NewsScan Daily, 12 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 12 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Sony Lets TV Viewers Take Control
        Search Engines Second Only to E-Mail in Internet Use
        Audit Identifies Top Adware Threat
        Most Passwords Are Easy To Guess

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: The Age of Abstractions

SONY LETS TV VIEWERS TAKE CONTROL
      Sony is launching a new line of television sets featuring the 
company's Digital Reality Creation technology that enables viewers to 
manipulate the images broadcast to their screens -- tweaking the resolution 
as well as zooming in and panning around the picture. "Up to now, TV has 
been passive," says Tetsujiro Kondo, chief developer of the new technology. 
"We're introducing an active element -- like binoculars." The new line of 
TVs, which initially will be available only in Japan, marks Sony's latest 
attempt to make a comeback in its core TV business. Long a market leader 
with its high-quality Trinitron picture-tube sets, Sony has lagged in 
rolling out the popular flat-panel models. (Wall Street Journal 12 Aug 2004)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109222661418488554,00.html (sub req'd)

SEARCH ENGINES SECOND ONLY TO E-MAIL IN INTERNET USE
      About 107 million people -- 84% of online users in the U.S. -- have 
used a search engine, according to a recent phone survey by the Pew 
Internet & American Life Project. More than two thirds of Internet users 
report employing a search engine at least a couple of times a week, and on 
any given day, more than half seek information on the Web using a search 
engine. Pew reports that Web search ranks second only to e-mail as the most 
popular online activity, and 87% of search engine users say they find the 
information they want most of the time. (Pew Internet & American Life 
Project 12 Aug 2004)
http://www.pewinternet.org

AUDIT IDENTIFIES TOP ADWARE THREAT
      A six-month audit carried out by an ISP and a software company has 
concluded that CoolWebSearch is one of the top adware threats on the web. 
The survey was carried out by the Atlanta-based ISP Earthlink and Webroot 
Software, the latter a company that makes privacy protection software. 
Slightly over two million scans were carried out during the period January 
1 to June 30 this year. A total of over 54 million instances of spyware 
were found. CoolWebSearch's most common exploit is to hijack a user's 
homepage and direct it to a paying client's Web site. Damaging CWS variants 
can pop up so many ads that a computer locks up or crashes. (The Age, 10 
Aug 2004) rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U.
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/10/1092102432873.html

MOST PASSWORDS ARE EASY TO GUESS
      Most Internet users choose easy-to-guess passwords such as their 
pet's name, according to a survey by Visa Europe. More than three-fourths 
of those polled said they choose passwords relating to friends, family and 
memorable dates. The favorites are nicknames (21%), birthdays and 
anniversaries (15%), pet names (15%), family members' names (14%) and 
memorable dates such as the Battle of Hastings and England's World Cup 
victory (7%). Two percent even reported using "password" as their password. 
"It is not surprising that loved ones and pet names top the most popular 
list as often people struggle to remember random characters or designated 
log-in codes and opt to choose their own. Of course, it is important that 
our passwords are personal and meaningful to us, but also that they are 
difficult to decipher and not easily guessed," says Visa Europe VP Hugo 
Bottelier. When choosing a password, Visa suggests avoiding words that 
appear in the dictionary, as well as words relating to personal information 
that could be inferred or guessed. The most preferable type of password 
would have random letters, numbers and punctuation. And for heaven's sake, 
don't write it down and leave it by your credit card or PC!  (Silicon.com 
11 Aug 2004)
http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39123066,00.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "If one ever wishes to retain one's fantasies about the good sense of 
the people in the realm of literary taste, one does best never to consult 
the bestseller lists." (Joseph Epstein)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE AGE OF ABSTRACTIONS
      The noted author and critic Joseph Epstein, writing about the recent 
National Endowment for the Arts report "Reading at Risk," suggests that too 
much hand-wringing is going on over NEA statistics showing that Americans 
are reading less and less. (The statistics indicate that the audience for 
the reading of novels, poems, and plays has fallen during the past 20 years 
from 56% to 47% of the nation's population.) Epstein writes:
      "Like all surveys, 'Reading at Risk' is an example of the style of 
statistical thinking dominant in our time. It's far from sure that 
statistics are very helpful in capturing so idiosyncratic an act as 
reading, except in a bulky and coarse way. That the Swedes read more 
novels, poems, and plays than American and the Portuguese read fewer than 
we do is a statistical fact, but I'm not sure what you do with it, 
especially when you don't know the quality of the material being read in 
the three countries...
      "Ours is supremely the age of abstractions. 'Create a concept,' 
Ortega y Gasset said, 'and reality leaves the room.' Careful reading of 
great imaginative writing brings reality back into the room, by reminding 
us how much more varied, complicated, and rich it is than any social or 
political concept devised by human beings can hope to capture. Read Balzac 
and the belief in, say, reining in corporate greed through political reform 
becomes a joke; read Dickens and you'll know that no social class has any 
monopoly on noble behavior; read Henry James and you'll find the midlife 
crisis and other pop psychological constructs don't even qualify as stupid; 
read Dreiser and you'll be aware that the pleasures of power are rarely 
trumped by the advertised desire to do good.
      "Read any amount of serious imaginative literature with care and you 
will be highly skeptical of the statistical style of thinking. You will 
quickly grasp that, in a standard statistical report such as 'Reading at 
Risk,' serious reading, always a minority interest, isn't at stake here. 
Nothing more is going on, really, than the crise du jour, soon to be 
replaced by the report on eating disorders, the harmfulness of aspirin, or 
the drop in high-school math scores."
      See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393308545/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Joseph Epstein's wonderful book "A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar 
Essays" -- 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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