NewsScan Daily, 3 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 3 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        IBM Turns Database Code Over to Open Source Group
        Small Businesses Suck Up HP's Lifeblood
        Yahoo Results Stay Close to Home
        Top Banking Sites Vulnerable: Researcher
        iTunes and Linux Make Sweet Music Together
        E-Books for Afghan Public Health Education

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: The Oceans
        Mailbag: The World as We Find It

IBM TURNS DATABASE CODE OVER TO OPEN SOURCE GROUP
      IBM announced it's giving the source code for Cloudscape, a database 
written in Java, to the Apache Software Foundation, an open source group 
that plans to rename the database Derby and make it available to software 
developers. The Apache group is best known as the steward of the Apache Web 
server, which is the software that powers most Web sites. Apache will hold 
the licensing and intellectual property rights to the Cloudscape code. 
Analysts say the move is geared toward boosting software applications 
development in the Java programming language while at the same time 
underscoring its support of the open source software movement. "The 
Cloudscape code is not a major factor in IBM's overall platform strategy, 
so this makes sense for IBM," says a Forrester Research analyst. (New York 
Times 3 Aug 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/03/technology/03java.html

SMALL BUSINESSES SUCK UP HP'S LIFEBLOOD
      The proliferation of printer cartridge fill-up stations over the past 
few years is taking a bite out of the profits of printer giants such as 
Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark. The fast growth of franchisers such as 
Australia's Cartridge World, which offers on-the-spot ink and toner 
refills, is attributable to their convenient locations and their ability to 
charge 30% to 50% below the cost of a new branded cartridge. "We want to be 
the McDonald's of ink and toner," says Burt Yarkin, CEO of Cartridge World 
North America. "We're going right into people's neighborhoods and becoming 
part of their lives." That's bad news for HP, which two years ago derived 
100% of its profits from recurring cartridge sales. But HP says the reason 
its cartridges cost more is higher quality. "Our cartridges still provide 
superior value," says HP VP of supplies marketing Boris Elisman, adding 
that refiller franchises command only about 20% of the overall cartridge 
market. However, the refillers counter that their inks, purchased from 
specialized German ink makers, are just as good as the brand name products 
and that refilled cartridges are environmentally friendly as well. And 
franchisees are reporting favorable results -- one Cartridge World 
franchisee who opened a store in June in Austin, Texas, reports about 20 
transactions a day and expects to break even on her $150,000 investment in 
six months. "Do you know any businesses out there that don't have a 
printer?" she asks. (Wall Street Journal 3 Aug 2004)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109148377828380947,00.html (sub req'd)

YAHOO RESULTS STAY CLOSE TO HOME
      Yahoo's taken the wraps off its latest bid to dominate the highly 
competitive search engine market -- a local search site that promises to 
provide more precise information about neighborhood businesses. The company 
is touting its local site as a major step forward in making search results 
more useable -- "We think this is a first product that crystallizes the 
power of local search" -- but several other search engines are pursuing a 
similar strategy. Verizon Communications beefed up the local results of its 
SuperPages.com site earlier this year and AskJeeves has announced a 
partnership with CitySearch to improve the quality of local search results 
on ask.com. (AP/Washington Post 3 Aug 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35973-2004Aug3.html

TOP BANKING SITES VULNERABLE: RESEARCHER
      The Web sites of three of Australia's four big banks are susceptible 
to cross-site scripting attacks, according to a British tech professional 
who gained prominence last year when he discovered a URL spoofing flaw in 
Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Sam Greenhalgh, who recently tested 
the Web sites of several British financial services companies and found 
many of them susceptible to the same kind of attacks, said the flaw 
resulted from sites not "sanitizing" information the user submits before 
displaying the information on the page: "If the information contains HTML, 
those HTML tags will be included on the site. Among other things this 
allows an attacker to include a tag that instructs the page to load a 
JavaScript file from another Web site." Greenhalgh provided demonstrations 
of injecting HTML on the sites using scripts he wrote himself. (The Age 2 
Aug 2004) Rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U.
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/02/1091412044139.html

iTUNES AND LINUX MAKE SWEET MUSIC TOGETHER
      CodeWeavers, a startup that specializes in software designed to 
enable Windows software to run on Linux, says its CrossOver Office 3.1 
software now adds support for Apple's iTunes. The version is currently in 
preview format and will be generally available later this year. "iTunes has 
been our No. 1 most requested application," says CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy 
White. "We remain confident that by the end of 2005, the majority of 
Windows applications will be supported by CrossOver Office. Until then, 
we're pleased to be bringing the appeal of iTunes to Linux users through 
the development of version 3.1." (CNet News.com 2 Aug 2004)
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-5293915.html

E-BOOKS FOR AFGHAN PUBLIC HEALTH EDUCATION
      The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is sending 
talking e-books to Afghanistan to give women basic lessons about public 
health, as part of a program based on the best-selling LeapPad e-books that 
help children learn to read. The books have a small wand that can be used 
to touch images of everyday life in Afghanistan that are then described in 
Dari or Pashto, the country's two principal languages. Health clinics 
initially will distribute 20,000 books to Afghan women. An HHS statement 
announcement of the program explains: "The people of Afghanistan continue 
to suffer from high maternal and infant mortality rates. By providing 
health information in a culturally competent manner, women's health, which 
had been ignored under the Taliban, can be improved throughout the region." 
(AP/USA Today 3 Aug 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/world/2004-08-03-afghan-ebooks_x.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "You must understand that I'm just as interested in someone I've 
known for ten minutes as in someone I've known for ten years." (Alberto 
Giacometti)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE OCEANS
      Marine biologist and deep ocean explorer Sylvia Earle writes:
      "Sometimes I am asked what I believe to be the greatest threat to the 
oceans, and thus to human survival and well-being. Is it the huge amount of 
trash and toxic chemicals that are dumped into the sea? Pesticide-, 
herbicide-, and fertilizer-laden runoff from the fields and lawns of the 
land? Acid rain and other toxins falling from the sky? Dredging and filling 
of shoreline marshes and productive, shallow sea-grass meadows? Oil spills? 
Overfishing? The introduction of exotic species?
      These are all problems, and all are contributing to the changing sea 
we are now witnessing, and causing. But if I had to name the single most 
frightening and dangerous threat to the health of the oceans, the one that 
stands alone yet is at the base of all the others is ignorance: lack of 
understanding, a failure to relate our destiny to that of the sea, or to 
make the connection between the health of coral reefs and our own health, 
between the fate of the great whales and the future of humankind. There is 
much to learn before it is possible to intelligently create a harmonious, 
viable place for ourselves on the planet. The best place to begin is by 
recognizing the magnitude of our ignorance, and not destroy species and 
natural systems that we cannot re-create nor effectively restore once they 
are gone.
      "This is the time as never before and perhaps never again to 
establish policies --on a small personal scale as well as on a broad public 
scale -- to protect and maintain planetary health. We have an opportunity 
now to achieve for humankind a prosperous, enduring future. If we fail, 
through inability to resolve thorny issues or by default born of 
indifference, greed, or lack of knowledge, our kind might well be a passing 
short-term phenomenon, a mere three or four million-year blip in the 
ancient and ongoing saga of life on Earth."

      [See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0449910652/newsscancom/ref=nosim for 
A. Earle's "Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans" -- or look for it in your 
favorite library. Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations 
to adult literacy programs.]

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

SHUFFLE OFF TO BUFFALO
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11081
      There was a charming homage to this image from the old Firesign 
Theatre ("The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra"): Hemlock Stones: I deduce 
that we're about to be visited by an American ingenue from upstate New 
York. Dr. Flotsam: How the deuce did you deduce that? Hemlock Stones: The 
taps on her shoes, Footman; they resound at a frequency produced by a 
unique alloy of aluminium and mag-nauseam, manufactured in Chicago, 
but...shuffled off to Buffalo! Dr. Flotsam: Uncanny inspiration, Stones! 
Hemlock Stones: Yes, and here's the last bit of inspiration from this 
can...<snort> ... Complexity and spaghetti are two different things. (Ron 
Zajac)

MISGUIDED NOTIONS OF PEDAGOGICAL PURITY
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11069
      Regarding Dan Hamilton's letter: I wonder if his daughter's school 
allows her to use crayons and scissors to do her projects. After all, these 
technologies could be approximated by rubbing with flowers and tearing. All 
technologies exist in a sequence from the most simple to the most complex. 
The question is what is the appropriate technology for the lesson. If you 
want to examine the internal properties of a piece of paper, tearing might 
be preferable to cutting. Calculators should be banned if you want to teach 
the basic facts of arithmetic, but if the lesson is about fluid dynamics, 
there is little to be gained by the drudgery of manual calculations. It is 
foolish to ban textbooks and PowerPoint out of some misguided notion of 
pedagogical purity. Like all tools they are useful for some tasks and not 
for others. (Andy Horner)

TECHNOLOGY ISN'T THE POINT
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/aacs/#l11
      NewsScan remains my favorite newsletter -- and the only one I think 
of as a MUST READ. Thank you for continuing to do such a great job! ... Re: 
the "Give Kids The Tools They Need" mailbag entry by Glen Bledsoe to Dan 
Hamilton's "Computers And Kids": With 20 years in the IT field before 
changing careers to become a secondary school teacher, I recognize that 
this is one of those "holy wars" that will not be easily solved. However, 
in the interest of simple fairness, it does seem worth pointing out a 
couple of things:
      Neither I, nor any of my children, have ever been involved with the 
Waldorf schools in any way -- but even so, I am familiar enough with it to 
instantly recognize that Mr. Bledsoe's comment "Is the real reason this 
school disdains technology is the belief that it harms the student, or is 
it because it would cut into their profits if they have to buy computers 
and software?" does nothing other than show his complete ignorance of the 
Waldorf concept and the philosophy behind it.
      Mr. Bledsoe seeks to impress us with his litany of buzz-words such as 
"3D and fractal... animations" and "layered-media projects;" and then 
states "I have dozens of examples of student work which could never have 
been created without technology" -- but the point is that, as parents, we 
are not nearly as interested in fractal animations as we are in the 
nurturing and development of our children's creative thinking, critical 
thinking, love of learning and progressive success and confidence. Mr. 
Bledsoe's comments do nothing to persuade me that computers are an 
important ingredient to any of those things.
      Mr. Bledsoe might thoroughly enjoy reading Clifford Stolls' book on 
computers in education: "High-Tech Heretic." (Matthew Blaisdell)

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