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RAIN 811 Weekly Update: General (11)



Searcher July/August 2002
Beyond the Information Audit: Checking the Health of an Organization's Information System
by Chris Dobson • President, F1 Services Inc.
Information audit, needs assessment, knowledge inventory — all are names for a process that examines the secret life of information within an organization. Where does the information come from? Where does it go? How is it used? How transformed? Who keeps it? Who shares it? Perhaps most importantly, the process may identify the information that gets away, leaving workers and decision-makers to rely on hunches and the way things have been done in the past. An information audit can also reveal time and money wasted on information sources that no one uses and show why no one uses them.
http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/jul02/dobson.htm


Washington Times 8/2/02
Senators seek to balance privacy, security matters
By Stephen Dinan
Two senators are proposing a privacy commission that would examine new surveillance technology with the goal of balancing security and privacy concerns.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020802-473343.htm


E-Commerce Times 8/5/02
Protecting Personal Information on the Internet
By Mark Helm
Besides government records, a savvy Internet snoop can search old newspaper stories, family genealogy sites and business Web sites, which often list employees and clients.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/18880.html


Toledo Blade 8/5/02
Document-destruction scandals good news for one Toledo firm
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20020805&Category=BUSINESS03&ArtNo=108050046&Ref=AR


New York Times 8/6/02
Credit Union Says A.T.M. Users Stole Millions After 9/11
By SUSAN SAULNY
Fifteen million dollars was looted from the Municipal Credit Union in New York City by its own members — including city employees, health care professionals and education workers — when a computer failure caused by the collapse of the World Trade Center allowed virtually unlimited access to money in automated teller machines, prosecutors said yesterday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/06/nyregion/06UNIO.html


New York Times 8/6/02
Would-Be Math Teacher Ended Up Educating a Computer Revolution
By STEVE LOHR
Frances E. Allen had intended to be a math teacher, but she was introduced to computing and got sidetracked, 45 years ago.
As a graduate student at the University of Michigan, Ms. Allen took a course in 1957 that involved programming a room-size computer to do elaborate mathematical calculations, and she was fascinated.
"It was 10 years before there was any such thing as computer science as a discipline," Ms. Allen said.
Raised on a dairy farm in upstate New York, the eldest of six children, in a house without electricity, plumbing or central heating, Frances Allen retired last week as a research fellow at I.B.M.'s Thomas J. Watson Laboratory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/06/science/physical/06PROF.html


28news.com 8/6/02
Dealership apologizes for dumping personal info
related story: Personal info found dumped by car dealers (8/5/02)
ST. PETERSBURG - "I feel like I've been raped. I'm just that upset about it. And this is just ridiculous for anybody to be that sloppy." Sandy McCoy did not hide her anger towards Lindell Mazda on Tuesday. The dealership left a dozen bags full of customers' sensitive, personal information out in the open in a Riverview parking lot this weekend.
At first, the dealership said it was not responsible for the documents left in a parking lot because a contractor held the sale for them. Tuesday, the sales manager apologized  and blamed it on one employee who, he claimed, did not follow directions.
http://www.wfts.com/stories/020806info.shtml


The Canberra Times 8/7/02
Students' records improved for cash
By AAP
SYDNEY: A Sydney university employee removed failing grades from at least nine student records in exchange for money and gifts, the Independent Commission Against Corruption said yesterday.
The ICAC launched an investigation in July 2001 after an internal audit at the University of Technology Sydney revealed unauthorised changes had been made to certain computerised records.
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class...ategory=general%20news&story_id=170095&y=2002&m=8


VOA 8/9/02
Genealogists Look to Archives, Internet to Track Down Family Origins
Maura Farelly
The Internet has proven to be very helpful to amateur genealogists, looking to trace their roots as far back into the past as they can. The U.S. GenWeb project, which was launched six years ago, has posted census data, marriage records, even tombstone transcriptions from all over the United States on the web. But there's a lot of misinformation on the Internet, too. And as VOA's Maura Farrelly reports, assembling a
family tree that's truly accurate still involves a lot of digging through primary-source documents at an archive.
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=298BA857-8D88-4AE9-8E25428E29D55015&title=Genealogists%20Look%20to%20Archives%2C%20Internet%20to%20Track%20Down%20Family%20Origins&catOID=45C9C784-88AD-11D4-A57200A0CC5EE46C


New York Times 8/10/02
The Ancient Art of Haranguing Has Moved to the Internet
By EMILY EAKIN
The pamphlet is a one-man show," observed George Orwell approvingly. "One has complete freedom of _expression_, including, if one chooses, the freedom to be scurrilous, abusive and seditious; or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious and `highbrow' than is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of periodical."
But Orwell, who pamphleteered on behalf of unpopular leftist causes, was not optimistic about the genre's prospects in an era dominated by newspapers devoted to what he perceived as an increasingly narrow range of mainstream opinion. "At any given moment there is a sort of all-prevailing orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss some large and uncomfortable fact," he lamented in 1948.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/10/arts/10TANK.html



The Times-Picayune 8/10/02
Steadfast sisterhood
Since braving the elements to get to the French colony in 1727, the Ursuline nuns have served generations of New Orleanians
By Siona LaFrance
Staff writer/The Times-Picayune
They arrived, mosquito-bitten and exhausted, on a hot summer morning in 1727.
The small group of French Ursuline nuns, answering a call to educate women in the burgeoning colony of New Orleans, had completed a harrowing five-month ocean voyage marked by violent storms, pirate threats, seasickness and food rationing; then a difficult seven-day boat trip up the Mississippi River.
http://www.nola.com/archives/t-p/index.ssf?/livingstory/ursulines06.html




Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA
pakurilecz@aol.com
Richmond, Va