NewsScan Daily, 1 February 2005 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 1 February 2005 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       School News: First Amendment? What First Amendment?
       Legal Center for Open-Source Projects
       From Out Of Right Field: A New Conceptual Age
       Where Did I Put My Car Keys?
       Oops: 'Can Spam Act' Seems To Be No-Can-Do

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: A Willingness of Heart

SCHOOL NEWS: FIRST AMENDMENT? WHAT FIRST AMENDMENT?
     A University of Connecticut survey of more than 100,000 high school
students has found that educators are failing to give high school students
an appreciation of the First Amendment¹s guarantees of free speech and a
free press. Commissioned by the Knight Foundation, the $1 million, two-year
study found that nearly three-fourths of high school students either do not
know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it for
granted; seventy-five percent erroneously think flag burning is illegal;
half believe the government can censor the Internet; and more than a third
think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. Knight
Foundation chief executive Hodding Carter III says, ³These results are not
only disturbing; they are dangerous. Ignorance about the basics of this free
society is a danger to our nation¹s future.² (Knight Foundation 31 Jan 2005)
<http://www.knightfdn.org/default.asp?story=news_at_knight/releases/2005/2005_01_31_firstamend.html>

LEGAL CENTER FOR OPEN-SOURCE PROJECTS
     A consortium of companies seeking promote use of the Linux operating
system has contributed $4 million to establish a legal center for nonprofit
open-source projects and developers. The Software Freedom Law Center will be
headed by Columbia University law professor Eben Moglen, who explains: "The
Law Center is being established to provide legal services to protect the
legitimate rights and interests of free and open source software projects
and developers, who often do not have the means to secure the legal services
they need." (AP/San Jose Mercury News 31 Jan 2005)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10783701.htm>

FROM OUT OF RIGHT FIELD: A NEW CONCEPTUAL AGE
     Wired contributing editor Daniel H. Pink, author of the new book "A
Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age," says
the future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like
logic, speed, and precision:  "Until recently, the abilities that led to
success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left
hemisphere [of the brain]. They were the sorts of linear, logical,
analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs." But today, the
world is shifting from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities
of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic
abilities of right-hemisphere Conceptual Age. Identifying the causes for
this shift to be "Asia, automation, and abundance," Pink champions a more
energetic use of right-brain thinking: "Want to get ahead today? Forget what
your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper.
Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the
nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go
right, young man and woman, go right." (Wired Feb 2005)
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain.html>

WHERE DID I PUT MY CAR KEYS?
     A research team at Johns Hopkins University has found a way to crack
the code used in millions of car keys -- a development that could allow
thieves to bypass the security systems on newer car models. The researchers
found that the "immobilizer" security system developed by Texas Instruments
could be cracked using a relatively inexpensive electronic device that
acquires information hidden in the microchips that make the system work. The
radio-frequency security system being used in more than 150 million new
Fords, Toyotas and Nissans involves a transponder chip embedded in the key
and a reader inside the car. If the reader does not recognize the
transponder, the car will not start, even if the key inserted in the
ignition is the correct one. (The Australian, 31 Jan 2005) Rec'd from J.
Lamp, Deakin U.
<http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,12104045%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html>

OOPS: 'CAN SPAM ACT' SEEMS TO BE NO-CAN-DO
     The Can Spam Act went into effect in January of last year, yet
unsolicited commercial e-mail on the Internet is now estimated to account
for at least 80% of all e-mail sent -- a figure up from 50-60% percent of
all e-mail before the law went into effect. A number of critics of the law
had argued that it would make the spam problem worse by effectively giving
bulk advertisers permission to send junk e-mail as long as they followed
certain rules. Steve Linford, the founder of the UK-based Spamhaus Project,
says the law "legalized spamming itself." The law's chief sponsor, Senator
Conrad Burns (R- Montana) says the problem isn' t the law but the
ineffective enforcement of the law: "As we progress into the next
legislative session, I'll be working to make sure the FTC utilizes the tools
now in place to enforce the act and effectively stem the tide of this
burden." Anne Mitchell of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy
comments: "Most people say it's a miserable failure, but I see it as a
lawyer would see it. To think that law enforcement agencies can make spam
stop right away is silly. There's no such thing as an instant fix in the
law." (New York Times 1 Feb 2005)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/technology/01spam.html?hp&ex=1107320400&en=f7486f68b21cb2cc&ei=5094&partner=homepage>

*****

FLASH CARD
     "An optimist is a person who sees only the lights in the picture,
whereas a pessimist sees only the shadows. An idealist, however, is one who
sees the light and the shadows, but in addition sees something else: the
possibility of changing the picture, of making the lights prevail over the
shadows." (Felix Adler)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: A WILLINGNESS OF HEART
     Journalist David Lamb explains what he found when he took an extended
journey across America:
     "The French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville wrote after his journey
through the United States in 1831-32: 'The time will therefore come when one
hundred and fifty million men will be living in North America, equal in
condition, all belonging to one family, owing their origin to the same
cause, and preserving the same civilization, the same language, the same
religion, the same habits, the same manners, and imbued with the same
opinions, propagated under the same forms. The rest is uncertain, but this
is certain; and it is a fact new to the world, a fact that the imagination
strives in vain to grasp.'
     "Could that be us he was talking about? What Tocqueville didn't foresee
was that our commonalty would be our differences, not our similarities.
Americans would be bound not by language or color or opinions but by sharing
a dream and a universal sense of place. America, F. Scott Fitzgerald said,
is 'a willingness of the heart,' and that says it pretty well. Though pop
cynics would have us believe such sentiments are antiquated these days, the
strength of the American character remains a striking and provable thing. I
have seen it on the battlefields of Vietnam and the Middle East, in the
prairie towns of the Dakotas and along the long, lonely byways that cut
through the heartland of a great nation. From all these places I came away
convinced that, however wrenching our problems. The America of the 1990s is
an achievement to be celebrated, not lamented.
     "I may well be out of sync with common sentiment, but the pessimism I
hear expressed when learned people gather to discuss our country mystifies
me. The self-indulgence of the sixties and the trickle-down indifference of
the eighties are behind us, and what the doomsayers tend to ignore are the
Americans themselves. I did not find in my travels defeated people looking
backward. Most of the Americans I met had rolled up their sleeves and gotten
on with life. They accepted any honorable man as a neighbor and knew that
the best social program was a good job. It wasn't very glamorous stuff, but
still, they always left me heartened and reminded me that there was a lot to
feel good about in America."
                          ***
[Source: David Lamb, "A Sense of Place: Listening to Americans."
To find a library copy, visit RLG's RedLightGreen service at
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTION=EDITION&WORKID=17167084&>
-- or to purchase a copy go to:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/051714431X/newsscancom/ref=nosim>
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.]

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