NewsScan Daily, 4 November 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 4 November 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization making
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Exit Poll Leakers and Leakees
       India Unveils National Internet Hub
       Innovators Who Helped Shape America
       Hollywood Launches Anti-Piracy Campaign
       Dead Code, in All Respects

FEATURES           
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: The Risk-Takers

EXIT POLL LEAKERS AND LEAKEES
     On election day this week exit-poll data suggested a Kerry trend that
proved to be quite wrong, but Warren Mitofsky, the longtime CBS election
analyst who co-heads the National Election Pool (NEP) that took the polls
defends them by saying: "We had called the networks earlier in the day and
told them about a handful of states where we didn't think the results were
accurate. But we didn't think we were supposed to share that with the leaker
and the leakee. All the people getting leaked stuff were getting it from
people who weren't always accurate and were premature, and now they are
complaining about it. We didn't mislead the people we were working with. We
made any number of projections. All of them were correct." He argues: "In a
football game, after you get the score at halftime, do you get mad at the
announcer if it doesn't turn out that way?" Ana Marie Cox (wonkette.com),
one of many bloggers who had reported the exit poll results, says: "I hope
I've had some role in killing exit polls. To the extent that blogs provide
people with bad or misleading information, I hope that teaches people not to
trust media in general." (Wall Street Journal 4 Nov 2004)
<http://www.wsj.com>

INDIA UNVEILS NATIONAL INTERNET HUB
     India has created a national Internet service hub to connect all
service providers and boost web traffic in the country of one billion
people. Until now, domestic Internet service providers have been forced to
rely on international traffic routing providers to run their Web sites, and
so Information and Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran says the new plan
will help to "proliferate the Internet" in that domestic service providers
will now be able to reduce the cost of traffic routing and improve service
for subscribers. (The Australian 29 Oct 2004) Rec'd from J. Lamp
<http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,11222365%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5
E,00.html>

INNOVATORS WHO HELPED SHAPE AMERICA
     On Monday evening, PBS will begin a four-part television series
profiling the innovators written about in "They Made America" -- a new book
by Sir Harold Evans. Sir Harold says his main criterion for deciding to
select an innovation for his survey was whether it had changed people's
lives: "That's why I included the bra" -- an innovation of the 1920s
developed by Ida Rosenthal. Other innovators profiled in the book and TV
series include: Edwin Armstrong, a radio pioneer; Lewis Tappan, inventor of
credit ratings; Georges Doriot, the father of venture capital; Raymond
Ingram Smith, the first to recognize gambling as an entirely new market;
Samuel Insull, the onetime Edison assistant who turned electricity into a
mass-market product; and many others. See today's Features section of
NewsScan Daily for more on this subject. (USA Today 3 Nov 2004)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2004-11-03-innovators_x.h
tm>

HOLLYWOOD LAUNCHES ANTI-PIRACY CAMPAIGN
     Taking its lead from major record companies, Hollywood studios have
prepared a host of lawsuits against people who illegally use copyrighted
movies obtained via file-sharing networks. Dan Glickman, president of the
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), says that what's needed to
combat piracy is "a holistic approach" -- including educational efforts,
criminal prosecution, and lawsuits against infringers. "You need the stick
and you need the carrot both. You can't just have one without the other."
But film producer Ross Grayson Bell says that the industry's focus should be
on providing legal ways to buy movies on the Internet -- and that Apple
iTunes Music Store is the right model because it lets people download songs
quickly and at a reasonable price: "There is a need that is not being met. I
think the real way to curb piracy is to take away that need. The industry
has to present a viable way to see movies in this new age." (Los Angeles
Times 4 Nov 2004) 
<http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-mpaa4nov04,1,7199732.story?coll=la-
headlines-technology>
 
DEAD CODE, IN ALL RESPECTS
     In Dayton, Ohio, at a cemetery called Blocker Hill, there's a group of
tiny graves in which programmers at LexisNexis bury their dead programs.
Doug Perseghetti says: "The code wakes us up in the middle of the night.
Some things die gracefully and other things we've had to kill." In 1992,
dozens of mourners followed pallbearers who carried a wooden coffin
containing a printout of the former Database Update Control System, while a
trumpeter played "Taps" after eulogies were spoken and chocolate cake
served. Requiescat in pace. (AP/San Jose Mercury News 3 Nov 2004)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10088575.htm>

*****

FLASH CARD
     "In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is
more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat." (Harold Evans0

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE RISK-TAKERS
     Englishman Sir Harold Evans, author of the new book, "They Made
America," explains the role America's tradition of innovation plays in
making the world a better place:
     "Here is a curious fact of American culture, supposedly so obsessed
with business. The Founding Fathers promised life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness, and there have been thousands of presidential biographies and
histories tracing the political struggles to honor those ideals. But none of
the promises could have been honored without the business innovators who
have had nothing like the same attention. You cannot much pursue happiness
if you are starving, or unable to move your family to a better place, or
protect it along the way, or communicate.
     "Politicians could make promises, but while government could provide
the framework of freedom it could not aspire to deliver these necessities.
We owe them to men like Cyrus McCormick (the reaper), Robert Fulton
(steamboat), Theodore Judah (transcontinental railway), Lewis Tappan (credit
rating), Sam Colt (six-gun), and Samuel Morse (telegraph). McCormick's
invention, and then his revolutionary buy-on-credit marketing, enabled
thousands of farmers to harvest the Great Plains and feed the world. He also
freed labor for the industrial revolution and the preservation of the Union.
And so has our progress continued down to this day with the founding of the
biotech industry by Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson, and the software
industry made possible by the operating system for PCs from the unsung Gary
Kildall.
     "Innovation will continue in America. It is in the nation's DNA. But if
the scope of it is not to ebb in the face of global competition -- in large
part the consequence of Malcom Maclean's innovation of container shipping --
we must honor more the risk-takers who really get things done."
                         ***
[To find a library copy of "The American Century" by Harold Evans visit
RLG's RedLightGreen.com:
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACT
ION=EDITION&WORKID=12253808&>
-- or to purchase a copy go to:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679410708/newsscancom/ref=nosim>
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.]

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