NewsScan Daily, 2 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 2 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Computer Security Fears
        Growth of Internet Telephony
        Calling All Spammers
        Virus Writers Usually Get Off Easy
        Who Owns Your Personal Data Anyway?
        Gaming For Money

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Sylvia Beach

COMPUTER SECURITY FEARS
A study by Federal Computer Week and the Pew Internet & American Life 
Project has found that about one in every two Americans fear terrorists 
will launch cyberattacks on the large networks that operate the banking, 
electrical transportation and water systems, disrupting everyday life and 
possibly crippling economic activity. The poll was taken before the Blaster 
worm infected millions of computers world. Well-known computer security 
expert Peter Neumann of SRI International says it's good that the public is 
becoming more aware of just how serious the threat can be: "Until now, the 
standard answer you get is, 'We've never had the Pearl Harbor of 
cybersecurity, so why worry.' We tend not to be on our toes. And we need to 
be on our toes." (USA Today 30 Aug 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-08-30-cyberterror_x.htm

GROWTH OF INTERNET TELEPHONY
Internet telephony, which uses software technology that allows the Internet 
to route traffic, has matured to the point that voice quality is usually 
indistinguishable from that of a conventional phone call. Calls based on 
Internet telephony can be routed through a company's internal data network, 
the Internet, or both, and Internet telephony has been adopted by such 
major organizations as Commerce Department, JetBlue Airways, SouthTrust 
banks. Approximately 2% of U.S. businesses were using some form of Internet 
telephony by the end of last year, says market research firm In-Stat/MDR, 
and that percentage will grow because the equipment costs of an Internet 
telephone system are lower than the those of a comparable-size conventional 
system that uses an on-site switch known as a PBX and the handsets that 
work with it. (New York Times 1 Sep 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/09/01/technology/01VOIP.html


CALLING ALL SPAMMERS
Who would ever have thought? It turns out that spammers need online 
community, too, and they can find it at The Bulk Club -- a support group 
for junk e-mailers. The overnight success of The Bulk Club (159 members 
signed up since its launch six months ago) belies the stereotype of the 
spammer as lone sociopath, lurking in the Internet's shadows. In fact, the 
club's rapidly swelling membership signals a move on the part of spammers 
to circle the wagons in an effort to protect and legitimize the embattled 
bulk e-mail industry. And what do members get for their $20 per month fee? 
Access to a variety of how-to articles (such as "How to Spoof"), spamming 
software, a members' message board and "300,000 FRESH e-mails/week." Also, 
thanks to a Web site security flaw uncovered last week, they received a bit 
of unwanted publicity -- the entire Bulk Club membership roster was 
revealed, including some of the biggest names in bulk e-mailing: Damon 
Decrescenzo, a Florida junk e-mail who's been sued by both Microsoft and 
Amazon; Internet porn king Seth Warshavsky; and John Milton -- an alias 
used by former neo-Nazi Davis Wolfgang Hawke -- and Jon Thau, both of whom 
are responsible for many of those penis enlargement ads you might have 
received. (Wired.com 2 Sep 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,60224,00.html

VIRUS WRITERS USUALLY GET OFF EASY
Although nearly 63,000 viruses have been identified by Symantec, causing an 
estimated $65 billion in damage, only a few perpetrators have been 
sentenced to jail time for their role in unleashing the malicious programs. 
Investigators say they're hampered by antiquated laws, sophisticated 
spoofing techniques, and for many years, a "boys will be boys" attitude 
that bordered on admiration for virus creators. Only one person has been 
sent to prison in the U.S. and two in the U.K., but the low numbers are 
"not reflective of how seriously we take these cases, but more reflective 
of the fact that these are very hard cases," says Chris Painter, deputy 
chief of computer crimes at the U.S. Dept. of Justice. Beginning Nov. 1, 
more stringent sentencing guidelines will go into effect, but Purdue 
University's Eugene Spafford, director of the Center for Education and 
Research in Information Assurance, says stiffer penalties alone aren't 
going to end viruses. Computer users need to "put bars on the windows" and 
make better use of antivirus software and technical protections. In 
addition, social attitudes need to change -- "creating the idea that 
hacking is not romantic, it's not clever, it's not an appropriate thing to 
do," says Spafford. (AP 30 Aug 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030830/D7T8DITG0.html

WHO OWNS YOUR PERSONAL DATA ANYWAY?
Harvard Business School professor John Deighton says that instead of 
relying on regulators to protect their privacy through contrivances such as 
the "Do Not Call" list, consumers should capitalize on the value of their 
personal information and get something in return for allowing businesses to 
use it. With companies doing a brisk business in selling and reselling your 
data, it's time for individuals to get into the act, demanding rewards such 
as better customer service, price discounts or maybe just plain money. "The 
challenge is to give people a claim on their identities while protecting 
them from mistreatment. The solution is to create institutions that allow 
consumers to build and claim the value of their marketplace identities and 
that give producers the incentive to respect them. Privacy and identity 
then become opposing economic goods, and consumers can choose how much of 
each they would like to consume" says Deighton. (HBS Working Knowledge/CNet 
1 Sep 2003)
http://news.com.com/2030-1087_3-5068504.html

GAMING FOR MONEY
The game Ultimate Arena allows players to wager small sums to play a match 
against a single challenger or group of opponents at a similar skill level. 
At the end of a 10-minute match, the winner of a $2 bet would take home 
$1.70 home (with Ultimate Arena keeping 30 cents). The maximum bet for a 
single game is $20 and the most someone can lose in a month is $100, while 
there is no upper limit on how much players can win. (San Jose Mercury News 
2 Sep 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6672900.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had 
really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that 
all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and 
the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places 
and how the weather was." (Ernest Hemingway)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: SYLVIA BEACH
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Paris bookseller Sylvia Beach, 
whose bookshop Shakespeare and Company was a gathering place in the 1920s 
and '30s for expatriate writers and a center where French authors could 
pursue their emerging interest in U.S. literature.
      Beach's father was the Reverend Sylvester Beach, who served as pastor 
of the First Presbyterian Church in Baltimore at the time of her birth. In 
1901, her father was named the assistant to the pastor to the American 
Church in Paris, and the family moved to France where Beach grew up. After 
serving in the Red Cross in Serbia, Beach returned to Paris following World 
War I and in 1919 opened the bookstore she named Shakespeare & 
Company  Very soon the shop became a creative and intellectual center for 
English-speaking writers such as Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, 
and Gertrude Stein.
      Beach made available a wide variety of services to her writer 
friends. She provided them a forum for introductions, found them typists, 
received their mail, critiqued their works in progress, and published their 
final products. She would serve these "regulars" tea in a back parlor of 
the shop that had a fireplace.
      Beach achieved literary fame in 1922 when she took the bold step of 
publishing James Joyce's novel "Ulysses," which at the time was considered 
too obscene to print. She offered to publish Joyce's masterpiece when it 
became clear that there was no hope of it appearing in English-speaking 
countries. She had a 1,000 copies printed in Dijon, and then continued its 
printing as long as it remained a banned book in England and the United 
States. Critics have called her publication of "Ulysses" one of the great 
literary events of the twentieth century.
      Shakespeare and Company operated successfully through the 1920s and 
early 1930s, but by 1936 the bookshop was facing hard times. Had it not 
been for the rallying force of her writer-friends Eliot, Hemingway, Gide, 
and Valery, Beach would have had to close the doors of Shakespeare & 
Company They organized "Les Amis de Shakespeare and Co." and gave readings 
of their works to raise money for the shop. However, with the onset of 
World War II, Beach closed the shop. In 1959 she wrote her memoir, 
"Shakespeare and Company," which gives a charming, first hand account of 
the literary scene of Paris in the 1920s and the role her shop played in 
the cultivation of important twentieth century American literary figures. 
Sylvia Beach died in Paris in 1962.

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0803260970/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Sylvia Beach's memoir, "Shakespeare and Company" -- or look for it in 
your favorite library. [We donate all revenue from our book recommendations 
to adult literacy programs.]

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