NewsScan Daily, 19 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 19 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Corporate Execs Blast Tech Industry for Shoddy Products
        Dell and HP Shoulder More of the Recycling Burden
        ICANN Cleared of Antitrust Charges in VeriSign Suit
        Cisco Investigating Source Code Theft
        Surprise -- Kids Are Still Downloading Music
        Skype Inks Deal with Two Telecom Carriers

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Gregor Mendel

CORPORATE EXECS BLAST TECH INDUSTRY FOR SHODDY PRODUCTS
      The Business Roundtable, a trade group for executives of 150 large 
U.S. corporations, has launched a lobbying campaign to make technology 
companies accountable for software that they say is vulnerable to hackers 
and overly complex to use. The group is urging tech firms to improve 
software design, make software easier to manage, and to continue tech 
support for software products that have been superseded by newer versions. 
"Up until now, the IT suppliers have deflected criticism and redirected 
criticism to end users… We would challenge the software industry to create 
products that are easier to use, where security is a default component of 
the software. It shouldn't require somebody with a technology degree to 
manage a home computer," says a Roundtable spokeswoman. The Roundtable's 
complaints mirror those made by some consumer groups and security experts, 
but were met with skepticism by technology representatives. "Cybersecurity 
is everybody's responsibility, including the vendors, the users, 
enterprises and government agencies," says a spokesman for the Information 
Technology Association of America. "No serious commentary will say that the 
user has no responsibility. We all have responsibilities to lock our doors 
in our homes and to buckle up when we get in cars." (AP 19 May 2004)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040519/D82LK4RG1.html

DELL AND HP SHOULDER MORE OF THE RECYCLING BURDEN
     Dell and Hewlett-Packard are taking steps to assume more 
responsibility for recycling discarded computer equipment, relieving 
individual consumers and local governments of the financial burden 
associated with proper disposal of obsolete hardware. Currently, both Dell 
and HP operate programs that pick up and recycle old computers for fees 
ranging from $13 to $30. The two companies ranked at the top of a recent 
report card generated by the Computer Takeback Campaign, which has been 
urging companies to set up their own recycling facilities -- something both 
Dell and HP have done. (New York Times 19 May 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/business/19compute.html

ICANN CLEARED OF ANTITRUST CHARGES IN VERISIGN SUIT
      U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz dismissed VeriSign's allegations 
that ICANN had violated federal antitrust laws in its attempts to block 
VeriSign from implementing its Site Finder service, which redirected Web 
surfers to VeriSign's site when they typed in an unassigned URL. Matz gave 
VeriSign until June 7 to either make a better case or drop the antitrust 
charges, and a company spokesman expressed confidence that VeriSign would 
"prevail on the matter." Meanwhile, ICANN General Counsel John Jeffrey 
said, "We're pleased that the judge is applying the law and looking at the 
statute very carefully." If the antitrust charges are removed from the 
case, it likely will be moved to state court for a ruling on VeriSign's 
other five claims against the Internet regulator. (CNet News.com 18 May 2004)
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-5215324.html

CISCO INVESTIGATING SOURCE CODE THEFT
      Cisco has launched an investigation into "a potential compromise" of 
its intellectual property, a company official says, following reports that 
some versions of its IOS had been stolen by an individual who broke into 
the company's corporate network. Terry Alberstein, director of corporate 
affairs for the Asia-Pacific, said the alleged break-in was not due to any 
vulnerabilities in Cisco equipment, software or services. He said the 
company had been made aware of the issue before the weekend, after a report 
appeared on the Russian security news portal, securitylab.ru. The report 
said an individual had broken into Cisco's corporate network and stolen the 
source code for IOS 12.3 and 12.3t. Version 12.3 is used across the 
Internet's main backbone. The individual who claimed to have accessed Cisco 
System's corporate network, boasted about it on an underground Internet 
relay chat channel, claiming that the total amount of data in the archives 
was around 800 megabytes. Two snippets of code were provided as proof of 
the claims. (The Age 18 May 2004) rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U.
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/18/1084783498077.html

SURPRISE -- KIDS ARE STILL DOWNLOADING MUSIC
      Fifty-six percent of American children ages eight to 18 with Internet 
access are continuing to download music, even though 88% of the respondents 
polled indicated they were familiar with music copyright restrictions, 
according to a new survey by Harris Interactive. The survey noted that more 
kids worry about downloading computer viruses with their songs than about 
getting in trouble with the law. The Harris poll was commissioned by the 
Business Software Alliance, which said the responses indicate a need for 
the software and entertainment industries to step up their efforts to 
dissuade kids from file-sharing. "It's a very good sign that a lot of kids 
and youth understand that creative works are protected by copyright law. 
[But if] they're still doing the wrong thing, that's not good," said a BSA 
spokeswoman. A spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America, 
which has led an aggressive campaign against illegal music downloading, 
said the latest numbers show that "education is important, but without an 
enforcement component, it can only do so much to influence behavior." 
Meanwhile, the executive of a P2P networking company suggested it would be 
more productive to find ways for the two sides to cooperate rather than 
clamp down on music distribution. (Washington Post 18 May 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37231-2004May18.html

SKYPE INKS DEAL WITH TWO TELECOM CARRIERS
      Skype, the VoIP brainchild of Kazaa co-founder Niklas Zennstrom and 
his partner, has signed agreements with two telecommunications companies 
that will enable Skype phone calls to be made on standard handsets anywhere 
in the U.S. Up until now, users of Skype's software had to make and receive 
their free long distance and international phone calls on their computers. 
The basic Skype service will remain free for Internet-based calls, but the 
company will offer two premium services -- one that allows Skype users to 
place calls to anyone outside the network, and a subscription-based service 
that includes features such as voice mail and a geographic-based phone 
number so that users can receive calls anywhere. These latest moves pit the 
spunky startup against industry giants such as AT&T, as well as smaller 
rivals such as VoicePulse and Vonage. Skype's biggest advantage is the 
power of its peer-to-peer architecture, which relies on users' computers to 
form the network rather than investing in expensive telecommunications 
gear. Zennstrom says 12 million people have downloaded the Skype software 
in the past nine months and about one million use it regularly. Jupiter 
Research predicts that Internet telephony will become a major source of new 
revenue for broadband ISPs, generating $6.36 billion by 2009. (San Jose 
Mercury News 19 May 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8701585.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each 
other." (Laurence J. Peter)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: GREGOR MENDEL
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel 
(1822-1884), whose experiments in crossbreeding garden peas laid the 
foundation for the modern science of genetics.
      Mendel set forth the basic laws of heredity, known today as the 
Mendelian Laws of Inheritance, but his work went unnoticed world during his 
lifetime. He never knew the fame that would come to him in 1900 when the 
papers he published a generation earlier in an obscure scientific journal 
first came to the attention of the scientific world at large.
      Mendel's Laws stated that each genetic characteristic is inherited 
independently; that characteristics show dominant and recessive forms; and 
that successive generations of crossbred offspring exhibit inherited 
characteristics in different combinations, each combination in a specific 
proportion of individuals.
      Born Johann Mendel in Heinzendorf, Austrian Silesia (now 
Czechoslovakia), Mendel changed his name to Gregor in 1843 when he entered 
the Augustinian monastery at Brunn (now Brno). He was ordained a priest in 
1847, and in 1851 was sent to the University of Vienna for training as a 
teacher of mathematics and natural sciences. He returned to Brunn in 1854, 
where he taught until 1868. Beginning in 1856 Mendel conducted extensive 
crossbreeding experiments with the garden peas he grew on the monastery 
grounds. He crossed hundreds of plants with various combinations of 
distinctive characteristics, keeping careful records of the plants and 
their offspring. Mendel's statistical analysis of his data provided the 
mathematical basis for formulating his three inheritance laws that became 
the basis for the modern science of genetics.
      In 1865, Mendel reported his findings at a meeting of the Brunn 
Natural History Society, and the following year his results were published 
as "Experiments with Plant Hybrids" in the society's journal. While his 
publication was referenced in the major libraries of Europe and America, it 
aroused no response from the scientific community.
      In 1868 Mendel was elected abbot of the monastery. Although he 
continued his interest in botany, bee culture, and meteorology, his new 
administrative duties restricted the time he could devote to scientific 
pursuits. He was also preoccupied by the monastery's long-standing legal 
conflicts with the Austrian government over taxation issues. When he died 
in 1884, he was remembered as a respected teacher and beloved monk, but not 
at all as a scientist of note. Sixteen years later, however, his importance 
came to light when his paper was unearthed by three European botanists who 
were searching the literature in connection with their own research on 
genetic inheritance. They discovered that Mendel had published both their 
experimental data and their explanatory theories 34 years previously.
                                ***
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0809057433/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for "The Impact of the Gene: From Mendel's Peas to Designer Babies" by 
Colin Tudge -- or look for it in your local library. (We donate all revenue 
from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

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