[MyAppleMenu] Apr 11, 2003

Fri Apr 11 21:05:01 EDT 2003

MyAppleMenu Newsletter
Friday, Apr 11, 2003

MyAppleMenu : News
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Apple Trades At Near Five-Year Low (MacMinute)
<http://www.macminute.com/2003/04/11/aapl>

Apple 'Interested' In Music Giant (BBC News)
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2940355.stm>
According to press reports last year, Vivendi turned down an offer from Mr Davis in November. The price tags currently under discussion may well be too small for Vivendi's expectations: Universal Music alone enjoys $6bn in annual revenues.

Davis May Drop Vivendi Bid On Apple Deal (Reuters)
<http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/030411/media_universal_davis_3.html>
Billionaire oilman Marvin Davis would drop his bid to acquire the entertainment assets of Franco-American conglomerate Vivendi Universal if Vivendi sells Universal Music to Apple Computer Inc., a source familiar with the situation said Friday.

MacHack Early Registration Ends April 15 (MacMinute)
<http://www.macminute.com/2003/04/11/machack>

Apple Boosts Bluetooth - Bluetooth Boosts Apple (Andrew Orlowski, The Register)
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/30202.html>
Sometimes support for an emergent technology is just as important, and here Apple is surfing the crest of a wave. Microsoft's support for Bluetooth in Windows has been erratic, and now trails Apple significantly.

Apple Reportedly In Talks To Buy Universal Music (Chuck Philips, Los Angeles Times)
<http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-apple11apr11004423,1,144740.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dtechnology>
Such a seemingly unlikely combination would instantly make technology guru Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and chief executive, the most powerful player in the record industry.

MySQL Boasts Might Against Big Players (Lisa M. Bowman, CNET News.com)
<http://news.com.com/2100-1012-996434.html>
MySQL kicked off its first-ever users conference by releasing the source code of its upcoming MySQL 5.0 product and touting its reputation as the little database company that could.

Harry Potter & The Chamber Of Secrets Ships (Tuncer Deniz, Inside Mac Games)
<http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ID=7438>

Apple Posts WWDC Promo Video (MacMinute)
<http://www.macminute.com/2003/04/10/wwdc>

MyAppleMenu : Opinions
----------------------
Apple Wants Vivendi To Dance (Arik Hesseldahl and Peter Kafka, Forbes)
<http://www.forbes.com/home/2003/04/11/cx_ah_cz_pk_0411applev.html>
Apple could be wading into the market for downloadable music at just the right moment.

Apple Hears The Music? (Jeff Fischer, Motley Fool)
<http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2003/mft03041104.htm>
Since the late 1990s, the halls of Apple HQ have echoed with the notion that computer makers must become media owners if they're going to differentiate themselves. Plus, Apple is far more than a computer maker.

Apple In Talks To Buy Universal Music Group - Report (Tony Smith, The Register)
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/30209.html>
Owning Universal would give Apple the clout to offer the kind of online music service it wants to without having to endure limitations placed upon it by the big labels.

Count Apple Out Of The Low Cost Desktop Market (Adam Robert Guha, Low End Mac)
<http://www.lowendmac.com/archive/03/0411.html>
We all know it, and I've said it a million times: Macs are not cheap computers.

MyAppleMenu : Reviews
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Why The Power Macintosh G4 MDD (With Noise Reduction Kit) Is Louder After Waking From Sleep (MacFixIt)
<http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20030410020307919>
"When the computer goes into sleep mode, there is a heat buildup inside the computer due to the fact that the fan stops."

MyAppleMenu : Wintel News
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Is Small Biz Microsoft's Next Big Thing? (Jay Greene, BusinessWeek)
<http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/apr2003/sb20030410_1194_sb014.htm>
With new software and an army of resellers, Gates & Co., are launching a massive offensive to target 45 million businesses worldwide.

More Wintel News at <http://www.myapplemenu.com/wintel/>

MyAppleMenu Tomorrow : Top Stories
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Experts Predict End Of CD (Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune)
<http://www.vanderbilthustler.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/04/11/3e9629c52bcb2>
The Internet file-sharing culture has devalued not just music, it has also weaned consumers off the idea of packaging. For artists who treat their music conceptually, with complementary artwork and music, and songs sequenced for particular artistic impact, the hodge-podge aspect of the Internet is bad news.

Google News Tries To Separate PR, News (Associated Press)
<http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20030410S0010>
Search engine Google Inc. is trying to change the way its News page handles press releases, after some releases appeared on the site without being marked as such.

ACLU Loses First DMCA Challenge (Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com)
<http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-996245.html>
In a strongly worded decision, a federal judge in Boston dismissed a lawsuit aimed at defanging part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The ACLU's suit, filed against filtering-software company N2H2 last July, claims the law unconstitutionally interferes with researchers' ability to investigate and evaluate the effectiveness of Internet filtering software.

MyAppleMenu Tomorrow : News & Opinions
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Congress OKs Internet Porn Restrictions (David McGuire, Washington Post)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4830-2003Apr10.html>
Congress passed legislation today that would give jail time to online pornographers who deliberately mask their sites behind innocuous domain names.

Internet Via The Power Grid: New Interest In Obvious Idea (John Markoff and Matt Richtel, New York Times)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/technology/10POWE.html?ex=1050552000&en=9d99636fb4d39d82&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE>
As cable, telephone and wireless companies compete to provide high-speed Internet access to homes, a new challenger is emerging based on a decidedly old technology.

Linux Lags On The Desktop (Jennifer Maselli, InformationWeek)
<http://www.itnews.com.au/storycontent.cfm?ID=8&Art_ID=11840>
Linux looks increasingly like a technically viable option as an operating system for PCs, but it's still one that's rarely considered seriously in business environments.

Google Washes Whiter (Andrew Orlowski, The Register)
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30195.html>
Google has made its own statement on the 'Googlewash': by making The Register story that coined the phrase disappear from its search results.

Total Information Awareness Project Undergoes First Test (Aaron Ricadela, InformationWeek)
<http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20030410S0018>
Pentagon researchers this month completed the first set of test data for the controversial Total Information Awareness system, a key technologist for the project says.

After Three Years Of Wi-Fi, Hurdles Remain (Tom Krazit, IDG News Service)
<http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,80223,00.html>
Members of the Wi-Fi Alliance acknowledge that obstacles must be cleared before wireless networking becomes part of mainstream corporations' IT budgets, or part of a consumer's monthly communications bill.

Students Put Their Own Spin On Downloading Music (Jefferson Graham, USA Today)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-04-10-music-share_x.htm>
As the record industry starts to come down hard on unauthorized music downloading on college campuses, students are responding with defiant words and defensive actions.

Security: Let's Get Physical (Vivienne Fisher, ZDNet Australia)
<http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-996345.html>
IT departments and business managers need to collaborate more closely on an enterprise’s physical security needs, argues one advocate.

MySQL Boasts Might Against Big Players (Lisa M. Bowman, CNET News.com)
<http://news.com.com/2100-1012-996434.html>
MySQL kicked off its first-ever users conference by releasing the source code of its upcoming MySQL 5.0 product and touting its reputation as the little database company that could.

MyAppleMenu Reader : World
--------------------------
My First Day Of Freedom (Hussain Abdul-Hussain, New York Times)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/opinion/11HUSS.html>
Most of us want to live in a world of democracy. Now I ask the United States to live up to the fullness of its promise; it should not favor the crooks among the opposition leaders simply because they are American allies, since that would create another Saddam Hussein.

The News We Kept To Ourselves (Eason Jordan, New York Times)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/opinion/11JORD.html>
I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

Hold Your Applause (Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/opinion/09FRIE.html>
It's hard to smile when there's no water. It's hard to applaud when you're frightened. It's hard to say, "Thank you for liberating me," when liberation has meant that looters have ransacked everything from the grain silos to the local school, where they even took away the blackboard.

Follow Asia's Example (Greg Sheridan, The Australian)
<http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,6261335%255E25377,00.html>
Each successful transition to democracy involved intimate and prolonged US involvement.

MyAppleMenu Reader : Science & Tech
-----------------------------------
Matrix2 (Steve Silberman, Wired)
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/matrix2_pr.html>
Bullet Time was just the beginning. F/x guru John Gaeta reinvents cinematography with The Matrix Reloaded.

MyAppleMenu Reader : Life
-------------------------
Worst Foot Forward: A Guide To Foreign Insults (Linton Weeks, Washington Post)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5449-2003Apr10.html>
In this ever-shrinking garden of cross-cultural pollination, it's not a bad idea to know that various societies have varying notions of insultitude. If we're ever going to get along, we should at least try to understand each other's snipes and slights.

'I'd Frantically Write, After Dark, On Lager' (Libby Brooks, The Guardian)
<http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,932906,00.html>
He is on Granta's prestigious Best Young British Novelists list, and his first novel is receiving huge critical acclaim. So why has Dan Rhodes declared that he will never write again?

The Story Not Worth Dying For (Chris Ayres, The Times)
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-641820,00.html>
If my editor asked me to become a war correspondent again, my response this time would be clear: absolutely probably not.

Sony Leads Charge To Cash In On Iraq (Julia Day, The Guardian)
<http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/story/0,7494,933239,00.html>
Japanese electronics giant Sony has taken an extraordinary step to cash in on the war in Iraq by patenting the term "Shock and Awe" for a computer game.

Goodbye To Column, Hello To Political Reporting (Mark Simon, San Francisco Chronicle)
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/10/BA52433.DTL>
I often found the requirement to form an opinion and express a point of view to be limiting -- an enforced bias that required the marshaling of facts to suit your own needs.

Expat Bloggers Big In Japan (Bryan Shih, Japan Media Review)
<http://www.ojr.org/japan/internet/1048789636.php>
The most active bloggers in Japan seem to be expats writing about what it's like to be an expat in Japan, but Japanese bloggers are slowly getting into the act.

Iraqi Currency Hot On eBay (Joanna Glasner, Wired News)
<http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58402,00.html>
The Iraqi dinar -- a currency so hyper-inflated as to be virtually worthless in the real world -- is gaining fresh value among collectors. In the three weeks since the start of war in Iraq, sellers of bank notes have seen a surge in demand from collectors for currency containing images of Saddam Hussein.

MyAppleMenu Reader : EOF
------------------------
Hong Kong In Hot Flush Over Ad Blunder (Jason Deans, The Guardian)
<http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,932861,00.html>
With the burgeoning Sars epidemic spreading fear among travellers worldwide, the Hong Kong tourist board must be ruing the day it commissioned a series of magazine ads telling readers a visit to the city will "take your breath away".

MyAppleMenu SingaporeSurf : Top Stories
---------------------------------------
Quarantined... Under Watchful Eye Of Camera (Ben Nadarajan, Straits Times)
<http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/singapore/story/0,4386,182461,00.html?>
12 flout stay-home orders, so cameras are installed in homes of all 490. When officials all, they have to be in front of it.

MyAppleMenu SingaporeSurf : News & Opinions
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Analysis: Singapore Growth Losing Steam (Sonia Kolesnikov, UPI)
<http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030410-021648-9077r>
Singapore's economic recovery is losing steam faster than expected as demand wanes for the country's exports. Advance estimates for the first quarter showed that gross domestic product increased by 1.5 percent, well below an official estimate of 2.7 percent and market expectation of 2.3 percent.

Discussion: Webcams To Enforce Singapore Quarantine (Slashdot)
<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/10/1844236&mode=flat&tid=158>

More Singapore News at <http://www.myapplemenu.com/singapore/>

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MyAppleMenu is edited by Heng-Cheong Leong. This site is not affiliated with Apple Computer, Inc., or any other companies in any manner. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, Power Macintosh, PowerBook, iMac, iBook, iPod, and eMac are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. All other brands or product names are trademarks of their registered holders. Copyright &copy; 1996-2003 Heng-Cheong Leong. All rights reserved.