NewsScan Daily, 21 August 2003 ("Above The Fold")

"NewsScan" <[email protected]> Thu, 21 Aug 2003 09:29:15 -0700

Newsgroups	gmane.culture.it.newsscan
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

NewsScan Daily, 21 August 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"
Sobig is Fastest-Spreading Virus Ever
Natural Sea Sponge Fibers Outshine Manmade Cable
Coming to a Small Screen Near You: The eBay TV Show
Internet-Inspired Terms Make the Oxford Cu
WiFi in Motion
Wireless Broadband

FEATURES
Flash Card
Memo From Maelstrom
Honorary Subscriber: Mary Boykin Chestnut
Mailbag: The World As We Find It

SOBIG IS FASTEST-SPREADING VIRUS EVER
The newest version of the Sobig virus is said to be the fastest-spreading
network virus ever, and MessageLabs (a company that filters e-mail for
corporate clients) intercepted more than a million copies of the "Sobig.F"
virus in a single day -- or one in every 17 e-mail messages the firm
scanned. The virus spreads through Windows PCs via e-mail and corporate
networks, and deposits a Trojan horse, or hacker back door, that can be
used to turn victims' PCs into relayers of spam e-mail. Yesterday, a worm
virus brought down the signaling systems of railroad company CSX Corp,
causing delays and canceled trains through the Eastern states. (Dow
Jones/AP/SJMN 21 Aug 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6578730.htm

NATURAL SEA SPONGE FIBERS OUTSHINE MANMADE CABLE
Scientists say the thin glass fibers grown by the "Venus flower basket" sea
sponge are capable of better transmitting light than the
industrial-strength fiber-optic cables that carry most of today's
telecommunications. "You can actually tie a knot in these natural
biological fibers and they will not break -- it's really quite amazing,"
says Joanna Aizenberg, who led the research at Bell Labs. The flexible
fibers -- each about two to seven inches long and the thickness of a human
hair -- grow at the base of the sea sponge to help anchor it to the ocean
floor. In contrast, the glass fibers produced by current manufacturing
methods are heated to high temperatures and produce relatively brittle
cable. In addition, the sponge is able to add traces of sodium to the
fibers, enhancing their ability to conduct light -- something that cannot
be done to manmade fibers because of the heat involved in manufacturing.
"One of the challenges of technology is doping the glass structure with
additives that improve optical properties," says Aizenberg. "If we
understand exactly how we can deposit sodium in glass fibers at low
temperatures as nature does, we can control all the properties." (AP 20
Aug2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030820/D7T1UEDO0.html

COMING TO A SMALL SCREEN NEAR YOU: THE EBAY TV SHOW
Sony Pictures Television has completed taping a pilot for an eBay TV show,
and if all goes well it should hit the airwaves in Fall 2004. The show
would not be an auction version of the Home Shopping Network, but rather
would focus on feature stories surrounding items for sale on eBay with the
hope of driving more traffic to the Web site. "We're looking at television
to attract more users who may know about eBay but, for one reason or
another, have not made an effort to use the site," says an eBay spokesman.
"It's also another vehicle for us to connect with our current users or
people who have an account but haven't bothered to go to eBay." But
Virginia Tech communications professor Matt McAllister says it's a big leap
from a Web site to primetime TV. "It's not an off-network comedy, it's not
a reality show, it's not a talk show and it's not a game show." The late
afternoon-early evening time slots Sony and eBay are considering are
already packed with the likes of Oprah and her compatriots, local news and
game shows like "Jeopardy." "Those are big giants they'll have to take
down," says McAllister. "They'll have to convince stations it will catch on
and that they'll have enough material for an hour show five nights a week
-- I'm still flabbergasted by that." (San Francisco Chronicle20 Aug 2003)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/08/20/BU138306.DTL&type=tech

INTERNET-INSPIRED TERMS MAKE THE OXFORD CUT
The venerable Oxford Dictionary of English has added 3,000 more terms to
its collection of 350,000 words and phrases commonly used in the English
language and a sizeable number are traceable to the Internet. Included in
the latest group are "cyberslacker" -- an employee who surfs the Net for
personal use during work; "ego surfer" -- one who looks for references of
him- or herself online; "data smog" -- the impenetrable morass of facts
available online; and "shovelware" -- low-priced games or other software
programs bundled into higher-priced collections. Meanwhile, the word
"groom" has taken on a more sinister meaning when it refers to paedophiles'
online interactions with potential victims. (The Independent 21 Aug 2003)
http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/news/story.jsp?story=435650

WIFI IN MOTION
Trials of WiFi in commuting trains are beginning in Silicon Valley next
month, and passengers on the Altamount Commuter Express (ACE) will be able
to connect to the Internet from their portable computing devices through
WiFi wireless technology. Industry analyst Keith Waryas of IDC says, "It's
a tremendously ripe market. It makes a lot of sense to have this network in
motion.'' (AP/San Jose Mercury News 21 Aug 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6578716.htm

WIRELESS BROADBAND
The "digital divide" that once separated information-poor rural areas and
information-rich urban areas has now pretty much been erased, according to
the Center for Rural Policy and Development. A new report from that group
cites wireless Internet as one reason that people in rural areas now enjoy
about the same level of broadband access as all Americans. For example, the
Rural Minnesota Internet survey showed that 15% of rural Minnesota
households have high-speed connections, compared with 16% of all U.S.
homes. Dennis Miller, chief executive of Midwest Wireless in outstate
Minnesota, is exultant: "You can participate in the global economy, and you
don't have to drive into the Twin Cities." Barb Fasnach, information
technology coordinator for LCS Precision Molding in Waterville, MN,
completely agrees: "I think we would have stagnated and shrunken" without
Midwest's service. "It's, 'If you build it, we will exist.'... We have a
little advantage over the big companies because we're in rural Minnesota
and have a work force that wants to go to work. Our costs are less, and
that's one of the reasons we stay here. Broadband makes the footing more
even." (AP/USA Today 20 Aug 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2003-08-20-wifi-broadband_
x.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
"People who are unhappy with the way things are tend to remain
unhappy even after they have changed them. The nature of their unhappiness
is such that change does not slake it." (Michael Lewis)

MEMO FROM MAELSTROM
Our hacker friend "maelstrom" sends us the following dispatch from
the world of hacking.
***
This latest round of Internet mail worms just tickles the cockles of
a hacker's heart. (And, yes, we do have them.) We have been warning home
users, small and medium size business owners, and the IT departments of
large companies for decades to regularly patch their operating systems when
security patches become available. Why? Because as soon as a new
vulnerability becomes known, the first thing we do is to look for machines
that HAVEN'T been patched so we can nose around inside them to see what we
can find!
What truly amazes me is that the new versions of Microsoft Windows
makes updating the security patches so incredibly easy, yet almost
everybody ignores that feature. It's something called "Windows Update" and,
on home machines especially, it automatically goes to the MS Web site on a
regular basis for patches. When there are patches that you need on your
machine, you see a little "world" icon in the Task Bar and you'll get a
little pop-up notice that says something like, "Updates are ready for
downloading." Everybody in the world seems to ignore this neat little
feature. Could save a lot of businesses some major heartaches!
Note: I have a "sacrificial" machine on my network called "Goat" ...
this machine is set up with one email account and I use it as a honeypot to
draw hackers and viruses to it so I can monitor activity. At 10:00 am this
morning it had received 500 of the new Sobig worms. And, nope, it's not
patched on purpose. How many worms on my other machines? NONE.
So, wake up, people!! All the firewalls and intrusion detection
systems in the world don't help you when there's a great big security hole
as big as a train tunnel that we can walk through undetected. Stop placing
all your efforts in the fancy machines with lots of bells and whistles and
concentrate your efforts in just making your servers and your desktop
computers secure with patches and correct user accounts!
Hack the world!
Maelstrom

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: MARY BOYKIN CHESTNUT
Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Civil War diarist Mary Boykin
Miller Chestnut (1823-1886), whose social position and connections gave her
a ringside seat for observing many of the war's important events and
personalities. Her diary, which ran to some 400,000 words, has been a
valuable source of information for serious historians and Civil War buffs
alike.
Chestnut's close friendship with Jefferson and Varina Davis gave her
chronicles a uniquely compelling, if not always unbiased, insider's point
of view. The diary was first published in 1905, and reissued in 1949 by Ben
Ames Williams under the title "A Diary from Dixie." In 1982 the historian
C. Vann Woodward edited the complete text as "Mary Chestnut's Civil War."
The Chestnut diary reveals her secret doubts about slavery and her fears
for the South's future, but her intelligent, and often humorous, insights
made her diary a historically important chronicle of the war.
She was born in South Carolina as the eldest child of Mary Boykin
and Stephen Decatur Miller, who had served as U.S. congressman and senator
and in 1826 was elected governor of South Carolina. Educated first at home,
she was sent at 13 to a French boarding school in Charleston. In 1840 when
she was only 17, she married James Chesnut, Jr., only surviving son of one
of South Carolina's largest landowners. She spent most of the next 20 years
in Camden, South Carolina and at Mulberry, her husband's family plantation.
When her husband was elected to the Senate in 1858, she accompanied him to
Washington where friendships were begun with many politicians who would
become the leading figures of the Confederacy. Following Lincoln's
election, the couple returned to South Carolina, where James Chestnut
participated in the drafting of a secession ordinance and subsequently
served in the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America, as
aide to General Pierre G.T. Beauregard and President Jefferson Davis.
During the war she accompanied her husband to his duty stations in
Charleston, Montgomery, Columbia, and Richmond, where their drawing room
served as a popular salon for the Confederate elite.
Both Mary and James Chestnut survived the war. Returning to their
plantation, they found total devastation. They tried to extricate
themselves from heavy debts and to rebuild their lives in the antebellum
style, but without success. In the early 1880s, she began to expand and
revise her diaries into book form. Still unfinished at the time of her
death in 1886, it remained for others to publish what is generally
acknowledged today as the finest literary work of the Confederacy.

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0517182661/newsscancom/ref=nosim
for Chestnut's "A Diary from Dixie" -- 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

BACK-SLAPPING CONSTRAINTS
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9023
Regarding the trainer's admonition to Indians to be careful of
indulging in overfamiliarity ("Americans are friendly, but do not slap an
American on his back or call him by his first name in the first meeting."),
would that this were true! I think he has an outdated or overly
conservative impression of us. In virtually every situation in which I find
myself, especially those involving customer service personnel, Americans
tend to address others by first name, even during the first contact. I
believe that, if not for the separation caused by the phone line or counter
between us, they might actually slap us on the back as well! I'm not
particularly bothered by this informality, and think it's a great idea to
be polite and careful when dealing with people of other cultures, but this
amused me. Thanks for the continued great variety of offerings! (Richard Brake)

WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN?
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9014
The article on the power grid could have been retitled: "How we never
learn anything from history." Something we used to do in IBM some twenty or
more years ago was look for [and fix] the weakest link in the chain. And
then go round again, and again... Will we ever learn?? [Answer: "probably,
no"] (Scott Pollard)

GO PHISH
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9012
Regarding the "phishing expedition," my wife and I received one of
those messages. I was immediately suspicious about the message, because we
have never been (to our knowledge) Citibank customers. I have an
application that previews incoming messages and noticed that it came from
an individual rather than from Citibank; however, when the message was
previewed from within my e-mail application it did truly look like
something official from Citibank. The discrepancy between what was in the
message and what was on the outside was enough to make me call Citibank.
The minute I mentioned the e-mail, the phone rep told me that they knew
about it (this was on Saturday the 16th) and that I could trash the
message. Interestingly enough, the targets for these messages were not
necessarily Citibank customers. (Tony Mitchell, Ph. D.)

YOU WON'T GET NO SATISFACTION!
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9007
Thanks for all the great work you do on NewsScan! I'd like to add two
small points about your story "Rolling Stones Yields To Digital Future."
First, the RealNetworks exclusive deal lasts for only two weeks. Other
music services will be able to participate beginning in September. Second,
since this arrangement only covers music since 1971, you can taste "Brown
Sugar," but you won't get complete "Satisfaction." (Information from
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/08/18/stones_open_vaults_to_net_downloads)
(Mark Gilmore)

HE SAYS UNTO, WE SAID INTO, LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8992
"Once More Into The Breach"? Hang your heads in shame: it's "Once
more UNTO the breach". See
"http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Shakespeare/HenryV/HenryV3_1.htm"
(amongst many others which Google found!!). (Allan Todd)

WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO FORWARD MESSAGES?
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8969
Regarding the "Six Degrees of Freedom" test, it depends on *why*
someone in the middle didn't forward the mail. If that someone just
couldn't be bothered, it doesn't prove anything at all about whether they
*could* have advanced the chain by one more link. So if that wasn't
accounted for, I don't believe it's been proved that "Instead of showing we
live in a small world, it really shows the opposite. Ninety-eight percent
of people can't reach anybody..." I know lots of people whom I wouldn't
bother with such a request unless there was a very good reason, and I would
include a study like this as probably not a compelling reason -- even
though I knew it would surely skew the results. (Barbara Beeton)

KEEPING CONTROL
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8969
If our current crop of academics believe that e-mail is as effective
as a personal phone call, then they need to take a course in effective
communications. Business networking involves making intelligent contacts
with those we know, getting their recommendations for the next place to
call and their personal referral, and never losing control of the process.
This implies that we keep trying to reach each network contact (and their
subsequent referrals) rather than sending them an e-mail and hoping for the
best. It would seem that the only academic myth might be scientific method
used! (Keith Cowan)

FLASH MOBS CREDIT GOES TO LARRY NIVEN
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8942
Please give credit for the "flash mobs" to author Larry Niven, who
wrote "Flash Crowd" in 1971 (in his "Flight of the Horse" collection of
short stories). See http://www.larryniven.org/nivenisms_in_the_news.htm ,
at the bottom of the page. PS-- Keep up the good work. You have Good Taste
in what is Important. (Gary Cordell)

MORE FROM TEDDY
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8986
I've come to rely on NewsScan Daily for my daily dose of tech news. I
really enjoy the Flash Card as well, and especially took note of your Flash
Card taken from Teddy Roosevelt. I've had a printout of this quote sitting
on my desk for the last 8 years because it's such an inspiration to me as
an entrepreneur trying to make it in today's economy; my version, however,
contains an additional line that may help explain why some people take
certain risks in life ... it's all about following your dream: "Who, at the
best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who, at the
worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never
be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
(Jeff Tolle)

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.
***********************************************************