NewsScan Daily, 13 December 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 13 December 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Finally! -- Oracle Buys Peoplesoft
       Browsing With AOL
       Strained Silicon
       The One Thing You've Just Got to Have
       iTunes to Accept PenPal Payments

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Chana Orloff

FINALLY! -- ORACLE BUYS PEOPLESOFT
     After failing in five previous attempts to acquire PeopleSoft, business
software giant Oracle has announced a "definitive merger agreement" with its
smaller rival. Oracle will pay about $10.3 billion to buy PeopleSoft (or
about $10 a share more than its original offer 18 months ago and $2 higher
than what it had called its "best and final offer" last month). Oracle
co-president Charles Phillips says, "This is a major turning point for the
entire enterprise software industry." (Washington Post 13 Dec 2004)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60629-2004Dec13.html>

BROWSING WITH AOL
     To fight competition in an increasingly broadband world, America Online
-- which began life as a dial-up Internet service provider -- has developed
its own software for browsing the Web and playing movies and songs. The
standalone browser's core will be Microsoft's Internet Explorer (chosen by
AOL so that users won't have to make "a leap of faith"), but AOL is planning
to add such features as tabbed browsing, and will provide tools for
countering e-mail "phishing" scams and searching files on the user's
computer. (AP/San Jose Mercury News 12 Dec 2004)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10401441.htm>

STRAINED SILICON
     IBM and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), working together to improve a
chip-making technology called "strained silicon," have developed a way to
boost semiconductor performance by about 12%. In the straining process,
silicon is chemically strained to increase the flow of electrons. Nick
Kepler, vice president of logic technology development at AMD, says: "We
have succeeded in building a better mousetrap, but doing it by innovating
with the conventional materials." (Reuters/USA Today 13 Dec 2004)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2004-12-13-strained-silicon_x.htm>

THE ONE THING YOU'VE JUST GOT TO HAVE
     Woot.com is an Internet retailer with a gimmick: it sells just a single
item each weekday, starting at midnight local time in its Dallas home base
and continuing until there is no more of that item left to sell. Woot (short
for "Wow! Loot!") doesn't tell its shoppers how many watches, laptops or
hot-tub phones it has. If it runs out of inventory of the item, shoppers
just have to wait until midnight for the next offering. The site has
apparently developed a fanatical following, but Forrester Research analyst
Carrie A. Johnson suggests it may lose out to sites with more offerings,
such as Overstock.com. Yet Woot has attracted imitators, such as Deal.com,
which offers a daily special that starts at full price and is discounted
every 15 minutes. (AP/Los Angeles Times 12 Dec 2004)
<http://www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology12dec12,1,285409.story?coll=sns-ap-toptechnology>

iTUNES TO ACCEPT PENPAL PAYMENTS
     Apple online music store iTunes will now accept PayPal for purchases of
music downloads, audiobooks and gift certificates. PayPal, a subsidiary of
eBay, makes it possible for any individual or business with an e-mail
address to send and receive payments online. Apple executive Eddy Cue says
the deal with PayPal will bring more customers to iTunes: "PayPal already
has millions of customers who are used to buying online." (AP 12 Dec 2004)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041212/D86TR38G0.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
     "I say that the art of sculpture is eight times as great as any other
art based on drawing, because a statue has eight views and they must all be
equally good." (Benvenuto Cellini)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: CHANA ORLOFF
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the figurative sculptor Chana Orloff
(1888-1968), who is best known for her many sculpted portraits of famous
people, particularly those from the art world of Paris.
     Orloff's favorite medium was wood, because of its warmth and
friendliness, but she also worked in stone, marble, bronze and cement. Her
work was done in the realist tradition, yet showed traces of the cubist
movement of her era.
     Her list of notable subjects reads like a who's-who of the first half
of the twentieth century: painters such as Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani,
poets Bialik, Fleg, Mac Orlan, architects Chareau, Auguste Perret, and other
notable personages such as Ben Gourion, Levy Echkol, and Scholem Asch.
     While visiting Israel, she produced public monuments in Ramat Gan and
Ein Gev. Among Orloff's other favorite subjects to sculpt were animals,
especially birds, ordinary men and women, and women as mothers, shown while
pregnant and with their children.
     Orloff was born in Ukraine but at age 16 moved with her family to
Jaffa, Israel. Her father worked in the fields and she helped out as a
seamstress. Six years later, in 1910, she moved to Paris, where she studied
sculpture and moved in the circles of avant-garde artists. In 1913 three of
her sculptures were accepted by the Salon d'Automne, and after that she
exhibited regularly.
     In 1916 she married the poet Ary Justman, who died in the post-World
War I influenza epidemic, leaving her with a baby son. In the 1920s Orloff
gained prominence as a sculptor, and received a steady stream of commissions
for portraits. She later had an entire room devoted to her works in the
Petit Palais of Paris. She also visited the United States, where she held
exhibitions in New York and Boston.
     During the Nazi occupation of France she continued to live in Paris
until 1942 when, fearing arrest as a Jew, she fled with her son to
Switzerland. Her Paris studio was vandalized and much of her work was stolen
or destroyed. After the war she returned to Paris and set about to create
her work Retour, which was a series of drawings and sculptures depicting her
sufferings as a deportee.
     For the remaining years of her life Orloff continued to work
productively and exhibit on a regular basis, holding many large-scale
exhibitions, including a retrospective in the Tel Aviv Museum.

                              ***
[For a library copy of "Orloff" by Chana Orloff, visit RLG's
RedLightGreen.com:
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTION=EDITION&WORKID=20553807&>
-- or to purchase a copy of "Bohemian Paris" about the birth of modern at,
go to:
< 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0802139973/newsscancom/ref=nos
im>
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.]

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