NewsScan Daily, 10 November 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 10 November 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Wal-Mart Suppliers Will Pay Price for RFID
       Portal for Nonprofits
       Comcast Rhapsody
       Technology Use (and Mis-Use)
       Amazon Wants To Be Good Enough To Eat

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Samuel Johnson

WAL-MART SUPPLIERS WILL PAY PRICE FOR RFID
The consulting firm A.T. Kearney says that Wal-Mart's plans to have every
shipment it receives from its suppliers carry a radio identification (RFID)
tag will cost those suppliers millions of dollars. Kearney executive David
Dannon says the extra cost is "a big item that most of them have not
budgeted for." RFID, which stands for radio-frequency identification, has
been used to track containers on trains and ships and in automatic toll
systems like E-ZPass. Dannon believes that Wal-Mart has begun to accept the
fact that universal use of RFID tags is going to take longer than originally
planned: "Wal-Mart recognizes that this is not going to go as fast as they
wanted." (New York Times 10 Nov 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/11/10/technology/10radio.html

PORTAL FOR NONPROFITS
Two years ago, multimillionaire Arthur A. Bushkin paid $15 million to create
an Internet portal called StargazerNet, and used it to offer nonprofit
organizations a free way of networking, conducting online chats among
offices, and organizing  their data. Yet today few nonprofits use
StargazerNet, apparently because they don't understand how it works.
However, Bushkin remains optimistic, noting that "it takes a certain amount
of time for people's behavior to change, to use the new technology... We
honestly believe that this is the 21st-century equivalent of the Carnegie
library online." He says that StargazerNet "is an attempt to put a certain
amount of technology in the public domain. Secondly, and more importantly,
put it in the public domain in a way the public can use it and control it
themselves." He points out: "It took more than 20 years for the Internet to
get traction." As of today, StargazerNet is still looking for traction.
(Washington Post 9 Nov 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19793-2003Nov9.html

COMCAST RHAPSODY 
Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider, will soon be selling its own
version of the RealNetworks/Rhapsody subscription music service to its 4.9
million high-speed Internet customers. Industry analysts are exuberant about
the news: Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media says, "The gold rush is finally
beginning. Now everybody is out there staking their claim," and Ted Cohen of
EMI Music says, "It shows that we're approaching the normalization of the
business. This is becoming a viable channel. It's not an anomaly anymore.
This is going to be part of the way music is distributed in the mainstream."
Sean Ryan, vice president of music services for RealNetworks, explains,
"What we're finding now is the more people enter the space, the more the
space expands. That may not be true forever. But certainly for now, it is
just getting over into popular culture." (San Jose Mercury News 10 Nov 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7226059.htm

TECHNOLOGY USE (AND MIS-USE)
The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSEE) has found that 83% of U.S.
undergraduates regularly use information technology in their academic work
-- and an even greater percentage -- 87% --  say that their peers at least
"sometimes" copy and paste information from the Web without citing the
source. George Kuh, Indiana University professor and NSSE director, says:
"Technology could well be a double-edged sword. Unlimited access to
information may help students produce more in less time, as indicated by
their relatively high grades. But whether students are learning with
authentic understanding remains to be seen." (USA Today 9 Nov 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2003-11-09-students-it_x.htm

AMAZON WANTS TO BE GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT
Online retailer Amazon.com has launched a gourmet foods store, from which it
is offering more than 30,000 regional food items from about 300 merchants,
including foods from most states and ethnic offerings from many countries.
The food products are shipped directly to customers by the merchants selling
on Amazon's Web site. Industry analyst Carrie Johnson of Forrester Research
explains: "This is such an incredibly fragmented industry that it makes
sense for a large player like Amazon.com to consolidate all of these brands
under one store. Frankly, when their retail partner is doing all the
fulfillment of this type of product, which is really where the biggest cost
is in gourmet foods, Amazon wins because they only have to sit on the front
side of that transaction." Participants in the arrangement include such
merchants as Omaha Steaks, Dean & DeLuca, Alaska Smokehouse, Sticky Fingers,
Schwan Food Co., Watkins Inc., General Mills, Hormel Foods, and Marshall
Field's. (AP/Los Angeles Times 10 Nov 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-online10nov10,1,5465992.story?coll=l
a-headlines-technology

*****

FLASH CARD
     "He who praises everybody, praises nobody." (Samuel Johnson)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: SAMUEL JOHNSON
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), after whom
the English-speaking world named the latter part of the eighteenth century
"The Age of Johnson."
     Dr. Johnson's achievements vast. He wrote the first English dictionary
based on historical principles; he produced the first editorially
intelligent edition of Shakespeare's plays; his literary criticism is ranked
with the finest in English; and next only to Shakespeare he is perhaps the
most quoted of English writers. Thanks to James Boswell's massive, brilliant
"Life Of Samuel Johnson" (1791), his ebullient personality and epigrammatic
conversational powers have entertained numberless thousands who have never
read his writings.
     Johnson was born to an elderly couple in Lichfield and received his
early education at the local grammar school. He attended Pembroke College,
Oxford, but after 14 months his lack of funds compelled him to leave without
a degree. Though constitutionally robust, he suffered throughout life from
bodily afflictions, and at age 21 he suffered the first of two mental
breakdowns, which left him with a lifelong dread of insanity, death, and
religious damnation. He tried teaching school but hated it, was attracted to
law but lacked the necessary diploma, and settled for writing because
writing was what he could do.
 His first book was a translation of "A Voyage to Abyssinia" by a Portuguese
Jesuit, which was typical of the literary hack work Johnson produced to
support himself for 20 years.
      In 1738 he joined the staff of The Gentleman's Magazine, for which he
wrote poetry--both in Latin and English--and essays.  As occasion required,
he also produced prefaces, reviews, encyclopedia articles, and biographies;
one of the latter, his life of the notorious minor poet Richard Savage
(1744), achieved considerable popularity.  His talents so impressed the
London publishers that in 1747 they commissioned him to write "A Dictionary
of the English Language." While working on this mammoth project, he also
wrote his chief poem, "The Vanity of Human Wishes," a satire in imitation of
the Roman poet Juvenal; saw his tragedy "Irene" produced, and composed a
powerful series of periodical essays, "The Rambler," on which his reputation
as a moralist is largely based.
     In 1756, Johnson turned to editing Shakespeare. By the time "The Plays
of William Shakespeare" appeared (1765), he had also produced a second
series of essays, "The Idler," and a comic romance, "Rasselas," his finest
satire on the human propensity to hopeful self-delusion. Johnson had also
experienced a second breakdown; been awarded a government pension; and made
two friends who were to become his principal biographers: With Boswell he
made a tour of the Hebrides that produced a travel book, "A Journey to the
Western Islands of Scotland." Johnson's last and greatest work was "The
Lives of the Poets."

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679417176/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for James Boswell's brilliant "Life of Johnson" -- or look for it in your
favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to
adult literacy programs.)

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