NewsScan Daily, 25 June 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 25 June 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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     NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization
making significant and sustained contributions to the effective management
and appropriate use of information technology. NSD is written by John Gehl
and Suzanne Douglas, [email protected].
     [Today's issue of NewsScan Daily is focused on Asia and the world and
is based exclusively on reports received from our Australian colleague John
Lamp, Deakin University.]
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Yahoo Launches Search Engine for Chinese
       Apple Loses Appeal Against Trademark Panel Decision
       Asia Pacific Semiconductor Industry to Grow 27%
       Network Vandals Attack Taiwan Ruling Party Website
       NSW Makes Open Source Move
       Offshoring Still Under a Cloud
       Microsoft's Brazil Lawsuit 'Reprehensible'

FEATURES        
       Flash Card
       The Advancement of Learning: The John Rylands Library
       Honorary Subscriber: Aleksandr Pushkin

YAHOO LAUNCHES SEARCH ENGINE FOR CHINESE
     Yahoo's China unit has launched a new search engine called 'Yisou,' or
No. 1 Search, tailored to Chinese users. "By combining the best assets of
our proprietary Yahoo Search Technology with our expertise and knowledge of
the Chinese online space, we created a dedicated search destination
customized for the Chinese user," Zhou Hongyi, general manager of Yahoo
China, says. Yahoo's announcement comes less than a week after rival Google
took a strategic stake in leading Chinese-language Internet search engine
Baidu.com. Baidu, China's most popular search engine, was dropped by Yahoo
on its Chinese-language website in March. (The Age 22 Jun 2004)
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/22/1087844904038.html

APPLE LOSES APPEAL AGAINST TRADEMARK PANEL DECISION
     Apple has lost a court appeal against a decision that rejected its
request to have its trademark logo extended to cover clothing and other
items in China. The verdict by the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court
means that Apple cannot claim that its logo is protected under law for those
goods. The trademark appraisal committee of China's State Administration for
Industry and Commerce had previously rejected Apple's application from April
2000 to have its trademark logo extended to cover clothing, hats and shoes.
Guangdong Apples Industrial Co, a Chinese maker of leather goods, had
registered a similar trademark with an entire apple, while Apple Computer's
trademark has an apple with a bite taken out of it. (The Age 22 Jun 2004)
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/22/1087844904276.html

ASIA PACIFIC SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY TO GROW 27%
     Gartner, the market and technology research company, is reporting that
the Asia Pacific semiconductor industry will grow at a world-fastest rate of
27.4% to reach $90.8 billion this year, fueled by demand in China. Over the
next four years, the industry is expected to average 14.3% annual growth to
be worth $138.8 billion, up from $71.3 billion in 2003. "Riding on the
positive wave created in 2003, the Asia Pacific semiconductor industry is
poised to propel the global semiconductor market to new heights," says
Gartner Singapore-based analyst Philip Koh. "The rising demands from the
end-user industries are the key driving force. China, the electronic
manufacturing hub of the world, is expected to continue to lead the industry
in the region." (The Age 22 Jun 2004)
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/22/1087844918325.html

HACKERS ATTACK TAIWAN RULING PARTY WEBSITE
     Suspected Chinese hackers have attacked the website of Taiwan President
Chen Shui-bian's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The
party's homepage was replaced with pro-China pictures and digitally altered
images of Chen and his Vice President Annette Lu, a DPP official said. One
photo shows a Chinese People's Liberation Army soldier aiming his rifle at a
target while another shows two men raising the Chinese national flag.
Another picture shows Chen's head transposed onto the body of a man clad in
traditional Japanese costume of kimono while Lu was transplanted onto an
unclothed woman. (The Age 23 Jun 2004)
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/23/1087844973856.html

NSW MAKES OPEN SOURCE MOVE
     The New South Wales government has made official its push into open
source technology, launching a $AU1.5 million deployment of what may be the
state's largest-ever rollout of open source software on the desktop. The
deployment of the open source office productivity suite represents a real
threat to Microsoft's dominance of the desktop through its Office package.
The government's Roads and Traffic Authority has already indicated its
preference for open standards by installing Apple's iMac G4 across the
registries earlier this year. The rollout will be a limited deployment of
the software, with a further commercial rollout to half the organization's
7000 desktops promised over the next few years. (The Australian 24 Jun 2004)
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,9939948%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,
00.html 

OFFSHORING STILL UNDER A CLOUD
     While the global drive to reduce costs had pushed more companies to
outsourcing, a new report from the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton has
found that most organizations remain skeptical about offshoring. The report
found that IT and human resources functions were the business processes most
likely to be outsourced by large companies and that astering IT complexity
has become a critical success factor in managing overhead costs. Nearly 90%
of companies that described themselves as "behind the competition" in
providing overhead services cited the management of a "patchwork" of
different systems as their main IT challenge. (The Australian 24 Jun 2004)
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,9933334%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,
00.html 

MICROSOFT'S BRAZIL LAWSUIT 'REPREHENSIBLE'
     OSIA, Australia's Open Source industry body, has issued a scathing
criticism of Microsoft's lawsuit against Sergio Amadeu, President of the
Brazilian National Institute for Information Technology, calling it a
"reprehensible action" that attempts to "curb freedom of speech and of
criticism." The defamation lawsuit was filed after Amadeu defended the
Brazilian government's decision to shift 300,000 PCs from Windows to Linux.
He had said this decision "makes sense for a developing country where a mere
10% of the 170 million people have computers at home and where the
debt-laden government is the nation's biggest computer buyer." OSIA also
referred to Microsoft's "abuse" of its monopoly position, and Bill Gates's
address to university students in 1998, where he made a statement saying,
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people
don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are
going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted,
and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next
decade." (The Age, 24 Jun 2004)
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/24/1088046211448.html

*****  

FLASH CARD
     " Time makes more converts than reason." (Tom Paine)

THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING: THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
     [This is the second in a series of NewsScan tributes to the great
research ibraries, museums, and archives that belong to RLG <
http://www.rlg.org>,  the organization that makes NewsScan Daily possible.
Today we feature The John Rylands University Library of Manchester,
described by William G. Simpson, the Library's Director.]
                                        *****
     As befits the birthplace of the industrial revolution and the great
"Cottonopolis" of the nineteenth century, Manchester's University Library is
named after the city's greatest mill owner and cotton merchant, who at one
time employed 24,000 people in the city. The original John Rylands Library
was built and endowed in his memory by his wife, Enriqueta Augustina, whose
partly Cuban origins give us our own connection with the Americas. The
present Library was formed by the amalgamation, in 1972, of the Rylands
which, despite its medieval Gothic appearance, which leads some visitors to
mistake it for a cathedral, opened as recently as 1900, with the original
Manchester University Library, which was founded with the University itself
in 1851. The historic John Rylands building in the city centre houses the
Special Collections Division of the JRULM.
     And what Special Collections they are! Amongst our printed materials we
have the earliest example of European printing, the St Christopher woodcut
of 1423, and over 4,500 incunabula, including both versions of the Gutenberg
Bible and sixty Caxtons (only the British Library has more, but our copies
are generally agreed to be finer!). We also have an almost complete
collection of the works published by Aldus Manutius and individual treasures
include the Prayer Book of Mary Queen of Scots. Our manuscript holdings
include the earliest surviving portion of the New Testament, the St John
Fragment, dating from about 125AD, and range through superb western and
oriental mediaeval manuscripts to modern literary and other archives, whose
content ranges from manorial rolls to radio-astronomy.
     I wouldn't, though, want to give readers the impression that we are
only concerned with historic resources. Our modern printed collections are
only exceeded in scale among UK university libraries by those of Oxford and
Cambridge and they have had both a 500 year start on us and the advantage of
legal deposit. Our electronic resources exceed even theirs!
     But it's also all-change. The foundation of a new University of
Manchester from the existing Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST on
1 October this year means that we are currently merging two library services
to create an even greater and, we intend, better Library. I shall have the
privilege of being both the last Director of the historic JRULM and the
first Director of the new Library (whose name has been agreed, and won't be
very different, but can't yet be announced). Watch this space!
     Bill Simpson
     Director & University Librarian
     John Rylands University Library of Manchester

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: ALEKSANDR PUSHKIN
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Russian poet and prose writer
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837), generally considered Russia's
greatest poet. 
     Pushkin wrote in a wide variety of poetic and prose styles, but is most
admired for his masterpiece, the verse-novel "Eugene Onegin," which
Tchaikovsky made into an opera. In his early years he displayed a mastery of
lyric poetry and produced a number of plays in verse. In the late 1820's, he
began to write in prose, turning out short stories, novellas, and novels. He
also showed his superior talent as a literary critic, letter writer, and
Russian folklorist and historian.
     Pushkin was born in Moscow into a family of impoverished aristocrats
who nevertheless saw to his education. Raised in a cultured home
environment, Pushkin graduated from the lyceum in 1817. He then found a post
at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in St. Petersburg, where as a well-born
Russian youth he was able to enjoy the glittering social life available to
the privileged classes in Russia's capital city. He would eventually
satirize that life for its shallow pleasures and social insensitivities in
his great verse novel, "Eugene Onegin."
     Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and stepped forth
as a spokesman for literary radicals. This angered the government, and led
to his transfer from the capital -- first to Kishinev in 1820 and then in
1823 to Odessa, where he again clashed with his superiors who sent him into
exile at his mother's rural estate. Despite continuing strained relations
with the government, in 1826 Pushkin was recalled to Moscow under the
protection of the new czar, Nicholas I. In 1831 he married Natalia
Goncharova, a beautiful socialite, whose social ambitions forced him into
great indebtedness (and in 1837 caused his death in a duel fought in defense
of her reputation).
     Pushkin's early death was felt as a national tragedy by the entire
Russian intellectual community, and a number of great Russian writers have
made his death the subject of poems. Even as a student, he was viewed as the
great poetic genius of the nation, and critics today generally agree that
Pushkin has remained the single most important influence on Russian
literature since the 19th century. His work has been admired by such Russian
masters as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoi, and Chekhov. His writing has, in addition,
provided fertile ground for Russian composers, notably Tchaikovsky,
Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0192838997/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" -- 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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