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AOL and Wal-Mart to launch ISP for rural areas
Confirming rumors, America Online and Wal-Mart yesterday announced their intention to
create a jointly named internet access company. The new service will be a customized
version of CompuServe, the one-time independent proprietary service that AOL bought in
Sept. 1997 and has remodeled into a low-cost service provider. The strategic intent is to
bring the internet to communities that don't at this point have easy local
access--Wal-Mart country, in other words. Wal-Mart reports that four of every 10 towns in
which it has a store still do not have local internet access. More than 90 million people
shop every year in Wal-Mart; AOL's current subscriber base is approaching 20 million.
Ex-Infoseek honcho beats child sex
rap--for now
A Los Angeles jury has
deadlocked on charges that former Infoseek executive Patrick Naughton had attempted to
have sex with a minor. The jury did find Naughton guilty of possessing child pornography.
Prosecutors must now decide whether they will retry the 34-year-old executive. Naughton
was arrested after meeting with an undercover FBI agent posing as a 13-year-old girl
following several months of online correspondence that was part of an FBI sting. Naughton
had told the jurors that he never believed that the person he was meeting was in fact
under-aged. He apparently succeeded in raising sufficient doubts in the minds of several
jurors. Naughton, who had been fired from his job as executive vice president of Infoseek
when the charges were filed, faces up to 30 years in prison if he is retried and
convicted.
Must-read: New Yorker's spoof of
Details
The New Yorker gives us a peek into the workings
of a fellow Conde Nast magazine with this week's Back Page feature, entitled "The
Details Magazine Editing Test." Noting that new Details editor Mark Golin, late of
Maxim, had been employing a "rigorous editing test" to screen applicants for
senior editorial jobs, writer Charles McGrath seizes on the opportunity to conjure his
vision of a winning application. His test is a page from Henry James' "Portrait of a
Lady" describing protagonist Isabel Archer. Applicants are apparently free to make
any revisions they deem necessary. McGrath's would-be editor uses his discretion to
replace "It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind" with "It had been
her fortune to possess a more excellent bod." For "a young woman of
extraordinary profundity," he (It's probably safe to assume it's a "he")
substitutes "a young woman of exceptional babetude-we're talking primo, dude!"
Is this just a bit of good-natured ribbing from one Conde Nast book to another, or is it
typical intellectual snobbery on the part of the New Yorker? There's a third
possibility: maybe it's just good investigative reporting by McGrath. Having read a recent
issue of Details, it's hard to say for sure.
