NewsScan Daily, 24 January 2005 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Ken King: Grid Computing Following Same Pattern as Internet, Linux
       'Robo-Soldier' Prepares for Iraq
       FEMA Yanks Online Tsunami Game
       Long Live the Laptop!
       Pew Study Finds Searcher Misperceptions

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Jean-François Champollion
       Mailbag: The World As We Find It

KEN KING: GRID COMPUTING FOLLOWING SAME PATTERN AS INTERNET, LINUX
     IBM, Intel, Hewlett, and Sun are forming a consortium called Globus
Consortium to promote utility-like grid computing in the corporate world.
The Globus project was started in 1996 by scientists at research
laboratories and universities, with the federal government providing most of
the early finances to develop the open-source software. Ken King, vice
president of grid computing at IBM, says: "We're seeing the same pattern
with grids that we saw with the Internet and Linux. It starts in government
labs and universities and then moves into broader commercial use." (New York
Times 24 Jan 2005) 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/technology/24grid.html?oref=login>

'ROBO-SOLDIER' PREPARES FOR IRAQ
     The U.S. Army is sending 18 remote-controlled robotic soldiers called
SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems) to
Iraq, but they are not the autonomous killer robots of science fiction: a
SWORDS robot shoots only when its human operator presses a button (after
identifying a target on video shot by the robot's cameras). Jim Lowrie,
president of Perceptek, one of the firms developing robotics systems for the
military, says: "For the foreseeable future, there always will be a person
in the loop who makes the decision on friend or foe. That's a hard problem
to determine autonomously." (Washington Post 24 Jan 2005)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31968-2005Jan24.html>

FEMA YANKS ONLINE TSUNAMI GAME
     Afraid it would be seen as unintentionally trivializing the recent
tsunami disaster, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has removed
from its Web site an online game that was meant to educate kids about
tsunamis. The game, designed in 1998, asked players to guide beach objects
back to their proper places after they were scattered by a tsunami.
Game-winners were awarded with a link to a cartoon dancing frog. (AP/San
Jose Mercury News 21 Jan 2005)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10702540.htm>

LONG LIVE THE LAPTOP!
     We've apparently entered the age of laptops: during the past holiday
season U.S. retail stores sold 24% more laptops than during the same period
in 2003, whereas desktop computers fell 7% in the same period. The report
comes from research company Current Analysis. Intel vice president Mooly
Eden provides confirming data: "Between 2001 and 2004, we more than doubled
the amount of notebooks in the market. Between 2004 and 2008, we believe the
market will double again." (USA Today 23 Jan 2005)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-01-23-laptop_x.htm>

PEW STUDY FINDS SEARCHER MISPERCEPTIONS
     A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project has found
that only 1 in 6 users of Internet search engines can tell the difference
between unbiased search results and paid advertisements. All of the major
search engines return a mix of regular results (based solely on relevance to
the search terms entered) and sponsored links (for which a Web site had paid
advertising fees). Only 38% of Web searchers are aware of the distinction,
and of those only 47% can always tell which are paid -- even though they're
usually labeled by the search engines. PEW researcher Deborah Fallows says:
"We're still in the infancy of the Internet. People are still kind of so
pleased that they can go there, ask for something and get an answer that
it's kind of not on their radar screen to look in a very scrutinizing way to
see what's in the background there." (AP 24 Jan 2005)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050124/D87QEK3O0.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
     "The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is
what I have words for." (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: JEAN-FRANCOIS CHAMPOLLION
     Today's honorary subscriber is French historian and linguist
Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832), whose success in deciphering the
hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone led to a life long career in the study of
early Egyptian history and culture.
     Discovered during Napoleon's incursion into Egypt, the Rosetta Stone
(engraved with a Greek text accompanied by both an hieroglyphic and a
demotic translation) had obvious potential as a key to unlock the Egyptian
system of hieroglyphic writing.  After an initial abortive attempt by the
English physicist Thomas Young to decipher the Rosetta Stone, Champollion
took up the task with scholarly zeal. He was something of a prodigy, and had
mastered by age 16 six ancient Oriental languages, in addition to Latin and
Greek. With a single-minded dedication to deciphering hieroglyphics,
Champollion soon began to piece together the puzzle of the hieroglyphics.
     In 1821-22 he started publishing papers on the hieroglyphic and
hieratic elements of the Rosetta Stone, and he went on to establish an
entire list of hieroglyphic signs and their Greek equivalents. He was first
to recognize that some of the signs were alphabetic, some syllabic, and some
determinative--i.e., standing for a whole idea or object previously
expressed. Because Egyptian texts in France were few, he spent most of
1824-25 working on inscriptions and papyruses in Italian collections,
chiefly at Turin. In 1828-29 he led a joint French and Tuscan mission to
Egypt to copy inscriptions on monuments lying between Alexandria and the
Second Cataract, and to collect antiquities for the Louvre, of which he had
been appointed curator in 1826. He was also elected to the French Academy
and was appointed the first professor of Egyptology at the College de
France. 
     His major publications include Summary of the "Hieroglyphic System of
the Ancient Egyptians"; "Egyptian Grammar"; and "Egyptian Dictionary."

[To find a library copy of Alan Honour's "The Man Who Could Read Stones"
visit RLG's RedLightGreen service at <http://tinyurl.com/6qdln> or to
purchase the book go to < http://tinyurl.com/4c5oc>. Note: We donate all
revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

LILY PONS
Re: 
<http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=honorary_subscriber&id=878>
     Well, your Honorary Subscriber article on Lily Pons certainly clears up
a small mystery for me. There used to be a very small town in Maryland named
Lilypons. They claimed years ago to be the state's smallest incorporated
entity, which was likely true since it's only a couple of houses and a
business of selling plants and fish from their several lily ponds
(<http://www.lilypons.com/>). These days, they give their address
differently. I've always wondered why they had such a seemingly peculiar
spelling for the name. (Bill Carpenter)

DANGEROUS DEVELOPMENT
     Just wondering if you are aware of the recent effort and feasibility
study underway by the federal department of education and the National
Center for Education Statistics (see for example
<http://www.aacrao.org/federal_relations/trp2summary.pdf>). The effort is
intended, basically, to require all colleges and universities to submit
unit-record (i.e. name- and SSN-specific) data on all college-level students
to the federal government for creation of studies and cross-checking with
IRS records. And this is not intended as a snapshot related to financial
aid, as already occurs. It is a transactional database intended to track
changes in a student's record ranging from enrollment status to major
declaration to address changes to sex changes. Institutions may be required
to submit a data file whenever a change is made to a list of 20 or more
personal characteristics. This strikes me as very dangerous. (Scott Dittman)

EDUCATION IS NOT A BUSINESS (CONT'D)
     Re: 
<http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11907>
     You write: "Secretary of Education Rod Paige says in the National
Education Technology Plan: 'Education is the only business still debating
the usefulness of technology...'" Let me join John Law's "Pleased to hear
it," and add another reason: the internet and associated information
technologies offer unprecedented access to information; and I don't doubt
that technology may make it easier to help students practice rote-memory
skills (games for multiplication tables or verb-ending memorization come to
mind). Technology doubtless offers many useful behind-the-scenes
administrative advantages as well: all schools have budgets and a business
side, and this year I can call up the university id photos of the students
in my classes to help me learn their names more easily. But at least at the
level where I work (and I'd hope to some extent at earlier levels), the
teacher's primary task is not to lead the student to information, but to
help her develop the judgment with which alone she can make any sense of it.
And that sense of judment cannot be honed by any less than the intimate,
intense involvement that person-to-person (and ideally face-to-face)
encounter allows. To read is one thing, but to make good judgments about
one's reading is another thing entirely. Thanks for the provocation, and for
your always-welcome summaries. (W.S.K. (Scott) Cameron)

BE CAREFUL WITH SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS
Re: <http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11937>
     You say, "Although Jacobsen was able to view the names and Social
Security numbers of 400 customers (all of whom were notified in writing
about the break-in), customer credit card numbers and other financial
information never were revealed." Interesting way to phrase this. If I'm not
mistaken, if someone makes fraudulent charges with my credit card, by law my
liability is only $50. But SSNs are the key to identity theft, and could
cost me thousands and years to clean up my financial reputation. My subtext:
non-payroll/tax related use of SSNs should stop, period! Why does your PHONE
company need your SSN?" (Richard Rathe M.D.)

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS
Re: <http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11947>
     Right, that's just what we need in our environment: copper and aluminum
fiber dust.  Didn't we learn our lesson with lead paint? (Chris Shaffer)

GO SLOW, TIVO
Re: <http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11910>
     I couldn¹t find anything about TiVo in your link, however I found three
other links:
http://www.baanassist.com/news/dispnews.asp?i=125342&t=99
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050106/ap/d87erdag0.html
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=P7839_0_6_0_C
All three said, "Alviso-based TiVo said it expects to release CableCard
models as a premium product in early 2006." Maybe my time scale is off but
after reading your summary paragraph I would not expect to have to wait a
year to buy the product. I think the fact that their "introduction" was for
something a year away merited a mention in the summary. (Marc Rhodes)

BREAKDOWN-SERVICE FOR BUGGY SOFTWARE?
Re: <http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11908>
     Is it me or don't people see it as ironic that MS want to get into the
market for anti-virus software. The fact is if their original software is so
buggy and full of holes which allows hackers/virus writers to exploit.
Surely it's an admission of defeat that their software isn't good enough or
do they have no shame? It's a bit like the manufacturers of the old
combustible Pinto moving into the private ambulance business. A bit harsh
perhaps but do Ford /BMW/Toyota etc. run a car breakdown service? (Glad
Englad)

I WANT TO BE BAD, BOOP-BOOP-A-DOOP!
Re: <http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11935>
     Skip Eastman remembered a song called 'I Want to Be Bad.' Perhaps you
can pass this link on to Skip:  Google tells us:
http://www.heptune.com/iwanttob.html. Which sends us to:
http://tinyurl.com/6yah7. (Geoffrey Tully)

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