NewsScan Daily, 23 Jul 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 23 Jul 2003 ("Above The Fold")
***********************************************************
NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization
making significant and sustained contributions to the effective
management and appropriate use of information technology. NSD is
written by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas, [email protected].
***********************************************************

"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Schools Reluctant to Enforce RIAA File-Swap Subpoenas
        Amazon's Tributaries: Software, Searching, Music, and ...
        New Method Cracks Passwords in Seconds
        U-Texas Puts Gutenberg Bible on the Web
        Consumers Support Anti-Spam Legislation
        Good Luck: Australia Considers New Law to Ban Spam

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Utopianism
        Mailbag: The World As We Find It

SCHOOLS RELUCTANT TO ENFORCE RIAA FILE-SWAP SUBPOENAS
Citing procedural concerns, MIT and Boston College have asked a court to 
quash subpoenas requesting that they provide the Recording Industry 
Association of American the identification of certain students accused of 
illegally downloading copyrighted music. The two institutions merely said 
that the subpoenas didn't allow for adequate time to notify the students, 
and a Boston College official explained: "We're not trying to protect our 
students from the consequences of copyright infringement. Once the 
subpoenas are properly filed, we will comply with the subpoenas." The RIAA 
is trying to discourage illegal file-sharing by pursuing not only 
large-scale downloaders but small-time ones as well. Some schools (for 
example, Northeastern University) are complying with the subpoenas without 
protest. (AP/San Jose Mercury News 23 Jul 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6365849.htm

AMAZON'S TRIBUTARIES: SOFTWARE, SEARCHING, MUSIC, AND ...
Revenue for Amazon, the Internet's largest retailer, reached $1.1 billion 
this quarter (up 36%). Although books and other media account for more than 
78% of that revenue, the company is rapidly expanding into areas far beyond 
its bookseller origins, with new projects in software, searching, music, 
and international markets (where it's 2nd quarter results showed a 81% 
year-over-year gain to $397 million). With regard to searching, Amazon has 
been developing a search engine that will allow consumers to search the 
entire text of books (rather than just the titles or summaries). (USA Today 
23 Jul 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techearnings/2003-07-22-amazoncom_ 
x.htm

NEW METHOD CRACKS PASSWORDS IN SECONDS
A senior research assistant at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology's 
Cryptography and Security Laboratory has published a paper outlining a way 
to speed up the process of cracking alphanumeric Windows passwords to only 
13.6 seconds on average. The previous average time was 1 minute, 41 
seconds. The new method uses massive lookup tables to match encoded 
passwords to the original text entered by a person, thus reducing the time 
it takes to break the code. "Windows passwords are not very good," says 
researcher Phillippe Oechslin. "The problem with Windows passwords is that 
they do not include any random information." The only requirement for the 
cracker is a large amount of memory in order to accommodate the lookup 
tables. The larger the table, the shorter the time it takes to crack the 
password. Users can protect themselves by adding nonalphanumeric characters 
to a password, which adds another layer of complexity to the process. Any 
cracker would then need more time or more memory or both to accomplish the 
break-in. For more information on Oechslin's method, check out 
http://lasecwww.epfl.ch/php_code/publications/search.php?ref=Oech03 (CNet 
News.com 22 Jul 2003)
http://news.com.com/2100-1009_3-5053063.html

U-TEXAS PUTS GUTENBERG BIBLE ON THE WEB
The University of Texas has digitized its entire two-volume Gutenberg Bible 
and posted portions of it on its library Web site: 
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/gutenberg/ . While other 
copies of the famed Bible have also gone digital, officials at the 
university's Harry Ransom Center say their copy is the best of the lot, 
because it was in use in monasteries in Southern Germany as late as the 
1760s, and was heavily annotated by monks who scratched out some passages 
and corrected others. Other sections were highlighted for reading aloud or 
for use during Mass. "Our copy is the most interesting in the world," says 
head librarian Richard Oram, and Paul Needham, of Princeton University's 
Scheide Library, agrees: "This is probably the most extensively annotated 
and corrected copy surviving. This is a very great treasure." The 
digitization project began in June 2002 and the finished product gives Web 
viewers 7,000 images of the unique manuscript. (AP 23 Jul 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030723/D7SF4NEG0.html

CONSUMERS SUPPORT LEGISLATION ANTI-SPAM LEGISLATION
A recent poll conducted by ePrivacy Group confirms a tidal wave of consumer 
sentiment against spam: 74% of respondents said they support a "do not 
e-mail" list and 59% said spammers should be punished. Of those who 
supported punishment, 80% said they favored consumer lawsuits against 
spammers. The news comes as no big surprise, but bolsters current efforts 
in Congress to pass legislation restricting unsolicited commercial e-mail. 
There are two bills currently moving through the legislative process: one 
introduced by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), which advocates creating a "do 
not e-mail" list and allows consumer lawsuits, and another sponsored by 
Sens. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), which would direct the 
Federal Trade Commission to investigate the feasibility of a "do not 
e-mail" list. (Wall Street Journal 23 Jul 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105891054976788400,00.html (sub req'd)

GOOD LUCK: AUSTRALIA CONSIDERS NEW LAW TO BAN SPAM
Australia's federal government plans to introduce legislation to end 
unsolicited commercial email by banning the "sending of commercial 
electronic messages without the prior consent of end-users unless there is 
an existing customer-business relationship"; imposing a range of penalties 
for breaking this law including fines, infringement notices and the ability 
to seek injunctions; requiring all commercial electronic messages to 
include a working opt-out mechanism and the sender's accurate contact 
details; banning the use of e-mail address harvesting software; and 
cooperating with overseas organizations to develop international guidelines 
and mechanisms to battle spam. The legislation would be enforced by the 
Australian Communications Authority (ACA). Jodie Sangster of the Australian 
Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) urges caution: "This is an issue where 
if they get it wrong could have a huge impact on business, particularly 
small businesses. For that reason, it's in the government's interest to 
make sure they fully consult and take into account the businesses it's 
going to impact on." (ZDNet 23 Jul 2003)
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2138021,00.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Were we perfectly acquainted with the object, we should never 
passionately desire it." (Francois De La Rochefoucauld)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: UTOPIANISM
      Author Robert Conquest comments on modern man's utopian fixations:
      "The huge catastrophes of our era have been inflicted by human beings 
driven by certain thoughts. And so history's essential questions must be: 
How do we account for what has been called the 'ideological frenzy' of the 
twentieth century? How did these mental aberrations gain a purchase? We 
need to develop the history and the nature of the various destructive 
ideologies in action. We need to consider the history and traditions of the 
culture that stood in opposition to them. We need to examine the history 
and background of the mental arena in which the battle of ideas was fought.
      "Both scarcely formulated fanaticisms and dosed systems of ideas are, 
of course, to be found throughout the past. These historical phenomena are 
full of lessons for our time (indeed ignorance of history is one of the 
most negative attributes of modern man). The basic characteristic and 
attraction was and is the archaic idea that utopia can be constructed on 
earth; the offer of a millenarian solution to all human problems. This 
central trend has been, at least in vocabulary, modernized. The aspirations 
which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries spoke in the dialect of 
Theology, in the eighteenth century took up that of Reason, and in the 
nineteenth century that of Science.
      "With the two last, we get the delusion that our knowledge of human 
society is so complete that we have the power to reinvent it according to 
the formulae so obtained, that human affairs are in principle fully 
understandable and fully manipulable: a fetishism of whatever happens, or 
happened, to be the supposed current state of knowledge about social, 
economic, psychological and other phenomena."
                                                                       ***
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393048187/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Robert Conquest's "Reflections on a Ravaged Century" -- or look for it 
in your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book 
recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

E-LINGUA E-FRANCA -- COMMENT VOUS DITES "CHISELED IN STONE"?
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8816
      Actually, l'Académie Française had decided years ago that the 
official term for an e-mail message would be "mél" (pronounced more-or-less 
like the English "mail"). The French use rather a lot of "franglais" -- 
English words adopted with perhaps a small change in spelling or 
pronunciation -- where the Québécois are more likely to bend over backward 
to come up with a term as far from the English as possible. We've been 
using "courriel" here for years, although the more finicky prefer "courrier 
électronique" written in full. When I first joined Internet discussion 
lists for translators almost a decade ago, some French-speaking Europeans 
thought "courriel" was cute, if a little odd, but quite a few of them 
adopted the word over time. I don't know why Club Internet would prefer the 
anglicism (except that it will save them the trouble of revising their Web 
pages and documentation) but I expect that, as is usual when somebody 
dictates from on high how people should express themselves, most people 
will do whatever they please anyhow. (Judyth Mermelstein, Montreal)

SLIDING PAYSCALES
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8823
      "Our aim here is not cost-driven. It's to build a 24/7 follow-the-sun 
model for development and support. When a software engineer goes to bed at 
night in the U.S., his or her colleague in India picks up development when 
they get into work. They're able to continually develop products." Yes, of 
course. And is the developer in India paid the same (in dollars) as the 
developer in the U.S.? (Ken Masters, Cape Town)

OUTSOURCING YOUR WORK AND INSOURCING YOUR WORRIES Re: 
http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8823
      I just completed a contract in which I interacted with an offshore 
development team in India, and I can tell you that people who only consider 
the hourly rate of outsourcers as compared to local workers are making a 
grave mistake. If your work is being done by people in a far-away time 
zone, how are you going to communicate with them? Via email? Via 
teleconferences late at night and early in the morning? How successful do 
you think that communication will be? If you have a programmer sitting next 
to a business analyst -- or working less than a few time zones away -- the 
business analyst and programmer can talk with each other informally, many 
times during the day. They just can't do this when they are on opposite 
sides of the world. So a 5-minute conversation between nearby workers can 
easily become a 3-day conversation when held between India and New York. Do 
you care about the speed in which your solutions are created?
      The less well-defined your projects are (and don't assume that they 
are well-defined -- my experience is that many projects do not provide 
sufficient time and resources for this activity), the more your business 
analysts will be interacting with your programmers. And your 3-month 
project can easily become a one-year project and/or the quality of the 
solution can be compromised in order to get the project done as quickly as 
possible. How much is time worth to you? How much is quality worth to you?
      Lastly, how much control do you want to hand off to remote workers? 
Do you want to be apprised of the status of your projects on your 
timetable? Do you want to be able to provide answers to significant issues 
and questions as they arise? You need to think about where you want 
management for your projects to be located.
      So ... I recommend to organizations thinking about outsourcing that 
they either spend the time and resources to completely specify the solution 
they want in excruciating detail and provide a local project manager -- or 
don't outsource to a location in a far-way time zone. (Bill Winett)

UTTERING UTTER DRIVEL
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8818
      Parker J. Palmer's think piece is utter drivel. How could an author 
who we assume to be a highly educated person, be so far off the mark? 
Perhaps because he is viewing the U.S. educational system from the outside. 
If he had ever taught in the public schools he would know that teachers 
have little or no power over the system, educational values or classroom 
organization. Teachers are handed all those at the beginning of each school 
year -- a fait accompli. Woe to the creative teacher who dares to veer from 
the course set by their community of parents, school board and 
administration. Many have tried and many have paid the price, drummed out 
of the "profession" they loved. (John Deamer)

WINDOWS ON THE WORLD
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8799
      In the article on Internet voting: Voters using SERVE can register to 
vote and cast their ballots from any Microsoft Windows-based computer with 
Internet access. I¹m pleased that the government supporting the Microsoft 
monopoly is using our tax dollars to further discourage competition in this 
field of endeavor. (Marc Rhodes)

THE VOTE ON INTERNET VOTING: NO
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8801
      Regarding a NewsScan reader's reference to an article published by 
The Inquirer (www.theinquirer.net) alleging possible voting machine fraud 
in the United States, I read the article myself and do not regard it as 
particularly credible. One of the cases of voting machine irregularities 
they described was in my home state of Alabama. Contrary to what the 
article indicates, the problem was identified within a very few days as 
essentially the electronic equivalent of a person calling in the results 
from a polling place on election night and getting the numbers wrong. The 
problem affected the preliminary results on election night, but the 
integrity of the machines themselves remained intact. Further, 
cross-referencing results in the preliminary tallies made it pretty clear 
that something was amiss in what had been reported on election night. The 
state's major news sources were satisfied with the explanation, and there 
was no recount because there was no need for one (and Alabama law is biased 
against recounts in the absence of evidence of genuine problems with the 
original count because recounts open up fraud potential of their own). 
Knowing what I do about the Alabama case and reading the article's 
description of it, it is clear that the article reflects either too little 
caring about the truth to make sure the facts are straight or a deliberate 
intent to distort the truth. Either way, that destroys the article's 
credibility in my view. Regarding the matter of Internet voting, I agree 
with some other NewsScan subscribers that the problems -- security, lack of 
a paper trail, and lack of a way to tell whether a vote might be coerced 
(not so much by guns as by, for example, the risk of a spouse's disapproval 
over voting the "wrong" way with them watching) -- outweigh the benefits. 
(Nathan Barclay)

SUBSCRIPTION INFO FOR NEWSSCAN DAILY:
      To subscribe or unsubscribe to the text, html, or handheld versions 
of NewsScan Daily, send the appropriate subscribe or unsubscribe messages 
(i.e., with the word 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the subject line) to 
the addresses shown below:
      Text version: Send message to [email protected]
      HTML version: Send mail to [email protected]
      NewsScan-To-Go: http://www.newsscan.com/handheld/current.html

TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT NEWSSCAN DAILY! Send them our little frog: 
http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html

***********************************************************
Please visit the site of RLG, the great organization that makes NewsScan 
Daily possible. (RLG has no influence over, nor any responsibility for, our 
editorial content.) Created in 1974 as the Research Libraries Group, RLG is 
a not-for-profit membership corporation of more than 160 universities, 
national libraries, archives, museums -- and other institutions with 
remarkable collections for research and learning. Its major initiatives are 
long-term retention of digital materials, resource sharing among member 
institutions, and improvement of researcher access to primary source 
material. RLG supplies online research resources worldwide. Visit RLG at 
http://www.rlg.org.

*********

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the TEXT version of NewsScan Daily, send an 
e-mail message to [email protected] with 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' 
in the subject line. To subscribe to our HTML version of NewsScan Daily, 
send mail to [email protected], with the word 'subscribe' as the 
subject. (Subscribing to the HTML version won't automatically unsubscribe 
you from the text version; please unsubscribe yourself as explained above.) 
Please note: To unsubscribe from an account to which you no longer have 
access, send mail to at [email protected].

*********

We call our news section "Above The Fold" to honor the tradition of the 
great "broadsheet" newspapers in which editors must decide which news 
stories are of such importance that they should be placed "above the fold" 
on the front page. The NewsScan Credo: Be informative, have fun, and get to 
the point! See http://www.newsscan.com/, and send us mail: John Gehl 
<[email protected]> and Suzanne Douglas <[email protected]>, or call 
770-704-7517.

*********

Get a free 6-week trial subscription to Innovation Weekly, an executive 
summary of trends, strategies and innovations in business and technology. 
Send mail to [email protected] with the word 'subscribe' in the 
subject line.

What customized news and information services do you need for your company? 
Get in touch with us at [email protected] or call 770-704-7517 to talk 
over the possibilities.

Copyright 2003. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.
***********************************************************