NewsScan Daily, 26 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 26 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization making
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Virtual Misunderstanding: Toys "R'" vs. Amazon
       Cingular to Sell Spectrum Rights to T-Mobile
       TiVo: Subscriptions and Revenue Up
       Porn Dumpers Move Offshore
       Florida Law Bans Deceptive Subject Lines
       See (and Photograph) the USA

FEATURES        
       Flash Card
       The Advancement of Learning: AAS
       Honorary Subscriber: Harold Urey

VIRTUAL MISUNDERSTANDING: TOYS "R'" VS. AMAZON
     Toys "R'' Us has accused Amazon.com of breaking a contract that gave
Toys "R" Us the right to be the exclusive toy and game seller on Amazon's
site. Since August 2000, when the contract was written, Amazon has shifted
its business model away from such exclusive arrangements and now has
multiple merchants offering the same products (sometimes at different
prices), the same way eBay does. Industry analyst Safa Rashtchy of Piper
Jaffray says, "Amazon does best if its total volume increases. It doesn't
matter if they sell the items themselves or earn a commission from a
third-party seller." Toys "R" Us is asking for court injunctions to prevent
Amazon from selling toys from other vendors and to prohibit Amazon from
posting ads from Google to competing online toy stores. (New York Times 25
May 2004) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/technology/25online.html

CINGULAR TO SELL SPECTRUM RIGHTS TO T-MOBILE
     Cingular Wireless is selling the rights to airwaves worth $2.5 billion
to T-Mobile USA in order to finesse antitrust objections to its acquisition
of AT&T Wireless. Cingular and AT&T have overlapping networks in large parts
of California and could be accused by regulators of having too much market
power. Cingular and T-Mobile say that they will not be trading subscribers
and that their new agreement will not affect service to existing
subscribers. (Washington Post 25 May 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55682-2004May25.html

TIVO: SUBSCRIPTIONS AND REVENUE UP
     Although TiVo, which markets recording systems that allow TV-watchers
to store and pause live television programs, has posted a loss in the latest
quarter, it can boast of acquiring 264,000 new subscribers and seeing its
revenue climb from $28.5 million to $34.5 million during the quarter. The
company says it expects to add 1.5 million to 1.6 million to subscribers
this fiscal year, which began in February. (Dow Jones/AP/San Jose Mercury
News 25 May 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8757320.htm

PORN DUMPERS MOVE OFFSHORE
     Some Australian Internet users are getting huge bills for phone calls
to exotic overseas locations, as providers of Internet pornography move
Internet dialing services offshore. Dial-up Internet users are disconnected
from their Internet service provider and then reconnected without their
knowledge to a premium overseas line. Charges are then split between the
telcos and the content provider. Many embarrassed users claim to have been
"dumped" -- i.e., connected to a premium-rate call without being fully
informed of the cost of the call. (The Australian 25 May 2004) Rec'd from
John Lamp, Deakin U http://tinyurl.com/2ymmk

FLORIDA LAW BANS DECEPTIVE SUBJECT LINES IN E-MAIL
     Legislation signed by Florida Governor Jeb Bush will allow the state's
attorney general to bring civil action against anyone in Florida who sends
spam e-mail with a subject line intended to give the message recipient a
false idea of what the message is about. (AP/USA Today 26 May 2004
http://tinyurl.com/2jj6l

SEE (AND PHOTOGRAPH) THE USA
     Imageos Inc. has built a van on which 13 digital cameras have been
mounted so it can photograph 50 million buildings in the country while the
van moves along (taking pictures every 15 feet). The van's drive-by
snapshots will then be matched against GPS satellite positioning data and
aerial photographs in a database, so that police, insurance agents and
others can call up overhead and street-level views simply by entering an
address. (AP/Los Angeles Times 25 May 2004) http://tinyurl.com/3x4q2

*****  

FLASH CARD 
     "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." (Sir Francis Bacon)

THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING: AAS
     The American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass.
<http://www.americanantiquarian.org> is a learned society and national
research library of early American history. Ellen S. Dunlap, the Society's
president and chief executive officer, says:
   "Chartered in October 1812, the Society has always been an independent,
nonprofit, and private institution, not governed or managed by any other
entity or collaborative. Its mission is to collect, preserve, and make
accessible for study a comprehensive library of research materials
documenting American history and culture through 1876, and thereby
contribute to a shared understanding of who and what made America what it is
today.² 
   The Society' current holdings include 670,000 books and pamphlets;
2,000,000 newspaper issues; 1,400 manuscript collections; and some 250,000
graphic arts and ephemeral items. The collections are distinguished by the
broadly inclusive view of collecting taken by the Society¹s librarians
throughout our history. Dunlap says, "AAS leaders were prescient in
acquiring certain genres (such as amateur newspapers, almanacs, children¹s
books, and women¹s diaries) long before their value as a resource for
understanding America¹s culture was recognized in the academy. They
consciously set out to collect the commonplace and ordinary piece of
printing, not just 'rare books.'"
   American Antiquarian Society founder Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831) began
earning his keep as a printer in Boston at the age of six -- learning to set
type before he could read -- and went on to become the leading printer,
publisher, newspaperman, and bookseller of his era. When he retired in
wealth and turned his attention to the systematic preservation of the
records of the origins and growth of the nation he had helped to make as a
patriot and civic leader, Thomas approached his task believing that the
answers to the liveliest historical questions lie in the lives and thoughts
of common people. 
   Under the current leadership of Ellen S. Dunlap, the Society sponsors a
lively on-line quarterly journal (http://www.Common-place.org) and works in
partnership with commercial vendors to provide enhanced access to texts in
its collections through micropublication and digitization. Its holdings of
pre-1877 American imprints stand without peer, even when compared to much
larger research libraries.
   Dunlap enjoys "the pleasure of working at a place like the American
Antiquarian Society, where people believe so strongly in the value of what
you do, and where the sense of institutional history and institutional
destiny is so palpable." She likes to quote founder Isaiah Thomas's
formulation of the Society's grand purpose:
     "We cannot obtain a knowledge of those who are to come after us, nor
are we certain what will be the events of future times; as it is in our
power, so it should be our duty to bestow on posterity that which they
cannot give to us, but which they may enlarge and improve and transmit to
those who shall succeed them. It is but paying a debt we owe to our
forefathers."
   [This is the first in a series of NewsScan tributes to the great research
libraries, museums, and archives that belong to RLG, the organization that
makes NewsScan Daily possible. Please visit http://www.rlg.org and also
http://www.americanantiquarian.org]

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: HAROLD UREY
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American chemist Harold Clayton Urey
(1893-1981), who won the 1934 Nobel Prize for chemistry for the discovery of
deuterium, a rare isotope of hydrogen.
     During World War II Urey directed a laboratory where isotopes of boron,
hydrogen, and uranium were produced for use in the development of the atomic
bomb. After the war, he undertook investigations into the history and
chemical nature of the solar system, and contributed to the studies made of
the lunar samples gathered by the Apollo astronauts. He studied the chemical
makeup of the sun, moon, and planets and formulated theories on the origin
of the solar system.
     In 1952 Urey published "The Planets: Their Origin and Development," in
which he presented his interesting theory that the planets of the solar
system may have derived from a gaseous disk rotating about the Sun and that
the disk, in combination with gases from the Sun, may have broken into
fragments and begun to condense. In the post war years, Urey also made
calculations of the temperature of ancient oceans by determining the amount
of certain isotopes in fossil shells.
     Urey was born in Walkerton, Indiana. He attended Montana State
University, graduating in 1917 with a major in zoology. During World War I
he developed an interest in chemistry, stimulated by the work he was doing
with high explosives. He next became a scholarship student at Berkeley,
where he earned a chemistry Ph.D. in 1923.
     Before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 1924, he spent a year
working in Niels Bohr's Copenhagen laboratory. His subsequent academic
appointments included serving on the faculty of Columbia University from
1929 to 1945, the University of Chicago from 1945 to 1958, and the
University of California at San Diego from 1958 until his death in 1981.
      Urey became an outspoken member of the scientists who protested
against the misuse of nuclear energy. He was further distressed when his
discovery of deuterium turned out to be of key importance in the development
of the more potent hydrogen bomb. For the remainder of his life Urey was
determined to confine his scientific work to matters that could not be
turned to destructive ends.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0381997057/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for a biography of Urey by Alvin Silverstein -- or look for it in your
favorite library. We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to
adult literacy programs.]

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