NewsScan Daily, 28 June 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 28 June 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Sun 3-D Interface Offered to Open-Source Community
        VeriSign Tackles E-Mail Security
        AskJeeves Adds Page Preview Feature
        'Xp Starter' Planned For Asia
        New Record Set for Text-Messaging Speed

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Beginning Your Next Masterpiece
        Memo From Maelstrom: 'You Be The Jury!'

SUN 3-D INTERFACE OFFERED TO OPEN-SOURCE COMMUNITY
      Sun Microsystems has designed 3-D interface software to compete with 
the PC desktop metaphor of desktops and file folders. The new technology 
will be offered to the open source community, and a Sun executive says, 
"What we want to do is leverage the community of open-source developers to 
do things we might not have thought of." Produced through a company effort 
dubbed Project Looking Glass, the 3D interface allows windows containing 
documents or images to be turned sideways (like books on a shelf) and spun 
around so that notations can be made on the reverse side. It may eventually 
be used on Windows machines, but Sun is initially planning to use the 
technology on desktop machines running Linux or Sun's own Solaris operating 
system. Sun president and COO Jonathan Schwartz says that Project Looking 
Glass reflects a swing in software development back toward desktop machines 
or other client devices, instead of running programs on centralized 
servers. (Wall Street Journal 28 Jun 2004)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108837380149148596,00.html (sub req'd)

VERISIGN TACKLES E-MAIL SECURITY
      VeriSign has unveiled a new e-mail protection service that uses 
custom blacklists, fingerprinting and heuristic tools to calculate the 
probability that a particular message is spam by examining a pattern of 
characteristics in the message. The company has begun free trials of the 
service, and VeriSign says it plans to add more features, including sender 
ID verification and domain authentication. "The introduction of this 
service will help enterprises restore the productivity gains from e-mail 
communication that are now under threat from spam and viruses," says 
VeriSign executive VP Judy Lin. (CNet News.com 28 Jun 2004)
http://news.com.com/2100-7355-5250010.html

ASKJEEVES ADDS PAGE PREVIEW FEATURE
      AskJeeves is adding a new preview feature that enables users to sneak 
a peek at thumbnail images of the Web pages displayed in results. (The 
feature works only when used with Windows/Internet Explorer.) "It 
eliminates the need to go pogo-sticking around the Web to decide where you 
want to go," says Jeeves senior VP Jim Lanzone, who notes in user testing, 
the preview feature reduced the number of clicks used by searchers by 50% 
to 70%. Although the images are tiny, they still are large enough to convey 
an idea of the Web site's focus. Jeeves is also adding new shortcuts 
designed to enhance user experience. For instance, after the user types in 
a famous person's name, Jeeves displays a box at the top of the results 
page with a minibio, photo and links to Web resources. If the user types in 
a movie title, the search engine pops up a synopsis of the film and what 
proportion of professional film critics liked it. (Washington Post 27 Jun 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7342-2004Jun26.html

'XP STARTER' PLANNED FOR ASIA
      Microsoft will begin in the fall to offer a version of its Windows 
operating system geared toward beginner computer users in Thailand and 
Malaysia. Dubbed Windows XP Starter Edition, the offering will be part of 
government-sponsored programs aimed at providing more affordable personal 
computers in those countries. The system will include Internet Explorer, 
Windows Media Player, and many other Windows features, but won't have all 
the functions of Windows XP offered in the United States. (The Australian 
25 Jun 2004) Rec'd from John Lamp
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,9949545%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E, 
00.html

NEW RECORD SET FOR TEXT-MESSAGING SPEED
      Singapore student Kimberly Yeo, 23, has walked away with first place 
in a contest designed to test text messaging speed and dexterity after she 
managed to type a fiendishly complicated 26-word text message on her cell 
phone in 43.66 seconds, says competition organizer Singapore 
Telecommunications. The record beats by a significant margin the previous 
time of 67 seconds set last year by Briton James Trusler in Sydney, 
Australia. Contestants had to type, "The razor-toothed piranhas of the 
genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish 
in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human." Like many of her 
fellow contestants, Yeo is an avid text-messager, sending about 50 a day, 
or 1,500 a month. Singapore Telecom says its system now handles about 9 
million text messages a day, up from 3.5-4 million in 2001-2002. (AP 28 Jun 
2004)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040628/D83G0VQ81.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "We operate under a jury system in this country, and as much as we 
complain about it, we have to admit that we know of no better system, 
except possibly flipping a coin." (Dave Barry)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: BEGINNING YOUR NEXT MASTERPIECE
      Irish author John O'Donoghue writes:
      "Aristotle said in the first sentence of his Metaphysics, 'All men by 
nature desire to know.' This is the secret magic and danger of having a 
mind. Even though your body is always bound to one place, your mind is a 
relentless voyager. The mind has a magnificent, creative restlessness that 
always brings it on a new journey. Even in the most sensible and controlled 
lives there is often an undertow of longing that would deliver them to 
distant shores. There is something within you that is not content to remain 
fixed within any one frame. You cannot immunize yourself against your 
longing. You love to reach beyond, to discover something new. Knowing calls 
you out of yourself. Discovery delights the heart. This is the natural joy 
of childhood and the earned joy of the artist. The child and the artist are 
pilgrims of discovery. When you limit your life to the one frame of 
thinking, you close out the mystery. When you fence in the desires of your 
heart within fixed walls of belief, morality, and convention, you dishonour 
the call to discovery. You create grey fields of 'quiet desperation.' 
Discovery is the nature of the sou1. There is some wildness of divinity in 
us, calling us to live everything. The Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh said, 
'To be dead is to stop believing in / The masterpieces we will begin 
tomorrow.'"
      [See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060955589/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for John O'Donohue's "Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong" -- 
or look for it in your favorite library. Note: We donate all revenue from 
our book recommendations to adult literacy program.]

MEMO FROM MAELSTROM: 'YOU BE THE JURY!'
      We received another letter from our hacker friend, maelstrom, who writes:
                          ***
      I am tossing this out to your readers to gauge their responses. Are 
all hackers evil demons who deserve the harshest possible punishment or, as 
with other crimes, should the level of punishment fit the severity of the 
crime?  Here's the story...
      Aug 2000
      A former cop who is employed by a large pharmaceutical firm as a 
network security administrator for remote access finds that his job is 
being outsourced to IBM. He is not offered a job with IBM. He steals an RSA 
card and activates a dormant account and links that account to the RSA 
card. He gives the new account global root accesses.
      Dec 2000
      The former employee has successfully logged into the 
pharmaceutical  company's network to keep his RSA card active and synched 
with the server's clock. Mid-month he logs in and deletes the account of 
one of his former superiors. A few days later, the superior tries to log on 
and finds that he can't get on to the system. He calls a tech to help him 
out. Within minutes the tech discovers that the account had been deleted. 
The tech creates a new account and restores the superior's access to his 
email.  Within a day the tech finds the log entries that show who deleted 
the account and when. Of course the "real" account holder had nothing to do 
with it (and had left employ of the pharmaceutical company many months 
earlier.) The tech deletes the offending account and traces the "attack" 
back to an IP address. Subsequently, the tech discovers that the "attack" 
came from a former employee. The tech also has the Help Desk restore access 
to servers, files, applications, etc., that the superior had lost when his 
account was deleted.
      March 2001
      The outsourced security vendor, IBM advises the pharmaceutical 
company that its charges for "incident response" are well over $80,000 and 
climbing. Much of their "response" work consists of validating tens of 
thousands of user accounts and drawing up new policies and procedures for 
increased security.
      The pharmaceutical company calls in the FBI. The FBI starts their 
investigation of the crime.
      May 2004
      The case finally goes to court. The prosecution argues that the 
hacker caused more than $80,000 in damages to the pharmaceutical company's 
system and, therefore, can be charged with the federal computer crime statute.
      The defense had tried over the course of many months to plea-bargain 
to a lesser charge. The government was not willing to deal. At the trial, 
the defense argues that the attack was soon discovered and fixed and allows 
that the hours spent by the tech could be considered "damage." However, the 
amount of time the tech spent fixing the system after the attack equated to 
only $1,500 in damage. They state that IBM charged excessively and went 
beyond "fixing" the damage. (The federal statute has a lower limit of 
$5,000 to make the crime a federal offense.) (By the way -- the hacker 
never said he was innocent. He admitted his guilt over and over.)
      The jury quickly finds the hacker guilty. The hacker now faces 12 
years in a federal penitentiary and a large fine. The defense team 
interviewed some of the jurors to find out why they decided on the guilty 
verdict. The consensus was this: He committed a crime. If they found him 
not-guilty, he would get off scot-free.
      End of story so far. There will probably be an appeal and the 
sentencing date is coming up soon. So, I ask the NewsScan readers. Was this 
justice? What would you have done if you were a juror?
              As ever...
                    Maelstrom

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