NewsScan Daily, 2 March 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 2 March 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Yahoo to Mix Ads With Search Results
       Supremes to Review Child Online Protection Act
       Toshiba Engineer Sues For 20% of Flash Memory Profits
       Bernie Ebbers Facing Federal Criminal Charges
       Group to Support Open Source Software in Australia
       Touchy (and Unclear) Subject

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: John Hancock

YAHOO TO MIX ADS WITH SEARCH RESULTS
     Adopting a practice called "paid inclusion," Yahoo is now going to let
companies purchase the assurance that their Web sites will be included in
the index from which Yahoo search results are selected. Paid inclusion is
already used by MSN and Ask Jeeves, but not by Google, which separately
displays and clearly displays information offered by advertisers. Yahoo vice
president Tim Cardogan defends the Yahoo decision by saying, "What our users
care about is the relevancy of results, not whether the source paid to
participate." Google co-founder Larry Page disagrees: "Any time you accept
money to influence the results, even if it is just for inclusion, it is
probably a bad thing." (New York Times 2 Mar 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/business/02net.html

SUPREMES TO REVIEW CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT
     The Supreme Court will do a new review of the free-speech ramifications
of Congress' latest version of the 1998 Child Online Protection ACT (COPA).
The Justice Department's position is that "there is a compelling government
interest in protecting minors from the effects of material that is not
obscene by adult standards but that is nonetheless harmful to minors...
Minors today can search the Web as easily as they can change television
channels. Thus, in the seclusion of their homes or those of friends,
unsupervised minors can, with the click of a mouse, visit one pornographic
site after another." The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says the law
violates the Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of free speech:
"COPA's bludgeon suppresses an enormous amount of speech protected for
adults and is unnecessary and ill-tailored to address the government's
interest in protecting children from sexually explicit content."
(AP/Washington Post 2 Mar 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21935-2004Mar2.html

TOSHIBA ENGINEER SUES FOR 20% OF FLASH MEMORY PROFITS
     A former Toshiba engineer is suing his former employer, the Japanese
electronics maker, alleging that he was insufficiently compensated for his
work developing flash memory technology. That technology has made 20 billion
yen (US$183.49 million) in profits for Toshiba, and the engineer, who now a
university professor, is asserting that his fair share of those profits is
20%. Flash memory chips, which are able to retain data after power is
switched off, are widely used in mobile phones, digital cameras and other
portable electronics.(San Jose Mercury News 2 Mar 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8085401.htm

BERNIE EBBERS FACING FEDERAL CRIMINAL CHARGES
     The U.S. Justice Department is filing criminal charges Tuesday against
former WorldCom chief executive Bernard Ebbers and against MCI, which
acquired WorldCom. The alleged fraud, the largest in American history, and
is thought to have cost investors in excess of $9 billion. (AP/USA Today 2
Mar 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techcorporatenews/2004-03-02-ebber
s-criminal-charges_x.htm

GROUP TO SUPPORT OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN AUSTRALIA
     A group called Open Source Industry Australia is a new coalition of
information technology companies formed to increase the take-up of software
belonging to this genre among the corporate, government and education
sectors. Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia have organizations
that serve as industry clusters for these states but the rest of the country
had none, Zymaris said. (The Age, 1 March 2004)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/01/1077989490993.html

TOUCHY (AND UNCLEAR) SUBJECT
     Supporters of the new touch-screen voting machines promise paperless
elections cheaper and faster to administer, but there are plenty of
skeptics. David Jefferson, a computer scientist at the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, warns: "Once a ballot is cast, you can't pull it back
out. After the fact, you cannot recover from problems. It's not like a
financial system, where you can take reasonable risks; in voting, you just
can't." MIT computer science professor Ted Selker, more optimistic about the
machines, says: "There are things that are scary that don't happen. And the
versions of the software have been such that somebody with nefarious goals
would be as confused as the rest of us if they tried." CalTech political
scientist R. Michael Alvarez agrees with Selker, but adds: "The issue of
voting systems has gotten very politicized in the last year. The overriding
issue now is that there's an enormous amount of uncertainty election
administrators have about what technological change is happening and what's
going to be permitted under the law, and it's not entirely clear that we're
going to have the technology to meet the requirements that have been put out
there." (Los Angeles Times 2 Mar 2004)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-me-votetech2mar02,1,2014513.story?coll=
la-headlines-technology

*****

FLASH CARD
     "If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an
infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even
considering if there is a man on base. (Dave Barry)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: JOHN HANCOCK
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American patriot John Hancock
(1737-1793), whose instantly recognizable signature on the Declaration of
Independence is the basis for the American expression "putting your John
Hancock" on something as a fancy way of saying "signing it."
     Hancock was the wealthiest merchant in Boston when he joined with other
colonists to protest the Stamp Act and other British confiscatory measures.
As a man of great wealth, he might have been expected to side with the
loyalists instead of joining with the quixotic Samuel Adams to support the
cause of liberty, but he had experienced first-hand mistreatment at the
hands of the British government, and he entered public service as a staunch
opponent of Britain's meddling presence in the colonies.
     Hancock was born in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. Left an
orphan at a young age, he was adopted by his childless uncle, the proprietor
of a successful mercantile business. After graduation from Harvard in 1754
at age 17, Hancock went to work for his uncle, who in 1760 sent him to
London for additional training and experience. When his uncle died in 1763,
Hancock inherited the business, along with a sizeable fortune, making him
reportedly the wealthiest man in New England.
     He was a member of the Continental Congress from 1775 to 1780, serving
as its president from 1775 to 1777, when he resigned that position
(ostensibly for health reasons, but perhaps because of disappointment at not
having been appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army).
     In 1780 Hancock was elected the first governor of Massachusetts, and
became a nine-term governor. In 1788 he presided over the Massachusetts
Convention that ratified the Federal Constitution.
     Hancock was at his best when, after hearing that the British had
offered a large reward for his capture, he quipped about his signing the
Declaration of Independence: "The British ministry can read that name
without spectacles; let them double their reward.""

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471332097/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for a biography of Hancock by H.G. Unger -- or look for it in your
favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to
adult literacy programs.)

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