NewsScan Daily, 11 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 11 May 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"
      U.S. Should Reopen Most Web Sites Shut Down After 9/11
      Tokyo University Professor Charged Over File-Swapping Progrma
      Student Hacker 'Makes the Grade'
      Microsoft Looks Beyond PC, Drops Wi-Fi
      The Cost of Satire
      China Shuts Down 8,600 Internet Cafés in 3 Months

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: The New Journalism

U.S. SHOULD REOPEN MOST WEB SITES SHUT DOWN AFTER 9/11
      The overwhelming majority of federal Web sites shut down after the 
Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks should be reopened because the sites pose 
little or no threat to homeland security, according to a study by the Rand 
Corp.'s National Defense Research Institute. The Institute identified 629 
Internet-accessible "geospatial information" databases provided by 30 
federal agencies that contain critical data about specific locations, but 
only four of those -- two containing information on pipelines plus one on 
nuclear reactors and one on dams -- were worth restricting. None of those 
was available to the public anymore. In many of the other cases, the 
information deemed potentially risky is available elsewhere, in some cases 
in superior detail. "It's a good time to take a closer look at the choices 
that they made at the time," says John Baker, principle author of the 
study, which was funded by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the 
government's intelligence mapping agency. (AP/Washington Post 11 May 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15750-2004May10.html

TOKYO UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR CHARGED OVER FILE-SWAPPING PROGRMA
      Isamu Kaneko, a professor at Tokyo University, has been arrested and 
charged with copyright offenses after he developed a file-sharing program 
called "Winny," designed to facilitate anonymous file-trading. Authorities 
suspect that Kaneko may have offered copyrighted material for download 
using the program. Experts say Winny borrows some techniques to prevent 
outsiders from finding out who has requested a particular file from the 
well-known "FreeNet" anonymous file-trading program, but is much easier to 
operate. In Japan, copyright violations are punishable with a maximum 
sentence of three years in prison or a fine of up to $27,000. A poll taken 
by Japan's Association of Copyright for Computer Software indicates that 
Winny is used by about 250,000 people in Japan. (New Scientist 11 May 2004)
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994978

STUDENT HACKER 'MAKES THE GRADE'
      A 17-year-old California high school student has been arrested and 
accused of a felony for allegedly hacking into his school's computer system 
and changing grades. The arrest came one week after school officials 
notified police of suspicious grade changes in the academic records of six 
juniors and one senior. Police Sgt. Steve Shulman says the investigation is 
continuing because "there may very well be other students involved." 
Administrators at Corona del Mar High School are examining the records of 
all 1,500 students to see if any other grades were altered. The charge 
against the student -- "unauthorized alteration of computerized data" -- 
carries a prison sentence of up to three years, but juvenile court 
officials and prosecutors have not yet decided whether to pursue charges in 
the case. A spokeswoman for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District says 
it appears that the records were accessed from a remote location -- 
something that supposedly was not possible -- and that the perpetrator was 
able to circumvent the password authorization feature: "We're upset that we 
were compromised and we're saddened that these students, who are obviously 
pretty smart, would use their intelligence for this. We're in a new age. We 
know that kids will find out what they can do, but we need to be clear that 
this is illegal -- that it's not a game." (Los Angeles Times 11 May 2004)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-me-hackers11may11,1,6240950.story?coll=la-headlines-technology

MICROSOFT LOOKS BEYOND PC, DROPS WI-FI
      Microsoft is reaching beyond the PC to extend its software to all 
kinds of hardware -- from a remote control that runs Windows to a Hummer 
with an Internet-connected navigation system. The company's new focus is 
aimed at satisfying consumers' appetite for pleasures like entertainment 
and vacations, says Microsoft VP Jim Allchin, who termed the phenomenon it 
"the experience economy." At its annual Windows Hardware Engineering 
Conference, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard demonstrated a prototype digital 
entertainment system that routes movies, music, photos, phone calls and 
other information to various family members via a PC. A new remote control 
device featured a color screen, microphone, speaker, voice recognition and 
the ability to read fingerprints to deliver each user's favorite TV shows. 
Meanwhile, the software giant announced it was discontinuing its entire 
line of Wi-Fi gear -- a dramatic turnaround, considering the company just 
launched a USB version of its 802.11g product in February and has been in 
the Wi-Fi market for only two years. The company said it would support its 
Wi-Fi products through their two-year warranty, but will not provide 
service after that. (SiliconValley.com 10 May 2004 and CNet News.com 10 May 
2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8631018.htm
http://news.com.com/2100-7351-5209677.html

THE COST OF SATIRE
      A collective of students and artists known as the Carbon Defense 
League (CDL) last year pieced together a Web site called re-code.com that 
proved so controversial that key components had to be removed. It was a 
database of bar codes for everyday supermarket items; visitors could 
download them, print them on to stickers and replace the more expensive, 
real prices by placing them on top of existing bar codes. The U.S. retail 
chain Wal-Mart issued a "cease and desist" notice and a media frenzy began. 
One year later, American CDL ringleader Nathan Martin says: "Initially it 
was about companies in the U.S. that use the rhetoric of revolution and the 
language of consumer power to sell product. We wanted to make 'name your 
own price' a reality." ("Name Your Own Price" is a slogan made popular by 
Priceline.com.) Martin and his crew decided to take the marketing byte and 
make it literal; their site would actually empower the consumer to do just 
that. It was supposed to be a cutting work of satire designed to expose the 
hypocrisy of modern consumer-oriented marketing. (The Age 8 May 2004) rec'd 
from John Lamp, Deakin University
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/07/1083881481855.html

CHINA SHUTS DOWN 8,600 INTERNET CAFÉS IN 3 MONTHS
      Chinese authorities say they have shut down more than 8,600 
unlicensed Internet cafés in the last three months in their latest campaign 
to bring the communication channel under tighter political control. 
Ostensibly, the crackdown is to protect teenagers from long Internet 
benders playing combat games and the like. The case of two middle school 
pupils in Chongqing, who fell asleep on a railway line and were run over on 
March 31 following a 48-hour interactive gaming session, is being cited. 
But preventing customers from gaining access to "unhealthy information 
online" is also a concern behind the drive against unauthorized public 
Internet venues, which was launched in February and will run until August, 
says the agency that licenses Internet cafés. Preventing anonymous access 
to the Internet from cafés has been one prong of Beijing's drive to squelch 
the Internet's political power for the past 18 months, although the excuse 
has always been the fire risk and protecting juveniles from abuse. (The Age 
7 May 2004) rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin University
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/07/1083881475636.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying 
to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil." (Alfred North Whitehead)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE NEW JOURNALISM
      Here's a comment on the co-called "New Journalism" by editor, writer 
and publisher Michael Korda:
      "After the New York Herald Tribune closed its doors in 1966, Clay 
Felker, then the editor of the newspaper's Sunday magazine, reconstituted 
New York as an independent enterprise and eventually made it a home for the 
practitioners of what was then called 'the new journalism,' including Jimmy 
Breslin, Tom Wolfe, Gail Sheehy, Nick Pileggi, and 'Adam Smith.' The new 
journalism was hard to define, but in practice it meant writing nonfiction 
as narrative, with a clear-cut story line, strong characters, and as much 
pizzazz as possible. In the 'old' journalism, typified by the newspages of 
The New York Times, the writer was ideally invisible -- he or she reported 
the facts as objectively as possible. In the 'new' journalism, the writer 
bullied his way into the story, sometimes overwhelming the people he was 
writing about, inevitably blurred what had once been the fairly rigid 
distinction between nonfiction and fiction -- a distinction that had in any 
event been eroding under the influence of books such as Meyer Levin's 
Compulsion (which presented fact as fiction) and the nonfiction of Norman 
Mailer (in which fact and fiction were indistinguishable). In keeping with 
the zeitgeist, the new journalism was almost by definition overheated, full 
of sound effects, and occasionally shrill. The people who were good at it, 
such as Wolfe and Breslin, were journalistic exhibitionists, media stars 
whose specialty was making even the humdrum and the insignificant seem 
important and, above all, exciting. Even the restaurant reviews had to be 
written like narrative stories, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, 
which probably explains why the celebrity chef appeared as a culture figure 
then, since a writer could hang a story on him, as opposed to simply 
reporting whether the food was edible and the service good or bad."
                           ***
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385335075/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Michael Korda's "Another Life: A Memoir of Other People" -- or look for 
it in your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from 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.
***********************************************************