NewsScan Daily, 17 February 2005 (" Above The Fold" )

NewsScan Daily, 17 February 2005 (" Above The Fold" )
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"ABOVE THE FOLD" 
          Phone Company Suspected of Blocking VoIP Calls
          Database Company Warns of ID Theft Concerns
          Federal Agencies Get Failing Grades on Cybersecurity
          No RFID Tags for School Kids -- At Least for Now
          You Are What You Type
 
FEATURES
         Flash Card
         Honorary Subscriber: Isamu Noguchi
 
PHONE COMPANY SUSPECTED OF BLOCKING VOIP CALLS
    The FCC's investigating whether a rural phone company blocked access to
the Vonage Internet-phone service, which was competing for the phone
company's customers. The company has not been identified. The problem became
public several days ago when Larry Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law
School and an advocate of Internet freedom, mentioned Vonage's problem at an
industry conference in Boulder, Colorado. Shutting off a potential
competitor could violate antitrust laws barring companies that control
essential facilities from refusing to give competitors the access needed to
compete. (Wall Street Journal 17 Feb 2005) <http://www.wsj.com>
 
DATABASE COMPANY WARNS OF ID THEFT CONCERNS
     ChoicePoint, a Georgia company in the business of selling personal data
on consumers, is alerting 145,000 people throughout the nation that a crime
ring paid for their credit reports, Social Security numbers and other
information. Con artists had posed as owners of debt-collection agencies,
insurance agencies and other firms that told ChoicePoint they needed to run
background checks on consumers. (San Jose Mercury News 17 Feb 2005)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10921081.htm>
 
FEDERAL AGENCIES GET FAILING GRADES ON CYBERSECURITY
     At least half of all federal agencies received a grade of "D" or worse
on the House Government Reform Committee's annual cyber-security report
card. Agencies that received failing marks include the departments of
Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban
Development, and Veterans Affairs. A grade of "D" was awarded to the
departments of Defense and Treasury, as well as the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration and the Small Business Administration. Committee
Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) was encouraged by the fact that the scores of the
10 agencies, as poor as they were, have actually improved since last year,
but he warned they must still do better: "I hope it won't take some kind of
major cyber-attack to wake everybody up."
(Washington Post 16 Feb 2005)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30342-2005Feb16.html>
 
NO RFID TAGS FOR SCHOOL KIDS -- AT LEAST FOR NOW
    The InCom company, which developed Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
tags to monitor the whereabouts of school children, has pulled out of a deal
with Brittain Elementary School in Sutter, California. School principal
Earnie Graham says, "I'm disappointed... I think I let my staff down. Nobody
on this campus knows every student." Dawn Cantrall, the parent who objected
to the system and brought the ACLU in to stop its implementation, remains
skeptical: "I'm not convinced it's over. I'm happy for now that kids are not
being tagged, but I'm still fighting to keep it out of our school system. It
has to stop here." The system was conceived as a way of simplifying
attendance-taking, reducing vandalism, and keeping students safe. (San
Francisco Chronicle 16 Feb 2005
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/02/16/financial/f075453S34.DTL>
 
YOU ARE WHAT YOU TYPE
    Researchers at Louisana Tech and the University of Pennsylvania have
come up with a way of incorporating a user's style of typing into his or her
system password. One of the researchers explains, "We look at the time
between keystrokes, and the time it takes to press a key." It appears that
style of typing is as unique as your eye color or speech patterns. Who would
have thought it. (AP/USA Today 17 Feb 2005)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2005-02-17-typing-biometric_x.htm>
 
***** 
 
FLASH CARD
    "An architect proves his skill by turning the defects of a site into
advantages." (Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini)
 
    Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American sculptor and designer Isamu
Noguchi (1904-1988), who favored elegantly abstracted, rounded forms in
highly polished stone. Noguchi belonged to the pioneering generation of 20th
century of modern artists that included many of the era's famous architects,
choreographers, and painters: he collaborated with his long-time friend
Buckminster Fuller in constructing models and planning outdoor projects; he
created sets for the choreographers Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and
George Ballenchine; and among his admirers were the artists Frida Kahlo,
Arshille Gorky, and Willem de Kooning. Over his lifetime Noguchi designed
furniture and settings for ballets, and collaborated with architects in
planning gardens, playgrounds, and bridges.
    Noguchi was born Isamu Gilmour in Los Angeles to Leonie Gilmour, an
Irish-American teacher and editor, and Yone Noguchi, a Japanese poet and
scholar. He lived in Japan from the age of 2 until he was 13, where he
attended Japanese and Jesuit schools. Returning to America, his mother sent
him to boarding school in Indiana. After high school, he attended Columbia
University to train as a medical doctor, but he soon abandoned the
university to take up sculpture as his true calling.
     He was drawn to the work of the Surrealists, and developed an interest
in abstract sculpture. He went of Paris on a Guggenheim Fellowship, and
there he studied with the modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi, who
impressed him with the artistic value of taking advantage of the
pre-disposed forms of sculpture materials. Another formative influence came
from his visit to Peking in the early 1930s to study calligraphic drawing.
    During World War II, Noguchi was interned in a California Nisei camp,
where he occupied himself experimenting with such materials as wood, paper,
wire, and bone. During the 1940s besides designing sets, costumes, and
properties for Martha Graham's dance company, Noguchi also created some of
his most admired sculptures, particularly the pink-and-blue marble Kouros
reminiscent of archaic Greek sculpture. Next Noguchi took on several outdoor
projects, in which he used Japanese garden designs to create engaging urban
spaces. He also executed two bridges for the Peace Park at Hiroshima; the
Garden of Peace of the UNESCO Building in Paris; the Sunken Courtyard of the
Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University; the Water Garden of the Chase
Manhattan Bank Plaza in New York City; and the Billy Rose Art Garden in
Jerusalem.
     In 1982 Noguchi was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding
lifelong contribution to the arts. In 1985 he opened the Isamu Noguchi
Garden Museum in Long Island City, N.Y. The museum and outdoor sculpture
garden contain some 500 of his sculptures, models, and photographs. Noguchi
died in December of 1988 at the age of 84, leaving a body of work that
continues as a visible symbol of the ties between East and West.
                   ***
[To find a library copy of Sam Hunter's "Isamu Noguchi"
visit RLG's RedLightGreen service at
http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTI
ON=EDITION&WORKID=15368267&
-- or to purchase a copy of "Isamu Noguchi: A Sculptor's World" go to:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/388243970X/newsscancom/ref=nosim>
     Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult
literacy programs.]
 
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