NewsScan Daily, 21 December 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 21 December 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       EBay Protests Executive's Arrest in India
       Automated Medication Worse Than the Disease?
       Chinatech on the Rise
       Battle in Bangalore: Microsoft Wins
       Controversy Over Wireless Phone Directory
       Two-Headed Chips

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: Iran
       Mailbag: The World As We Find It

EBAY PROTESTS EXECUTIVE'S ARREST IN INDIA
     EBay is outraged by the arrest of Avnish Bajaj, the Indian-born and
Harvard-educated chief of the company's India auction site Baazee.com, in a
case involving the sale of a video clip of a teenage couple engaged in
illicit acts. EBay says the video clip was never shown on the site and that
the seller had merely offered it to buyers with a description of its
content, but the law under which the arrest makes publishing or transmitting
obscene material in any electronic form punishable by up to five years in
jail. (New York Times 21 Dec 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/technology/21ebay.html>

AUTOMATED MEDICATION WORSE THAN THE DISEASE?
     A report from U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP), a nonprofit group that sets
standards for the drug industry, says that as more hospitals have
implemented automated systems for administering drugs the number of errors
associated with them has risen. USP vice president Diane Cousins says, "It
would seem logical that applying computer technology to the medication use
process would have a significant positive impact in preventing medication
errors. Yet, depending on the computer's design or user competence, new
points of potential errors can emerge." Kenneth Kizer of the National
Quality Forum agrees with Cousins: "Technology offers great opportunity to
reduce errors, but it's not a panacea. You can't just throw a computerized
system in and expect that everything's fixed. It has to be done right. The
technology is only as good as the people who use it." (Washington Post 20
Dec 2004)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15178-2004Dec20.html>

CHINATECH ON THE RISE
     Journalist Evan Ramstad notes that China's 250 million users (about
one-fifth of the country's total population) far surpass those of any other
country and that China's technological rise is happening faster than it did
elsewhere in Asia: "China passed the U.S. in unit consumption of TV sets two
years ago as household penetration of TVs passed 90%, closing in on the near
ubiquity of TVs in developed countries. If population trends hold, China is
unlikely to be challenged as the world's largest market for TVs until the
middle of the century, when India is expected to become the most populous
country. And when final figures emerge shortly, we're likely to learn that
China passed the U.S. this year as the world's top PC maker, another change
unlikely to be challenged for years to come."  (Wall Street Journal 20 Dec
2004)
<http://www.wsj.com>

BATTLE IN BANGALORE: MICROSOFT WINS
     Microsoft has won a battle against open source software supporters in
Bangalore, India, a high-tech hub whose local authorities have selected
Microsoft as their vendor of choice software for networking the state's
utilities and services in an e-governance project for the 55 million people
of Karnataka state. Microsoft sold software at 45 percent of the market
price to the private company executing the Bangalore project, a move the
company's critics derided as merely a trick to tie large populations to
proprietary software. Defending his decision to choose Microsoft, Indian
official Rajiv Chawla points out that Microsoft is "quite popular even in
villages," and adds: "Let open source become so popular, then we will have
no problem using it." (AP/San Jose Mercury News 20 Dec 2004)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10459988.htm>

CONROVERSY OVER WIRELESS PHONE DIRECTORY
     Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal wants the cellular
phone industry to discard its plans to create a directory assistance system
for wireless phone numbers because there are "too many unknowns and dangers
and too few protections at this point." But Kathleen Pierz, a Michigan
analyst specializing in directory assistance counseling, says there are
plenty of safeguards: "This is so buttoned up from a customer point of view,
people don't have to worry. Blumenthal fears that a list of wireless numbers
would inevitably be sold to telemarketers: "If the lists are there, they
will be sold. They are so valuable. No cell phone company will resist the
temptation to sell those lists for the huge profits." Pierz, however, points
out that there is no marketing value to such lists because of existing
federal laws preventing entities from calling a cell phone. (AP/USA Today 21
Dec 2004)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/phones/2004-12-21-mobile411_x.htm>

TWO-HEADED CHIPS
     Leading semiconductor companies Intel and AMD will soon be selling
two-headed microprocessors, a development Bernard Myderson of IBM calls "a
seminal shift" for the chip industry.  Although two-headed chips won't run
as fast as single-engine ones they'll require less power and will be able to
handle more work simultaneously. Intel senior fellow Justin Rattner
explains: "What's going on inside of the machine is a bit of a juggling act.
You've got that one engine doing a little bit of each one of those things,
and it appears to users that they're all happening at once."(AP 21 Dec 2004)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041221/D873OBU80.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
     "No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to
read." (David McCollough)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: IRAN
     Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution thinks it behooves us all
to know a little more than we do about the  history of Iran:
     "To understand the labyrinth of U.S.-Iranian relations, there are at
least three things that you need to know about the seven millennia of
Iranian history before the twentieth century. The first is that the land
that is today Iran is the heir to a long line of remarkable predecessors. In
its day, the Persian Empire was a superpower like nothing the world had ever
seen -- with a monotheistic religion, a vast army, a rich civilization, a
new and remarkably efficient method of administration, and territory
stretching from Egypt to Central Asia. All Iranians know that history well,
and it is a source of enormous pride to them. It has given them a widely
remarked sense of superiority over all of their neighbors, and, ironically,
while Tehran now refers to the United States by the moniker 'Global
Arrogance,' within the Middle East a stereotypical complaint against
Iranians is their own arrogant treatment of others.
     "The second important aspect of Iran's early history that still defines
the Iranian state and has had a tremendous impact on U.S.-Iranian relations
is that for the last five hundred years, Iran has been the only Shi'i Muslim
state in the world. Though 90 percent of all Muslims are Sunni, there are a
number of countries where Shi'ah make up either a majority (Bahrain, Iraq,
Iran) or a significant minority (Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen). But
only Iran adopted Shi'i Islam as its state religion. Although the
Sunni-Shi'ah divide is not as caustic as other interreligious splits, it is
not a trifle either. There are important aspects of Shi'ism that have helped
shape Iranian political culture in ways that are quite different from that
of other Muslim nations. What's more, it has heightened both Iran's sense of
uniqueness and its sense of isolation. For Iranians, Shi'ism is a key
element of their culture, and for many Arabs and other non-Iranians, the
terms 'Shi'ah' and 'Persian' were long considered synonymous.
     "Last, for roughly a century and a half beginning in the early 1800s, a
weak Iranian state became prey to powerful external actors, principally the
European great powers. Iranians (Persians, as they were then still known)
were accustomed to looking down on Europeans as barbarian adherents to a
superseded religion and a primitive civilization. Now, suddenly, they were
trouncing the shah's armies, carving up their lands, making and unmaking
governments, monopolizing their markets, and treating their land as
battleground, playground, and campground with no regard for the needs or
desires of the Iranians themselves. It was humiliating; it was frustrating,
and it was frightening for Iranians to be so vulnerable and so constantly
manipulated by these foreign powers. And it reinforced a powerful sense of
xenophobia coupled with an inferiority complex among Iranians to complement
their superiority complex."

                        ***
[To purchase Ken Pollock's "The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran
and America," go to:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400063159/newsscancom/ref=nosim>;
for a library copy of his earlier book on Iraq, check out RLG's
RedLightGreen service at
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTION=EDITION&WORKID=21404694&>
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.]

MAILBAG: THE WORLD AS WE FIND IT

GOOGLE SERVICE IS NO THREAT TO LIBRARIES
Re: <http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=11830>
     Librarians are not worried about digitizing all those books. Librarians
have a large body of research that proves that as books age their
circulation declines. Google is digitizing a lot of little used material
that will always be little used.
     Goggle's efforts may allow libraries to do a lot of weeding.
     If you have not used a library's catalog, formerly cards, now online,
you will see more content attached to each book's record than ever before.
     (Leslie R. Morris, Editor, The Journal of Interlibrary Loan)

UNSTEPPING ON FLOWERS
Re: 
<http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&dateissued=20041216>
      Oops, J.R.R. Tolkein's "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is correct. I
just saw the posts today and wondered where I got the information.
Unfortunately I can't find it either after searching all over the Internet
and in my local ClipCache Plus file where it appears. It is or was damaged
in the last system crash (ACPI?). All I have is in my record of as IRC
"startrek" chat "Only hobbits can step on flowers sir. J.R.R. Tolkein
translated "Sir Gawain and the Blue Knight" written in response to the
trivia question: "ST-Trivia Question: TNG: in the episode "justice", wesley
was sentenced to death for _____" (stepping on flowers). I usually have the
url in ClipCache Plus but from the crash stops at "given further insight
into his academic and..." (George Myers)

THE NEWSSCAN COMMUNITY IS A QUALITY BUNCH
     I was surprised to see my question about the 8 views of a sculpture in
"print." Even more surprising was the number of responses to my comment. It
looks like I uncovered a point of interest, a nexus of curiosity by fellow
NewsScan viewers. As I read those comments, I enjoyed the community that had
gathered around that topic, AND that sculpture. I understand even better the
value of your newsletter and the community of reflective thinkers that
congregate around your "coffee pot". Thanks for providing a venue for us,
your colleagues and friends. Consider this my Christmas card to you for all
you do to help keep us invigorated and productive. (Mark H. Zollinhofer,
Ph.D.)

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