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

NewsScan Daily, 11 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Vint Cerf on the Future of VoIP
        Digital and HDTV Get a Boost
        Girl's Music Lawsuit Settlement
        Debate Over Electronic Voting
        Sharp Laptop Features 3D Imaging
        Breaking News: You've Got Spam

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Nostalgia for Those Glorious Dark Ages
        Mailbag: The World As We Find It

VINT CERF ON THE FUTURE OF VOIP
Vint Cerf, senior VP of Internet Architecture and Technology for MCI, talks 
about the next-generation phone services based on VoIP (voice over Internet 
protocol) that are now being rolled out: "You can show up at a hotel and 
register your normal telephone number -- as long as you can plug in your PC 
to an Internet service. What that means is your visibility in the 
communications world is now portable. Wherever you are, your communications 
are (there also). You can control where things go. If someone's trying to 
send a fax, you can vector that to your e-mail as an attachment or vector 
it to a different fax machine. There's an incredible amount of interaction 
over what had been completely separate services." Looking to the future, 
Cerf says the most important next-generation service is the ability to use 
the Internet as a household control system. "If you're like me, you have 
consumer equipment with remotes around the house. I can't figure out which 
one's which. And once I get the right one, the batteries are dead. Why not 
Internet-enable everything? Then it's possible to just have a single 
radio-based device, maybe 802.11-enabled, that lets you interact with all 
those appliances. You don't even have to be home. Obviously there are some 
security issues involved. You need strong authentication to make sure some 
15-year-old next door won't reprogram your house." (CNet News.com 10 Sep 2003)
http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5073025.html

DIGITAL AND HDTV GET A BOOST
The Federal Communications Commission has approved new technical and 
labeling standards aimed at enabling digital cable signals to flow 
seamlessly into television sets without the need for a set-top box. To 
watch cable channels on a so-called "plug-and-play" TV, the consumer would 
simply insert a security card provided by the cable company into the set. 
"The FCC action could be an important tipping point in the U.S. transition 
to digital television," said the Consumer Electronics Association in a 
statement. According to the National Cable and Telecommunications 
Association, cable companies now offer high-definition TV service to 60 
million U.S. households, but consumers' confusion over whether various 
digital devices would be compatible has stymied HDTV set buying. Under the 
new rules, consumers would still need a set-top box for two-way services, 
such as video-on-demand, some pay-per-view programming and customized 
electronic programming guides. Congress has set a December 2006 deadline 
for broadcasters to switch over from analog to digital programming. 
(Wired.com 10 Sep 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60377,00.html

FILE-SHARING COMPANIES PAY FOR GIRL'S MUSIC SETTLEMENT
A coalition of companies that run Internet song-sharing services have 
offered to pay the $2,000 settlement a mother agreed to pay the Recording 
Industry Association of America (RIAA) after it lodged lawsuits against her 
12-year-old daughter (and 260 other defendants) for music copyright 
infringement. Wayne Rosso, president of the Internet file-sharing service 
Grokster charges: "These people give Joe Stalin a good name." And the 
group's executive director, Adam Eisgrau, adds: "We don't condone copyright 
infringement, but it's time for the RIAA's winged monkeys to fly back to 
the castle and leave the Munchkins alone." Before it filed the lawsuits, 
the RIAA was dismissive of predictions that "the recording industry's 
aggressive legal strategy might result in a consumer backlash." (Washington 
Post 10 Sep 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57424-2003Sep10.html

DEBATE OVER ELECTRONIC VOTING
During California's March 2002 primary, absentee vote tallies from one 
county seem to have been sent to an Internet site operated by Diebold 
Election Systems Inc., the company that manufactured the voting machines 
used in the election. Activist critics of electronic voting systems say the 
glitch is new evidence that the technology is intrinsically faulty, but 
Diebold executive Deborah Seiler says that Diebold engineers may have 
published the results as part of a test performed days, weeks or months 
after the county primary (regardless of the time stamp shown): "These 
activists don't understand what they're looking at." Seiler insists that 
the company has a system of checks and balances to safeguard against fraud, 
but that explanation doesn't satisfy Kim Alexander, president of the 
California Voter Foundation, who charges: "In our quest to deliver faster, 
more accurate election results, we've left the voting process wide open to 
new forms of attack and mismanagement." (AP/San Jose Mercury News 11 Sep 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6739336.htm

SHARP LAPTOP FEATURES 3D IMAGING
Sharp's Mebius PC-RD3D laptop computer by Sharp is being billed as the 
world's first 3D laptop and the company plans to roll out the new model 
next month in Japan. The Mebius laptop is aimed mostly at professionals who 
design 3D software, but Sharp is also planning to market a consumer model, 
says a company spokeswoman. The computer display produces the 3D illusion 
by sending a slightly different image to each eye simultaneously by bending 
them in different angles. No special glasses are required to enjoy the 
effect. The Mebius switches from 3D to 2D mode with the push of a button 
and costs $3,000. (AP 11 Sep 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030911/D7TG6UGG0.html

BREAKING NEWS: YOU'VE GOT SPAM
Analyst Matt Cain of META Group says that spammers "used to use sex to get 
your attention, then e-mails tied to holidays like Mother's Day. Now, it's 
topical come-ons" such as breaking-news headlines "The intent of every 
spammer is to try every trick to get you to open a message." And Ken 
Schneider of Brightmail thinks the trend will grow and grow: "You can be 
sure there will be substantially more spam during the presidential 
primaries next year. People will take advantage of any current event to 
make a buck." More than 20 million messages with references to the 
California recall -- many of them hawking "Terminator for Governor" 
T-shirts and adult DVDs for another candidate -- were sent in the past 
month, and 100 million are expected before the recall election is over. 
Gubernatorial candidate and porn star Mary Carey is angry that a 
distributor of adult DVDs is using her run for office to sell two of her 
films for $14.95. "I'm very upset, because it offends people, and they're 
profiting from my name." (USA Today 11 Sep 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-09-11-spam_x.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich 
people." (Logan Pearsall Smith)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: NOSTALGIA FOR THOSE GLORIOUS DARK AGES
      German cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch says the September 
11th fall of the World Trade Center towers should be understood in the 
context of a fear of global change:
      "The growth in the economy's power and prestige after 1990 was not 
confined to its functional efficiency but came to touch areas of society 
previously monopolized by religion and nationalism. If people looked toward 
anything in the hope of salvation or in fear of damnation, it was 
increasingly the economy. Having lost faith in God, the nation, and utopian 
politics, they credited the economy with the power both to create paradise 
on earth and to destroy life as they knew it. In the West, the threat of 
collective extinction attached no longer to war-which had in any case 
become a long distance media event-but rather to the economy, with its 
double threat of devastating the environment and wiping out jobs. In her 
book 'The Economic Horror,' Viviane Forrester even referred to the 
unemployed as the 'defeated.'
      "Accordingly, on September 11, 2001, the attack on the Pentagon was 
greeted with considerably less panic than that on the World Trade Center -- 
a fact that can of course be explained by the divergent scale of 
destruction. Compared with the apocalyptic ruins and the deaths of 
thousands in Manhattan, the hole ripped in the side of the Pentagon had an 
almost old-world quality, like damage done to a medieval castle. But the 
function and symbolic import of the two sites also shaped the public 
reaction. Despite the shock of the event, it could hardly have been 
inconceivable to Americans that the nation's military headquarters should 
have been a target for attack. The strike against the twin towers was far 
more traumatic. In its lifetime, the World Trade Center stood as an example 
of 1960s shoe-box architecture, impressive primarily for its astounding 
lack of fantasy and aesthetic worth. But with the towers' collapse, two 
other dimensions were made visible: the sheer violence of their physical 
mass, evident in the wreckage, and the extent of the hatred that had chosen 
them as symbols to be destroyed. September 11 contained something of the 
fall of Troy. Only in 2001, it was not the destruction of the warrior' 
fortress that carried the symbolic power but the fall of the merchants' 
towers."
                            ***
See Wolfgang Schivelbusch's "The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, 
Mourning, and Recovery" -- 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

FREEDOM FROM POP-UPS
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9147
      With regards to the ruling allowing pop-ups to appear on user 
computers, what I don't understand is why people complain about pop-ups 
when there are solutions out there. The biggest solution is to stop using 
Internet Explorer. I use Mozilla. At home, I use the full version with the 
email service and all. At work, I use the explorer only version, Firebird. 
Many people make fun of me for using this browser instead of Internet 
Explorer. However, when I tell them that I don't get pop-ups, their 
curiosity is piqued. Since switching to Mozilla over a year ago, I have not 
received one pop-up. Occasionally, I need to use Internet Explorer when I 
get to a website built poorly by someone using Front Page. But, these pages 
are few and far between. So, whenever people start complaining about 
getting pop-ups, I always tell them to do something about it. Switch to 
Mozilla. It is free. It is pop-up free. It is the answer to the problems 
with Internet Explorer. (Wesley Shoop)

MY DNA DOES NOT BELONG TO ANY INSURANCE COMPANY
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9151
      While it would be of great interest to me to have a personalized DNA 
snapshot that could show the diseases I am at risk of developing, I am 
quite sure it would be of even more interest to my health insurer. 
Concurrent with the technical developments, is someone working on the 
bio-ethics of having this knowledge? Will I become uninsurable because the 
machine says I have a propensity to (xyz)?... You keep us thinking! (Gerry 
Visel)

CHEAP BLANK DVDs, BROUGHT TO YOU BY DISNEY
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9159
      Perhaps the environmentalists will not see landfills stuffed full of 
Disney's new disposable money-earner. The DVDs are "are viewable for 48 
hours after opening up the package. Once the package is opened, exposure to 
oxygen slowly erodes the readability of the disc through a process similar 
to the developing of Polaroid film." It springs to mind what would happen 
if upon unwrapping you immediately sprayed the DVD with a clear aerosol 
varnish or lacquer thereby sealing the surface against oxygen? Hey presto 
-- cheap DVDs and no trash problem. Not that I am recommending such actions 
of course... Thanks for NewsScan -- always something interesting. (Ross W. 
Sargent)

DISNEY SELF-DESTRUCTION IS SUPERFLUOUS
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9159
      What is Disney thinking? They advertise themselves and have long been 
considered as, the creators of "classics." My children treasure their 
Disney videos. Self-destructing? They wear them out with no other help. 
(Peter Bogdanoff)

FACE-TO-FACE
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9165
      As Diana Bouchard points out, there are very good reasons for 
face-to-face meetings. Such a meeting is an important tool for doing 
business on many levels. To reject what has worked, after a fashion, in the 
past in favour of a new technology is usually a mistake.
      But that doesn't mean that you should not make use of that new 
technology. The correct attitude, I think, is to see it as a way of 
enhancing and enriching what you already have. In the specific case of 
meetings, I think it is important to have face-to-face meetings with people 
whom you have never met. But after you have gotten to know them then you 
can more easily feel where they are coming from when you just see the words.
      I am an executive director of a not-for-profit company. I deal with a 
9-member board of directors who meet face-to-face occasionally. We all know 
each other very well. Hence between meetings we can usefully discuss issues 
just by email. Those unstructured discussions obviously enhance the 
face-to-face meetings and help us cut down the number of them. However if 
we had access to a tool that enabled us to have structured/moderated 
discussions of major issues online we could surely cut down on those 
face-to-face meetings still further. But there is no way that we could 
eliminate them altogether. The social interaction is too important. Use 
technology to enhance and improve what you are doing. But if you try to use 
it to replace what you are doing altogether, you may well throw out the 
baby with the bath water. (Roger Taylor, Ontario)

BIG ENOUGH TO DRIVE A TRUCK BOMB THROUGH
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9146
      In "Safe & Sound In The Cyber Age" Chey and Stephen Cobb want to know 
if there has been a pattern of pale-skinned American citizens who are also 
middle-aged businessmen of European descent carrying out deadly terrorist 
attacks against America.  Try in Birmingham, Alabama in the late '50s and 
early '60s. These terrorists didn't even need a foreign influence to 
indiscriminately kill their fellow Americans. As for something more recent, 
how about Timothy McVeigh, who would be approaching middle age if he hadn't 
been caught and executed. And how many other John Walker Lindh's are out 
there, being trained by Al-Qaida specifically because of their All-American 
white bread looks? Setting up a positive racial profile (i.e. "these type 
of people can't be terrorists") is a security loophole big enough for bin 
Laden to drive a truck bomb through. (Jane Gudicini)

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