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

NewsScan Daily, 24 November 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Supercomputers Return to the Limelight
       The Wireless, the Seekers, and the Sorters
       Over the Top: Man Threatens Murder After Getting Spammed
       Virtual High School
       Prague: Where It's At, Information-Wise

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Investigating The First Thanksgiving: You Are The Historian
       Honorary Subscriber: Fannie Lou Hamer

SUPERCOMPUTERS RETURN TO THE LIMELIGHT
After years of decline, the supercomputer industry's now where the action
in. Jim McGraw of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory explains: "The
Japanese Earth Simulator has re-energized the U.S. government and the high
performance computing field," and David Turek of IBM's Deep Computing
Initiative says: "Grids have happened. It's fundamentally a proposition
about access to computing power and it's cascading across the industry."
(Grid computing harnesses as many as several thousand computers in a single
powerful system.) Another relatively new development in supercomputing is
reconfigurable logic, which allows semiconductor devices to be reorganized
internally to run different kinds of applications quickly. (New York Times
24 Nov 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/11/24/technology/24neco.html

THE WIRELESS, THE SEEKERS, AND THE SORTERS
A new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 27%
of teenagers and 20-somethings are considering abandoning their home phones
in favor using only their cell phones. Overall, 21% of cell phone users of
all ages have considered canceling their home phone service, but as of now
only 3% have actually gotten rid of their fixed-line phones. The study also
found that the tech elite consists mostly of 30-somethings who spend an
average of $169 a month on information goods.  Study author John Horrigan
points out as a new paradox the fact that those who consume more information
technology are the least likely to report feeling overwhelmed by the volume
of information: "They know how to sort through that." (Washington Post 24
Nov 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8674-2003Nov23.html

GETTING SOME RAGE OUT: MAN THREATENS MURDER AFTER GETTING SPAMMED
A few months ago 44-year-old Charles Booher, a self-described non-violent
person, went bonkers after receiving too much spam, and sent a series of
e-mail messages threatening to kill the spammer. Now Booher's been charged
with 11 violations of interstate communications, for which he could be
sentenced to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if found guilty. His
current thoughts: "If I could go back, I wouldn't have done it. I would have
realized sooner that I needed to shut my Web site down, to shut down my
e-mail, and to re-evaluate the way I was using the Internet." In one of the
messages he told the spammer: "I will locate you, disable you using a quick
22 calibre shot to your lower spine and then duck tape... I am going to cut
into the left side of your brain using a power drill and an ice pick."
Reflecting on the messages he sent to the spammer, Booher now says: "It felt
like I was just getting some rage out." (San Jose Mercury News 22 Nov 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7326032.htm

VIRTUAL HIGH SCHOOL
The Michigan Virtual High School program has become the second-largest such
program in the country, with more than 7,200 student enrollments. The
program allows students to take courses over the Internet to earn credit for
a variety of classes not offered in their own schools. One student in the
program says: "It's not as hard as I thought it would be. You don't have to
sit in a classroom and listen to teachers talk. I can only listen to a
teacher for so long." Out of 13 states with the program, Florida has the
highest enrollment, with an expected 20,000 student enrollments this school
year. (AP/USA Today 23 Nov 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2003-11-23-virtual-school
-michigan_x.htm

PRAGUE: WHERE IT'S AT, INFORMATION-WISE
The Czech Republic is being increasingly seen by global corporations as an
excellent location for their customer call centers as well as back-office
and IT operations. DHL, the logistics group, will eventually be employing
1,000 people at a data center in Prague to track shipments, customer queries
and billing activities throughout Europe, and Accenture, the consulting
firm, plans a five-fold increase in employees in Prague over the next five
years, to 1,500 employees. The Los Angeles Times reports that whereas
previously service projects went to cheaper destinations such as India and
the Philippines, Western companies now see central Europe as a viable
alternative because it is closer in culture and time zone to companies'
headquarters, and because it has a better-qualified workforce, with a large
pool of expatriates who can speak multiple languages. (Los Angeles Times 24
Nov 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-ft-czech24nov24,1,6399557.story?coll=la
-headlines-technology

*****

FLASH CARD
     "In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been
granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do
not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it." (John F. Kennedy)

INVESTIGATING THE FIRST THANKSGIVING: YOU ARE THE HISTORIAN
     Take a look at Plimoth Plantation's interesting new site, the Online
www.plimoth.org/olc, where you'll find the award-winning Online Learning
Center called "You Are the Historian: Investigating the First Thanksgiving."
Honored as "Best Education Site," it challenges users to become historians
and teaches them what an historian is, how primary sources and oral
histories are used, and how historical events are interpreted and
reinterpreted. The site focuses on the harvest celebration of 1621, and
through exploration and activities, children learn what is known and guessed
about this event and how it evolved into the modern Thanksgiving holiday.
The director of this critically acclaimed project is Dr. Lisa Neal,
Editor-in-Chief of eLearn Magazine, www.eLearnMag.org.

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: FANNIE LOU HAMER
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the civil rights activist Fannie Lou
Hamer (1917-1977), who was one of the most eloquent speakers for the civil
rights movement in the south. She worked for political, social and economic
equality for herself and all African Americans; she fought to integrate the
national Democratic Party, and became one of its first black delegates to a
presidential convention.
     Hamer became known in the civil rights movement as a captivating
preacher and singer. Everywhere she went, the sound of her voice gave people
hope and made them want to join her in song; she would lead busloads of
activists -- black and white -- in fervent spirituals like "This Little
Light of Mine." Former White House aide Liz Carpenter, who worked with her
to help found the National Women's Political Caucus, once said that Hamer
"made evangelist Billy Graham look like amateur night."
     Born in Montgomery County, Mississippi, Hamer was the granddaughter of
a slave and the youngest of 20 children. Her parents were sharecroppers, and
at age six she began helping her parents in the cotton fields. Once grown,
she married another sharecropper named Perry "Pap" Hamer and settled down to
work land on the Marlow plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi. In 1962, when
Hamer was 44 years old, SNCC volunteers came to town and held a voter
registration meeting. She was surprised to learn that African-Americans
actually had a constitutional right to vote. When the SNCC members asked for
volunteers to go to the courthouse to register to vote, Hamer and 17 others
rode off to register at the courthouse in Indianola. On returning their bus
was stopped and they were jailed and beaten by the police. After being
released from jail, the plantation owner told her that if she insisted on
voting, she would have to get off his land -- even though she had been there
for eighteen years. She left the plantation that same day. Ten days later,
nightriders fired 16 bullets into the home of the family with whom she had
gone to stay.
     Finished as a sharecropper, she went to work on welfare and voter
registration programs for SNCC and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC). On a number of occasions she was arrested and severely
beaten, further debilitating a body that was still suffering from the ill
effects of childhood polio. In 1964, as a co-founder of the newly created
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), she electrified the Democratic
Party's presidential convention in Atlantic City and the nation with her
eloquent condemnation of the injustice of Mississippi Democrats seating an
all-white delegation. The Party buckled and gave voting and speaking rights
to two MFDP delegates, seating the others as honored guests. The Democrats
also agreed that in the future no delegation would be seated from a state
where anyone was illegally denied the vote through illegal tests, taxes and
intimidation. Fannie Lou Hamer died in 1977 at the age of 59. Speaking at
her funeral, Andrew Young said of her: "She shook the foundations of this
nation."

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0252021517/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for a biography of Fannie Lou Hamer -- or look in your favorite library.
(We donate all revenue from our book suggestions to adult literacy
programs.)

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