NewsScan Daily, 27 July 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 27 July 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       IBM to Build Supercomputer for DOD
       Google Struts Its Stuff
       Up Up & Away? VC Investments Reach Two-Year High
       Who Would Have Guessed It: Some People Like Spam!
       Bin Laden Hoax Virus Warning
       Dressed for Success on the Net

FEATURES           
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Beatrix Potter

IBM TO BUILD SUPERCOMPUTER FOR DOD
     IBM has been awarded a contract to build the U.S. military's fastest
supercomputer, a 20 teraflop system that will cost about $100 million to
build. The fourth-fastest computer in the world, the system will be used to
produce short-term weather forecasts for Navy fleets at sea and to allow
military scientists to model atmosphere and ocean dynamics for the entire
surface of the Earth. Other uses will be to analyze aircraft material at a
molecular level and to examine the flow of water around submarine hulls to
improve their design. The supercomputer's design calls for 368 of IBM's
high-end corporate servers, using processors from the family of chips that
power Apple's G5 Macintosh desktops and Nintendo's video game consoles.
(Washington Post 26 Jul 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16518-2004Jul26.html

GOOGLE STRUTS ITS STUFF
     Search engine company Google, which is planning to use a modified
"Dutch auction" to launch its initial stock offering of stock, expects those
shares to sell for $108-135 each. Industry analyst Andrew M. Schroepfer of
Tier1 Research comments: "On a pure valuation basis, this is expensive. But
if you have a creative mind like people did during the Internet bubble, it
could look cheap." In the auction, prospective investors will indicate how
many shares they want and the maximum price they're willing to pay. (New
York Times 27 Jul 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/technology/27google.html

UP UP & AWAY? VC INVESTMENTS REACH TWO-YEAR HIGH
     Venture capitalists invested $5.6 billion in start-up companies in the
second quarter of 2004, a two-year high that continues an upward trend in
investment and a 17% increase from last year. However, both the amount of
investment and the number of deals are far below the highs of 1999 and 2000,
according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Venture Economics and the
National Venture Capital Association. There is a continuing trend toward VC
investment in healthcare companies and computer technology also remained
attractive to venture capitalists, who invested $1.2 billion in 212 software
companies during the quarter. (AP/San Jose Mercury News 27 Jul 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9252001.htm

WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED IT: SOME PEOPLE LIKE SPAM!
     A Yahoo survey of Internet users found that one out of five U.S.
residents admit to buying products from spammers, and one out of three make
some kind of response to spam (such as by asking to removed from the list,
by insulting the spammer, etc.). In defense of spam, a 30-year-old
computer-book author in Los Angeles says, "Spam can be useful. One person's
spam is another person's bargain." Others seize on occasional deals they
find -- a practice strongly discouraged by Laura Atkins, president of the
anti-spam organization called SpamCon Foundation, who points out: "These
spam-reading consumers are perpetuating the problem." (USA Today 27 Jul
2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2004-07-27-spam_x.htm

BIN LADEN HOAX VIRUS WARNING
     E-mail purporting to contain evidence of Osama bin Laden's suicide
contains a "Trojan horse" virus that could allow network vandals to take
over infected computers. Naming the new scheme the Hackarmy Trojan horse,
the antivirus firm Sophos says, "Thousands of messages have been posted onto
Internet message boards and usenet newsgroups claiming that journalists from
CNN found the terrorist leader's hanged body earlier this week." The
messages point to a site where it's claimed that a file of photographs can
be downloaded, but what the file really contains is a Trojan horse that can
allow hackers to gain remote control of an infected computer. (The
Australian 26 Jul 2004)
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10248393%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E
,00.html

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS ON THE NET
     Want to wear an integrated software solution to the next party you go
to? A new jacket from the German clothing firm Rosner GmbH has a built-in
128-megabyte MP3 player controlled through cloth buttons on the left sleeve
and provides headphones sewn into the collar, along with a hands-free cell
phone microphone that works with phones on the Bluetooth short-range
wireless standard. The limited-edition garment is "geared toward
technologically progressive, fashion-conscious men." Dieter May, a business
strategist at Infineon, says: "We think it makes great sense to build in
electronics into clothes, and we are looking forward to develop further
clothes with integrated electronic solutions."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology11jul26,1,215307.story?co
ll=sns-ap-toptechnology

*****

FLASH CARD
     "Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can
walk step by step on the fells and rough land seeing every stone and flower
and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me
again." (Beatrix Potter)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: BEATRIX POTTER
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the English author and illustrator
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), who was much admired for her delightful
children's stories about small animals.
     Potter's first and probably most famous story was "The Tale of Peter
Rabbit." The books that followed introduced her young readers to such
interesting animal characters such as Squirrel Nutkin, Benjamin Bunny, Tom
Kitten, Jemima Puddle-Duck, the Flopsy Bunnies, and Pigling Bland. Potter's
literary style has been characterized as fanciful and humorous but not
sentimental. 
     Potter designed her books to be tiny enough so that even the smallest
children could hold them. Eventually Potter's writings created an entire
spin-off industry including pottery, tea towels, soft toys, and cartoon
films.
     Beatrix Potter was born in South Kensington, now part of Greater
London, England. The only daughter of a family made wealthy by Britain's
cotton industry, she was brought up in a protected family environment,
somewhat isolated from other children. She never went to school, but was
taught at home by a governess. She did enjoy long holidays in Scotland and
the English Lake District, and these childhood experiences left her with a
love of animals and a feeling for natural settings that inspired her
imaginative watercolor drawings.
     While on holiday in Scotland when she was 27 years old, Potter wrote
and illustrated an animal story in a letter meant to cheer up the sick child
of a former governess. It was the story of four bunnies named Flopsy, Mopsy,
Cotton-tail, and Peter. She was so pleased with the reception of her letter
that she was motivated to publish it privately as "The Tale of Peter
Rabbit." Later it was published commercially by Frederick Warne & Company,
the firm that subsequently went on to reap financial success by bringing out
22 more books by Potter.
     In 1905 Potter became engaged to Norman Warne, the son of her
publisher. The marriage never took place because Warne died suddenly of
leukemia only a month following the engagement. Potter then lived quietly on
the grounds of the small Lake District farm she bought with the proceeds of
a legacy and the royalties from her books.
     In 1913 she married her solicitor, William Heelis, and spent the last
30 years of her life living in the farmhouse she named Hill Top. In those
years she abandoned writing for sheep farming.
     The original illustrations for all of her works are now in the Tate
Gallery in London. In 1980 The Beatrix Potter Society was founded as an
organization providing a professional curatorship of Beatrix Potter
material.

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0723244049/newsscancom/ref=nosim
for the complete tales of Beatrix Potter -- or look for them in your
favorite library. Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations
to adult literacy programs.]

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