NewsScan Daily, 17 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 17 June 2003 ("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].
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Best Buy Decides Musicland Would Be Best Sold
       Reconfigurable Chip Design
       Big Brother at the Office
       SCO Sues IBM Over Unix License
       Hot University

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Roger Maris
       Mailbag: The World As We Find It

BEST BUY DECIDES MUSICLAND WOULD BE BEST SOLD
Best Buy, the nation's largest electronics retailer, is getting rid of its
Musicland unit, which it purchased in 2001 for $696 million. Industry
observer George Rosenbaum says, "Best Buy recognizes they made a huge
mistake. They've finally conceded they lost over $600 million." Bernie
Hackett, the owner of an independent music store, sums up the situation this
way: "The music industry is being destroyed by the Internet. Die-hard
customers don't shop here anymore because they get everything they need
online. To be honest, if I didn't own a record store, I'd probably do the
same thing." (Washington Post 17 Jun 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2522-2003Jun16.html

RECONFIGURABLE CHIP DESIGN
A coming trend in chip design will be the use of software that can, in an
instant, reconfigure a microchip's circuitry. Paul Master of QuickSilver,
which has created a prototype the chip, says: "Until now, the hardware had
to match the problem. Now we can change that." Possible uses of
reconfigurable chips will include: cell phones that can work anywhere in the
world; portable computers that can wirelessly and automatically connect to
the Internet using the most suitable radio frequency; and consumer
electronics devices that can easily adjust to every new technical standard
in digital sights and sounds. (New York Times 16 Jun 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/06/16/technology/16CHIP.html

BIG BROTHER AT THE OFFICE
More than three out of four of the nation's largest companies monitor
employee e-mails, Internet connections and computer files, because bosses
are worried that their employees, instead of working, will use the Internet
for pornography, online shopping, or Internet gambling. George Walls, a
union president in Milwaukee, says that companies "are far more aggressive
than they ever have been in the past. Virtually every minute of every day
they can tell what you are doing. With all the monitoring, it is turning
into an electronic sweatshop." Lisa Ellington, a call center worker, finds
the situation "kind of insulting," and explains: "I am a good employee and
don't have any reason to be stressed out by this. But it is human nature.
You tense up. I pay bills, buy children's school clothes or order flowers. I
know a lot of people did Christmas shopping. It gives you time to multitask
and take care of things." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinenal/SJMN 17 Jun 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6107429.htm

SCO SUES IBM OVER UNIX LICENSE
The SCO Group has revoked IBM's license to use Unix. SCO is claiming in a
lawsuit that IBM illegally used Unix in its AIX operating system. IBM seems
unruffled by the lawsuit. Its spokesman says: "As we have said all along,
our license is irrevocable, perpetual, and can not be terminated."
(Reuters/USA Today 17 Jun 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2003-06-16-sco-slaps-ibm_x.htm

HOT UNIVERSITY
The University of Twente in the Netherlands may have the largest wireless
"hot spot" in Europe, with wireless network supporting more than 6,000
students and a staff of 2,500 distributed across a 346-acre campus. A
university official says, "First-year students have a laptop with fast
wireless connection and can run heavy CAD design software, send large
images, and so on... Students and staff are quick adopters of these nice
facilities. The flexible way of teaching that this allows also helps with
new students who have experienced new ways of learning at school. They're
not used to classical ways of knowledge transfer anymore." (Cnet 17 Jun
2003) http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-1017988.html

*****

FLASH CARD
     "All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height."
(Casey Stengel)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: ROGER MARIS
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the legendary American League outfielder
Roger Maris (1934-1985), who was the home-run twin to Mickey Mantle and is
remembered by fans as the man with the asterisk in the record books: *Hit 61
home runs in 1961 in a 162-game season. The asterisk was inserted by
baseball commissioner Ford C. Frick to distinguish Maris's home-run record
from the one set in 1927 by the greatest Yankee of them all: Babe Ruth, who
hit 60 in the days of the 154-game season. It was inserted to defend the
Olympian feats of Babe Ruth against long seasons, short fences and newly
arrived sluggers. Asterisk or no asterisk, Roger Maris made history in
October of 1961 when he hit his 61st home run of the season in his 161st
game on the final day of the 162-game season in Yankee Stadium against Tracy
Stallard of the Boston Red Sox.
     Roger Maris was born in Minnesota, but was still an infant when his
family moved to Fargo, North Dakota. (The family name was Maras, but he
changed it legally in 1955 to Maris.) He was an outstanding athlete in high
school, a star in basketball and track and an all-state halfback in
football. The school had no baseball team, but he played American Legion
ball and became a star there, too. When he graduated from high school, a
scout for the Cleveland Indians offered Maris a $5,000 bonus and $10,000
more if he made the big leagues. Maris signed, and it didn't take him long
to redeem the full bonus. He broke into professional ball in 1954 in Keokuk,
advanced in 1955 to Reading, then in 1956 to Indianapolis in the American
Association, one notch below the majors. One year later, in 1957, he was
playing outfield for the Indians. Traded to the Kansas City Athletics in
1958, he was then traded to New York in 1959, with some recognition as a
blooming power hitter. In his debut in 1960, he hit a single, double and two
home runs, finishing the season with 39 home runs. The Yankees won the
American League pennant that year and began a streak of five straight
pennants.
     After 1964, the Yankees stopped winning pennants, following their
extraordinary run of 14 in 16 years. Maris, meanwhile, endured several
seasons of injuries to his back, hand and legs, and said later that he was
outraged by intimations that he had been exaggerating his ailments.
     In 1966 he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals, where he again
distinguished himself as a star player with a strong right-handed throwing
arm from right field and a strong left-handed swing at the plate. He played
for the Cardinals in the 1967 and 1968 World Series, and then retired at the
close of the 1968 season. His career record, with no asterisk, read: 12
years in the big leagues, 1,463 games, 5,101 times at bat, 1,325 hits, 275
home runs, 826 runs, 851 runs batted in and an average of .260. In seven
World Series, he hit six home runs.
     After retiring from baseball, Roger Maris lived in Gainesville, Fla.,
where he owned a beer distributorship. When he died in 1985 at age 51, he
was buried in Fargo, N. D.
         
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/059524615X/newsscancom/ref=nosim
for "Still a Legend: The Story of Roger Maris" -- or look for it in your
favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to
adult literacy programs.)

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

HORSE POLLUTION
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8567
     In response to the Seabiscuit piece on the terror of cars at the turn
of the 20th century: One thing that's often forgotten in the gripes about
auto pollution is that powdered horse manure and the fumes from dead beasts
in the streets were major -- and possibly unparalleled -- sources of stench
and pestilence on the urban scene. At least when cars died, they didn't
rot.(Derek Davis)

BACK UP YOUR DATA, START DOING IT NOW
Re: 
http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=honorary_subscriber&id=665
     Thanks for choosing Thomas Carlyle as one of your Honorary Subscribers.
I was inspired by a lecturer at a summer school to read 'The French
Revolution', and well worth the effort it was too. Carlyle's birthplace is
not too far from here, and I often drive past Ecclefechan on the way down to
England. Many of my colleagues have been forced to hear the same anecdote
which this always reminds me of: not sure how apocryphal it is. Anyway the
story goes that while writing 'The French Revolution' Carlyle sent the
manuscript to his friend John Stuart Mill (another famous Victorian thinker)
to read over & comment on. Mill received the manuscript for the first
volume, but sadly his maid used it as kindling to light the household fires
and the great (and not short) work of literature was destroyed: Carlyle had
to rewrite it from scratch. Which is, as I always point out to people, a
good reminder of why you should  *always* back up your data! (Allan Todd,
UK)

ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE
Re: 
http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=honorary_subscriber&id=665
     Was very interested in the piece on Thomas Carlyle; learn something new
every day--if you read NewsScan! Isn't Carlyle supposed to have said, in
response to someone's declaring "I accept the universe!", "You'd better!"?
Thanks as always for a great newsletter! (Dave Van Dyk) [You're right:
Margaret Fuller, the New England transcendentalist, was often quoted as
saying, ³I accept the universe,² and someone repeated her remark to
Carlyle.]

LOOK AWAY FROM INTEL
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8555
     Intel looks East? I think it would be deliciously fitting if American
programmers, in exchange, would optimize their programs specifically for AMD
processors and not Intel ones... which obviously wouldn't bother Intel,
right? It really is outrageous that they turn their back on the people who
created the technologies that made them successful. (Gordon Peterson)

EASTERN, WESTERN VIEWS OF ROBOTS
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8544
     The idea that Westerners tend to fear out-of-control robots while
Japanese don't seem to, brought to mind an article I read a few months ago
and a book I just finished. I bring them up not because I endorse or
disagree with what they say, but because they are provocative, which seems
to fit your "Worth Thinking About" theme.  The (lengthy) article
(http://www.hoopandtree.org/qx_of_evil.htm ) is about the psychological and
sociological factors that underlie human attitudes and behavior on the good
vs. evil axis. The "shadows and projection" section suggests that we fear in
others what we secretly know to be our own dark side -- how we would behave
given the opportunity. If one accepts that premise, might the idea that the
welfare of the community is more important than that of the individual,
which is at the heart of much Eastern philosophy and ethics, permit the
Japanese to feel that robots are nothing to fear -- they too will be good
citizens? (Joe Callahan)

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA
Re: 
http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=honorary_subscriber&id=664
     I grew up in East Aurora and I'm always pleasantly surprised when the
Fra's name [Elbert Hubbard] pops up. 'A Message to Garcia' was among the 5
most published works on the planet, measured by copies printed, and may
still be (along with the Bible (KJE?), the Koran, Mao's Little Red Book, and
Webster's Dictionary). This is from memory, so please don't weigh it too
heavily. I've never talked to anyone who claims to have read it. 8-) (Jeff
Wechter)

HANDLING CHALLENGES
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8516
     If I were you I'd be looking to manually handle challenges to your
responses to subscription requests - thus when someone subscribes, you send
an acknowledgement, their system sends a challenge, you respond to the
challenge and the acknowledgement gets through. This acknowledgement should
warn the subscriber that they must add NewScan to their challenge-response
system's whitelist if they want to hear from you again. This would at least
ensure that new subscribers have the relevant information to ensure you can
reach them. Existing subscribers who are cut off when they join a
challenge-response system might well try and resubscribe, so you'd get most
of them too with any luck. (Of course I don't know what your volume of
subscription requests is -- perhaps this is unmanageable but it's surely
better than trying to handle the challenges returned for every single
edition.) (Merlyn Kline)

TECHNOLOGY USERS: HERE'S A CHALLENGE FOR YOU
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8516
     "If you sign up for challenge-response, then say goodbye to NewsScan
Daily." Not so in my experience. I took all my current lists and entered
them either in my address book or my list of domain exceptions right from
the start. And even with the few I forgot initially, I've been monitoring my
suspected email mailbox and whenever Earthlink traps something dubious, I
immediately make a new exception entry, so that any queries that go out need
not be answered.The technology and its mechanisms are working perfectly and
the need for any action on my part has been reduced to nil. Users have to
take at least some responsibility in order for any system like this to
function properly. (Bob Walthers)

LOTS OF WHITE SPACE
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8516
     SpamBlocker has a feature that allows me to add entire domains to my
address book, so, for example, if you respond to me using any address from
the newsscan.com domain I will get it, as I added newsscan.com to my domain
address list. In the 9 days I've been using it, SpamBlocker has only put two
emails that weren't spam into my Suspect folder for me to check. AND, it
allows me to click just once to send the suspect mail to my Inbox and add
the address to my address book. In both cases they were addresses from sites
where I'd registered and purchased an item and forgotten to add the domain
name to my address book. Easily remedied with the one-click transfer to my
Inbox, add to my address book feature.I suppose it would depend on the type
of job one has and the need to be getting email from folks one has not had
previous contact with. But, for me, the challenge/response system EarthLink
has instituted works very well. (Carole Leita)

HOW TO DO IT
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8516
     If you are using spamBlocker, to keep getting NewsScan or ANY mailing
list, simply add the NewsScan "from" address ([email protected]) to your
address book using your TotalAccess 2003 connection software, or on the Web
at webmail.earthlink.net.(John Nolt)

PATRIOTIC RECALL
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8512
     When Admiral Elmo Zumwalt became Chief of Naval Operations several
decades ago, he found many Navy old-timers, including many Admirals,
unwilling to go along with changes he implemented to improve and modernize
the Navy. Some of those old-timers soon retired -- early and involuntarily.
I feel the same treatment may need to occur in our security agencies before
they do what we expect of them. We don't need the Dept of Homeland Security
to make these agencies share information. For when they do share &
cooperate, we don't need to give up personal liberties or personal data to
TIA/Genoa to achieve greater security. Let's make the pre-Sep 11 agencies
work together and repeal the propaganda misnamed "The Patriot Act." (R.
Cullen)

DISTRIBUTED TROUBLE
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8507
     This concept is troublesome to me. People leave their personal
computers open to allow someone else to get the best use of their computer
power? After spending sometimes over $1,000.00 for that computing power? And
someone else gets all the glory (assuming something comes from their using
that computing power)? Not with my money! Let me pose another scenario. Why
can't these folks who need all this computing power use the computing power
intrinsic to all the computers being discarded because of their age or
obsolescence? Why don't they say "Send us you old computers. We'll put them
to good use!" They could be daisied, or serialed, or paralleled or whatever
to get the same result. Let the shippers volunteer free shipping to these
specific addresses as their part of this charitable activity. And, this
solution would not require the Internet bandwidth being used to network all
these far flung machines. It's a perfect answer to the environmental
concerns inherent in disposing of obsolete computing machines. And, after
all, let's face it, the research being done using Distributed Computing will
probably lead to some technology that will be turned into some consumer
goods, which I will eventually pay for anyway, so why should I pay twice?
(Michael H. Bell)

THE BACK BONE CONNECTED TO THE SPAM BONE
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=8535
     The multi-national company I work for installed a filter earlier this
year. They did put out a notice that we should tell people we contact
regularly to call if they didn't get an e-mail response from us. A week or
two later, several of us got into a water cooler conversation and it turned
out that we no longer could e-mail from home to work. One woman related that
her daughter had traditionally relied on e-mail to communicate from school
to home. She'd discovered that this no longer worked when she picked her
daughter up from class and was confronted with an angry young woman who
wanted to know why she hadn't picked her up early. Her mother asked her what
she was talking about and her daughter related: 'We were supposed to leave
early to pick out our prom formals. I e-mailed you but you didn't show up
and didn't e-mail me back to tell me you couldn't come.' Her daughter's
e-mail had been filtered since it used the word 'buy' (as in prom formal.)
     E-mail had been a very efficient method of communicating with her
daughter, now the daughter calls her mother at work (a practice not
encouraged by most companies) and the mother must rely on messages relayed
through the school office (which requires her to call long-distance from
work.)
     Another told how he'd started carrying work home on disk (a practice
that will become harder as more computers are bought 'sans disk.')
     I decided to complain to our Information Resources Department. They
told me that my e-mails from home were being legitimately blocked due to
'profane words'. I countered that I didn't use profanity and asked for a
list of the words that held up the messages. They told me that the filter
replied back with the offending words. I countered that I had not received
any such reply. My messages simply didn't get through.
     This exchange went on with predictable results. I was admonished to
quit wasting the company's time and cease sending personal e-mails from home
to work.  Seeing my job threatened, I apologized profusely and promised to
never abuse the companies e-mail system again. [Later, I discovered that my
own ISP's filter had caught the company's SPAM filter replies (because, of
course, they contained the offending words such as; Buy, Deal, Body, etc.)]
     Since I'd been instructed to quit wasting the company's time on
frivolous complaints about the spam filter, I couldn't even report other
work-related problems with the filter when I discovered them. I now use
phone, fax, and a HotMail account to communicate with many customers who've
been blocked by our corporate spam filter.
     Ain't technology great?" (James McClellan)

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