NewsScan Daily, 15 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 15 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        IBM Lays Out Plan for Intelligent Bricks
        E-Books Take a Hit, But Don't Count Them Out
        Microsoft and Motorola Cellphone Deal
        Anti-spam Effort Would Pay Spammers to Stop
        Sharpton Calls Internet Voting a 'High-Tech Poll Tax'
        Signs of Tech Recovery?

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Percival Lowell

IBM LAYS OUT PLAN FOR INTELLIGENT BRICKS
Researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center are proposing a new type of 
computer configuration -- one that involves Lego-like stacking of so-called 
Collective Intelligent Bricks to build a customized data storage center. 
The bricks are really cubes with edges measuring 20cm and inside each brick 
are 12 disk drives, each of which can store 80 gigabytes of data. The 
bricks house a processor to run the disks and a chip that enables the 
connectors on the outside of the brick to link to other bricks for data 
exchange. The transmission rate between connectors is now relatively slow 
-- 3 gigabits per second -- but lead scientist Jai Menon is hoping to boost 
that to 10 gigabits soon -- a rate comparable to high-speed fiber optic 
connections. And while there are still cooling issues to be worked out 
(it's hard to keep all those components cool when they're packed so tightly 
together), the brick design has one feature that engineers value the most 
-- redundancy. If one brick goes bad, the network of connections can be 
routed around it to isolate it, and back-up copies of all data can be 
stored in multiple bricks to ensure no failure would be catastrophic. (The 
Economist 11 Sep 2003)
http://www.economist.com

E-BOOKS TAKE A HIT, BUT DON'T COUNT THEM OUT
The future of e-books got slightly more fuzzy last week when Barnes & Noble 
announced it was closing down its eBooks store, but industry watchers say 
the long-term forecast for the nascent market is still upbeat. And while 
today's e-book technology is viewed by many as a solution in search of a 
problem, companies like Microsoft, Palm and Adobe stand firmly behind their 
investments in the industry. "We think that in the long-term, e-book 
technology has a great future. Market acceptance has not taken off quite as 
quickly as was predicted, but we are certainly continuing to invest in this 
area," says an Adobe spokesman. And while it may be a long wait until the 
average consumer turns to e-books for pleasure reading, e-books may 
ultimately find their niche with tech-savvy youth accustomed to on-screen 
browsing and the burgeoning cohort of retiring baby boomers, predicts 
Richard Doherty, research director at Envisioneering Group. "Two audiences 
that will benefit best are young people who loathe the idea of a library… 
and aging people who want the convenience of large type on demand" and the 
freedom from lugging hefty hard copy around. (Reuters 14 Sep 2003)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&ncid=581&e=2&u=/nm/20030914/tc_nm/media_ebooks_dc

MICROSOFT AND MOTOROLA CELLPHONE DEAL
Microsoft and Motorola have agreed to produce and market a high-end 
cellphone based on the Windows Mobile software platform. The MPx200  is set 
to go on sale in Britain in October for a retail price of £239 ($383), and 
will be available in the U.S. later this year through AT&T Wireless. The 
handset is designed to make it easy to use e-mail messaging and to 
synchronize the phone with a computer. Industry analysts say the deal with 
Microsoft gives Motorola a more cohesive strategy for addressing the 
corporate market and helps differentiate it from Nokia. (New York Times 15 
Sep 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/09/15/technology/15SOFT.html

ANTI-SPAM EFFORT WOULD PAY SPAMMERS TO STOP
A new anti-spam service, called Global Removal, is taking a different 
approach to fighting spam -- it's proposing to pay spammers for cooperating 
with their effort. Internet users fed up with junk e-mail would pay a $5 
lifetime fee to have their e-mail addresses put on a Global Removal 
do-not-spam list. Addresses on the list would be cross-referenced and 
deleted from mailing lists maintained by Global's partners, which include 
more than 50 known spammers and an equal number of legitimate e-mail 
marketers. These partners would be rewarded for their diligence through an 
affiliate program, which would pay $1 for every new subscriber that they 
bring to the service. In order to avoid a new flood of spam touting Global 
Removal's service, the spammers would be allowed to send only one message 
to their purged mailing lists. "Despite the urban legend, these guys don't 
really want to keep these names on their lists if they know that the people 
aren't going to be receptive to advertising," says Global CEO Tom Jackson. 
"They can make more money for less effort through our program." Critics say 
the flaw in Global's sales pitch is that subscribers would still receive 
junk e-mail from spammers not affiliated with Global and that Global's 
spammers could always renege on their deal and go back to their old lists. 
One intellectual property lawyer says, "It's a little like paying 
protection money to mob bosses. There's precious little assurance about the 
comprehensiveness of the protection, or that the prices won't go up at the 
whim of the 'bosses.'" Still, if spammers "could be assured some minimum 
bit of income by not sending me mail, it's a better deal for them and a 
relief to me." (Wired.com 15 Sep 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60431,00.html

SHARPTON CALLS INTERNET VOTING A 'HIGH-TECH POLL TAX'
Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton has protested a Democratic 
Party plan that would, for the first time, allow Internet voting in 
Michigan's presidential caucus -- and is challenging front-runner Howard 
Dean to stand with him. Sharpton wrote to Dean: "Perhaps it is due to the 
fact you governed a state with virtually no people of color living within 
its borders that you are unaware that this is a racially biased proposal." 
(Vermont is nearly 98% white.) A Dean spokesman said that Dean supports the 
concept of Internet voting or anything that will people to the polls "as 
long as it's coupled with the need to insure access to African Americans 
and others when it might not be available." Calling the scheme a "high-tech 
poll tax," Sharpton explained: "A grandmother in a housing development is 
going to have to go downstairs and walk five blocks to vote. Who do you 
think is going to get more of the vote? Democracy is about equal access. 
This is not equal access. It really is a high-tech poll tax." (AP/USA Today 
12 Sep 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-09-12-sharpton-vs-net_x.ht m

SIGNS OF TECH RECOVERY?
Silicon Valley's unemployment rate dropped in August, but economist and 
consultant Richard Carlson says the decline is "meaningless," explaining: 
"All that happened was more people gave up and stopped looking for work.'' 
But labor market consultant Ruth Kavanagh disagrees: "It's a good sign, 
it's a significant decline. It was the second consecutive month of the 
unemployment rate in Santa Clara County being down slightly. We will just 
have to wait and see what continues to happen.'' Priscilla Azcueta, a vice 
president with a temporary employment firm, agrees with the interpretation 
that this is the beginning of an economic upswing: "There's been a big jump 
from what we're seeing now compared to the first quarter as far as the 
number of jobs we've filled. We see a 50% jump for all business types. And, 
in the last month we've had a lot more orders for employees in software 
development, Web design, technical writing, etc. "We hardly had business in 
those areas for a long time. Now things are starting to pop up.'' (San Jose 
Mercury News 13 Sep 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6762417.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "The secret of joy is the mastery of pain." (Anaïs Nin)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: PERCIVAL LOWELL
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American astronomer Percival 
Lowell, who is remembered today for his controversial belief in the 
existence of artificial canals on Mars. He spent more than a decade 
charting the apparently crisscross markings of Mars. Although other 
astronomers vehemently denied the existence of canals on Mars, Lowell not 
only maintained their existence, but also claimed that they had been built 
by intelligent beings. Not until the Mars probes of the 1960s were Lowell's 
claims conclusively disproved.
      Despite the controversy over the Martian canals, Lowell earned a 
place in the history of astronomy for his substantial contributions to the 
study of the planets and the stars. Most memorable was his prediction of 
the position of a planet beyond Neptune, later discovered by Clyde Tombaugh 
and named Pluto, a name specifically chosen because its first two letters 
are the initials of Lowell's name.
      Lowell was a member of one of Boston's most famous families. His 
sister was the poet Amy Lowell, and his brother became the president of 
Harvard University. After he himself graduated from Harvard with honors 
in1876, he became a businessman, spending considerable time traveling in 
the Far East, where he spent part of the time as counselor and foreign 
secretary to the Korean Special Mission to the United States.
      Sparked by his early interest in mathematics and astronomy, Lowell 
became intrigued by Giovanni Schiaparelli's report that "canals" existed on 
Mars. On his return from the Far East in 1894 he built a private 
observatory near Flagstaff, Arizona, and devoted his fortune and energy to 
the study of the Martian surface. For 15 years he photographed and charted 
markings on Mars that he saw as irrigation canals constructed as part of a 
planet-wide system of cultivated vegetation supported by water from the 
annual melting of the polar ice caps. For him this was evidence of 
intelligent life on Mars, which became the subject of his 1906 book "Mars 
and Its Canals." Lowell's theory, long vigorously opposed, was finally put 
to rest by information received from the U.S. spacecraft Mariner 4 when it 
flew past Mars in July 1965.
      Lowell was more successful in his studies of the irregularities he 
detected in the orbit of Uranus. He attributed these perturbations to the 
action of an unseen planet beyond Neptune and calculated its probable 
position. In 1905 he organized a systematic search for the planet by the 
staff of his observatory, and in 1915 he published his "Memoir on a 
Trans-Neptunian Planet." Fourteen years after his death the search 
culminated in the discovery of Pluto.

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674002911/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for a biography of Percival Lowell by David Strauss -- or look for it in 
your favorite library. [We donate all revenue from our book recommendations 
to adult literacy programs.]

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