Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 58

D2 THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2002 THE HARTFORD COURANT JAVA BY PAT 1 if ri. KATIE COURIC CRACKS UP over a Lego model of her head on Monday's "Today" Show. She and Matt Lauer, right, handle today's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, where Lego will enter its first float. To celebrate, the Enfield firm made models of the heads of the "Today" anchors, including Al Roker and Ann Curry. ASSOCIATED PRESS comedic reasons.

Pope John Paul II thought it was funny and assured me that he felt the usage was in accord with proper canonical strictures." JFK Jr. Remembered The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard will rename its ARCO Forum of Public Affairs in honor of John F.Kennedy Jr. The Kennedy School's forum will be renovated during the summer with a gift from Harvard's Institute of Politics and will be dedicated in the fall Today's Birthdays Recording executive Berry Gordy Jr. is 73.

Actress Hope Lange is 71. Gary Hart is 66. Singer Randy Newman is 59. damages and a trust fund made up of all the "assets, revenues and profits defendants improperly received" from the 2000 distribution of the film. The three companies, which AOL Time Warner owns, are charged with breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and wrongful accounting.

Lamarre Gets Papal Blessing For Deviant Spelling Java doesn't often respond directly to letters to the editor, but in this case, because of the sensitive subject matter, it's imperative. Recently, we reported that Jacques Lamarre of Hartford Stage did a little spoof of the company's play "Edgardo Mine," In Macy's Parade, They've Got A Lego Up On The Competition When you tune into today's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, be sure to check out Connecticut's newest float Lego's "A Carousel of Imagination" 32 feet long, 22 feet wide and 24 feet tall. The Enfield-based Lego company is entering the parade for the first time in the parade's 76-year history, giving it a three-year commitment. "We felt it was a great chance to show the exuberance of the Lego brand in a parade that is the most time-honored American tradition," said Katherine Lee, director of public relations for Lego America. People from Macy's visited Lego's showroom at the American International Toy Show and asked Lego to take part The float is designed as a revolving carousel, but instead of horses, it's made up of other fun things like a fish, crab, helicopter and camel, Lee said, and it's made of oversize Lego bricks and other pieces that resemble Legos.

Macy's designed the float and built it in its parade studio in Hoboken, N.J. Michael Feinstein will be aboard singing "Pure Imagination." An Excellent Sift For The Expletive On Your List There have always been talking dolls, but they generally had sweet things to say. Welcome the Osbournes. America's favorite family is now available in a 0 -ir' I too long ago and the memory of any potential witnesses would be impaired. But the judge was unmoved and set a trial date of Jan.

21. Since his music career faltered, Brown has been in trouble with the law regularly even spending 26 days in a Florida jail for drunken driving in 1996. Brown was arrested this month in Atlanta on charges including possessing less than 30 grams of marijuana and speeding. A Heavenly Message For Children's Book Author When Don LAMARRE, left, of Hartford Stage went before using the Swedish-friendly instead of the Italian single-p "Papa" a "Mamma Mia!" parody invitation. permission from the Pope himself.

1 which is about Pope PiusK, when he invited cast members of "Mamma Mia!" which was then playing at The BushnelLIn the invitation, he called the stage play "PappaPio" and ran a picture of a pope. A reader, Giovanni Frisoneof Cromwell, objected and wrote: "In Italian, 'pappa' means pap' or 'mush, so he was either insulting the pope's character or inviting guests to a meal of baby food. He probably meant to say: 'Papa Pio' depending on the pronunciation, 'papa' can mean pope or Well anyway, it was funny to me. I don't know how Mush Pius' felt" WelL Lamarre has responded to Frisone's critique and offers a picture as back-up. He writes: "I have attached photo evidence that I flew over to Rome prior to Java's publication to receive a special papal dispensation for the use of the Swedish variant spelling of Tapa Pio for purely A vi JACQUES right to the top "Pappa Pio" when he drew up He said he got tutu, bobblehead collection complete with potty-mouth expressions from Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly and Jack.

They're made by NovelTOYoutofLos OZZY leads the line-up of the Os- bourne family of bobble-head dolls. Sharon, Kelly and Jack bring up the rear. superstars like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington andBillieHolliday. Carter had met Sue Mingus last year at a book-signing for her autobiography, "Tonight at Noon: A Love Story," and had promised then to send her an autographed copy of his book to give to her granddaughter. She enjoyed it so much, she ordered 12 more, Carter said.

The Dev3 Made Them Do It A Los Angeles judge refused to throw out a lawsuit brought last year by the writer and director of "The Exorcist," who allege they were denied profits from a 2000 reissue of the 1973 hit horror film. The film, about a girl possessed by the devil was reissued in theaters with added scenes. It sold hundreds of thousands of video and DVD copies that netted millions in profits for AOL Time Warner. The lawsuit, filed by writer William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin, accuses Warner Turner Network Television and Turner Broadcasting System of hiding revenue to avoid paying them a full share. It seeks unspecified actual, compensatory and punitive ard Nixon.

But none remained active in politics after going into news, nor do they show obvious favoritism toward former political associates. Ailes said that when Rick Kaplan was president of CNN, he continued his friendship with Bill Clinton and stayed at the White House. Kaplan said he never gave advice to Clinton. The Fox channel's straight-news segments are brash but not necessarily biased. The talk and analysis shows include some moderates.

Fox's Geraldo Rivera defended the Clintons when he was at CNBC. Otherwise, conservatives dominate Fox News programming. They include Bill O'Reilly (who agrees with the right on most issues), Sean Hannity (who overshadows moderate Alan Colmes on "Hannity and Tony Snow (speech writer for the first President Bush), David Asman (formerly of the conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal) and Oliver North (of the Reagan Iran-contra scandal). Fox attracts more viewers than competing all-news cable channels CNN and MSNBC (although the traditional over-the-air networks have much larger audi Contrary To Slogan, Fox News Not Fair Or Balanced Angeles, and they're bound to delight any one on your gift list who enjoys a good cuss word. They are available at stores like Spencer Gifts, Tower Records and Musicland.

Whitney Sticking It Out With Bobby Not sure what Whitney Houston thought she would achieve by sticking her tongue out in court Tuesday, but it didn't help the case of her bad-boy husband, Bobby Brown. The downsized and frizzy-haired Whitney was by her husband's side as he tried to have 6-year-old charges of driving under the influence, speeding, failing to maintain a lane and having no proof of insurance dropped. Brown's lawyer argued the charges happened Woodward, assistant managing editor. According to Woodward, Roger Ailes, chairman of the Fox News Channel, sent a confidential message to Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's chief political strategist.

"His back channel message: The American public would tolerate waiting and would be patient, but only as long as they were convinced that Bush was using the harshest measures possible," Woodward wrote. Ailes (rhymes with would not release the contents of the message but said Woodward's interpretation was wrong. He said he was writing as "a concerned American" to express his "outrage." Taken by itself, a confidential message from a news executive to the president through a political adviser is merely inappropriate a "venial sin," as Chris Matthews put it on CNBC's "Hardball." But Ailes' message shouldn't be taken by itself. It should be added to the body of evidence that Fox News is cozy with the Republican Party and the political right Ailes never covered a news story in his life. For most of his career before Fox, he was a non- draconian, tool is permission-based e-mail, in which any sender not already on a list of approved e-mailers must ask permission, or pass some sort of test, to get a message delivered.

Today, a new company enters the battle against spam with a program that combines all three of these weapons. It's called Matador, from a Palo Alto, startup called MailFrontier. The Windows program costs $29.95 but can. be used free for a one-month trial. You can download it at www.mailfrontier.com.

Matador is an easy-to-use, attractive utility that integrates rigit into Microsoft Outlook 2000 or yutlcok 2002. A version for 5 Carter came home from work Friday, his wife, Catherine, said there was a nice message for him on the answering machine. It was Sue Mingus, widow of legendary jazz bassist and pianist Charles Mingus, saying she loved Carter's new children's book, "Heaven's All-Star Jazz Band" (Random House, It is the latest book by Carter, who is creative director at Adams Knight Advertising in Avon, and in it he writes of her husband and other jazz news television producer and an influential consultant to Republican candidates. He started as a prop assistant for the old "Mike Douglas Show" and rose to become its executive producer. He later served as a top TV adviser to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush the elder.

His fingerprints are on the Willie Horton commercials that accused Michael Dukakis, Bush's opponent of releasing a dangerous criminal. Ailes produced "Tomorrow," NBC's old late-night interview show, and a syndicated show featuring conservative talker Rush Limbaugh. He thenheaded NBC's cable-TV operation. In 1996 he moved to the Fox News Channel, part of News the global media empire controlled by Rupert Murdoch, who is not timid about using his properties (such as the New York Post) to advance his conservative agenda. Ailes defenders are quick to point out that other TV news professionals once worked for politicians.

They are right NBC's Tim Russert worked for Democrats. ABC's George Stephanopoulos worked for Bill Clinton. ABC's Diane Sawyer worked for Rich Microsoft's Outlook Express e-mail program should be out shortly. Once you install Matador, it adds a few buttons to Outlook and begins scanning your incoming e-maiL It compares every e-mail against both a "whitelist" of approved senders it creates from your address book and your sent-mail folder, and a "blacklist" of known spammers it keeps. It also looks for specific phrases and structural characteristics in each e-mail to see if it looks like junk mail If so, Matador places the e-mail in a special Outlook folder called Matador Junk Mail.

You look through this junk-mail folder, and if you find a legiti at Movie director Joe Dante is 56. "Late Show" orchestra leader Paul Shaffer is 53. Actor Ed Harris is 52. Actress S. Epatha Merkerson is 50.

Actor Judd Nelson is 43. Rock musician Matt Cameron (Soundgarden) is 40. Comedian Jon Stewart is 40. Actress Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon is 36. TV personality Anna Nicole Smith is 35.

singer Dawn Robinson is 34. Hip-hop musician apl.de.ap (Black Eyed Peas) is 28. Actress Scarlett Pomers is 14. Wire Reports Included Pat Sere met can be reached by e-mail at Seremetcourant.com li by phone at 860-241-6742 or 800-524-4242, Ext 6742. cousin of the Democratic presidential candidate were involved in another network's coverage on election night? What would they say if the chief of another network news operation had been the TV adviser to Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? I don't think it's wrong for Fox News to favor conservatives.

For those who don't want a conservative spin, there are lots of other places to get information. In fact I wish there were an overtly liberal TV or radio outlet for variety. (Fox supporters claims CNN, PBS and NPR play that role, but none of them is led by a Democratic political strategist.) I just want the Fox News Channel to be honest with us. Instead of saying, "We report, you decide," it should forthrightly declare, "On the right, and proud of it" Paul Janensch is a former newspaper editor who teaches journalism at Quinnipiac University. His commentary can be heard at 8:35 am.

Fridays on the five stations ofWNPR Connecticut Public Radio, including 90.5 FM in Hartford E-mail: Paul. Janensch quinnipiac.edu. challenged again. If they give a wrong answer, or the inquiry is bounced back as undeliverable, their e-mail goes into the junk folder and they are added to the blacklist The idea is to make the challenge simple for humans but impossible for the automated mailing programs that 99 percent of spammers use to blast out their odious pitches. You can turn off the challenge feature, or set it to work only with e-mail that seems like spam.

But I recommend using it for all e-mail from people not on your whitelist It may irritate some legitimate senders, but it's the only way to ensure Matador will catch automated spl rn. Professor News: Why has there been such a fuss over a message sent to the White House by the boss of the Fox News Channel after the Sept. 11 terror attacks? Because it was the last straw for those in or close to the news media (including yours truly) who think Fox News tilts heavily to the right Fox likes to tell viewers, "We report, you PAUL JANENSCH decide," and claims it provides news coverage that is "fair and balanced" while the rest of the news media are "liberal" The facts don't support such claims. Other major American news outlets are overwhelmingly centrist (and for that reason rather stodgy). On the other hand.

Fox News' leadership and programming are unarguably on the conservative side of the political spectrum. The issue of Fox's political orientation flared up last week with the publication in the Washington Post of an excerpt from the new book, "Bush at War," by Bob ences). Ailes was smart to recognize that a cable channel is more like radio than conventional TV and can succeed by appealing to a relatively narrow slice of the public. It'sworthrecallinghowfheFox News Channel handled the 2000 presidential election votecount After hours of flip-flopping by all the networks, Fox News declared at 2:16 a.m. that Bush had won Florida and therefore the presidency.

The other networks quickly followed Fox's lead, and some newspapers in the Eastern time zone, caught up in the stampede, put "Bush wins!" on their front pages. As it turned out the call was 39 days premature. But from then on, Bush was seen by much of the public as the winner, and Democrat Al Gore was seen as a sore loser. The director of the Fox desk that made that call was John Ellis, a first cousin to Bush and an open supporter of the GOP candidate. He bragged to The New Yorker magazine that on election night he spoke frequently on the telephone with Bush and his brother, Florida Gov.

Jeb Bush. What would conservative commentators on Fox say if a first constantly training the program to correct its lapses. That's why I think Matador's best and easiest feature is its toughest: the so-called Challenge feature. When you turn this on, e-mail from suspicious or unknown senders is placed in a Matador Challenged Mail folder and the senders get an automated e-mail challenge. They receive an e-mail with a photo of cute animals kittens, puppies, fish, giraffes and are asked to say how many animals are in the picture, using buttons labeled one to five.

If the senders answer correctly, their e-mail is moved to your inbox and their addresses are added to your whitelist so they aren't cMatador' Challenges Spam To Get Past, Into Your Door mate messap that doesn't belong there, you just highlight it and click the "unjunk" button dor has added to Outlook. The message immediately moves to your inbox and the sender's address is added to your whitelist. Similarly, if you find a message in your inbox that should have been treated as spam, you can click a "junk" button that will move it to the junk-mail folder and add the sender's address to the blacklist In my test of Matador, over about a week, these filtering and community features worked about as well as in other programs. A But you have tP a lot of work, By WALTER S. MOSSBERG WALL STREET JOURNAL In the fight against spam, the unsolicited commercial e-mail that is the scourge of the Internet three main weapons have emerged.

The most common is filtering million software, which 'ft'f)Wil seeks to identify spam automati cally oy certain characteristics and then block it or segregate it A second approach is the community-policing method, in which users report spam to some central organization that then teaches filtering software to block it A third, more.