NewsScan Daily, 11 October 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 11 October 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        One in Four Americans Seek Prescription Drug Info on the Net
        Let Your Fingers Do the Talking
        LambdaRail Lights Up
        Phone Companies Spinning Copper Into Fiber

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        RedLightGreen.com: Go There Now!
        Honorary Subscriber: Woody Guthrie
        Mailbag: The World As We Find It

ONE IN FOUR AMERICANS SEEK PRESCRIPTION DRUG INFO ON THE NET
      Twenty-six percent of Americans have consulted the Internet for 
information on prescription medications, according to a May-June 2004 phone 
survey conducted by the Pew Internet Project. "More Americans go online for 
health information than see a doctor on a typical day. Now that the cost 
and safety of prescription drugs have come to the forefront of policy 
debates, we see that significant numbers of Americans are turning to the 
Internet to get information and explore drug purchases," says Susannah Fox, 
director of research at the Pew Internet & American Life Project and author 
of the study. The survey shows that a majority of Americans (62%) still 
think purchasing drugs on the Internet is less safe than buying them at a 
local pharmacy. Only 4% of those surveyed had ever actually bought drugs 
through a Web site, and three-quarters said the last time they did, it was 
for a chronic medical condition, such as hypertension or arthritis. One 
quarter said their last online prescription was for some other purpose, 
such as weight loss or sexual performance. Ninety percent of online 
purchasers reported that they planned to continue buying their prescription 
drugs on the Internet. (Pew Internet & American Life Project 10 Oct 2004)
<http://www.pewinternet.org>

LET YOUR FINGERS DO THE TALKING
      Fingerprint technology appears to be the biometric identification 
method of choice, surpassing competing systems such as retina scanning, 
handprint geometry and facial recognition. "Fingerprints will be dominant 
for the foreseeable future," says Don McKeon, product manager for biometric 
security at IBM. One reason for its popularity is falling prices for 
fingerprint readers: Microsoft recently introduced a stand-alone model for 
$54 and earlier this year American Power Conversion rolled out a model for 
PCs priced at $45. Meanwhile, IBM said last week it would begin selling 
laptops with built-in fingerprint readers and Microsoft is marketing a 
fingerprint reader-keyboard and -mouse. International Biometric Group 
predicts sales of fingerprint readers will rise 86% to $368 million this 
year, up from $198 million last year, spurred by user rebellion against the 
myriad passwords computer users must now memorize. "Our parents didn't deal 
with the problem of remembering 20 passwords, and our grandkids won't even 
know what they are," predicts McKeon. (Wall Street Journal 11 Oct 2004)
<http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109744462285841431,00.html> (sub req'd)

LAMBDARAIL LIGHTS UP
      The National LambdaRail (NLR) last month completed the first phase of 
deployment, linking Denver and Chicago, Atlanta and Jacksonville, and 
Seattle and Denver, among others. Phase 2, which will focus primarily on 
the southern U.S., will provide high-speed Internet links among 
universities in Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Salt Lake 
City and New York. Experts say NLR's capabilities as an all-optical network 
far outstrip those of Internet2's 10-gigabit-per-second Abilene network. 
"The National LambdaRail is the next step in the natural evolution of 
research and education in data communications," says NLR chief executive 
Tom West. "For the first time, researchers will actually own the 
underlying  infrastructure, something that is crucial in developing 
advanced science applications and network research." Like Abilene, NLR is 
heavily backed by Internet2, the university consortium dedicated to 
next-generation Internet technologies, but NLR's high-speed links are 
independent of the commercial Internet backbone that comprises much of the 
Abilene network. (CNet News.com 11 Oct 2004)
<http://news.com.com/Optical+networking+The+next+generation/2100-1033_3-5403589.html>

PHONE COMPANIES SPINNING COPPER INTO FIBER
      In a pitch to spruce up its image and retain customers, Verizon 
Communications and other Bell companies are going door-to-door, offering to 
replace customers' old copper wire with high-speed fiber optic lines 
capable of handling not only phone calls but TV programming and Internet 
connections at six times the speed of cable lines. The move signals the 
Bells' determination to maintain their grip on consumers' communications 
channels, despite cable companies' aggressive move into Internet phone 
service. It's a risky strategy -- the installations are being provided for 
free, despite the fact that they can cost the telcos up to $1,000 per house 
in equipment and labor. Nevertheless, Verizon says it plans to spend $3 
billion to offer fiber service to three million homes nationwide by the end 
of 2005. (New York Times 11 Oct 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/technology/11fiber.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
      "So long, it's been good to know you, So long, it's been good to know 
you, So long, it's been good to know you, There's a mighty big war that's 
got to be won, And we'll get back together again." (Woody Guthrie)

REDLIGHTGREEN.COM
      Go right now to RedLightGreen.com, which was created by our friends 
at RLG to help everyone who ever has to find books in libraries, either 
close by or anywhere in the world. A pleasure to use, it searches 120 
million books to find the best matches to what you're looking for. If you 
ever do research you need this. Go to <http://www.redlightgreen.com> and 
type in 'hemingway' or 'wittgenstein' or 'rumpelstiltskin' or anything you 
want. Do it now, so you'll know it's there.

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: WOODY GUTHRIE
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American folk singer, guitarist, 
and composer Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) whose songs, many of them now 
classics, expressed his deep empathy for ordinary people and the hardships 
they experienced. Guthrie suffered many personal misfortunes of his own, 
but his music was never depressing but always uplifting. No matter how 
harsh the circumstances of life depicted in his songs, his view of life 
remained one of hope, his best-known song being the joyful "This Land Is 
Your Land." Guthrie's music and vocal style influenced many younger 
professional folk singers, including Bob Dylan and Jack Elliot, and after 
his death Guthrie's musical tradition was carried on by a number of folk 
singers and composers, including his son, Arlo Guthrie, born in 1947.
      Woodrow Wilson Guthrie came from Okemah, Oklahoma. He left school 
after the 10th grade, and at age 16 began to roam across the country, 
traveling by freight train, as so many did during the Great Depression of 
the 1930s. Carrying his guitar and harmonica, he passed his days composing 
songs about migrant workers and the destitute people who were his traveling 
companions, and serenaded them on the road and in the shantytowns and hobo 
camps of the 1930s. Besides expressing compassion for their plight, his 
songs also described the beauty of the American land.
      On his way to becoming a legendary modern American folksinger he 
wrote more than 1,000 songs, including such memorable tunes as "So Long 
(It's Been Good to Know Yuh)," "Hard Traveling," "Blowing Down this Old 
Dusty Road," and "Union Maid." Guthrie used his experiences with the 
dispossessed, combined with his own country heritage, to become a musical 
spokesman for labor and populist sentiment. He found his way to New York 
City, where he joined Pete Seeger and others in the Almanac Singers, who 
mainly performed for farmer and worker groups. During World War II he 
served in the Merchant Marine, after which he returned to the Almanac 
Singers to write the songs and sketches published under the title "American 
Folksongs."
      In 1943 Guthrie wrote an autobiography, "Bound for Glory" -- a film 
version of which appeared in 1976. During his last 13 years, he suffered 
from Huntington's disease, the degenerative nerve disorder that took his 
life in a New York hospital in 1967.
      [For a library with the Woody Guthrie biography "Bound for Glory," go 
to RLG's RedLightGreen site by clicking on 
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACT 
ION=EDITION&WORKID=14113897> ... or to buy the book go to 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452264456/newsscancom/ref=nosim> 
Note: We donate all revenue from our book and media recommendations to 
adult literacy programs.]

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

NAME-BRAND EQUIVALENT LEMONS
Re: <http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11457>
      You write: "Best Buy is using contract manufacturers to make its 
products, which it then turns around and offers to consumers for a lower 
price than many 'name-brand' equivalents." This has been one of my major 
annoyances when shopping for electronic entertainment toys. It's getting 
harder and harder to choose a product whose brand name you trust, by the 
brand alone. I even resorted to going by place of MFG for awhile; 
everything is coming from China now. Now they are hiding behind transient 
NAMES as well. Recently I almost bought a great looking TV whose price was 
rock bottom. However, when I looked into its short history, it was a real 
lemon: APEX. So, how can we know that they are not behind the new brands 
and that you can expect failure or loss of use within the warranty period? 
I don't buy things to store them in a shop for months on end. (Alex van Luik)

REINVENTION AS SECOND-TIER ELECTRONICS RETAILERS
Re: <http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11457>
      Regarding "Best Buy: The Brand," I suspect another reason they are 
doing this is to eliminate the popular practice of matching competitors' 
prices. If Good Guys is selling a 26" Sony TV for $50 less than Best Buy, 
and the consumer brings this to the salesman's attention, then Best Buy 
will match Good Guys' price (and the reverse is also true). With the 
introduction of in-house brands, there is no longer any competing product, 
at least in this regard, and Best Buy does not have to match prices. 
Profits go up. Hmmm. Best Buy could be starting a trend here to reduce the 
cut-throat competition between electronics retailers. Or, they could be 
unwittingly reinventing themselves as a second-tier electronics retailer. 
Think "RadioShack," which has sold mainly in-house brands for years. (Ben 
White)

KEEPING UP WITH THE ACMES OF THE WORLD
Re: 
<http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&dateissued=200 
41004>
      In answer to John McNulty's question ("Who wants a cellphone that 
takes pictures, plays music, or accesses  the Internet?"), I do! I bought 
my current phone because it has an MP3 player and FM radio built in. That 
said, I agree that almost everyone doesn't care about most of the features 
included with most of the phones on the market. On the other hand, what are 
the manufacturers to do? Once Acme Corp. offers a camera on their phone at 
price point X, then Smith Inc. can either keep up, drop their prices, or 
just hope people prefer the Smith brand. (Nate Scherer)

NO MYSTERY TOURS OF THE INTERNET, PLEASE
Re: 
<http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&dateissued=2004 
1004>
      Please, please, PLEASE ask your reader to NOT use URL obfuscators 
such as tinyurl. I refuse to click ANY link hosted on these sites, no 
matter how "relevant" the person offering this link claims it may be, nor 
how reputable the source publication. At least with a longer, albeit 
potentially "broken" link, I can see for myself which server the link if 
going to, and if the link is so long that it wraps over a couple of lines, 
a simple copy and paste will fix that. I need to know where you are 
intending to send me before I click any link. For all I know, the next 
tinyurl I click could take me to the infamous goatse guy, or someone's 
outwars clan, or a porn site, or some other undesirable site. URL 
obfuscators are a very bad thing! (Amos Bannister)

FINNS DESCENDING, QUITE JUSTIFIABLY
Re: <http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11484>
      You misprinted the OECD news report on low tech in Finland. You 
stated that too many people are still heavily reliant on Norway's natural 
resources!! OUCH!!!! The article in "The Age" states that "Too many people 
in Finland are still heavily reliant on their natural forest resources". I 
suggest a clarification before aggrieved Finns descend on NewsScan. _ 
Seeing Norway mentioned is what sent me to the source of the article as it 
seemed incorrect. (Sati Banerjee) [Thank you. Would you please help us get 
rid of some of the Finns who have descended, and are still descending on 
NewsScan? We won't ever, ever do this again. --J&S]

ANOTHER HIGHLY PERCEPTIVE NEWSSCAN READER!
Re: <http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11476>
      The article "P2P Gets A Boost" identifies one of the students who 
invented the search process as Francis Crick. Perhaps just coincidence, but 
one of the discoverers of the double helix has that name, too. Son? Not a 
very common name. (Dick Hatch) [An excellent scientific hypothesis, and you 
are correct. The Francis Crick who co-created of Neonet is the grandson of 
Francis Crick of double helix fame.-- J&S]

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We call our news section "Above The Fold" to honor the tradition of the 
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