NewsScan Daily, 7 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 7 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Tapscott Says Innovate or Die
       Asia-Pacific Technology Update
       Educated (But Unemployed) in India
       Audacity, Fun, and Work at MIT
       Truly Anonymous File-Sharing
       The Mental Health of Chinese Youth

FEATURES        
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: André-Marie Ampère

TAPSCOTT SAYS INNOVATE OR DIE
     Rebutting business analysts who preach about the "commoditization" of
information technology and says that IT doesn't matter anymore, technology
guru Don Tapscott rejects the commoditization thesis as just plain silly:
"In fact, nothing in the universe is as diverse as a byte of data, which can
carry information ranging from baby pictures to a digitally signed
million-dollar bank transfer. It's like saying that Shakespeare's works are
a commodity because he uses the alphabet just like everybody else." Tapscott
says that those who advise companies to spend less and suggest that they
follow rather than lead in technology are drawing a blueprint for failure;
his own prescription is: "Cut fat, not your company's nervous system.
Ultimately companies face a choice. They can innovate in IT -- a resource
still in its infancy -- to enable new business designs that help them
differentiate in the market. Or they can yield to the pressures and cynicism
of a difficult business environment. Punishment is already proving swift for
those who make the wrong choice." (CIO Magazine 1 May 2004)
http://www.cio.com/archive/050104/keynote.html

ASIA-PACIFIC TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
     IT spending in the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan should grow 10%
to $88 billion ($AU120 billion) this year, thanks to a recovery in regional
economies. This represents a sharp acceleration from the 3.4% growth seen in
2003, says industry research firm IDC: "Infastructure upgrades and business
oriented initiatives are driving IT demand for 2004." The director of
information technology spending research at IDC says that 58% of more than
3,000 company executives recently surveyed across the region plan to
increase IT spending this year. Only 2.5% indicate that their technology
expenditures will decrease. (The Australian, 6 May 2004)
http://tinyurl.com/36j3e Rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin University

EDUCATED (BUT UNEMPLOYED) IN INDIA
     In spite of the fact that U.S. and European outsourcing has immensely
benefited India's economy (and although the country is now "shining,"
according to a government publicity campaign), there are still nowhere near
enough high-tech jobs to be had for a well-educated population. In the
Hyderabad area, about 60,000 jobs in information technology have indeed been
created -- yet many have gone to young Indians from across the country, even
though the region has 350,000 English-speaking graduates. The head of one
placement agent in Hyderabad says it's very difficult to place engineers,
because "no country has as many engineering colleges as this state." By the
end of 2002, the state had about 2.6 million educated unemployed residents.
(New York Times 6 May 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/international/asia/06indi.html

AUDACITY, FUN, AND WORK AT MIT
     MIT's new Strata Center -- which will house CSAIL, the Computer Science
and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory -- was designed by renowned architect
Frank O. Gehry to foster creativity and out-of-the-box thinking: walls lean
and tilt like stacked building blocks and staircases seem suspended in air.
MIT president Charles M. Vest says, "We hope that it's going to be a
building that will inspire people, make them think a little bit, and will
frankly show a little bit of the audacity and fun we have at MIT, as well as
the hard work we do." Architect Gehry, whose designs include the acclaimed
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, admits that the building "does take a
step into another realm, of innovation, and a bit of a sense that it doesn't
take itself so seriously, as some modernism does. It tends to have a sense
of humor, and I think that is attractive these days -- I hope so anyway."
The building is packed with technology, including a holodeck that
researchers will use to create three-dimensional environments. (AP/San Jose
Mercury News 6 May 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8605714.htm

TRULY ANONYMOUS FILE-SHARING
     Pablo Soto, co-founder of Madrid-based Optisoft, which runs the
music-only file-sharing networks Blubster and Piolet on proprietary MP2P
peer-to-peer platform, says: "Our users are requesting more and more
privacy. They are more than disgusted with the threat of lawsuits." Soto
says a new system upgrade should protect Optisoft's users from legal action
brought taken by the music trade group the Recording Industry Association of
America (RIAA), which has sued a number of Internet users for putting their
music collection online for others to download. Soto says, "I do not think
it will stop the RIAA from suing our users. But if any of our users has the
balls to go to court, I don't see any way on the planet for the RIAA to
win." (Reuters/USA Today 7 May 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/music/2004-05-07-anon-share_x.htm

THE MENTAL HEALTH OF CHINESE YOUTH
     China has shut down more than 8,600 Internet cafes in the last three
months, many of them for illegally admitting juveniles. The official Xinhua
News Agency warns: "Any such place allowing juveniles to enter or allowing
unhealthy information to spread through the Internet will face rigid, severe
penalty." The Chinese government agency for industry and commerce has
decided that Internet cafes that admit minors "have brought great harm to
the mental health of teenagers and interfered with the school teaching."
Last month an Internet cafe in the city of Chongqing was fined after two
teenagers spent more than 48 hours playing an online video game, then fell
asleep on a railroad track and were killed by a train. (AP/Washington Post 6
May 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6356-2004May6.html

*****  

FLASH CARD 
     "Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that
causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators." (Dave Barry)

ANDRÉ-MARIE AMPÈRE
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the French physicist André-Marie Ampère
(1775-1836), whose scientific investigations of electromagnetism earned him
the honor of having his name designate the unit measure of electric current.
     Following up the discovery of H. C. Orsted in 1820 that a wire carrying
an electric current deflected a magnetized compass needle, Ampere almost
immediately demonstrated what has come to be known as the "right hand screw
rule" to describe the nature of the deflection. Ampere showed that if one's
right hand were imagined as grasping the wire with the thumb pointing in the
direction of the current's flow, then the magnet's north pole would be
deflected in the direction pointed to by the fingers curled around the wire.
With this discovery Ampere set the stage for the scientific probing of the
relationship between electricity and magnetism, which Ampere first called
electrodynamics, but is now more correctly called the science of
electromagnetism. Ampere's contribution to the study of electromagnetism was
also important for his early attempts to quantify electrical and magnetic
phenomena, as well as the theories he advanced to explain magnetism in terms
of circling electrical currents. His classic work, "Mathematical Theory of
Electrodynamic Phenomena," was published in 1827.
     Ampere was born at Poleymieux-au-Mont-d'or, near Lyons, the son of a
well-to-do merchant. He was largely self-educated, working his way through
his well-stocked family library. He displayed an early aptitude for
mathematics, mastering the works of Euler and Bernoulli, but his reading was
quite broad, including, history, travels, poetry, philosophy and the natural
sciences.
     Unlike his father, who fell victim to the guillotine, he survived the
French Revolution and later found favor with Napoleon. He became a science
teacher, first in Lyons and then in Bourg, and later at the Ecole
Polytechnique. In 1808 he became inspector general of the university system
in Paris. Beginning in 1824, he also taught physics at the College de France
and philosophy at the Faculte des Lettres.
     His teaching and his scholarly pursuits helped him get through a life
that was otherwise personally sorrowful. He was greatly distressed by his
father's execution and the early death of his first wife. He found no relief
in his second marriage, which was not a happy one.
     Apart from his writings on electrodynamics, Ampere wrote a small
treatise, "Considerations on the Mathematical Theory of Chance," which
demonstrated that the habitual gambler has little chance against the house.
Ampere died in Marseille from pneumonia at age 61, and is buried in the
Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris, where the epitaph he chose for his tombstone
displays the sad words, "Happy, at last."

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0748406425/
newsscancom/ref=nosim for "Science in the Making" (E.A. Davis & N.A. Mott,
eds.) 
-- or look for it in your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from book
recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

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