NewsScan Daily, 18 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 18 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization making
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Google Slashes Share Price
       Net-Porn Is Good for You, Say Academics
       Violence at California's Cybercafes
       Voter Data 'Sale' in Australia
       U.S. Advertisers Go Digital to Track Ads

FEATURES           
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Kit Carson
       If Books Were Sold as Software (by Jef Raskin)

GOOGLE SLASHES SHARE PRICE
     Google has cut the expected share price for its initial public stock
offering by almost a third, an indication that demand from investors is
considerably less than was expected. The Internet search firm now says its
expected price range will be between $85 and $95 per share -- whereas its
original projected price range was between $108 to $135 per share. Google
also announced that the number of shares ultimately available to the public
will be reduced from about 25 million to 19.6 million. (Washington Post 18
Aug 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10478-2004Aug18.html

NET-PORN IS GOOD FOR YOU, SAY ACADEMICS
     Pornography is good for people, says the academic leading an Australian
taxpayer-funded study of the subject. Alan McKee and his colleagues
Catharine Lumby and Kath Albury are conducting the Understanding Pornography
in Australia study. The Labor party is considering forcing Internet service
providers to filter hardcore porn in order to protect children using home
computers. McKee says: "The surprising finding was that pornography is
actually good for you in many ways. When you look at people who are using it
in everyday life, over 90% report it has had a very positive effect" because
it had taught them to be "more relaxed about their sexuality," made them
think about another person's pleasure, and made them less judgmental about
body shapes. (The Australian 17 Aug 2004) Rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U.
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10468780%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E
,00.html

VIOLENCE AT CALIFORNIA'S CYBERCAFES
     Episodes of violence at several businesses in southern California have
prompted a number of municipal crackdowns -- the latest of which is taking
the form of a Los Angeles ordinance requiring that the city's 30 Internet
cafes enforce the city's long-standing curfew for minors, pay for in-store
surveillance cameras, enforce limits on how many computers each business can
operate, and obey prohibitions against dark window coverings. But Ernest
Miller, a spokesman for iGames, which represents about 500 PC gaming parlors
in the U.S. and abroad, insists that there's nothing particularly violent
about cybercafes: "A haven for gang activity can be any location where
people gather -- corner liquor stores, pool halls or cinemas." (AP/San Jose
Mercury News 17 Aug 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9425640.htm

VOTER DATA 'SALE' IN AUSTRALIA
     The Australian Electoral Commission will investigate whether the
Liberal Party has on-sold to its federal and state candidates political
databases containing private information about voters, in breach of federal
electoral laws. Former ministerial staffers have told The Australian the
Liberal Party secretariat has offered discounts to ensure candidates buy the
Feedback database, which contains personal information about their
constituents based on Australian Electoral Roll electronic data. AEC
spokesman Brien Hallett said the law prohibited the use of protected
electoral roll data being used for "commercial purposes," but that
definition would need to be tested by a court. (The Australian 17 Aug 2004)
Rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U.
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10466272%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E
,00.html

THEY'RE INTO YOUR TELLY, NEXT THEY'LL BE INTO YOUR PANTRY
     The top four U.S. broadcast networks -- CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox -- have
signed on to comply with a new 12-character code system called Ad-ID, to be
used for tracking all advertising. The system is being compared in
importance to the introduction three decades ago of the universal product
code (UPC) bar codes for tracking retail sales and inventory. Marketing
professor Peter Sealey at the University of California at Berkeley explains:
"It's going to allow advertisers for the first time to precisely target
individuals for whom the message has relevance. This way we can create on
the fly a different ad for a different household." Example: a diaper
manufacturer could select households with babies while a dental adhesive
maker would pinpoint their denture-wearing neighbors, based on information
that consumers provided. Sealy says that five years or so from now Ad-ID and
RFID systems will be used together: "Then we could measure whether we
delivered the commercial to you, and, as I am monitoring your pantry,
whether you bought the product, too." (Reuters/USA Today 18 Aug 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2004-08-18-rfid-plus-ads_x
htm

*****

FLASH CARD
     "We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the byways and untrodden
depths of the wilderness, and travel and explore and tell the world the
glories of our journey." (John Hope Franklin)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: KIT CARSON
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the frontiersman Kit Carson (1809-1868),
whose exploits as a trapper, scout, Indian agent and soldier made him a
legend in his own time.
     Though small in stature, Carson was an expert shot (at age 8, he could
shoot a squirrel at 50 yards), and during his early years in the Western
wilderness grew into a lean and hardy member of the fearless breed of fur
trappers known as the "Mountain Men." Caught up in the westward migration of
settlers, Carson became a feared Indian fighter. Yet in his later role as an
Indian agent, he emerged as a protector and friend of the tribes he
supervised.
     Carson was born with the given name Christopher, in Madison County,
Kentucky. His father died when he was nine, and Kit received no schooling.
He was apprenticed to a saddle maker in 1825, but ran away to join an
expedition to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he became an experienced trapper
and Indian fighter. When John C. Frémont was commissioned to conduct
government mapping expeditions of the Northwest Territories, he chose Carson
to be his guide. During the third expedition in 1847 war broke out with
Mexico, and Frémont moved quickly to occupy California as a U.S. possession.
Frémont then sent Carson to Washington with dispatches for President Polk.
     En route Carson ran into General Stephen Kearny who countermanded
Carson's orders and forced him to guide his army group back to California.
Thirty miles from San Diego, they were ambushed by the Mexicans, and were
only saved from defeat when Carson crept through enemy lines and ran on foot
all the way to San Diego for reinforcements.
     Again sent to Washington with dispatches, Carson and a small party
crossed the continent in three months. President Polk acclaimed Carson a
hero and made him a lieutenant in the Mounted Rifle Corps. When he returned
West, Carson learned that the Senate had voted down his commission, in all
likelihood a spiteful action taken against Fremont's father-in-law, Senator
Thomas H. Benton.
     Carson settled into civilian life with his second wife, Maria
Jaramillo. They were married following the death of his first wife, an
Arapaho woman he named Alice. In 1854 Carson was appointed Indian agent at
Taos for two Utes tribes and (unlike many agents) Carson dealt honestly with
the Indians -- who admired him for that and for his obvious love of
children. (He had seven children of his own.)
     When the Civil War broke out, Carson was appointed Colonel of the 1st
New Mexico Volunteers, and in 1862 he fought Confederate forces at Valverde,
New Mexico. Later he led campaigns against the Apaches and other Plains
Indians, forcing them to live on reservations. In 1865 Carson was made a
brigadier general and later was appointed Colorado's territorial
superintendent of Indian affairs, a position he held until his death in
1868. The Carson name is honored historically in various Southwest
locations, including Nevada's capital at Carson City, Colorado's Ft. Carson,
and California's Carson Pass.

[See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0803250312/newsscancom/ref=nosim
for Kit Carson's autobiography -- or look for it in the multimedia section
of your favorite library. [Note: We donate all revenue from our book
recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

IF BOOKS WERE SOLD AS SOFTWARE (BY JEF RASKIN)
     We received this note from our friend Jef Raskin, who is famous as the
creator of the Macintosh computer:
     "To share with my fellow NewsScan readers --
     "If books were sold as software and online recordings are, they would
have this legalese up front:
     "The content of this book is distributed on an 'as is' basis, without
warranty as to accuracy of content, quality of writing, punctuation,
usefulness of the ideas presented, merchantability, correctness or
readability of formulae, charts, and figures, or correspondence of (a) the
table of contents with the actual contents, (2) page references in the index
(if any) with the actual page numbering (if present), and (iii) any
illustration with its adjacent caption. Illustrations may have been printed
reversed or inverted, the publisher accepts no responsibility for
orientation or chirality. Any resemblance of the author or his or her
likeness or name to any person, living or dead, or their heirs or assigns,
is coincidental; all references to people, places, or events have been or
should have been fictionalized and may or may not have any factual basis,
even if reported as factual. Similarities to existing works of art,
literature, song, or television or movie scripts is pure happenstance.
References have been chosen at random from our own catalog. Neither the
author(s) nor the publisher shall have any liability whatever to any person,
corporation, animal whether feral or domesticated, or other corporeal or
incorporeal entity with respect to any loss, damage, misunderstanding, or
death from choking with laughter or apoplexy at or due to, respectively, the
contents; that is caused or is alleged to be caused by any party, whether
directly or indirectly due to the information or lack of information that
may or may not be found in this alleged work. No representation is made as
to the correctness of the ISBN or date of publication as our typist isn't
good with numbers and errors of spelling and usage are attributable solely
to bugs in the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word. If sold
without a cover, this book will be thinner than those sold with a cover. You
do not own this book, but have acquired only a revocable non-exclusive
license to read the material contained herein.  You may not read it aloud to
any third party. This disclaimer is a copyrighted work of Jef Raskin, first
published in 2004, and is distributed 'as is', without warranty as to
quality of humor, incisiveness of commentary, sharpness of taunt, or aptness
of jibe." 

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