NewsScan Daily, 13 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 13 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Congress Revisits 'Fair Use' Restrictions in Copyright Act
        'Entangled' Photons Could Yield High-Density Storage
        Videogamers Growing Up, Going Online
        Commercial Search Engines Threaten Newspapers' Livelihood
        Techno-Enthusiasts in Search of Peace and Quiet

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: What Keeps You Awake at Night?

CONGRESS REVISITS 'FAIR USE' RESTRICTIONS IN COPYRIGHT ACT
      A House subcommittee on consumer protection heard arguments yesterday 
on proposed amendments to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which 
imposed broad restrictions on bypassing technological "locks" on DVDs and 
some music CDs and software programs. The amendments, sponsored by Rick 
Boucher (D-Va.) and John Doolittle (R-Calif.), would reinstate the 
provision for "fair use" of such materials, even if circumvention of 
copy-protection software were necessary for such use. The sale of pirated 
DVDs and other forms of copyright infringement would remain illegal. 
"Without a change in the existing law, individuals will be less willing to 
purchase digital media if their use of the media within the home is 
severely circumscribed," says Boucher. "In addition, manufacturers of 
equipment and software which enable circumvention for legitimate purposes 
will be reluctant to introduce the products into the market." It's unclear 
whether the Boucher-Doolittle bill has much momentum behind it -- so far, 
it has only 15 co-sponsors in the House, and there is no companion Senate 
bill as yet. (CNet News.com 12 May 2004)
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5211674.html

'ENTANGLED' PHOTONS COULD YIELD HIGH-DENSITY STORAGE
      Scientists working independently at the University of Toronto and the 
University of Vienna have come up with methods for "entangling" photons in 
a way that enhance their normal properties -- a development that one day 
could result in new ways to pack data more densely onto CDs and other 
memory devices. According to New Scientist.com, "A physical principle 
called the diffraction limit says that light cannot be used to see or 
inscribe features that are smaller than half its wavelength. This limits 
the density of data on a CD, for example, and the size of the circuits that 
can be carved into microchips." By entangling the photons, two or more 
particles of light are induced to share a single quantum state, which makes 
them behave as a single photon with a wavelength one third as long and a 
higher energy level. "Looking some years ahead, it doesn't seem unrealistic 
to expect commercial applications of entangled photons," says a University 
of California physicist. For instance, entangling the photons from the red 
lasers in CD players could increase the storage capacity of a CD by a 
factor of nine. (New Scientist.com 12 May 2004)
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994988

VIDEOGAMERS GROWING UP, GOING ONLINE
      The latest survey of videogame enthusiasts indicates that gamers are 
getting older -- the average age is now 29 -- and a slight majority of 
players are now older than 18. As might be expected, 59% of the gamers are 
male, and those that report increasing their hours of play did so at the 
expense of television viewing and movie attendance. The Entertainment 
Software Association also found that gamers increasingly are going online 
for interactive play, with 43% reporting they play an hour or more online 
each week, up from 31% two years ago. Meanwhile, a third of those surveyed 
objected to the videogame industry's recent penchant for licensing spinoffs 
from Hollywood movies and said they wished game developers would focus on 
coming up with original content over the next 10 years. (Reuters/Washington 
Post 13 May 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23073-2004May13.html

COMMERCIAL SEARCH ENGINES THREATEN NEWSPAPERS' LIVELIHOOD
      Newspapers face a greater threat of revenue erosion from online 
local-search products than they do from online job listings like 
Monster.com, according to a new study by The Neil Budde Group and the 
Advanced Interactive Media Group. "For local publishers, which have already 
been fighting the 'new monsters' eating away at their classified 
advertising, this may be a far greater challenge than the first Internet 
wave. Well-funded competitors like Yahoo and Google are only starting to 
target the local market, so local media still have time to respond," says 
study co-author Neil Budde. The report notes that local advertisers like 
car-repair shops, plumbers and restaurants could migrate to local search 
pages, leaving newspapers' bottom lines bleeding red ink. "The ability to 
directly target advertising at consumers, and to determine exactly  what 
the response to those ads has been, gives local advertisers more power than 
ever before to focus their spending where it works," says co-author Peter 
Zollman. "Few local publishers have realized yet how this will endanger 
their business, and even fewer have responded with effective local search 
tools for their advertisers." (AIM Group news release 11 May 2004)
http://www.aimgroup.com

TECHNO-ENTHUSIASTS IN SEARCH OF PEACE AND QUIET
     A recent gathering of techno-enthusiasts explored ways to overcome 
information overload and the stress associated with living with 24/7 access 
to work, friends and sometimes strangers. The meeting's organizer, David 
Levy, noted he'd imposed a "technology-free" Sabbath, carving out 24 hours 
in the week when he doesn't log on or answer his cell phone. "It's not 
about saying 'no' to all these important inventions," says Levy. "Nobody 
says we shouldn't have e-mail… But how do we come to a kind of balance and 
accommodation?" Levy, a professor in the information school at the 
University of Washington and author of "Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of 
Documents in a Digital Age," says the idea for the conference germinated 
when graduate students complained repeatedly that they felt like technology 
was taking over their lives. "What I heard from my students was that they 
didn't feel like they could dig into any subject." However, Levy 
acknowledges his own struggle with technology: "There is this addictive 
quality I recognize in myself. As soon as Shabbat is over, I run to check 
my e-mail." John de Graaf, editor of "Take Back Your Time: Fighting 
Overwork and Time Poverty in America," says that Levy's concerns are right 
on target. "I think this is a huge issue. This is one of the major crises 
of our society," says de Graaf. (Wired.com 13 May 2004)
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,63434,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." (Ben 
Franklin)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: WHAT KEEPS YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT?
      In his book, "The Music of the Primes," Marcus du Sautoy reminds us 
of the question posed by the great mathematician David Hilbert at the time 
of his death:
      "One hot and humid morning in August 1900, David Hilbert of the 
University of Göttingen addressed the International Congress of 
Mathematicians in a packed lecture hall at the Sorbonne, Paris. Already 
recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians of the age, Hilbert had 
prepared a daring lecture. He was going to talk about what was unknown 
rather than what had already been proved. This went against all the 
accepted conventions, and the audience could hear the nervousness in 
Hilbert's voice as he began to lay out his vision for the future of 
mathematics. 'Who of us would not be glad to lift the veil behind which the 
future lies hidden; to cast a glance at the next advances of our science 
and at the secrets of its development during future centuries?' To herald 
the new century, Hilbert challenged the audience with a list of 
twenty-three problems that he believed should set the course for the 
mathematical explorers of the twentieth century.
      "The ensuing decades saw many of the problems answered, and those who 
discovered the solutions make up an illustrious band of mathematicians 
known as 'the honours class'. It includes the likes of Kurt Gödel and Henri 
Poincaré, along with many other pioneers whose ideas have transformed the 
mathematical landscape. But there was one problem, the eighth on Hilbert's 
list, which looked as if it would survive the century without a champion: 
the Riemann Hypothesis.
      "Of all the challenges that Hilbert had set, the eighth had a special 
place in his heart. There is a German myth about Frederick Barbarossa, a 
much-loved German emperor who died during the Third Crusade. A legend grew 
that he was still alive, asleep in a cavern in the Kyffhäuser Mountains. He 
would awake only when Germany needed him. Somebody allegedly asked Hilbert, 
'If you were to be revived like Barbarossa, after five hundred years, what 
would you do?' His reply: 'I would ask, 'Has someone proved the Riemann 
Hypothesis?'"

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060935588/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Marcus du Sautoy's "The Music of the Primes: Searching to Solve the 
Greatest Mystery in Mathematics" -- or look for it in your favorite 
library. (We donate all revenue from book recommendations to adult literacy 
programs.)

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