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

NewsScan Daily, 23 June 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Food Stamp Era Over: The System Goes Electronic
       AOL, Yahoo, MSN And Earthlink Join to Fight the Zombies
       SBC to Spend $4-6 Billion on Data Network
       Dell Wants Bigger Share of Educational Market
       Wireless Cops at the Airport

FEATURES        
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Bill Lear

FOOD STAMP ERA OVER: THE SYSTEM GOES ELECTRONIC
     Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman has declared the end of the "paper
era" of the food stamp program: "This month the food stamp program arrived
in the 21st century. States are destroying the paper coupons, and we don't
anticipate that we'll ever have to print them again." Everybody seems to
like the new electronic debit cards -- the recipients avoid the stigma
attached to the paper coupons, the grocers get paid faster, and the states
find the electronic simpler and less open to fraud. Under the new system,
each recipient has an account in which benefits are electronically deposited
each month, and can be drawn on at the checkout line of a grocery store by
sliding a plastic card through the same device used for commercial debit or
credit cards. One benefits recipient says that when he was a teenager he saw
"addicts who would trade food stamps for drugs even though they had sick
children starving," whereas with the debit cards "you have no choice but to
purchase food."(New York Times 23 Jun 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/politics/23FOOD.final.html

AOL, YAHOO, MSN AND EARTHLINK JOIN TO FIGHT THE ZOMBIES
     The country's four largest providers of e-mail service have united in a
war to defeat the "zombies" -- personal computers that have been
surreptitiously invaded by spammers, who then use them to send spam and
other messages without the knowledge of the PC owners. The Anti-Spam
Technical Alliance, which includes AOL, Yahoo, MSN and Earthlink, is urging
all Internet providers to police their networks more aggressively and to cut
service away from zombie machines. There may be hundreds of thousands of
zombie PCs around the world, accounting for as much as 40% of all spam that
is generated. (Washington Post 22 Jun 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61759-2004Jun22.html

SBC TO SPEND $4-6 BILLION ON DATA NETWORK
     SBC Communications, the San Antonio-based telephone company, plans to
spend $4-6 billion over the next five years to build a network for
transmitting high-speed Internet data, digital TV and voice calls, through a
service based on Microsoft's TV IPTV platform for HDTV, video-on-demand, and
digital video recording (DVR). SBC chief executive Edward E. Whitacre
credits the Bush administration for fostering the development of new
technologies in the telecom industry, which he predicts "will soon enough
increase the demand" for advanced telecom services throughout the country.
(Dow Jones/AP 22 Jun 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8984580.htm

DELL WANTS BIGGER SHARE OF EDUCATIONAL MARKET
     Dell, which already has a 44% share of the education market, is pushing
even harder, by cutting prices and helping schools create digital
classrooms. Chief executive Michael Dell predicts: "I think it's fair to say
we're going to be growing faster than the market... A lot of these schools
are realizing, as many corporations have, that they really don't want to be
in the business of managing all this themselves, so they have turned to Dell
to do that." Kenneth C. Green of The Campus Computing Project, which tracks
technology use in higher education, comments: "Dell has been very successful
on a price and service-agreement basis -- they cut good deals. These are
commodity products now, so price is very important." (AP/Los Angeles Times
23 Jun 2004) http://tinyurl.com/yubzr

WIRELESS COPS AT THE AIRPORT
     State troopers patrolling Boston's Logan International Airport will be
using Blackberry handheld wireless devices to search the database of a
company called LocatePLUS, which holds billions of online public records.
The database was developed by aggregating and integrating a number of
databases to create what the company's chief executive calls a "complete
dossier" on an estimated 205 million people. State Police Lt. Thomas Coffey
calls the system "invaluable" and says "it really provides us with
information that we probably could not obtain elsewhere without a lot of
legwork." LocatePLUS has more than 15,000 customers, including more than
2,000 law enforcement agencies. (AP/USA Today 23 Jun 2004)
http://tinyurl.com/2dp69

*****  

FLASH CARD
     "The whole world loves a maverick, but the whole world wants the
maverick to achieve something nobler than simple rebellion." (Kevin
Patterson)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: BILL LEAR
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the inventor and entrepreneur William
Powell Lear (1902-1978), whose creative genius expressed itself in a
remarkable career that included impressive inventions in aviation,
communications and navigation.
     Lear's name is an eponym in the field of corporate aviation, where his
Learjet enjoys a dominant commercial presence. Less well known is his
invention of the commercially short-lived 8-track tape player. The highly
successful Motorola company owes its start to Lear's invention of the car
radio, the company's first product and the one from which it took its name
as a contraction of "motor" and "victrola."
     In the short span of twenty years, beginning in 1920, Lear earned over
100 patents for groundbreaking electronic devices in three industries,
including the first practical automobile radio, the airplane radio-compass
and autopilot, and the now outmoded eight-track tape player. Many of his
communication and navigational devices have found worldwide applications in
commercial and military aviation.
     Lear was born in Hannibal, Missouri in 1902. His formal education was
minimal, lasting only through the eighth grade in the Chicago public
schools. At age 16 he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and saw service during the
first World War. After the War, having become a competent auto mechanic, ham
radio operator, and an aviation mechanic at Chicago's Grant Park Airport, he
learned to fly, and began to pursue his interest in electronic technology.
At the age of 20, he founded Quincy Radio Laboratory, where he invented the
first workable automobile radio, the rights to which he sold in 1924 to
Motorola. Lear then turned his attention to airplanes, inventing the first
reliable aeronautical radio compass, which led to the development of the
"Learmatic Navigator," an automatic pilot system, which kept planes on
course by locking into radio broadcast signals. The Learmatic Navigator
earned him the prestigious Frank M. Hawks Memorial Award.
     During World War II, Lear's companies became a major supplier of
technological equipment to the Allied forces. After the war, Lear continued
to perfect his miniature autopilots for fighter jets, adding a system for
fully automatic landings in low visibility conditions. For this work he was
awarded the FAA's Collier Trophy, bestowed on him by President Truman in
1950. 
     In 1962, the French government honored Lear for making automatic blind
landings possible in passenger airplanes. It was in 1962 also that Lear
formed the Learjet Company to meet the emerging market demand for corporate
jets. The Learjet was developed in Wichita in 1964, and quickly earned a
solid market position. By 1975, over 500 Learjets had been sold, and today
the company -- under different management -- remains the world's foremost
supplier of corporate jets.
     In the 1970s Lear busied himself with further small-aircraft design,
including the use of new composite materials in their construction. He also
became involved in a search for an antipollutant steam engine.
     Lear died in 1978, and in 1981 he was given a final honor of
investiture into the International Aerospace Hall of Fame.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0395353726/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for the biography "Stormy Genius: The Life of Aviation's Maverick Bill
Lear" -- or look for it in your favorite library. Note: We donate all
revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy program.]

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