NewsScan Daily, 2 July 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 2 July 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       RFID Could Cost 4 Million Jobs by 2007
       Rebellion Against Directory of Cell Phone Numbers
       Hot Chips
       Tiny Keyboards
       E-Book Called a Feast for the Eyes'
       The French Forbid "DidTheyReadIt?" Service

FEATURES           
       Flash Card
       Holiday     
       Honorary Subscriber: Lee De Forest
       Memo from Maelstrom: 'The Jury is IN!'

RFID COULD COST 4 MILLION JOBS BY 2007
     The Yankee Group, a prominent market research firm, is predicting that
RFID tags will cost four million U.S. jobs by 2007, throughout numerous
industries. (RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification, a technology
embedded for inventory and tracking purposes into products, materials, and
shipments.) However, Yankee Group analyst Adam Zabel thinks that most
workers who lose their jobs due to increased efficiencies made possible by
RFID technology will be able to obtain 'more value-added' positions. (Vnunet
2 Jul 2004)  http://www.vnunet.com/news/1156369

REBELLION AGAINST DIRECTORY OF CELL PHONE NUMBERS
     A proposal from the the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet
Association (CTIA) to create a national directory of cell phone numbers has
created quite a stir across the country. Northwestern University sociologist
Bernard Beck comments: "As life becomes more technologically complex, people
reflexively pull back. We don't want to give up any personal information
because it seems every day someone figures out a new way to victimize us."
U.S. Cellular promises to withhold customers' numbers from any directory and
Verizon Wireless says it will not participate in a wireless directory, but
various other carriers have decided to use the directory service, which
could start next year. A spokesperson for CTIA says the industry doesn't
plan to list numbers without permission and that the numbers will be
available only by dialing 411. Andrew Cole of A.T. Kearney comments: "It's
more than likely that your friends already have your cell-phone number, so
all a directory does is make it available to strangers. Most people don't
want that. Our research shows that people want to simplify their lives.
They're subject to a barrage of external contacts they haven't initiated. In
the old days it was cool to be connected, but these days the sign of someone
who's reached society's higher echelons is that he's disconnected." (Chicago
Tribune/San Jose Mercury News 1 Jul 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9059631.htm

HOT CHIPS
    Today's microchips are as much as five times as hot as a stovetop,
because more and more transistors are packed into tinier spaces so that
computing devices can run faster and faster. Cooling systems are now being
built into computers and cell phones to conserve every ounce of power. IBM
Microelectronics chief technology officer Bernie Meyerson says that the
design of chips that consume less power represents "a seminal shift in the
industry," and adds: "If all you do is make chips smaller, you will hit the
power crisis. I'm optimistic that it is an opportunity to do more holistic
design that takes into account everything... not just performance." (San
Jose Mercury News 2 Jul 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9063464.htm

TINY KEYBOARDS
      Phone makers have been rushing to add standard keyboards onto tiny
cell phones and other devices: Motorola's new A630 cell phone flips open
into a miniature laptop mode, so that keys can be pressed with thumbs;
Nokia's 6810 flips open to produce a keyboard that spreads out like two
wings on either side of the screen; Samsung has designed a fist-size box
that uses a laser to project a keyboard on any flat surface. Yet some
industry analysts have been questioning the demand for traditional Qwerty
keypads (named for the six letters at the top left of a typewriter
keyboard): a survey by Strategy Analytics found that only 13% of cell phone
users said they wanted one, and Seamus McAteer of the Zelos Group thinks
that the Qwerty keypad is "a generational thing" -- in that today's teens
have grown up sending text messages using phone keys and have no interest in
using traditional keyboards on small devices. (USA Today 1 Jul 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-07-01-cell-key_x.htm

SONY E-BOOK CALLED A FEAST FOR THE EYES
     Technology journalist Yuri Kageyama is wild about Sony's new Librie
electronic book reader, which is "easier on the eyes than any electronic
display yet." The device features a display technology designed to replace
printed words on paper (using so-called electronic ink). To download
content, the machine connects to a personal computer via a USB link; digital
books are obtained from a service in Japan called Publishing Link, set up
with capital from Sony and major Japanese publishers. Kageyama says: "I'm
not wild about buying books that self-destruct after 60 days. But the idea
behind Librie makes impeccable sense. It's not that far-fetched to imagine
receiving our morning newspaper of choice -- call it the Daily Download --
into an upgraded version of such a gadget. We'll save a lot of trees." (AP
Technology 1 Jul 2004)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040701/D83HVNUG0.html

FRENCH AUTHORITY FORBIDS "DIDTHEYREADIT?" SERVICE
     CNIL, the French data protection authority, has declared Rampell
Software's new  mail-service 'Did they read it?' to be illegal. (Subscribers
to "DidTheyReadIt?" get a report about the exact time their e-mail was
opened, for how long, on what kind of operating system and if the mail was
forwarded to other people.) The CNIL finds the service unacceptable under
French privacy
Legislation; as a result, any French subscriber to this service risks a
prison sentence of 5 years plus a substantial fine. (EDRIgram 1 Jul 2004)
www.edri.org  Rec'd from Jim Sterne via Mark Gibbs

*****  

FLASH CARD
     "Failure is my best friend. If I succeeded, it would be like dying.
Maybe worse." (Alberto Giacometti)

HOLIDAY
     In honor of American Independence Day, a U.S. national holiday, we will
suspend publication of NewsScan Daily on Monday, the Fourth of July, and
resume on Tuesday. 

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: LEE DE FORREST
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American inventor Lee De Forest
(1873-1961), who was a pioneering and prolific force in the fields of
wireless telegraphy, radio, wire telephone, sound-on-film, picture
transmission, and television. The most widely known of his more than 300
patented inventions was the triode, or Audion tube for amplifying radio
signals. Until the development of the transistor in 1947, the De Forest
triode remained the key component of all radio, telephone, radar,
television, and computer systems. Along with Marconi and a distinguished
list of other claimants, De Forest was frequently called the father of radio
(and he so referred to himself, not unjustifiably, in the title of his 1950
autobiography).
     De Forest was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the son of a Congregational
minister, but was brought up in Alabama, where his father had become
president of the Talladega College for Negroes. Ostracized by the white
community, De Forest grew to maturity none the worse for having only black
youngsters for his companions. In 1893, he entered the Sheffield Scientific
School of Yale University, finishing with a Ph.D. in physics six years
later. His doctoral dissertation dealt with the propagation of
electromagnetic waves, which made it possibly the first United States thesis
on what would later become known as radio.
     He went to work for the Western Electric Company in Chicago, where he
began designing devices for wireless telegraphy. In 1902 he received
sufficient funding to found the De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company.
Unfortunately, by 1906 his company became insolvent (due to fraud by his
business partners), but in 1907 he obtained the patent for his Audion tube,
the triode device that he had developed by adding a third element to the
electronic diode patented by the Englishman Sir John Ambrose Fleming in
1905. Using his radio tube, De Forest was able to broadcast experimentally
both speech and music in the New York City area.
     De Forest again ventured into business, starting up the De Forest Radio
Telephone Company, which became another failed operation. However, this time
his poor choice of partners led to an indictment of De Forest for fraudulent
use of the mails to promote a worthless device. De Forest was acquitted and
then made the fateful decision to sell his rights to the Audion -- only to
watch his "worthless" invention become the basis for the subsequent success
of AT&T. 
     De Forest later designed a movie-sound system and contributed to the
development of the phonograph, telephone, television, radar, and diathermy.
Over time, however, De Forest acknowledging his poor business acumen would
sell many of his patents at prices much less than their true worth.
     Despite an understandable degree of bitterness at the financial
exploitation of his inventions, De Forest continued as an active freelance
inventor well into old age, and was granted his last patent in 1957 at age
84. He did enjoy a noticeable degree of support from the communications
community, but they were unsuccessful in their efforts to earn him the Nobel
Prize for Physics.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671134809/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for a biography of De Forest -- or look for it in your favorite library.
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.]

MEMO FROM MAELSTROM: 'THE JURY IS IN!'
Re: http://tinyurl.com/3x264 and http://tinyurl.com/38j5c
     Here's maelstrom's comments on the messages received in response to the
recent maelstrom memo 'You Be the Jury!'
                          ***
     I want to thank everyone who took the time to respond to my last
missive, 'You Be The Jury!' The judgment from the last NewsScan was GUILTY!
(7 guilty and 2 innocent).
     Given the responses I'd say most everyone got my point -- which was
that this was not an open-and-shut case and it posed a moral dilemma. As a
society, we have some hard questions to consider when it comes to computer
crime.
     I know hackers are not the most popular people on Earth, but employers
need to think about the ethical treatment of their employees. With the
Internet, it's much easier to cause harm to the entire company than you
would imagine -- and there are plenty of interesting cases listed in the
FBI's Computer Crime web site (http://www.cybercrime.gov/cccases.html).
     Most of the people charged by the FBI had been former employees of the
companies they hacked. I'm NOT siding with these hackers; I'm just saying
that bosses need to be careful about how they let people go. It may not
"feel" right to have to jolly an employee who has been a right pain in the
arse, but if you piss him off, your network security better be top-notch.
     Going back to the responses again... Two persons felt they had to
attack me personally. I get that a lot and have developed quite an alligator
hide to the slings and arrows thrown at me. I just have one question for
folks who believe I am the devil incarnate -- Do You Know Who I AM? For all
you know, I could be a middle-aged housewife who just gets a kick egging
people on! Or, perhaps I work for the federal government as an undercover
hacker. Or, I'm just another wild-eyed kid with a chip on my shoulder.
     Whatever the case may be, I will continue to send notes to NewsScan so
I can occasionally rattle some cages and get people to think.
                 As always...
                              maelstrom

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