NewsScan Daily, 22 December 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 22 December 2004 ("Above The Fold")
***********************************************************
NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization
making significant and sustained contributions to the effective
management and appropriate use of information technology. NSD is written by
John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas, [email protected].
***********************************************************

"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Apple Sues 'Tiger' Testers Over Leaks
        EU Court Rules Against Microsoft
        Judge Rejects Guilty Plea in AOL Spam Case
        Broadband Surpasses Dialup in the U.S.
        Blockbuster Cuts Prices, Upping the Ante in DVD Rental Biz

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Jules-Henri Poincaré

APPLE SUES 'TIGER' TESTERS OVER LEAKS
      Apple has sued three members of the Apple Developer Connection for 
releasing preview versions of its latest Mac OSX, code-named Tiger, onto 
file-sharing sites. "Members of Apple Development Connection receive 
advance copies of Apple software under strict confidentiality agreements, 
which we take very seriously to protect our intellectual property," said 
Apple in a statement. The Apple Development Connection is a group of 
software programmers who have access to text versions of Apple software in 
order to tweak their own applications to work with Apple systems. The Tiger 
software was apparently leaked onto sites that use BitTorrent technology, 
which does not actually host the files being shared, but rather hosts a 
link that points users toward others who have the file sought. Last week, 
the Motion Picture Association of America launched a legal campaign against 
such sites, noting that they've been used for illegal sharing of movie 
files. (BBC News 22 Dec 2004)
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4117465.stm>

EU COURT RULES AGAINST MICROSOFT
      A European Union judge today ruled that Microsoft must immediately 
submit to sanctions imposed by EC regulators after they found that 
Microsoft broke antitrust laws by integrating its Windows Media Player into 
Windows, thus putting rival media software companies at a disadvantage. 
Microsoft had appealed the initial decision, arguing that pulling Media 
Player out of Windows would degrade its performance, but in today's ruling, 
Chief Judge Bo Vesterdorf of the Court of First Instance found that 
postponing sanctions would give Microsoft time to strengthen its grip on 
the market for media playing applications. Microsoft must now create two 
versions of Windows for European distribution -- one that contains Media 
Player and one without. Microsoft announced it would comply while 
contemplating its next legal move. (Washington Post 22 Dec 2004)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18543-2004Dec22.html>

JUDGE REJECTS GUILTY PLEA IN AOL SPAM CASE
      A federal judge in New York has refused to accept a guilty plea from 
a former AOL software engineer accused of stealing 92 million subscriber 
e-mail addresses and selling them to spammers. Judge Alvin Hellerstein said 
he was not convinced that Jason Smathers had actually committed a crime 
under the new "CAN-SPAM" legislation passed by Congress this fall. The 
technicality hinges on whether Smathers deceived anyone -- a requirement of 
the CAN-SPAM law. "Everybody hates spammers, there's no question about 
that," said Hellerstein, who told federal prosecutor David Siegal: "I'm not 
prepared to go ahead, Mr. Siegal. I need to be independently satisfied that 
a crime has been created." Prosecutors allege that Smathers sold the list 
to Las Vegas resident Sean Dunaway, who then resold it to spammers, netting 
Smathers more than $100,000 from the deal. (Wall Street Journal 21 Dec 2004)
<http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110365400892306111,00.html> (sub req'd)

BROADBAND SURPASSES DIALUP IN THE U.S.
      The number of broadband Internet connections in U.S. households has 
finally surpassed that of dialup, accounting for 53% of residential users 
in October according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The prevalence of "always-on" 
broadband leads to higher usage rates as high-speed users subscribe to the 
practice of "infosnacking," says AOL executive VP Jim Bankoff: "People are 
more able and willing to just walk up to the Internet to get a quick 
snippet of what they need, send a quick e-mail, read a quick news article, 
check a sports score." That instant availability has changed communal 
behavior, says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life 
Project. Family members arguing over a point are more apt to "look it up 
online rather than continue to yell at each other," says Rainie, who notes 
his high-speed bandwidth at home has also changed his offline behavior -- 
he gets to the office late and leaves early in order to avoid rush-hour 
traffic, knowing that he can accomplish what he needs to do in his hours at 
home. (AP 21 Dec 2004)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041221/D8744AUO0.html>

BLOCKBUSTER CUTS PRICES, UPPING THE ANTE IN DVD RENTAL BIZ
      Blockbuster has slashed the price on its online DVD rental service by 
$2.50, to $14.99 a month, in a move that reflects the increasingly 
cutthroat competition in the market. Rival Netflix had recently lowered its 
price to $17.99 a month and Wal-Mart charges $17.36 a month. Subscriptions 
at all three companies entitle customers to unlimited rentals, three movies 
at a time, no due dates and no late fees or postage charges. Blockbuster 
says by mid-January, its online unit will have 23 distribution centers, 
more than double its capacity in August 2004, when it launched the service. 
(Reuters/CNet News.com 22 Dec 2004)
<http://news.com.com/Blockbuster+undercuts+DVD+rivals/2100-1026_3-5500813.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is 
everything." (Jules-Henri Poincaré)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: JULES-HENRI POINCARÉ
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the French mathematician Jules-Henri 
Poincaré (1854-1912), who was also a theoretical astronomer and philosopher 
of science who influenced cosmogony, relativity, and topology.
      Called "the last of the universal mathematicians" by mathematics 
historian E.T. Bell, Poincaré was also a gifted interpreter of science to a 
wide public. He was among the first to grasp the significance of Einstein's 
theory of relativity, and he lectured and wrote prolifically in all 
branches of pure and applied mathematics, covering topics in the fields of 
electricity, optics, astronomy, thermodynamics, light, probability, and 
statistical mechanics. In later life he wrote profoundly on mathematical 
creativity. He was a forerunner of the modern intuitionist school in that 
he believed that some mathematical induction is a priori and independent of 
logic. Sudden illumination, he believed, followed long subconscious work, 
and was a prelude to mathematical creation.
      Poincaré was the son of a physician and belonged to a distinguished 
French family. His first cousin, Raymond Poincaré, was president of the 
French Republic during World War I. He was born in Nancy, and attended the 
Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, where his nearsightedness did not keep him 
from achieving top honors in mathematics. He had an unusually retentive 
memory for everything he read and was able to perform complex mathematical 
calculations in his head. He also had the ability to write quickly and turn 
out well-phrased papers without extensive revisions. In 1879 he received 
his doctorate from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines, with a thesis 
on differential equations. Following a brief appointment in mathematical 
analysis at the University of Caen, Poincaré joined the faculty of the 
Sorbonne at the University of Paris in 1881 and remained there until his 
death in 1912.
      Among Poincaré's many substantial scientific and mathematical 
contributions was his work on the classical three-body problem (for 
example, the system involving the Sun, Moon, and Earth), which involved the 
question of how long such celestial bodies would remain stable in their 
present spatial relationships, given their present masses, velocities, 
motions, and mutual distances. Even though his solution to the problem was 
only partially correct, in 1889 he was awarded the prize offered for its 
solution by King Oscar II of Sweden, because of the powerful new 
mathematical techniques Poincaré developed in working on the problem. In 
1906 Poincaré was elected president of the Académie des Sciences in 
recognition of his lifetime of mathematical and scientific achievement.
      After Poincaré achieved prominence as a mathematician, he used his 
literary talent to describe for the general public the meaning and 
importance of science and mathematics. He wrote "Science and Hypothesis," 
"The Value of Science," and "Science and Method," all of which reached a 
wide public of nonprofessionals. In 1908 his stature as a writer was 
recognized by his election to membership in the Académie Francaise, the 
highest honor accorded a French writer.

[To locate a library copy of "The Mathematical Heritage of Henri Poincaré," 
check out RLG's RedLightGreen service at: 
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTION=EDITION&WORKID=30945599&>; 
or to purchase a copy go to: 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0821814427/newsscancom/ref=nosim> 
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy 
programs.]

SUBSCRIPTION INFO FOR NEWSSCAN DAILY: To subscribe or unsubscribe to the 
text, html, or handheld versions of NewsScan Daily, send the appropriate 
subscribe or unsubscribe messages (i.e., with the word 'subscribe' or 
'unsubscribe' in the subject line) to the addresses shown below:
      Text version: Send message to [email protected]
      Html version: Send mail to [email protected]
      NewsScan-To-Go: http://www.newsscan.com/handheld/current.html

TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT NEWSSCAN DAILY! Send them our little frog: 
http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html

***********************************************************
Please visit the site of RLG, the great organization that makes NewsScan 
Daily possible. (RLG has no influence over, nor any responsibility for, our 
editorial content.) Created in 1974 as the Research Libraries Group, RLG is 
a not-for-profit membership corporation of more than 160 universities, 
national libraries, archives, museums -- and other institutions with 
remarkable collections for research and learning. Its major initiatives are 
long-term retention of digital materials, resource sharing among member 
institutions, and improvement of researcher access to primary source 
material. RLG supplies online research resources worldwide. Visit RLG at 
http://www.rlg.org.

*********

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the TEXT version of NewsScan Daily, send an 
e-mail message to [email protected] with 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' 
in the subject line. To subscribe to our HTML version of NewsScan Daily, 
send mail to [email protected], with the word 'subscribe' as the 
subject. (Subscribing to the HTML version won't automatically unsubscribe 
you from the text version; please unsubscribe yourself as explained above.) 
Please note: To unsubscribe from an account to which you no longer have 
access, send mail to at [email protected].

*********

We call our news section "Above The Fold" to honor the tradition of the 
great "broadsheet" newspapers in which editors must decide which news 
stories are of such importance that they should be placed "above the fold" 
on the front page. The NewsScan Credo: Be informative, have fun, and get to 
the point! See http://www.newsscan.com/, and send us mail: John Gehl 
<[email protected]> and Suzanne Douglas <[email protected]>, or call 
770-704-7517.

*********

Get a free 6-week trial subscription to Innovation Weekly, an executive 
summary of trends, strategies and innovations in business and technology. 
Send mail to [email protected] with the word 'subscribe' in the 
subject line.

What customized news and information services do you need for your company? 
Get in touch with us at [email protected] or call 770-704-7517 to talk 
over the possibilities.

Copyright 2002. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan.com Inc.
***********************************************************