ETD: 782 E-Biz Strikes Again!; Unique Mother's Day Gifts in
Survey of Women Homeowners; 'Sasser' Worm Targets Microsoft Windows
Flaw
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Tue May 4 02:11:35 GMT 2004
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0782 May 4, 2004
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] E-Biz Strikes Again!
[3] Unique Mother's Day Gifts in Survey of Women Homeowners
[4] 'Sasser' Worm Targets Microsoft Windows Flaw
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
Mother's Day is Sunday here in the U.S. We all give the usual Mother's Day
gifts - flowers, jewelry. Well, Sears did a survey and found not all women
want roses. Very interesting. What do you give your mother on this day?
E-business is on the rise again. And Business Week lists six new arenas to
explore. I know some of our members are already in some of them. What
about you?
A new and nasty worm is attacking Windows computers. And it's not passed
via e-mail. Get your firewalls and security up-to-date and fast! It is nasty!
Tell us about your business which will remain for posterity at
our "Members: Who Are You?" site. We just updated all those postings that
we were delinquent with the
updates. http://etailersdigest.com/resources/members/index.htm And we have
a form there for you to tell us about you. As I said when I first proposed
this idea, we have "known" each other for a long time, yet we often don't
know anything about each other. So, tell us who you are and what you do.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] E-Biz Strikes Again!
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The Internet has rewritten the rules for books, music, and travel. Which
industries are next? Here are six:
As the Internet boom turned into bust, corporate America could be forgiven
for allowing itself a small sigh of relief. When all was giddy, and the
stock market giddiest of all, big companies feared the disruptive power of
the Net. Look what happened to Barnes & Noble, they fretted, as
Amazon.com changed the game of bookselling. Or how Expedia Inc. ( overran
travel agents. No one wanted to be the next to get "Amazoned." So when the
NASDAQ buckled in 2000, the corporate giants relaxed -- relieved that
things weren't going to change as radically or as rapidly as they had feared.
Uh-oh -- the threat is back. Net companies have survived their nuclear
winter, and throughout the economy, big companies are again under assault.
Again, the Web is threatening to force down the prices charged by
traditional players, squeeze their margins, and even put some out of
business. New technology, new ways of doing business, and new approaches to
cutting out the middleman mean the old pricing power is collapsing in a
series of industries -- and existing leaders will be forced to find new
ways to make money. The pressing question is: How many more industries will
be transformed by the Net? "How high is the sky?" answers Barry Diller, CEO
of InterActiveCorp (IACI ) , which owns Expedia and other Net properties.
In the first wave of disruption, Amazon, Expedia, and others rewrote the
rules for books, music, and air travel. Now the Web is poised to remake at
least six more major industries: jewelry, bill payments, telecom, hotels,
real estate, and software. In the jewelry business, online players are set
to wreak havoc on traditional players. Amazon CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos, who
jumped into the business on Apr. 22, says he can buy a diamond wholesale
for $500 and resell it for $575. Never mind that Tiffany (TIF ), Zale (ZLC
), and neighborhood stores are used to getting $1,000 for the same stone.
Five-year-old Blue Nile Inc. has proved that this strategy can be very
profitable. The online jeweler made $27 million on $129 million in sales
last year. The upstarts "are going to kill everyone," says analyst Ken
Gassman of New York-based Rapaport, which publishes a diamond industry
newsletter.
Brave talk like that is surfacing again because this show turned out to
star more than just eBay (EBAY ) and the Failures. Companies that made it
through the dot-com bust worked hard to get their houses in order. Nearly
60% of the remaining public Internet companies made money in the fourth
quarter of last year, based on standard accounting measurements. Those
profits are luring investors back to the market. Venture-capital
investments topped $5 billion in the first quarter for the first time in
nearly two years, while 14 Net companies are registered to go public.
The super six for the future are:
1. Jewelry
2. Online check writing
3. Hotels
4. Telecom
5. Real estate
6. Open source software (like Linux)
Are you ready?
George
Details at...
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_19/b3882601.htm
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[3] Many Moms Opt for Tools Over Roses in Sears Survey of Women Homeowners
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Here I thought only fathers wanted tools as a present....
Not all moms are hoping their families say it with flowers this Mother's
Day. One-third of all respondents in a nationwide survey of women
homeowners said they would rather receive a dozen tools than a dozen roses
this Mother's Day. The survey was commissioned by Sears, Roebuck and Co.
(NYSE: S - News) and conducted by the national research firm of Mathew
Greenwald & Associates between March 27 and April 18.
The strong interest in home improvement has attracted more women, moms
included, to become involved in home and yard projects. While traditional
Mother's Day gifts will touch the hearts of many moms across the country,
gift givers would be wise to acknowledge that some moms have different
interests. Eighty-three percent of the women surveyed said working with
tools makes them feel more empowered.
Among traditional gift ideas, Mother's rings and lockets deliver heartfelt
messages on Mother's Day. Other selections include new spring colors across
all apparel categories, as well as digital cameras or camcorders.
The nationwide telephone poll looked at the home care knowledge, attitudes
and behaviors of 603 female homeowners. The survey base included 301
married or cohabiting women homeowners and 302 single women homeowners. The
margin of error for the total sample is +/- 3.9%. The margin of error for
the sub- samples of married/cohabiting and single women homeowners is +/- 5.5%.
Details at...
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040503/cgm056_1.html
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[4] 'Sasser' Worm Targets Microsoft Windows Flaw
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A new computer worm tied up hundreds of thousands of machines world-wide,
making it the latest outbreak to take advantage of a flaw in Microsoft
Corp.'s Windows operating systems.
The worm, dubbed "Sasser" by antivirus companies, currently has four
variants and has been slowing down infected consumer and corporate
computers world-wide and the networks on which they run. The flaw, which
affects machines running various versions of Microsoft's operating system,
including Windows XP, Windows Server and Windows NT, was revealed by
Microsoft only two weeks ago.
Stephen Toulouse, security program manager with Microsoft's security
response center, said the company is taking the Sasser worm "extremely
seriously." Microsoft is offering customers a software-based cleaner tool
that can be downloaded from its Web site1 and will automatically remove the
worm.
Sasser is a self-executing piece of software code that takes advantage of a
flaw in the Windows Local Security Authority Subsystem Services, or LSASS.
The worm scans the Internet searching for vulnerable computers. Once an
infectable computer is found, the worm infiltrates it and then uses that
machine to pinpoint other vulnerable computers.
"This virus doesn't involve e-mail. It searches out infectable machines all
by itself without any intervention from users," said David Perry, global
director of education for Trend Micro Inc., a Tokyo antivirus company.
While the worm doesn't wipe out files or deliver what antivirus
professionals call destructive payloads, it does slow network response
times, in some cases to a point where the networks can't be used.
Network Associates, which said the Sasser worm originated on Friday, has
received reports from Fortune 500 companies that the worm tried to
penetrate their networks, according to Vincent Gullotto, vice president of
the company's antivirus emergency response team. Mr. Gullotto said the
largest number of infected machines are in Europe, which was hit during the
weekend.
Rival antivirus maker Symantec Corp. said Monday afternoon that it has
received 5,100 submissions from its consumer and corporate customers, or
about 170 submissions an hour. Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering
for Symantec Security Response, said that rate is higher than what Blaster,
last summer's devastating network worm, produced at the same stage of its
outbreak.
"It's exploiting a vulnerability that's as widespread as Blaster's and
users had only two weeks to patch," a short timeline for updating the large
number of computers linked on a large corporate network, he said. Moreover,
it wasn't the only serious Microsoft security issued in its monthly patch
release made on April 13. The software giant also revealed two other
"critical" flaws and an "important" flaw affecting multiple Windows
versions that day.
Details at...
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108360001280600272,00.html
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Links to follow
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Prior to 29 Dec
1999 http://etailersdigest.com/archives/index.htm
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