NewsScan Daily, 9 June 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 9 June 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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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].
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       'The Future of Television': TiVo to Add Internet to TV Watching
       Google Promotes Froogle, Is Anyone Surprised?
       Nintendo Hopes to Start a 'Revolution' in Video Games
       Optus Opts for Indian Call Centers
       Ohio's Turnpike Scanning System
       E-Voting Overseer Wants 'More Research' on Paper Backup Ballots

FEATURES        
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Clara Shortridge Foltz
       Mailbag: The World As We Find It

'THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION': TIVO TO ADD INTERNET TO TV WATCHING
     TiVo has developed a capability that will let a user download movies
and music from the Internet to the TiVo hard drive and mix it with TV
programs. TiVo chief executive Michael Ramsey explains, "We're fully
committed to developing an entertainment experience you can't get over
normal broadcast television. This is what we think the future of television
is." (New York Times 9 Jun 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/technology/09net.html

GOOGLE PROMOTES FROOGLE, IS ANYONE SURPRISED?
     Google's shopping site, called Froogle, now appears at the top of the
list of advertiser-supported sites relevant to a particular search. Danny
Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, complains: "It is weird when Google
shoves its own stuff in there. It is wrong, in that Google has taken a spot
an advertiser was expecting to get. If you are an advertiser, you have a
right to be upset. They ought to come up with something better." Andy Beal
of the search engine marketing firm WebSourced Inc. calls Google's practice
misleading because it makes it appear that the Froogle link came up because
of its relevance to the search rather than because of a Google
administrative decision: "If Google thinks there is nothing wrong with
showing Froogle at the top, why are they not clearly labeling it? They
should at least have a button that explains what it is and where these
results are coming from." (Washington Post 8 Jun 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26277-2004Jun8.html

NINTENDO HOPES TO START A 'REVOLUTION' IN VIDEO GAMES
     Video game company Nintendo is developing a new home game console
code-named "Revolution" to compete with rival Sony's PlayStation 2 by
delivering "new ideas" for entertainment. Without explaining what those new
ideas are, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata says: "What we need is not a
next-generation machine but a next-generation way of playing games. We need
to propose a new idea so that the game industry can overcome its current
crisis." Nintendo is planning a new portable game called Nintendo DS ("dual
screen") which in some games allows players to see a close-up on one monitor
and an overall map on the other. Iwata says, "Double screens and touch
panels are not new technologies. The idea of using them for a game machine
is new." (AP/San Jose Mercury News 9 Jun 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8879986.htm

OPTUS OPTS FOR INDIAN CALL CENTERS
     Optus, an Australian telecom company controlled by the Singapore
government, has joined the ranks of other companies using cheap labor in
India for some of its call center operations. However, the company's
corporate affairs manager has promised Australians: "Optus will always
maintain a call center presence in Australia"  Optus has about 4000 call
center staff in Australia, and it's unclear how many Australian jobs may be
affected by the company's new reliance on Indian call center operators. (The
Australian 8 Jun 2004) Rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U.
http://tinyurl.com/3bow5

OHIO'S TURNPIKE SCANNING SYSTEM
     The Ohio State Highway Patrol will be using two scanners on turnpike
gates and two scanners in patrol cars for four months, as they test a new
system that recognizes license plates and matches them with a national crime
database. The scanner company, Elsaq SpA, is based in Genoa, Italy. Jeff
Gamso of the Ohio ACLU worries that the scanners will invade the privacy of
ordinary citizens: "It's a free society, and we're supposed to move as we
like without the government tracking us everywhere." State Highway Patrol
superintendent Paul McClellan says that if the scanners had been in place
earlier this year, they might have detected the individual responsible for a
number of sniper shootings on state highways. (AP/USA Today 9 Jun 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-06-09-turnpike-scan_x.htm

E-VOTING OVERSEER WANTS 'MORE RESEARCH' ON PAPER BACKUP BALLOTS
     DeForest B. Soaries, the head of the federal Election Assistance
Commission, says he wants election officials to be able to analyze software
source code in the electronic systems they purchase. Some vendors have
resisted providing source code, on the ground that it is proprietary
information. As for requiring that the systems produce paper copies of votes
cast electronically, Soaries is undecided: "If there was unanimity among
scholars and scientists on the paper issue it would be a more compelling
case. All of the research, all of the testimony we've received, all the
writings that I've read argue for more research." (AP/Los Angeles Times 8
Jun 2004) http://tinyurl.com/yv3mz

*****  

FLASH CARD
     "Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear
the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way
that it cares for its helpless members." (Pearl S. Buck)

FOLTZ, CLARA SHORTRIDGE
HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: CLARA SHORTRIDGE FOLTZ
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the noted lawyer and reformer Clara
Shortridge Foltz (1849-1934), who was America's first practicing woman
lawyer. 
     Foltz enjoyed a long career in the law, beginning in 1878 and lasting
until her death in 1934. During those years she instigated progressive
legislation for women's rights and was active in the woman's Suffrage
Movement. In 1910 she was appointed to the Los Angeles District Attorney's
Office, becoming the first woman deputy district attorney in the United
States. She became an early proponent of the concept of the public
defender's office and was a prominent voice in other legal causes of her
times.
     Foltz was born Clara Shortridge in New Lisbon, Indiana, and grew up in
that state, until 1858 when her family moved to Mount Pleasant, Iowa. She
became a schoolteacher and married Jeremiah R. Foltz in 1864, moving to
Portland, Oregon, in 1872 and a short time later to San Jose, California.
     Widowed in 1877, she began the study of the law under a local attorney.
At that time California's constitution confined admission to the bar to
white males. Undeterred by that obstacle, Foltz organized a successful
movement to have "white male" replaced with "person" in the constitution,
enabling her to become the first woman admitted to legal practice in
California. 
     Becoming the first woman lawyer in California was only to be the first
of many such firsts. She was the first woman admitted to Hastings Law
School; first to be made a Clerk for the State Judiciary Committee; and
first to be appointed to the State Board of Normal Schools, the State Board
of Corrections, and the State Board of Charities. She was also the first
Woman Deputy District Attorney in the U.S; the first woman Licensed Notary
Public; the first woman named director of a major bank; and the first woman
to run for Governor of California.
     Foltz built a successful private law practice first in San Francisco
and later in New York City. She also lived and worked in San Diego and Los
Angeles. In San Francisco she organized the Portia Law Club for women
lawyers. In San Diego she founded and edited a newspaper, the Daily San
Diego Bee. Her corporate law practice motivated her to set up a women's
department for the United Bank and Trust Company of San Francisco and to
publish the trade magazine, Oil Fields and Furnaces, later merged into the
National Oil Reporter.
     For several years she published the New American Woman magazine.
Throughout her life she remained an activist reformer. She was active in
legal efforts to reform criminal procedure and prison administration,
including the appointment of public defenders for indigent defendants and
the segregation of juvenile offenders from adult prisoners. She introduced
legislation to allow women to serve as executors and administrators of
estates and to hold commissions as notaries public. Active to the end of her
days, at age 81 in 1930 she entered the Republican gubernatorial primary and
received a quite respectable percentage of the vote. Foltz died in Los
Angeles in 1934.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/014026437X/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for "A Woman's Guide to Law School" by Linda P. Hirschman -- or look for
it in your favorite library. We donate all revenue from our book
recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

WHY DOES THIS LEAVE US DEPRESSED?
     [This message from Dr. Mike Yohe of Valparaiso University]
Hi John and Suzanne: Sorry to say, SpamAssassin isn't NewsScan-Daily-aware.
;-}  
     Here are the SpamAssassain headers:
         > X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=6.2 tagged_above=1.5 required=4.5
               tests=BAYES_10,
         >  DCC_CHECK, DOMAIN_BODY, MILLION_EMAIL
         > X-Spam-Level: ******
         > X-Spam-Flag: YES
     And here's our Internet guru's analysis:
> Dr. Yohe, the tests it failed were:
      "4.7 million Internet addresses" -- commonly used in e-mail list sales
> It's listed in the DCC clearinghouse:
> http://rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/
> It has a Bayesian spam probability of 30-40%.
> Brief explanations of the rules can be found at:
> http://au.spamassassin.org/tests.html
>
> Probably the most significant was the 4.7 mio Internet addresses  which has a
pretty high score to it.
>                                       --Simon
Mike Yohe continues:
     To put this in perspective, at Valparaiso University we're currently
receiving 70-80,000 e-mail messages per day from off campus.  An average of
about 95% are flagged as spam, and another 2-3% are virus-bearing. We get
very few reports of false positives, but from personal experience I am
confident there are far more false negatives than false positives. It's safe
to say that less than 3% of incoming messages are worthwhile.
     Needless to say, spam puts a tremendous load on our resources -- so
much so that we are seriously considering not delivering anything above a
certain threshold -- and this issue of NewsScan Daily exceeds any threshold
we've so far considered.
     Any suggestions for a solution to this problem?  Economics would do it;
if people had to pay to send e-mail, the spam would pretty much dry up. Of
course, we'd have to pay you to send us NewsScan Daily -- which I
would gladly do.
                (Mike Yohe)

AN E-MAIL CAMPAIGN (BUT SEE ALSO PREVIOUS MESSAGE)
     I'm so tired of email being a potential carrier of virus' that could
wipe out my computer, and rip through my address book infecting all my
contacts -- making me look like a royal jerk. So when I noticed that Yahoo,
EarthLink and MSN all scan every email for Virus' before delivering them I
took notice. 
     When I called my Internet Service Provider (ISP) to find out more about
it, it wasn't even on their radar and they are a very large corporation.
Historically they've considered it each customer's sole responsibility to
use anti-virus software to protect against virus' that its mail servers pass
on to them. So in other words: They can be the conduit of infection for us
and not even bother trying to protect us from becoming sick, and when we do
become sick it's our fault -- even when we do use the latest anti-virus
software. But when I said as much, the representative saw the strength of my
argument, and the need for such a service, and said he'd bring it up at the
next meeting. I told them that this was issue #1 above all other possible
improvements.  
     The reality of it is that one virus does not make a plague, it is the
networked nature of ISPs that provide the fertile ground for world wide
email virus contagion. ISPs can no longer avoid the role they play in the
transmission of these virus by shifting the sole the responsibility on to
the end user. Any ISP that isn't scanning emails for virus' is derelict in
their duty in protecting us and the greater networked community from
infected mail that they pass through their email servers. I'm writing this
to start a email campaign, to let you know that it is so very possible for
ISPs to scan your email for virus' before you receive them, in the end
protecting you and sharpening their competitive advantage in the market
place. 
     I urge you to contact your ISP and notify them that this service is a
requirement. I mean, what would you say to your telephone company if any
call you received could wipe out your telephone, and your ability to receive
future calls? The same needs to be said to the ISPs.  As more and more ISP's
do this, email virus' plagues as we have come to know them will become a
thing of the past, but at least for now you'll be protected.  (Corl DeLuna)

INSECURITY UNDER THE CIRCUS TENT
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=10728
     I love it when all these high-priced officials stand behind a podium
and declare they have found the Holy Grail when they announce the letting of
a contract like the one with Accenture. I have yet to see any of them, from
any administration, present that Holy Grail to such a gathering. What is
that Holy Grail you ask? To me it would be material evidence of the
prevention of a 9/11 type catastrophe, regardless of it being done by a $10
billion system, or some reward hungry accomplice who decided to take the
money and run. Muhammad Abd al-Hameed shows great insight into the human
condition. Americans have been crawling under the circus tent or entering
the movie theater through the exit doors for centuries. (Michael Bell)

A CRY FOR HELP?
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=10705
     Your Honorary Subscriber Carolyn Wells says that looking up things is
"the most ravenous time-snatcher I know. You pull one book from the shelf,
which carries a hint or a reference that sends you posthaste to another
book, and that to successive others." I have exactly that experience
browsing the web. The joys of virtually limitless cross-references --
courtesy of in-document links -- can keep me going and going and going. The
Internet Movie Database is in particular a timesink for me. (John Beck)

ANY PUBLISHERS WANT A MAP TO TREASURE ISLAND?
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=10693
     With regard to "Online Newspaper Readership Up 350% Over 5 Years" I
think that celebrating an increase of 350% in the audience for online
versions of newspapers over the past five years is like Donald Rumsfeld
jumping with joy after getting just 1000 new foreign troops for Iraq after a
year of pleading with the whole world. One basic problem is the huge size of
files. If I have to download, say 35MB of a daily issue of The NY Times with
a dial-up connection of 33KB, you may as well ask me to push a camel through
the eye of a needle. Unless the files are reduced to a fraction, few horses
will come to drink at the Internet watering holes of the newspapers. The
publishers must work on something like fractal compression that may reduce
the size by a factor of 500. (Incidentally, fractal compression can
theoretically broadcast a digital television channel on a short wave
transmitter, turning 3000 of them worldwide into terrestrial television
channels, each reaching thousands of kilometers. A real camel through the
needle¹s eye!)
     The far bigger problem is that the newspaper publishers, who are
supposed to tell us everything about the world, have just no idea where and
how to sell the electronic editions. Long, long ago, I subscribed to The NY
Times for several years. The newspaper cost me four times my local one, came
by surface mail after 8-10 weeks and in bursts of 5-10 copies. Still I loved
every minute of reading it. (By ³reading² I mean every headline, all display
ads and all text that was fit to read.) If such a devoted fan does not
accept even a free trial subscription of the electronic edition, there must
be some very serious problems indeed. I know how to solve them all. Some
publishers may well sell more copies of their electronic editions than their
paper ones. Anybody for the map to the treasure island?
(Muhammad Abd al-Hameed, Lahore, Pakistan, [email protected])

A 1921 EDITORIAL FROM THE NATION'S SO-CALLED 'NEWSPAPER OF RECORD'!
Re: 
http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=honorary_subscriber&id=770
     I'm way behind in my email, but I just read your recent Honorary
Subscriber entry about Robert Goddard. This has always been one of my
favorite quotes from the "newspaper of record": "Professor Goddard does not
know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something
better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic
knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York Times
editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work. (George Mason,
Hawaii)

ELEGANCE (TWO EXAMPLES)
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=10714
     "Even your 'wanted' e-mail is clogging your in-box now, right? E-mail
is 'broken,'" says Eric Hahn, former CTO of Netscape and current CEO of
antispam firm Proofpoint. "We need to make metaphoric changes..."  Hmm --
he's right up to a point. But I've been using e-mail since the early 80s.
Since the early 90s I've used Eudora (on a Macintosh actually, though it's
also a Windows program). The power and ease of use of Eudora are so far
ahead of any other mailer I've ever seen (and I've seen a few), they're out
of sight. Users of certain mail programs, on a certain platform, who have
seen their mailers grow in size and power over the years simply do not
comprehend what I'm talking about, so I gave up trying to convince them
years ago.
     Power without elegance of design is merely a hindrance.  Steve Dorner
-- the creator of Eudora -- is one of The Great Internet Gurus in my
opinion.
     Cheers -- and NewsScan itself is, in a different way, a supreme example
of elegant power. (John Law, Information System and Services Information
Officer, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK)

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