NewsScan Daily, 8 September 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 8 September 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Sony Zooms In
       France Telecom Employees Protest Privatization Plans
       E-Voting in Nevada
       IT Job Market
       Russian Crime Pays for Datadots
       The Next Version of the Pinup

FEATURES           
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: Weighty Matters

SONY ZOOMS IN
     Sony has developed a computer chip that will allow TV viewers to zoom
in on any part of an image without losing any sharpness in picture quality.
Sony says its chip doesn't zoom the usual way (by stretching horizontal and
vertical scanning lines) but instead delivers clear zoomed images by
digitally enhancing the signal to communicate gloss, depth and texture.
(AP/San Jose Mercury News 8 Sep 2004)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9608835.htm>

FRANCE TELECOM EMPLOYEES PROTEST PRIVATIZATION PLANS
     France Telecom employees have protested government plans to privatize
the group, with management characterizing the mobilization as modest and
unions describing it as robust resistance. Company officials say 18.3% of
the workforce heeded a union call for a 24-hour strike, while the SUD-PTT
union claims the figure was 25% and characterizes the response as
"significant." Another union, the CGT, says 30-70% of the workforce went out
on strike, with turnout varying among branches. The strike call followed an
announcement by the government that it will reduce its stake in France
Telecom to below 50%. (The Age 8 Sep 2004) Rec'd from J. Lamp
<http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/08/1094530645952.html>

E-VOTING IN NEVADA
     Nevada voters have become the first in the nation to cast ballots in a
statewide election using computers that produced printed paper records of
electronic ballots. "Knock on wood, so far things have been working
flawlessly," said Secretary of State Dean Heller. Nevada's $9.3 million
voting system includes more than 2,600 computers and printers deployed in
every county. The system, developed by California-based Sequoia Voting
Systems, aims to address concerns that paperless touchscreen votes cannot be
properly audited or recounted. "From what I've seen, voters seem to enjoy
the experience," says DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman of the U.S. Election
Assistance Commission. "There hasn't been frustration or confusion."(AP/USA
Today 8 Sep 2004) 
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/evoting/2004-09-08-nv-evote-sy
stem_x.htm

IT JOB MARKET
     A survey by the Information Technology Association of America reports
that the U.S. high-tech workforce grew by 2% last year but that  demand for
computer programmers, tech-support specialists and other high-tech workers
continues to erode. "This is still not the job market America's IT workers
have been hoping for," according to ITAA President Harris Miller.
(Reuters/USA Today 8 Sep 2004)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry/2004-09-08-tech-job-outl
ook_x.htm

RUSSIAN CRIME PAYS FOR DATADOT
     Australian security technology firm DataDot is on the verge of sealing
a multimillion-dollar deal with Russia thanks to a law that will make an
Australian technology compulsory for all new automobiles by 2006. The
company sells a unique spray-on system of microdots laser-etched with a
serial number. "They used that product to educate police and governments all
over Russia," DataDot executive chairman Ian Allen said. "There is a decree
going through parliament that police must look for the dots." (The
Australian, 7 Sep 2004)
<http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10689519%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5
E,00.html>

THE NEXT VERSION OF THE PINUP
     The October issue of Playboy features several digital video game
characters posing in the nude. Playboy senior editor Scott Alexander says,
"Hopefully the purists won't get too bent out of shape. This is just the
next version of the pinup... We treated these women just like they are
celebrities. We treated them real, as if they had turn-ons and turn-offs...
Part of the thrust of the piece is that gaming is not just for kids. We want
to establish the way Playboy's going to be covering video games. We want to
cover them from perspective of an adult who has a life. We're not writing
video game reviews for kids who play five hours a day. We're writing for the
grown-up who may play five hours a week, if that much." (AP/Los Angeles
Times) 
<http://www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology15sep08,1,1198348.story?
coll=sns-ap-toptechnology

*****

FLASH CARD
     "I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the
consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater
pleasures." (Michel de Montaigne)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: WEIGHTY MATTERS
     Long before the statistics were in, Edwin Newman took note of America's
obesity problem:  
     "This is a thoroughly unscientific observation, based entirely on what
the pros call anecdotal evidence. Yet it does appear that something bizarre
is taking place in the United States, that bizarre something being that
American women in extraordinary numbers are becoming extraordinarily fat.
Men also, but not nearly so many.
     Americans who might be called ample, or well-upholstered, who weigh ten
or twenty percent more than the accepted norm, are increasing in numbers,
too. The unscientific observation, however, applies not to them but to those
who are vastly overweight, lady sumo wrestlers who make you stare in
amazement and wonder how they perform the ordinary chores of life, how they
get through the day.
     Some strain, wobble, and hesitate going up steps a few inches high.
Aboard commercial aircraft, they occupy their own seats and, with their
flesh jutting over and under the armrests, virtually surrounding the
armrests, half of the seats next to them. Passengers in front of them cannot
lean back; there is no room. These people must weigh, many of them, three
hundred pounds and more, and they are of all kinds and ages. They fill their
outsize clothes to the last centimeter.
     What is causing this ballooning? There is apparently a new view of
these matters, a let-it-a11-hang-out attitude. Maybe people who tend to be
overweight are deciding that it isn't worth the trouble to deprive
themselves of food and drink they enjoy. Once started down that road, they
simply grow larger and larger. Then, too, so-called fast food may be playing
its part. It's easy to get and is eaten almost absentmindedly. Television
may be involved -- all that staring at the screen, often munching on
something. Add the American addiction to the automobile.
     It is strange that this phenomenon should turn up at the same time that
so many Americans are devoted to fitness and cultivation of the body
muscular. Maybe the fatness is a defiant reaction. There, in any case, the
fatness is, and it is disquieting, as though some sinister force is out to
disable a large part of the population. What is going on?"
     [See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0446514233/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for Edwin Newman's "I Must Say: On English, The News, and Other Matters"
-- or look for it in your favorite library. Note: We donate all revenue from
our book and media recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

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