NewsScan Daily, 28 January 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 28 January 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       HP Bumped From List of 'Best Companies to Work For'
       Homeland Security Department to Give Cyber Alerts
       Amazon's First Profitable Year
       AT&T Wireless Up for Grabs
       Gates on the Next Ten Years

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Mike Royko

HP BUMPED FROM LIST OF 'BEST COMPANIES TO WORK FOR'
Hewlett-Packard, which has always been known as an employee-friendly
company, has failed to make Fortune's magazine's 2004 list of the "100 Best
Companies to Work For" for the first time since the company's merger with
Compaq Computer. The fall from grace is due partly to the fact that, in
surveys, HP employees gave the company management poor marks on credibility,
respect and fairness.  Jeanne Palmer, a Human Resources consultant, says:
"I'm not terribly surprised the results are what they are. When you've done
a significant merger as they've done and that results in layoffs, the
employees aren't going to be as happy. I think the results will look
different in a year or two." The company says that its own internal survey
of 93,500 employees last year showed the company rated high in seven areas
(including strong leadership), average in two areas, and weak in four areas
(including workload management). (San Jose Mercury News 28 Jan 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7806351.htm

HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT TO GIVE CYBER ALERTS
The cyber security division of the Department of Homeland Security is
creating a new, centralized system for alerting the country to network
threats by providing a clearinghouse of information on hacking, viruses,
worms and other forms of cyber terrorism. Cyber security director Amit Yoran
explains: "We are focused on making the threats and recommended actions
easier for all computer users to understand, prioritize and act upon. The
vendor community is focused on sales as well as on protecting their clients.
Coming from the U.S. government, the focus [of the new centralized system]
is solely on the public interest." (Washington Post 28 Jan 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55804-2004Jan28.html

AMAZON'S FIRST PROFITABLE YEAR
Online retailer Amazon.com earned $73 million in the fourth quarter, and was
thereby able to boast its first full-year profit. But Goldman Sachs analyst
Anthony Noto said that the electronics and merchandise category seems to be
slowing down for Amazon and added: "The question remains how big can they be
outside of books, music and video." Amazon, however, says it will add new
types of merchandise this year, and will increase its spending on technology
for the first time since 2000. (New York Times 28 Jan 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/28/technology/28amazon.htmlVIRU.html

AT&T WIRELESS UP FOR GRABS
Suitors for No. 3 U.S. cell phone carrier AT&T Wireless now apparently
include Japan's NTT DoCoMo (which already owns 16% of AT&T Wireless) and SBC
Communications, and a bidding war seems likely. AT&T Wireless has
acknowledged strong interest from several parties but says that it won't
enter into any deal before mid-February. (USA Today 28 Jan 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techcorporatenews/2004-01-28-att_x
htm

GATES ON THE NEXT TEN YEARS
Microsoft cofounder and chief executive Bill Gates predicts that by the end
of this decade software will be intelligent enough to let users know if and
when it should alert them with new information that would be of special
interest to them. Here's how he sees it all happening: "If you want to write
a document, if you want fill out your tax returns, you'll use the larger
screen device [available on a PC]. If you want to go out and just take
something that fits in your pocket, you'll take the phone. And so there's an
imperative to make these things work together. For example, if you want to
be notified about something that's changing, that's important to you,
software should know which device you have with you and should know what
you're doing, know the context to understand if interrupting you with this
new information is appropriate or not." [Homework question for the advanced
student: What information worthy of interrupting him should be brought to
the attention of Mr. Gates?] (AP/Los Angeles Times 28 Jan 2004)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology12jan28,1,3889909.story?c
oll=sns-ap-toptechnology

*****

FLASH CARD
     "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." (Emile Coue)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: MIKE ROYKO
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the longtime Chicago newspaper columnist
Mike Royko (1932-1997), who was the gruff, but witty, voice of Chicago's
working class ethnics. He turned out his nine hundred word columns at the
prodigious rate of five, or sometimes, six a week. Before he ended up at the
Chicago Tribune as a nationally syndicated columnist, he worked for a number
of newspapers, including the Daily News and the Sun Times. Over the years he
published several compilations of his columns, and in 1971 a controversial
book about Mayor Richard J. Daly and Chicago machine politics entitled
"Boss." Praised by some as a "primer in politics," Boss was criticized by
others as "the product of an intense dislike" of Daly, "intended to portray
him as unfavorably as possible." A more balanced critique appeared in the
Saturday Review, which asserted that Rokyo's "devastating attack on Daly and
his machine" was "well directed" and "never overstated." Despite his
frequent biting criticism of municipal failings, Royko clearly loved his
Chicago, and always wrote feelingly about its denizens. And for that he was
rewarded with coveted honors: the three most prestigious being a 1972
Pulitzer Prize for commentary, The National Press Club Lifetime Achievement
Award in 1990, the Damon Runyon Award in 1995.
     Royko was born to working class parents in a heavily Slavic Chicago
neighborhood. He grew up living in an apartment above a tavern owned and
operated by his family. He graduated from Salmon Chase Elementary School and
then attended several high schools, dropping out at age sixteen to complete
graduation requirements by attending a YMCA education program. Next he
worked nights at the Marshall Field Department Store, while taking courses
for two years at Wright Junior College. He spent the four years 1951-56 in
the U. S. Air Force, working the last year on the base paper of O'Hare
Field, then an air force base. After his discharge from the service, he
became a reporter for a local Chicago news service, covering city and county
for several neighborhood weeklies. In 1959 he was hired by the Daily News,
first as a reporter and soon after as a columnist free to write about the
Chicago political scene. From the start he displayed a remarkable talent for
producing readable human-interest columns about local social conditions and
their effect on the lives of "the little guy." Many of his columns dealt
with government venality and corruption. For example, he reported
ticket-fixing, no-show jobs for friends and relatives of city officials, and
lenient sentences for mob enforcers.
     Royko died in his beloved Chicago in 1997 at the age of 64. A fellow
newsman paid him this tribute: "Royko wasn't quite a Twain, or a Mencken,
but his writing was distinctive and memorable and in its time the closest
thing to lasting literature in a daily paper. Royko could make you laugh and
make you think, stir outrage at a heartless bureaucrat, or bring a tear to
the eye when he flashed a glimpse of the heart hidden beneath his hard
shell."

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226730727/newsscancom/ref=nosim
for "One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko" -- or look for it in your
favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to
adult literacy programs.)

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