NewsScan Daily, 24 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 24 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Google May Hold IPO Auction Online
       Amazon's New 'Search Inside the Book' Feature
       Internet Fraud Update
       Regulation of Cyber Cafes
       Screeners Coded to Prevent Movie Piracy

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       A Good Life
       Worth Thinking About: Drinking Styles

GOOGLE MAY HOLD IPO AUCTION ONLINE
Google is making plans for an online auction of shares in an initial public
offering that might value the company at more than $15 billion. (Whereas
many other hot IPOs -- from Apple in 1980 to Netscape in 1995 -- were based
on unprofitable companies, Google is already profitable, and has become a
global business.) An auction would allow all investors to bid for Google's
shares directly, rather than leave it to investment bankers to decide how
much Google shares should cost, and decide who should receive them; however,
some bankers are warning that a pure online auction will risk setting an
unrealistically high price for Google's shares, because there would not be
enough stock available to meet all the demand from private investors. (New
York Times 24 Oct 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/financialtimes/business/24FT-GOOGLE.html

AMAZON'S NEW 'SEARCH INSIDE THE BOOK' FEATURE
Amazon.com has announced a new feature called "Search Inside the Book" that
is making the text of 120,000 books (more than 33 million pages) fully
searchable at no charge. The feature makes it possible to scan a database
for the word or phrase entered by a visitor to Amazon's site for each
relevant portion of a searchable book. The pages that are found can be read
onscreen and printed but not copied or downloaded. University of Washington
computer scientist Oren Etzioni says: "It's an impressive feat -- a bold
concept, coupled with nice execution and clear business thinking. This
really shows Amazon is a technology company, not innovating just with things
like free shipping but putting something out there that's brand
new."(Seattle Post-Intelligencer 24 Oct 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/mercurynews/business/7092377.htm

INTERNET FRAUD UPDATE
The Federal Trade Commission says that complaints of Internet-related
identity theft more than tripled last year, to 2,352 last year from the year
before. Jay Foley of the Identity Theft Resource Center says, "Online fraud
is becoming as big an issue for eBay and AOL as security is for Microsoft."
Typically, eBay covers buyers or sellers for up to $200 (or $500 for some
listings) if an item is not delivered or is in bad condition, though there
is a $25 processing fee. Posting safety tips for eBay transactions are
listed at at www.ebay.com/securitycenter. (USA Today 24 Oct 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-10-23-fraud_x.htm

REGULATION OF CYBER CAFES
An appeals court in Orange County, California, will soon be deciding whether
to uphold a lower-court ruling that prohibits the town of Garden Grove from
imposing strict regulations on cyber cafes -- regulations enacted because
city officials found that cyber cafes that provide Internet access and video
games were attracting gangs and violence. Owners sued the city, saying their
businesses were being unfairly picked-on. (Los Angeles Times 24 Oct 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-me-cyber24oct24,1,2911110.story?coll=la
-headlines-technology (registration req'd)

SCREENERS CODED TO PREVENT MOVIE PIRACY
A compromise has been reached that will make possible a carefully controlled
distribution of free cassettes to Oscar voters for private screening during
the upcoming awards season. The movies will be numbered VHS cassettes rather
than easily copied DVDs, and they will be coded for tracing if they are sold
or pirated. Academy members will sign contracts taking responsibility for
any "screeners" they accept, and making them subject to possible banishment
from the Academy if the screeners are later found on the black market.
(Washington Post 24 Oct 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9524-2003Oct23.html

*****

FLASH CARD
     "Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating
adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills,
responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in
all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while
book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults." (Eric
Hoffer)

A GOOD LIFE
     Long-time NewsScan Daily subscriber Leon Goodman sends in the following
nice note: 
     "I appreciate you and every phase of the thing you have created. You
are Ben Franklin of this age. Thanks to your willingness to publish my ideas
and introduce me to all your Honorary Subscribers and Dr. Mike, I have
written two books and am helping others to get their journals and memoirs
together. My first book is self-published and has gone out to family and
friends in hardcopy and now I have it on the web in html form. Thank you,
and have look at what I did."
     We've read Leon's book, which is free on the Web. You'll find it to be
quite well-written and very interesting. You'll find the book at:
http://leongoodman.tripod.com.
     
WORTH THINKING ABOUT: DRINKING STYLES
     Next time you're tempted to pour your troubles into a bartender's
friendly ear, remember that he may be gathering stories for his memoirs --
which is what Toby Cecchini was doing when he picked up this story from the
American son of an Italian immigrant.
     "Speaking in confused wonder still about Americans' juvenile
relationship to alcohol, he told me a story from the end of the Second World
War in Florence. Out walking early one morning, he and his sister came upon
a crowd silently taking in a spectacle so incredible to them that many years
later, he still marvels at it. Still up after an all-night bender, some
American G.I.'s were lolling on the steps of Santa Croce, bleary drunk,
passing a flask of wine back and forth, singing and carrying on like one
would imagine G.I.'s might well be doing, away from home for the first time
and flush from chasing out the Axis Powers. In Italy, though, he explains,
wine isn't abused that way. Further, there a man measured his masculinity in
many ways that might seem odd to us, but it simply went without saying that
no man worth being called such would ever be seen as unable to hold his
drink. You would never drink that much to begin with, but slurring? Singing?
Carrying on like silly adolescents who had chanced across a bottle -- and on
the steps of a church!? The crowd couldn't conceive of what they were
seeing; it was unconscionable. The G.I.'s had seemed to them the swaggering
cowboys who stormed in on waves of adulation to liberate them. It would be
like us witnessing John Wayne stumbling out of a drag bar, then stopping to
take a piss on the American flag. But the longer my dad spent in America, he
said, the more he understood those sacrilegious soldiers. Our puritanical
backbone still heavily influences all of our views, alcohol not the least.
Most Americans, he explained, aren't quite sure how to simply enjoy alcohol.
They are like children, fascinated, so they abuse it, then they're afraid of
it. A touch simplistic maybe, but not terribly far from the truth."
                        ***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0767912098/for Toby
Cecchini's "Cosmopolitan: A Bartender's Life" -- or look for it in your
favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to
adult literacy programs.)

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