NewsScan Daily, 11 August 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 11 August 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Hewlett-Packard: 'Simplify, Simplify, Simplify'
        Man Proves He Was Victimized by Network Vandals
        Judge Throws Out RIAA Subpoenas
        Merger of Spanish-Language TV Companies
        Subscription Fees Boost Numbers
        Web Sites Seek the Personal Touch

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Albert Jay Nock

HEWLETT-PACKARD: 'SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY'
Hewlett-Packard, which (besides being the No. 1 manufacturer of printers) 
is the world's largest consumer technology company, is today launching 100 
new and upgraded PCs, printers, digital cameras and other devices intended 
to provide a comprehensive digital solution for the home. HP's move could 
force others to follow suit. HP chief executive Carly Fiorina says: "What's 
holding digital in the home back is it's too darn hard and complicated. 
Consumers are willing to spend money on technology that they think does 
something for them. What they care about is it works every time." Gartner 
industry analyst Peter Grant seems to agree: "HP is providing all the 
pieces to the tech jigsaw puzzle." Inside HP, the new strategy is called 
"Radically Simple, Better Together," and the head of the company's printing 
and imaging business, Vyomesh Joshi, explains: "It all boils down to 
simplify, simplify, simplify." (USA Today 11 Aug 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2003-08-10-hp_x.htm

MAN PROVES HE WAS VICTIMIZED BY NETWORK VANDALS
In the U.K., a man has been acquitted in Exeter Crown Court after 
successfully arguing that child pornography found on his personal computer 
had been placed there without his knowledge by network vandals who had used 
a "Trojan horse" program to infect his machine. The case creates two 
worries: one, that actual child pornographers now have a new alibi that 
would be difficult to disprove; two, that innocent Web surfers might find 
themselves charged with possessing illegal material planted on their 
computers by malicious invaders. Former U.S. federal computer crime 
prosecutor Mark Rasch says, "The scary thing is not that the defense might 
work. The scary thing is that the defense might be right. The nightmare 
scenario is somebody might go to jail for something he didn't do because he 
was set up." (New York Times 11 Aug 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/08/11/technology/11PORN.html

JUDGE THROWS OUT RIAA SUBPOENAS
A federal judge in Boston has rejected subpoenas filed by the Recording 
Industry Association of America last month as part of its nationwide 
crackdown on digital music file-sharing. The subpoenas targeted students at 
Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who used 
various screen names to share songs online. In his ruling, Judge Joseph L. 
Tauro said that under federal rules, subpoenas issued in Washington cannot 
be served in Massachusetts. The RIAA called the ruling "a minor procedural 
issue" but declined to say whether it would refile in Boston. (AP 8 Aug 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030809/D7SQ5LC80.html

MERGER OF SPANISH-LANGUAGE TV COMPANIES
The Federal Communications Commission seems ready to approve Univision's 
$3-billion bid to buy Tichenor's Hispanic Broadcasting, and supporters of 
the merger say it will improve media choices for Hispanic consumers by 
making it possible for the combined company to compete effectively for 
advertising dollars with English-language media conglomerates. Univision 
president Ray Rodriguez says, "When you go to see advertisers and you walk 
in to sell something and you've got a TV station and he's Viacom, he can 
make a better sales pitch. We believe putting our two companies together 
gets us one step closer to being able to compete better with 
English-language giants, and that only makes sense." Opponents say the 
merger will give the combined companies a virtual monopoly over the 
Spanish-speaking audience that government agencies would never allow among 
bigger media companies. Raul Alarcon, president of Spanish Broadcasting, 
says the merger would create a "very anti-competitive, monopolistic 
behemoth." (Washington Post 11 Aug 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41905-2003Aug10.html

SUBSCRIPTION FEES BOOST NUMBERS
How do you attract more online subscribers? By charging them of course. 
That's what AOL Time Warner has discovered after it cut off free access to 
13 of its magazines' Web sites in April. Since then, traffic for most 
titles is steady and subscriptions are up, defying the conventional wisdom 
that predicted a 50% decline in Web visitors. AOL Time Warner's initial 
motivation was to stop pouring money into online operations that returned 
very little benefit and to give AOL subscribers an additional perk -- they 
could access the content for free. Instead, it turns out that people *will* 
pay for Web content, but only if they're forced to. "We are taming the 
Internet for the benefit of our magazines whereas in the past, we might 
have been a little too credulous," says Time Interactive executive editor 
Neil Desmond. Meanwhile, some titles that were excluded from the original 
experiment are now clamoring for similar terms. Fortune has begun to "drop 
the curtain" on popular portions of its Web site and Business 2.0 has 
decided to shut down free access of its own accord. "It didn't take 
Rockefeller to figure out that a lot of your readers are getting you free," 
says Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner. (Wall Street Journal 11 Aug 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106054824356219400,00.html (sub req'd)

WEB SITES SEEK THE PERSONAL TOUCH
Kaltix, a Web search venture formed by three members of Stanford 
University's PageRank team, is bent on out-Googling Google by developing a 
speedier version of the Stanford PageRank algorithm and using it to develop 
a more personalized Web search service. "Kaltix is a 'stealth-mode' 
startup… (leveraging) research done at Stanford University as well as 
several new technologies developed at Kaltix to provide large-scale 
personalized and context-sensitive search," says a company representative. 
A number of companies outside of the search engine sector, such as Amazon 
and TiVo, have attempted to integrate personalization features into their 
business, but most have fallen short of expectations. If search developers 
are successful, they could help millions of people better navigate the Web, 
while unlocking new revenue from online advertisers eager to maximize their 
return on marketing dollars. "Personalization is one of the holy grails for 
search," says Chris Sherman, editor of Search Day. "Everybody's working on 
personalization to some degree or another. When it comes out of the labs 
and what flavor it takes are the big questions." Sherman adds that the key 
to success will be getting the user interface right -- giving users notice 
of what data has been collected, where it's stored and how it can be 
changed or removed. "A lot of it is going to be experimental. 
Personalization can turn people off if it's interfering and annoys them," 
says University of Pittsburgh professor Amanda Spink. (CNet News.com 11 Aug 
2003)
http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-5061873.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of 
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all 
nations into civilization." (Karl Marx)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: ALBERT JAY NOCK
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the maverick American clergyman, 
editor and writer Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), whose classic work, "Memoirs 
of a Superfluous Man," was read as a rite of passage by an entire 
generation of post World War II American dissidents.
      Nock was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the only child of Emma 
Sheldon Jay and Joseph Albert Nock, a hot-tempered steelworker and 
Episcopal clergyman. He grew up in a semi-rural Brooklyn neighborhood. He 
was schooled at home until he was a teenager when he attended a private 
preparatory school. In 1887 he entered St. Stephen's College and then went 
on to attend Berkeley Divinity School in Middletown, Connecticut. He was 
ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1897, after which he met and married 
Agnes Grumbine, with whom he had two sons.
      In 1909, he seemed to have experienced a crisis of faith. He had left 
his wife and quit the clergy to become an editor of American Magazine, 
launched by editors and writers who had a falling out with S.S. McClure, 
the pioneering muckraking publisher. Nock worked at American Magazine for 
four years and spent time with the likes of muckraking journalists Lincoln 
Steffens and John Reed.
      As a man of letters, Nock was the real thing. Well-read in many 
fields, he combined an old-world cultural sense and a political stance that 
saw the State as the enemy of everything civilized, beautiful, and true. He 
consistently opposed welfare, government-managed economies, consolidation, 
and, above all else, war. He argued vehemently against American 
participation in the two World Wars, criticizing England's dominating 
influence over U.S. foreign policy.
      As a working journalist, Nock founded and edited The Freeman journal 
for four years and contributed numerous articles to magazines like 
Harper's, The Atlantic, and The American Mercury. When The Freeman shut 
down in 1924, he spent the next few years in Europe, after which he 
returned to New York City to continue his literary career and to work as a 
visiting professor of American history and politics at Columbia University. 
He died in 1945 at the home of a close friend in Wakefield, Rhode Island, 
and was buried in that city's Riverside Cemetery. Because his thinking was 
so completely out of the mainstream, Nock considered himself genuinely 
superfluous to the world as he found it. Yet many viewed him as the 
Superlative Man, whose like will not pass this way again.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0819133094/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Albert Jay Nock's "Memoirs of a Superfluous Man" -- or look for it in 
your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations 
to adult literacy programs.)

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