NewsScan Daily, 19 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 19 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization
making significant and sustained contributions to the effective
management and appropriate use of information technology. NSD is
written by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas, [email protected].
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Instant Messages Forever (Or at Least Three Years)
       Digital Projection Not Quite Ready for Eight O'Clock Showing
       What's Next for Oracle, Peoplesoft, and J.D.Edwards?
       IEEE Ratifies New Wi-Fi Standard
       U.S. Electronics Exports Down

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       'Cheers for NewsScan'
       Honorary Subscriber: Pierre de Fermat
       Mailbag: The World As We Find It

INSTANT MESSAGES FOREVER (OR AT LEAST THREE YEARS)
NASD, the self-regulatory body of the investment industry, is telling Wall
Street brokers that instant messages must be saved for at least three years:
"NASD recognizes that instant messaging is becoming increasingly popular as
a real-time method of communicating and we want to be clear about our
expectations for its use. Firms have to remember that regardless of the
informality of instant messaging, it is still subject to the same
requirements as e-mail communications." (Washington Post 19 Jun 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10951-2003Jun18.html

DIGITAL PROJECTION NOT QUITE READY FOR EIGHT-O'CLOCK SHOWING
Digital movie projection in theaters will be a boon for a lot of people
(when it finally arrives), but in the view of consultant Michael Karagosian:
"Today's digital cinema systems are not ready to be rolled out. They don't
yet produce an image equal to that of film. I thought the 'Star Wars'
digital showing looked very bad." But the problems are being worked out, and
John Frithian, the president of the National Association of Theater Owners,
says: "It's impossible to know when all this will happen. But whenever it
does, it will be the biggest technological transition in our industry's
history." The studios will save up to $1 billion a year by no longer needing
to ship film prints to each of the world's 150,000 screens. (New York Times
19 Jun 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/06/19/technology/circuits/19cine.html

WHAT'S NEXT FOR ORACLE, PEOPLESOFT, AND J.D.EDWARDS?
Not clear yet. The shareholders -- and the courts -- will decide the answer
to that question. Oracle's hostile takeover plans for acquiring PeopleSoft
have been complicated by PeopleSoft's bid for J.D. Edwards (a bid welcomed
by J.D. Edwards), and everyone is suing somebody or other. Oracle is suing
PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards (alleging that their plans to merge violate
their obligations to get the best deal for their shareholders), and
PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards are suing Oracle (alleging unfair business
practices). And there are also numerous private lawsuits. This will all take
a little time to clear up.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6122122.htm

IEEE RATIFIES NEW WI-FI STANDARD
The new 802.11g wireless standard, which has now been approved by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), is likely to
prompt a new surge of interest in WiFi, the technology which uses a radio
signal allowing laptops and other mobile devices to connect to the Internet
through access points called "hot spots" located in cafes, airports, etc.
The 802.11g standard will allow wireless transmission at speeds four to five
times faster than the current standard, and make it possible to send bigger
files (e.g., videos) and connect more computers to an access point. (Chicago
Sun-Times 18 Jun 2003)
http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-fin-emain19.html

U.S. ELECTRONICS EXPORTS DOWN
The electronics industry trade group AeA (the new name of the American
Electronics Association) reports that the level of U.S. exports of finished
and unfinished high-tech goods fell 26% from 2000 to 2002. (A prominent
exception was China, whose 2001 acceptance into the World Trade Organization
unleashed a pent-up demand in that country for imports from the West.) The
general decline in U.S. electronics imports seems attributable to the fact
that the world spent the 1990s racing to improve its technology-based
infrastructures, and at the conclusion of that race is now taking a bit of a
rest. But some experts believe there will be a modest upturn in worldwide
spending on information technology over the next several years. (Los Angeles
Times 19 Jun 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-export19jun19,1,4327693.story?coll=l
a-headlines-technology

*****

FLASH CARD
     "If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see,
you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are
a victim of it." (S.I. Hayakawa)

'CHEERS FOR NEWSSCAN'
     Telecommunications Policy Review (TPR), a superb weekly newsletter
(print only) covering telecom and related issues, has a regular section
specifically devoted to "good news" -- and this week's issue includes a
story: "Cheers for NewsScan," which notes that NewsScan has "a link
arrangement with Amazon.com and, to-date, it's evidently generated some
$3,681.72 in payments from Amazon to Literacy Action, an organization which
works to promote adult literacy." (TPR)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: PIERRE de FERMAT
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the French lawyer and government
official Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665) who devoted his spare time to
mathematics and is now best remembered for the important discoveries he made
in Analytic Geometry and Number Theory. He also worked on probability theory
and optics. 
     Because mathematics was only a hobby for Fermat, he did not formally
publish his work but merely scribbled hasty notes in the margins of books or
casually described his discoveries in letters to friends. As a result, he
lost out to Descartes for the discovery of Analytic Geometry, which he
developed independently and actually carried out in three and not just two
dimensions. Fermat worked together with Blaise Pascal on the theory of
probabilities, formulating the principles on which Christiaan Huygens later
founded the calculus of probabilities. His methods for finding tangents to
curves and their maximum and minimum points led him to be regarded as the
inventor of the differential calculus.
     Fermat's greatest work was in number theory. He was especially
interested in the properties of Prime Numbers and in the determination of
families of solutions to sets of similar problems. About his most famous
theorem, known as Fermat's last theorem, Fermat wrote in the margin of his
copy of the works of the 3rd century B.C. Greek geometer Apollonius: "I have
discovered a truly remarkable proof (of this theorem) which this margin is
too small to contain." The theorem has still not been proved, although
current number-theory conjectures seem to imply its validity. Fermat's work
was largely forgotten until it was rediscovered in the middle of the 19th
century.
     Fermat was a Basque who studied law, probably at Toulouse and perhaps
also at Bordeaux. In 1631 he received the baccalaureate in law from the
University of Orléans. He then served in the local parliament at Toulouse,
becoming councillor in 1634; and in 1638 he was named to the Criminal Court.
His proficiency for foreign languages, classical literature, and ancient
science and mathematics, led him to follow the custom of his day in
composing conjectural "restorations" of lost works of antiquity. Fermat
seldom gave demonstrations of his results, and generally left proofs of his
theorems and conjectures to others. Although Fermat was among the most
productive mathematicians of his day, his influence was circumscribed by his
reluctance to publish.

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385493622/ newsscancom/ref=nosim
for "Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest
Mathematical Problem" -- or look for it in your favorite library. (We donate
all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

BEWARE NEWSSCAN IMPOSTERS -- THERE'S ONLY ONE NEWSSCAN!
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8602
     I'm glad Microsoft is suing spammers -- and I wish more providers would
sue spammers. Spam is not only an obtrusive  nuisance, it is making many
people wonder whether it is worth subscribing  to the net at all. Today has
been a good example; fully 95% of my e-mails  today have been spam -- a new
high (low?). That is up from about 50% just two months ago. To try to manage
the problem, some of my frequent  correspondents and I have now agreed on
"codes" to put in the subject line  so we will know what not to erase before
reading. Even that does not solve the problem of insidious pop-ups, but it's
a start. So far, NewsScan is easily distingishable from spam, thank
goodness, but watch out for spammers who might adopt a "look-alike" format
to fool us. (John McNulty, Halifax, Canada)

REDUCING CONFLICTS WITH THE I.T. DEPARTMENT
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8601
     I read with interest the mailbag comment from James McClellan's, which
reminded me of just how the relationship between employees and the I.T.
department can go sour, when there is insufficient flexibility. All too
often employees, when confronted by an I.T. department unwilling or unable
to fulfill their request, will set up their own systems, which are
inflexible, unprofessional and unreliable. Companies should spend more
effort in getting I.T. departments to communicate properly with the business
users, and actively work to eradicate the "us and them" culture that can
quickly grow between I.T. departments and the employees. The problem is
two-fold. Firstly, business users do not understand the issues that plague
I.T. staff, and neither should they. Secondly, I.T. staff do not understand
the stresses that business users experience. This is because the modes of
work are so different that each cannot see the problems that the other
faces. This is compounded by the fact that often both sides of the equation
bring significant quantities of attitude and emotion to the argument, which
further clouds the issue and makes resolution harder. However, I think it's
relatively easy to solve. Companies should adopt a strategy of ensuring that
I.T. staff are aware of business process, including things such as real
return on investment, spend as a function of profit etc. Also, they should
ensure that users are appropriately trained, as 75% of user difficulties are
training issues. These two policies alone would make the whole business
world more efficient and less stressful. (Giles Guthrie, U.K.)

WHISTLING WHILE YOU WORK
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8603
     I wrote Hatch a note on his website suggesting, for  starters, that
people who drive cars illegally should  have their cars destroyed. Also,
borrowing from Lessig, what do we do about people who *listen* to CDs being
played by people who paid for them? Is the listener in violation of the
copyright laws? I did tell him, he'd have to track down my tape backups that
are stored off-site. The music police would be busy. (Actually, I don't do
free downloads of music, so none of this applies to me anyway.) And finally,
is there any xeroxing of copyrighted material being done by staffers in
Hatch's office?  Naughty, naughty; destroy that xerox machine. I didn't ask
him about what's to be done with people who whistle copyrighted tunes they
haven't paid for. (Bob Futrelle)

DISTRIBUTED CONFUSION
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8600
     If this concept is troubling to Mr. Bell, his attitudes are at least as
troubling to me. First of all, there is a very obvious reason why discarded
computers aren't applied to serious research projects: Whereas the computing
power of an average consumer machine has increased by about three orders of
magnitude in the last ten years, the environmental demands  of that machine
(power consumed and heat generated) have barely changed at all. Therefore, a
"daisy or serial or parallel" of obsolete machines that is even
theoretically comparable to a new $1000 computer would easily create one
thousand times the environmental load, say about 100-200kW
-- at California rates, over $10,000 per month for electricity alone. End of
story. 
     There's no need to even bring up the algorithmic or maintenance
arguments against using broken old machines, which are just as final. But
worse, what reason is there to think that any conceivable scientific
research will just be turned into consumer goods for which Mr.Bell will have
to pay twice?  Industry funded, for-profit research tends to produce stuff
like Viagra, which is fantastically lucrative but of dubious merit in the
advancement of human knowledge--and benefits only a relatively small but
wealthy segment of society. Community funded research tends to produce stuff
like the Internet, which was of no commercial value for many  years (and we
are all better off for it). (Michael Dickerson

IN PRAISE OF ROGER MARIS
Re: 
http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=honorary_subscriber&id=667
     I would add to your notes about Roger Maris. Ford Frick put the
asterisk against the home run total Maris hit back in 1961 not because of
the length of the season or the dilution of talent due to expansion but
rather because his career in   baseball was due to Babe Ruth.His reasoning
was selfish in every sense of the word; he did not want to see his idol's
image spoiled, soiled, or damaged in any way. He was aided in this by the
New York media of the day who wanted their image of the All-American idol,
Mickey Mantle, to break the record...
     And before anyone yells at me, I think Mickey was one of the greatest
ball players of all time.  How he played with the various injuries has
always amazed me.  
     I think Billy Crystal's movie "61" is a fair portrait of what Maris
went through that year. When athletes talk about the scrutiny of the New
York media, they are not joking.  Between the unfair pressure placed on
Maris by Frick during that season (not before or after) and the pressure
imposed by the media each day, it is amazing that Maris was able to
continue. And then when Mantle was unfortunately injured and the burden of
carrying the team was placed on Maris' shoulders, that makes his
achievements of that year even more astonishing.
     I was living in St. Louis when the Cardinals got Roger's contract.I can
remember the joy in the city on knowing that this consummate ballplayer was
now a Cardinal. In St. Louis, Roger Maris is remembered as much or more for
his contributions to the 1966 and 1967 teams as he is for 1961.  The tribute
paid to him in 1998 by Mark Mcqwire was a tribute by the whole team,
organization and city as well. (Tony Mitchell Ph.D.)

PROPOSAL FOR WHITELISTS
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8597
     Whitelists, in their normal format, have a number of problems (as were
pointed out by several letters to the editor). I propose a slight, but
significant variant. I propose that the "whitelist" instead be a PERMISSIONS
list, associated with each potential recipient. The default (for sending
E-mail addresses not on the recipient's permissions list) would be that such
senders could only send non-encoded, non-HTML-burdened  E-mails, containing
no attachments.  Any message not in conformance would either be bounced back
to the sender or t-canned completely, probably as soon as it reached the
destination domain. A recipient, by adding a specific sender to their
permissions list, could enable receiving either/or HTML, and/or attachments,
and/or encoded [base64 or other] text from that specific sender. This way,
plain ASCII text e-mail would get through to the recipient whether they were
on the recipient's permissions list or not. Most mail OUGHT to be plain
ASCII text (and certainly all unsolicited/unexpected mail should/could
be!). 
     Most of the tricks that spammers and fraudsters employ (and most of the
stuff they do to try to defeat filters) are based on HTML, or scripting, or
encoding, or text-as-images (again, based on HTML). Once those tricks are
denied to them,   and once bogus URLs are directly visible (i.e. no
click-on-'this'-link which actually goes invisibly to somewhere else) since
the user would have to copy-and-paste the link directly... then a lot of
spam abuse is going to end. Also, without HTML, attachments, and encoding...
the spam transiting the net and getting delivered is likely to be 3-5x (or
more) smaller, saving both bandwidth and disk space all along the line.
     Once these concealment/obscuring tricks are denied to spammers and
fraudsters, then content filters (stuff like SpamAssassin) should be able to
do a first-class job on quashing the great majority of the remaining stuff.
Even better, unlike a lot of the technically-elaborate solutions being
debated by net gurus, this 'permissions list' requires no global consensus
or "re-engineering" of the whole Internet. It can be implemented
incrementally, starting with as little as a single ISP. Its subscribers
would feel the   advantages, in terms of a huge reduction of spam, virtually
immediately. And it wouldn't block ANYBODY from getting their copy of
plain-ASCII-text  NewsScan (or other similarly responsible newsletters). So
responsible senders   wouldn't be inconvenienced, either.(Gordon Peterson)

BOOKS VS. CHEWING GUM
Re: 
http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=honorary_subscriber&id=664
     For some reason our spaminator bumped your June 9 issue to my spam
folder -- who knows why, it takes a bunch of stuff and bumps it over there
for no apparent reason whatsoever, yet lets the viagra et al stuff
through...  Anywho, in that issue your honorary member is Elbert Hubbard.
My favorite quote by him (and perhaps the only one I know) is:  "This will
never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do
for chewing gum." (Karl T. Gruben)

SPAM GOES COMPLETELY LOOPY
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8609
     I sent your latest ³Worth Thinking About: Regulating Science² to my
daughter because she is a bio-engineering student. I copied myself on the
email -- and it ended up in my Spam Trap.Spamming myself -- that¹s a new one
:)  (Cynthia Kondratieff)

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We call our news section "Above The Fold" to honor the tradition of the
great "broadsheet" newspapers in which editors must decide which news
stories are of such importance that they should be placed "above the fold"
on the front page. The NewsScan Credo: Be informative, have fun, and get to
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