NewsScan Daily, 23 March 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 23 March 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Webball: Microsoft's Deal With Major League Baseball
       Should People Be Blocked From Replying to Spam?
       Andreessen: High on Offshore Outsourcing
       The Desktop Wars: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft
       Threaten Google, Get Arrested

FEATURES        
       Flash Card  
       Worth Thinking About: Real Politics

WEBBALL: MICROSOFT'S DEAL WITH MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
     In a multi-year deal with Major League Baseball (MLB), Microsoft's
MSN.com will promote MLB.com products, offer exclusive free baseball
content, and give users of its paid MSN services access to live online
baseball games. Microsoft rival RealNetworks had an exclusive arrangement
with MLB in the 2001-2003 baseball seasons, but RealNetworks no longer has
exclusive rights, and the company has stopped offering baseball games as
part of its paid subscription services. (AP/San Jose Mercury News 22 Mar
2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8251053.htm

SHOULD PEOPLE BE BLOCKED FROM REPLYING TO SPAM?
     To defeat spammers, America Online blocks the ability of its members to
visit Web sites promoted by bulk e-mailers. Most spammer messages include
links that lead to Internet sites, but AOL members who now attempt to visit
a blocked Web page receive an error message saying simply that a connection
to the page could not be made. The result: less business for spammers. But
Washington attorney Paul M. Smith, a specialist in Internet and media law,
warns: "There is a service to AOL members by doing this, but there's some
trade-off... because some people want to go to those sites." AOL is the
first -- and so far the only -- Internet service provider to cut off access
to commerce Web sites advertised by spam. Cindy Cohn of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation calls the AOL strategy "paternalistic," even if
well-intentioned. (Washington Post 19 Mar 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9449-2004Mar19.html

ANDREESSEN: HIGH ON OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING
     Marc Andreessen, celebrated for creating the first Web browser a decade
ago, is an enthusiastic supporter of "offshoring" because it "fundamentally
reduces the cost of goods and services for Americans." He points out: "If I
can get my tax return prepared for less money because the offshore labor is
cheaper than the domestic labor, then as an American consumer, I'm better
off. At the same time, when American companies engage in offshoring, they
increase their own competitiveness worldwide -- delivering the same product
or service at a lower cost. That increases their ability to win in the world
market... The process of offshoring creates both jobs and consumer demand in
countries. If you look at what's happening in India and China today, there's
an incredibly rapid creation of a middle class. And of course, many of the
goods and services they are going to buy are going to come from American
companies. So they will be buying iPods from Apple and drinking Coke and
wearing Nike shoes and getting their financial services from Merrill Lynch."
Andreessen calls the desire of some members of Congress to restrict the use
of offshore labor "the silliest, dumbest thing I've ever heard of in years.
It's just nuts." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 23 Mar 2004)
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/0304/23outsourcing.html

THE DESKTOP WARS: GOOGLE, YAHOO, AND MICROSOFT
     John Battelle, author of a forthcoming book on the rise of online
search, thinks that the era of the operating system is over: "The Web has
created the equivalent of an operating system layered on top of the
computer's operating system. There is some question how important that
underlying operating system is going to be in the future." And so the new
combatants for control of the computer desktop are Yahoo and Google and
Microsoft's MSN. The fiercest contender may be Google, with an audience
nearly six times larger than it was in early 2001, but both Yahoo and
Microsoft think they'll be able to build a better search engine than Google.
Microsoft MSN director Lisa Gurry says: "Our customers tell us that no one
is doing a very good job with search right now. Our own internal data
indicates 50% of search questions go unanswered, so we think there are some
great opportunities ahead." (AP/USA Today 23 Mar 2004)
http://tinyurl.com/2doad

THREATEN GOOGLE, GET ARRESTED
     Federal law enforcement officials in California have arrested a
32-year-old man who demanded $100,000 from Google Inc. and threatened to
"destroy" the company by using a a software program to fake traffic on
Internet ads. The man's program automated phony traffic to cost-per-click
ads Google places on websites and caused Google to make payments to Web
sites the man had set up. Released on $50,000 bail, he faces up to 20 years
in prison and a $250,000 fine. (Bloomberg News/Los Angeles Times 23 Mar
2004) http://tinyurl.com/2a2vh

*****  

FLASH CARD      
     "History never looks like history when you are living through it."
(John W. Gardner)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: REAL POLITICS
     You don't know what you don't know, and most Americans living 60 years
ago knew nothing about the true relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt
and Harry S. Truman. (Not that most Americans living now would know these
things either!) At the time discussed in the following excerpt from David
McCollough's book "Truman," America was in the middle of World War II;
Roosevelt's health had deteriorated badly; and Senator Truman had just been
picked by Roosevelt's men to replace FDR's current Vice President, Henry
Wallace. Truman and Roosevelt hadn't had a single private conversation
before the president's men decided to get rid of Wallace and put Truman in
his place for Roosevelt's fourth term in office.
     Of the people mentioned in the excerpt, Henry Wallace, a man of the far
Left, admired Stalin; Joe Kennedy, father of Jack, Bobby, and Teddy, was far
to the Right, and had been an admirer of Hitler.
     Here's historian David McCollough:
     "How Truman honestly felt about Roosevelt can be deduced only from odd
remarks to friends or in his private notes and correspondence, and the
picture that emerges, though incomplete, is not complimentary. He called him
Santa Claus. He called him a prima donna and a fakir... There was little
subtle about Truman. He was never remote, rarely ever evasive. He had been
raised on straight answers by people who nearly always meant what they
said... To Republican Owen Brewster, Truman said he had but one objection to
the President and that was 'he lies.'
     "Such feelings, however, would never be publicly expressed, not by
Senator Harry Truman of his President, his Commander in Chief and leader of
the Democratic Party. That would be unthinkably disloyal, not to say
politically unwise and unprofessional. On occasion Truman could also rise to
Roosevelt's defense... At a meeting in Boston in a room at the Ritz-Carlton
Hotel that fall, halfway through the campaign, Joe Kennedy began vilifying
Roosevelt. 'Harry, what the hell are you doing campaigning for that crippled
son-of-a-bitch that killed my son Joe?' Kennedy said, referring to his
oldest son, who had died in the war. Kennedy went on, saying Roosevelt had
caused the war. Truman, by his later account, stood all he could, then told
Kennedy to keep quiet or he would throw him out the window. Bob Hannegan [a
Party insider] had to step in and take Truman aside to remind him of how
important Kennedy's money was to the Democratic Party."
                         ***
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671869205/newsscancom/ref=nos
im  for David McCollugh's "Truman" -- or look for it in your favorite
library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult
literacy programs.)

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