NewsScan Daily, 23 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 23 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        VeriSign Refuses to Back Down
        Sun Sheds Light on Faster Transmission Techniques
        DNA Computing Making Tiny Strides
        U.S. Slashes Number of H-1B Visas
        Yahoo Debuts Comparison Shopping Searches

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: American Invention

VERISIGN REFUSES TO BACK DOWN
Despite a flood of criticism, VeriSign has told ICANN in a letter that it 
won't disable its Site Finder service. ICANN had asked VeriSign to 
voluntarily suspend the service until the technical ramifications could be 
studied. The controversial service diverts Web users who enter invalid URLs 
because of careless typing to VeriSign's own Web site. The Internet 
registrar's refusal to back down potentially puts it on a collision course 
with ICANN, which oversees its contract with the U.S. Department of 
Commerce to manage the master list of .com and .net Web addresses. But 
former ICANN board member Karl Auerbach says ICANN has a history of weak 
contracts: "I suspect that we're going to discover that VeriSign just might 
get away with it." Meanwhile, VeriSign is also facing lawsuits filed by 
Popular Enterprises, a Florida firm with a competing Site-Finder-type 
service, and by Go Daddy, another Internet registrar that has accused 
VeriSign of engaging in unfair business practices. (San Francisco Chronicle 
23 Sep 2003)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/23/BUGTC1SB8M1.DTL&type=tech

SUN SHEDS LIGHT ON FASTER TRANSMISSION TECHNIQUES
Sun Microsystems engineers have discovered a way to move data 60 to 100 
times fast as the present top speeds allow. The technique, dubbed 
"capacitive coupling," involves placing the transmitter of one chip 
directly in proximity to its neighbor's receiver, eliminating some of the 
circuitry that can cause bottlenecks. Researchers say the Sun technique 
could pack hundreds of chips in face-to-face checkerboard fashion far more 
densely than is now possible and could lead to the realization of one of 
Silicon Valley's pipe dreams: a computer packaging technique known as 
wafer-scale integration, which would eliminate the need for clunky circuit 
boards. "This is a very novel idea that could give you a way to make a very 
compact computer," says David Patterson, a computer scientist at the 
University of California at Berkeley. "From the very beginning people have 
been making circuits on wafers and then chopping them up and then wiring 
them back together again." Stanford University professor William J. Dally 
says, "This is one of those things that could have great potential if they 
can work out the details," which include coming up with ways to cool the 
tightly packed chips and mitigate potential interference between the tiny 
transmitters and receivers. (New York Times 22 Sep 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/technology/22SUN.html

DNA COMPUTING MAKING TINY STRIDES
DNA computing is still in the embryonic stages of evolution, but scientists 
are already finding ways of using life's basic building blocks to calculate 
the way conventional computers do. In February, Udi Shapiro of Israel's 
Weizmann Institute of Science announced the creation of the world's 
smallest biological computing device -- a microliter of salt solution 
containing three trillion self-contained DNA computing devices -- and more 
recently a game-playing biomolecular device -- an enzyme-powered 
tic-tac-toe machine -- was demonstrated by Columbia University scientist 
Milan Stojanovic. "I do not believe that any of the current (biological) 
technologies will ever be able to compete with silicon in serious 
computational problems. However, in the control of biological processes, 
biological computing has its place," says Stojanovic. "The ultimate 
application would be a 'doctor in a cell,'" says Shapiro. "It would 
diagnose the disease by analyzing the data available in its biochemical 
environment, e.g. the tissue or organ in which it resides, and cure it by 
synthesizing and delivering the appropriate drug molecules." (CNN.com 22 
Sep 2003)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/09/19/wow.tech.life.computing/index.html

U.S. SLASHES NUMBER OF H-1B VISAS
After bowing to pressure from the high-tech industry to increase the number 
of H-1B visas offered to highly qualified foreign workers, the U.S. 
government is planning to sharply cut the number from 195,000 to 65,000 for 
the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The three-year visas have been used to 
bring highly skilled workers, mostly from the Indian sub-continent, to the 
U.S. to fill jobs in the computer industry. "Given the weakness of our 
current economy, and the rising unemployment we have experienced under 
President Bush's stewardship, many who supported the increase in 2000 now 
believe that 65,000 visas are sufficient," says Sen. Patrick Leahy 
(D-Vermont). Immigration attorneys say the new restrictions will set off a 
scramble by companies to fill their slots before the ceiling is reached. 
(Reuters/CNet 23 Sep 2003)
http://news.com.com/2100-1036_3-5080288.html

YAHOO DEBUTS COMPARISON SHOPPING SEARCHES
In an effort to offer users a more compelling search experience, Yahoo has 
launched a new search platform that enables users to find products, compare 
prices and purchase from different merchants. The new service goes 
head-to-head with similar offerings from the Shopping.com Web site, which 
integrates a comparison shopping platform with product reviews from 
Epinions, and Google's Froogle product search platform. "(Search is) 
becoming the most efficient way for consumers to find products," says Yahoo 
Shopping general manager Rob Solomon. The Yahoo Shopping service will offer 
both merchant and consumer reviews, as well as product comparison grids and 
functions that calculate the cost of a product after taxes and shipping 
have been added on. "We're finding that this is a pretty advanced feature 
and it'll appeal to the early adopters and tech-savvy crowd," says Solomon. 
(Reuters 23 Sep 2003)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&ncid=581&e=2&u=/nm/20030923/tc_nm/media_yahoo_dc

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, old Time is still a-flying: And 
this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying."(Robert Herrick)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: AMERICAN INVENTION
      Henry Ford was a simple soul with an enormously complex personality, 
and the Episcopalian minister Samuel S. Marquis who for many years headed 
Ford's "sociological department" (which monitored the living habits of the 
company's workers) wrote of Henry Ford in 1923: "There are in him lights so 
high and shadows so deep, that I cannot get the whole of him in the proper 
focus at the same time." But one trait that stood out in Ford was his 
attitude to work, and historian Douglas Brinkley writes:
      "Populist to his core, Ford preferred fortunes born of production 
rather than the paper-shuffling kind that benefited only the stock 
manipulators and financial speculators who contrived them. He disdained men 
like railroad baron Jay Gould for being greedy 'city slickers' helpless in 
a machine shop, research laboratory, or manufacturing plant. 'Did you ever 
see dishonest calluses on a man's hands?' Ford once asked. 'Hardly. When a 
man's hands are callused and women's hands are worn, you may be sure 
honesty is there. That's more than you can say about many soft white 
hands.' Ford, like his fellow automotive pioneers, had to either thread 
every rod and bore every cylinder himself or get an associate to do it. He 
also had to invent his own ignition system, and he did it all with midnight 
zeal. Ford saw himself as heir to a tradition of innovation that started 
with Benjamin Franklin, changing our national character and the world with 
it. As historian Willis M. West put it, 'The American invents as the Greek 
chiseled, as the Venetian painted, as the modern Italian sings.'"
                          ***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067003181X/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Douglas Brinkley's "Wheels For The World: Henry Ford, His Company, and 
a Century of Progress, 1903-2003"  -- or look for it in your favorite 
library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult 
literacy programs.)

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