming advisory section, where it maintains a
list of flaws its researchers have found in software. As part of its policy
of informing the public of upcoming security advisories, eEye normally
informs the vendor and then waits for a patch before issuing full details of
the flaw in question. The newly reported flaws could result in the execution
of remote code. (The Age 22 Apr 2004)
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/22/1082530291990.html (Rec'd from John
Lamp, Deakin U)

AMD CREATES DESIGN CENTER IN INDIA
     Advanced Micro Devices, the U.S. chip manufacturer known as AMD, will
establish a new design center in Bangalore, India, and plans to hire 120
engineers in that city by the end of next year. The company says no
engineers in the U.S. or elsewhere will lose their jobs because of the
creation of this facility in Bangalore. An AMD executive says: "We continue
to hire in all our centers. I am just happy to offload some of my workload
here." The company already runs design and engineering centers in
California, Texas, and Germany. (AP/Los Angeles Times 23 Apr 2004)
http://tinyurl.com/yur9m

*****  

FLASH CARD 
     "Instead of prompting the appearance of delusions and/or
hallucinations, many of the patients receiving Valium displayed a
progressive development of dislikes and hates. The patients themselves
deliberately used the term 'hate'. This hatefulness first involved
non-significant figures in the patients' environment, progressed from there
to the involvement of key figures such as aides, nurses and physicians, and
went on to the involvement of important personal figures such as parents and
spouses... This hatefulness was of a peculiar type. The patients were
unhappy with it; they realized that it was unnatural and without basis, but
were impotent to do anything about it. Many of them, exhibiting real
distress, would inquire, 'Why do I feel like this?'" (P.E. Feldman, Journal
of Neuropsychiatry)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: FANTASY IDEOLOGY
     In a book dealing with how the U.S. is perceived by its enemies, Lee
Harris suggests that we may be victims of what he calls "fantasy ideology""
       "It is a common human weakness to wish to make more of our
contribution to the world than the world is prepared to acknowledge; it is
our fantasy world that allows us to fill this gap. Normally, for most of us
at least, this fantasy world of ours stays relatively hidden, and indeed a
common criterion of our mental health is the extent to which we are able to
keep our fantasies firmly under our watchful control.
       "Yet clearly there are individuals for whom this control is, at best,
intermittent; its failure results in behavior that ranges from the merely
obnoxious to the clinically psychotic. The man who insists on being taken
more seriously than his advantages warrant falls into the former category;
the maniac who murders an utter stranger because God -- or his neighbor's
dog -- commanded him to do so belongs to the latter.
       "What is common in such interactions is that the fantasist inevitably
treats other people merely as props: there is absolutely no interest in, or
even awareness of, others as having wills or minds of their own. The man who
bores us with stories designed to impress us with his importance or his
intellect or his bank account cares nothing for us as individuals, for he
has already cast us in the role that he wishes us to play: we are there to
be impressed by him. Indeed, it is an error even to suggest that he is
trying to impress us, for this would assume that he is willing to learn
enough about us to discover how best we might be impressed. Nothing of the
kind occurs. And why should it? After all, the fantasist has already
projected onto us the role which we are to play in his fantasy. And no
matter what we may be thinking of his recital, it never crosses his mind
that we may be utterly failing to play the part expected of us; indeed, it
is sometimes astonishing to see how much exertion is required of us in order
to bring our own profound lack of interest to the fantasist's attention."
                                ***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743257499/ for "Civilization And
Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History," by Lee Harris -- or look for it in
your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations
to adult literacy programs.)

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