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Columbia Disaster Has 1 Year Anniversary; A Look At Defensive Driving Techniques; Gaming Turns To DVDs Next

Aired January 31, 2004 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SIEBERG, HOST: Hi, everybody. I'm Daniel Sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, NASA talks shuttle safety. And returning to flight as it marks the one-year anniversary of the Columbia disaster.

Snow, ice and cars are not a good mix. We'll take you to a driving school that could help you steer clear of a crash.

And we'll match wits with our gaming guru Mark Salzman as trivia turns to DVD. All that and more on NEXT.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SEIBERG: One year after the space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas, top NASA officials say they don't see any reason right now that the shuttle couldn't return to space this September. But according to Colombia family members and the head of the accident investigation, NASA still has some soul searching to do before the shuttle leaves the pad.

Miles O'Brien has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you play outside today at recess?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One year later, Jon Clark is dealing we equal parts of grief and guilt.

JON CLARK, NASA NEUROLOGIST: I'm as much responsible as anyone else.

O'BRIEN: A NASA neurologist, Clark is part of the space shuttle medical team. He was in Houston's mission control while Columbia, carrying Laurel -- his wife -- was in orbit. And he is haunted by what he and his colleagues did not do for the crew once they saw foam hit Columbia's wing on launch.

CLARK: There were things that could have turned this into a heroic Apollo 13-style rescue and success. We snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Instead, we just let it go.

O'BRIEN: It haunts the space shuttle program, as well. NASA veteran Wayne Hale became the No. 2 man in the shuttle program after the accident.

WAYNE HALE, DEPUTY SHUTTLE PROGRAM MANAGER: When you become confronted with a life changing event and, it really, for many of us. Columbia was a life-changing event, then you have to go back to the basics and say, what have we got to change to make sure that we don't make this mistake again?

O'BRIEN: The independent team that investigated the crash offered 15 specific recommendations. NASA engineers clearly have embraced the technical tasks, fixing tiles and foam and heat-shielding carbon panels.

But progress on perhaps the most important prescript, changing the way decisions are made, is much harder to measure.

ADM. HAL GEHMAN: We built a fairly high mountain for NASA to climb, and they are still working at it.

O'BRIEN: Retired Admiral Hal Gehman led the inquest that concluded the shuttle program talked about safety, but put tremendous pressure on the team to meet a budget and build a space station on a tight schedule.

GEHMAN: And people who bring up reasons to slow down the process or make the process more expensive are not very welcome, and therein is the problem.

O'BRIEN: That is why no one bothered to conduct a test like this before the accident. They assumed falling foam was harmless. It is also why managers blew off e-mails the engineering trenches expressing concern for Columbia during the mission.

WAYNE HALE, DEPUTY SHUTTLE PROGRAM MGR.: We still see people coming to work that exhibit the old way of doing business and you have to get them by shoulder and say, now, look, this is a new world. We're going to operate in a different and better way.

GEHMAN: Now, we are quite confident that at least at the very top of NASA that they do get it. That puts a tremendous burden on the top two or three levels of management to instill that new philosophy and new culture into the entire organization.

O'BRIEN: But people inside the shuttle program say pangs of collective guilt and remorse have done more to change the thinking here than any edict from on high.

There's a lot more honest talk now, but that happened after Challenger as well. And eventually, old habits took root once again.

CLARK: So you see that complacency and even to a point arrogance in how we did -- were doing things -- that has emerged and now in the aftermath of it, wow. Jeez.

What were we thinking?

O'BRIEN: (on camera): In the wake of Columbia, there are many who wonder if the shuttle can be flown safely at all. But Hal Gehman is not among them. He believes NASA can safely return to flight by the fall, as it plans. But he worries about what can happen over time as memory fades and complacency takes root.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Meanwhile, on Mars, pictures sent back by the rover named Opportunity this week really got NASA scientists excited.

STEVE SQUYRES, SCIENTIST: These are something that we've never seen on Mars before. So we are about to embark on what is arguably going to be the coolest geological field trip in human history.

SIEBERG: Opportunity beamed back pictures of an outcropping of Martian bedrock. It's the first ever seen. Scientists say it's possible the layers of rock were formed by water. Opportunity also transmitted some pretty cool pictures of the imprints its air bags made in the dust when it landed. NASA also got pictures showing Opportunity raising itself, as the rover prepared to roll off its lander.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of Mars, the Rover spirit sent a new image on Wednesday, that's the first since it began malfunctioning a week ago.

Back here on earth, health officials are dealing with yet another disease that's making the jump from animals to humans. It's called bird flu. So far it's been limited to Southeast Asia. But authorities are working hard to prevent a SARS-like epidemic. We have two reports. One from Mike Yardley explaining the dangers of bird flu. But first here's Tom Mintier in Thailand where Asian health ministers met this week to discuss how to stop the disease.

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TOM MINTIER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was a gathering of health and agricultural officials from across Asia. Countries affected or concerned with the outbreak of bird flu. As the meeting opened, word that the virus has continued to spread across Thailand. From the first two provinces, then 10, now at least 25 of Thailand's 76 have recorded the infection.

DR. THERESA TAM, WHO SPOKESWOMAN: I think the aim right now is to prevent any further transmission between poultry or any bird reservoirs and the human population. So that has to be done very, very quickly.

MINTIER: Thailand has suffered two deaths as a result of bird flu. Eleven other cases are currently under investigation by Thai health authorities, six of those, all adults, have already died from what the doctors claim is bacterial pneumonia, not bird flu. Health officials admit that the bird flu has now arrived in Bangkok, located in the city's weekend market where chickens and birds are always on sale. During a speech at the summit Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra called on health officials to keep the public informed. THAKSIN SHINAWATRA, PRIME MINISTER OF THAILAND: The public needs to be told, and be fully aware of the facts. In the meantime, the public also needs to be advised accurately on how to cope safely with the spread of the pandemic to protect themselves and to contain the disease.

MINTIER: Some in Thailand have claimed that the prime minister and his government did not do just that. And withheld information for days, if not weeks, that allowed the bird flu to spread.

SHINAWATRA: What it will mean, this is what the Thai government is doing right now. Our top priority is to get the situation well under control.

MINTIER: Delegates to the meeting were also asked to help poorer countries who lack the resources both technically and financially to deal with the virus. Here it is being compared to SARS, with the prime minister saying that just like SARS, where a local outbreak spirals into a regional and even global crisis, if not dealt with properly.

(on camera): The Thai prime minister has recently accused the media of attempting to sensationalize the story. In his speech he also referred to SARS once again, saying the fear of SARS, just like bird flu could be worse than the bird flu itself. He has also recently refused to answer international journalists' questions covering the story.

(voice-over): The so-called bird flu sweeping through parts of Asia has been isolated as a type of influenza. It's type-A. The type the World Health Organization views as the most dangerous and most likely to cause a human epidemic. The influenza epidemic of World War I killed 20 million people. That's more than were killed in the war itself. So far the number of human cases of this year's bird flu outbreak have been small. Isolated to direct contact between humans and birds. More specifically, the contact with the bodily fluids or waste of an infected animal. But the World Health Organization warns that could change, the virus could mutate. For instance, if a person simultaneously contracts bird flu, and another already existing form of human influenza the viruses could combine, spreading easily from person-to-person.

PETER CORDINGLEY, SPOKESMAN, ASIA PACIFIC WHO: The more this virus spreads, the more countries it shows up in, the less control we have over it, the more chances there are of the virus jumping to humans. And if it jumps to humans, and then attaches itself to the human flu virus, and then mutates and becomes a new virus, of which we have no knowledge, then we have a serious international problem on our hands. And it's all potential. It's all theoretical. But it's very real in the sense that the scientists are worried about it.

MINTIER: Another concern, the symptoms of bird flu can mimic other illnesses. The fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches and pneumonia that accompany the virus are similar to that of other respiratory illnesses, including the deadly SARS virus. A serious concern in a region still reeling from last year's SARS outbreak. Government officials are working to assure citizens there is no need for panic.

SUDARAT KEYURAPHAN, THAI PUBLIC HEALTH MINISTER: This disease is not like SARS. Originally it's spread among poultry. It appeared for the first time seven years ago that it could be transmitted from poultry to humans. But the only group who can catch it are those who touch sick chickens.

MINTIER: Health officials want consumers to know there is no danger of contracting the virus through the consumption of cooked poultry. And they stress that so far there is no evidence of human- to-human transmission of the bird flu virus. Nor was that the case in the 1997 bird flu outbreak that killed six people in Hong Kong. For now, the WHO says the best hope of preventing the spread of the disease to humans is to stamp out the infection where it starts, to cull infected birds before the illness has a chance to spread, and to educate people about proper sanitation when handling livestock. So far, health officials say bird flu is not a global threat. And scientists who work to identify and eradicate disease hope to keep it that way. But with hopes of a vaccine against bird flu months away, coupled with reality that influenza has an uncanny ability to mutate and evade extinction, researchers still worry about the as yet unknown what ifs.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: In case you're wondering, you can find the latest on the bird flu outbreak at our Web site at cnn.com/next.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up on NEXT@CNN an unusually high threat level in cyberspace this week. We'll tell you about the latest scams.

Also ahead, the lazy way to make money on eBay.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Computer security experts this week reported the biggest virus-like attack in months, maybe ever. The worm is called Mydoom or Novar and it arrives via E-mail looking like an innocuous error message. It clogged corporate e-mail systems forcing some to shut down for awhile. One security company said one out of every twelve e-mails flying through cyberspace contains the worm. If you're worried about viruses, you can now get alerts from the government when new viruses and other computer attacks are detected. The Department of Homeland Security launched the program on Wednesday. You can sign up for the alerts at us-cert.gov.

Well, if you get an e-mail from the U.S. Government accusing you of violating the patriot act don't panic. Sarah Parker, from CNN affiliate WTNH reports on the latest Internet e-mail scam.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is so insidious because it starts out fdic.gov. I mean it really looks legitimate.

SARAH PARKER, WTNH CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Steve Morton (ph) admits he nearly fell for the scam. A message sent to his work e- mail, claiming to be from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In this case it takes you to a page that looks eminently reasonable but it's bogus.

PARKER: The e-mail targeted bank customers. It alerts you that Department of Homeland Security director Tom Ridge has advised FDIC to suspend deposit insurance on your bank account. The reason -- suspected violation of the Patriot Act. The e-mail directs you to a link to verify your identity and personal bank account information. That's when Morton smelled a scam.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I waved my mouse over the link you were supposed to click to verify your identity, there was a hidden link to some other Web site.

PARKER: The link was bogus. The crime is not. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal received numerous complaints. He said especially troubling is the reference to homeland security.

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, CONNECTICUT ATTORNEY GENERAL: Which seems to exploit and take advantage of people's motives to want to help the government in apprehending and prosecuting terrorists.

PARKER: Now the FDIC is investigating the fraud. An alert on their Web site notifies consumers. While federal authorities are working to source out the scam.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Other fraudulent e-mails, some looking like they come from eBay or PayPal are also out there trying to get you to divulge your account numbers. Now if you get a suspicious e-mail the Federal Trade Commission suggests you contact the company in question by phone to verify the information.

Speaking of eBay, have you been tempted to sell something on the Internet auction site but never did so because you thought it would be too much trouble?

Well some new companies are out there to help you. As Jen Rogers reports.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I wanted to see if I could sell this camera.

JEN ROGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Isold It is one of a half dozen new clicks and mortar middlemen trying to help you sell on eBay.

ELISE WETZEL, FOUNDER, ISOLD IT: We've had great success with electronics, computer equipment, cameras.

ROGERS: Sellers typically end up with around 70 percent of the winning bid. Stores keep the rest for commission, eBay, and PayPal fees.

WETZEL: It will be interesting to see how I feel, too, when they take their commission out, because then you don't get as much either. And at that point maybe I'll feel like, if I had done this myself.

ROGERS: Jeanne Case (ph) is trying to sell this Tiffany refreshment set with Isold It.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was a gift and it's been sitting in the same box for seven years and I just thought well it's a shame that it's sitting there. Let's see if I can sell it and get some money with it.

ROGERS: With case hoping for a big sale, Isold it gets to work, taking photographs, writing an accurate and enticing description and starting the auction. Eventually the company collects payment, packs the item, and finally gets it out the door. The last step in the process, cutting checks to sellers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This check here is for $267.21. This individual gets a check for $81.88.

ROGERS (on camera): Now Isold It won't take all of the junk from your garage. They do have their standards. In fact, I tried to bring in these three books to sell and was basically told, no thanks, because they wouldn't bring in any dollars on eBay. And that's the minimum that Isold It is aiming for.

(voice-over): Isold It expects to open 15 more franchises in the next three months in California. And then roll out nationwide. The company will face some fierce special not only from other well financed entrepreneurs opening stores, but the 30,000 individual trading assistants eBay says are working out of their homes trying to do the same thing.

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ANNOUNCER: Just ahead, a lot of cars were on slippery ground during this week's snow and ice storms. We'll take you to a school that could have helped those drivers out.

And later, an amateur fossil hound makes a big discovery.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All this cook ware has a super slick surface of DuPont Teflon. Even burned foot won't stick to Teflon. Even if it's baked on for hours. Gives you no stick cooking with no scour cleanup. Look for this seal when you buy, it's your assurance of a quality DuPont Teflon finish.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIEBERG: With all the snow and ice storms in much of the nation this week you may have gotten a lot of practice driving in slippery conditions.

Did you know there's a school specially designed to help you out in such situations?

CNN's Rob Marciano got a little ice time at the winter driving school in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

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(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes!

ROB MARCIANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Believe me, it's harder than it looks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not bad. Good first one. Of course one problem on the ice, it's difficult to tell when we are locked up.

MARCIANO: My instincts told me to lock the brakes, all the way around the 250,000 gallons of frozen water they called an ice track. This is the Bridgestone Winter Driving School. And the goal is to turn you into a safe driver even in the most treacherous conditions. The day started calmly enough, indoors, sheltered from the freezing temperatures. The winter drive classroom looked more like a car enthusiasts club, giving no hint about the intense crash course that was in store.

MARK COX, DIRECTOR: The biggest difference between this school and most other schools is that we start out teaching people in the worst possible conditions. The most challenging situation available.

MARCIANO: Never turning while under braking is one important lesson. And repetitive braking exercises helped drive that point home. But the challenge of keeping a 3,000 pound vehicle stable in conditions like these were still daunting.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good job. Now to straighten your wheels and just back out of the snow bank.

MARCIANO: With each passing lap, however, I gained some confidence and felt it helped become a better driver.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not going to be able to keep up the speed that your counterparts have been doing.

MARCIANO: The instructors mostly currents and ex-race car drivers stress the importance of controlling the car's weight transfers under braking, and acceleration.

LEA CROTEAU, INSTRUCTOR: Some of these weight transfers can cause skids. Either the front tires may slide out making the vehicle refuse to turn in a corner or oversteer, which would be the back tires sliding and turning too much for the corner.

MARCIANO: The school's client list includes everyone from regular commuters, to the U.S. Army and state police departments, to Federal Express, Ford, and General Motors.

CROTEAU: The biggest thing that people get from completing the school is appreciating how little grip there is when they're traveling over snow and ice, and so a lot of them learn how to adjust their speed more properly so that they can get in and out of corners.

MARCIANO: By the end of the course. The idea that you should learn on a track with professional instruction started to make perfect sense. And with each successful controlled slide, the ice became somewhat less intimidating.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One other thing that we hope people leave here with is an understanding that if their car starts to slide, that doesn't mean you're out of control, it just means that you need to respond to it appropriately, and regain control of the situation.

MARCIANO: And staying in control is what this driving school is all about. Although, some of us were a little better at losing control.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hear the cone screaming all the way from here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: All right so now we know, traffic cones do have feelings.

Coming up in our next half hour of NEXT@CNN, no this isn't New England after this week's snowstorm, although it might look like it. We'll tell you why wind in this Arctic circle village is both a curse and a blessing.

And later Microsoft wins one battle, well, which wasn't much of a battle, but another is still up in the air.

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SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN.

All right, the verdict is in. A fossil found in Scotland three years ago is from a newly discovered species that's the oldest land dwelling creature known to science. The fossil is from a half inch long millipede that lived 420 million years ago. It was found by Michael Newman who is a bus driver by trade and a paleontologist in his spare time. Newman had found significant fossils in this area along the shore in Eastern Scotland and he knew this was an interesting specimen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL NEWMAN, AMATEUR PALEONTOLOGIST: I've collected meripods (PH) here before and then some millipedes, but they'd had -- weren't very good for legs, and these ones had very good legs, and so I thought, well hand on a minute, this is well preserved, it's going to be quite good and might show other details. And so, that's when I passed it on to Heather Wilson at Yale.

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SIEBERG: Scientists at Yale and the national museums of Scotland confirm that the millipede had holes allowing it to breathe air meaning it lived on land. They named it Pneumodesmus Newmani in honor of Newman.

In Northern Alaska, icy winds blowing 80 miles per hour are not unusual. That may sound like a bad thing to most of us. But for one village in that remote region it's turning into an advantage. Gary Strieker reports from Kotzebue, Alaska.

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GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle, bitterly cold temperatures are intensified by driving wind. And for native people who have lived in Alaska for thousands of years, the wind has never been friendly.

ROY ADOGODUK SMITH, FISHERMAN: This one is a medium-sized pike.

STRIEKER: Fisherman Roy Adogoduk Smith says the wind has always made life miserable, here in the village of Selawik.

SMITH: This direction, the wind we have right now, is blowing so hard, that living is so hard around here. It's cold and sometimes the river gets real rough, and a lot of people in the village, when it's windy like this they're stationed in their homes.

STRIEKER: But people in this isolated settlement just might change their views about the wind, because times are changing, and Selawik is growing.

DENNIS STOYER, SELAWIK RESIDENT: When I first came here I '74, there was only 300 people lived here. There were no telephones, almost no electricity to speak of, and now there happens to be -- there's over 800 people live here, we have 200 homes and a great demand for electricity.

STRIEKER: So much demand that they're building a new electrical power plant just outside town. Not only the usual diesel generators, but also four state-of-the-art winds turbines to produce electricity from frigid Arctic gales.

BRENT PETRIE, ALASKA VILLAGE ELEC. COOPERATIVE: As we looked at what it cost for fuel tanks and what our fuel costs were, we decided, let's try to put in some wind turbines at the same time. STRIEKER: Brent Petrie works with the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, helping to build and operative power plants in 51 small, remote communities, all but one of them accessible only by airplane or by marine vessels during the few summer months when rivers and harbors are not frozen.

Electricity is expensive in these villages, mainly because of the high cost of delivering and storing diesel fuel for generators.

PETRIE: And we use about 200,000 gallons of fuel here a year for electric power generation. Each one of these machines, we calculate, would displace about 10,000 gallons of fuel oil.

STRIEKER: It wasn't that many years ago when electric power first came to these villages, changing people's lives.

ADA WARD, RETIRED HOSPITAL AIDE: The lighting -- the lights in the house and people start getting refrigerators and freezers and all kinds of things that they can afford and it was way easier for us at that time.

STRIEKER: Easier in many ways, like scaling fish with an electric scaler, instead of a caribou shoulder blade.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's easy, alright, but it's messy. Splash all over.

STRIEKER: And as more electricity is used, there's greater need for cheaper ways to generate it.

On Alaska's blustery tundra, that would be wind's power.

(on camera): In some ways, places like this, in Alaska, are ideal for wind energy. This flat tundra allows the wind to blow at full force. Air masses are actually heavier and more powerful here at sea level pressure, and the winds are the strongest in the winter, when towns and villages need the most electricity.

How many turbines do you have here?

BRAD REEVE, KOTZEBUE ELECTRIC ASSOC.: We have 11 operational ones right now.

And you backfill...

STRIEKER: Brad Reeve manages the power company in Kotzebue, a small town on the coast of the Chukchi Sea, about 110 kilometers from Selawik. With a population of some 3,000, Kotzebue has pioneered the use of wind power in Alaska.

REEVE: The big questions that we really had were: Is this stuff suited for Alaska? Will this stuff hold up through the severe winter storms that we get?

STRIEKER: In the 1980's, after more than 100 wind turbines were set up across the state, none of them survived the blizzards with winds blowing at 130 kilometers an hour.

But this new generation of wind turbines is robust and easily serviced. The oldest ones here, have now operated continuously through six winters without breakdowns.

On this unusually calm spring day, most of the turbines are resting.

REEVE: That's the risk of wind turbine, they -- the wind doesn't blow all the time anywhere. But you can tell they're kind of searching for the wind right now as they're turning. They act like a big weather vane.

STRIEKER: The towers are built on specially designed foundation pilings, sunk nearly 8 meters into frozen permafrost.

By current standards, these are small turbines, erected easily without need for giant cranes which are unavailable in remote villages.

At full speed, each machine can generate more than 50 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power about 20 homes.

REEVE: The blades spin -- are spinning at about 60 revolutions per minute. The drive train then speeds that up to about 1,800 rpm, which is generator speed, and as the generator goes above 1,800 rpm, it starts producing power.

STRIEKER: Managers say in prime conditions, 40 percent of this town's power is supplied by the turbines. Some day, they hope, wind energy will power the entire town.

There are limits to the growth of wind power. Experts, in Alaska's Power Authority say, some rural villages here don't have enough wind and will continue to get their electricity from diesel fuel. Villages like these will still be tormented by Arctic winds, but they'll benefit from cheap electric power.

Researchers say these are proving grounds for village wind power projects in other countries, especially in harsh, frigid conditions like Antarctica, and eventually perhaps on other cold and windy planets, like Mars.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Up next, should convicted killers be allowed to write about their crimes on the internet?

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SIEBERG: Last week we told you about the battle between Microsoft and Mike Rowe, a Canadian teenager who happened to name his website MikeRoweSoft. Well, the battle is over, and apparently everyone is happy.

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SIEBERG (voice-over): Mike gets an XBOX, Microsoft training, and a few other goodies. In return he says he's changing the name of his website to MikeRoweForums.com. The software giant says it will cover his costs, and help him redirect web surfers from the old site. And, he's found another way to make a few bucks off the situation. Various legal papers documenting his spat with Microsoft are now on sale on eBay. Rowe says whatever he makes from the sale he'll save for his education.

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SIEBERG: All right I know you may think you've heard this story years ago, the government goes after Microsoft, accusing it of stifling competition, but this time it's not the U.S. government, it's the European Union. The E.U. is considering a plan to force Microsoft to split its media player from its operating system. Jim Bolden reports.

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JIM BOLDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Microsoft says its audio and video application Media Player is simply a free add-on to its dominant PC operating system. Detractors, including the European Commission say attaching media player to XP is an attempt by Microsoft to control what we hear and see over future media devices.

BRYAN GLICK, "COMPUTING": The European Commission is trying to set a precedent that says, we're looking at the media player marketplace as a distinct marketplace, rather than as an add-on function to an existing marketplace, and part of that is because these media players are going to be used so extensively in the future for things like downloading music and watching video on demand.

BOLDEN: The E.U.'s competition arm is now circulating to top E.U. officials a draft copy of possible penalties. One could force Microsoft to split or un-bundle its Media Playerfrom operating systems like XP. It might also be forced to bundle rival services like Real Network's RealPlayer and Apple Quicktime with Media Player. So consumers can use any of them with ease.

Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates says his company is still in talks with the E.U. and is hoping for a last-minute settlement.

MICHAEL GRENFELL, NORTON ROSE: It's never absolutely too late. It's not over 'til the fat lady sings. But, we are very late in the day. Microsoft and the commission have been debating this, and negotiating this now, for months and years and it's very, very late in the day.

BOLDEN: If no deal is reached, the E.U. could announce penalties, including a massive fine, within weeks.

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SIEBERG: Microsoft and the E.U. may have strong feelings over Media Player, but they're mild compared to the feelings evoked by some websites. We're talking about sites where murders boast about their crimes. Brian Cabell has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jack Trawick is a convicted killer on Alabama's death row with a penchant of writing about his crimes on the internet. In a website, which is now closed down, he wrote about Stephanie Gach, whom he was convicted of murdering twelve years ago. Absolutely no remorse.

The attorney for Gach's family provided other postings from the site in which he boasted about his crimes and taunted the victim's families.

(on camera): There are several other similar sites on the internet. This one, for example, is called "The Cells," it's operated from France, it features several serial killers, and seems to glorify them. Efforts to reach the operator of the website by airtime were unsuccessful.

(voice-over): Such websites, say victim's advocates, are needlessly crewel and offensive.

NANCY RUHE, PARENTS OF MURDERED CHILDREN: I do believe that prisons can control what prisoners send out of prison, and should be able to, you know, give some kind of punishment for prisoners who choose to re- victimize family members.

CABELL: But a federal court, just last year, ruled that prisoners can post their writing on the internet, it's their right of free speech.

LARA STEMPLE, STOP PRISONER RAPE: The courts have said many times that offensive speech -- that the solution to offensive speech is to either not listen to it or to engage in counter-speech, but that we're all better off as a society when free speech is allowed to flourish.

CABELL: That's small consolation for the mother of Stephanie Gach, she's filed a lawsuit against Trawick, the prison, and the website designer for intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, and libel. The prison, incidentally, agrees with the complaint and will try to halt Trawick's internet postings.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Incidentally, CNN tried, but was unable to locate the web designer for a response. Jack Trawick has no legal representation and could not be reached for comment.

ANNOUNCER: Just ahead a computer program that could some day help paralyzed people communicate, a program created by a high school student.

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SIEBERG: It sounds almost like mind over matter. Develop a way that disabled people can control a computer keyboard using nothing but brain waves, but some day it may be reality, and one of the researchers making progress towards that goal is a high school senior from Pennsylvania. Peter Viles has her story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At school, Elena Glassman is popular, she likes a quick game of Frisbee at lunch, she's a great student, speaks well in public.

ELENA GLASSMAN, STUDENT: To fully comprehend the significance of undersea noise pollution...

VILES: But at home, she is someone else, an electrical engineer who has written prize-winning computer programs that read brain waves so that people who literally cannot move a muscle can communicate.

GLASSMAN: Really good candidates for this technology would be people who have a spinal cord injury, so that they -- that there's been no damage to the brain...

VILES (on camera): Right.

GLASSMAN: ...but it's just the connection to the muscle that's been severed.

VILES (voice-over): Elena and scientists around the world analyzed the same set of brain waves, commands to move either the left side of the body or the right side. Now, the hard part was writing a computer program that reads the waves and knows left from right, and this is where she completely lost us.

GLASSMAN: And you might have a neural -- you know, density of firings that might increase kind of like a normal distribution. So, I took simulated neuron action potential and summed it over its normal distribution.

VILES (on camera): Not entirely sure I follow all that.

(voice-over): She actually tried several times.

GLASSMAN: You can analyze a signal by taking that -- it's called the coefficient, multiplying it by the signal and then summing the result and then just shifting it across the signal.

VILES (on camera): Um -- anybody?

(LAUGHTER)

(voice-over): Here's the part we do understand. Elena's method was 93 percent accurate, more accurate than several universities.

(on camera): Better than the University of Sydney. Better than the National University of Ireland, this is not going to go over well in Ireland. Better than the Israel Institute of Technology, a lot better than them.

(voice-over): Elena's work has won national science awards, but she is modest about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Elena Glassman of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. GLASSMAN: I'm just a normal kid, I just spent enough time and I just -- you know, was so interested in it that I was able to read up and to learn the stuff.

VILES: Elena wants to continue researching brain waves and ultimately teach at a university.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Still to come, we'll pursue a little trivia, parlor games get some help from digital video.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Last week in our report on the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh computer we showed you what looked like the famous commercial from 1984, which introduced the Mac to the world. But as some of you pointed out, it wasn't exactly the same as the 1984 ad. Hmm, what's wrong with this picture? Well, if you look closely, the woman is wearing an iPod and they didn't come out until 2001. Well, this is a digitally enhanced version of the commercial which Apple put together to celebrate the anniversary. Well, the folks at Apple wouldn't tell us exactly how they did it, but they did say they didn't re-shoot the whole commercial.

Well, speaking of ads from Apple, the company is teaming up with Pepsi for what it calls a ground breaking commercial in Sunday's Super Bowl. It'll feature 16 teens who were sued by the regarding industry for illegally swapping music over the internet. The commercial advertises a Pepsi contest that will give people the chance to download music for free and legally from Apple's iTunes music store.

And, on the topic of contests and games, there's a new twist to old trivia games. Erica Hill found out all about it from our gaming guru Mark Salzman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERICA HILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Maybe your family does movie night, maybe you do game night, maybe it's time to step it up a notch. Joining us to help you do that is Mark Salzman, he's a computer tech expert.

And, you have a great new game that marries movie night and game night.

MARK SALZMAN, CNN COMPUTER TECH EXPERT: That's right. We're going to actually look at two products today, Erica, that combine traditional board games with the popularity of DVDs, and it does so really well. And, it combines traditional trivia with multimedia, so you're going to be challenged on video clips, audio clips, and still images, as well. So, it's a lot of fun.

HILL: It sounds like fun, and one way, I think, to probably keep kids interested. The first one you have for us is called "Scene It?" This is for movie buffs. SALZMAN: That's right "Scene It?" is all about films, and so if you're a film aficionado there's 700 clips that you'll find on the DVD.

HILL: Wow.

SALZMAN: And there's -- you know, hundreds of questions in paper format, as well. The more traditional trivia ones that you read to competitors in the game, and so what you do is you've got two different dice here to play around with. You simply roll the dice, and then one -- the number tells you how many spots to move around the board

HILL: OK.

SALZMAN: And the other, the die here, tells you what kind of question to ask. Now we landed on "all play" and if you look at your handy reference card it tells you that we're going to go to the DVD and this is a question that we both have to answer together.

HILL: All right.

SALZMAN: Whoever gets it first wins the round. And then we go again.

HILL: Pressure's on with this one.

SALZMAN: So, if I may do the honors. I've got the DVD remote.

HILL: Please, go right ahead.

SALZMAN: And, we'll go to "all play" and it's going to give us our question.

HILL: OK.

SALZMAN: So we have to see who's the first to answer.

HILL: All right, I'm ready.

SALZMAN: All right. So the question is: Be the first to identify the actor from the following characters he has played.

HILL: Robin of Locksley?

SALZMAN: Oh, Kevin Costner.

HILL: Elliot Ness.

SALZMAN: Is it Kevin Costner?

HILL: I think it might be.

SALZMAN: Let's see. Let's see.

HILL: No, or wa -- I don't know if he...

SALZMAN: Yes. OK. All right.

HILL: Nice work. You win.

SALZMAN: It only took the fifth clue. OK, so I won, so that means I keep rolling until I move around the board -- sorry, I roll again, because I got it right, and then we swap whenever I get it wrong and whoever gets to the final cut, wins. Now, if you don't have time to play a full game, Erica, and in today's day and age that's not unusual that we'd be tight for time, right?

HILL: No, it's not.

SALZMAN: So, you can fold the game inwards like this and play "Scene It?" in sort of an abbreviated version.

HILL: Which is so smart, I love this idea.

SALZMAN: Yeah, it's a great idea. So, this is, again, perfect for film fanatics. There's lots of video clips which we really didn't get to in this example, but there's tons of them from the likes of "Shrek" and -- you know, other live action movies, and it's called "Scene It?" and it's 50 bucks.

HILL: We also have a new take on an old classic -- a classic board game. This, though, is "Trivial Pursuit's DVD Pop Culture Edition," and this seems like a perfect marriage of board game and DVD.

SALZMAN: Yeah, it is. And, it's got 400 clips on the DVD, and it's not just movies like with "Scene It?" but, now you're going to be drilled on cheesy '80s commercials.

HILL: My favorite.

SALZMAN: "Name That Tune" clips, there's some great TV and movie clips, as well. And it's got the 1,800 regular questions, so it works really well. We all know the rules to "Trivial Pursuit."

HILL: Yep.

SALZMAN: Now it ads a DVD component.

HILL: Which is fun.

SALZMAN: Yeah.

HILL: Another thing that's fun to me, I love these pieces, much more exciting than the pie plates you use to get.

SALZMAN: Absolutely, I've got a lava lamp here, and you've got a cell phone and you put the colored wedges inside the piece here.

HILL: OK.

SALZMAN: So, it's a clever little idea. So, why don't you roll the die.

HILL: I will do that.

SALZMAN: And we'll see what you get.

HILL: Come on big money.

SALZMAN: All right a six.

HILL: A six.

SALZMAN: So, that means you land on a colored wedge.

HILL: OK.

SALZMAN: That's great because that means we go to the DVD.

HILL: All right, I'm going to take the cell phone to a -- blue is TV, right?

SALZMAN: Blue, it is.

HILL: We're going to try a TV DVD.

SALZMAN: So, if I may do the honors. So, we go down to TV.

OK, so now you're going to get a short animated clip that tells you what theme you've landed, and now you only have a few seconds to answer the question by yourself otherwise it's opened up to the rest of the board.

HILL: Ah, there's a little pressure on you in this edition.

SALZMAN: Yeah, So, here's a clip.

HILL: It's "Colombo."

SALZMAN: Wow, good job.

HILL: How about that, Huh?

SALZMAN: Yeah.

HILL: I can play this game. Not bad.

SALZMAN: That was an easy one, they do get tougher.

HILL: OK, so I get my little wedge which I put in, right here, and then we keep going. This game also about 50 bucks, you said?

SALZMAN: Yep, that's right. You can go to trivialpursuit.com, read more about it, but it is 50, just like "Scene it?" ad you can buy it at most retailers across the country, like Toys R Us.

HILL: All right, two new options for movie night, game night, or maybe a combination of both. Good to have you with us Mark Salzman. Thanks again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Here's a piece of trivia for you: You can find more information on those DVD games on our website, that's at cnn.com/next.

Well, that's all the time we have for now, but here's what's coming up next week.

This is mini earth; it's a Japanese version of the much ballyhooed, but ill fated Biosphere II experiment in Texas. And, if its creators are successful it could help pave the way for people to live in space. That's coming up on NEXT. Until then we always love to hear from you. You can send us an e-mail at next@cnn.com.

Thanks so much for joining this week, for all of us. I'm Daniel Sieberg. We'll wee you next time.

END

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Defensive Driving Techniques; Gaming Turns To DVDs Next>