NewsScan Daily, 11 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 11 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization making
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Suzanne Douglas, editors <at> NewsScan.com.
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Windows on a Budget
       Google Sets IPO Auction Deadline
       Top Chinese Sites Launch Anti-Porn Measures
       DVD Software Company Yields to MPAA
       Gaming the System (All Systems)
       Technology Causing 'Frantic Life Syndrome'

FEATURES           
       Flash Card
       Worm Holes in Cyberspace
       Worth Thinking About: What Are You Thinking About (and How)?

WINDOWS ON A BUDGET
     Microsoft has created less-expensive versions of its Windows XP
operating system to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and is developing
similar programs in two other countries. The widespread interest in the
Linux operating system has helped focus Microsoft's attention on the need
for seriously competitive pricing strategies throughout the world. Deepak
Phatak, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, says that India
is exploring programs to distribute low-cost PCs using Linux but that it
could be tempted by lower new prices from Microsoft:
"People in the government will never play a technology-favorites game. They
want to see value for money." (Wall Street Journal 11 Aug 2004)
http://www.wsj.com (sub. req'd)

GOOGLE SETS IPO AUCTION DEADLINE
     Google has set tomorrow at 5 p.m. as the deadline for investors to
register for its initial public offering. After that, brokerage firms will
begin to accept bids for Google's 25.7 million shares, probably priced in
the range of $108 to $135 a share. This week Google paid Yahoo an estimated
$328 million in stock to settle a patent dispute, and the the size of that
payment has forced Google into the position of having to report a loss for
the quarter. (Washington Post 11 Aug 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55021-2004Aug10.html

TOP CHINESE SITES LAUNCH ANTI-PORN MEASURES
     Popular Chinese web sites Sina.com, Sohu.com and Netease.com are
complying with orders to clean up web content to "create a green environment
for millions of underage surfers." The official Xinhua news agency says that
technical measures had been taken to clean up the sites and web-links, as
well as to block pornographic content in their chatrooms and bulletin
boards. On the main page of Sina.com on Friday, small sections where
pictures of scantily dressed embracing couples are normally posted had
disappeared, but were replaced with news about internet crackdown on
pornographic content. However, a word search still yielded Web pages
containing revealing pictures of women, such as a Sina.com sports website
which contained a series of pictures taken from a British tabloid newspaper.
(The Age 9 Aug 2004) Rec'd from J Lamp
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/09/1091903484947.html

DVD SOFTWARE COMPANY YIELDS TO MPAA
     Software company 321 Studios in St. Louis will stop selling DVD copying
software worldwide and has agreed to a financial settlement with the Motion
Picture Association of America (MPAA). MPAA chief executive Jack Valenti
says: "321 Studios built its business on the flawed premise that it could
profit from violating the motion picture studios' copyrights; the courts
have been amply clear -- there is no leniency for violating federal
copyright laws. Now that the company's illegal copying software is off of
store shelves worldwide, we have moved to settle the case." In addition,
Valenti warned: "This is not the end of the story in our massive fight
against piracy." (AP/San Jose Mercury News 10 Aug 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9364923.htm

GAMING THE SYSTEM (ALL SYSTEMS)
     Training Magazine says that U.S. companies are eager to shift from
classroom-based training to interactive education (so-called "e-learning,"
and that advances in computer graphics and the increasing availability of
broadband lines have created interest in a new generation of video games to
support serious education. Just two of many possible examples: Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh has developed a game to prepare police and
fire departments for terrorist attacks involving biological or chemical
hazards, and MIT is developing ways to use video games to teach math,
science, engineering and other subjects. (AP/USA Today 11 Aug 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2004-08-11-playing-for-rea
l_x.htm

TECHNOLOGY CAUSING 'FRANTIC LIFE SYNDROME'
     Working women in the U.K. think new technology makes their lives even
more hectic, according to a new report. The advent of mobile phones and
e-mail have left women feeling under greater pressure to juggle work and
home commitments, leaving less time for themselves. As a result, a growing
number of career women are suffering from what has been dubbed "frantic life
syndrome." Research conducted for Good Housekeeping magazine found 30% of
working females had regularly been driven to exhaustion by work and home
commitments. The problem is even more acute for those living in London,
where the figure rises to 47%. Some of the biggest gripes are on the subject
of technology designed to make life easier. (The Age 9 Aug 2004) Rec'd from
J Lamp
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/09/1091903494672.html

*****

FLASH CARD
     "A man is not old until his regrets take the place of dreams." (John
Barrymore)

WORM HOLES IN CYBERSPACE
         [by Stephen Cobb, CISSP, www.cobb.com/help]
     Last week a strange piece of email arrived with this subject: "read it
immediately." I say the email was strange because it appeared to come from
newsscan.com, but the only email I get from that address is clearly labeled
"NewsScan Daily." Furthermore, this message had an attachment and NewsScan
never sends me attachments. Being a brave soul whose computer is armed with
several layers of defense against Internet evil-doers, I opened the message
(not the attachment). What I found was not normal NewsScan email. In fact,
here is the sum total of what it said: "something is going wrong." This
enigmatic statement was followed by three line of text that my anti-virus
program had inserted:
     Viruses found in the attached files.
     The file me.zip: Virus identified I-Worm/Netsky.B.
     The attachment was moved to the virus vault.
Did this mean the computers at NewsScan were infected with a worm or virus?
This might seem like a logical assumption, based on the sender address, but
it is a flawed assumption. The sender address on an e-mail is easily
"spoofed," making the message appear to have been sent by someone who in
fact had nothing to do with the message. This is exactly what some worms and
viruses do: send messages to random e-mail addresses from random email
addresses. In many cases the owners of those 'to' and 'from' addresses are
entirely innocent. Such was the case with newsscan.com, which was not
infected, and such is the case many times a day with my email. I get worms
emailed to me from all over the world from spoofed addresses and I also get
complaints from people who think I have sent them a worm when I haven't. The
lessons are clear:
     * Run an up-to-date anti-virus program.
     * Distrust funny looking messages even if they appear to come from
someone you know.
     * Don't write and complain to the sender since they probably didn't
send it.
     * Finally, if your company runs an anti-virus gateway, tell it not to
automatically notify senders of infected email -- that only wastes time and
bandwidth. 
     To learn about more the latest virus and worm threats see:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/vinfodb.html

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT (AND HOW)?
     British author Peter Watson calls attention to the current interest in
the elusive mystery of our conscious self:
     "At the moment, the problem with consciousness is that our
understanding is so rudimentary that we don't even know how to talk about
it... It is fair to say that those involved in the subject fall into four
camps: 
     "There are those like the British philosopher Colin McGinn, who argue
that consciousness is resistant to explanation in principle and for all
time. Philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and Hilary Putnam also add that at
the present (and maybe for all time) science cannot account for qualia, the
first-person phenomenal experience that we understand as consciousness. Then
there are two types of reductionists.
     "Those like Daniel Dennett, who claim not only that consciousness can
be explained by science but that construction of an artificially intelligent
machine that will be conscious is not far off, may be called the 'hard'
reductionists. 
     "The soft reductionists, typified by John Searle, believe that
consciousness does depend on the physical properties of the brain but think
we are nowhere near solving just how these processes work, and dismiss the
very idea that machines will ever be conscious.
     "Finally, there are those like Roger Penrose who believe that a new
kind of dualism is needed, that in effect a whole new set of physical laws
may apply inside the brain, which account for consciousness. Penrose's
actually thinks that we live in three worlds -- the physical, the mental,
and the mathematical: 'The physical world grounds the mental world, which in
turn grounds the mathematical, and the mathematical world is the ground of
the physical world, and so on around the circle. While consciousness is
being investigated as never before, it would be rash to predict that the new
century will bring advances quickly.' "

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060084383/newsscancom/ref=nosim
for Peter Watson's "The Modern Mind, An Intellectual History of the 20th
Century" -- or look for it in your favorite library. [Note: We donate all
revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

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