NewsScan Daily, 16 Jul 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 16 Jul 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Senate Puts the Squeeze on TIA Funding
        P2P Pervades the Corporate Suite
        Buy.Com's New Music Download Service
        The Future of Ultra Wideband
        Rival Instant Messaging Standards Face Off
        New Chapter in the Browser Wars

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Elmer Sperry

SENATE PUTS THE SQUEEZE ON TIA FUNDING
U.S. senators deliberating over next year's defense budget have proposed 
eliminating all funding the Defense Department's Terrorism Information 
Awareness project. The TIA project, under the supervision of retired Adm. 
John Poindexter, seeks to develop computer software capable of scanning 
vast public and private databases of commercial transactions and personal 
data around the world to ferret out possible terrorist activities. The 
committee's proposal "reflects deep, deep skepticism in Congress of the 
Pentagon's assurances about this system," says a spokesman for the Center 
for Democracy and Technology. "There appears to be some spillover 
skepticism from Iraq where they voted to go to war and now are questioning 
whether that was based on clever use of words or selective use of 
intelligence." (AP 15 Jul 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030715/D7SA90880.html

P2P PERVADES THE CORPORATE SUITE
Peer-to-peer file-swapping software is deeply entrenched in corporate 
networks, according to a study of 560 companies by Canadian firm 
AssetMetrix, which found that 77% of the companies reported P2P 
applications such as Kazaa and Morpheus installed. Among companies with 
more than 500 employees, 100% had at least one P2P program installed. 
"Corporations are frantic about how to rein in some control over this," 
says AssetMetrix president Paul Bodnoff. "Like with software licenses, most 
companies want to be on the right side of the law. The challenge is how 
they do that." In addition to worries over legal liability for employee's 
file-swapping activities, corporate IT managers say they're also concerned 
about the drain of resources caused by such activities. Transfers of large 
media files can bog down legitimate data traffic, and P2P software can also 
allow viruses to worm their way onto the systems, compromising network 
security. (CNet News.com 16 Jul 2003)
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1026184.html?tag=fd_top

BUY.COM'S NEW MUSIC DOWNLOAD SERVICE
Buy.com, a mainstream Internet shopping site, will soon be offering a new 
music download service that (like the Apple iTunes Music Store) will sell 
individual music tracks without collecting an up-front monthly subscription 
fee. Since Apple has not yet developed a Windows version of its service, 
the PC music market offers a broad target for a company such as Buy.com, 
which will try to surpass its much larger rival, Amazon.com, which has 34.5 
million monthly visitors compared to Buy.com's 3.1 million, according to 
Nielsen/NetRatings. (San Jose Mercury News 16 Jul 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6306486.htm

THE FUTURE OF ULTRA WIDEBAND
Intel and Texas Instruments have now consolidated their proposed standards 
for the new ultra wideband (UWB) technology for presentation to the 
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and several 
months from now, IEEE will choose a winner from among about two dozen 
different proposals it has received. Allied Business Intelligence predicts 
that UWB wireless technology, designated 802.15.3a, will generate $1.39 
billion in revenue by 2007. Supporters see the technology as a cheaper, 
100-times-faster, and less power-hungry way to wirelessly connect devices 
at short range than Bluetooth, the most popular "personal area network" 
technology used by cell phone and PDA manufacturers and by Microsoft and 
Apple. Detractors, however, say it could interfere with bandwidth 
neighbors, including some versions of Wi-Fi. (CNet 15 Jul 2003)
http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-1026002.html

RIVAL INSTANT MESSAGING STANDARDS FACE OFF
Technology giants like IBM and Hewlett-Packard are squaring off for the 
next skirmish over the technical standards. This time the battleground is 
instant messaging, which is rapidly making inroads into the corporate 
suite. The two major standards are SIP/SIMPLE (session initiation protocol 
for instant messaging and presence leveraging extensions) and XMPP 
(extensible messaging and presence protocol). Microsoft, IBM and Reuters, 
among others, are backing the SIP/SIMPLE standard, while XMPP's advocates 
include France Telecom, Intel and Jabber, a developer of enterprise IM 
software. Hewlett-Packard recently threw its weight behind XMPP by 
developing an instant-message server with Jabber, and other Jabber 
customers include BellSouth, AT&T and Earthlink. HP Services manager 
Michael Dang praises XMPP's fully developed design: "Put it on a cheap 
Intel box and we can instantly communicate." But SIP/SIMPLE's backers say 
the protocol can serve as a basis for other systems besides just messaging. 
"It was important for us to have a broader architecture than just something 
based on instant message," says an IBM Lotus marketing manager. Meanwhile, 
some analysts are predicting that SIP/SIMPLE, although widely regarded as 
the inferior standard, will win out, largely because of its heavyweight 
support. "Most people will be moving toward SIP/SIMPLE simply because 
Microsoft and IBM use them," says market researcher Michael Osterman. (Wall 
Street Journal 16 Jul 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB105776377059598800,00.html (sub req'd)

NEW CHAPTER IN THE BROWSER WARS
Mozilla, the Web browser project, has been spun off from AOL as the 
independent Mozilla Foundation with a mission to compete directly with 
Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), which currently controls 96% of the 
browser software market. Mozilla Foundation president Mitchell Baker says, 
"People say there's no innovation in the browser space, but that's only if 
you're using IE. We want people to know that there's a better product out 
there." Mozilla seems to have surpassed IE in terms of various features, 
such as pop-up blocking and junk-mail filtering. Baker says, "In the past, 
our geek flavor has been a barrier to general adoption. "Now we plan to 
focus more on distribution. We've got the better browser. And that's what 
really matters." (Wired.com 16 Jul 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59640,00.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Endure, and save yourself for happier times." (Virgil)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: ELMER SPERRY
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the versatile American inventor and 
engineer Elmer Sperry (1860-1930), whose many patented inventions 
contributed to the development of the electric light and power industries 
as well as the other leading technologies of his time, including industrial 
chemistry and mining machinery. He is best known today for the gyroscopic 
compasses and stabilizers he invented as automatic guidance and control 
devices for ships and aircraft.
      Sperry was born in Cortland, New York, and while attending the 
Cortland Normal School he also audited lectures on electrical science and 
technology at nearby Cornell University. At the age of 19 he persuaded a 
Cortland manufacturer to finance him in developing an improved dynamo as 
well as an arc lamp. The next year (1880) he went to Chicago and opened a 
factory, the Sperry Electric Company, to make dynamos and arc lamps.
      He also invented the electric rotary and chain undercutting machines, 
and, to manufacture them, he established the Sperry Electric Mining Machine 
Company in 1888. Two years later, he designed an electrical industrial 
locomotive and motor transmission machinery for streetcars, founding the 
Sperry Electric Railway Company in Cleveland, which he later sold to the 
General Electric Company.
      From 1894 he made electric automobiles powered by his patented 
storage battery. After 1900 he established an electrochemical research 
laboratory with C.P. Townsend at Washington, D.C. There they invented the 
chlorine detinning process (for salvaging tin from old cans and scrap) and 
processes for producing white lead from impure lead and caustic soda from 
salt. Around this time he also founded the Chicago Fuse Wire Company to 
manufacture electric fuse wire using machines he had invented.
      By 1918 he was also producing a high-intensity arc searchlight six 
times brighter than any earlier light.
      Sperry's greatest inventions grew from converting the gyroscope, 
first designed as a toy, into a stable gyrocompass, making it the first 
essential improvement of the compass in a thousand years. Sperry set up his 
Sperry Gyroscope Company in Brooklyn in 1910, and the next year 
successfully installed his gyrocompass on the U.S. battleship Delaware. He 
extended the gyro principle to guidance of torpedoes, to gyropilots for the 
steering of ships and for stabilizing airplanes, and finally to a ship 
stabilizer. Years later his gyroscope firm would become the Sperry 
Corporation for manufacturing computers, precision instruments, farm 
machinery, and electric and hydraulic equipment.
      In his lifetime, Sperry received more than 350 patents and founded 
eight companies. He took his place in the history of American technology as 
an inventor who moved from the time of the independent inventor working 
alone in his laboratory or workshop to the era of corporate research and 
development.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801847567/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for "Elmer Sperry: Inventor and Engineer" by Thomas Parke Hughes -- or look 
for it in your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book 
recommendations to adult literacy programs.)

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