NewsScan Daily, 25 January 2005 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 25 January 2005 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        IBM's PC Business Sale Raises Red Flag on National Security
        Yahoo and Google Face Off on TV Content Searching
        Software Watches While You Work
        Russian Music Sites Specialize in Cheap Downloads
        Thousands of Laptops, Cell Phones Left in Cabs

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Melina Mercouri

IBM'S PC BUSINESS SALE RAISES RED FLAG ON NATIONAL SECURITY
      The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investments, which reviews acquisitions 
of U.S. businesses by foreign firms, says it's concerned that IBM's sale of 
its PC business to China's Lenovo Group could open the door for industrial 
espionage. The committee is composed of 11 U.S. government agencies, 
including the departments of Justice and the Treasury. The $1.75-billion 
deal has already passed the antitrust scrutiny of the Federal Trade 
Commission, which said it would not raise objections based on how the sale 
might affect competition in the market. The IBM-Lenovo transaction is the 
biggest PC industry deal since Hewlett-Packard acquired Compaq in May 2002, 
and would result in Lenovo becoming the third largest PC maker in the 
world, after Dell and HP. (CNet News.com 24 Jan 2005)
<http://news.com.com/IBM-Lenovo+deal+said+to+get+national+security+review/2100-1003_3-5547546.html>

YAHOO AND GOOGLE FACE OFF ON TV CONTENT SEARCHING
      Search-engine giants Yahoo and Google are opening a new front in 
their battle for market dominance as they unveil rival efforts to enable 
users to search through video programming content. Yahoo Video Search 
scours the Web for video clips and says it soon will include news clips 
from Bloomberg and the BBC that are indexed by closed-captioning. Yahoo 
also offers a way for publishers to submit their videos for inclusion. 
Google Video's search service works by archiving the closed-captioning text 
of TV shows on PBS, C-SPAN, Fox News, ABC and other channels. It doesn't 
actually play video clips yet, but has not ruled out a future move to 
include them once it works out copyright issues with producers. Although 
it's as yet unclear how people will use these capabilities, some say video 
searches could signal a new way for users to find and view television 
programming. "Just think of the number of hits these folks from Google get 
every day," says C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb. "We're not really sure where 
they're going to go with this, but we're all ears." (Los Angeles Times 25 
Jan 2005)
<http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-google25jan25,1,3438955.story?coll=la-headlines-technology>

SOFTWARE WATCHES WHILE YOU WORK
      Security firm 3ami and storage specialist BridgeHead Software have 
teamed up to create a network security system that can log computer 
keystroke activity, store it and retrieve the files within minutes. The 
developers say the system represents a breakthrough in the way data is 
monitored and stored, but privacy advocates worry that such monitoring not 
only is overly intrusive but can be damaging to employees' morale. However, 
3ami managing director Tim Ellsmore counters: "That is not the case. It is 
not about replacing dialogue but there are issues that you can talk through 
but you still need proof. People need to recognize that you are using a PC 
as a representative of a company and that employers have a legal 
requirement to store data." The software was developed in response to the 
Freedom of Information Act's requirement for companies to store all data 
for a specified period of time, and is designed to monitor the downloading 
of pornography, the use of inappropriate language and the copying of 
applications for personal use. It also potentially could enable employers 
to track stolen files and identify whether they'd been e-mailed to a third 
party, copied, printed, deleted or saved to a CD, floppy disk, memory stick 
or flash card. (BBC News 25 Jan 2005)
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4188747.stm>

RUSSIAN MUSIC SITES SPECIALIZE IN CHEAP DOWNLOADS
      Russian music sites with names like MP3search.ru and 3MP3.ru provide 
music fans with a way to bypass the copyright restrictions on most U.S. and 
European online music services and pay less while they're at it. The sites 
offer a large selection of high-quality downloads with no restrictions for 
about 10 cents or less per song, but U.S. lawyers warn that downloading 
music from these sites is just as illegal as downloading from free P2P 
sites like Kazaa: "It doesn't matter if somebody downloads in the U.S. and 
believes that it's legal because the site tells them so," says one 
intellectual property attorney. However, several of the Russian sites say 
they pay licensing fees to a group called the Russian Organization for 
Multimedia & Digital Systems (ROMS), which purports to represent Russian 
copyright holders and acts "in conformity with the requirements of the 
Russian laws," according to ROMS legal expert Konstantin Leontiev. 
Meanwhile, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry says 
that Russia is second only to China in CD piracy and is threatening legal 
action against some Russian music sites. (Wall Street Journal 25 Jan 2005)
<http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110632225796232623,00.html> (sub req'd)

THOUSANDS OF LAPTOPS, CELL PHONES LEFT IN CABS
      A new survey estimates that 11,300 laptops, 31,400 handheld devices 
and 200,000 mobile phones were left in taxis around the world during the 
last six months. The survey, which polled some 1,000 taxi drivers and 
extrapolated from there, indicates that four out of five cell phones and 19 
out of 20 laptops were returned to their owners eventually. Geographically, 
Chicagoans were most likely to leave a handheld device in a cab, while 
Londoners were more careless than others with their laptops. Danes seemed 
to be most likely to forget their cell phones. Other items reportedly left 
in cabs include a harp, dentures, artificial limbs and a baby. 
(Reuters/CNN.com 24 Jan 2005)
<http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/01/24/taxis.lost.reut/index.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
      "A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses 
interest in students." (John Ciardi)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: MELINA MERCOURI
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Greek actress and political 
activist Melina Mercouri (1925-1994) who was the minister of culture in her 
country's first Socialist government. Mercouri achieved international 
stardom when she played the good-hearted prostitute in the 1960 film "Never 
on Sunday," and her fame from this role gave a boost to her subsequent 
involvement in Greek politics.
       Mercouri was indignant over the military coup that brought a handful 
of army colonels to power in Greece in 1967. The coup occurred when she was 
abroad, and her early opposition against the junta was first voiced in 
Europe and the United States. In retaliation, the regime revoked her Greek 
citizenship, effectively exiling her. During her years in exile, she lived 
mainly in Paris, but was able to perform in British and American 
productions, such as "Topkapi."
      Mercouri was only able to return to Greece after the dictatorship 
collapsed in 1974. Upon her return, she promptly joined Papandreou's 
Panhellenic Socialist Movement, running unsuccessfully for deputy from the 
same Piraeus district that had made her famous in "Never on Sunday." Later, 
she was elected to the Greek parliament, first in 1977, and again in 1981.
      Politically, she was a pacifist as well as a vociferous anti-fascist. 
When Papandreou became Greece's premier, she was appointed his minister for 
culture. As minister she supported feminist causes and was an effective 
publicist for Greece on the international cultural scene. She succeeded in 
increasing government subsidies for the arts, building additional 
libraries, and promoting the preservation of national monuments. She 
failed, however, in her attempt to persuade the British government to 
return the Elgin Marbles sculptures, which had been taken from the 
Parthenon to the British Museum during the Turkish occupation in 1806.
      Mercouri was born in Athens, Greece, and came from a politically 
prominent family. Her father was an interior minister of Greece, and her 
grandfather a mayor of Athens. She graduated from the Drama School of the 
National Theatre of Greece. Her first major role, at the age of 20, was 
Lavinia in Eugene O'Neill's "Mourning Becomes Electra." She began her film 
career in 1955, and in 1966 she married the French-born American film 
director Jules Dassin, who had directed most of her films. In 1971 Mercouri 
published an autobiography, "I Was Born Greek." She died in 1994, while 
hospitalized in New York City.

[To find a library copy of "I Was Born Greek," visit RLG's RedLightGreen 
service at 
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTION=EDITION&WORKID=19104243&> 
or to purchase the DVD of "Never on Sunday" go to 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00008ZZ9J/newsscancom/ref=nosim/>. 
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy 
programs.]

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