NewsScan Daily, 14 August 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 14 August 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       FBI Enters Investigation of Blaster
       Internet2 -- 'Build It and They Will Come'
       Software to Identify Copyright Restrictions
       Let the Sun Shine In and Destroy Those Evil Vampires
       Digital Project Seeks Funding Applicants
       Once More Into the Breach: COPA Goes Back To Supremes

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: Green Grass As Far As You Could See

FBI ENTERS INVESTIGATION OF BLASTER
The FBI is investigating the origin of the malicious computer program
Blaster (also known as MSBlaster and LoveSan), which has already wormed its
way into more than 250,000 Internet-connected computers running Windows
software. Blaster has been infecting computers in organizations of every
kind (e.g, CBS, the Senate, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta) -- in
spite of the fact that computer experts say it's not well-written software.
Dan Ingevaldson of Internet Security Systems Inc. warns: "A better version
of this worm wouldn't crash any machines; it would work correctly every
time, move faster, and delete or steal its victims' files."(Washington Post
14 Aug 2003) 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56071-2003Aug13.html

INTERNET2 -- 'BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME'
Internet2, which is more than 3,500 times faster than a typical home
broadband connection, is great for research applications -- but is it worth
the considerable upgrade cost to elementary and secondary U.S. schools? Why
would they need that kind of speed? Carl Pennypacker, a research astronomer
at Berkeley, argues that as more schools get access to Internet2,
researchers will develop applications for children that demand the faster
network -- such as searches to request images of black holes -- and Joseph
Janes of the University of Washington's information school adds: "Internet2
is one of those things that if you build it, they will come. Once this kind
of bandwidth is readily available, then you will see people develop
applications and services for it." (New York Times 14 Aug 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/technology/circuits/14next.html

SOFTWARE TO IDENTIFY COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS
Media companies often have problems understanding what they own -- i.e.,
what footage, images and other items they have the right to distribute, and
where those rights apply; these problems are then complicated by the fact
that each individual segment of a video may be covered by different
restrictions on where it can be shown, what it can be used for and when it
can be sold. Software called RightsLine, which is able to track those
restrictions down to a single frame of film, is now being used by National
Geographic Television & Film to streamline the licensing process and inspire
more creative uses of its footage. At the National Geographic site,
customers will be able to search through a digitized collection of about
100,000 videos, view and select the footage that suits their needs, and fill
out a license application online. (Los Angeles Times 13 Aug 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-rights13aug13223419,1,948474.story?c
oll=la-headlines-technology

LET THE SUN SHINE IN AND DESTROY THOSE EVIL VAMPIRES
The new video game "Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand," designed for
Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, has a solar sensor built into the game
cartridge, allowing natural sunlight to give players of the handheld game a
strategic advantage. The game stars a vampire hunter whose power is greater
by day (with sunlight) than it is by night, and some of the vampires can be
dispatched to their doom only by exposure to natural sunlight. (AP/San Jose
Mercury News 14 Aug 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6531013.htm

DIGITAL PROJECT SEEKS FUNDING APPLICANTS
The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, a
$100-million project spearheaded by the U.S. Library of Congress, is seeking
applications aimed at developing and testing models for the collection of
digital materials. "As more and more information is produced only in digital
form, it has become critical for the national to develop an infrastructure
for the collection and preservation of these materials before they are
lost," says LoC Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives Laura E.
Campell, who's heading up the cooperative effort. The first set of projects
to be funded will focus on the selection and collection of at-risk and
historically significant digital materials for which no analog equivalent
exists. In addition, NDIIPP is seeking to develop a network of committed
institutional partners to support the long-term collection and preservation
of digital content. Applications due by Nov. 12, 2003.
(NDIIPP 12 Aug 2003) http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/programannouncement

ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH: COPA GOES BACK TO SUPREMES
The Justice Department is appealing to the Supreme Court a Pennsylvania
appeals court ruling that has been blocking enforcement of the Child Online
Protection Act (COPA) -- the 1998 law requiring commercial Web site
operators to use credit cards or other adult access systems to prevent
minors from viewing the material. The appellate court has twice ruled that
COPA unconstitutionally restricts free speech, but those decisions have
twice been rejected by the Supreme Court. Congress drafted COPA in an effort
to create a more narrowly defined law than the Communications Decency Act
(CDA) of 1996, which the Supreme Court struck down in 1997 as
unconstitutional.  (DC Internet 13 Aug 2003)
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2248171

*****

FLASH CARD
     "The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy,
chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly
photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust."
(Elizabeth Bowen)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: GREEN GRASS AS FAR AS YOU COULD SEE
     In his book on the history of soul music (including the boogaloo,
hip-hop, and rap), Arthur Kempton, son of influential liberal columnist
Murray Kempton, writes:
     "Aframericans are a tribe marked once by bondage and again by the lie
of their freedom, which for most of those unleashed meant only conscription
into an indefinite term of volunteer slavery. The American South is their
old country now. The salve of a selective remembrance of ancestral hard
places in bad times has unscarred the tissue layered over wounds that once
seemed too raw to heal. Any visceral memory of the old country's
depredations has been outlived by the romance of 'all-day preaching, dinner
on the ground, green grass far as you could see' -- a bygone burnished by
the rub of contemporary disenchantments into a version of the official
American mythic past, when families were closer and food was tastier, where
streets were cleaner and houses, yards, and children better kept. Every
summer across the South there are reunions of graduates of defunct black
high schools that become occasions of attendees' rueful reflections on how
much was lost to children in their communities when desegregation 'washed
away our schools.' At least then the socially conservative traditions of
Aframerican life were intact enough to produce people who withstood the
worst assaults of outsiders.
     "Most black Americans still live among elders whose own elders were
bred and born 'down home,' when many places there were as bitter and
backward as Mississippi. But none other stood more for the biblical Egypt of
the Jews' captivity. In tribal consciousness Mississippi is mythopoetic
territory where people drank tears for water and suffered in the heart of a
darkness that time has since softened into a pervading twilight in which no
place seems as different from any other as it used to. This place that once
seemed pernicious to those who fled it has become an object of nostalgia."
                             ***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375406123/newsscancom/ref=nosim
for Arthur Kempton's "Boogaloo" -- or look for it in your favorite library.
(We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.)

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