NewsScan Daily, 26 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 26 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")
***********************************************************
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].
***********************************************************

"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       RIAA to Music Swappers: We're Gonna Get You
       Upgrade for AOL Customers to Improve Web Access
       Gateway, JVC Enter Handheld Market
       Fold-Up Screens From NEC-Mitsubishi
       Gates: Orwell Got It Backwards
       Iraqi Internet Users 'Want Everything Fast'

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: Termites

RECORDING INDUSTRY TO MUSIC SWAPPERS: WE'RE GONNA GET YOU
Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA), says his organization plans to file at least several hundred
lawsuits within the next 10 weeks against individual computer users who
share substantial amounts of copyrighted music online. The RIAA, which
represents the five major music labels, will start gathering evidence
against file-swappers by using software to scan the public directories of
peer-to-peer networks such as KaZaA and Grokster. Sherman says, "A lot of
people think they can get away with what they are doing because peer-to-peer
file sharing allows them to hide behind made-up screen names. They are not
anonymous. The law is very clear. What they are doing is stealing." (New
York Times 26 Jun 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/06/26/technology/26MUSI.html

UPGRADE FOR AOL CUSTOMERS WILL IMPROVE WEB ACCESS
Trying to keep up with competitors who offer higher-speed Internet access,
America Online is including an "accelerator" in a free software upgrade
called AOL 9.0 Optimized. The accelerator works by using compression
technology to store frequently accessed Web sites in cache memory. AOL is
promising that customers will see "an appreciable difference" in
performance. (USA Today 26 Jun 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techcorporatenews/2003-06-25-aolim
_x.htm

GATEWAY AND JVC ENTER HANDHELD COMPUTER MARKET
Gateway is launching its first branded PDA, which will retail for about
$350, and electronics company JVC is offering PDAs that can be integrated
with JVC digital camcorders. Both lines of handhelds are based on
Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. (Information Week 24 Jun 2003)
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10800115

FOLD-UP SCREENS FROM NEC-MITSUBISHI
NEC-Mitsubishi is offering a new line of light-weight LCD monitors that can
be folded up for easy portability. The new displays have a protective black
bezel acrylic screen and a flexible stand that adjusts to a variety of
angles, including flat against its base. (Globe & Mail 25 Jun 2003)
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030625.gtnecc0625/BNSto
ry/Technology/

GATES: ORWELL GOT IT BACKWARDS
"Orwell's vision didn't come true, and I don't believe it will," Microsoft
chairman Bill Gates said this week in a speech commemorating the 100th
anniversary of the birth of George Orwell, the English author whose works
included the dystopian novel "1984." That novel described a repressive
society of the future dominated by a figure called Big Brother, whose image
was displayed on screens throughout the land.  Gates said that, contrary to
Orwell's fears, "This technology can make our country more secure and
prevent the nightmare vision of George Orwell at the same time... At a time
of increased uncertainty about homeland security, computers must be
available wherever and whenever we need them... Not so long ago, most people
paid little attention to cybercrime, but today there's a broader recognition
that IT security is vital to homeland security. We must build higher walls
and stronger vaults, and government must continue to step up the priority
given to this kind of crime while protecting the privacy of consumers."
(AP/Los Angeles Times 25 Jun 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology12jun25,1,4099114.story?c
oll=sns-ap-toptechnology

IRAQI INTERNET USERS 'WANT EVERYING FAST'
During the three decades of Saddam Hussein's rule, Iraqis were denied the
use of free e-mail and live chat, but now things are quite different. Iraqi
citizen Firas Behnam explains: "This is a new sense of freedom for us. We
are not in a very secure society yet, but at least we can say whatever we
like." And Web site administrator Yaser Hassan says: "Some Web sites are
still closed, but if you let us know, we will reopen them. The users here
want everything fast. They complain loudly when they see 'access denied,'
even though they did not complain for 30 years." (San Jose Mercury News 26
Jun 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6166288.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
     "Another cause of your sickness, and the most important: you have
forgotten what you are." (Boethius)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: TERMITES
     Niles Eldredge, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in
New York, has risen to the defense of the termite:
     "Consider the role that termites play, especially in the arid Tropics
where they are so abundant. Without termites in these ecosystems, there
simply would be no decay of cellulose, the predominant component of plant
tissue. Without decay, the system would rather quickly grind to a halt, as
nutrients would remain forever trapped in dead wood and stems, and a thick
carpet of dead plants would quickly begin to clog the landscape. Termites,
as all homeowners know, can eat and digest cellulose, though how they do so
is in itself an interesting ecological story. Termites themselves cannot
digest cellulose directly. Just as we depend on a rich flora of microbes in
our stomachs and intestines for complete digestion and absorption of
nutrients, termites house, in their hindgut, a truly amazing array of
microbes, including various bacteria and protozoans. These microbes actually
convert the cellulose to utilizable energy--an example of ecological
mutualism beneficial to host and microbe alike, but with vast implications
for the ecosystem at large.
     "Macrotermes michaelseni is the most conspicuous termite in the
Okavango region. These termites are loaded with fats and proteins, and many
species find them delicious. African peoples have consumed termites for
millennia. School kids, finding a fresh termite swarm, will fall on them and
gorge themselves before going off to tell their friends of their discovery
(or so a Ugandan college roommate of mine once told me--at the same time
professing disgust at the mere thought of anyone eating shrimp, crabs, or
lobsters; chacun a son gout!).
     "Termites are on the menus of many other species as well. Their most
persistent and formidable enemies are driver ants, which is why termites
labor so intensively to keep their gray-clay mounds impervious to even the
smallest of invaders. But they also are beloved by many larger animal
species, especially aardwolves and aardvarks, as well as many omnivorous
species, including certainly chacma baboons and vervet monkeys, that happen
to chance on them."
                        ---
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691050090/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for Niles Eldredge's "Life In The Balance" -- or look for it in your
favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to
adult literacy programs.)]

SUBSCRIPTION INFO FOR NEWSSCAN DAILY:
     To subscribe or unsubscribe to the text, html, or handheld versions of
NewsScan Daily, send the appropriate subscribe or unsubscribe messages
(i.e., with the word 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the subject line) to
the addresses shown below:
     Text version: Send message to [email protected]
     HTML version: Send mail to [email protected]
     NewsScan-To-Go: http://www.newsscan.com/handheld/current.html

TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT NEWSSCAN DAILY! Send them our little frog:
http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html

***********************************************************
Please visit the site of RLG, the great organization that makes NewsScan
Daily possible. (RLG has no influence over, nor any responsibility for, our
editorial content.) Created in 1974 as the Research Libraries Group, RLG is
a not-for-profit membership corporation of more than 160 universities,
national libraries, archives, museums -- and other institutions with
remarkable collections for research and learning. Its major initiatives are
long-term retention of digital materials, resource sharing among member
institutions, and improvement of researcher access to primary source
material. RLG supplies online research resources worldwide. Visit RLG at
http://www.rlg.org.

*********

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the TEXT version of NewsScan Daily, send an
e-mail message to [email protected] with 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in
the subject line. To subscribe to our HTML version of NewsScan Daily, send
mail to [email protected], with the word 'subscribe' as the
subject. (Subscribing to the HTML version won't automatically unsubscribe
you from the text version; please unsubscribe yourself as explained above.)
Please note: To unsubscribe from an account to which you no longer have
access, send mail to at [email protected].

*********

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
the point! See http://www.newsscan.com/, and send us mail: John Gehl
<[email protected]> and Suzanne Douglas <[email protected]>, or call
770-704-7517.

*********

Get a free 6-week trial subscription to Innovation Weekly, an executive
summary of trends, strategies and innovations in business and technology.
Send mail to [email protected] with the word 'subscribe' in the
subject line.

What customized news and information services do you need for your company?
Get in touch with us at [email protected] or call 770-704-7517 to talk
over the possibilities.

Copyright 2003. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.
***********************************************************