NewsScan Daily, 2 May 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 2 May 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Students Pay the Piper's Association for Freeloaded Downloads
        Nanotechnology Breakthrough
        Internet Wiretaps from Cisco
        Video Streaming Hits a Gusher
        iPods Invading the Classroom
        Spam Heading for Cell Phones

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Art for the Treadmill
        Mailbag: The World As We Find It

STUDENTS PAY THE PIPER'S ASSOCIATION FOR FREELOADED DOWNLOADS
Four college students who were sued by the Recording Industry Association 
of America for downloading music without paying for it have now agreed to 
settle the lawsuits by paying $12,000 to $17,000 each. The students were 
charged with using their campus networks to provide fellow students with 
illegal copies of popular music. One of the students, Daniel Peng of 
Princeton University, said in a statement: "I don't believe that I did 
anything wrong. I am glad that the case been settled amicably, and I hope 
that, for the sake of artists, the larger issues can soon be resolved." His 
lawyer adds: "This suit is about the industry's attempt to intimidate 
Internet users and instill fear of lawsuits against users of the Internet, 
particularly students. They need to find some other way to protect their 
economic interests than bringing suits against bright creative young 
people." (New York Times 2 May 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/national/02STUD.html

NANOTECHNOLOGY BREAKTHROUGH
IBM has developed the world's smallest solid-state flashlight -- a carbon 
nanotube made by rolling a sheet of pure graphite into a single molecule. 
The light emitted by the flashlight is invisible to human eyes, but is 
ideal for fiber-optics cables. Although the advance is years away from any 
practical use, it represents a real scientific breakthrough, and chemistry 
professor Peidong Yang of the University of California-Berkeley calls it "a 
fantastic achievement." Phaedon Avouris, IBM manager's of nanoscale 
research, explains that the flashlight is notable because "it's very small, 
it's solid-state, and it's a transistor, which allows full control of its 
properties." (San Jose Mercury News 2 May 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/5769467.htm

INTERNET WIRETAPS FROM CISCO
In response to concerns by law enforcement officials that criminals can use 
Internet telephony to avoid court-approved wiretaps, Cisco Systems has 
developed a way for police to monitor Internet-based phone calls without 
detection. The company says it is building the capabilities into a limited 
number of its new products, though none have been sold as yet. The 
monitoring service includes an auditing mechanism by a third-party 
provider, in order to ensure that the surveillance complies with all laws 
governing interception of communication. (AP/USA Today 1 May 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-05-01-net-taps_x.htm

VIDEO STREAMING HITS A GUSHER
Video streaming is going mainstream, with the number of streams accessed 
this year topping 6 billion -- a 40% increase over 2002, according to 
AccuStream iMedia Research -- and double digit growth is expected to 
continue through 2004. Meanwhile, although paid subscription streaming 
content is on the rise, AccuStream says that a recovering ad market could 
tilt the business model back toward more sponsored, ad-supported or 
distributor-subsidized content. (Europemedia 2 May 2003)
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16159

IPODS INVADING THE CLASSROOM
Apple has donated 50 iPod digital music players to Georgia College & State 
University in Milledgeville, Georgia, as part of an experimental project to 
come up with creative ways of using the devices. Students are using the 
iPods in classes like Gothic Imagination, which looks at 18th to 20th 
century art, architecture, literature and music. As part of their 
assignments, students received an iPod pre-loaded with 5GB of music to 
listen to. Dr. Rob Viau, who teaches the class, says the experiment was a 
great success: "The iPod has enabled me to require the students to 
pre-engage the musical materials before class." Meanwhile, the students are 
enjoying the machines, too. "I am definitely a lover of my iPod. I've been 
bragging to all of my friends how we get to use this cool little gadget," 
says one. (BBC News 2 May 2003)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2988325.stm

SPAM HEADING FOR CELL PHONES
The spam that now accounts for as much as three-quarters of total e-mail 
volume is heading for a cell phone near you, according to a panel of 
telecom experts at a forum on spam held Thursday. Federal law prohibits 
most telemarketers from dialing cell phones, but there are no laws 
preventing them from sending text messages to addresses like 
[email protected]. Because many text messaging services carry 
a per-message charge, the cost to consumers could mount quickly. Text 
messaging has yet to catch on in the U.S., and it may never happen if 
spammers start exploiting it, said phone-company officials. Wireless spam 
is already a problem in Japan, where text messaging has been a popular 
feature for years. "As data traffic over wireless networks continues to 
grow, so will spam," warned an NTT executive. (Reuters 1 May 2003)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&ncid=581&e=7&u=/nm/20030501/tc_nm/tech_spam_dc

*****

FLASH CARD
      "An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the 
incomprehensible." (Alfred A. Knopf)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: ART FOR THE TREADMILL
      Victoria Newhouse, a respected authority on architecture, says that 
museums are less than ideal settings for displaying art:
      "The grouping together of precious objects has gone on since 
antiquity: Egyptian tombs, ancient temples and medieval church crypts and 
royal treasuries--the Schatzkammern--all sheltered such collections. But 
the attractive presentation of pieces, including art, as opposed to their 
secretive storage, marked the beginning of what we know as the museum. At 
the beginning of the 16th century, in English country houses and French 
castles, painting collections, at first confined to portraits, were shown 
in long, connective corridors. Referred to as galleries, these passageways 
were widely used as places to take exercise, and art was hung on their 
walls to distract, much as television does today for people on treadmills.
      "Some of these galleries were designed for private enjoyment, 
accessible only to the owners and their friends; others were designed for 
public attendance. Many start as the former and end up as the latter. A 
strong incentive for opening a private museum to the public is the owner's 
wish to provide an alternative to institutional settings. The collector's 
reaction against art's institutionalization is frequently as decisive as 
the artist's. Repeatedly, collectors say they want their holdings to be 
seen in a setting that is more like a home than a museum. And even a 
consummate museum professional like William Rubin, the curator of MoMA's 
Department of Painting and Sculpture from 1967 to 1988, asserts that art is 
ideally viewed in a domestic setting. For Rubin: Museums are essentially 
compromises... Their weakness is that they are necessarily 
homogenized--emptied of all connotations other than art. And that is, 
finally, an artificial situation."
                               ***
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1885254601/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Newhouse's "Towards A New Museum" -- or look for it in your favorite 
library. [We donate all revenues from our book recommendations to literacy 
programs.]

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

RESTRAINING THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8267
      From your article and the information on the Cloudmark site it seems 
that I could solicit email from anyone I disliked or disagreed with 
(political distribution list, electronic retailer, etc.) and then use 
SpamNet to block large portions of their mail to others. How is that sort 
of abuse prevented? (Joe Callahan)

DUMB, DUMBER, DUMBEST
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8267
      According to the Cloudmark story, "Users hit the 'block' button 
whenever they receive spam, and after that the unwanted e-mail is rejected 
by any computer loaded with SpamNet software." So if I have a beef against 
NewsScan, all I have to do is to click on Block, and NewsScan becomes 
invisible to all its recipients. This has a capability for harm that is far 
greater than any prior problems with Napster. Right up there with the 
dumbest ideas of all time. (Richard Hatch)

A PASSION FOR TECHNOLOGY
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8246
      P*rn seems to be an adequate tool through the ages of measuring the 
adoption rate of a new technology. Witness the trade in racy pictures made 
in the early years of photography, the adoption of home video when Betamax 
and VHS systems came out, the proliferation of sites catering to this on 
the Internet and now p*rn's presence with the file swapping services. It 
must mean that the file-swapping services are becoming mainstream. 
(Stephanie George)

DOUBLE YOUR ETHICS, DOUBLE YOUR FUN
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8208
      It is hard to believe that DoubleClick supports anything to do with 
ethics since they load their software onto your computer and provide 
information to retailers and who knows who else without your knowledge. In 
fact, the only way you can find out that DoubleClick is on your PC is to 
use third party software. If this is their idea of ethical behavior, I 
don't believe I want their input about how email should be handled. I 
suspect it is an attempt on their part to circumvent further government 
regulation regarding email. Once the government gets rolling on what's 
ethical and what is not, DoubleClick will likely become a distant memory. 
(Greg Youngs)

SING, SING A SONG (OR THE DVORAK CELLO CONCERTO, IF YOU KNOW THE WORDS)
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8239
      The new iTunes service (which Apple says will work on PCs in 2004) is 
a bit crazy when it comes to classical music. For example, you can buy the 
first and second movements of the Saint-Saens Cello Concerto No. 1 for $.99 
each, but you can't buy the third movement the same way. To get that, 
you've got to buy both that concerto and the Dvorak cello concerto for 
$11.99 (it's not always $9.99 for an album as some sources have stated). I 
already have the Dvorak, so I'm out of luck trying to buy the Saint-Saens 
from iTunes. It is also odd to have the movements of the concerti called 
"songs." Every piece of music in this system that you can buy separately is 
called a "song" whether or not it's a song. Too bad I can't pick up that 
third movement for a song. (Jef Raskin)

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