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

NewsScan Daily, 2 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Pop-Up Company Agrees to Pipe Down
        Business Blogging Goes Mainstream
        VoIP -- Voyeurism Over Internet Protocol?
        DJs Ordered to Pay in Music Piracy Case
        Just a Minute -- My Brain Is Booting Up

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Sandor Petöfi

POP-UP COMPANY AGREES TO PIPE DOWN
      D Squared Solutions, a San Diego company founded by two college 
students, has settled with the Federal Trade Commission after agreeing to 
desist mass-mailing pop-up ads using the Messenger function enabled on many 
Windows operating systems. D Squared has also agreed to stop peddling 
software that would have blocked the very ads it was sending. The company's 
founders have not admitted any wrongdoing and face no penalties. Their 
lawyers claimed the pair were not trying to extort consumers with their ads 
and one attorney suggested that such ads are "annoyances you have to deal 
with in a free society." (AP 30 July 2004)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040731/D845EU300.html

BUSINESS BLOGGING GOES MAINSTREAM
      Major technology companies such as Microsoft and IBM are endorsing 
blogging as a means of enhancing companies' communications channels while 
at the same time eyeing them as potential profit-boosters. At a recent 
conference held at the University of California Berkeley's Haas Business 
School, IBM Almaden Research Center director James Spohrer outlined his 
company's plans for integrating blogging into its employee communication 
strategies: "It's about decreasing social space between employees, and 
increasing the amount of knowledge shared between people." An example might 
contain some of an individual's educational background and work experience, 
as well as information on product development strategies that colleagues 
and customers can access around the clock. This sharing of information 
could spur feedback on efforts to produce new products and improve business 
processes, said Spohrer. Meanwhile, some analysts are looking at the 
marketing potential inherent in blogging. "Blogs are a way to put a human 
face on the company," because of the continuous interaction and 
relationships that employees can develop with blog-readers, says Forrester 
Research analyst Charlene Li. (Reuters 31 Jul 2004)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=5834827

VOIP -- VOYEURISM OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL?
      With businesses and individuals flocking to Internet telephony as a 
cheap alternative to pricey landline phones, hackers are discovering new 
opportunities for eavesdropping and making mischief. Tapping phones by 
hacking into servers and hard drives is much easier than conventional 
wiretapping and analysts say even though very few incidents have been 
reported to date, it's just a matter of time. "Once you are running an 
Internet phone network, all those threats you worry about in the data world 
will be transferred to the voice world," says one security consultant. 
"Voice over Internet phones are not in the spotlight of hackers yet, but in 
this voyeuristic world, if someone can listen in on people's conversations 
and get a thrill, they will." In addition, voice packets offer new 
opportunities for disguising and distributing malignant code. "You can 
spoof a packet and insert myself into a communications flow," says a 
systems engineer for Mirage Networks. "This kind of threat has been around 
for a while for data, but now it will move into voice. As you see a broader 
acceptance of voice over Internet, you'll see more spoofs." (New York Times 
2 Aug 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/technology/02virus.html

DJs ORDERED TO PAY IN MUSIC PIRACY CASE
      The Federal Court of Australia has ordered five disc jockeys, a 
record store and its director to pay a total of $140,000 to the owners of 
copyright, whose music they had copied and sold. The award was in favor of 
Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment (Australia) and Warner Music 
Australia. The DJs who were asked to pay go by the names Moto, Chocolate 
Boy Wonder, Peter Gunz, Demo, and Tikelz. Record store Anthem Records and 
its director Joe Sitoa were also asked to pay. The respondents had produced 
and distributed compilation CDs containing music from some of the biggest 
names in rhythm and blues, including Ja Rule, Jennifer Lopez and Missy 
Elliot. (The Age, 30 Jul 2004) rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U.
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/30/1091080426577.html

JUST A MINUTE -- MY BRAIN IS BOOTING UP
      Increasingly, college students are toting their laptops to class and 
using them as retrieval mechanisms for information they haven't yet managed 
to store in their carbon-based brain cells. The phenomenon was predicted 40 
years ago by Marshall McLuhan, who suggested that people's senses were 
extending outside of their bodies, in the way a book was an extension of 
the eye and a car was the extension of a foot. Internet researcher Sherry 
Turkle has documented this latest evolutionary trend in her book "Life on 
the Screen" where she describes a typical college student's study habits -- 
the text book is open, the CNN news ticker is flickering across the TV 
screen, the headphones are pumping out the latest alternative rock, and the 
student's fielding IM messages as he/she surfs the Web. "Real life is just 
one more window," says one multitasking student. (CNN.com 2 Aug 2004)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/08/02/school.internet/index.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study 
mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and 
philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, 
commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study 
painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." 
(John Adams)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: SANDOR PETÖFI
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the 19th century Hungarian lyric poet 
and revolutionary Sandor Petöfi (1823-1856), who was a prominent literary 
figure leading up to the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution in 1848.
      Petöfi believed fervently in the principles of the French Revolution, 
and vehemently protested Hungary's social injustices, especially the 
hereditary privileges enjoyed by the nobility and monarchy. In the 
political crisis of his age, he sought without success a seat in Hungary's 
parliamentary Diet, probably because his rhetoric was too radical. His 
politically charged poetry, however, did find wide popular acceptance. His 
rousing poem, "Talpra magyar" ("Rise, Hungarian"), written on the eve of 
the revolution, became the uprising's anthem.
      During the revolution Petöfi became the aide-de-camp of the Polish 
General Jozef Bem, then head of the Transylvanian army, opposing the 
invading Russian forces. Petöfi disappeared during the Battle of Segesvár 
in July 31, 1849. For many years it was thought he had died at Segesvár, 
but in the late 1980s Soviet investigators found archives that revealed 
that he was one of some 1,800 Hungarian prisoners of war who were marched 
to Siberia. It is now believed that he died there of tuberculosis in 1856. 
Today Hungarians celebrate Petöfi's memory as a great poet and 
revolutionary who symbolizes their abiding desire for freedom.
      Petöfi was born Sandor-Alexander-Petöfi Petrovics on New Year's Day, 
1823, in Kiskoros. His father, Istvan Petrovics, was a village butcher and 
innkeeper. A Serb, he was married to Maria Hruz, a Slovak. When Petöfi was 
16 years old his family's funds were wiped out by the flooding of the 
Danube River, inducing him to leave school and join a traveling theater 
troupe. Soon thereafter he quit acting to become a soldier in the Austrian 
army. He served two years until he was discharged because of ill health. He 
resumed studies at the Calvinist College of Papa, but only for a short time 
before returning to acting. He had no success acting and was forced into 
poverty at Debrecen, where he eked out a living as a translator.
      Petöfi published his first poem in 1842. His years of hardship living 
ended in 1844, when Mihály Vörösmarty, then the leading Hungarian poet, 
secured his appointment as assistant editor of the literary periodical 
Pesti Divatlap. That same year, he achieved instant fame with his first 
volume of poetry, Versek, despite some critical disapproval of the 
extremist tone of his poems.
      Petöfi remains a popular hero in Hungarian history, and appreciation 
for his poetry has never diminished. Hungarians still find in Petöfi's 
words an inspiring expression of their historical roots as a people.
      [See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679772537/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
"The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848" by Eric Hobsbaum -- or look for it in 
your favorite library. Note: We donate all revenue from our book 
recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

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