NewsScan Daily, 2 November 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 2 November 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       AMD's Low-Cost Online-Access Device
       Netflix Drops Prices
       A Choice Between Present and Future
       China Closes Internet Cafes
       Internet Stalker in Another 'Bad Patch' of His Life

FEATURES           
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: Confidence and Conscience

AMD's LOW-COST ONLINE-ACCESS DEVICE
     Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) plans to sell an Internet access device in
India and other developing countries for two to three hundred dollars.
Called the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), it was developed in
conjunction with companies such as Solectron, Seagate, Samsung, and
Macromedia, and will be sold in India through VSNL, an international phone
service and Internet access provider that's part of the India's Tata
conglomerate. VNSL will offer the device, which runs on a Microsoft
Windows-based operating system, as a bundled service to broadband customers.
Although Internet penetration in India is now about 0.4% and broadband
penetration 0.02%, the country plans to have 20 million broadband and 40
million Internet users by 2010, with much of that growth coming from
wireless technologies. (Reuters/USA Today 31 Oct 2004)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/gear/computing/2004-10-31-net-access-
india_x.htm>

NETFLIX DROPS PRICES
     Movie-rental service Netflix has reduced the price for DVD rentals from
$21.99 a month to $17.99 to combat competition from Blockbuster, Wal-Mart,
and Amazon. Netflix customers to online to select the DVDs they want to
rent, then receive them by snailmail and return them whenever they're
finished with them (and usually request some more films). (DowJones/AP 1 Nov
2004)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10072294.htm>

IN INDIA, A CHOICE BETWEEN PRESENT AND FUTURE
     Dharam Singh, chief minister of the Indian state in which high-tech
Bangalore is the capital, has promised to address complaints from software
and other high-technology firms about the city's poor roads and inadequate
power supply. Companies say they have had to hire vehicles to transport
their employees to the office, and that frequent power cuts force them to
run diesel generators. Singh is a member of the Congress party, which
increased local taxes on computers and software after coming to power this
year promising to help the rural poor. Pawan Kumar, chairman of software
firm VMoksha Technologies, has accused the Congress Party of damaging
India's high-tech future: "In the name of helping rural poor, this
government ignores the information technology sector, which has offered a
rare opportunity for India to play a big role in the global economy." (AP 1
Nov 2004)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041101/D8636A6G0.html>

CHINA CLOSES INTERNET CAFES
     China has shut down 1,600 Internet cafes and fined operators a total of
$12 million because they allowed children play violent games or commit other
violations of the government's policies to clean up Web sites and video
games. Investigators have inspected 1.8 million Internet cafes looking for
unlicensed operations, has ordered 18,000 of them to "stop operation for
rectification" of violations. The country has the world's second-largest
population of Internet users after the United States, with 87 million people
online. Culture Ministry official Zhang Xinjian says: "Porn, gambling,
violence and similar problems have adversely affected the healthy
development of the Internet in China." (AP/Los Angeles Times 1 Nov 2004)
<http://www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology12nov01,1,1722637.story?
coll=sns-ap-toptechnology>

INTERNET STALKER IN ANOTHER 'BAD PATCH' OF HIS LIFE
     A South Carolina man has been sentenced to five years of probation, 500
hours of community service, and more than $12,000 in restitution for
breaking a federal Internet stalking law by sending dozens of e-mails and
faxes to a woman who broke up with him more than a decade ago. He also made
it appear that the woman was sending pornographic material to her
colleagues. The man now acknowledges that he was "stupid, hurtful and just
plain wrong" to torment the woman, and says: "I was going through a bad
patch in my life. I want to take my lumps and get on with life." He could
have faced two years in prison and a fine of $250,000, but prosecutors
agreed to recommend a sentence of three to five years on probation. (AP 2
Nov 2004)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041102/D863O0TO0.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
     "To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the
people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you
can perform." (Theodore H. White)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: CONFIDENCE AND CONSCIENCE
     The historian William Manchester, author of celebrated biographies of
Kennedy, Churchill, MacArthur, and others, wrote of England's leaders
between the two World Wars:
     "What comes through, like the pounding on the wall of a man who wants
the party in the next apartment to quiet down so he can sleep, is a
determination to avoid discord, unpleasantness, or any rude interruption of
long serene weekends in the country. England's ruling class, or those of
them in power, had lost their fathers' inflexible determination. A.G.
Gardiner had described the English patrician as 'a personality that is
entirely fearless,' belonging to 'a caste that never doubts itself.' A.L.
Rowse, fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, quotes Gardiner and then adds:
'Never till 1931, we may say; for in that year the caste lost confidence in
itself and, undermined by fear, it lost not only confidence but conscience.
Confused in mind about everything, except the main chance -- its own
preservation -- it survived from year to year, from month to month, day to
day, by blurring the clarity of all issues, even the most dangerous -- that
of the nation's safety; it maintained its enormous majority by electoral
trickery, it spoke and perhaps thought in the language of humbug, it hoped
to stave off conflict...by offering appeasement.'"
                         ***
[Source, William Manchester's "The Last Lion." To find a library copy visit
RLG's RedLightGreen.com:
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACT
ION=EDITION&WORKID=18416996&>
-- or to purchase a copy go to:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316545031/qid=1099334884/newsscanco
m/ref=nosim>.
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.]

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