NewsScan Daily, 6 October 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 6 October 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Google Does Books
        House Punishes Spyware Perpetrators
        Mobiles Reach All China's Ethnic Minorities
        Sony's 1000-Gigabyte Computer
        Microsoft in Your Living Room
        Radio When and How You Want It

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Bernhard Riemann

GOOGLE DOES BOOKS
      Google is launching a new service designed to help publishers sell 
books online. Called Google Print, it will allow users to see book excerpts 
alongside ordinary Google Web page search results, and will carry a link to 
buy the book from a variety of online book retailers, including Amazon. 
"It's an advantage for publishers because it offers them the possibility to 
promote books online. And for users, it gives them the advantage of 
accessing information about authors and books and even to read a little 
from the books," says a Google spokesman. (Reuters/USA Today 6 Oct 2004)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-10-06-google-print_x.htm>

HOUSE PUNISHES SPYWARE PERPETRATORS
      The U.S. House of Representatives has voted 399-1 to pass the "Spy 
Act," which imposes heavy federal fines on those who secretly install 
"spyware" programs on people's computers to surreptitiously monitor their 
Internet activities. The bill was introduced by Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.). 
(AP/Washington Post 5 Oct 2004)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9558-2004Oct5.html>

MOBILES REACH ALL CHINA'S ETHNIC MINORITIES
      China has brought its mobile phone network to the last of its ethnic 
minority regions previously cut off from communication with the outside 
world. The district of Drung in the mountainous county of Gongshan in 
southwestern Yunnan province was connected to the mobile phone network on 
Saturday -- the last of 55 ethnic minority regions to be hooked up, says 
the Xinhua news agency. (The Age 4 Oct 2004) rec'd from J. Lamp 
<http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/04/1096850384137.html>

SONY'S 1000-GIGABYTE COMPUTER
      Sony is introducing a computer and home-server system in Japan with 
1,000 gigabytes of hard-drive storage, which is enough to record six TV 
channels for full week. There are no plans to market the computer overseas. 
The machine has six analog TV tuners that can record six channels at once 
for a week at 19 hours of programming a day, and has a regular personal 
computer tuner for recording a seventh channel. (AP/San Jose Mercury News 6 
Oct 2004)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9849519.htm>

MICROSOFT IN YOUR LIVING ROOM
      Microsoft has developed a $200 device called MSN TV 2 to  pipe 
pictures, video and music from a PC to a TV, either wirelessly or via a 
cable, and to let users send e-mail and surf the Internet from their TVs. 
People with Internet connections pay either $9.95 a month or $99 a year for 
the service; dial-up access costs $21.95 a month. Gartner Research analyst 
David Smith explains, "As the economics tilt toward consumer electronics, 
Microsoft wants to be a key technology provider. Microsoft has deep pockets 
and a willingness to be there for many, many years. They're very patient. 
People are interested in being able to access their content from lots of 
different devices. And this is definitely a step in that direction." (Los 
Angeles Times 6 Oct 2004)
<http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-microtv6oct06,1,6758384.story?coll= 
la-headlines-technology>

RADIO WHEN AND HOW YOU WANT IT
      A company called Griffin Technology has introduced radioShark, a 
device that does for radio what TiVo does for television: allowing a user 
to pause, rewind or fast-forward live programming, and of course store it 
as well. Technology analyst Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal 
writes: "Overall, we found the radioShark to be a good idea, but it lacks 
some of TiVo's smart features. Because it doesn't have program schedules 
like TiVo does, you can't look through a list of upcoming radio shows to 
learn what will be on when, what specific song will be played, or which 
talk-radio topic will be discussed. By contrast, TiVo's schedule grid makes 
it a cinch to plan your recordings ahead of time... If radioShark were 
smarter, it could be a sensation. For now, though, it's more of a 
curiosity, or a tool for radio enthusiasts with a good sense of station 
schedules and time to invest." (Wall Street Journal 6 Oct 2004)
<http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109701902050037291,00.html> (sub req'd)

*****

FLASH CARD
      "If only I had the theorems! Then I should find the proofs easily 
enough." (Bernhard Riemann)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: BERNHARD RIEMANN
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the 19th-century German mathematician 
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866), who made important 
contributions in many areas of mathematics, including differential 
geometry, complex variables, and analytic number theory. He laid the 
foundations for modern topology, and his 1854 paper "On the Hypotheses 
Which Lie at the Foundation of Geometry" has become a classic treatise, the 
results of which Albert Einstein incorporated into his relativistic theory 
of gravitation. When Riemann first expanded geometry to use n-dimensional 
space to deal with concepts like distance and curvature, he produced a 
geometry that might have been considered a fanciful exercise in pure 
mathematics, with little relation to practical reality. As it turned out, 
however, Riemannian non-Euclidian geometry would have useful applications 
in physics and his view of geometry as the general study of "curved spaces" 
provided Einstein with some of the mathematical tools he needed to 
construct his theory of relativity.
      Riemann was born the second of six children of a Lutheran pastor, who 
gave him an excellent early education. Later, while attending the local 
Gymnasium he displayed a special talent for mathematics and to the 
amazement of his teachers mastered on his own calculus and Legendre's 
Theory of Numbers, topics that far exceeded the school's curriculum. 
Originally, Riemann intended to study theology and follow his father into 
the ministry, but his evident interest in mathematics persuaded him, with 
his father's kind approval, abandon theology for math and science. 
Beginning in 1846 he studied at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin, 
where he was interested in problems concerning the theory of prime numbers, 
elliptic functions and geometry. Following studies in experimental physics 
and natural philosophy, which sought to derive universal principles from 
all natural phenomena, he concluded that mathematical theory could secure a 
connection between magnetism, light, gravitation, and electricity, and he 
suggested field theories, in which the space surrounding electrical charges 
may be mathematically described. This was the beginning of his mature 
studies that would become so useful for the later development of modern 
mathematical physics.
      After an interruption to serve in the Prussian army during the 
campaign to suppress the 1848 Revolution, Riemann earned a doctorate at 
Göttingen in 1851, based on a thesis that was warmly praised by the then 
elderly, renowned mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. In 1853 Riemann 
joined the faculty at Göttingen, becoming professor of mathematics there in 
1859. Despite his delicate health, Riemann enjoyed a productive university 
career. In 1857 he became professor extraordinarius (associate professor) 
and in 1859 professor, succeeding the mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune 
Dirichlet, who had succeeded Gauss four years earlier. Despite persistent 
health problems Riemann produced a small but steady stream of papers, which 
contained his highly original ideas. He was only 39 years old when he died 
of tuberculosis in 1866. At the time of his death his friend, the famous 
mathematician Julius Dedekind, said of him: "The gentle mind which had been 
implanted in him in his father's house remained with him all his life, and 
he served his God faithfully, as his father had, but in a different way."

[See 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0677001401/newsscancom/ref=no 
sim> for S. Chowla's "The Riemann Hypothesis and Hilbert's Tenth Problem," 
or look for it in your favorite library using RedLightGreen from our 
friends at RLG, using the following link:
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACT 
ION=EDITION&WORKID=10320746&LANGUAGE=ENG&MATERIAL=books&FROMRSLT=1&FROMWORK= 
1&lang=English>
      Note: We donate all revenue from our book and media recommendations 
to adult literacy programs.]

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