NewsScan Daily, 13 July 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 13 July 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Radio Kids in Japan
       IBM Wants to Be of Service
       The Phight Against Phishers
       Battling Cyberterrorism
       Microsoft's New Online Store

FEATURES           
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: The Greco-Roman Tradition

RADIO KIDS IN JAPAN
     School officials in the Japanese city of Osaka will soon be using RFID
technology to monitor the movements of their pupils. (The acronym stands for
radio frequency identification.) The tags, which will be read by readers
installed at various key locations throughout a school, will be placed on
the children's schoolbags, name tags, or clothing. (CNET 12 Jul 2004)
http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/systems/0,39001153,39186467,00.htm

IBM WANTS TO BE OF SERVICE
     IBM is offering a line of servers based on its new high-performance
Power 5 microprocessors. Forrester Research analyst Brad Day says, "This
step ratchets up IBM's position in the ongoing battle among the Unix
titans." The systems make it possible for several workloads to be run at
once on a single machine, greatly increasing the utilization rates. IBM says
that the Power 5 technology was designed specifically with actual customer
needs in mind (rather than in pursuit of the goal of simply improving raw
chip performance). Ravi K. Arimilli, chief technology officer for IBM's
microprocessor and computer systems, explains: "We're taking a
solutions-centered approach, how to design so the systems do a better job
doing the work customers do instead of a transistor-level mentality. That
means understanding how the layers of software really run on your system."
Executives at Sun and Hewlett-Packard are confident that their own server
strategies are up to this new challenge from IBM.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/13/technology/13blue.html

THE PHIGHT AGAINST PHISHERS
     The U.S. Senate is now considering legislation to fight "phishers" --
scam artists who use fake Web sites to dupe people into revealing their
financial or other private information. The proposed law could cost phishers
up to five years in jail and as much as $250,000 in fines. Typically, a
scammer who goes phishing will send a message doctored to look like an
official notice from some respectable bank or online store, and will use the
phony site to trick consumers into giving out their account information.
Avivah Litan of Gartner Research warns: "The Internet's becoming a very
dangerous place to conduct financial business unless you're willing to
scrutinize your activities very closely." (Washington Post 12 Jul 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44826-2004Jul12.html

BATTLING CYBERTERRORISM
     At the University of Tulsa, a program called Cyber Corps has become one
of the nation's largest institutions specifically created to combat
cyberterrorism. Since September 2001 the corps has grown from six
universities to twenty universities. The Tulsa program and similar programs
at Carnegie Mellon University, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the State
University of New York at Stony Brook have received large new grants from
the National Science Foundation. [The leaders at the Naval Postgraduate
School are professors Dorothy Denning and Peter Denning, special friends of
NewsScan.] (AP/San Jose Mercury News 12 Jul 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9136325.htm

MICROSOFT'S NEW ONLINE STORE
     In partnership with CNET Networks, Microsoft is planning a fall launch
for "Windows Marketplace," a shopping and downloading site that will allow
users to buy hardware and software for use with the Windows operating
system. The site will provide customer reviews and other information about
computers, software and other gadgets, and links to online merchants such as
Circuit City or Best Buy, where the consumer can make purchases. Safa
Rashtchy, an e-commerce analyst with Piper Jaffray, doubts that the new
store will make much of a difference: "So far in the e-commerce space we
have not seen a competitive product from Microsoft." (AP/USA Today 12 Jul
2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-07-12-ms-online-store_x.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
     "The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this
fever for writing." (Martin Luther)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE GRECO-ROMAN TRADITION
     While it is now academically fashionable in some quarters to downplay
the importance of the Western tradition, there may be some value in
recalling these words of the learned classicist Gilbert Highet about its
origins:
     "The Greeks and, learning from them, the Romans created a noble and
complex civilization, which flourished for a thousand years and was
overthrown only through a long series of invasions and civil wars,
epidemics, economic disasters, and administrative, moral, and religious
catastrophes. It did not entirely disappear. Nothing so great and so long
established does. Something of it lived, transformed but undestroyed,
throughout the agonizing centuries in which mankind slowly built up western
civilization once more. But much of it was covered by wave after wave of
barbarism; silted over; buried; and forgotten. Europe slipped backwards,
backwards, almost into savagery.
     "When the civilization of the west began to rise again and remake
itself, it did so largely through rediscovering the buried culture of Greece
and Rome. Great systems of thought, profound and skilful works of art, do
not perish unless their material vehicle is utterly destroyed. They do not
become fossils, because a fossil is lifeless and cannot reproduce itself.
But they, whenever they find a mind to receive them, live again in it and
make it live more fully."
     [See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195002067/qid=1089661185/news
scancom/ref=nosim for Gilbert Highet's "The Classical Tradition: Greek and
Roman Influences on Western Literature -- or look for it in your favorite
library. Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult
literacy programs.]

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