NewsScan Daily, 7 February 2005 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 7 February 2005 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Here Come the Podcasters
       Former AOL Employee Faces Jail for Helping Spammers
       VoIP Company Focuses on Developing Countries
       Greece Bans E-Mail Snooping
       Super-Duper Microchip From IBM, Sony & Toshiba
       Cellphone Companies Reject Role of 'Moral Arbiter'

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Ibn Khaldun

HERE COME THE PODCASTERS
     It's called "podcasting," and it has the potential of changing the
dynamics of broadcasting the same way blogs have changed the dynamics of
print and TV journalism. Podcasting allows anyone with a PC to become a
broadcaster -- at virtually no cost. Programs distributed with this
technology can be received anywhere, anytime (without requiring the listener
to be near a PC), and they can be paused, rewound or fast-forwarded. The
number of regular podcasts is now more than 800, with many focusing on
gadgets, technology, new bands and music, or developments in politics,
movies and sports. One podcaster says, "It would be great if I made a
fortune doing it, but I don't see how that could possibly happen. I'm not
really trying for it, either. I'm hoping to meet some interesting people and
establish some good communications with people on weird topics." (AP/USA
Today 7 Feb 2005)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-02-07-podcasting_x.htm>

FORMER AOL EMPLOYEE FACES JAIL FOR HELPING SPAMMERS
     Virginia software engineer Jason Smathers, formerly employed by America
Online, has pleaded guilty to stealing 92 million screen names and e-mail
addresses and then selling them to spammers. The spammers in turn used them
to generate seven billion unsolicited e-mail messages. The 24-year-old
Smathers now faces from 18 months to two years in prison and mandatory
restitution of between $200,000 and $400,000, the estimated amount of what
AOL had to spend as a result of the e-mails. Authorities said he used
another employee's access code to steal the list of AOL customers in 2003
from its headquarters in Dulles, Va. He was promptly fired by the company.
(AP/San Jose Mercury News 7 Feb 2005)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10827690.htm>

VOIP COMPANY FOCUSES ON DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
     A Virginia company called Xyrous Communications has built a
voice-over-Internet (VoIP) network to reach developing countries such as
Vietnam, India, and Turkey, and well as troubled countries such as Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Iran. The idea for the business is to sell access to the
network to other telecommunications companies that carry the calls into
those areas. One of the principals of the project says that the hardest part
of dealing with those countries is that "rules of law don't really exist."
However, Xyrous benefits from the fact that few competitors are willing to
deal with the challenges or risks of doing business in out-of-the-way
places. As a result, the company can charge far more for carrying a phone
call to those areas than would otherwise be possible. (Washington Post 6 Feb
2005)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3673-2005Feb6.html>

GREECE BANS E-MAIL SNOOPING
     Greece's personal data watchdog has ordered companies not to violate
employee privacy by snooping into their private e-mail. The independent Data
Protection Authority (DPA), whose decisions are binding, has barred firms
from collecting and processing information on workers' communications,
including e-mail. The decision did not include fines. The authority acted on
a complaint by the workers' union of an unnamed company, alleging the
company remote-controlled employees' computers through virtual network
control, specialized software that transmits the screen and keyboard and
mouse clicks between two computers on a network. (The Australian 2 Feb 2005)
<http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,12124895%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html> By J Lamp Deakin U.

SUPER-DUPER MICROCHIP FROM IBM, SONY & TOSHIBA
     Optimized for broadband-rich applications such as digital home
entertainment, a fast new microprocessor (known as "Cell") from IBM, Sony
and Toshiba will be used in 2006 in Sony's PlayStation 3 and Toshiba
advanced high-definition televisions. Industry analyst Richard Doherty of
the market research company Envisioneering says, "There is a new game in
town, and it will revive an industry that has been kind of sleepy for the
last few years." The Cell chip could have a theoretical peak performance of
256 billion mathematical operations per second, enough to have it ranked
among the top 500 supercomputers. Kevin Krewell of Microprocessor Report
says, "This is extremely impressive, and it proves that architectural
innovation isn't dead."

U.K. CELLPHONE COMPANIES REJECT ROLE OF 'MORAL ARBITER'
     A London city councilman wants cellphone companies to strangle the vice
trade by declining calls to the numbers shown on business cards soliciting
prostitution, but most cellphone companies say it isn't their job to
interfere with a customer's service. A Vodaphone spokesman says, "We are not
content to play the role of moral arbiter." The decision is supported by the
English Collective of Prostitutes, which says that women who are unable to
advertise in phone booths may be forced to walk the streets, a more
dangerous activity than operating from an apartment. Although prostitution
itself (though not street solications) is legal in the U.K., the city
councilman says a crackdown is crucial because the world's oldest profession
has been booming in London ever the fall of the Berlin Wall, when organized
crime gangs began to coerce young women from Eastern Europe and Russia to
work for them. (Wall Street Journal 7 Feb 2005) <http://wsj.com>

*****

FLASH CARD
     "It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of
life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that
goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it." (Arnold Toynbee)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: IBN KHALDUN
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Arab scholar and statesman Ibn
Khaldun (1332-1406), who is celebrated as a pioneer in the philosophy of
history. He was one of many Muslim historians who wrote detailed histories
of the world, attempting to synthesize the knowledge and lore of the ancient
civilizations of Persia, Byzantium, and the Near East.
     Scornful of other historians' blind trust in tradition, Ibn Khaldun
took pains to explain the phenomena that he recorded. He believed that
dynasties have a natural lifetime just like individuals, because they draw
their strength from a sentiment he called "group solidarity," which is
difficult to maintain for more than three forty-year generations. He noted
that a proper understanding of events can be achieved only by comprehending
human society in its different manifestations, distinguishing the nomadic
from the sedentary, and studying the effects of geography and climate on
them. 
     His masterful history of the world, "The Book of Lessons and Archive of
Early and Subsequent History," which contains his theories of history and
society, was called by English historian Arnold Toynbee "the most
comprehensive and illuminating analysis of how human affairs work that has
been made anywhere."
     Because he took a scientific view of the rise and decay of human
societies, arguing that such changes followed empirically verifiable laws,
his analyses are not without relevance to modern problems. His scholarly
output encompassed today's disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology,
folklore, geography, linguistics, economics and political science
     Ibn Khaldun was born in Tunis to a family with roots in the aristocracy
of Seville, Spain. In 1352 he entered the service of the Sultan of Fez, but
in 1356 he was imprisoned for two years under suspicion of political
disloyalty. After spending some years in Granada, Spain, he returned to
Africa and entered the service of the Sultan of Tiemcen. After various
vicissitudes, including further imprisonment and a period of residence in a
monastery, he obtained employment with the Sultan of Tunis. After visiting
Mecca in 1384, he was appointed grand qadi in Cairo, Egypt, an office from
which he was removed and reinstalled no fewer than five times. He died in
Cairo in 1406.
     As an example of his writing, we include the following quotation on
economics (anticipating the Laffer curve), taken from the Wikepedia Web
site:
     "In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence,
but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other,
they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs
and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought
up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...[and] sharply raise
the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business
of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon
discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their
taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of
taxation."

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[To find a library copy of Michael Brett's "Ibn Khaldun and the Medieval
Maghrib" visit RLG's RedLightGreen service at
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTION=EDITION&WORKID=9211773&>
-- or to purchase a copy of M.A. Enan's "Ibn Khaldun: His Life and Work" go
to: 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0935782222/newsscancom/ref=nosim>
     Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult
literacy programs.]

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