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To: SSP who wrote (85126)	5/26/2001 12:04:24 PM
From: Jim Bishop	Respond to of 150070

Itanium chips: dailynews.yahoo.com Week ahead, the week that was By Charles Cooper, ZDNet News Intel will lift its gag order when it announces the start of shipments of Itanium chips to its PC customers. The arrival of the 64-bit chip means you can expect Itanium workstations and servers to reach the market within the next couple of months. That's bad news for Sun Microsystems and other server makers that only sell RISC-based systems. With the long-delayed Itanium in tow, the Compaqs and Hewlett-Packards of the world are going to force the RISC camp to match their lower prices or risk (no pun intended) losing business. Proxicom ultimately spurned Compaq but sources tell me the company is on the prowl to pick up another high-end services provider. The pressure is on to increase that piece of the business to 30 percent of total revenue from the current 21 percent. A deal isn't likely to hit the street next week, but who knows? "Who knows" is a fine way to start any ruminations about the next chapter in the Microsoft saga. Make that the never-ending Microsoft saga. The good justices on the U.S. Court of Appeals are still mucking around with a decision about what to do with Judge Jackson's breakup order. With the approach of the dog days of a typically brutal Washington summer, the court's vacation time is around the bend. Could next week be when we hear a decision? Lineo will announce a deal to supply Linux (news - web sites) technology to Sharp for that company's next generation of Zaurus personal digital assistants. Alcatel and Lucent are going into the weekend still negotiating merger terms. This may or may not result in an agreement. But if they do clinch a deal, I hope somebody from Lucent's brass prevails upon their opposite number to drop those idiotic commercials Alcatel's been running the last couple of months. And another fading comet from the dot-com era is expected to retreat from the scene when Business 2.0 publishes its last edition. Parent company Imagine Media and AOL Time Warner are about to announce a deal whereby Business 2.0's name and subscriber list will get folded into Time's eCompany Now. The week that was America Online announced plans to raise its monthly subscription prices by $1.95 because....well, because it can. Though a harbinger of bad news for consumers--the other ISPs will follow suit, mark my words--it's a smart move by AOL. The company can sell it as a relatively painless increase--hey, the price of three Snickers bars each month--in return for providing "value-added services." And more importantly, from AOL's perspective, it's also a guarantee of an extra $300 million per year. This despite the self-serving spin of an MSN spokesman who rhetorically asked why AOL "expects its customers to pay a premium for a service that does not offer the same level of features and functionality that can be found standard on MSN." Puh-leeze. So now Vivendi owns MP3.com, how should history judge MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson? Yes, the company will survive, albeit as an outpost in the sprawling Vivendi empire. But the sale, which was forced by desperation, signals the end of the promised music revolution in which the Internet would rock the world of the music moguls. Try as he might, Robertson was unable to undo the effect of a huge blunder which required MP3.com to pay out more than $150 million in lawsuit settlements with several big music companies. A cynic--well, at least this cynic--might argue that the litigation pursued by Vivendi and the other big studios came about precisely because they sought to drive down MP3.com's share price until it could be snapped up for a song. The Supreme Court is going to revisit the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, a statute that was supposed to prevent commercial sites from selling sexually explicit material to minors. COPA, a good idea that was badly conceived, never got put into practice as it was met by repeated court challenges from free-speech advocates who correctly noted it would stifle Internet speech. What is it about Microsoft and the number three? Seems that nearly every big project undertaken by the Redmondians results in an underwhelming product--but the third time is a charm. So it was with Windows. So it was with NT. And so it apparently is with Pocket PC, which marks the company's third attempt at an operating system for handhelds. Less than a year after its introduction, there are now about 1.25 million Pocket PC units in the market. Unlike Palm, Pocket PC's strength has been the corporate market, the economic slowdown of the last several months notwithstanding. Meanwhile, Microsoft finally put its 64-bit version of Windows XP into customer hands for testing. This operating system, which will presumably wind up on servers powered by Intel's Itanium chip, isn't going to hit the market before the late October release of the 32-bit version of Windows XP. Here's something straight out of the funny papers: A new report issued by the General Accounting Office (news - web sites) concludes that a special unit set up by the FBI (news - web sites) to warn against imminent electronic attacks by the bad guys is all too often a day late and a dollar short. I am shocked, shocked! Well, not to slam the FBI but here's a starter suggestion: Why not staff the unit with computer security professionals--hackers and crackers, the more the merrier--instead of regular FBI agents? (As luck would have it, Uncle Sam announced plans to set aside $8.6 million for scholarships to security students who agree to work in government posts after graduation.) And so it happened that the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center, the cybersecurity analogue of the Justice League of America, got hit by a denial-of-service attack, making it temporarily impossible for CERT to do its job--warning companies about computer security threats. The wonderfully named 1394 Trade Association passed a milestone this week when it gave thumbs up to new specifications for FireWire, or IEEE 1394b. The takeaway here is that the speed of the connections between personal computers and peripherals will jump to up to 800 megabits per second from the 400 mbps of the current version of FireWire. But don't expect the first systems featuring the new standard until late this year. Aimster CEO Johnny Deep has had better weeks, to be sure. First, an arbitration panel rules that AOL Time Warner should receive rights to the Aimster.com domain name. Then the front group for the recording industry at the RIAA (news - web sites) fired off a lawsuit, charging Aimster with violating copyright in much the same way as Napster (news - web sites) and Scour, the two previous targets of its attention. It's only a matter of time before the Motion Picture Association of America piles on with its own lawsuit. Here's a sign of the times. Attrition.org, a volunteer site that tracks the defacement of Web pages, will no longer do so because its staff can't keep up with the ever-increasing load. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of California at San Diego report that more than 4,000 denial-of-service attacks get launched every week. Richard Egan, nominated earlier this year to be the next U.S. ambassador to Ireland, has filed along with his wife to sell 10.1 million shares of EMC, the storage company he co-founded. Based on the stock's current value, that's a bit more than $400 million, which will buy him and the missus a fair amount of Guinness. Dell's President James Vanderslice declared a full-scale price war, which is hardly something investors wanted to hear. But that's the current coin of conventional wisdom these days in the PC market: Slash prices and bleed your rival white. Dell does have some $8 billion in the bank and has far more leeway than, say, an EMachines ever did to play this game. But for what purpose: Just to say you're No. 1? It does seem slightly nuts. Kmart showed its gratitude to Mark Goldstein for rescuing Bluelight.com and making it the nation's second largest online site operated by a mass merchandise company by pushing him out the door. Now that the site is functioning just fine, what many of the weasels in corporate forget is how bad things were prior to Goldstein taking the reins, not the least of the challenges being that so many of their customers weren't even online. The PC price war is getting really funky. I saw a Dell ad for a Pentium 4 machine with the works--17-inch color monitor, 1.3GB hard drive, 128K memory, and so on--and the system was selling for about $1,100. That's of a piece with earlier statements by senior Dell execs suggesting that they are ready, willing and able to go to the mattresses to win more market share.

To: SSP who wrote (85126)	5/26/2001 12:56:17 PM
From: Jim Bishop	Respond to of 150070

SCIO possible candidate for the LIST, impact date July 2001 based on this news. biz.yahoo.com Scios Announces FDA Advisory Committee Unanimously Recommends Approval Of Natrecor for Acute Congestive Heart Failure Drug Could Become First New Acute CHF Treatment in Over a Decade SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Scios Inc. (Nasdaq: SCIO - news) announced today that the Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unanimously recommended approval of Natrecor® (nesiritide) for the treatment of acute congestive heart failure (CHF) by a vote of 10-0. If approved by the FDA, Natrecor would be the first new treatment for acute CHF in more than a decade. Natrecor is a recombinant form of B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), a naturally occurring hormone in the body that aids healthy functioning of the heart. BNP causes arteries and veins to dilate, alleviating symptoms by improving blood movement around the heart without a change in heart rate. Natrecor is administered intravenously in a standard fixed dose regimen, and typically does not require titration (i.e., dose adjustments). Approximately five million Americans suffer from congestive heart failure, and there are approximately one million hospitalizations each year in the United States due to acute CHF. ``Natrecor is now one step closer to approval and helping physicians manage acute CHF patients, which are growing in number every year,'' said Darlene P. Horton, M.D., Scios' Vice President of Medical Affairs. ``We commend the clinical investigators and their teams at leading medical centers around the country who made it possible to expedite high-quality clinical trials evaluating Natrecor. We are very proud of this dedicated development effort.'' Based on the outcome of clinical trials involving nearly 1,000 patients treated with Natrecor, Scios submitted an amendment to the New Drug Application (NDA) for Natrecor to the FDA in early 2001. The original NDA was filed with the FDA in April 1998. The FDA subsequently requested additional data on Natrecor, which was included in the amended application filed in January of 2001. Despite a positive Advisory Committee recommendation, the FDA's final decision may differ. We expect the FDA to make its decision in July 2001. In anticipation of final FDA approval of Natrecor, Scios entered into a commercialization and marketing agreement for Natrecor in the United States with Innovex, the commercialization unit of Quintiles Transnational Corp. (Nasdaq: QTRN - news). ``We are building a 180-person strong sales and marketing force that we believe will be the largest and the most focused in the U.S. acute CHF market,'' said Richard B. Brewer, Scios' President and Chief Executive Officer. ``We have hired two area business directors who will coordinate and lead the field sales effort with the 18 business managers who will support the sales force. We will be ready to launch the product at the end of July if Natrecor is approved by the FDA.'' Clinical Trial Results Presenters at today's advisory committee meeting reviewed results of several clinical trials, including the pivotal 498-patient VMAC (Vasodilation in the Management of Acute Congestive heart failure) trial. The data demonstrated Natrecor's ability to rapidly improve blood circulation and reduce pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP), a measure of the pulmonary congestion resulting from acute CHF, in as little as 15 minutes. This effect was sustained for at least 48 hours. Natrecor has also been shown to rapidly alleviate patient symptoms, such as shortness of breath and fatigue. The most common side effects have been headache, reversible hypotension, and abdominal pain. In addition to Dr. Horton, data was also presented to the Advisory Committee by James B. Young, M.D., Head, Section of Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplant Medicine and Medical Director of the Kaufman Center for Heart Failure at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and William Abraham, M.D., Chief, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and Director, Section of Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation, University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Congestive Heart Failure - An Epidemic A potentially life-threatening disorder that has no cure, heart failure is a chronic pathophysiologic condition in which the heart functions inefficiently and circulation is reduced to the body's organs. In congestive heart failure, fluid accumulates in the tissues, including lung tissue, causing such symptoms as difficulty breathing, swelling of the hands and feet, difficulty sleeping, dry cough, fatigue and rapid weight gain. CHF may result from an acute event (e.g., heart attack) or may develop gradually over time. During an acute episode of CHF, the heart's inability to adequately circulate blood throughout the body worsens beyond its already compromised state, causing symptoms to become so pronounced that hospital treatment is required to stabilize the patient's condition. A sudden increase in dietary sodium (salt), failure to take chronic oral medications for managing CHF, or the development of a new heart arrhythmia can precipitate an acute attack. Conference Call Details Scios will host a conference call and webcast this afternoon to discuss the results of the meeting at 6:00 p.m. (EDT). The webcast will be available on Scios' Web site at www.sciosinc.com. The conference call dial-in will be 800-314-7867. A replay of both the conference call and webcast will be available through June 1, 2001. The replay dial-in number will be 888-203-1112, confirmation code 593777. Scios Inc. Scios is a biopharmaceutical company developing novel treatments for heart failure and rheumatoid arthritis. The company's disease-based technology platform integrates expertise in protein biology with computational and medicinal chemistry to identify novel targets and rationally design small-molecule compounds to treat cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases, for large markets with unmet medical needs. Additional information on Scios is available on its Web site located at www.sciosinc.com and in the company's various filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The statements in this press release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These include uncertainties associated with anticipating the response of the FDA to the results of the VMAC trial, the timing of regulatory approval of Natrecor, and acceptance by the medical community of Natrecor as a new therapy for acute decompensated CHF, as well as other risks detailed from time to time in the reports filed by Scios with the SEC, including the company's annual report on form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000, and subsequent reports filed on form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2001. SOURCE: Scios Inc.

To: SSP who wrote (85126)	5/26/2001 1:06:53 PM
From: Jim Bishop	Respond to of 150070

SCIO more: msnbc.com FDA panel backs heart failure drug Experts say Natrecor should be approved for sale BETHESDA, Md., May 25 — Scios Inc. moved closer to getting its first drug on the U.S. market on Friday, as an advisory panel unanimously backed approval for Natrecor, a heart failure treatment regulators rejected two years ago that analysts say could post sales of up to $300 million a year. A FOOD and Drug Administration panel voted that Natrecor should be approved for treating acute flare-ups of congestive heart failure, a life-threatening condition that is the leading cause of hospitalization in Americans older than 65. Scios, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based biopharmaceutical company, hopes Natrecor will become its first product approved for marketing in the United States. Industry analysts estimate peak annual sales could be between $200 million and $300 million. ,b>The company said it expects the FDA to make a final decision by July. The committee vote “was beyond our expectations. A unanimous vote is rare in this business,” Scios Chief Scientific Officer George Schreiner said in an interview. The FDA usually follows its panels’ advice, although its action was at odds with the committee on Scios’ first request for approval. In January 1999, the advisory committee voted 5-3 to recommend approval, but the FDA turned down Scios’ application and asked for more information. To meet the FDA’s demands, Scios compared Natrecor to nitroglycerin and a placebo in a trial of 489 patients. The study showed that Natrecor worked better than intravenous nitroglycerin, the standard treatment, at easing blood flow and helping patients breathe better, Scios officials said. The new data satisfied committee members that Natrecor’s benefits outweighed risks such as possible drops in blood pressure. Dr. Marvin Konstam of New England Medical Center previously voted against Natrecor but said Scios “did a really nice job” addressing concerns. One panel member urged a “black box” warning about the possibility of blood pressure drops, saying they can be dangerous for heart failure patients, who are typically elderly. An estimated 5 million Americans have congestive heart failure, a chronic condition that causes fatigue and shortness of breath when fluid backs up into the lungs and tissues. Leading causes are damage to heart muscle from coronary artery disease or high blood pressure. Missing a dose of daily medication or eating a heavy meal can send patients to the hospital with acute flare-ups. Scios said such episodes lead to 1 million hospital visits each year. The last new treatment for acute congestive heart failure was approved in 1987, and all current options have drawbacks such as possibly serious side effects. Natrecor, known generically as nesiritide, is a genetically engineered version of a natural heart hormone that works by dilating blood vessels and easing blood flow.

To: SSP who wrote (85126)	5/26/2001 2:05:17 PM
From: Jim Bishop	Respond to of 150070

AVBC LIST possible with short and medium impact dates. Friday May 25, 5:39 pm Eastern Time Press Release SOURCE: Aqua Vie Beverage Corporation Aqua Vie Hydrators(TM) to Be Available Through Industry Giant Fleming Foods; Expands Regional Retail Availability in California and Western U.S. KETCHUM, Idaho, May 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Aqua Vie Beverage Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: AVBC - news) announced today that industry giant Fleming Foods (www.fleming.com) has joined the company's sales and marketing system and will make Aqua Vie Hydrators(TM) available to its network, which serves over 3000 supermarkets throughout the United States, including a number of independent regional banners. Thomas Gillespie, Aqua Vie's president and chief executive officer, said, ``We anticipate a significant geographic expansion of retail availability during the month of June and throughout the summer as a result of the addition of Fleming and the coordinated distribution efforts of several additional distributors and brokers in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, as well as Arizona, Nevada, Texas and Oklahoma.'' Aqua Vie continues to make excellent progress in Southern California, especially throughout the Albertson's system, consisting of more than 300 stores statewide, and product is being well received by consumers. Additionally, Ralphs and Randalls (a division of Safeway) will begin offering Aqua Vie Hydrators in early June throughout their respective service areas. In-store demonstrations will be taking place throughout the summer in various Albertson's, Ralphs and Randalls locations. ``We are excited about recent developments and pleased to report that several pilot distributors and brokers have now re-upped and increased the size of their programs,'' said Gillespie. He indicated that the company expects to achieve significant market penetration and additional same-store shelf space in the Western United States during the summer of 2001. ``We are confident that Aqua Vie's exceptional 'drinkability' and consumers' preference for good taste will help us make noticeable inroads throughout the summer season,'' said Gillespie. Fleming Foods (NYSE: FLM - news) is the industry leader in distribution and has a growing presence in value retailing. The company serves 3000 supermarkets including more than 700 North American stores of global supermarketer IGA and other regional banners, 5000 convenience stores and nearly 1000 supercenters, discount, limited assortment, drug, specialty and other businesses. Fleming also operates price impact stores throughout the United States under the Food4Less banner and, soon to come, the Fresh4Less banner. Aqua Vie Beverage Corporation develops and markets all-natural, lightly flavored, still (non-carbonated) bottled spring water. The company's low-calorie alternative beverages are bacteria-free and contain no preservatives. Aqua Vie produces and markets the Hydrator(TM) line of beverages in the United States and Europe. This beverage line, comprised of seven low-calorie, all-natural beverages that are lightly flavored and packaged in half-liter bottles, is designed to increase one's personal consumption of water, naturally. The underlying technology also serves as the delivery system for Aqua Vie's new line of children's Hydrators(TM), PurePlay(TM), and Eau Vin(TM), Aqua Vie's line of nonalcoholic wine and champagnes made from spring water. For further information about Aqua Vie Beverage Corporation, visit the company's web site at www.aquavie.com. NOTE: Statements contained in this news release that are not strictly historical are forward-looking within the meaning of the safe harbor clause of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The company makes these statements based on information available to it as of the date of this news release and it assumes no responsibility to update or revise such forward-looking statements. Editors and investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements invoke risk and uncertainties that may cause the company's actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, demand for the company's product both domestically and abroad, the company's ability to continue to develop its market, general economic conditions, and other factors that may be more fully described in the company's literature and any periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. SOURCE: Aqua Vie Beverage Corporation

To: SSP who wrote (85126)	5/26/2001 9:36:48 PM
From: Jim Bishop	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 150070

MIGR msdn.microsoft.com Theresa W. Carey Migrating to Itanium? MigraTEC Inc. has published DART 1.0 for Windows®, a software utility that enables enterprises and other organizations to conduct an initial assessment for migrating C/C++ Windows-based applications to Intel's Itanium platform. Dubbed DART, for Downloadable Assessment Reporting Tool, the utility supports any application that was developed using Microsoft® Visual Studio®. This is the first in a series of DARTs coming from MigraTEC. DARTs are small, quickly retrievable utilities for CIOs, CTOs, MIS managers, and software developers who are considering migrating legacy C/C++ applications to a different operating system or hardware platform. They can use DARTs to get a sampling of the scope and complexity of the proposed migration project. Future DARTs will perform 64-bit and cross-platform migration assessment and reporting for applications running on Linux and AIX 5L platforms, among others. Users download the utility (it's less than 100KB) and run it on the application they want to migrate. The DART will provide the following specific information on the application to be migrated: the number of lines of code involved, the number of files involved, and a sampling of the issues found for a particular migration path. Organizations can then make more informed decisions when planning for software migration projects. To assist enterprises with the upcoming 64-bit software migration, MigraTEC licenses its MigrationSUITE software to help automate the porting process. MigraTEC Inc. 11494 Luna Road, Suite 100 Dallas, TX 75234 972-969-0300 migratec.com