NewsScan Daily, 3 December 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 3 December 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"  
       IBM May Be Leaving the PC Business
       Ex-CIA Chief Worries About Internet Security
       The Search Software Loved by the In-Crowd
       Recycled Blogs: From Blog to Print
       Yeah, Pull The Games (Just Let Them Watch Pro Basketball)

FEATURES
       Dr. Mike's New Book
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Frederick the Great

IBM MAY BE LEAVING THE PC BUSINESS
     IBM is said to be talking with Chinese PC-maker Lenovo, which was
formerly known as Legend, about the possible sale of IBM's PC operations
(though IBM neither confirms nor denies the rumor). Samuel J. Palmisano, who
became IBM's chief executive in 2002, has been recasting it as a service
organization offering itself as a consulting partner with its corporate
customers. Industry analyst Mark Stahlman explains, "Palmisano's getting out
of businesses that aren't growth opportunities and concentrating on what IBM
does best. PC's are not where the growth is." And Gartner research vice
president Leslie Fiering says: "Exiting the market may be the only logical
choice for global vendors bleeding profits and struggling for share. The PC
divisions of HP and IBM are vulnerable to being spun off if their drag on
margins and profitability are deemed too great by their parent companies."
(New York Times 3 Dec 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/03/technology/03ibm.html?hp&ex=1102136400&en=a404729a59c077f6&ei=5094&partner=homepage>

EX-CIA CHIEF WORRIES ABOUT INTERNET SECURITY
     Former CIA Director George J. Tenet sees the Internet as "a potential
Achilles' heel" in the fight against terrorism, endangering "our financial
stability and physical security if the networks we are creating are not
protected." Calling for new cybersecurity measures, Tenet says: "I know that
these actions will be controversial in this age when we still think the
Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability, but
ultimately the Wild West must give way to governance and control." He
believes that access to the Web might need to be limited to those who can
show they take security seriously. (UPI/Washington Times 3 Dec 2004)
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20041201-114750-6381r>

THE SEARCH SOFTWARE USED BY THE IN-CROWD
     Analysts working for U.S. intelligence and other federal agencies
looking for documents and data stored on computers inside their own agencies
they use software made by the Convera Corp. in Virginia, which offers
specialized services and offer such features as the ability to automatically
notify intelligence analysts when a new document matching a search query is
added to the agency's database, and to search for patterns within data,
identifying relationships buried in mountains of separate documents. Helen
Mitchell, head of enterprise search for the FDA, says: "Before, people
couldn't find everything if things were misfiled or they didn't have the
time or resources. With the Convera software, and the technology for
searching documents and patterns, they can find documents even with
misspellings." Convera plans to make its Internet search engine available to
regular computer users for free sometime next year. (Washington Post 4 Dec
2004) <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30161-2004Dec2.html>

RECYCLED BLOGS: FROM BLOG TO PRINT
     Tony Perkins, the Silicon Valley publishing entrepreneur who made the
magazine Red Herring an icon of the dot-com boom years, is creating a new
quarterly print publication called AlwaysOn, that will repackage, in printed
form, material taken from Internet blogs. It will draw heavily from postings
on www.alwayson-network.com, a technology-focused blogging community that
Perkins created after Red Herring's collapse. He hopes to make money through
a combination of advertising and an annual $49 subscription: "It makes my
heart go pitter patter when I think about it. I really think this is where
the media is going to go in the future." (AP 3 Dec 2004)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041203/D86O71200.html>

YEAH, PULL THE GAMES (JUST LET THEM WATCH PRO BASKETBALL)
     The superintendent of a Missouri correctional center says he "didn't
closely review" the videogames the prison inmates were using, because he'd
been led to believe that "these games had more like cartoon violence." But
now he's taken a look at them, and Missouri's most violent criminals will no
longer be able to play video games that simulate murders, carjackings and
the killing of police officers. In one game, "Hitman: Contracts," players
use meat hooks and silencer-equipped pistols to carry out violent contract
killings. One correctional officer defends the games this way: "It has a
good effect on helping us run the prison and make sure they're busy and not
trying to work on ways to escape or harm others. That's kind of our bottom
line -- public safety." But criminal justice professor Jim Houston points
out: "These kinds of games reinforce a criminal lifestyle that caused them
to get into prison in the first place." (AP/USA Today 2 Dec 2004)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-12-02-mizzou-prison-games_x.htm>

*****

DR. MIKE'S NEW BOOK
     Those of you buying presents for friends and associates might want to
consider the new book by Dr. Mike Litrel, who developed many fans in the
NewsScan community when we published a few of his columns. His book is
called "The Eyes Don't See What the Mind Don't Know," and you can go to
<>http://www.doctor-mike.net/>   to learn more about it. Dr. Mike is
donating the proceeds from book sales to a women & children's center.

FLASH CARD
     "If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by
philosophers." (Frederick the Great)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: FREDERICK THE GREAT
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the medieval monarch Frederick II
(1194-1250), known to his contemporaries as Stupor Mundi (Wonder of the
World) for his breath of knowledge and brilliant mind.
     Frederick was an excellent administrator and an able soldier, and his
broad cultural outlook and intellectual gifts made him something of
Renaissance man ahead of his time. He understood several languages and
encouraged the development of poetry and sculpture. His book on falcons and
relevant facts of bird life, based entirely on his own research, earned him
a place in the history of science and is still considered first-rate natural
history by experts.
     Frederick belonged to the royal Hohenstaufen family. He was the son of
the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI and Constance of Sicily. Because of
circumstances created by his father's premature death at age 32, Frederick
was reared by his mother in her native Sicily. When he came of age,
Frederick inherited the crowns of both Germany and Italy, but he preferred
to live in Sicily, where he remained even after he was named Holy Roman
Emperor in 1220. Frederick governed his Sicilian kingdom well. He
established the University of Naples in 1224 and made the University of
Salerno the best school of medicine in Europe.
     His decision to rule from Sicily, however, gave him constant problems
with both the German princes and the Northern Italian provincial rulers, who
sought greater independence from Imperial control. Frederick also had
conflicts with the popes, who saw the Emperor as a rival power. In 1227 Pope
Honorius III excommunicated Frederick for violating his vow to go on
crusade. This motivated Frederick to set out for Jerusalem the next year.
Using diplomacy and not arms, Frederick succeeded in recovering Jerusalem
from the Muslims who had conquered it. He then crowned himself king of
Jerusalem in 1229.
     In consolidating his power over his Italian kingdom, Frederick erected
a chain of castles and border fortifications, enlarged major harbors and
established a navy and a fleet of merchant vessels. He instituted measures
designed to bring trade under state control, and make the manufacture of
certain products the monopoly of the state. Finally, he created a civil
service for which candidates were trained at the state university he had
founded in Naples in 1224, the first in Europe.
     Frederick also created a new constitution the Kingdom of Sicily that
was the first codification of a European state's administrative law since
the reign of Justinian in the 6th century. Frederick's codes contained ideas
that anticipated political principles that would be favored by the
Enlightenment. Frederick's struggles with rebellious German and Italian
princes and papal authorities continued unabated until his sudden death in
1250. He was buried in the cathedral of Palermo near his first wife, his
parents, and his grandfather.
                              ***
[To find a library copy of "Frederick II: A Medieval Emporer" by David
Abulafia, visit RLG's RedLightGreen.com:
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTION=EDITION&WORKID=6924432&>
-- or to purchase a copy go to:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195080408/newsscancom/ref=nosim>
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.]

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