NewsScan Daily, 30 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 30 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Music to Your Ears: RealNetworks Delivered by Vodafone
        Bill Would Mandate Notification of Personal Data Hacks
        NEC Unveils Methanol-Powered Laptop Prototype
        TV Advertising Execs in Denial Over TiVo Data
        ICANN Plans to Open the Doors
        Is Your Privacy Invaded by the 'Black Box' in Your Car?

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Childhood Stress -- Fact or Myth?

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS: REALNETWORKS DELIVERED BY VODAFONE
A deal between RealNetworks and Vodafone will result in audio and video 
being delivered to the handsets of some of Vodafone's 119.7 million 
subscribers using RealNetworks Media Player. Cell phone users in Europe and 
Asia seem eager to use their phones for entertainment, but it's not yet 
clear whether there's a truly mass market for such activities. Peter 
Bancroft, VP for a British firm that develops software for handheld 
devices, is somewhat of a skeptic: "The market certainly believes this is 
real. The glorious thing is that nobody knows... The idea of transmitting a 
song to someone is really quite a novel one. But, guess what? We already 
have something that does this quite nicely. It's called a radio." (New York 
Times 29 Jun 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/06/30/technology/30REAL.html

BILL WOULD MANDATE NOTIFICATION OF PERSONAL DATA HACKS
Legislation introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) would require 
businesses and government agencies to notify consumers when hackers break 
into corporate computer systems and steal their personal data, such as 
social security numbers and credit card information. The stipulations of 
the bill are in direct conflict with efforts by the Bush administration to 
keep such details hidden from the public, in the hope that hacking victims 
will notify the FBI and other government agencies when such incidents 
occur. The FBI director and some top U.S. prosecutors told technology 
executives recently that they will increasingly work to keep the secret the 
names of companies that fall victim to major hacking attacks. Consumer 
groups praised Feinstein's proposed legislation: "It's a really important 
step forward," said Chris Hoofnagle, deputy counsel at the Electronic 
Privacy Information Center. "Individuals do not have this right to notice 
now." (AP/CNN.com 30 Jun 2003)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/06/30/hacker.bill.ap/index.html

NEC UNVEILS METHANOL-POWERED LAPTOP PROTOTYPE
NEC has taken the wraps off a prototype laptop powered by a micro-fuel-cell 
system that relies on methanol fuel cartridges that can be replaced or 
refilled as needed. Fuel cells are widely seen as the most promising future 
clean-energy source and analysts expect the market to take off by 2010. NEC 
says its system can run about five hours on a single cartridge -- about the 
same performance as a prototype announced by rival Toshiba in March. Like 
NEC, Toshiba plans to make its micro-fuel-cell system available 
commercially by 2004, and Sony, Casio and Hitachi have also announced plans 
to get into the market. (Wall Street Journal 30 Jun 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105695547355701800.djm,00.html (sub req'd)

TV ADVERTISING EXECS IN DENIAL OVER TIVO DATA
Television advertising has long relied on Nielsen ratings, which indicate 
how many viewers are watching a particular TV show, but not whether they're 
sticking around for the commercials, or heading off to the kitchen for a 
snack or channel-surfing to check on the baseball score. But the data 
service recently launched by TiVo offers a much more complete vision of 
what's happening in the home when the TV's on. It can track what viewers 
record, what they watch, when they change the channel and which commercials 
they skip. This ability to pinpoint viewer behavior has received a less 
than enthusiastic reception from advertisers. "This kind of information is 
the holy grail for marketers. But it's not the holy grail for advertising 
agencies and media companies, which have built an industry around the idea 
of getting a shallow message to a broad audience rather than a tailored 
message to a narrower one," says the chief strategy officer for interactive 
ad agency Avenue A. According to the TiVo data, genres like big-budget 
situation comedies (think "Friends") tend to have the lowest 
commercial-viewing rates because couch potatoes record them and skip 
through the commercials when they watch. Reality TV, news programs such as 
"60 Minutes" and "event" programming such as the Academy Awards do 
significantly better. With Forrester Research predicting that by 2007, more 
than half of American households will have either a personal video recorder 
such as TiVo or other on-demand services, advertisers will be forced get 
their heads out of the sand and come with a new business strategy. 
(Business Week Online 27 Jun 2003)
http://businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2003/tc20030627_1133_tc119.htm

ICANN PLANS TO OPEN THE DOORS
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has long 
been accused by critics of being a closed organization, but a reform 
movement begun under outgoing president Stuart Lynn (and continued by his 
successor, Paul Twomey) will allow organization of the individual Internet 
user community for informed participation in the organization. Applications 
will be accepted from groups seeking designation as "At-Large Structures." 
In a separate discussion, the group tried to wrestle with the question of 
how much personal data collected by Internet domain administrators should 
be publicly available. Twomey said, "Although no definitive policy was 
formed, a lot of healthy dialogue took place paving the way for future 
policy development." (Internet News 27 Jun 2003)
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/2229111

IS YOUR PRIVACY INVADED BY THE 'BLACK BOX' IN YOUR CAR?
A recent survey found that most people are unaware that many later-model 
automobiles are equipped with "black box" recording devices (called "data 
event recorders") which are capable not only of triggering the release of 
accident airbags but also of recording driving data (such as speed of the 
car) in the last few seconds before a crash. Such information is 
increasingly being used as evidence in criminal and civil cases related to 
the accident, as part of "normal reconstruction" of what happened. But 
civil libertarians are balking. Defense attorney Bob Weiner calls the black 
boxes "a tremendous invasion of privacy," and David Sobel, general counsel 
for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, say: "The real issue is one 
of notice, and the problem arises from the fact that information is being 
collected about people's driving behavior without them knowing. If drivers 
knew about the device, they could at least then begin asking questions." 
(USA Today 29 Jun 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-06-27-black-boxes_x.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to 
start over." (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: CHILDHOOD STRESS -- FACT OR MYTH?
      Brown University professor William Damon thinks that Americans 
over-protect their children from experiences that are falsely perceived 
dangerously stressful.
      "We have been told that childhood is a time of play and romance that 
must not be interrupted by the harsh realities of the grown-up world. To do 
so would be to stifle the child's nascent creativity, to overburden the 
child with responsibilities, to 'stress out' the child. At the root of 
these warnings is the belief that children are fragile creatures with 
delicate sensibilities that are easily shattered and corrupted.
      "This is a belief that hails back to the romantic philosopher Jean 
Jacques Rousseau. It is not one, however, that has been substantiated in 
developmental research. Children are psychologically resilient and they are 
born with a wide range of competencies, virtues, and positive social 
dispositions. Children are able spontaneously to interact constructively 
with others. They can create their own spirit of playfulness and they 
eagerly seek out information about the real world. They need a framework of 
adult guidance in the face of life's complexities, not a protective bubble 
that shields out reality.
      "The idea that children will become overstressed, overburdened, and 
overwhelmed if we 'hurry' them by urging them to achieve is diametrically 
opposed to the truth of the matter. Even at very early ages, children find 
the pursuit of talents, skills, and knowledge to be an uplifting 
experience. They are active and avid learners. The earlier we begin 
inducing children to learn and achieve, the more naturally they take to it. 
The longer we postpone such activities, the more they are likely to build 
up defenses, maladaptive habits, and unproductive interests. The 
stressed-out child is far more likely to be the one who has developed few 
proficiencies than the one who has thrived on the busy activities of 
exploration and achievement.
      "Children need to be engaged not just in activities that seem easy 
and fun but also in challenging ones that can help them excel. In order to 
acquire creative skills, children need extrinsic feedback and reward just 
as much as they need work that is intrinsically interesting. They must 
learn to sustain their effort even when things get difficult and boring. 
Children do best in the long run when prepared to cope with the frustration 
and drudgery that is an inevitable part of creative work."
                       ***
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684825058/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for William Damon's "Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of 
Indulgence in America's Homes and Schools"  -- or look for it in your 
favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to 
adult literacy programs.)

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