New Bookmarks
Year 2001 Quarter 4:  October 1-December 31 Additions to Bob Jensen's Bookmarks
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

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For the October 1-December 31, 2001 Additions and Summaries scroll down this document 
For the other editions go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
For the full set of Bob Jensen's Bookmarks go to http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm
    (The full set is never up to date with the latest additions to my New Bookmarks.)
Click here to go to Bob Jensen's home page http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

Choose a Date for Additions to the Bookmarks File

December 20, 2001     December 10, 2001     December 3, 2001     

November 23, 2001    November 14, 2001    November 7, 2001      November 1, 2001     

October 24, 2001        October 18, 2001        October 10, 2001        October 2, 2001    

Scroll down this page to view this week's new bookmarks. 

For earlier editions of New Bookmarks, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

I maintain threads on various topics at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 

San Antonio Events and Regional Links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/sanantonio.htm 

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
This search engine may get you some hits from other professors at Trinity University included with Bob Jensen's documents, but this may be to your benefit.

Whenever a commercial product or service is mentioned anywhere in Bob Jensen's website, there is no advertising fee or other remuneration to Bob Jensen.  This website is intended to be a public service.  I am grateful to Trinity University for serving up my ramblings.

Bob Jensen's video helpers for MS Excel, MS Access, and other helper videos are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/ 
Accompanying documentation can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/default1.htm and http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

Bob Jensen's Commentaries, Quotations, and Links Regarding the Latest U.S. War are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JusticeAppeal.htm 

December 20, 2001

This is the last edition of New Bookmarks for the Year 2001.  My wife and I will be spending the holidays with my father in Algona, Iowa.  Archived editions are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

My father (Vernon) is nearly 90 years old and in the best of health considering his age.  In 1995, he asked me to write a story about his first trip away from the farm (when he was fourteen years old).  You can read the story about when life was difficult but, at the same time, more genuine because few people had any money to waste on anything. 
See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/vernon.htm 

A Year 2001 message of love from my wife, Erika
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/erika/xmas01.htm

A Year 2000 message of love from my wife, Erika.  
She describes how a Munich street urchin became Cinderella filled with love and joy --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/erika/xmas00.htm 

Bob's Old Story About Growing Up in Iowa
Short story entitled My Glimpse of Heaven:  What I learned from Max and Gwen

Brotherhood - in memory of the 343 fallen firefighters --- http://www.brotherhoodfdny.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on terrorism are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JusticeAppeal.htm

The State Department unveils a site dedicated to September's terrorist attacks, and it's surprising some observers with its emotional tone, raising a question about propaganda  --- http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,49067,00.html 

Quotes of the Week

The ultimate fate of any profession lies not in its rules, regulations, and controls. The fate lies in the will and dedication of the majority of people who serve in that profession --- the honest cops, the devoted doctors, the dedicated professors, the faithful clergy, and the ardent auditors.
Bob Jensen in a message to his students following the Enron scandal.

To Andersen's credit, it has long advocated a tighter rule.  But that would crimp the Big Five's clients --- companies and Wall Street.  Accountants have helped stall changes.  
Enron's collapse may finally break that logjam.  Like it or not, the Big Five must accept new rules that give investors a clearer picture of what risks companies run with SPEs.
Mike McNamee (See below)

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Mark Twain

Now, will you please move that elephant? It's blocking the television.
Laura Palmer Noone & Craig Swenson, "5 Dirty Little Secrets in Higher Education," (See Below)

Think now of the youth camp traditions.  Much of higher education is attached to a model that privileges the baccalaureate student who is eighteen to twenty-two years old, studying full-time to obtain a degree in four years, and residing in institutional housing.  These students are the privileged few--already a minority in American higher education in actual numbers but still dominant in the myths of what higher education is about.  These privileged few are granted a special opportunity in life: to spend four years of adulthood, mainly withdrawn from productive employment, in the exploitation of their physical and mental capabilities for their own purposes--some high-minded, some frankly bent on the pleasures of youth--while being protected from most of the ordinary consequences (often even the legal consequences) of irresponsible conduct.  (It is no accident that drug abuse has historically been a phenomenon among the un-employed young--with the graciously un-employed upper-class youths buying their supplies from the unwillingly un-employed lower-class youths.  The two groups have more in common than we like to imagine.)  Dormitories and fraternity/sorority houses and student ghettos are the scenes of a wide variety of childish behaviors to which the denizens feel entitled.  Many students living in the same settings are disgusted by some of what they see and refrain from much of the behavior around them, but they rarely succeed in overthrowing the dominant culture.
James O'Donnell "Youth Camp:  A Long Farewell" (See Below)

Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. In the 20th century, nihilistic themes--epistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessness--have preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Mid-century, for example, the existentialists helped popularize tenets of nihilism in their attempts to blunt its destructive potential. By the end of the century, existential despair as a response to nihilism gave way to an attitude of indifference, often associated with antifoundationalism.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy --- http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/n/nihilism.htm 

It's almost springtime in Texas.

From our beloved Lady Bird Johnson
The Wildflower Center http://wildflower.avatartech.com/Plants_Online/Native_Plants/native.html 

New
Bob Jensen's Threads on Return on Business Valuation, Business Combinations, 
Investment (ROI), and Pro Forma Financial Reporting --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm 

A New Kind of Cheating

Use of a cell phone for purposes of cheating during an examination would seem to be an obvious problem.  It just never dawned on me until I witnessed it in a men's room on December 15, 2001.  It was the beginning day of final examinations.  I did not have my final examinations scheduled until the following week.  However, I listened in while a student quite obviously was asking questions on a cell phone and then waiting for answers.

Leaving books and crib notes in a bathroom or hallway is a common problem.  The cell phone idea, however, just had never dawned on me.  This could be a particular problem on makeup exams.  How often have you made a student leave books and notes in your office and then put the student alone in a room to take a test?  Have you ever thought about that tiny cell phone that might be in a pocket?

I suspect the next best thing is having a buddy with books and a computer hidden in one of the stalls such that it is not necessary to make a phone call to the buddy.

Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

Reply from Rohan Chambers [rchambers@CYBERVALE.COM] 

How about this.....

Some students use cell phones as calculators, and.....during the examination they send text messages to each other!

Rohan Chambers 
Lecturer in Auditing and Finance School of Business Administration 
University of Technology, Jamaica

Reply from Andrew Priest [a.priest@ECU.EDU.AU] 

Hi

We ban cell (mobile) phones from exam rooms and an invigilator goes with student to the men's/women's room so as to minimise this risk. However, I have often noticed some invigilator waiting outside the toilet facility rather than discreetly inside.

Regards, 
Andrew

 

Reply from Christine Kloezeman [ckloezem@GLENDALE.CC.CA.US] 

I too bought 52 hand held calculators from Pic and Save for the use in all my classes. Last semester I found a student using her palmtop that had all the notes. I have a container that keeps them in the division office so others can use them. The bathroom trick has been very well used this semester so I told them for the final they had to take care of business. I like the comment about when they leave the room they have finished the test.

I do this to be fair to those 60% that will not cheat. I have even been thanked by the students because they felt studied hard and it wasn't fair to have student get good grades without learning.

I like the idea of re-developing an honor code. Many times we need to revisit these areas with the students.

I wish there was a site we could develop that would keep the instructors on top of the current cheating techniques. It's like having teenagers. You can save a lot of problems by being aware of the things they are trying to pull. Anybody know of a site like that. I know I will visit it before each test.

Hi Christine,

I have updated a site concerning how students plagiarize at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

I am also trying to build up the above site for cheating on examinations. I hope others will send me great ideas on how to cheat.

Bob Jensen rjensen@trinity.edu 

Reply from Patricia Doherty [pdoherty@BU.EDU]

What bothers me about all this is the lengths to which we all go to prevent cheating. It is, as a faculty member here described it, another "1% solution" in that for the very few who would really cheat, we spend huge amounts of our time, and restrict those who wouldn't cheat anyway. I used to have someone accompany people to the rest room, but we frequently have so few proctors that I cannot spare anyone, and began to feel silly about it, so now I do random checks. I had never thought of the cell phone thing. I do know that the graphing calculators provide ample opportunity to cheat, so we have resorted to buying, as a department, 400 cheap calculators, which we pass out for each exam, then collect. That restricts that avenue.

We used to check ID, have not recently. So yesterday (yes, Saturday) while grading I found a "fake" exam. Really irritated me that someone would waste our time that way, and I plan to investigate further after we have grades in, with little hope of success.

We give case exams in managerial, which are harder to cheat on. And we do allow a page of handwritten (no photocopies or printed) notes. I always question how far I am willing to go to prevent cheating, and where I just say, if you are that clever, go ahead, you'll get your "reward" someday.

I have updated my threads on cheating with additional items at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

An Old Kind of Cheating

The first edition of New Bookmarks in Year 2002 will feature sites where you can either purchase research papers or download them for free. Since many of you are grading or have just graded term papers, I thought it might be of interest to show how sophisticated these papers are becoming --- cheating is becoming more difficult to detect.

For example, note the index on the left margin at http://www.a1-termpaper.com/wom-gen.shtml 

I clicked on Business to obtain the index at http://www.a1-termpaper.com/bus-idx.shtml 

I then clicked on Accounting and obtained the listing at http://www.a1-termpaper.com/bus-acc.shtml 

In the first Year 2002 edition of New Bookmarks, I will relay a study by a student who used this and other services, sometimes paying as much as $90 for papers and then examining the grades and comments written by professors. For an advance view of this study, see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm#SethStevenson 

Note that most term papers are not free online and, therefore, will not show up in Web search engines unless some student was required by his instructor to put his or her term paper online.

You might be able to detect cheating in a search engine if the clueless student did not even bother to change the title of the paper (which can be found using search engines.)

I have updated my threads on plagiarism with additional items at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

This is a Good Idea

One way to actually make money off spam is to sue the people sending it. That's what Bennett Haselton did under Washington State's anti-spam law, and now he has $2,000 coming his way. Others are doing the same to junk faxers.  "Wham, Bam, Thank You Spam," by Jeffrey Benner, Wired News, December 12, 2001 --- http://www.wirednews.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,49089,FF.html 

The IRS has released Revenue Procedure 2001-59, which includes the new 2002 tax tables as well as numerous inflation-related changes to tax deductions, credits, and exemptions. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/66066 

Computer Hero of the Year
Professor. Herbert A. Simon, 1916-2001, Winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics and the 1986 National Medal of Science.  He was the fourteenth foreign scientist to ever be admitted into the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  Dr. Simon was a long-time professor of Political Science, Economics, Business, and  Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University

You can read a tribute to him in the May/June edition of EDUCAUSE Review, pp. 26-27.

Also see one of his last, perhaps the last, published paper entitled "What Makes Technology Revolutionary," EDUCAUSE Review, May/June 2001, beginning on Page 28 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/edreview.html 
The paper was, however, written in 1987 in EDUCOM Bulletin and reprinted in EDUCAUSE Review.

In the above article, Professor Simon asserts that the steam engine was the start of the first industrial revolution, and the computer was the start of the second industrial revolution.

Overwhelmed, underappreciated, overexpectant, underdone--2001 was a year of dramatic extremes. Here are some trends and strategies that flew high or flamed out. http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFS80BcUEY04e0BD3g0A4 

New Items on the Enron Scandal

Factoid:  Enron's external "independent" auditors made more from consulting and internal auditing at Enron than the firm's fees from its "independent" audit.

"The Big Five Need to Factor in Investors," Mike McNamee, Business Week, December 24, 2001, Page 32 --- http://www.businessweek.com/ (not free to download for non-subscribers)

At issue are so-called special-purpose entities (SPEs), such as Chewco and JEDI partnerships Enron used to get assets like power plants off its books.  Under standard accounting, a company can spin off assets --- an the related debts --- to an SPE if an outside investor puts up capital worth at least 3% of the SPE's total value.  

Three of Enron's partnerships didn't meet the test --- a fact auditors Arthur Andersen LLP missed.  On Dec. 12, Andersen CEO Joseph F. Berardino told the House Financial Services Committee his accountants erred in calculating one partnership's value.  On others, he says, Enron withheld information from its auditors:  The outside investor put up 3%, but Enron cut a side deal to cover half of that with its own cash.  Enron denies it withheld any information.

Does that absolve Andersen?  Hardly.  Auditors are supposed to uncover secret deals, not let them slide.  Critics fear the New Economy emphasis means auditors will do even less probing.

The 3% rule for SPEs is also too lax.

To Andersen's credit, it has long advocated a tighter rule.  But that would crimp the Big Five's clients --- companies and Wall Street.  Accountants have helped stall changes.  

Enron's collapse may finally break that logjam.  Like it or not, the Big Five must accept new rules that give investors a clearer picture of what risks companies run with SPEs.

The rest of the article is on Page 38 of the Business Week Article.

"Let Auditors Be Auditors," Editorial Page, Business Week, December 24, 2001 --- http://www.businessweek.com/ (not free to download for non-subscribers)

But neither proposal (plans proposed by SEC Commission Chairman Harvey L. Pitt) goes far enough.  GAAP, the generally accepted accounting principles, desperately need to be revamped to deal with cash flow and other issues relevant in a fast-moving, high-tech economy.  The whole move to off-balance sheet accounting should be reassessed.  Opaque partnerships that hide assets and debt do not serve the interests of investors.  Under heavy shareholder pressure from the Enron fallout, El Paso Corp. just moved $2 billion in partnership debt onto the balance sheet. Finally, Pitt should consider requiring companies to change their auditors who go easy on them, as we have seen time and time again.

Bob Jensen's commentaries and threads on the Enron scandal are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

"Arthur Andersen:  How Bad Will It Get?" Business Week, December 24, 2001, pp. 30-32 --- http://www.businessweek.com/ (not free to download for non-subscribers)

QUOTE 1
Berardino, a 51-year-old Andersen lifer, may find the firm's competence in auditing complex financial companies questioned.  While Andersen was its auditory, Enron's managers shoveled debt into partnerships with Enron's own ececs to get it off the balance sheet --- a dubious though legal ploy.  In one case, says Berardino, hoarse from defending the firm on Capitol Hill, Andersen's auditors made an "error in judgment" and should have consolidated the partnership in Enron's overall results.  Regarding another, he says Enron officials did not tell their auditor about a "separate agreement" they had with an outside investor, so the auditor mistakenly let Enron keep the partnership's results separate.  (Enron denies that the auditors were not so informed.)

QUOTE 2
Enron says a special board committee is investgating why management and the board did not learn about this arrangement until October.  Now that Enron has consolidated such set-ups into its financial statements, it had to restate its financial reports from 1997 onward, cutting earnings by nearly $500 million.  Damningly, the company says more than four years' worth of audits and statements approved by Andersen "should not be relied upon."

Bob Jensen's commentaries and threads on the Enron scandal are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

One of the most prominent CPAs in the world sent me the following message and sent the WSJ link:

Bob, More on Enron. It's interesting that this matter of performing internal audits didn't come up in the testimony Joe Beradino of Andersen presented to the House Committee a couple of days ago

"Arthur Andersen's 'Double Duty' Work Raises Questions About Its Independence," by Jonathan Weil, The Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2001 --- http://interactive.wsj.com/fr/emailthis/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1008289729306300000.djm 

In addition to acting as Enron Corp.'s outside auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP also performed internal-auditing services for Enron, raising further questions about the Big Five accounting firm's independence and the degree to which it may have been auditing its own work.

That Andersen performed "double duty" work for the Houston-based energy concern likely will trigger greater regulatory scrutiny of Andersen's role as Enron's independent auditor than would ordinarily be the case after an audit failure, accounting and securities-law specialists say.

It also potentially could expose Andersen to greater liability for damages in shareholder lawsuits, depending on whether the internal auditors employed by Andersen missed key warning signs that they should have caught. Once valued at more than $77 billion, Enron is now in proceedings under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

Internal-audit departments, among other things, are used to ensure that a company's control systems are adequate and working, while outside independent auditors are hired to opine on the accuracy of a company's financial statements. Every sizable company relies on outside auditors to check whether its internal auditors are working effectively to prevent fraud, accounting irregularities and waste. But when a company hires its outside auditor to monitor internal auditors working for the same firm, critics say it creates an unavoidable conflict of interest for the firm.

Still, such arrangements have become more common over the past decade. In response, the Securities and Exchange Commission last year passed new rules, which take effect in August 2002, restricting the amount of internal-audit work that outside auditors can perform for their clients, though not banning it outright.

"It certainly runs totally contrary to my concept of independence," says Alan Bromberg, a securities-law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "I see it as a double duty, double responsibility and, therefore, double potential liability."

Andersen officials say their firm's independence wasn't impaired by the size or nature of the fees paid by Enron -- $52 million last year. An Enron spokesman said, "The company believed and continues to believe that Arthur Andersen's role as Enron's internal auditor would not compromise Andersen's role as independent auditor for Enron."

Andersen spokesman David Tabolt said Enron outsourced its internal-audit department to Andersen around 1994 or 1995. He said Enron began conducting some of its own internal-audit functions in recent years. Enron, Andersen's second-largest U.S. client, paid $25 million for audit fees in 2000, according to Enron's proxy last year. Mr. Tabolt said that figure includes both internal and external audit fees, a point not explained in the proxy, though he declined to specify how much Andersen was paid for each. Additionally, Enron paid Andersen a further $27 million for other services, including tax and consulting work.

Following audit failures, outside auditors frequently claim that their clients withheld crucial information from them. In testimony Wednesday before a joint hearing of two House Financial Services subcommittees, which are investigating Enron's collapse, Andersen's chief executive, Joseph Berardino, made the same claim about Enron. However, given that Andersen also was Enron's internal auditor, "it's going to be tough for Andersen to take that traditional tack that 'management pulled the wool over our eyes,' " says Douglas Carmichael, an accounting professor at Baruch College in New York.

Mr. Tabolt, the Andersen spokesman, said it is too early to make judgments about Andersen's work. "None of us knows yet exactly what happened here," he said. "When we know the facts we'll all be able to make informed judgments. But until then, much of this is speculation."

Though it hasn't received public attention recently, Andersen's double-duty work for Enron wasn't a secret. A March 1996 Wall Street Journal article, for instance, noted that a growing number of companies, including Enron, had outsourced their internal-audit departments to their outside auditors, a development that had prompted criticism from regulators and others. At other times, Mr. Tabolt said, Andersen and Enron officials had discussed their arrangement publicly.

Accounting firms say the double-duty arrangements let them become more familiar with clients' control procedures and that such arrangements are ethically permissible, as long as outside auditors don't make management decisions in handling the internal audits. Under the new SEC rules taking effect next year, an outside auditor impairs its independence if it performs more than 40% of a client's internal-audit work. The SEC said the restriction won't apply to clients with assets of $200 million or less. Previously, the SEC had imposed no such percentage limitation.

The Gottesdiener Law Firm, the Washington, D.C. 401(k) and pension class action law firm prosecuting the most comprehensive of the 401(k) cases pending against Enron Corporation and related defendants, added new allegations to its case today, charging Arthur Andersen of Chicago with knowingly participating in Enron's fraud on employees.
Lawsuit Seeks to Hold Andersen Accountable for Defrauding Enron Investors, Employees --- http://www.smartpros.com/x31970.xml 

Bob Jensen's commentaries and threads on the Enron scandal are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

The Public Oversight Board, the group that oversees the peer review process required of all public accounting firms that audit publicly held companies, has decided to take an active role in the expanded peer review that Deloitte & Touche is providing to Andersen. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/65920 

But We're Hanging in There at a Reduced Rank 11 (Which is About in the Middle Among 23 Professions)!

A recent poll jointly conducted by CNN, Gallup Organization, and USA Today ranked various professions according to how members are perceived in terms of conveying honesty and ethics. Find out how accountants ranked in comparison to members of other professions. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/66220 

A recent poll jointly conducted by CNN, Gallup Organization, and USA Today ranked various professions according to how members are perceived in terms of conveying honesty and ethics. In recent years, nurses and pharmacists have monopolized the top positions on the annual survey.

This year, in the wake of the September 11 events, firefighters took a decisive victory as frontrunners in the poll. Accountants appeared in 11th position, with 41 percent of respondents giving the profession "High" or "Very High" ratings for honesty and ethical standards.

Rounding out the top 10 were Nurses in second position, followed by U.S. Military Personnel, Policemen, Pharmacists, Medical Doctors, Clergy, Engineers, College Teachers, and Dentists.

Following Accountants in the ranking of 23 professions were Bankers, Journalists, Congressmen, Business Executives, Senators, Auto Mechanics, Stockbrokers, Lawyers, Labor Union Leaders, Insurance Salesmen, Advertising Practitioners, and Car Salesmen.

One thousand five adults participated in the poll, which was conducted November 26 and 27.

Details are given at http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr011205.asp 

As promised, the Securities and Exchange Commission has revisited the issues that concern publicly held companies regarding Regulation Fair Disclosure, the ruling that requires publicly held companies to provide information that could influence the purchase of shares simultaneously to every potential investor. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/65824 

Bob Jensen's commentaries and threads on the Enron scandal are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.ht

New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani plans to start his own consulting firm when he leaves office in January. Reports are that the new firm will have an affiliation with Ernst & Young and will receive financial backing from the Big Five firm. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/66338 

From the Free Wall Street Journal Educators' Reviews for December 13, 2001 

TITLE: Former Auditor of Superior Bank Cites Grand-Jury Probe Into Collapse of Thrift 
REPORTER: Mark Maremont 
DATE: Dec 12, 2001 
PAGE: C16 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1008126509354552200.djm  
TOPICS: Accounting, Accounting Fraud, Accounting Irregularities, Auditing, Auditing Services, Bad Debts, Banking, Loan Loss Allowance

SUMMARY: Ernst & Young LLP, former auditor of Superior Bank, is cooperating with a grand-jury investigation. Superior Bank, which failed in July, is one of the largest banking institutions to fail in recent years. A representative from the Office of Thrift Supervision told Congress that Ernst and Young permitted improper accounting. Ernst and Young contends that there were no accounting mistakes.

QUESTIONS: 
1.) What actions has Ernst and Young taken in cooperation with the grand-jury investigation? Is Ernst and Young required to take these actions? Are they violating client confidentiality by surrendering working papers to a third party? Under what circumstances is it acceptable to share client work papers with a third party?

2.) What factors does Ernst and Young contend contributed to the failure of Superior Bank? If Ernst and Young had perfect foresight about these events, what changes in the financial reporting would have been required? Is it reasonable to expect auditors to anticipate changes in the economy? Why or why not?

3.) What factors does the Office of Thrift Supervision claim contributed to the failure of Superior Bank? Discuss two financial reporting issues that should have been considered by Ernst and Young. Do you think that Ernst and Young allowed misleading financial reporting by Superior Bank? Why or why not?

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island 
Reviewed By: Benson Wier, Virginia Commonwealth University 
Reviewed By: Kimberly Dunn, Florida Atlantic University

From the Free Wall Street Journal Educators' Reviews for December 13, 2001

TITLE: EPA Will Destroy Hudson River to Save It 
REPORTER: Bonner R. Cohen 
DATE: Dec 12, 2001 
PAGE: A18 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1008121274639180560.djm  
TOPICS: Financial Statement Analysis, Financial Accounting

SUMMARY: This commentary by a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute provides environmental and civic arguments against the EPA's recent decision to dredge the Hudson River to remove PCBs legally dumped there by GE prior to 1977. Related articles provide the history of GE's efforts to prevent this decision to dredge the river. Questions relate to environmental remediation reporting requirements and assessing GE's disclosure of this particular Superfund clean-up project.

QUESTIONS: 
1.) What financial accounting standards address reporting requirements for environmental liabilities? Specifically, describe the AICPA's statement of position on this topic. What are the major points of disclosure and liability recognition discussed in that document?

2.) Using the AICPA's statement of position, summarize the environmental laws currently in effect in the U.S. What is the Superfund Law?

3.) What is a "Superfund site"? Who decides on the actions which must be taken in cleaning up a "Superfund site"?

4.) Both the commentary by Bonner Cohen and the related articles emphasize the fact that GE legally disposed of PCBs in the Hudson River. If the company's actions have always been legal, then why must GE pay for the cost of cleaning up the river, estimated to total $460 million?

5.) Obtain GE's 2000 annual report from the company's web site. Note 21 provides disclosure related to liabilities including their involvement in various environmental clean-up efforts. How detailed are the disclosures of their obligations in this area? Compare this disclosure to the requirements in the AICPA's statement of position. Do you think the company has accrued any amount for the liability to clean up the Hudson River? If so, how much? Cite any accounting standards you rely on to make this estimate.

6.) How significant is the expected cost of cleaning up the Hudson River under the EPA's plan relative to GE's overall operations? Given the EPA's decision and based on the AICPA's statement of position, what requirements do you think GE must meet in reporting its results for the year ended December 31, 2001?

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island Reviewed By: Benson Wier, Virginia Commonwealth University Reviewed By: Kimberly Dunn, Florida Atlantic University

--- RELATED ARTICLES --- TITLE: EPA Orders Dredging of PCBs from the Upper Hudson River REPORTER: Matt Murray ISSUE: Dec 05, 2001 LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1007497237159676640.djm 

TITLE: U.S. Decision to Seek River Clean-Up is Big Setback for General Electric REPORTER: Matt Murray And Tom Hamburger ISSUE: Aug 02, 2001 LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB996670293589550385.djm 

~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ +

CPA2Biz Unveils Business Valuation Resource Center --- http://www.smartpros.com/x31976.xml 

The BV Center will include resources and information from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and industry experts on various factors affecting the value of a business or a transaction, such as mergers and acquisitions; economic damages due to a patent infringement or breaches of contract; bankruptcy or a reorganization; or fraud due to anti-trust actions or embezzlement. The BV Center will provide a comprehensive combination of solutions that meet the professional needs of CPAs practicing business valuation, including those who have achieved the AICPA's Accredited in Business Valuation credential. The BV Center will also provide networking communities for BV practitioners as well as a public forum for discussion of business valuation trends, developments and issues.

"Tremendous growth in the BV discipline, coupled with a dynamic group of factors affecting business valuation, means that CPAs need a consistent, timely and relevant vehicle through which BV-related information can be disseminated to them," said Erik Asgeirsson, Vice President of Product Management at CPA2Biz. "The BV Center on CPA2Biz will provide them with AICPA books, practice aids, newsletters and software, along with industry expert literature and complementary third-party products and solutions. Because the issues associated with valuation impact CPAs in both public and private sectors -- auditors, tax practitioners, personal financial planners as well as BV specialists -- the BV Center will have a powerful horizontal impact on the profession."

"I think that CPAs who practice in business valuation ought to go to the BV Center for information and tools that are timely, relevant and easy to obtain," said Thomas Hilton, CPA/ABV, Chairman of the AICPA Business Valuation Subcommittee. "The BV Center is a source CPAs can use to offer their clients a higher level of service, as well as to connect with other CPAs who provide valuation services."

The CPA2Biz Website is at www.cpa2biz.com/ 

Bob Jensen's Threads on Return on Business Valuation, Business Combinations, Investment (ROI), and Pro Forma Financial Reporting --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm 

News from Fathom

December 2001

Forward this newsletter to a friend!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
In this issue: 
* Financing Terrorism 
* Is Globalization to Blame for the Terrorist Attacks? 
* Free Seminar: Manufacturing Anywhere 
* Back by popular demand: Prospecting for Business Information ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Columbia University 
* The London School of Economics and Political Science 
* Cambridge University Press 
* The British Library 
* The New York Public Library 
* The University of Chicago 
* University of Michigan 
* American Film Institute 
* RAND * Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 
* The Natural History Museum 
* Victoria and Albert Museum 
* Science Museum *

~~~~~~~~~~~ IN THE NEWS ~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, US officials began an intense effort to freeze bank accounts and financial transactions linked to terrorist groups. As the search continues with the help of foreign nations, investigators are finding that Al Qaeda's network of assets is wider reaching and more complex than they ever imagined, encompassing funds from private corporations, charitable organizations, investment groups, and organized crime operations around the world.

Jean-François Seznec, adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University and Raporteur to the UNESCO-Amar standing conference on relations between Islam and the West, examines the financing behind terrorist operations and explores ways to stop the flow of funds in the free feature "Financing Terrorism: Channels for Depositing and Moving Money": http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=603&page=feature&id=122459

FREE BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS FEATURES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*** TERRORISM AND THE DEVELOPING WORLD ... September 11 and the Dark Side of Globalization Lisa Anderson, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, explores the dark side of globalization-- transnational networks and underground markets nearly invisible from state governments: "The World Bank estimates that half of the commercial transactions that take place in Egypt every year are in the black market..." http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=604&page=feature&id=122424 

*** TERRORISM AND THE DEVELOPING WORLD ... Terrorism, Imperialism and Globalization John Harriss, director of the Development Studies Institute at The London School of Economics and Political Science, considers the economic, political and cultural contexts for the emergence of terrorist movements: "The enemy that we are now fighting--terrorism--is to an important extent a creature created by western imperialism, headed up by the US..." http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=605&page=feature&id=122430 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ONLINE COURSES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Free Seminar * MANUFACTURING ANYWHERE, a free seminar from RAND, explores the changes the 21st century will bring to manufacturing. Learn about "Napsterization," postponement, outsourcing, vertical disintegration, and more. The seminar is free; simply follow the checkout process to enroll: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=606&page=course&id=10701041 

* Short e-Course * PROSPECTING FOR BUSINESS INFORMATION, a short online course from the New York Public Library, is designed to help small business owners, job-hunters, grant seekers, investors, advertisers and others navigate Web- and library-based company information services for business research. Also includes temporary access to databases from LexisNexis, infoUSA and Standard and Poor's. Class starts December 19: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=607&page=course&id=49704700 

* Short e-Course * DEVELOPING YOUR CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT PLAN, a short online course from Columbia University, is designed to help beginning teachers strengthen their classroom management skills from the start. Enroll anytime: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=612&page=course&id=41704005 

* Semester-Length Course * CHILDREN'S MATERIALS: EVALUATION AND USE, an online course from the University of Washington, is designed primarily for educators seeking an endorsement as school library media specialists and teachers who want to build a classroom collection of the "best of the best" in children's literature. Enroll anytime: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=613&page=course&id=1406

Search for more online courses in Fathom's Course Directory: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=614&page=directory 

Search for more online courses in Fathom's Course Directory: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=608&page=directory&id=0 

THINKING IS ENCOURAGED @ FATHOM.COM  (TM) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Search for more online courses in Fathom's Course Directory: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=608&page=directory&id=0 

You can listen to part of my August 2001 workshop in Atlanta devoted to Fathom at 
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001cpe/01start.htm 

Lesson Plans Library (K-12) ---  http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/index.html 

Find hundreds of original lesson plans, all written by teachers for teachers. Use the pull-down menus below to browse by subject, grade, or both.
 
Lesson Plans for Assignment Discovery and TLC Elementary School
If you are searching for lesson plans to support Assignment Discovery and TLC Elementary School programming, click here.
 
See NEW lesson plans for the fall! Click here.

"To Youth Camp:  A Long Farewell," by James J. O'Donnell, EDUCAUSE Review, November/December 2001, pp 14-19 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm01/erm016w.html 
Excerpts are quoted below.  Go to the above link to download the full article.

Five years ago, the revolution in "distance learning" (or "distance-independent learning" or "distributed learning") seemed to be upon us.  Two or three years ago, the sounds of the revolution could be heard in all quadrants of the sky.  Yet as we go into the fall of 2001, the rumblings are much quieter.  What appeared inevitable only a couple of years ago now looks puzzlingly remote.  To be sure, evidence of the revolution can be seen here and there: new products are becoming available, many more courses are available in some location-independent form, and Western Governors University already has its first Chancellor Emeritus and an enrollment of five hundred students.  And there is wisdom in persistence and patience.  If the dot-coms have gone dot-bust, it's reasonable to think that the inflated expectations in the not-for-profit sector¹ would also deflate, and what was overvalued two years ago would be undervalued today--making this a good time to invest.

It baffles some that the revolution has not occurred.  But when a question won't answer itself, chances are you're asking the wrong question.

Distance learning was certainly high concept for the 1990s in higher education.  But like the "horseless carriage," this notion materialized through an unimaginative extension of traditional forms.  The key insight was that networked information technology makes it possible to reorganize the process of learning and to redistribute what takes place face to face so that it takes place when learners and teachers are separated in space and time.  Traditional students could learn in new ways, and new kinds of students could join the academic community for the first time.

Many of those who felt keenly the clarity of that vision also thought that existing institutions harbored some excess capacity of instructional time and attention that could be sold cheaply in bulk.  This was a shimmering dream, never realistic.  Much time and energy was spent trying to prove that concept, with precious little to show as a result.  Nobody has succeeded in building outlet malls for the mind--offering cheap and serviceable merchandise of sometimes dubious origin more or less protected by prestige name brands.  That is, in fact, good news.  And even where more realistic projects were put in notion, markets have been slow to evolve, faculty hard to recruit, and production costs impossible to bring in line with the results that can be demonstrated.  At least one university that made a splash announcing its for-profit subsidiary for distance learning has now quietly closed down the operation.

Nothing is as easy as it seems.

Think now of the youth camp traditions.  Much of higher education is attached to a model that privileges the baccalaureate student who is eighteen to twenty-two years old, studying full-time to obtain a degree in four years, and residing in institutional housing.  These students are the privileged few--already a minority in American higher education in actual numbers but still dominant in the myths of what higher education is about.  These privileged few are granted a special opportunity in life: to spend four years of adulthood, mainly withdrawn from productive employment, in the exploitation of their physical and mental capabilities for their own purposes--some high-minded, some frankly bent on the pleasures of youth--while being protected from most of the ordinary consequences (often even the legal consequences) of irresponsible conduct.  (It is no accident that drug abuse has historically been a phenomenon among the un-employed young--with the graciously un-employed upper-class youths buying their supplies from the unwillingly un-employed lower-class youths.  The two groups have more in common than we like to imagine.)  Dormitories and fraternity/sorority houses and student ghettos are the scenes of a wide variety of childish behaviors to which the denizens feel entitled.  Many students living in the same settings are disgusted by some of what they see and refrain from much of the behavior around them, but they rarely succeed in overthrowing the dominant culture.

Colleges and universities are deeply and complexly attached to the infantilization.  The social position of higher education in European and American societies is firmly rooted in a notion of prolonged and irresponsible childhood.  Though only a fraction of students actually have the opportunity to live such a life, servicing their needs still provides the conceptual and bureaucratic structure of higher education institutions.  A new administrator in my university asked me how "the typical student" gets computer support-and when I pressed the question, I found that "the typical student" is the undergraduate, even though undergraduates make up less than 50 percent of our FTE population.

Parental anxiety plays a significant part in encouraging institutions to establish and preserve these patronizing cultures.  Parents want levels of security that would be unreasonable to expect if their eighteen-year-old son or daughter instead moved off to the big city to get a job.  They want to be absolutely sure that their children have easy access to three super-abundant meals a day and don't have to worry about paying for the food.  They expect health care, counseling, and other services that would be preposterous to expect elsewhere, and colleges and universities compete aggressively to deliver all these services.

So when most people think of higher education, they think of something that happens to people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two and that lasts for about four years.  In reality, many students are already well into their twenties, still working on a first degree while taking a responsible economic role in society as well.  Many others, in their twenties and thirties, are engaged in professional education, whether for the academic Ph.D. or in the myriad professional disciplines.  Higher education institutions serve a huge variety of adult learners, some working for a bachelor's degree, some for professional degrees, some for continuing professional education, and some for reasons of cultural and personal enhancement.  But on the traditional campus, all those adults are in one way or another made to feel marginal.  Even--one might say especially--the search for a parking space often reminds them that they are second-class citizens.²

---

NOTES

¹    I mean here the deliberately not-for-profit sector, to distinguish traditional colleges and universities from that new sector of the economy that would really like to make a profit if they could, but...

²    Notice that complaints about the failings of higher education rarely include the astonishingly successful system of professional education.  Although we may argue about the specifics of curriculum and the focus in, say, law and medical school, few dispute that those schools do what they do extraordinarily well.  Likewise, nobody writes best-sellers complaining about the quality of community college education, yet few outside those institutions hear anything about the extraordinary and beneficial impact they have on students' lives.

Bob Jensen's documents on distance education are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

From Syllabus News on December 11, 2001

Blackboard, CollegisEduprise Expand Partnership

Blackboard Inc. and CollegisEduprise, Inc. said they would bundle their respective tools and services to strengthen their offerings to the higher education market. The collaboration will blend the Blackboard 5 Learning System, software licensing, application hosting and integration services from Blackboard with education assessment, strategic planning, end-user help desk services, and faculty pedagogical training from CollegisEduprise. Clients of both companies include the Community College of Denver, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Montgomery Community College, New York Institute of Technology, Norfolk State University and the University of Baltimore.

The Bb homepage is at http://www.blackboard.com/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on Blackboard are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/blackboard.htm 

---

Seton Hall University unveiled a program to provide technology resources and training to economically disadvantaged people. Project SHUTTLE, for Seton Hall University Technology Training for Lifelong Education, aims to provide technology education, resources and training to people without a personal computer or technological resources. The project will collaborate with the school's Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and Upward Bound Program to provide laptop computers to participating high school seniors. The students receive training in laptop use and are encouraged to take the computers home for schoolwork and home use. EOP director Carol McMillan-Lonesome called SHUTTLE "a conduit for families to embrace lifelong learning through technology, understand the ... importance of higher education and achieve personal ... aspirations."

For more information, visit: http://academic.shu.edu/shuttle/index.html 

---

eCollege Says Courseware Exceeds Disability Standards

Courseware developer eCollege said the software it will release this month will exceed Section 508, the federal accessibility standard for information technology. The comany said its software targets student users as well as disabled faculty authoring online courses. It will also provide a support staff trained in assistive technologies. The software will be available without requiring a new version purchase, upgrade or implementatioin, the company said. Mike Gibson, coordinator of the Professional Training in Adaptive Technology Program at the Colorado Center for the Blind, said, "working with an e-learning company that is proactive in understanding and meeting the needs of the blind helps us to change what it means to be blind."

The eCollege homepage is at http://www.ecollege.com/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on course authoring systems and shells can be found at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

---

Pepperdine University, eNeuralNet, and IBM Corp. have joined forces to open the Murray S. Craig Digital Democracy Lab at Pepperdine's School of Public Policy. The lab is dedicated to promoting political accountability via the use of artificial intelligence software. eNeuralNet is donating its Minutes-N-Motion political accountability software, a 50-seat license, and an IBM server. Craig, the software's creator, will serve as a strategic advisor to lab director, Pepperdine professor Mike Shires, in developing curriculum and research applications.

For more information, visit: http://www.pepperdine.edu 

A Century of Drawing: Works on Paper:  Works on Paper from Degas to LeWitt (Art, History) --- 
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/drawinginfo.htm 

---

Evaluation of Websites

I recommend the comprehensive site at http://www.prana3.com/tools/  

A message from Ed Scribner

Here's a guide Susan Beck at the NMSU Library has prepared for student evaluation of Web sites --- http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html 

A message from Ron Tidd about evaluation of Web Sites:

Bobby- http://www.cast.org/bobby/  
web page validation for accessibility by people with disabilities (be attentive and expand the community)

W3C- http://validator.w3.org/  
free HTML validation service

Web Site Garage- http://websitegarage.netscape.com/  
tune up your web page

Web Wonk- http://www.dsiegel.com/tips/  
Tips for designers and writers

Web Shui at http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/0-3881.html?tag=st.bl.3880.dir.3881 

Web sales have proven to be a small slice of most sectors, so retailers are more selective about their investments in Web initiatives. They're starting to view their Web sites like any other store--now that it's built and functioning, what justifies spending more money on it? http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFS80BcUEY04e0BD3h0A5 

Bob Jensen's bookmarks for evaluation of Websites are at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm#Evaluation 

The Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta is pleased to accept applications for its Master of Arts degree in Humanities Computing. The programme integrates computational methods and theories with research and teaching in the Humanities. The Faculty is committed to offering its students opportunities to combine their interests in the Arts and emerging computing technologies, particularly in the areas of information management, multimedia, electronic publishing, and distance education. The new M.A. in Humanities Computing will help form students who not only understand, create, and manage multimedia and technological projects, but also understand the critical and intellectual traditions of Humanities scholarship.

Please find enclosed a poster and brochures that outline the programme, which should provide interested students with the information they need to make an informed decision. To be most widely considered for funding, applications to the programme should arrive no later than January 7, 2002, although we will continue to review all applications after this date.

Please circulate the posters and brochures to interested departments, institutes, and potential students. Thank you for your support of this new and exciting endeavour.

Yours truly,

Nasrin Rahimieh 
Associate Dean (Humanities) Faculty of Arts 6-14 
Humanities Centre University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E5 
Tel: (780) 492-9132 Fax: (780) 492-7251

Here's a guide Susan Beck at the NMSU Library has prepared for students:

http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html 

Ed Scribner 
New Mexico State

For professional Website evaluation, you might take a look at http://www.prana3.com/tools/ 

"5 Dirty Little Secrets in Higher Education," by Laura Palmer Noone & Craig Swenson. EDUCAUSE Review,
  November/December 2001, pp. 20-31 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm01/erm016w.html 

Dirty Little Secret #1
You Don't Have to Be a Researcher to Be a Good Teacher

Lest there be any misunderstanding, let us make clear that we think research is a good thing.  We support it, benefit from it, and think the "scholarship of discovery" to be a worthy pursuit.¹  But let's all be honest: some researchers make great teachers, whereas others--some of the most celebrated researchers, in fact--have no place inside a classroom (if judged by their ability to facilitate learning).  The irony is that many in this second group don't want to be in the classroom anyhow.

If a "good researcher" is defined as someone who is a critical and reflective observer, who asks good questions, who draws warranted conclusions from data, and who understands the limits of prediction, we'll agree that the researcher does indeed have a place inside the classroom.  If, on the other hand, a "good researcher" means what it usually means--that he or she is publishing formal "academic" research--that's where we part company.

The pattern followed by most researchers leads them to learn more and more about less and less.  Narrow specialization often precludes interdisciplinary breadth.  The gift of so many great teachers, by contrast, rests in their breadth of knowledge--in their ability to synthesize and communicate the ideas of others and to inspire their students.

 

Dirty Little Secret #2
Professors Know a Lot about Their Disciplines but Very Little about Teaching

The process of getting a doctorate has never been about learning how to teach.  Oh sure, most traditional doctoral programs require candidates to serve as teaching assistants, but that usually means little more than assigning them to classes.  Faculty in most disciplines tend to look down their noses at those who choose education (i.e., "teaching") as their discipline.  Doctoral candidates in most disciplines primarily learn their disciplines and learn how to do research.  Teaching is way down in the pecking order, and everybody knows it.

Thus, until very recently, there were few efforts to teach doctoral candidates how to teach and even fewer to teach professors how to be better teachers.  And even though many institutions have now created centers to help instructors teach better--a hopeful sign--directors of those centers state that relatively small percentages of professors use these services.  In addition, those who do learn teaching techniques are probably ignorant about how those techniques work.   Simply put, those who do most of the teaching don't know all that much about how their students actually learn.

Dirty Little Secret #3
Professors Know Even Less about Learning Than They Do about Teaching

See  http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm01/erm016w.html 

Dirty Little Secret #4
Part-Time Instructors Are Just as Effective as Full-Time Faculty Members

See  http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm01/erm016w.html 

Dirty Little Secret #5
Seat-Time Measures Don't Measure Seat Time

One of the most widely used measures in higher education is the Carnegie Unit of Instruction.  Ostensibly, the Carnegie Unit measures "time on task"--the amount of time that students spend with instructors.  Time on task is considered a "best practice" in undergraduate education,⁶ but the dirty little secret is that student time spent on a task is not generally what the Carnegie Unit measures.  What it usually measures is the amount of time for which a course is scheduled.  It doesn't measure time on task for the simple reason that attendance isn't required at most institutions.  In many traditional classes, a student who shows up only for the mid-term and final exams, and hands in required assignments, won't be directly penalized.

The situation is more acute in this age of electronically mediated instruction.  Here the Carnegie Unit is an obvious anachronism. This realization is at least partially behind the initiatives of accrediting bodies that now require a much greater emphasis on assessing student learning--that is, on measuring the outcome rather than the input.

But measuring outcomes is difficult, as innovators have discovered.  Like the old saying about the weather, everybody talks about it, but nobody (or at least a relatively small number) does anything about it.  Inputs are easy to measure, though, and so higher education clings to outdated measures like the Carnegie Unit as if they were articles of faith. That presents a problem if student learning is the goal: when we are concerned about how long a student's rear end is in a seat, we are concerned about the wrong end of the student.

Family Therapy

Well, there it is--the elephant in the living room has been uncloaked.  There are likely a few more dirty little secrets lurking among us, but enough already.  Higher education will probably never be one big happy family.  We are an awfully diverse bunch, we tend to be argumentative by nature, and we seem to like it that way.  Besides, nothing says that we all have to be the same--or that being the same would be a good thing.  But we can learn from one another, and the good news is that there is nothing particularly earthshaking about the secrets revealed above.  Higher education does not have to give up its emphasis on research, which has, after all, built in the United States and Canada the greatest research infrastructure and capability in the world.  What is needed is much greater attention to student learning--how it happens, the conditions under which it occurs best, and how to measure it.  Then college and university faculty must prepare themselves to manage that process.

Now, will you please move that elephant? It's blocking the television.

Notes

^1.    We here use Ernest L. Boyer's term.  See Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Princeton, N.J.: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990).

^2.   Stephen D. Brookfield, The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990).

^3.   Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered.

^4.   Judith M. Gappa and David W. Leslie, The Invisible Faculty: Improving the Status of Part-Timers in Higher Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993).

^5.   Edward E. Lawler III, "Challenging Traditional Research  Assumptions," in Edward E. Lawler III et al., Doing Research That Is Useful for Theory and Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985).

^6.   See A. W. Chickering and Z. F. Gamson, "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education," Wingspread Journal 9, no. 2 (1987).  See also AAHE Bulletin, March 1987.

External Auditing of Information Security: Perception Versus Reality

A message from E. Scribner [escribne@NMSU.EDU]

One client's view of security-related external audit procedures:

"Security Journal: Annual Audits Target Security, But Miss Mark"

http://www.computerworld.com/itresources/rcstory/0,4167,KEY73_STO66354,00.html 

Ed Scribner 
New Mexico State

Jensen Comment:  The above article is very timely and very disturbing.  A quotation is shown below:

Perception vs. Reality

When I first started working in the security world, I looked forward to external audits. I saw the auditors as independent experts who could review objectively what I had been trying to achieve and give me pointers on how to improve. I expected a strong report that would help keep management support for my security initiatives.

Think you could do it better as an information systems auditor? Pass the Certified Information Systems Auditor exam and perhaps you’ll be providing companies like mine with more thorough security assessments. This Web site includes conferences and training programs as well as exam information.

Read Kevin Van Dixon’s “Spoof Bounce” paper at the SANS Institute Web site to see the kind of risk that having a predictable IP identification can cause.

This paper on TCP/IP “spoofing sets” shows how technically esoteric bugs get, but the threat is real.

The annual audit is just one hoop security managers in financial services organizations must jump through. These 23 other regulatory agencies all have an impact as well.

Anomaly-based intrusion-detection systems are in their infancy, but interesting projects such as these provide valuable security services.

Now I know the process much better. I don't look forward to external audits; I just prepare my list of user accounts and logical access controls. To be polite, I play the game properly: The auditors come, and I provide an hourlong presentation about our work this year: the deployment of personal firewalls to every desktop, the extension of our intrusion-detection systems from signature-based to anomaly-based, the automated virus update process and the delivery of dual Internet connections to provide some protection against distributed denial-of-service attacks.

They listen—the fresh graduate auditor looking wide-eyed on his day out of the office to earn some billable time, the older auditor looking harried and lost. Then they nod and ask to run their cheapo in-house scanner software on our domain controller. They don't ask to run it on our production domain controller, but on our corporate desktop domain controller. Of course we refuse, because it's untested software and we have a change-control process for that sort of thing.

They look surprised, but we save the day by asking what information they require. They list the usual: account name, privileges, last log-in and so on. We run a shiny report from our vulnerability assessment systems and hand it over in hard copy. The graduate looks crestfallen, realizing he'll be spending tonight reading it to find something—anything—to report.

A week later, their report arrives with a spurious "medium risk" assigned to information security because, out of the thousands of accounts they reviewed, they found one that hadn't been used for a few weeks.

I suppose I shouldn't be bitter. If they did a proper job, they might find many problems, and we'd look bad. And we'd never hire them again. It's a nice, comfortable arrangement that helps both sides—the auditors don't have to do any real work (apart from that poor graduate), and we don't get any real hassle. But how are we supposed to get better unless we are under pressure?

I can't imagine what it must be like on the other side of this farce—why would you become an auditor? Now that I've seen the time they can allocate to their reviews, I realize they just don't have the time to get to the bottom of anything until external factors force them to investigate.

So will auditors who are too underfunded to find anything guarantee me a nice, healthy bonus? I wish. My management is well aware of the depth of investigation involved in an annual audit. Instead, they will be measuring my performance based against my objectives set at the beginning of the year.

The rest of the article is at http://www.computerworld.com/itresources/rcstory/0,4167,KEY73_STO66354,00.htm

Trinity University students may access the article at J:\courses\acct5342\readings\ExternalAudits 

My threads on related issues are in "Opportunities of E-Business Assurance & Security: Risks in Assuring Risk" at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/assurance.htm 

If the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is fully enforced, stations will be unable to afford to webcast their tunes

"Why college radio fears the DMCA," by Mark L. Shahinian, Salon, December 13, 2001 --- http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/12/13/college_webcast/print.html 

In the heady days of the late 1990s, Internet radio broadcasts were a poster child for the free flow of information over the Web. But if a 1998 federal law is fully enforced, webcasting could be just a fond memory for college radio.

Under the terms of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), radio stations around the country are supposed to pay thousands of dollars in annual fees to broadcast streaming audio over the Web. Managers of college and community stations say while their commercial counterparts may be able to pay the fees, their stations don't have the cash and will shut down their webcasts.

The 1998 law came up on Capitol Hill Thursday, as members of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property held an oversight hearing on how temporary copies stored on computers should be counted when calculating copyright fees.

The hearing, said congressional staffers, was an early skirmish in a battle to defang the DMCA and transfer power from record companies back to broadcasters.

Webcasting was once touted as an example of the Internet's leveling power -- it allows small local stations to reach Internet users all over the world. And college stations, which run tight budgets and eclectic playlists, fit the webcast bill perfectly. But record companies don't like webcasting, with its potential for copying and distributing unlimited digital copies of songs.

Under long-standing U.S. copyright law, broadcasters pay a coalition of songwriters' groups to air music over the Internet and the airwaves. But until the DMCA, performers and record companies did not have the rights to royalties when stations played their music. As part of the 1998 law, Congress allowed performers and record companies to start collecting fees on songs sent over the web, said Joel Willer, a mass communications professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. There are still no performer fees for regular airwave broadcasts.

But until now, the law has yet to be fully enforced. If it is, college radio on the Web will be in trouble.

According to Bob Kohn, founder of eMusic.com, and author of a book on music licensing, classic Beltway dealmaking partially explains why radio stations are being asked to pay performers for webcasts,

As the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act came together, says Kohn, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Digital Music Association, or DiMA, struck a deal: The DiMA, made up of webcasting heavies such as MTV, wanted to shut small webcasters out of the market. The RIAA wanted money for its artists and record companies.

The RIAA got their fees -- and the fees effectively strangled the interest in small-time webcasting, says Kohn. The fees may end up doing the same for college webcasting.

Both the RIAA and the DiMA strongly disagreed with Kohn's characterizations.

"That's just pathetic," says Jonathan Potter, head of the DiMA. "The MTVs and AOLs of the world have spent millions to argue for lower rates for everybody." Agreeing to webcast fees was painful, and was only done because members of the DiMA, faced with huge lawsuits over copyright infringement, had their back to the wall, says Potter.

Will Robedee, general manager of KTRU at Rice University in Houston, is trying to pull together a coalition of college radio stations to change the DMCA. Some fees are acceptable, but college stations shouldn't have to pay anywhere near what the big commercial stations pay, says Robedee. The law makes some provision for special treatment of nonprofit stations, but Robedee wants guarantees of substantially lower fees

The law also includes requirements that stations report every song played -- requirements, says Robedee, that would be impossible for low-budget, nonautomated stations to meet.

"There is a public interest in having these stations webcasting," Robedee said, citing exposure given to unknown bands, and the eclectic playlists that characterize college radio.

Still, performers deserve payment for their songs, says Jano Cabrera, spokesman for the RIAA. "We think that the law makes sense because artists and record companies who invest time, energy and resources should be compensated."

The fees, if implemented, would mean the end of webcasting at KALX, the University of California at Berkeley's radio station, says KALX general manager Sandra Wasson.

KALX pays a total of $623 per year to songwriters (as opposed to performers) to play music over the Web. The fee is low, Wasson said, because KALX doesn't run advertisements. If the recording industry's fee proposal goes through, KALX would have to dish out $10,000 to $20,000 a year in webcasting fees, Wasson said. And the fees would be retroactive to 1998.

"On our small budget, there's just no way we can afford those amounts," says Wasson, who also notes that KALX's $200,000 yearly budget is huge compared to most college stations.

The recording industry and broadcasters are battling in front of a federal arbitration panel over just how high those fees should be. The RIAA, representing performers, is asking for 0.4 cents per listener per song. Broadcasters want fees many times lower. Record companies and performers will split the fees equally, Cabrera said.

Robedee, at Rice, hopes a new bill intended to gut the Millennium Copyright Act will include protections for college stations.

The Music On-Line Competition Act is designed to break the hammerlock the recording industry has over music distribution, says Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah. Cannon co-authored the bill along with Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va.

Continued at http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/12/13/college_webcast/print.html

Bob Jensen laments the DMCA from an educator's perspective at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm 

Innovation of the Week

"Distributed computing's prime moment," by Stephen Shankland, ZD Net News, December 13, 2001 --- http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5100648,00.html?chkpt=zdnnp1tp02 

A 20-year-old in Owen Sound, Canada, has found the world's largest known prime number using a mere desktop computer. But he didn't work alone: His system was part of a 210,000-machine quasi-supercomputer stretched across the globe. Using a computer with an 800MHz chip from Advanced Micro Devices, Michael Cameron found the prime number on Nov. 14, according to Entropia. The San Diego company sells software to enable "distributed computing," which harnesses the unused processing abilities of computers scattered across the Internet.

Although the arrival of profit motive has transformed distributed computing, its roots remain in academic pursuits such finding optimal Golomb rulers or alien radio signals.

Cameron's computer found the number, but he shares credit with others: George Woltman, who founded the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) and wrote the search software, and Entropia founder Scott Kurowski, who created the network system called PrimeNet that governs the 210,000 computers that are part of the effort.

Prime numbers, once a mathematical curiosity but now crucial to encrypted communications, are numbers greater than one that are divisible only by one and the number itself. Cameron was participating in a project to search for a particular type of prime number called a Mersenne prime.

The number that Cameron discovered--2 to the 13,466,917th power minus 1--has 4,053,946 digits. In order to cram his discovery onto a 29-inch-by-40-inch poster sold by Perfectly Scientific, the number is printed in a tiny 1.37-point font and read with a magnifying glass.

Mersenne primes are named after Marin Mersenne, a French monk born in 1588 who investigated a particular type of prime number: 2 to the power of "p" minus one, in which "p" is an ordinary prime number.

Mersenne primes are much rarer than ordinary primes. The GIMPS effort, exhaustively searching for possible candidates since 1996, has been responsible for discovering the five most recent examples. Altogether, 39 have been discovered so far.

Cameron's computer took 42 days to verify that the number was a Mersenne prime. After that, researchers using a workstation took three weeks to confirm the work.

Prime numbers are needed for encrypted communications such as a Web browser's Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology that makes it harder to sniff out credit card numbers or other private information. But those systems typically use primes that are merely 300 or so digits, said Stanford University mathematician Dan Boneh.

"The large Mersenne primes are not very useful," Boneh said, though finding one will grant a person 15 minutes of fame.

Mathematical hobbyists have provided online versions of Cameron's number written out in decimal form or in words.

Searching for Mersenne primes is computationally intense, but it is a problem that's known as "embarrassingly parallel," which means it can easily be broken down into independent parts that separate computers tackle. Many supercomputer problems take another form, requiring high-speed communication between separate computers or requiring that a problem be solved one step at a time with little opportunity for sharing among many systems.

Parallel computing tasks aren't merely academic. Sun Microsystems and Intel use distributed computing software to help design microprocessors, and companies such as Entropia, Turbolinux, Platform Computing, Parabon Computation and United Devices have software that can be used for work in genetics, pharmaceuticals or financial services. Typically, this software is used within a single corporation rather than on strangers' computers across the Internet.

The concept of distributed computing is closely related to "grid" computing, which unites computers and storage systems into a single pool of resources. The National Science Foundation is among those interested in the concept, devoting $53 million to one grid.

Continued at http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5100648,00.html?chkpt=zdnnp1tp02

Innovation of the Future

"A new spin on computing UC scientists suggest way to harness electrons for processors," by Carl T. Hall, San Francisco Chronicle, December 10, 2001 --- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/12/10/MN230810.DTL  

Some radically new ways of building computers are starting to take shape as scientists venture ever deeper into the weird realm of quantum mechanics.

A team of researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara has taken a key step by suggesting for the first time a practical way to bring the elusive phenomenon known as "electron spin" under precise control.

Experts said it opens up a path toward a whole new style of computing, one that is expected to be particularly useful at performing calculations that stymie conventional machines, such as breaking complex codes and searching huge databases at lightning speed.

"We're trying to explore how to go about building real quantum devices," said David Awschalom, a physicist and director of the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation at UC Santa Barbara.

Although such devices are a long way off, experts say the basic scientific foundation is being laid for machines capable of exploiting the quirky behavior of matter at the scale of individual atoms and subatomic particles.

"Quantum computers are proving to be very difficult to build, for many reasons, but one of them is how do you get these little quantum elements to behave the way you want them to," said Mark Kubinec, a chemist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Awschalom reported the results of his latest adventures in the quantum world last week in the journal Nature. The experiments were among the first under a $1.2 billion research initiative launched by the state of California.

The high-profile effort, announced last December by Gov. Gray Davis, includes corporate partnerships and four new "Centers for Science and Innovation" being created at UC campuses throughout the state.

Continued at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/12/10/MN230810.DTL 

PDA reliability has got to get better, says David, but it won't until we stop thinking about PDAs as traditional computers. http://clickthru.online.com/Click?q=0a-ZnBCIrrVci48ArtKshNYSOuR 

Online Guide to Eastern Shorebirds (Science, Ecology) http://www.a2z4birders.com/cgi-bin/birds 

A "shopping list for terrorist organizations" is being distributed by the Customs Service to businesses as a guide to guard against future attacks --- http://www.wirednews.com/news/conflict/0,2100,48993,00.html 

Book Recommendation: "'Good Enough' isn't enough: Nine Challenges for Companies That Choose to Be Great"

Mediocrity. It's the comfortable curse that a company can live with...but not grow with. And according to business writer, thinker, and consultant Alan Weiss, if mediocrity continues long enough, it can deteriorate into paralysis and business failure. In "'Good Enough' isn't enough," Weiss declares war on the shrug- and-smile culture that maintains a sparkling appearance while allowing gross inefficiency and concealed incompetence to fester. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0814405053/accountingweb 

After a hired hacker proved the Department of Interior websites were easy to penetrate, a U.S. district judge orders all sites taken down. When they'll be back up is anybody's guess --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48980,00.html 

Web wanderers looking for information on national parks, government mapping services or geological disasters will need to get their information from non-official websites for a while.

A hired hacker's ability to easily penetrate computer systems operated by the Department of Interior has resulted in a legal order taking the entire system offline until the network can be secured.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued the order late Wednesday after a report showed that the computer system which handles $500 million annually in royalties from Indian land has major security holes that make it easy to access the system, alter records and possibly divert funds.

Continued at - http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48980,00.html  

See also:
Suppression Stifles Some Sites
Oh Boy, an Indian Controversy

Bob Jensen's threads on security are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/assurance.htm 

Four teenagers admit they wrote and spread the Goner e-mail worm that created apoplexy among antivirus companies last week --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,48969,00.html 

Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative ---  http://early-cuneiform.humnet.ucla.edu/cdli.htm 

The Cuneiform Digital Library

The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) represents the efforts of an international group of Assyriologists, museum curators and historians of science to make available through the internet the form and content of cuneiform tablets dating from the beginning of writing, ca. 3200 B.C., until the end of the third millennium. Despite the 150 years since the decipherment of cuneiform, and the 100 years since Sumerian documents of the 3rd millennium B.C. from southern Babylonia were first published, such basic research tools as a reliable paleography charting the graphic development of cuneiform, and a lexical and grammatical glossary of the approximately 120,000 texts inscribed during this period of early state formation, remain unavailable even to specialists, not to mention scholars from other disciplines to whom these earliest sources on social development represent an extraordinary hidden treasure. The CDLI, directed by Robert. K. Englund of the University of California at Los Angeles and Peter Damerow of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, is pursuing the systematic digital documentation and electronic publication of these 3rd millennium sources. Cooperative partners include leading experts from the field of Assyriology, curators of European and American museums, and computer specialists in text markup. The CDLI data set will consist of text and image, combining document transliterations, text glossaries and digitized originals and photo archives of early cuneiform.

This electronic documentation should be of particular interest to cuneiform scholars distant from collections, and to museum personnel intent on archiving and preserving fragile and often decaying cuneiform collections. The data will form the basis for the development of representations of the structure of 3rd millennium administrative and lexical documents, making the contents of the texts accessible to scholars from other disciplines. A typology of accounting procedures, graphical representations of formal structures of bookkeeping documents, and extensive glossaries of technical terms later supplemented by linguistic tools for accessing the primary sources by non-Assyriologists are being developed. Data formats, including Extensible Markup Language (XML) text descriptions, with vector-based image specifications of computer-assisted tablet copies, will be chosen to insure high conformance with ongoing digital library projects. Metadata-based lexemic and grammatical analysis of Sumerian in the CDLI markup environment will not onl y put at the disposal of specialists in the fields of Assyriology and Sumerology available cuneiform documents from the first thousand years of Babylonian writing, but also general linguists, semioticists, and historians of communication and cognition, of administration and early state formation, will for the first time have access to the form and content of these records.

In an initial three-year phase funded by the Digital Library Initiative of the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities (see text of funding proposal), project staff and associates expect to complete the digitization of the early cuneiform collections of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, the Louvre, Paris, the Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven, and the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Approximately half of large holdings of the British Museum should be finished in this period. Dual track internet presentations of these collections (conforming on the one hand with individual museum presentation, on the other with archival data sets of the CDLI) will be implemented in steps, beginning in January 2001 with that of the Vorderasiatisches Museum. The ca. 3200 tablets of that museum represent one of the finest collections of early cuneiform known to us, with representative text groups from all of the major phases of writing in Mesopotamia. Project staff are currently preparing for insertion in our internet pages the full image data sets of the Hermitage, with its substantial archives of pre-Sargonic Lagash (ca. 2400-2350 B.C.) and Ur III (ca. 2050-2000 B.C.) administrative documents, and of all collections of tablets deriving from the period of proto-cuneiform (ca. 3200-3000 B.C.). Such research tools as a reliable paleography of twelve hundred years of cuneiform, and a lexical and grammatical glossary of the wide-ranging records from the period of early Babylonian history will follow from the cooperative research on these data sets sponsored by the CDLI.

Even members of the industry say it will take years before Bluetooth wireless technology is adopted en masse. But that doesn't mean we can't dream about its potential --- http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,49023,00.html 

Camera on the Tip of His Shoe

He was put on probation for taping "upskirt" videos with a sneakercam ... but that didn't stop him from taking it with him to his probation office --- http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,49054,00.html 

A man sentenced to probation for using a tiny video camera in his sneakers to peek up women's skirts also used the "sneakercam" to ogle women at his probation office, prosecutors told a Florida court.

The allegations came to light during a hearing on Tuesday after defendant Daniel Searfoss was arrested a second time on voyeurism charges, the Tampa Tribune reported on Wednesday.

Searfoss, a 43-year-old mechanic, was first arrested Dec. 31, 2000, on a misdemeanor voyeurism charge at a Wal-Mart store in Plant City, Florida, near Tampa. Police said he wired a camera hidden in his sneaker to a video recorder he carried in a bag, using it to peek up women's skirts.

See also:
Reporters Scowl at Face Scanners
Protesters Wish for Cams to Scram

Hi Sarah,

I suggest that you begin with a free online accounting history book by David A.R. Forrester. It is a great book and has some great references to other books. You will find the link at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory 

Although it is not accounting history per se, I also recommend the book by Geoffrey Poitras that is also referenced beneath the Forrester book.

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message----- 
From: Sarah Cheng [ACCT] [mailto:acsarah@inet.polyu.edu.hk]  
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 4:24 AM 
To: CPAS-L@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU ; rjensen@TRINITY.EDU  
Subject: Re: Accounting history

Any idea about a good book on accounting history?

Regards,
Sarah Cheng

One-time Internet booster Henry Blodget, who recently left Merrill Lynch, is reportedly one of several stock analysts being probed for alleged conflicts of interest --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48992,00.html 

Which one factor is most important when choosing a Web server (software) platform for your enterprise?

See Information Week's choices at http://update.internetweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFMQ0Bdl6n0V30BDq50Ao 

Small town governments, church groups and the Ohio State Senate have Web addresses that have been hijacked and held ransom by pornographers lately in a growing trend.

"Sites Forlorn When Reborn as Porn," by Jeffrey Benner, Wired News, December 10, 2001 --- 
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,48903,1162b6a.html 

The website for the city of Villa Hills, Kentucky, currently features a picture of 19-year-old Tina clutching her bare breasts.

Images of "Euro Teen Sluts" appear where Manchester, Iowa's city government information used to be. And teachers looking for Home Education Magazine at its former online address will find a link to "gang bang models," but absolutely no helpful tips on home schooling.

These are just a few of the growing number of local governments, church groups and nonprofit organizations that have recently seen their homepages turned into smut dens.

The International Lutheran Woman's Missionary League, the Nebraska Department of Education, the Ohio State Senate and the Ballet Theatre of Annapolis, Maryland, have all experienced the same fate, according to N2H2, a Web filtering company that tracks porn on the Web.

"It's a trend we started seeing several months ago," N2H2 spokesman David Burt said. "It seems to be a couple of companies, one in Armenia. They buy up lapsed domain names and convert them to porn sites."

The takeovers all involve domain names whose registration has expired. Some owners just forgot to renew. Others gave up ownership to their old address after switching over to a new name.

The domain names may have been snapped up by speculators who make a living trafficking in expired domains, according to Ron Wiener, CEO of Snapnames. His company specializes in purchasing expired names the instant they become available.

"All the good new names are gone, so speculators feast entirely on (expiring) names," Wiener said. "Most are just trying to find a buyer for it."

In many cases, the target market is the old owner.

The new owner of Manchester, Iowa's old website -- replaced with links to porn after the city inadvertently failed to renew its registration -- offered to sell it back for $550. Manchester refused, and shifted its homepage to a new address instead.

The Good News Web Designers Association, a Christian organization, has issued a warning to its members not to let domains lapse, after numerous reports emerged of Christian sites being bought by pornographers based in Russia and then held for ransom.

"Christian ministry sites, Catholic Diocesan sites, Youth Ministry sites, children's sites, Christian Web designers' own business sites, and amusement parks," have all been hit, the alert cautions.

Catholic Diocese in Cleveland and Brooklyn were among the victims, according to United Press International.

With roughly 1 million formerly registered domains opening up each month, Wiener said trafficking in them has become big business, and most get purchased the instant they're available. "This is one of the biggest stealth industries around," Wiener said. "We have customers dropping $50,000 a day on expired domains."

Continued at  http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,48903,1162b6a.html  

See also:
Homeschool Gets Sex Education
Confusion Is Domain Problem
Is It Too Late for Sex.Coop?
Activists Attack Porn Bill

Trinity University's Student Managed Fund --- http://www.trinity.edu/smf/ 

Trinity's Student Managed Fund manages over $500,000 of the University's endowment.  The year long class is responsible for actively managing the portfolio by buying and selling stocks picked and voted upon by class members.  The objective of the class is to improve students' skills at investment management, securities analysis, and team participation through practical means.  We invest exclusively in common stocks and use the S&P 500 index to gauge performance.   Recent Action in the SMF

A Xerox senior engineer's life is in tatters after being charged with trading digital images of child pornography. He says he's innocent, and government records show inconsistencies in the case ---  
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48946,00.html 

CANANDAIGUA, New York -- Larry Benedict is sitting cross-legged on the floor of his home in New York's picturesque Finger Lakes region, surrounded by the detritus of a once-happy life.

A pair of hermit crabs scuttles about in an aquarium in the corner, left behind when his wife and son moved out. Squirreled away in a cardboard box are 15 patents he was awarded as a senior engineer at Xerox, which has told him he no longer has a job. Closer

By far the most prominent feature in the living room of Benedict's lakeside home is a pile of paper that would reach 10 feet high if stacked. It's a record of his defense against a criminal prosecution that began in 1995. The case has thrashed his family, career and savings, and shows no sign of ending soon.

Uncle Sam has accused the 44-year-old engineer of swapping computer disks containing images of minors engaged in sexual activities.

Benedict has been indicted on two counts of violating 18 U.S.C. 2252, which makes it a federal felony to distribute images "of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct." Because the proceedings against him are still underway, Benedict remains free on $7,500 bond.

It should be no surprise that Benedict insists he's innocent. In addition to the social ostracism that a child porn conviction would bring, a prosecutor once informed Benedict that he'd face up to 50 years in prison if a jury believed he was guilty.

What is unusual, however, is that a review of thousands of pages of court records, affidavits and transcripts has uncovered a series of remarkable inconsistencies in the criminal case that the federal government has assembled.

Police destroyed vital evidence that could have shown Benedict was innocent. One investigator incorrectly informed a grand jury that there was written evidence linking Benedict to child pornography, even though none was ever found.

A postal inspector told a grand jury that Benedict confessed to trading child pornography while in the presence of state police witnesses. The state troopers insist it never happened.

Files and entire directories mysteriously appeared on seized computers while they were stored in police evidence rooms. It took prosecutors nearly five years to uncover illegal image files on Benedict's PC -- in an obvious, top-level directory titled "GIF."

For its part, in court filings as recently as Monday, the U.S. Attorney's office steadfastly denies any wrongdoing.

Martin Littlefield, the assistant U.S. Attorney in Buffalo, New York, in charge of Benedict's prosecution, won't comment. "For me to engage in an out-of-court dissertation about allegations would be unethical and inappropriate on

Continued at http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48946,00.html 

In Part 2 of a series, was a suspected trafficker in child pornography a wronged target of an overeager postal inspector? --- 
http://www.wirednews.com/news/politics/0,1283,49013,00.html 

A former Xerox engineer admits trading pirated PC games with a convicted pedophile. But is that all they exchanged? Part 3 of a series by Declan McCullagh, reporting from Canandaigua, New York --- 
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49083,00.html 

Former Xerox exec Larry Benedict is accused of trading child porn, but enforcement officials still can't produce any evidence that images existed on his computers. Part 4 of a series by Washington bureau chief Declan McCullagh --- 
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49132,00.html 

Did Larry Benedict purposely swap child pornography, or did he merely think he was swapping computer games? One lesson in this seven-year saga is that proof isn't always clear when dealing with electronic files. Part 5 of a series by Washington bureau chief --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49141,00.html 

Two groups that publish sexual content on the Web challenge the Communications Decency Act, fearful the vagueness of its obscenity provision leaves them vulnerable to charges --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,49044,00.html 

Europeans still fret over what impact actual euro currency will have on the continent, but auction sites think it'll help facilitate cross-border transactions --- http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,49048,1162b6a.html 

A message received from AccountingWeb on December 14, 2001

Here is a sample of the questions that have been posted this week. Check out all the questions at our Q&A Forum and see if you can lend a hand. http://www.accountingweb.com/help/anyanswers.html 

1. Is there a source for determining what cities have grant money available for small businesses planning to relocate? http://www.accountingweb.com/item/65595 

2. How can one best structure a lump sum damages settlement that involves a lawyer's contingency payment? http://www.accountingweb.com/item/65731 

3. What account should be used to book rebates received on the purchase of PC's, cell phones, and so on? http://www.accountingweb.com/item/66048 

4. An individual tax practice in Denver, CO is contemplating raising prices at least 30% but is worried that the increase will cause many clients to leave. Are there any statistics available that address this issue? http://www.accountingweb.com/item/66187 

Bob Jensen's threads on helpers for accounting practices and small business are at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fees.htm 

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As companies continue to grapple with security and disaster recovery concerns brought about by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the federal government is considering a broad set of security standards that it will push its agencies and private industry to follow. Last week, the Business Software Alliance, at its Global Tech Summit in Washington, issued a "Cyber Security Blueprint" to guide collaborative government and industry initiatives. The proposals include greater investment in enhanced security tools, federal research and development investment in security technology, and increased criminal penalties against computer crimes --- http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s%253D701%2526a%253D19634,00.asp 

MicronPC is giving a thumbs-up to new security measures with a notebook computer launched Monday. The PC maker's new Transport GX2 features a fingerprint reader to verify a person's rights to access data inside the system. With the GX2, MicronPC becomes one of the first manufacturers to build into a notebook so-called biometric security. http://clickthru.online.com/Click?q=34-pJJSIcdN1sbGQTBGltAkVn4R 

A message from Peter C. Bruce [pbruce@statistics.com] 

Raftery, Tanner & Wells' new book "Statistics in the 21st Century" (Chapman & Hall, 2002) is not, strictly speaking, new, in the sense that much of the material has previously appeared in journal articles. Still, unless you know that you will be stuck analyzing the same types of problems with the same methods in the same job from here on out, it is a valuable addition to your book shelf.

This book grew out of a series of articles in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, presenting 30 short review articles on the role of statistics in various discplines, as well as 20 similar articles on recent methodological advances. It will be of interest to several sorts of statisticians: -- Academics seeking to understand whether methodologies developed mainly in the context of another discipline might have applicability for their own; -- Researchers whose statistical applications have been narrowly focused, and who want to expand their understanding in a general way; -- Teachers who believe their students may benefit from greater knowledge of how statistics is used in the world -- Independent consultants thinking of expanding their reach; -- Students contemplating career choices and professionals thinking of a career change.

A large part of statistics is measuring and understanding variability, and there is some variability among these vignettes. David Oakes (survival analysis) packs an enormous amount of statistical content into just over four pages, and the goal of broad coverage is undermined a bit by detailed forays into theory that are necessarily terse and jumpy. Peter Guttorp's piece on environmental statistics has much less material to tackle and does it in more space, resulting in a more readable "density index."

Bottom line: A valuable resource for the statistician who wants a quick understanding of what the rest of the profession is doing. Tons of references a good book to have around.

The following disciplines and topics are touched upon:

- Survival analysis - Causal analysis in health science ("counterfactual approach") - Environmental statistics - Capture-recapture - Predicting genetic merit in animal breeding - Modeling toxicology - Assessing diagnostic tests (Receiver Operating Characteristic Methodology) - Randomized clinical trials - Epidemiology - Analysis of the gene - Financial markets - Market research - Time series data - Statistics in political science and sociology - Psychometrics - Forensic statistics - Demography - Climate and weather (global warming) - Seismology - Measuring internet traffic - Data compression - Reliability - Statistical Process Control

Methods Topics

- Log Linear models - Bayesian statistics and Gibbs sampling (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) - Decision theory - The bootstrap - Which variables to select for a model - Nonparametrics - Generalized Linear Models - Missing Data - Robust statistics - Likelihood - Measurement error models - Minimax decision-making

Reviewed by Peter Bruce, statistics.com 
Available at http://www.statistics.com/content/bookstore/ 

Wow!  Over 20 years of Usenet discussion groups to search, browse, and post messages --- 
http://groups.google.com/ 

A popular search engine (Google) has posted 20 years' worth of Usenet discussion group postings: more than 700 million entries in all. Included: American Taliban John Walker, screen name, "doodoo." --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,49016,00.html 

Teenager Training for Terrorism:  The Early Years

E-mails from a Traitor The young John Walker left an enormous cache of nutty e-mails --- http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/669eqdyh.asp 

From August 1995 to August 1997, John Philip Walker Lindh, the Marin County jihadist, was a frequent contributor to Internet newsgroups. As Newsweek reports  http://www.msnbc.com/news/669825.asp  in its latest issue, he used the nom de plume "doodoo."

At the outset, he pretended to be a rapper, critiquing the rhymes of another Internet poseur as "some 13 year old white kid playing smart," which would actually be a pretty fair description of himself, then a 14-year-old white kid trying to pass himself off as black. Two years later, he was "Prof. J" pontificating on the relationship of Judaism to Zionism in the newsgroup soc.religion.islam.

In between, he seems to have liquidated his comic books and video games in order to buy audio equipment. But on July 29, 1996, he suddenly pulls up short: "I've heard recently that certain musical instruments are forbidden by Islam," he writes. And by September 21, 1996, he's placing an online want ad (WTB means "wanted to buy") for recordings of Malcolm X speeches. He comes across in many places as a budding totalitarian, though it should be noted that many 15-year-old habitues of newsgroups try to sound imperious. Not that many sign their e-mails "Br. Mujahid," however.

You can retrieve the online oeuvre of the American Taliban for yourself by searching for "doodoo@hooked.net" in the newsgroups archive at Google http://groups.google.com/groups?group=news&hl=en . Or you can read them at http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/669eqdyh.asp  , reformatted in chronological order. The only editing I've done is to remove the e-mail addresses of third parties and the more technical parts of the address headers. The personal webpage he refers to, http://www.hooked.net/users/doodoo/index.htm  , seems no longer to exist.

Bob Jensen's Bookmarks on "Discussion Groups, Newsgroups and Chat Rooms" are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob3.htm#DiscussionGroups 

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.ht

News from New Media on December 13, 2001

THIS WEEK'S NEWS

* BUSINESS Future of Marketing for 2002: New Priorities, Part I The flash and excess that were the mark of marketing in the 1990s are officially gone for good. Today, customer knowledge and calculable returns rule. The following issues will be essential to marketing success in the coming year: Multi-Channel Synchronization Today, most businesses operate across many channels, from retail stores and catalogs, to call centers and the Web. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3265 

We Came, We Saw, We Did a Little E-Shopping In fact, 25 percent of us are finished buying gifts; report finds last two weeks of November were the biggest so far this year for online shopping. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3261 

Untapped Webizens: Seeking Out the Gay and Lesbian Market Nowhere has the Web's potential to galvanize had a stronger impact than in the gay and lesbian community, yet little has been done to reach this market online. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3257 

Toys Continue to Top E-Commerce Lists If the data from the Nielsen//NetRatings Holiday eCommerce Index is any indication, there should be a lot of packages arriving at a lot of homes that will make a lot of children very happy this holiday season. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3254 

Travel Joins the Holiday Shopping Spree Online shoppers outspent their post-Thanksgiving e-commerce purchases during the week ending Dec. 2. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3251 

DESIGN Making Advertisers and Users Happier: A Case Study Making advertisers and users happier: Has Lycos achieved the impossible? http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3263 

How Web Designers Sell Themselves Are you one of those Web designers who design quite well, but don't have time to work on your own site? Savvy Web surfers looking for designers expect a great deal from a site offering Web development/design. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3262 

Is Your Web Site Qualified to Sell? Does your site pass the one page only indicator? Take this test to find out. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3256 

Eight Things to Consider When Choosing a CMS If you are a Web site owner you'll probably be keen to do the job of keeping your Web site up-to-date yourself. We've been producing content management systems for our clients for couple of years now, but the main problem has been that these systems often cost more than the original Web site. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3253 

Accommodating Visually Impaired Shoppers Online retailing behemoth Amazon.com is making it easier for the visually impaired to shop on the Internet by launching an alternative version of its Web site designed for customers who use screen access software. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3249 

/-------------------------------------------------------------------\

**JOB SECURITY -- CAREER GROWTH -- CHALLENGING POSITIONS** The internet.com Careers Channel is the leading online Information Technology (IT) job board. Whether you need to start your new job today, are searching for your dream job, or are just wondering what your skills are worth, you'll find the tools you need to land your next great job. Don't wait any longer! http://www.internet.com/sections/careers.html 

* TECHNOLOGY Internet Influencing All Aspects of Healthcare The Internet has provided efficient ways for doctors to treat and communicate with their patients, but it's also provided a platform for pharmaceutical companies and other organizations to reach doctors, a study by The Boston Consulting Group and Harris Interactive found. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3264 

Enterprises Continue to Drive Wireless Applications Nearly half (46.1 percent) of development managers at large corporations plan to develop applications for wireless devices in the coming year, according to Evans Data Corp . That's more than plan on developing B2B e-commerce applications and even security. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3260 

ISPs Barely Passing Customer Service Tests A survey of more than 14,000 Internet users by the National Regulatory Research Institute and BIGresearch found that almost half (47 percent) of the respondents have complained to their ISP about the quality of service. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3258 

Email Can Do That? Email Can Do That? All the technology @d:TECH has to offer is being channeled into your inbox. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3252 

Advanced Ad-Serving Features, Part 2: Third-Party Ad Servers Advanced features of third-party ad servers that meet the needs of advertisers & agencies. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=3250 

MORE NEWMEDIA NEWS (From the internet.com Network)

Sun To Find Competition in New Intel Rack Units Setting themselves as the "Company Of Choice," the popular chipmaker is betting increased flexibility is what carriers, OEMs are looking for in a rack unit. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article/0,,10_939031,00.html 

Judge, Creditors Approve @Home Extension Creditors at the nearly-defunct broadband ISP agreed to keep its operations open until February 2002, saving millions of high-speed customers from shutdown. http://www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article/0,,8_938361,00.html 

President to Name Tech Advisory Group A panel of technology marquee names, including AOL Time Warner's Steve Case, could play an influential role in helping to shape the administration and the government's technology policy. http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article/0,1471,8471_938721,00.html 

TOP HEADLINES FROM INTERNETNEWS.COM

Yahoo! To Snatch HotJobs Out of the Clutches Of Monster.com http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article/0,2198,3531_939331,00.html 

For Online Retailers, It's Showtime http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article/0,,4_939511,00.html 

Ciena Posts Net Loss, Warns of More Losses http://www.internetnews.com/fina-news/article/0,,5_939451,00.html 

CONTACT US!

Questions? Comments? Please e-mail them to NewMedia Managing Editor Laura Rush (lrush@internet.com). Please do not send unsubscribe requests to this address--instructions for that appear at the very bottom of this newsletter. You can also subscribe/unsubscribe directly from our Web site, at http://www.newmedia.com 

Bob Jensen's Tutorials on e-Commerce are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce.htm 

Dmitri Sklyarov, the Russian hacker arrested after DefCon earlier this year for cracking Adobe's e-book reader security and publishing how he did it, makes a deal --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49122,00.html 

Subject: I AM A STUDENT REQUESTING HELP

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Jennifer Collins <jcollin2@OLIVET.EDU>  
To: <CPAS-L@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU> 
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 3:27 PM 
Subject: I AM A STUDENT REQUESTING HELP

I am a student at Olivet Nazarene University in Kankakee, IL majoring in Accounting. I have been asked to do a special project listing three > examples of how accounting impacts some aspects of our society. If you can  help me at all please do. I have been asked to use the internet and/or >business professionals therefore, I decided to combine the two. As I said > before, any information that you can give me will be greatly appreciated. 
Thank you. 

Reply from Bob Jensen

I tend to agree with the President of Harvard University when he stated the following:

**************************************** 
If one were writing a history of the American capital market, it is a fair bet that the single most important innovation shaping that market was the idea of generally accepted accounting principles. Lawrence Summers, President of Harvard University and former Secretary of Treasury 
***************************************

From FEI Express, May 24, 2001 --- http://www.fei.org/newsletters/express/feiexpress62.cfm

LAWRENCE SUMMERS AT THE FORBES CFO CONFERENCE Lawrence Summers, the President-elect of Harvard University and former Secretary of Treasury, talked about what's new in the "New Economy" and how those innovations have contributed to the overall success of the global economy.

Three hallmarks of our time: 1. Technology that brings people together; 2. The fact that we are REALLY becoming ONE world; the coming together of our global economy; 3. The power of free markets not only is clearly demonstrated but actually increasing in importance.

Summers also talked about the dramatic shift in capital allocation arising from shareholder activism in the late '80s and through the '90s. He spoke about how the shift of investors' dollars from unresponsive, under-performing management teams to venture capitalists and private equity investment groups drove the dramatic stock market performance in the '90s. Our capacity for creative destruction and reallocation of capital underlies the ability to do this. Further, U.S. companies have been the most aggressive in seeking out opportunities abroad.

As to the future, he joked that economists are often advised to name a date or name a number, but not both. How quickly the inventories are worked off is one key. Summers thinks they were worked down nicely in the first quarter of this year, which bodes well for the balance of the year. Equipment investment will be weak for some time, in his view. There is still excess capacity and there is equipment being sold off from busted companies at pennies on the dollar. Therefore, investment will lag. Consumer spending is the final key component. Summers thinks that most likely we will just barely avoid a technical recession, but sluggish consumption and investment will continue for three quarters. He thinks the tax cut is too small in the near term to have any impact on the short-term economy.

The tax cut, in his view, will not help in the current economy, and he thinks it's a big mistake in the long run. In his opinion, there is a significant risk, and we can't afford it. Smaller surpluses will lead to higher interest costs. He thinks it will put us back into deficit spending. Second, we can't be sure what the surplus or deficit will be in five or ten years. The error band around the forecasts five years from now has a width of $600 billion. He thinks we shouldn't lock in long-term cuts with that kind of uncertainty.

Globally, Japan is on the downslide again. It must resolve the "mother-of-all" banking crisis before its economy can rebound. Europe faces a real risk of diminished expectations, feeling that 3% growth is just fine. However, Mexico is a bright spot and appears poised for growth in his view. India and China are experiencing substantial growth, while China's growth, is decelerating and India's is accelerating. Brazil is looking at important elections in 2002 that show worrisome signs of turmoil.

For the long run, his view is that we are in a period of remarkable opportunity, but will be challenged in the short term.

Summers emphasized that the US should care more about what happens around the world than we have historically. We are shifting to a world economy and therefore, he feels, we should spend more resources to promote the raw materials for capitalism around the world - an educated population and a culture that has the rule of law - respect for property rights and enforceable contracts - are the raw materials of capitalism.

He mocked the talk of our new economy's improved "scientific control" of inventory. Summers feels the truth is, in rapid expansion periods, that companies press to get more product out, then overbuy from the suppliers, getting stuck when the inevitable slowdown comes. It happens over and over again.

The great expansion of the 90s came with little price increases for companies. He credited the availability of imported products and the overall increase in competition in our economy with keeping a lid on prices. More knowledge-based products that are easily transportable have also provided price restraints.

Hope this helps a little.

Bob Jensen

Reply from Robert Walker

-----Original Message----- 
From: Robert B Walker [mailto:walkerrb@ACTRIX.CO.NZ]  
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 1:56 PM 
To: CPAS-L@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU Subject: 
Re: I AM A STUDENT REQUESTING HELP

This is an opportunity too good to miss. Amongst other things it has flushed out an interesting if not a little disillusioned piece from Todd Boyle which I will have to think about.

I am not quite sure why Todd disagrees with the basic accounting equation and the application of double entry - I do not believe they are suffused with ideology in the way that, say, the conceptual framework is said to be.

I also think we should see accounting, qua double entry, as being beyond the overlay of standardisation that has been imposed since the Great Depression. (By the way the other history that I think is most illuminating is R & S Storey 'The Framework of Financial Accounting Concepts & Standards' published by FASB.)

I still suffer the delusion attributed to Sombart - that double entry created Western economic hegemony. Well at least I do in part, clearly the dynamic underlying capitalism has something else in the mix beginning in Italy in the Renaissance and finding its full flowering in the US of the 20th century.

Nonetheless the impact of double entry is profound. Modern commercial and financial activity cannot happen without it. Double entry enables, firstly, the creation of artifical personality and, then, the capacity to combine a large number of individual economic interests into that one entity. Banking is afterall only a manifestation of double entry. Banking simply cannot exist without it (the banking empire of the German Fugger family notwithstanding).

The general ledger in a bank is its engine of production. It is the bank. Banks are the centrepiece of our economic system. Double entry is therefore at its core.

If I may attribute motive to Todd I suspect he perceives failure of the accounting model as presently practiced in things such as the Enron scandal. I think, contrarily, that is not accounting's failure. It is a failure to apply accounting (by which I mean double entry) properly. There is a difference.

One final thought: so far the correspondents have answered the student purely in commerical terms. Accounting's impact on government is just as profound. An insight into this can be gained in some measure by an IMF publication called 'How to Measure the Fiscal Deficit' (ed. M Blejer). The history of government finance and its accounting is as venerable as that pertaining to commerce. In fact the history I referred to yesterday - that of O ten Have - hints that double entry was first used in government as long ago as a thousand years, by Arabs of course. They were demonstrably using ex post budget analysis as far back as that.

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory.htm 

QUICK FACTS ABOUT TRINITY UNIVERSITY
Trinity University's Homepage --- http://www.trinity.edu/ 

• #1 (Top) University in the West (offering Masters degrees): U.S. News and World Report (2002).
  

• #1 (Top) Best Value/Western Universities: U.S. News and World Report (2002).
  

• #3 in nation for individual attention from faculty: Kaplan/Newsweek College Catalog (2002).
  

• Top 20 in nation for quality of student life: The Princeton Review, The Best 331 Colleges (2001).
  

• #20 Undergraduate Engineering Program: U.S. News and World Report (2001).
  

• Top 30 Value among Private Colleges: Kiplinger's Personal Finance (2001).
  

• Top 10 for number of Ph.D. bound alumni in 1998; 35% of graduate immediately enroll.
  

• 3 students won Goldwater scholarships in 1999-2000.
  

• 100% placement for five-year bachelor and master's graduates (Education and Accounting).
  

• One of the leading providers of Peace Corps volunteers in the Southwest.
  

• 54% of Trinity's classes enroll 20 or fewer students.
  

• One of the nation's largest undergraduate research programs in chemistry.
  

• 40% of 2001 graduate studied abroad--on every continent except Antarctica!
  

• 45% of students volunteer in community service programs.
  

• Top 11 national ranking in Division III Intercollegiate Athletics for last 3 years; Sports Illustrated for Women named Trinity's programs among top 3 NCAA Division (2000).
  

• $3.5 million: amount spent to renovate the Stieren Theatre.
  

• $1.3 million: cost of each year to insure that Elizabeth Coates Library has one of the most extensive library collections among national liberal arts and sciences colleges (900,000 volumes).
  

• $750,000: amount of endowment invested in the Student Managed Fund.--- http://www.trinity.edu/smf/ 

The link to the above information is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TrinityQuickFacts.htm 

Think Geek
Debbie Bowling suggests having a few laughs while you shop.

Here's a web site I thought you would enjoy! It has all types of "geeky" things to buy!

http://www.thinkgeek.com/ 

Debbie

Forwarded by Denny Beresford

One of my colleagues observed that last Saturday was the effective date of FASB Statement 142, prompting accountants across the land to shout the following holiday greeting:

Peace on Earth and GOODWILL to men (but not to expense)!

Reply from Bob Jensen

Unless, like now, it is being "impaired."

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

Double click and go there for a good laugh --- http://www.whoohoo.net/resume/ 

Forwarded by Nancy Mills

Subject: Definitions

The meaning of words: The Washington Post published a contest for readers in which they were asked to supply alternate meanings for various words. The following were some of the winning entries:

Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

Pokemon (n), A Jamaican proctologist. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie.

Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash. Flatulence (n.) the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.

Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.

Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts

Forwarded by Dick Haar

A man was going up to bed, when his wife told him he'd left the light on in the garden shed - she could see it from the bedroom window. But he said that he hadn't been in the shed that day. He looked himself, and saw that there were people in the shed, stealing things. He rang the police, but they told him that no one currently was in his immediate area, and that, due to ongoing investigations it could be several hours before someone would be available to respond. He said OK, hung up.

He then counted to 30 and rang the police again. "Hello. I just rang you a few seconds ago because there were thieves in my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now, I've just shot them all."

Within five minutes there were half a dozen police cars in the area, an Armed Response unit, the works. Of course, they caught the burglars red-handed.

One of the policeman said to this man, "I thought you reported that you'd shot them!"

The man replied, "I thought they said there was no-one available!"

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

The Sex Of The Computer

A language instructor was explaining to her class that in French, nouns unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine.

"House," in French, is feminine-"la maison." "Pencil," in French, is masculine-"le crayon."

One puzzled student asked, "What gender is computer?" The teacher did not know, and the word wasn't in her French dictionary. So for fun she split the class into two groups appropriately enough, by gender and asked them to decide whether "computer" should be a masculine or feminine noun.

Both groups were required to give four reasons for their recommendation. 

The men's group decided that computers should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computer"), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for possible later retrieval

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your pay check on accessories for it.

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ("le computer"), because:

1. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on;

2. They have a lot of data but they are still clueless

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you'd waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

The women won.

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

                          Living on Earth is expensive,
                             but it does include a free trip
                             around the sun every year.        

                         Birthdays are good for you;
                             the more you have, the longer
                             you live.                         
            
                         How long a minute is depends
                             on what side of the bathroom
                             door you're on.

                         Ever notice that the people who
                             are late are often much jollier
                             than the people who have to
                             wait for them?       

                         If ignorance is bliss, why aren't
                             more people happy?      

                         Most of us go to our grave with
                             our music still inside of us.        

                         If Wal-Mart is lowering prices
                             every day, how come nothing
                             is free yet?        

                         You may be only one person
                             in the world, but you may also
                             be the world to one person.          

                         Some mistakes are too much
                             fun to only make once.       

                         Don't cry because it's over;
                             smile because it happened.         

                         We could learn a lot from
                             crayons: some are sharp,
                             some are pretty, some are dull,
                             some have weird names, and
                             all are different colors.... but
                             they all have to learn to live
                             in the same box.     

                         A truly happy person is one who
                             can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

                         Happiness comes through doors
                             you didn't even know you left open.

                         Have an awesome day, and know that
                             someone has thought about you today!

 

Forwarded by Maria

MUD PUDDLES AND DANDELIONS

When I look at a patch of dandelions, I see a bunch of weeds
that are going to take over my yard.

My kids see flowers for Mom and blowing white fluff you
can wish on.

When I look at an old drunk and he smiles at me, I see a
smelly, dirty person who probably
wants money and I look away.

My kids see someone smiling at them and they smile back.

When I hear music I love, I know I can't carry a tune and
don't have much rhythm so I sit self-consciously and listen.

My kids feel the beat and move to it. They sing out the
words. If they don't know them, they make up their own.

When I feel wind on my face, I brace myself against it. I
feel it messing up my hair and pulling me back when I walk.

My kids close their eyes, spread their arms and fly with
it, until they fall to the ground laughing.

When I pray, I say thee and thou and grant me this, give me that.

My kids say, "Hi God! Thanks for my toys and my friends.
Please keep the bad dreams away tonight. Sorry, I don't want to
go to Heaven yet. I would miss my Mommy and Daddy."

When I see a mud puddle I step around it. I see muddy
shoes and dirty carpets.

My kids sit in it. They see dams to build, rivers to
cross and worms to play with.

I wonder if we are given kids to teach or to learn from?

No wonder God loves the little children!!

"Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look
back and realize they were the big things."

My wish to you....Mud Puddles and Dandelions and may God
bless this day for you.

Forwarded by my cousin Donna Johnson.  I do not know who is the original author.  I do not know who is the original author, but the poem describes exactly how I felt as I addressed each of our Christmas cards this year

There is a list of folks I know
All written in a book,
And every year at Christmas time
I go and take a look.

And that is when I realize that
these names are a part
Not of the book they're written in
But of my very heart.

For each name stands for someone,
Who has touched my very life sometime,
And in that meeting they've become,
The "Rhythm of the Rhyme"

I really feel I am composed of each remembered name,
And while you may not be aware,
My life is so much better,
Than it was before you came.

For once that you have known someone,
the years cannot erase,
The memory of a pleasant word,
Or a friendly face.

So never think my Christmas cards
Are just a mere routine,
Of names upon a list, 
Forgotten in between.

For when I send a Christmas card
That is addressed to you,
It is because you're on that list
Of folks I'm indebted to.

And whether I have known you,
For many years or few,
In some way you have had a part,
In shaping things I do.

So every year when Christmas comes,
We just realize anew,
the Biggest Gift that God can give,
Is knowing friends like you!!!

Happy holidays to each and every one of you.  Pray God bless you all!

And that's the way it was on December 20, 2001 with a little help from my friends.

In March 2000, Forbes named AccountantsWorld.com as the Best Website on the Web --- http://accountantsworld.com/.
Some top accountancy links --- http://accountantsworld.com/category.asp?id=Accounting

For accounting news, I prefer AccountingWeb at http://www.accountingweb.com/ 

Another leading accounting site is AccountingEducation.com at http://www.accountingeducation.com/ 

Paul Pacter maintains the best international accounting standards and news Website at http://www.iasplus.com/

How stuff works --- http://www.howstuffworks.com/ 

Bob Jensen's video helpers for MS Excel, MS Access, and other helper videos are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/ 
Accompanying documentation can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/default1.htm and http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-999-7347 Fax: 210-999-8134  Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu  

December 10, 2001

Quotes of the Week

"When you lose, don't lose the lesson."
(Quoted near the bottom of this edition of New Bookmarks)

"It doesn't matter if you're the greatest guitar player in the world. If you're not enlightened, forget it."
George Harrison, quoted in "Zen Guitar"

"Enron chief and Bush buddy grabs $150 million while employees lose their shirts.  Probe him."
Newsweek Magazine, December 10, 2001 on Page 6,
One of the really sad parts of the Enron scandal is that thousands of Enron employees were not allowed to sell Enron shares in their pension funds and were left hold empty pension funds.  One elderly Enron employee on television last evening lamented that his pension of over $2 million was reduced to less than $10,000.  

Enron:  A Message From the CEO of Andersen

     Bob Jensen's Commentary on the Above Message From the CEO of Andersen
     (The Most Difficult Message That I Have Perhaps Ever Written!)
     This is followed by replies from other accounting educators.

Lawsuit Seeks to Hold Andersen Accountable for Defrauding Enron Investors, Employees --- http://www.smartpros.com/x31970.xml 

WARNING: 
Everybody reading this message should download the Parts 1 and 2 Washington Post article immediately.  Like most online newspaper articles, these will not be available for downloading after a week or two (at least not for free like now).  The articles deal with new concerns about whether public accounting firms are more self-serving than public-serving when conducting audits.  They dwell on some serious scandals.

Some quotations and links to the full Part 1 and Part 2 articles can be found at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

The Big Five Firms Join Hands (in Prayer?)
Facing up to a raft of negative publicity for the accounting profession in light of Big Five firm Andersen's association with failed energy giant Enron, members of all of the Big Five firms joined hands (in prayer?) on December 4, 2001 and vowed to uphold higher standards in the future. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/65518

The SEC's Response
Remarks by Robert K. Herdman Chief Accountant U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' Twenty-Ninth Annual National Conference on Current SEC Developments Washington, D.C., December 6, 2001 --- http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch526.htm 

From the Free Wall Street Journal Educators' Reviews for December 6, 2001 

TITLE: Audits of Arthur Andersen Become Further Focus of Investigation
SEC REPORTER: Jonathan Weil
DATE: Nov 30, 2001 PAGE: A3 LINK:
     http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1007059096430725120.djm 
TOPICS: Advanced Financial Accounting, Auditing

SUMMARY: This article focuses on the issues facing Arthur Andersen now that their work on the Enron audit has become the subject of an SEC investigation. The on-line version of the article provides three questions that are attributed to "some accounting professors." The questions in this review expand on those three provided in the article.

QUESTIONS:
1.) The first question the SEC might ask of Enron's auditors is "were financial statement disclosures regarding Enron's transactions too opaque to understand?" Are financial statement disclosures required to be understandable? To whom? Who is responsible for ensuring a certain level of understandability?

2.) Another question that the SEC could consider is whether Andersen auditors were aware that certain off-balance-sheet partnerships should have been consolidated into Enron's balance sheet, as they were in the company's recent restatement. How could the auditors have been "unaware" that certain entities should have been consolidated? What is the SEC's concern with whether or not the auditors were aware of the need for consolidation?

3.) A third question that the SEC could ask is, "Did Andersen auditors knowingly sign off on some 'immaterial' accounting violations, ignoring that they collectively distorted Enron's results?" Again, what is the SEC's concern with whether Andersen was aware of the collective impact of the accounting errors? Should Andersen have been aware of the collective amount of impact of these errors? What steps would you suggest in order to assess this issue?

4.) The article finishes with a discussion of expected Congressional hearings into Enron's accounting practices and into the accounting and auditing standards setting process in general. What concern is there that the FASB "has been working on a project for more than a decade to tighten the rules governing when companies must consolidate certain off-balance sheet 'special purpose entities'"?

5.) In general, how stringent are accounting and auditing requirements in the U.S. relative to other countries' standards? Are accounting standards in other countries set in the same way as in the U.S.? If not, who establishes standards? What incentives would the U.S. Congress have to establish a law-based system if they become convinced that our private sector standards setting practices are inadequate? Are you concerned about having accounting and reporting standards established by law?

6.) The article describes revenue recognition practices at Enron that were based on "noncash unrealized gains." What standard allows, even requires, this practice? Why does the author state, "to date, the accounting standards board has given energy traders almost boundless latitude to value their energy contracts as they see fit"?

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
Reviewed By: Benson Wier, Virginia Commonwealth University
Reviewed By: Kimberly Dunn, Florida Atlantic University

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory.htm 

Can Internal Auditors truly be independent while being employed by the entity and seen as working for the management to achieve organizational goals? In theory, External Auditors are more likely to be perceived as independent, but is it not the case that Internal Auditors appear to have little or no independence? http://www.accountingweb.com/item/65704 

The Future of Amazon.com:  Unlike Enron, Amazon.com seems to thrive without profits.  How long can it last?

"Economy, the Web and E-Commerce: Amazon.com." An Interview With Jeff Bezos CEO, Amazon.com, The Washington Post,  December 6, 2001 --- http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/zforum/01/washtech_bezos120601.htm 

Amazon.com is pinning its hopes on pro forma reporting to report the company's first profit in history.  But wait! Plans by U.S. regulators to crack down on "pro forma" abuses in accounting may take a toll on Internet firms, which like the financial reporting technique because it can make losses seem smaller than they really are.  

"When Pro Forma Is Bad Form," by Joanna Glasner, Wired News, December 6, 2001 --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48877,00.html 

As part of efforts to improve the clarity of information given to investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission warned this week that it will crack down on companies that use creative accounting methods to pump up poor earnings results.

In particular, the commission said it will focus on abuse of a popular form of financial reporting known as "pro forma" accounting, which allows companies to exclude certain expenses and gains from their earnings results. The SEC said the method "may not convey a true and accurate picture of a company's financial well-being."

Experts say the practice is especially common among Internet firms, which began issuing earnings press releases with pro forma numbers en masse during the stock market boom of the late 1990s. The list of new-economy companies using pro forma figures includes such prominent firms as Yahoo (YHOO), AOL Time Warner (AOL), CNET (CNET) and JDS Uniphase (JDSU).

Unprofitable firms are particularly avid users of pro forma numbers, said Brett Trueman, professor of accounting at the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

"I can't say for sure why, but I can take a guess: They're losing big time, and they want to give investors the impression that the losses are not as great as they appear," he said.

Trueman said savvy investors tend to know that companies may have self-serving interests in mind when they release pro forma numbers. Experienced traders often put greater credence in numbers compiled according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), which firms are required to release alongside any pro forma numbers.

A mounting concern, however, is the fact that many companies rely almost solely on pro forma numbers in projections for future performance.

Perhaps the best-known proponent of pro forma is the perennially unprofitable Amazon.com, which has a history of guiding investor expectations using an accounting system that excludes charges for stock compensation, restructuring or the declining value of past acquisitions.

Invariably, the pro forma numbers are better than the GAAP ones. In its most recent quarter, for example, Amazon (AMZN) reported a pro forma loss of $58 million. When measured according to GAAP, Amazon's net loss nearly tripled to $170 million.

Things are apt to get even stranger in the last quarter of the year, when Amazon said it plans to deliver its first-ever pro forma operating profit. By regular accounting standards, the company will still be losing money.

Those results might not sit too well with the folks at the SEC, however.

In its statements this week, the SEC noted that although there's nothing inherently illegal about providing pro forma numbers, figures should not be presented in a deliberately misleading manner. Regulators may have been talking directly to Amazon in one paragraph of their warning, which said:

"Investors are likely to be deceived if a company uses a pro forma presentation to recast a loss as if it were a profit."

Neither Amazon nor AOL Time Warner returned phone calls inquiring if they planned to make changes to their pro forma accounting methods in light of the SEC's recent statements.

According to Trueman, few members of the financial community would advocate getting rid of pro forma numbers altogether.

Even the SEC said that pro forma numbers, when used appropriately, can provide investors with a great deal of useful information that might not be included with GAAP results. When presented correctly, pro forma numbers can offer insights into the performance of the core business, by excluding one-time events that can skew quarterly results.

Rather than ditching pro forma, industry groups like Financial Executives International and the National Investor Relations Institute say a better plan is to set uniform guidelines for how to present the numbers. They have issued a set of recommendations, such as making sure companies don't arbitrarily change what's included in pro forma results from quarter to quarter.

Certainly some consistency would make it easier for folks who try to track this stuff, said Joe Cooper, research analyst at First Call, which compiles analyst projections of earnings.

The boom in pro forma reporting has created quite a bit of extra work for First Call, Cooper said, because it has to figure out which companies and analysts are using pro forma numbers and how they're using them.

But the extra work of compiling pro forma numbers doesn't necessarily result in greater financial transparency for investors, Cooper said.

"In days past, before it was abused, it was a way to give an honest apples-to-apples comparison," he said. "Now, it is being used as a way to continually put their company in a good light."

See also:
SEC Fires Warning Shot Over Tech Statements
Earnings Downplay Stock Losses
Change at the Top for AOL
Where's the Money?, Huh?
There's no biz like E-Biz

I added the following to my December 4, 2001 message from Phil Livinston to my threads on pro forma accounting statements at  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm  
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/theory/00overview/beresford01.htm 

To: FEI Members and Prospective Members From: Phil Livingston

Special FEI Express - SEC Cautions Companies to Potential Dangers of "Pro Forma" Financials

Today, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a cautionary advisory on the use of pro forma earnings per share measures used in earnings press releases. The SEC warned that companies issuing earnings press releases should always include net earnings per share determined according to U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and recommended that any use of pro forma measures should be accompanied by a plain English reconciliation back to the GAAP results. The SEC stated that companies not following these practices could be subject to the anti-fraud provisions of laws governing corporate financial reporting. The SEC advisory went on to recommend the guidance provided by the "FEI/NIRI Earnings Press Release Guidelines."

FEI strongly encourages companies to follow the "best practice" standard created by our Committee on Corporate Reporting and the National Institute of Investor Relations. These guidelines can be found on the FEI website at http://www.fei.org/news/FEI-NIRI-EPRGuidelines-4-26-2001.cfm . SEC officials have broadly endorsed these guidelines and repeatedly encouraged their use in public speeches. Current market and economic conditions make it important for all of us involved in financial reporting to take extra steps to make sure we are fully and fairly presenting our companies' financial results to investors. As financial officers, we have that extra duty to our shareholders, employees and creditors to provide highly transparent and meaningful information.

The use of pro forma earnings has become increasingly widespread and is drawing more attention. Some say the increased use of pro forma measures results from the inadequacies and limitations of measures currently defined by GAAP. Meanwhile, critics cite cases of abuse where pro forma earnings have been used to distort reality and provide an opaque view of a company's results. Be in the camp that uses pro forma earnings in a constructive way to provide meaningful supplemental data to the GAAP results. Please share this SEC release and the FEI guidelines with the rest of your management team. Be a best practices company in financial reporting.

Read the official release from the SEC here: http://www.sec.gov/news/headlines/proforma-fin.htm 

That's all for now,

Phil

Bob Jensen's threads on pro forma reporting can be found at the following sites:

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm  

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/theory/00overview/theory01.htm 

The Accounting Fraud Beat (This article has some great examples.)
"Asset misappropriation comes in many forms:  Enemies Within," by Joseph T. Wells, The Journal of Accountancy, December 2001, pp.31-35 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/dec2001/wells.htm 

Sometimes, the truth isn’t very pretty. Consider, for example, the American workforce. Although regarded by many as the finest in the world, it has a dark side. According to estimates, a third of American workers have stolen on the job. Many of these thefts are immaterial to the financial statements, but not all are—especially to small businesses.

Regardless of the amounts, CPAs are being asked to play an increasingly important role in helping organizations prevent and detect internal fraud and theft. Responding to these demands requires the auditor to have a thorough understanding of asset misappropriation. CPAs with unaudited clients can provide additional services by suggesting a periodic examination of the cash account only.

Although “internal theft” and “employee fraud” are commonly used, a more encompassing term is “asset misappropriation.” For our purposes, asset misappropriation means more than theft or embezzlement. An employee who wrongly uses company equipment (for example, computers and software) for his or her own personal benefit has not stolen the property, but has misappropriated it.

Employees—from executives to rank-and-file workers—can be very imaginative in the ways they scam their companies. But in a study of 2,608 cases of occupational fraud and abuse, we learned that asset misappropriation can be subdivided into specific types; the most prevalent are skimming and fraudulent disbursements.

Continued at  http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/dec2001/wells.htm 

Other links on accounting fraud can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

I received this advertisement by email. Can anybody send me information  good news and/or bad news about Capella?

Bob Jensen 
Email: rjensen@trinity.edu 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Capella University [mailto:capellauniv@e-mailprovider.net]  
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 8:56 AM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu  
Subject: Passionate about teaching? Earn a Master's or PhD for your passion.

The following is vendor information on products and services which we hope is of interest to you. It is being sent to subscribers of Syllabus Magazine who have opted to receive such information. _______________________________________________

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A message from Barbara McCartney [bmccartn@metz.une.edu.au] 

Hi Bob

I am one of the ' interested sleepers' on the AECM listserve which is an excellent resource for those of us with a bit of GI (geographical isolation). You helped me a couple of years ago in getting an e-commerce course together and that course is pretty strong now.

I'm hoping you can also give a view on this: I've been working with a guy called Steve Smith from UWV and we decided to put together a page of links on cybercrime and I was wondering if I could get comment from the listserve before putting in the headers and making it really public.

The idea of the page is a resource page for educators - I'll be using it in my e-commerce course for example.

Anyway here it is and your view on whether it is suitable to go on the

listserve will be most valued. It works best in IE at this stage

http://www-personal.une.edu.au/~bmccartn/index.htm

Kind regards

Barbara

My latest contribution to Accounting Information Systems

Document 1 (Introduction)
Document 1 contains an Overview and Timeline of OLAP, GML, SGML, HTML, XML, RDF, and XBRL at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm

WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE                
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL

Document 1 is especially devoted to a summary of online analytic processes (OLAP) and the eXtensible Business Language (XBRL).

Updates on Enrollments in Some Distance Education Programs

E-MBA at the University of Florida --- http://www.infowar.com/iwftp/edupage/00/Edupage,_September_10,_2001.shtml 

E-MBA PROGRAMS GRADUATE The first MBA graduates of the University of Florida, Gainesville, to take all of their classes online will get their degrees in December. At UF, the quality of the e-MBA is thought to be the same as the traditional, in-class degree. The same professors teach the classes, and the standards and admissions are the same as well. Most of the students in the online program enroll because they already have full-time jobs. Electronic MBAs have accreditation at UF; there is nothing to indicate whether an MBA is Internet-based. 
(Forbes Online, 30 August 2001)

Western Governors University --- http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0160.pdf 

Western Governors University already has its first Chancellor Emeritus and an enrollment of five hundred students.

Wow Sites of the Year

linkdup's set of links, news about links, and reviews of links is quite good --- http://www.linkdup.com/ 

This is a great place to start when you are looking for innovative Web site designs!

Bob Jensen's Favorite (it was overlooked by linkdup):
I have to admit that my favorite site design is the FedScope linked at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#OLAPextended 

Bad and Frustrating Website Designs

The Best and the Worst of Contingency Designs --- http://www.37signals.com/dnf/ 

Wow Innovation of the Week 

From InformationWeek Daily on December 3, 2001

** INNOVATION: Videoconferencing Gets Eyeballed

Imagine turning on the news and seeing the anchor look down at his or her script during the entire broadcast. "You'd tune out pretty quickly, wouldn't you?" asks Steve McNelley, a psychologist and co-founder of Digital Video Enterprises, a videoconferencing systems provider. The company, along with Microsoft and a handful of other startups, is tackling a problem that's hamstrung videoconferencing's popularity as a one-on-one communication tool: the inability of conference participants to look each other in the eye.

Eye contact is among the most important aspects of establishing trust, researchers and psychologists say. But most desktop videoconferencing systems position the camera above the monitor, making people appear to be looking down. Microsoft Research is fine-tuning a program that gathers data about the position of a person's head, eyes, and nose from the video stream of a camera placed under that person's monitor. The program then transposes the video image onto a 3-D computer-generated head that can be manipulated to appear as if it's looking into the camera, rather than over it. Microsoft hopes to incorporate the software into NetMeeting, its online Web-conferencing product. Microsoft is ironing out the kinks of the program, which can distort facial images, says Jim Gemmell, a Microsoft researcher.

Digital Video offers custom-built videoconferencing systems that use half-silvered mirrors to create the illusion of eye contact by aligning the camera with the images from the monitor. The mirror is placed in front of the camera at a forward-tilting angle, which lets it reflect the images from an upward-facing monitor positioned just below the camera. It works much like TelePrompTers used in television to feed lines to actors and anchors.

Digital Video is negotiating production and marketing deals for the system. - Alorie Gilbert

For more on videoconferencing, see Technology Brings Far-Flung Colleagues Together http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFGg0BcUEY0V20ZlZ0AN 

 

Perhaps This Should Have Been the Wow Innovation of the Week

Apple's newest operating system sells for more than $100. The latest upgrade costs under $20. A couple of programmers discovered they could convert the upgrade into the full OS, and published the information --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48742,00.html 

Bob Blystone clued me in on this university registration crapshoot game link.

"God Doesn’t Play Dice, But the Registrar Does Choosing Classes Is Hard When You Don’t Know the Rules of the Game."  by Tim Sullivan, Georgetown University's The Hoya, August 31, 2001 --- http://www.thehoya.com/viewpoint/083101/view3.cfm 

Playing games is fun. The way I see it, there are few more relaxing and entertaining ways to spend a warm summer afternoon than with your friends or family and a scintillating board game. From tiddlywinks to Parcheesi to Operation, there’s nothing like a good ol’ fashioned game.

But no matter what game you’re playing, one universal rule applies: In order to succeed, you have to know the rules. Think about it — if you didn’t know the rules, you’d spend your days in a vain attempt to finish first in the Monopoly beauty pageant or angling to inherit a skunk farm.

I say this because I have been thinking a lot about how we students of Georgetown choose the classes we want to take and then register for the ones we don’t. The reason, I think, is fairly simple: Very few, if any, Georgetown undergraduates understand what they need to do to get the classes they want.

In short, we’re all playing a very, very important academic game, but under unpublished house rules that Georgetown established sometime around the Garfield administration.

For example, let’s say that as a junior English major, I want to take a 200-level English course. I indicate that it is my top priority during pre-registration in the proper manner, and don’t get into it. Now at the same time, a junior Culture and Politics major also pre-registers for the same English course, which counts for his or her major as well, and also lists it as his or her first priority. Murphy’s Law being what it is, my friend gets the course and I don’t.

Fine. I can handle losing a game by blowing a lay up or being out-thought by my opponent, but in this case, I just keep asking myself, “Why?” What mechanisms were in place that decided the outcome of this game?

So the questions I have for the university, and specifically the registrar’s office are these: How do you decide who gets what classes? Do seniors, as widely rumored, get preference over sophomores and juniors? If two majors claim the same class, who gets priority then? What are the tiebreakers? G.P.A.? School? Rank? Random chance? How much weight does the preference you give to a class hold? I could go on forever, but you get the gist: How does registration work?

This is, obviously, no trifling matter. The type and quality of the classes we take constitutes the bulk of what the degree we will leave here with will eventually mean.

But with a matter as serious as this, the solution is a relatively simple one: a modicum of transparency. Someone somewhere within this university must know how this behemoth process works. Somebody had to have written the computer program that makes these important decisions. Is it unreasonable to ask that the university share this information with the people it affects?

Publishing the method to this madness is one of many feasible steps that can be taken to improve the class selection and registration process. Every professor should be asked to post his or her syllabi online so prospective students can browse for classes before the hectic add-drop period. Academic departments need to do a better job updating their course description Web sites in time for pre-registration. The Registrar’s Web site should include a search or include a sort function that allows students to find classes that are still open after pre-registration or that fit into the time slots they have available after their other selections have been made.

None of these measures would be particularly difficult to implement, and the tangible benefits to students would be sizable to say the least.

You would think that the nation’s oldest Catholic university would be against gambling and games of chance, but to most people that is exactly what the scheduling process is — a crapshoot. The only difference is that in that game, when you win you get craps. In our game, that’s precisely how you describe your classes if you lose.

Tim Sullivan is a junior in the College and is a contributing editor, sports editor and member of the board of directors for The Hoya.

Tax Warning
Beware if the tax benefit of a donation is higher than the true market value,

The IRS warns taxpayers to watch out for charities that are clamoring for used car donations as the year winds down. The last month of the year is typically a busy time for charities to collect from taxpayers who hope to generate a year-end tax deduction. Find out how you can check to see if the charity is a bona fide tax-exempt organization, and get tips on valuing your vehicle. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/65397 

Key to career success:  Keep up with buzz words daily
BuzzWhack --- http://www.buzzwhack.com/ 

Wow Economics Paper of the Week (Knowledge, Learning, and Conditional Probabilities)
I received a copy from Skip McGoun [mcgoun@bucknell.edu] 
I think you can obtain a copy of the paper by contacting Skip at the email address above.  Skip sent along the following review by Chris Robinson. 

Hi Bob,

I think this paper is tremendously-important, and should make every one of us think more carefully about what we assume when we use the current finance "knowledge" in the classroom or in our own research.

 

As we accumulate more 'knowledge' in an area of science, we forget some of the earlier-acquired parts of that 'knowledge.' I put 'knowledge' in single quotation marks, because we only think we know; there exists no reality that is ultimately knowable, understandable and agreed upon by everyone. We forget the assumptions/beliefs/philosophies that underlie our 'knowledge.' In a more direct sense, we forget the specific choices about what to believe that subsequent 'knowledge' relies upon as its foundation. Such a process of forgetting is both natural, and necessary. If we are to remember every single foundational fact/assumption upon which our current understanding is built, and to recall it every time we try to think about something, we will think very slowly indeed!

As scientists, one of our important tasks is to continue to remember what went before, lest we fail to learn from it. The field of finance has placed very little value on remembering its own past, and particularly the choices that were made. For example, if Markowitz had chosen to work with semi-variance instead of variance, would we have a very different view of asset pricing models today? Everyone knows that alternative choice is perfectly reasonable and defensible, and yet we do not see any research today pursuing it.

Bob James takes us back to another seminal choice in finance and economics, the definition of conditional probability. Let me quote from his conclusion:

"Ironically, Samuelson's (1965) seminal article Proof That Properly Anticipated Prices Fluctuate Randomly and Malkiel's (1990) famous book A random walk down Wall Street may be among the most damaging publications in the efficient market literature. Samuelson's article led economists to believe that expectations follow martingales while Malkiel's book led the general population to believe that asset prices can follow random walks over time. Both martingales and random walks are stochastic processes that necessitate a fixed probability space. If Bayesians are correct and information affects probabilities, neither stochastic process is useful for describing expectations or asset prices."

Our belief in relatively efficient markets requires that we trust a large empirical literature showing prices change quickly in response to all public information. When we find a market that doesn't correspond to this belief, we call it inefficient. Of course no such model is perfect, and we acknowledge that there are a variety of "anomalies," but they don't affect our belief that we can use a conditional model to determine the efficiency of a market.

The problem that Bob James explains lies in the nature of the conditional probability. If the probability space itself is fixed, then we can rely on all the research of efficiency, leaving aside the issue of testing market efficiency and a return-generating model simultaneously. However, if every new observation isn't merely further evidence of the same process, but causes us to change our expectations for the distribution of the process, then none of this literature can tell us about efficiency. This Bayesian approach to statistics and probability theory has been around for a long time, but finance chose to take the fixed probability space road, presumably because it is easier to get neat results. Personally, I find Bob's arguments convincing, that Bayesian revisions to probability spaces are more likely to be the underlying behaviour of investors reacting to new information.

You could say that all Bob does is take us back to the future, since Keynes argued this long ago. That misses the point. We cannot continue to follow a path blindly, when we know the choice that put us on the path is not necessarily the best choice. If I could commission research to follow up Bob's paper, I would look in three directions:

-A redevelopment of the theoretical models in finance, using Bayesian probabilities for reaction to information. This is a very challenging task, and I have no idea where it would lead or if we can arrive at neat, compact models like the ones that currently dominate the finance field. For example, I have been wondering for a long time how valid it is for us to take a mean value of a time series of returns of asset classes for use in personal finance planning. If every period's drawing is from a different distribution, and investors react to the observations by adjusting their view of the future probability space, the way we analyze personal finance problems is not valid.

-A re-investigation of market efficiency using empirical tests that allow for Bayesian revisions of the probability space.

-A more direct investigation of investor beliefs to see how they form probabilities and whether they assume a fixed probability space or revise their estimate of the space with new information. Perhaps researchers in "behavioural finance" are already starting to address this third point.

Chris Robinson

From Syllabus News on December 4, 2001

UMass Lowell Trains Faculty Online in Distance Learning

The University of Massachusetts at Lowell has put on the Web the course it offers faculty to train them in developing online course materials. "What better way to have faculty understand the technology and the students' experience than to take an online course themselves?'' said Dean Jacqueline Moloney. The six-week online training pilot program will help 20 faculty adapt courses in a distance learning format and complete a course outline. The program will provide both technical and pedagogical skills development needed by faculty to migrate 10 courses online.

For more information, visit http://continuinged.uml.edu 

---

UCLA Report Pegs Internet Usage Up, E-Commerce Down

A UCLA study on the impact of the Internet shows that despite continued growth in usage, enthusiasm for electronic commerce is down, and concerns about online privacy and security remain steady. The study found that 72.3 percent of Americans have Internet access, up from 66.9 percent in 2000. Users go online an average of 9.8 hours per week, up from 9.4 hours in 2000. While Internet commerce remains strong -- 48.9 percent of Internet users purchased online in 2001 -- it is down from 50.7 percent in 2000. Jeffrey Cole, director of the university's Center for Communication Policy, said that "despite the dot-com meltdown, we found that the Internet is more vigorous than ever."

For more information, visit: http://www.ccp.ucla.edu 

---

SAP Funds Universities in E-Business Research

Eenterprise software developer SAP, Inc. has started a program to fund university e-business research projects. The company is currently committing more than $500,000 to fund three projects at colleges and universities, with additional research projects to be considered as the program progresses. The initial projects include "Realizing the Process Enterprise," at Carleton University, to study of the role of institutionalizing processes during enterprise system implementations; "E- Business Solutions to Border Control Challenges," at Rutgers University, a study of the information technology requirements for international trade; and "Adoption of Web-Based New Product Development Systems," at the Rochester Institute of Technology, a study of business-to-business product development.

Congratulations to Emory University:  New Doctoral Programs at a Prestigious University

We need these new programs. According to Page -3 of the Hasselback Accounting Faculty Directory 2002-2003, there were only 74 doctorates awarded in accountancy in the Year 2000. This is down from 200 in 1993.

Graig Waymire sent me a letter announcing a new doctoral programs in Accounting, Information Systems, and Marketing.  With the decline in the number of doctoral programs (for example Rice University dropped its accounting doctoral program) in the U.S. and the number of candidates in many existing programs, it is great to have a great university launch some new programs.

See http://goizueta.emory.edu/degree/phd.html 

It is not an easy decision. You have decided to go to a graduate school of business and to pursue a life of scholarship.You are seeking a doctoral program that does more than prepare you for a life’s work. You want intellectual stimulation, the opportunity to study and collaborate with motivated students and faculty who make a difference-scholars who are excited about the changes in our world and want to understand and shape the new forces at work in the economy.

One important goal of the Goizueta Business School is to educate the next generation of business academics-leaders whose research and teaching will influence future scholarship at the best business schools in the world. We want to prepare our doctoral students to conduct innovative and significant research, to publish in the top academic journals of their discipline, and to teach bright students effectively and passionately.

The School. Goizueta Business School has a collaborative environment in which faculty inspire students to ask important questions and to study new business phenomena. We are a small faculty. Our doctoral program is designed to be personal and individualized. Even though the program is organized into areas of specialization, it is designed to encourage scholarly exchanges and research collaboration across disciplines. We believe that disciplines grow intellectually at their edges.

The Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Emory’s Graduate School of Arts & Science offers training and research opportunities for students in 30 major fields of advanced study. Interdisciplinary graduate programs at Emory offer another level of opportunity for advanced study in emerging fields of inquiry. These competitive programs prepare graduates for careers ranging from college and university teaching to research and administration in the public and private sectors.

The University. Collaboration does not stop at the walls of the Goizueta Building. We believe doctoral education must be connected to the University as a whole, and that students should be exposed to contemporary thinking in multiple disciplines, including economics, sociology, psychology, political science, and statistics. It is our philosophy to encourage doctoral students to participate fully in the intellectual currents of Emory University by studying and collaborating with scholars in other fields and disciplines.

The City. And then there is the city of Atlanta, a vibrant laboratory for the new economy and home to the fourth largest concentration of corporate headquarters in the country. As the economic hub of the Southeast, the capital of the state of Georgia, and one of the fastest growing technology centers in the nation, Atlanta provides students with every opportunity to study current business problems and practices. We have close ties to the Atlanta business community, and our doctoral students are expected to take full advantage of the resources of the city in their research and education.

The school is currently accepting applications from individuals interested in any of three areas within the school.

· Accounting
· Information Systems
· Marketing

Students accepted into the program will commence full time studies in the Fall of 2002. A fourth area of concentration in Organization and Management will be offered beginning in the Fall of 2003 and a fifth area of concentration in Finance will be offered in the 2004-2005 academic year.

The curriculum combines doctoral coursework in the social sciences and quantitative methods, seminars on specific research topics, summer research experiences, and a dissertation.

The School’s Doctoral Studies Committee oversees the program and includes one tenured faculty member from each area of concentration. The Assistant Dean of Doctoral Studies chairs this committee, and together with the Ph.D. Coordinator, coordinates the day-to-day activities and curriculum of the Program.

For a list of FAQ on Ph.D. Use these links.

• General Information
• Admissions
• Application Procedures
• Financial Aid

Continued at  http://goizueta.emory.edu/degree/phd.html 

Reply from a doctoral student in accounting

As a soon to be graduate, I can easily substantiate the assertions of David Fordham. I think the numbers at AAA were 255 posted positions and 62 posted resumes. Granted, I am sure there are more people looking for positions who, for reasons of confidentiality, did not list their resume. However, of the 255 positions listed many are for multiple positions. While I narrowed my list to six schools, those schools were actually interviewing for a total of 11 positions. As one whose resume was listed, I could easily have accepted 50 to 60 interviews at the convention, and I still get about one or two unsolicited emails every week.

On the other hand, my school has had very few inquiries and applications for the doctoral program.

While this is purely anecdotal, I can definitely say that the demand is there, and I am very happy about that.

Chuck Pier

Reply from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU] 

I continue to be puzzled by the accreditation agencies' emphasis on doctorates. Why do they require the institutions to have minimums on the amount of "doctoral coverage" -- on the *fundamentals* classes?

I fully understand why you need some fairly heavy research credentials to teach advanced-level courses. I fully understand why you need to be active, dynamic, and devoting significant time to scholarly activity if you are teaching the top-tier material, material which requires demonstrable analytical skill, tons and tons of current, state-of-the-art knowledge, and a proven record of valid interpretation and application.

But why, oh why, do you need a doctorate to teach beginning business students the difference between revenue and expense?

These students aren't going to swim to the depths which would require their professor to be able to analyze last week's EITF details, refute last quarter's JAR lead article, or double-check last year's Horizons pieces for methodological errors. These students are struggling to understand what a bond premium is and how common stock differs from preferred stock. They aren't going to ask questions which require empirical studies of Black's CAP-M, time-series data-mining, orthogonal factor analysis, or a four-year longitudinal study of going-concern indicators.

Our accreditation team (we passed by the way!), complained about our only having 75% of our Principles sections covered by doctoral faculty. They want more doctoral faculty in those classes. Our two permanent, full-time non-doctoral professors are always, consistently, ranked in the top three or four faculty (out of 15) in the teaching ratings. Their students perform well in downstream courses. Why are we being asked to replace them with doctoral faculty when they are doing such a great job doing what we need them to be doing? How will merely having a doctorate help them do even better?

It is the accreditation agencies who are apparently driving the demand for Ph.D.'s.

And as long as our dean demands that we stay accredited, we will play the game and will continue to seek Ph.D.'s to fill our tenure-track positions. Once the accreditation agencies stop emphasizing the doctorates, then we will be more realistic and can hire more teachers like the Haydens, and like our own super-teachers Dinah Gottschalk and Kim Richardson.

David Fordham (another $0.02, once again...)

From the Scout Report on December 7, 2001

Re-envisioning the PhD http://www.grad.washington.edu/envision/ 

This new site, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, is home to the Re- envisioning the PhD project, which is tasked with investigating change in doctoral education, in particular, helping to expand the career choices available to PhD students. In the Re-envisioning Project Resources section, visitors will find conference materials, recommendations from studies, summaries of interviews, a bibliography, career resources, and more. The Promising Practices section contains information on the different ways in which groups (universities, associations, organizations, and more) are responding to concerns about doctoral education. The other two main sections of the site, National/ International Resources and News and Updates contain links to even more resources, studies, current news, related projects, and more.

 

Toolkit to End Violence Against Women  http://toolkit.ncjrs.org/ 

Van Gogh and Gauguin (Art, Art History) --- http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/vangogh.html 

On occasion I forward informative advertisements (without receiving any fees).

Every once in a while, something comes along that is so unique and different that it warrants particular attention from accounting faculty. Case Music Store: Automatic Posting is such a product. It eliminates the frustration of dealing with the interface of general ledger packages where the emphasis is on the interface as opposed to the teaching of debits and credits.

Case Music Store: Automatic Posting is a computer-based accounting practice set which exposes students to a generic automatic posting system that can be used with any textbook. Case Music incorporates the most prominent features of commercially used general ledger packages and implements them into a unique learning environment suitable for principles, systems, or intermediate.

Case Music Store: Automatic Posting includes the following features:

--Digitized video tutorial that steps the students through the practice set --A self-grading feature: internal check figures hidden within the student software --Teacher grading program which can pinpoint the exact location of student error --Ability to print or view reports at any time --View the effects of each transaction immediately in reports --Generic - Adaptable to any textbook - Customizing ability --Proprietorship and corporate version --Multiple transaction sets --Approximate time to complete is 8-10 hours

Please contact Ivy Software for a complimentary desk copy.

Ivy Software (800) 342-5489 MailTo:IvyMail@IvySoftware.com 

On the web at http://www.ivysoftware.com 

Web Design Tools -- prana3 --- http://www.prana3.com/tools/ 

Bob Jensen's helpers for authoring are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 
Especially note http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

A message from Richard Campbell on December 7, 2001

Below is a link to a presentation made with the new adding product for Powerpoint 2002 - Microsoft Producer. I didn't upload the sound files to my Windows Media server, but they play OK on my machine.

http://www.virtualpublishing.net/u4all_2/u4all_1a_files/default.htm 

Question:
A big-time consulting firm -- so big it has its own song -- doesn't like websites linking to it without permission. Naturally, this has spawned dozens of unauthorized links.  What firm is it?

Answer:

The answer is KPMG Consulting, but the answer is a little complicated.

"Big Stink Over a Simple Link," by Farhad Manjoo, Wired News, December 6, 2001 --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48874,00.html 

KPMG, an international services firm, prides itself on its "e-business" savvy, and it charges companies boatloads to improve their "new economy" businesses.

But this week several website owners were wondering whether KPMG's Internet acumen was really worth anything at all, as it announced a policy that seemed to breach the most basic freedom on the Web -- the freedom to link to any site you want to.

In a letter to a consultant in Britain who runs a personal website that has not been especially nice to KPMG, the company said it had discovered a link on his site to www.kpmg.com, and that the website owner, Chris Raettig, should "please be aware such links require that a formal Agreement exist between our two parties, as mandated by our organization's Web Link Policy."

The letter added that Raettig should feel free to arrange this "Web Link Agreement" with KPMG, but that until he has done so, he should remove his link to the company's homepage. (The KPMG in question here is a tax and audit firm that is no longer affiliated with KPMG Consulting, the independent consulting firm at kpmgconsulting.com -- that firm has no "linking policy.")

Raettig is one of those digital-age 22-year-olds who know the Web inside out, and he's aware when he's being flimflammed. So he penned a nice no-thanks letter back to the company, saying that "my own organization's Web link policy requires no such formal agreement."

Raettig also stated the obvious big problem with KPMG's policy: "If every hyperlink used on the Web required parties at both sides of the link to enter into a formal agreement, I sincerely doubt that the Web would be in existence today."

Raettig posted his correspondence with KPMG on his online journal, and when others who run their own weblogs saw the item, they decided to have a little fun with KPMG. They linked to KPMG's site -- just like this -- to see what the company could do about it.

Within a day of Raettig's posting, several dozen sites were linking to KPMG's front page, according to Blogdex, a weblog indexing system. So many people visited Raettig's site that it was knocked offline for awhile, which he found "very amusing."

Tom Coates, who runs a weblog at plasticbag.org, said that KPMG was getting its just desserts. "On the Web, it's so easy for people to make a farce out of companies like this, and these communities are very strong and are prepared to say you're just dicking us around," he said. "It's not an environment where big companies can easily throw their weight around."

But George Ledwith, a KPMG spokesman, insisted the company wasn't trying to harass anyone, and was just "protecting its brand."

Asked if he was aware of the weblog backlash, he answered: "What we are aware of is that individuals and others link to our site without an agreement, and we have a Web policy clearly outlined."

The policy he refers to -- posted on the company's website -- states, "KPMG is obligated to protect its reputation and trademarks and KPMG reserves the right to request removal of any link to our website."

He said that this was not a new policy, nor was it unusual. "We easily sent hundreds of these letters over the past year," he said. Indeed, he wondered why this was considered newsworthy at all, as "many organizations do this."

And Ledwith is right -- others have tried to enforce linking rules. Last year, Ticketmaster alleged that a rival company, Tickets.com, was violating its copyright by linking to "deep" pages on its site -- that is, allowing people to bypass Ticketmaster's front page, where its most lucrative ads were located.

But Ticketmaster lost that bid. "Hyperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act," ruled U.S. District Judge Harry Hupp. "There is no deception in what is happening. This is analogous to using a library's card index to get reference to particular items, albeit faster and more efficiently."

KPMG is not saying that only "deep links" require approval, but that all links require its approval. Still, Ledwith was steadfast in his defense of the policy, saying that "our brand is an asset that deserves protection."

What exactly did Raettig do to KPMG to provoke its brand-protection instincts?

Ledwith insists it was merely his link to KPMG's site, but Raettig and others think the company got upset that Raettig has posted KPMG's theme song on his website.

KPMG's theme song? Yes, its theme song -- a several-minute long repetitive ditty called "Vision of Global Strategy."

Continued at http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48874,00.html 

Reply from Ed Scribner

Bob,

There are so many stars in the universe that there must be other planetary systems similar to hours; thus there must be other planets like ours. Likewise, there are so many web sites in the universe that there must be others with a no-link policy similar to that of KPMG Consulting, and they're probably lurking somewhere within the depths of your bookmarks! The rest of us on the list, therefore (and I am unanimous in this, to quote Mrs. Slocombe of 'Are You Being Served?'), retract our wholehearted support for BobWeb and disavow any knowledge of your actions.

Ed

oooo 
Ed Scribner 
New Mexico State

Signs (Art, Advertising, Marketing, History) --- http://www.pjchmiel.com/photo/signs.html 

Bob Jensen's bookmarks for advertising and marketing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#022119Advertising%20and%20Marketing 

'Mujihadeen' Hackers Take Out US Government Sites, The Washington Post, November 30, 2001 --- http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172582.html 

Two Web sites operated by the United States government were attacked Thursday by a group that threatened violence against Americans.

The hackers vandalized the home page of the NOAA Office of High Performance Computing and Communications, as well a Web server operated by the National Institute of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute, according to a mirror of the defacements captured by the Alldas defacement archive.

 

Both defaced pages bore the flag of Saudi Arabia and contained titles that read, in Urdu, "Allah is the greatest of all." At the bottom of the pages was a sentence that read in Urdu "Americans be prepared to die."

The hackers did not identify the name of their group but signed the pages "anonymous."

Officials from the two U.S. organizations were not immediately available for comment. Both Web sites, which were running the Apache Web server on the Linux operating system, were unreachable today.

In the message at the NIH site, the attackers called themselves "mujihadeens" and wrote "we are not hacker, we are just cyberterrorist." On the NOAA site, the group threatened "the greatest cyberterrorist attack against American government"

Separately, a Web site attacker from a group called World Of Hell today defaced a server operated by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC).

The home page of the Army's Waterways Experiment Station was replaced with the World of Hell logo and a taunting message that included greetings to numerous other defacers.

The attacker, who used the nickname Rivver, claimed to have obtained classified information that he threatened to distribute.

According to a copy of the original site cached at the Google search engine, the ERDC's mission is "to conceive, plan, study and execute engineering investigations and research and development studies in support of the civil and military missions of the Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies."

Among the groups listed in the "shoutz" section of the World of Hell defacement was GForce, a Pakistani hacking crew that recently formed the Al-Qaeda Alliance to attack Department of Defense sites. GForce defaced two military sites in October.

A mirror of the NOAA defacement is here: http://defaced.alldas.de/mirror/2001/11/29/hpcc.fsl.noaa.gov/ .

The NIH site defacement is mirrored at http://defaced.alldas.de/mirror/2001/11/30/snoop.nhgri.nih.gov/ .

The Army site defacement is mirrored at http://defaced.alldas.de/mirror/2001/11/30/www.wes.army.mil/ .

Reported by Newsbytes, http://www.newsbytes.com .

Bob Jensen's threads on terrorism are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JusticeAppeal.htm 

From The Journal of Accountancy, December 2001, Page 21 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/dec2001/news_web.htm 

SMALL BUSINESS SITES

Business Resources
sites.krislyn.com

This home page is full of links to “strictly business sites” such as online associations and e-zines. Users can find industry-specific information on accounting, economics and investments, to name a few. The business plans section of the site offers a link to a bookstore where business people can find titles on writing and implementing their plans. Visitors also can link to freebieclub.com, which provides links to various discount and gratis promotional offers.

The Voice of Small Business
www.nfibonline.com

This National Federation of Independent Business site includes a tools and tips section with articles for small-business owners, such as “Six Ways to Keep Employees Safe on the Road,” “The Small Business Owner’s Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep” and “A Checklist for Starting a Small Business.”

A Big Site for Small Companies
www.smallbusiness.com

Registration here is necessary but free and lets users seek advice from peers, share experiences and publicize their businesses with profile pages and listings in the site’s online directory. Linked articles of interest cover topics such as business planning, human resources, legal issues and raising capital. They are accompanied by smallbusiness.com’s own rating system on the article’s helpfulness.

Free Articles Here
businessbookpress.com

If you’re buying, selling or determining the value of your business, this Web site offers free articles on all three of those subjects. Titles include “Finding the Right Business to Buy” and “What Makes the Sale of a Business Fall Through?” There’s also an “Ask the Expert” message board to help users get answers to tough business questions.

Keep Up With Industry News
www.all-biz.com

This online resource center for small businesses groups its free articles by “business zones” or sectors such as advertising, communications, marketing and telecommunications. Registration is free and comes with a subscription to a newsletter that offers business tips and ideas.

Channel Surf Here
www.businesstown.com

Articles on business topics, a free newsletter and special offers on reference materials are available here. Channels include Internet, accounting and consulting. There’s no charge for a subscription.

Business Plan Preparation
www.businessplans.org

This Center for Business Planning site offers sample business plans, analyses of business strategies and sections on writing and evaluating business and marketing plans. The site also features links to other resources including a business directory and a glossary.

A Site for Survivors
www.business-survival.com

How-to articles, surveys and reports and an ask-the-experts section make up the bulk of the Small Business Survival Center. Articles are broken down by categories such as starting and running a business and dealing with technology. Titles include “10 Ways to Lower Your Computer Support Bills” and “Top 10 Deadly Small Business Mistakes.”

Solutions for Growing Businesses
www.entrepreneurmag.com

Users can access the current and archived electronic versions of Entrepreneur magazine, as well as BizStartups and HomeOfficemag, at this site. Visitors can get free subscriptions to e-newsletters and access to Entrepreneur’s annual guide of more than 400 start-up opportunities and the five-part guide, “How to Build a Business Plan.”

Help for Small Businesses
www.businessknowhow.com

Visitors here have access to sample business plans, classified ads, employment forms, model legal forms and business agreements. Articles and guidance are also offered on topics such as the Small Business Administration’s disaster-assistance program and generating traffic for your company’s Web site.

Bob Jensen's Small Business Bookmarks are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#022119Small%20Business 

From The Journal of Accountancy, December 2001, Page 21 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/dec2001/news_web.htm 

For the Discerning Consumer
www.consumerreview.com

This site features product reviews written by the people who know these items best—the consumers who purchase and use them. All candid reviews have strengths, weaknesses and summaries of the products. Categories include auto, computer hardware, electronics, and home and garden. These are further broken down into item-specific sections like desktops, notebooks and personal digital assistants

Great Castles of Wales --- http://www.anzwers.org/free/castlewales/ 

Walking with Prehistoric Beasts - the Discovery Channel (History, Science, Paleontology) --- 
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/beasts/beasts.html 

"Tenure Status And Grade Inflation:  A Time Series Approach, by Stephen F. Gohmann and Myra J. McCrickard, Journal of the Academy of Business Education, Fall 2001, p. 1 (this journal is not online)

Abstract 
In this paper we examine the influence of the tenure decision on a faculty member's grading practices.  Some academics have argued that the pressure for tenure may influence faculty to lower grading standards in an attempt to influence students to give them better evaluations, thus increasing the chances of gaining tenure.  If this hypothesis holds, we would expect faculty to have inflated grade distributions as their tenure decision approaches.  However, other hypotheses exist to explain why untenured faculty may have inflated grade distributions relative to tenured faculty.  One in particular is that untenured faculty have less experience in evaluating students and tend to err on the side of lenient grades when a grade is borderline.  If this hypothesis is true, then we would expect a faculty member's grades to be lower over time.  We use cross-sectional time-series data to examine the impact of the approach and passing of the tenure decision on faculty members' grade distributions.  Our results indicate that faculty tend to give lower grades as the tenure decision approaches, thus supporting the hypothesis that over time faculty learn how to better distinguish among student performance.

The authors are both from The University of Louisville.  The study used data over an eight year period.

It's for the birds.
Operation Migration (Ecology, Science) http://www.operationmigration.org/ 

Top Ten Selling Books on AccountingWEB ---  http://www.accountingweb.com/item/63294 

1. Creating Rainmakers: The Manager's Guide To Training Professionals To Attract New Clients

    

2. Million Dollar Consulting, New and Updated Edition: The Professional's Guide to Growing a Practice

    

3. Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, The Future of Professional Services

    

4. How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients

    

5. How to Work a Room: The Ultimate Guide to Savvy Socializing in Person and Online

    

6. Business by Referral: Sure Fire Way to Generate New Business

    

7. How to Become a Rainmaker: The People Who Get and Keep Customers

    

8. The I Hate Selling Book: Business-Building Advice for Consultants, Attorneys, Accountants, Engineers, Architects, and Other Professionals

    

9. How to Maximize Fees in Professional Service Firms
   
   
10. 422 Tax Deductions for Businesses & Self-Employed Individuals 3rd Ed.

Book Recommendation: First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

The authors expose the fallacies of standard management thinking. In seven chapters, the two consultants for the Gallup Organization debunk some dearly held notions about management, such as "Treat people as you like to be treated," "People are capable of almost anything," and "A manager's role is diminishing in today's economy." "Great managers are revolutionaries," the authors write. "This book will take you inside the minds of these managers to explain why they have toppled conventional wisdom and reveal the new truths they have forged in its place." http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684852861/accountingweb 

Books for Kids
Books of Wonder --- http://www.booksofwonder.com/ 

How to find books --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 

The flurry of virulent e-mail worms that attack Outlook users can be prevented by a free patch on Microsoft's website. The problem: It's impossible to find and cumbersome to install --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,48756,00.html 

Experience Thailand (Travel and Adventure) --- http://www.experiencethailand.com/ 

Marie's World Tour --- http://www.mariesworldtour.com/ 

2001 Antarctic Expedition --- http://www.biology.ucsc.edu/people/williams/antarctic/ 

Frozen Under (from National Geographic) --- 
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/12/01/sights_n_sounds/media.1.2.html 

The United States and New Zealand are a world apart -- except on Antarctica, where their science bases are just a frozen hill away.  
"Where U.S., Kiwis Are Neighbors," by Kim Griggs, Wired News, December 6, 2001 --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48617,00.html 

Rock and Rap
Paul's Boutique Samples and References List (Music?) http://www.moire.com/beastieboys/samples/ 

30 years of acclaimed printmaking and sculpture. (Art, Art History) --- http://www.nga.gov/gemini/ 

Berlin Mitte --- http://uinic.de/berlin-mitte/ 

An expedition through space and time in 260 photos.

The radical changes within Berlin Mitte over the past 10 years are presented from an artistic perspective. Maps of the locations photographed aid in orientation.

Question:
What are the search terms most frequently used in search engines?

Answer:
The Yahoo! Buzz Index --- http://buzz.yahoo.com/weekly /
The Buzz Index varies over time.  These are the hot ones this week.

Last Week	Weeks on Chart
1	3	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	49
2	1	Xbox	7
3	4	Christmas	4
4	2	Nintendo Game Cube	5
5	-	The Beatles	1
6	5	PlayStation 2	9
7	6	Britney Spears	49
8	7	Morpheus	25
9	-	George Harrison	1
10	8	Dragon Ball Z	49
11	12	Lord of the Rings	6
12	10	National Football League	11
13	11	WWF	49
14	-	Segway	1
15	17	NBA	6
16	22	Shakira	6
17	15	Linkin Park	21
18	9	Kazaa	21
19	18	Jennifer Lopez	49
20	16	The Sims	9

What has the "Jennifer Lopez" search phrase got that the phrase "Bob Jensen" is lacking?
Don't answer that!

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 

From InformationWeek Daily on December 3, 2001

New Battle Begins Over File-Sharing Programs

The next battle between copyright owners and file-sharing programs has begun. A Dutch district court judge has ordered KaZaA in Amsterdam to block its users from swapping copyrighted music files or face fines of more than $40,000 a day. A similar order in the United States against file-sharing company Napster Inc. resulted in the company banning unapproved files and eventually suspending service. But KaZaA says it can't comply with the order, since the nature of its software makes it impossible to isolate users.

KaZaA, like its sister programs Morpheus and Grokster, is based on technology from the Dutch company FastTrack. Unlike Napster, which let users share music files through a directory that resided on its own computers, the FastTrack technology uses a distributed network, with no central servers to shut down or restrict. "It's not even clear to me that [the judge's] order is feasible," says Aram Sinnreich, analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix. "Unlike Napster, there's no centralized information server, so there's no switch you can flick to stop people from sharing."

Sinnreich says the new generation of distributed file-sharing programs may be beyond the scope of litigation. "It is possible for a copyright to be violated without there being a single individual or company responsible," he says. And technological solutions aren't any better. "The only way to stop it would be to monitor all consumer Internet activity, and that would be a clear violation of privacy." The solution, Sinnreich says, is for companies to attract consumers to a legal alternative by offering things such as guaranteed file quality, ease of use, and rapid transfers. "They need to build a better mouse trap," he says. "We don't see this as an impasse." - David M. Ewalt

Read on: What The Movie Industry Can Learn From Napster http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFGg0BcUEY0V20bdF0A2 

Has RIAA Blown Royalties Issue Out Of Proportion? http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFGg0BcUEY0V20bdG0A3 

Bob Jensen's P2P file sharing threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm 

This computer consists of DNA molecules and lives in a test tube. It can't do much at all. But hey, it's a computer nonetheless --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,48697,00.html 

WhatUDo (advice for sexually active teens) --- http://www.whatudo.org/ 

Ceil Pillsbury reminded me of the following article that deals, among other things, with use of Excel's pivot tables in financial reporting.  My tutorials on videos on pivot tables, including videos on how to use the pivot tables provided by Microsoft for analyzing its own financial statements and in forecasting performance are given in the following two sites:

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm 

 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm#Excel 

HOW MICROSOFT ADDS IT UP:  Accounting the Digital Way by Scott M. Boggs, Journal of Accountancy, May 1999 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/may1999/boggs.htm 
(An overview of Microsoft's FinWeb financial reporting database.)

Question:
What is the most important international tax issue?

Answer:
E&Y: Transfer Pricing Most Important Int'l Tax Issue --- http://www.smartpros.com/x31918.xml 

NEW YORK, November 29, 2001 — While an overwhelming majority of multinational corporations (MNCs) continue to rank transfer pricing as the most important international tax issue, most companies "are losing out on opportunities arising from proactive transfer pricing management of post merger integrations, e-commerce and intellectual property," according to a new survey released by Ernst & Young LLP.

Eighty-five percent of the tax and finance directors responding to the 2001 Ernst & Young Transfer Pricing Global Survey rank transfer pricing as their most important current international tax issue.

Transfer pricing involves the price at which transactions between units of multinational companies take place, including the inter-company transfer of goods, property, services, loans and leases.

"MNCs are missing opportunities to build shareholder value by not integrating transfer pricing up front in strategic business actions -- including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, e-commerce and intellectual property management," warns John Hobster, CEO of Global Transfer Pricing Services of Ernst & Young, adding that "there are encouraging signs that the most progressive companies are beginning to understand how transfer pricing can impact every phase of their business operations."

The Ernst & Young survey found that only 29 percent of corporate parents consider transfer pricing as part of their strategic corporate planning.

"Failing to integrate transfer pricing policies in the case of mergers and acquisitions is alarmingly common," said Hobster. "Half of all companies that reported a merger or acquisition in the last two years simply applied the dominant company's transfer pricing methodology, and 23 percent allowed multiple systems to continue. This increases their risk of being taxed on the same profits twice, and falls short of "best of class" behavior to harness the opportunities presented by such events."

While e-commerce transactions across borders continue to grow, two-thirds of parent companies and half of subsidiaries surveyed by Ernst & Young do not consider the transfer pricing issues related to their e-commerce activities, and only one-fourth of parent companies expect the impact of e-commerce to become significant to transfer pricing planning.

"Less than 30 percent of companies consider the transfer pricing-related issues around e-commerce, despite the fact that in many industries, the development of e-commerce is a major value enhancer," said Hobster.

Management of intellectual property has been relegated to tracking and registering, not tax-efficient exploitation, according to the survey, which found that there is no widespread clear and coherent adoption of IP management strategies that will optimize operating outcomes, minimize tax costs, or satisfy tax authority inquiries.

"Simply 'managing' a company's IP does not equate to responsible planning," said Bob Ackerman, Co-Director of Ernst and Young's Americas Transfer Pricing Practice. "Failure to integrate business and tax strategies in the IP arena leads to poor operating outcomes and overpayment of tax."

The survey also revealed an increased zeal on the part of enforcement agencies combined with a heightened capability to do their job. This is reflected in transfer pricing audits, which are a major issue for companies around the globe, with nearly two-thirds of respondents reporting having suffered a transfer pricing audit somewhere in their organization in the past two years.

"In addition, transfer pricing audits are generating more adjustments now than in 1999 at the time of the last Ernst & Young Transfer Pricing Survey," said Ackerman. "Adjustments are most prevalent in the field of technical and management services."

The survey also addressed the debate over the need -- or not -- for complete alignment of transfer prices for both tax and management purposes. It found that 77 percent of MNC parents use the same set of transfer prices for both tax and management purposes.

According to Ackerman, "This runs counter to the conventional wisdom that companies tend to favor separate systems for tax and management purposes. We believe that the two views can be reconciled. First, we found that a majority of companies use the same set of transfer prices for tax and management purposes. This is the case because it is too complicated and too confusing to maintain multiple sets of books."

Of those using the same transfer price, 52 percent use a compromise between satisfying tax requirements and achieving management/operational objectives. And among those using different transfer prices for tax and management purposes, 49 percent start with the operational transfer prices, which they modify for tax purposes.

"While every MNC is different, in our experience, compromise systems rarely succeed. Operations are often only partially motivated, pointing to transfer pricing restrictions outside their control. Transfer pricing systems are often a calculated risk--meeting some regulatory requirements, but not all," said Hobster.

Link forwarded by Patrick Charles

"New Study Explains Why Tax Harmonization Threatens America's Competitive Advantage In Global Economy," Center for Freedom and Prosperity, November 27, 2001 --- http://www.freedomandprosperity.org/press/p11-27-01/p11-27-01.shtml 

Dear Professor Jensen,

The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is now working with almost 200 campuses and twenty-some scholarly and professional societies. One aspect of that work is to encourage and support activities that "go public." In that spirit, I'm pleased to send along in this posting information about two upcoming conferences.

The first, at Rockhurst University this coming spring, aims at exploring disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) styles in the scholarship of teaching and learning. It builds on a forthcoming volume edited by Mary Taylor Huber and Sherwyn Morreale, which will soon be available from the American Association for Higher Education--Carnegie's partner in CASTL.

The second, at Illinois State University next summer, focuses on "mission, values and identity" at Research Intensive institutions, and includes attention to the scholarship of teaching and learning in such settings. You may also be interested to know that Illinois State recently announced the Cross Endowed Chair for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning--a great idea and a generous gift from K. Patricia Cross, whose work has taught us all so much about how students learn.

Thanks for your interest in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

-- Pat Hutchings

A message from Bill Schwartz

ADVANCES IN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION is now going to accept manuscript submissions only by email attachment. Please send the manuscript in two files prepared in WORD; one with the manuscript but not a cover page and a second with the cover page only. In addition, mail one hard copy with a submission check by regular mail. Continue to send empirical manuscripts to Professor J. Edward Ketz ( k55@psu.edu)  and non empirical manuscripts to Bill Schwartz ( bschwart@iusb.edu ).

A message from Ed Scribner at New Mexico State University at Las Cruces

Bob--You inspired me to send a brief note of encouragement to our accounting students, which I forwarded to some alumni. Here's a thoughtful response from one of them.

Ed

Raymond Bachert wrote:

 Hi Ed, good job! In my experience in industry I couldn't agree more. I  work with SAP, the largest ERP Company in the world, and MS, the largest  software company; and in my experience what you say is absolutely true.  In industry most of the manual tasks of "bookkeeping" are virtually  eliminated with EDI, the web and other forms of automation. The key to  being successful in this environment is to have high quality folks  that understand business problems and the proper application of  accounting principles to new situations.  

While at NMSU I recall there being some discussion about preparing  students to pass the CPA exam vs. preparing them to understand the  principles of accounting. The later was chosen and I think this is  absolutely the right course of learning for new business professionals.  

Industry is very competitive and the time to make changes is smaller than  ever. The key is competent, reliable professionals working with  integrity. In my experience, companies that don't have this go out of  business. The application of technology only makes this process happen  in a more spectacular way.  

Let me know if there's anything I can do for you.  
Best regards, 
Ray Bachert  

-----Original Message----- 
From: Ed Scribner [mailto:escribne@NMSU.Edu]  
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 8:59 AM 
Subject: Encouragement  

Dear Alumni and Friends,   FYI, here's a copy of a message recently sent to our accounting student  listserv:  

Dear Accounting Students,   I hope you're following the Enron scandal in the business news. There  are some severe accounting problems, among other problems at Enron, that  might discourage you about the profession. Remember, though, that these  problems only underscore the need for competent, reliable information  professionals working with integrity to make sure such occurrences are  minimized. These are the kinds of professionals the employers  consistently tell us are coming out of New Mexico State.

Hang in there!  

Ed Scribner 
Accounting & BCS, NMSU

Bob Jensen's commentaries on the Enron mess are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

The anticipated collapse of Enron will have a weighty impact on the struggling business of bandwidth trading, which the energy firm helped create at the height of the Internet boom --- http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,48732,1162b6a.html 

I see that none of you nominated Bob Jensen! 

TIME's 2001 Global Influentials --- http://www.time.com/time/2001/influentials/ 

It appears that Camstudio has a freeware video screen capture system that competes with the non-freeware Camtasia (that I love) for capturing computer screen activity in to video.  The Camstudio software lacks many of the great features of Camtasia, especially the feature that allows for conversion of the AVI files into RealMedia Files (to both save space and avoid having to download a special player for playback).

Hi Bob,

We would like to introduce our new freeware which can record screen activity into standard AVI movie files. It is an ideal tool for developing videos to demonstrate features of a new software, for creating movies used in user training or any other task that requires the capture of desktop activity.

The program is easy to use, and you can select an area or full desktop for recording. You can adjust the video quality settings to reduce file size, use custom cursors and add a soundtrack through your microphone.

[Name and version of app ] 
CamStudio 1.1

[Link to homepage of app] http://www.atomixbuttons.com/vsc 

[System requirements] Microsoft Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000 or later. 400 MHz processor . 64 MB RAM 4 MB of hard-disk space for program installation.

[Download link] http://www.atomixbuttons.com/vsc/setup.exe 

RenderSoft Software [jupboo@pacific.net.sg] 

The FAQ site has a nice explanation of hardware acceleration problems that can arise when playing back any AVI files on newer computers --- http://www.atomixbuttons.com/vsc/ 

When I play back a full-screen AVI file using Windows Media Player by double clicking it, the text and graphics becomes blurred.

There are two main reasons for the movie being blurred.

One is that you are using Windows Media Player to play back a movie that has a frame size that is as big or bigger than the screen. 

In this case, Windows Media Player will shrink the picture to fit it on the screen. This cause the  text and graphics to be blurry. To view the movie in full quality, you will need to switch Windows Media Player to full screen playback, or switch your monitor to a higher resolution .

You may also record a smaller region to avoid this problem. Otherwise you may need to use the Movie Player software that is distributed with the CamStudio package to playback the movie.

Another reason for the cause of the unclear image is the use of Lossy Codec as your compressor. This means the compressor will degrade the quality of your picture to reduce the size of your AVI file.

To remedy this, you may either set the Quality settings in Video Options to a higher value, or use a Lossless Codec for your compressor (e.g Microsoft RLE is a lossless codec that is available only in the display mode of 256 colors).


When I press the F9 key to stop the recorder when the program is minimized, the save dialog does not appear.

Try minimizing all other windows on your desktop. The save dialog window is probably hidden behind them.


Can I use the AVI files recorded with CamStudio for commercial purposes ?

Yes, of course. The AVI files created with CamStudio may be used for any purposes, including commercial purposes. You may sell your recorded .AVI files or charge users for products that include those AVIs.



How come when I try to record something playing in Windows Media Player (or Real Player or Apple QuickTime), it comes out blank?

This is because hardware acceleration is being used in these players. You may want to disable hardware acceleration in these players :

Windows Media Player 7:
Choose Tools:Options (and select the Performance tab). Set the Hardware Acceleration slider to None.

Windows Media Player 6.4 and earlier:
Choose View: Options : Playback. Set the Hardware Acceleration slider to None.

Apple QuickTime:
Choose Edit : Preferences : Streaming Transport. Select Video Settings in the combobox and uncheck all DirectDraw options.

RealPlayer G2:
Choose Options/Preferences (and select the Performance tab). Uncheck the "Use Optimized Video Display" setting.

Disabling Hardware Acceleration System Wide
Another solution is to disable hardware acceleration for your whole system.

To do this on Windows 2000, go to the Control Panel, choose Display : Properties : Settings : Advanced : Troubleshooting. Set the Hardware Acceleration slider to None.

For other versions of Windows, go to the Control Panel, choose System, (and under the performance tab), choose Graphics : Advanced. Set the Hardware Acceleration slider to None.



When I record my DVD player, the output is blank.

DVD players usually require hardware acceleration to run. You may not be able to capture movies from your DVD player.



My Win 2000 system freezes when I record with CamStudio.

Try turning off system wide hardware acceleration and reducing the input frame rate of CamStudio.

Turning off system wide hardware acceleration :
Please read FAQ above on how to go about in disabling system wide hardware acceleration.

Reducing Frame Rate:
In CamStudio, go to Options : Video Options and increase the value of "Capture Frames Every __ milliseconds"



When I click the Record button, I get an "Error Creating AVI file" message.

Try going to Options : Video Options, and select a different compressor.



I am recording a game with its sound effects and music. The video comes out fine but how come the audio is missing ?

CamStudio 1.1 can only record audio from the microphone. If you need to record the audio playing in the speakers, one suggestion is to place your microphone near your speakers.


How can I optimize the video settings to get the best results ? Can you suggest a good video setting ?

One setting which gives very good frame rates is to use 256 color display mode with MS RLE as Compressor.

Futhermore, in Options: Video Options

• Set the Capture Frame Every value to 5
• Set the Set Key Frames Every value to be 200
• Set Playback Rate to 200

In general, you should adjust the Set Key Frames Every and Playback Rate to be equal 1000/Capture Frame Every. For example, if Capture Frame Every is 5, then the Playback Rate should be 1000/5 = 200.

However, if you are creating a time-lapse movie, (in which your Capture Frame Every is a very large value), you may want to set the Playback Rate to be around 20 to 30 frames/second.



I have fininshed recording with CamStudio and would like to trim/cut some of the frames in the AVI. Are there any freeware video editors that can do this?

VirtualDub is a great freeware video editor for editing AVIs. Download it at http://www.virtualdub.org/index



I am trying to record a DOS application by switching to it from Windows, and it seems to be impossible as all I get is some sort of fuzzy stuff in the playback.

CamStudio cannot record your DOS application when it is running in full screen DOS mode. Try recording your DOS application in windowed mode.

You can make your full-screen DOS application into a window by pressing CTRL-ESC when you are in DOS mode. This will return you to the Windows screen. If you look at the task-bar, you will notice a new item "MS-DOS prompt". By right-clicking on this item, and selecting Properties, a dialog box will be displayed. Choose the Screen tab and under Usage, select Window and click "OK". Your DOS screen will now become a window. You can start recording from here and the output should be fine.



Does CamStudio record DirectX, OpenGL applications and special windows such as the Office Assistant in MS Word?

This actually depends on your system. For most cases, CamStudio should be able to record DirectX and OpenGL programs if they are running in windowed mode rather than full-screen mode.

( I successfully recorded the Office Assistant in one computer running Win Me, but could not do so in another with Win 2000 installed. )



I need to save in the QuickTime or Mpeg format. How can I do that with CamStudio ?

CamStudio does not save videos in the QuickTime or Mpeg movie format directly. You will need third party software to do the conversion.

For Quicktime movies, you may use QuickTime Pro from http://www.apple.com/quicktime/.

For Mpeg, there is a free AVI to MPEG converter on the internet.   Click here for free AVI to MPEG1 converter




How can I convert AVI files to Windows Media files (.ASF  .WMV) for streaming on the Internet.

You may use the free Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7 to convert AVI files to ASF or WMV format.

Windows Media Encoder is available without charge at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/wm7/encoder.html



When I record a large window, the computer becomes very slow. How can I capture a large window fast enough?

Capturing a large frame and compressing it are time-intensive operations. Your computer may not be fast able to handle such frame rates at these sizes.

You can try to

• make the size of the capture region smaller
  
• reduce the number of colors for the display mode
  
• decrease the input frame rate (by making the value of Capture Frame Every __ Milliseconds in Video Options larger)
  

I have downloaded your source code and found them very interesting. Would you tell me how the function XXX in file YYY works ?

Please do not direct technical questions related to the source code to us.



I am a programmer. How can I implement the feature of adding text/graphics overlay into the movie ?

You may want take a look at the functions

captureScreenFrame
InsertHighLight

in the file vscapView.cpp of the source code to see how we implemented the drawing of highlights into a frame of the AVI movie. The addition of text/graphics overlay should be very similar.

Bob Jensen's threads and a video tutorial can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

Fun for Kids on the Computer
Build a Snowman --- http://www.funone.com/1new/11/snowman2/index.html 
Drag the parts to the plain snow balls.

Maybe this isn't accounting, but on the side you can assign standard costs of components and actual costs of components and then solve for the standard cost variances.  But who wants to do this?  Just have some fun at this site.

Forwarded by Bob Overn

If you like to drink BEER (or if you don't) here is an interesting math exercise:

1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have a beer (try for more than once but less than 10, girls can substitute their favorite drink)

2. Multiply this number by 2 (Just to be bold)

3. Add 5. (for Friday Night)

4. Multiply it by 50. I'll wait while you get the calculator................

5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1751.... If you haven't, add 1750 ..........

6. Now subtract ! the four digit year that you were born. (if you remember)

You should have a three digit number

Now here's the kicker!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you Ready???????????????

The first digit of this was your original number! (i.e., how many times you want to have a beer each week).

The next two numbers are your age.

IMPRESSIVE ISN'T IT?

(2001 IS THE ONLY YEAR THIS WILL EVER WORK, ISN'T THAT INTERESTING)

BOB

Forwarded by Dick Haar

Subject: Taliban vs. Texas

A large group of Taliban soldiers are moving down a road when they hear a voice call from behind a sand-dune. "One Texas soldier is better than ten Taliban".

The Taliban commander quickly sends 10 of his best soldiers over the dune whereupon a gun-battle breaks out and continues for a few minutes, then silence.

The voice then calls out "One Texan is better than one hundred Taliban".

Furious, the Taliban commander sends his next best 100 troops over the dune and instantly a huge gunfight commences. After 10 minutes of battle, again silence.

The Texan voice calls out again "One Texan is better than one thousand Taliban".

The enraged Taliban Commander musters one thousand fighters and sends them across the dune. Cannon, rocket and machine gun fire ring out as a huge battle is fought. Then silence. Eventually one wounded Taliban fighter crawls back over the dune and with his dying words tells his commander,

"Don't send any more men, its a trap. There's actually two of them."

The friend who sent me this does not live in Rhode Island.

When you're from Texas, people that you meet ask you questions like, 
"Do you have any cows?" 
It's nice to be able to say yes. 

They ask you, "Do you have horses?" 
Yup. 

"Bet you got a bunch of guns, eh?"
Of course. They all want to know if you've been to Southfork.  They watched the TV show called Dallas.

Have you ever looked at a map of the world? Hell yes you have. Look at Texas for me just for a second.  That picture, with the Panhandle and the Gulf Coast, and the Red River and the Rio Grande is as much a part of you as anything ever will be. As soon as anyone anywhere in the world looks at it they know what it is. It's Texas.

Pick any kid off the street in Japan and draw him a picture of Texas in the dirt and he'll know what it is. What happens if I show you a picture of any other state? You'll get it maybe after a minute or two, but who else would? Even if you do, does it ever stir any feelings in you?

In every man, woman and child on this little rock the Good Lord put us on, there is somewhere in them a person who wishes just once he could be a real live  Texan and get up on a horse or ride in a pickup.

Did you ever hear anyone in a bar go, "Wow... so you're from Ok-la-homa. Cool. Tell me about it?!"
( I don't think so )

There is some bit of Texas in everyone. Do you know why? Because Texas is Texas.

Texas is the Alamo. Texas is 183 men standing in a church, facing thousands of Mexican nationals, fighting for freedom, who had the chance to walk out and save themselves, but stayed. They stayed to change the name of Tejas to TEXAS...

We send our kids to schools named William B. Travis and Bowie and do you know why? Because those men saw a line in the sand and they decided to be heroes. John Wayne paid to do the movie himself.

That is Texas.

Texas is Sam Houston capturing Santa Anna at San Jacinto.
Texas is Juneteenth and Texas Independence Day.
Texas is huge forests of Piney Woods like the Davy Crockett National Forest.
Texas is breathtaking mountains in Big Bend.
Texas is shiny skyscrapers in Houston and Dallas.
Texas is world record bass from places like Lake Fork.

Texas is mexican food like nowhere in the world, even Mexico.
Texas is larger-than-life legends like Willie Nelson and Buddy Holly, Earl Campbell and Nolan Ryan, Denton Cooley and Michael DeBakey, Lyndon Johnson and George Bush.
Texas is great companies like Dell Computer and Texas Instruments.
Texas is insurance companies and oil companies.
Texas is huge herds of cattle and miles of crops.
Texas is skies blackened with doves and leases full of deer.
Texas is a place where towns shut down for Friday night football and the streets are deserted.
Texas is beaches and deserts, lakes and rivers, mountains and prairies.

If it isn't in Texas, you don't need it. No one does anything bigger or better.

By federal law, Texas is the only state in the U.S. that can fly its flag at the same height as the U.S. flag. Think about that for a second. You fly the Stars and Stripes at 20 feet in Maryland, or California, or Maine, and your state flag, whatever it is, goes at 17. You fly the Stars and Stripes in front of Pine Tree High in Longview at 20 feet, the Lone Star flies at 20 feet.

Do you know why? Because we place being a Texan as high as being an American down here.

Our capitol is the only one in the country that is taller than the capitol building in Washington, D. C.
We signed those in as part of the deal when we came on. That's the best part right there.
WHEN WE CAME ON.

Texas was its own country. The Republic of Texas.
Every time I think of that I tear up. All of this makes you proud to be a Texan.

 

Forwarded by Brent and Betty Carper (and rewarded slightly by Bob Jensen to put it into his Scandinavian roots)

In an apparent copycat terrorist act, Norwegian terrorists Knute Jenson and Ollie Olson have hijacked the Viking's Goodyear blimp.

So far they have bounced off five buildings in Stockholm. Stay tuned for further developments!

Forwarded by Brent and Betty Carper

ONE. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

TWO. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.

THREE. Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.

FOUR. When you say, "I love you", mean it.

FIVE. When you say, "I'm sorry", look the person in the eye.

SIX. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.

SEVEN. Believe in love at first sight.

EIGHT. Never laugh at anyone's dreams. People who don't have dreams don't have much.

NINE. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.

TEN. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.

ELEVEN. Don't judge people by their relatives.

TWELVE. Talk slowly but think quickly.

THIRTEEN. When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, "Why do you want to know?"

FOURTEEN. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

FIFTEEN. Say "bless you" when you hear someone sneeze.

SIXTEEN. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

SEVENTEEN. Remember the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others; and Responsibility for all your actions.

EIGHTEEN. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

NINETEEN. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

TWENTY. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.

TWENTY ONE. Spend some time alone. You just may learn something about yourself

To this I might add TWENTY TWO
Dish out the choicest delights as often and as plentiful as possible.  Whatever you dish out, you will receive more of  in return  somewhere at sometime when you least expect it.

And that's the way it was on December 10, 2001 with a little help from my friends.

In March 2000, Forbes named AccountantsWorld.com as the Best Website on the Web --- http://accountantsworld.com/.
Some top accountancy links --- http://accountantsworld.com/category.asp?id=Accounting

For accounting news, I prefer AccountingWeb at http://www.accountingweb.com/ 

Another leading accounting site is AccountingEducation.com at http://www.accountingeducation.com/ 

Paul Pacter maintains the best international accounting standards and news Website at http://www.iasplus.com/

How stuff works --- http://www.howstuffworks.com/ 

Bob Jensen's video helpers for MS Excel, MS Access, and other helper videos are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/ 
Accompanying documentation can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/default1.htm and http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-999-7347 Fax: 210-999-8134  Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu  

December 3, 2001

Quotes of the Week

The ultimate fate of any profession lies not in its rules, regulations, and controls. The fate lies in the will and dedication of the majority of people who serve in that profession --- the honest cops, the devoted doctors, the dedicated professors, the faithful clergy, and the ardent auditors.
This is the concluding paragraph in a recent message sent to my graduate students in accounting.  (See below)

Our enemies make us stronger.
Our friends make us forgiving.
I made this up, although I'm certain that these thoughts have been repeatedly written down in various forms.

My wife, Erika, requested that I quote the lyrics of one of her favorite songs.  It is fitting for the world in these troubled times.  I should add that I cannot recall a single fight between us.  Hence, her interest in this song must be on a broader scale.

The Way Old Friends Do --- http://members.fortunecity.com/abbalink/songs/lyrics/twofd.htm 

You and I can share the silence 
Finding comfort together 
The way old friends do

And after fights and words of violence 
We make up with each other 
The way old friends do

Times of joy and times of sorrow 
We will always see it through 
Oh I don't care what comes tomorrow 
We can face it Together 
The way old friends do

You and I can share the silence 
Finding comfort together the way old friends do 
And after fights and words of violence 
We make up with each other the way old friends do 

Times of joy and times of sorrow 
We will always see it through 
Oh I don't care what comes tomorrow 
We can face it together the way old friends do

We can face it together the way old friends do

I created a timeline of major happenings (on a timeline) leading up to the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and On Line Analytical Process (OLAP) systems.  Overviews of XML, VoiceXML, XLink, XHTML, XBRL, XForm, XSLT, RDF and the Semantic Web are also provided --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm

Researchers at Yale and the University of Michigan have spent two years developing a new test to assess business school candidates. The Successful Intelligence Assessment (SIA) test is not expected to replace the GMAT any time soon, but may be offered as a supplement to the GMAT. The SIA test assesses an applicant's potential for business success. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/64980 

Wow Technology of the Week

"Water drop holds a trillion computers Devices with DNA:   Software may one day be fitted into cells," by John Whitfield, Nature, November 22, 2001 --- http://www.nature.com/nsu/011122/011122-11.html 

If you wear the right glasses, a lot of what you see inside the cell is computation," says Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. Now Shapiro and his colleagues have turned the computational power of biological molecules to their own ends1.

The researchers have built a machine that solves mathematical problems using DNA as software and enzymes as hardware. A trillion such biomolecular machines - working at more than 99.8% accuracy - can fit into a drop of water.

Computers with DNA input and output have been made before, but they involved a laborious series of reactions, each needing human supervision. The new automaton requires only the right molecular mix.

It's too early to say whether biomolecular nanomachines will ever become practical. Optimists, including the new machine's inventors, envision them screening libraries of DNA sequences, or even lurking inside cells where they would watch for trouble or synthesize drugs.

The new invention is "an interesting proof of principle", says Martyn Amos, a bioinformatics researcher at the University of Liverpool, UK. Amos questions whether molecular automata could ever do anything complex enough to be useful, but thinks they may find applications inside cells.

"DNA computing needs to establish its own niche, and I don't think that lies in competing with traditional silicon devices," says Amos. Biological computers would be better suited to biological problems, such as sensors within organisms or drug delivery, he believes.

Continued at http://www.nature.com/nsu/011122/011122-11.html 

Cash Flow Versus Fair Value Hedges

-----Original Message----- 
From: hy hy [mailto:hy_5000@hotmail.com]  
Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2001 5:04 AM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu  
Subject: Fair Value >< Cash Flow Hedge

Dear Mr. Jensen. 

I would like to introduce my self, my name is Hery Yanto, I'm a student at Catholik University of Atma Jaya Jakarta, Indonesia. I would like to asking you about derivative, could you please answer my question since I'm interested to know about derivative. 

I would be very grateful if you want answer my questions below. Thank you.

Regards,

Hery Yanto

QUESTION 1
What the different between fair value and cash flow hedge?

*************************************************************** 
Bob Jensen's Reply to Question 1
If a bond pays a fixed (coupon) rate of 12% semi-annually on a face value of $1,000, then the cash flows are fixed at $60 every six months. The cash flows do not vary, but the market value of the bond will fluctuate daily with changes in interest rates. A fair value hedge would fix the value of the bond at a contracted amount (such as $990) but the combined cash flow of the hedged item (the bond) and the hedge would then be variable and no longer fixed at $60 every six months.

If a bond pays a variable rate semi-annualy on a face value of $1,000, the market value is fixed at a given level (such as $990) but the bond's semi-annual cash flows will vary with interest rates. A cash flow hedge will freeze the bond interest payments at a fixed level (such as $60) but the fair value of the bond plus the fair value of the hedge will vary.

The point is that hedged items having fair value risk and not cash flow risk can be hedged for fair value, but the hedge will create cash flow risk that did not exist before the hedge. Conversely, hedged items having cash flow risk but no fair value risk can be hedged for cash flow risk, but the fair value of the hedged item plus the hedge will now vary with interest rates.

***************************************************************

QUESTION 2 
If I'm entered into forward currency contract, to exchange USD 1 with AUD 2 in the specific date in the future, is it a cash flow hedge or fair value hedge. (I have loan in AUD currency and it will due on the same date with the contract)

*************************************************************** Bob Jensen's Reply

Bob Jensen's Reply to Question 2
Actually, you have foreign exchange (FX) risk that is best not viewed as cash flow or fair value risk. If your expiring forward contract gives you AUD 2 for USD 1 at time when the currency market is such that you could have received AUD 2.1 for only USD 1 without such a forward contract, then you have in a sense had an opportunity cash flow loss of AUD 0.1 due to your hedge.  However, your hedge also allowed you to sleep nights knowing that you would receive AUD 2 for each USD 1 no matter what happened in the FX currency markets.

Now consider the case where you must purchase a gallon of fuel at an unknown USD price in six months. Suppose the current price of a gallon of fuel is USD 1. Your FX hedge of USD 1 for AUD 2 does not hedge the price of the fuel. To hedge the price of fuel, you must instead enter into a fuel price hedge in U.S. dollars. The only thing your FX hedges against is the risk that in six months, AUD 2 will not get at least US 1 due to a decline in the AUD exchange rate. The USD 1 that you get for AUD 2 may or may not buy an exact gallon of fuel, depending upon what the price of that fuel becomes after six months.  In other words, your FX hedge did not hedge the price of fuel.

One of the best documents the FASB generated for FAS 133 implementation is called "Summary of Derivative Types."  This document also explains how to value certain types.  It can be downloaded free from at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/fasb/derivsum.exe

You find more examples of FAS 133, FAS 138, and IAS hedging and accounting at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm 

 ***************************************************************

Wow Book of the Week --- http://come.to/Gratis-Economy/ 

TITLE:  THE GRATIS ECONOMY: PRIVATELY PROVIDED PUBLIC GOODS
AUTHOR:  Andras Kelen
PUBLISHER:  Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001

The book is not gratis
ISBN 963 9241 22 9 cloth HB $51.95 / £32.95 ISBN 963 9241 33 4 paperback PB $24.95 / £15.95

Advances in Accounting Reports --- Updates and Demos on XBRL

Bob Jensen's threads on XBRL are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm 

A listing of XBRL Demos from http://www.xbrlsolutions.com/Demos.htm 

The following are demos which XBRL Solutions makes available.  For more information regarding these demos, please contact CharlesHoffman@xbrlSolutions.com:

• Instance Document Validator
• Form 990
• Lists and Enumeration Services
• Financial Highlights Demo
• Comprehensive Demo
• FDIC/FRB Demo
• Sample XSLT
• Great Plains Sample
• APRA Uses XBRL
• Morgan Stanley Dean Witter 10K with XBRL in it, filed with the SEC 
  (Update from Bob Jensen:  Also see http://www.xbrl.org/Events/taxfilings.html )
• NewTec XBRL MultiMart
• Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore Demo
• QuickBooks to XBRL Conversion (qbXML to XBRL Coming Soon!)

XBRL for tax filinings --- http://www.xbrl.org/Events/taxfilings.html 

AICPA book link to XBRL Essentials --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/tpcpa/june01/xbrl.htm 

Multimart Web Financials Slide Show (with a bit on ERP and XBRL)  --- http://www.reportingtools.com/Present/Present_files/frame.htm 

Bob Jensen's threads on XML, RDF, and XBRL are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm 

Wow Site of the Week --- Visualization of Math Formulas

A message from Scott Bonacker

I would like to make a nomination for a WOW site of some week or another:

http://glinda.lrsm.upenn.edu/~weeks/pics.html 

Scott Scott Bonacker, CPA 
McCullough, Officer & Company, LLC Springfield, Missouri moccpa.com

Wow Innovation of the Week (Forwarded by Barbara MacAlpine [Barbara.MacAlpine@Trinity.edu] 

This should be the role model of all academic journals.

[This review] is also available electronically to licensed subscribers through the MCB University Press Emerald service [ http://giorgio.emeraldinsight.com/lhtn.htm   ]

ABSTRACT

The Internet Journal of Chemistry (IJC) ( www.ijc.com ) is an electronic-only electronic journal with the primary aim of publishing the results of high-quality research in all areas of chemistry. Unlike conventional e-journals in chemistry and other scientific disciplines, IJC offers a wide variety of innovative features, functionalities, and content that augment and enhance use and understanding of article text. Among these are user annotation and commentary; data manipulation; electronic discussion forums; electronic manuscript submission; font, format, and display control; modeling; multimedia components; personalization; and reader participation. IJC is an outstanding example of the 'eclectic journal', an emerging form of the next- generation electronic journal.

Gerry McKiernan Associate Professor and Science and Technology Librarian and Bibliographer Iowa State University Library Ames IA 50011 gerrymck@iastate.edu 

Reply from J. S. Gangolly [gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU] 

Bob,

I got very excited when I got the above, and went immediately to their site only to find that the contents are available only by subscription.

I think we already have too many journals peddled by a handful of publishers at extortionary prices, and those hurled at captive audiences at discriminatory prices (such as AAA and similar journals).

I think a few months ago I posted a message about the resignation of most of the editorial board of the prestigious academic journal "Machine Learning" and setting up of a rival new journal with open access, "journal of Machine Learning Research". Kluwer, the publisher of the former did make amends, but came too late (and too little); MIT Press, the publisher of the latter, does allow free access.

I give below three prestigious journals available for free to all. This short list reflects my own rather narrow interests, and so is not representative of what is available for free.

1. MIT Press: Journal of Machine Learning Research http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/jmlr/ 

2. Oxford University Press Journal of Digital information http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v02/i01/Miall/ 

3. Morgan Kaufman Publishers journal of artificial intelligence research http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/jair/home.html 

I am positive there are many more. I have been searching to see if there is an index of free academic journals. I hope some one on this listserv will post a message on this.

Jagdish

Wow Article of the Week

Note from Bob Jensen:  This demonstrates the growth of distance education and then questions some of the pedagogy.

"A Virtual Revolution:  Trends in the Expansion of Distance Education," by Thomas J. Kriger, USDLA Journal (a refereed journal of the United States Distance Learning Association," November 2001 --- http://www.usdla.org/ED_magazine/illuminactive/NOV01_Issue/article02.html 

This report describes four major trends leading the growth of distance education. The purpose is not to cover every provider but to draw a picture of the types of organizational structures and educational activities that are on the rise. These include:

• Existing higher education institutions that have or are developing distance education programs, such as e-Cornell, NYU Online, the University of Illinois On-line; University of Maryland University College, Rio Salado Community College, the SUNY Learning Network and Virtual Temple;
• Full virtual universities, such as the University of Phoenix Online, Western Governors University, Andrew Jackson University, Cappella University, Jones International University, Kennedy-Warren University;
• Corporate university or training institutions, such as the members of Corporate University Xchange and Click2learn.

Corporate-university joint ventures. those that provide course management systems such as Blackboard, Campus Pipeline, eCollege and Web CT, as well as those who package and distribute courses or content from existing institutions such as UNext.com, Cenquest, Fathom, Global Education Network, Quisic and Universitas 21;

What do we learn from these descriptions? First, we learn that the variety of new ways to organize DE and reach new students is enormous, as is the talent that can be brought to bear in making education attractive in the new medium. But we also find that the way distance education is being organized and conducted often poses serious questions.

Much of the distance education under study here, whether non-profit or for-profit, is built on corporate ideas about consumer focus, product standardization, tight personnel control and cost effectiveness (maximizing course taking while minimizing the "inputs" of faculty and development time). These concepts are contrary to the traditional model of higher education decision-making which emphasizes faculty independence in teaching and research, academic control of the curriculum, academic freedom in the classroom and collegial decision-making.

While traditional practices are not sacrosanct, academic decision making processes have been very successful in producing quality higher education the best in the world. Our concern is that some of the new trends and practices described in this report may inhibit rather than promote good education. A number of specific concerns arose:

• Education based primarily on the marketplace and the model of "student as customer" is too narrow. Student and industry preferences certainly matter in designing curricula, but if pleasing the customer is the pre-eminent value, there is a real danger that the curriculum will not be coherent, rigorous enough or broad enough to meet the student's long-term interests.
• A central characteristic of many DE providers is to "unbundle" the faculty role so that different specialists develop the curriculum, teach the course, evaluate student performance, etc. This allows for greater standardization but it may not add up to better education.
• Standardization of coursework also inhibits students from being exposed to the diverse views of different faculty members with varying knowledge and perspectives. This diversity is important in enabling students to hone their own ideas and knowledge.
• Some programs exhibited an inclination to increase class size as a means of increasing the financial output of a course. The only proper consideration in fixing class size is to maintain the best level to facilitate learning.
• Some programs rely too heavily on testing for individual "outcomes" and "competencies" while downgrading the importance of class time and social interaction in developing deep knowledge about a subject. Along the same lines, distance education providers too often dismiss the importance of same-time same-place interaction rather than building it into their programs whenever possible.

It is appropriate, indeed essential, to present information for the DE marketplace in an attractive, computer-friendly fashion. But over-attention to drawing "customers" may result in technology driving the way teaching is conducted-leading, for example, to models centered around bite-size, "point and click" accumulations of facts rather than a more reflective, less easily measured search for knowledge.

In the year 2000, AFT published Distance Education: Guidelines for Good Practice. The guidelines lay out 14 specific standards which, if observed, ensure high quality distance education. (A synopsis of the guidelines appears in the report's conclusion.) The guidelines advance AFT's belief that broad academic content, high standards, personal interaction and professional control are the key elements of educational quality. College faculty must insist on sound practice based on a broad vision of education-one that recognizes education is about more than facts, more than competencies, more than career ambitions.

Education, among other things, is about broadening intellectual horizons, relying on facts and reason when confronting life issues and learning to listen to others and defend ideas by the force of argument. That is why education is the foundation of a working democracy. Because distance education is ubiquitous and offers so much promise, faculty are obligated to carry the banner for quality and good practice while recognizing that this will sometimes require challenging current trends and practices

Continued at  http://www.usdla.org/ED_magazine/illuminactive/NOV01_Issue/article02.html  

Bob Jensen's documents on distance education are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

In particular, a related article on "The Dark Side" of distance education is provided at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm 

Online Pedagogy at the University of Phoenix

Phoenix faculty work in a highly structured environment. Course facilitators in traditional classes are forbidden to lecture. Faculty are, instead, expected to closely follow Phoenix's "teaching/ learning model," which begins with course syllabi and detailed teaching modules developed by fulltime faculty on the main campus. In this way, faculty responsibilities are broken down into a series of discrete steps, such as when course development is detached from teaching. Phoenix course modules "include guidelines for weekly assignments, group activities and grading."  Some course modules contain classroom time-management guidelines broken down into 15-minute intervals.

Phoenix defends its practice of using these restrictive guidelines in the name of standardization. The university's online catalog declares: "The standardized curriculum for each degree program provides students with specified levels of knowledge and skills regardless of the delivery method or classroom location."

Critics argue, however, that Phoenix's course modules violate academic freedom because they don't allow faculty members sufficient discretion. Milton R. Blood, managing director of the American Assembly of the Collegiate Schools of Business, has characterized Phoenix's standardized curriculum as "McEducation." He explained, "It's a redefinition of how we go about delivering higher education. The question is whether it's really higher education when it's delivered in a franchised way."

Thomas J. Kriger, quoted from the Wow Article of the Week above.

More from Kriger's article cited above:

Table 1  A Sampling of Colleges and Universities that Offer Online/Distance Education Programs
Institution	Characteristics	Number and Type of DE Programs	DE Enrollment	Accreditation
e-Cornell	For-profit spin off; no courses offered yet	Will offer certificates, not degree programs	NA	Not accredited as a separate entity
NYU Online	For Profit spin off primarily for corporate market	Two graduate; many corporate programs	166 (in graduate programs)	Not accredited as a separate entity
University of Illinois Online	Umbrella Organization for different U. of Illinois campuses	One professional degree; 10 master's, bachelor's completion program	6,000 courses taken online	North Central
University of Maryland University College	Claims online program is world's largest online university	12 bachelor; 10 graduate	7,955; UMUC now claims enrollment of 40,000	Middle States
Rio Saldo Community College	One of the first and largest online community college programs	Six associate degrees; 12 certificate	200 onpine courses, 8,000 students per semester	North Central
SUNY Learning Network	One of the three largest DE programs in the country (with Phoenix and UMUC)	1,500 courses from Accounting to Web design	Approximately 10,000 course enrollments per semester	Middle States
Virtual Temple	For profit spin off; no courses offered yet	NA	NA	Not accredited as a separate entity
* Figures for 1999-2000, US Department of Education, Report to Congress on the Distance Education Demonstration Programs, January 2001. Other statistics reported directly by institutions.

Rio Salado Community College (Table 1) offers one of the largest distance education programs at the community college level. One of 10 separate institutions in the huge (9,000-plus square miles) Maricopa Community College District in the greater Phoenix area, Rio Salado was founded in 1978 as a center for adult education. With no central campus, this self-described "college without boundaries" originally offered courses in high schools, libraries and community centers in the Phoenix area. In 1996, Rio Salado began to add online programs to its extensive menu of distance learning courses and training programs. Today, Rio Salado delivers 80 percent of its general education courses via the Internet or other DE technologies. New course selections at Rio begin every two weeks and students can study at their own pace, which offers flexibility for working adults.[9] Rio Salado employs 18 full-time faculty and 600 part-timers, and every faculty member is required to teach at least one online course.

The faculty role at Rio Salado is "unbundled," or broken down into a series of discrete tasks. Design teams-which include a technical trainer, an editor, a proofreader, and Web and content specialists create a curriculum and standardized courses that are taught primarily by adjunct faculty.

Rio Salado College is one of a handful of U.S. institutions that participate in the Pew Learning and Technology Program's Grant Program in Course Redesign. This program was based upon ideas found in the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, in which modular, online exercises, tutorials and quizzes would replace more expensive direct contact with actual faculty in high enrollment introductory courses.

Links to these and many other online programs can be found at the following sites:

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm 

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm 

More from Kriger's article cited above:

Table 3 Corporate-University Joint Ventures: Hybrid Course or Content Providers
Institution	Characteristics	Number and Type of DE Programs	Affiliations	Accreditation
Cardean University / Unext.com	Create courses in collaboration with prestigious business schools; problem-solving based curriculum	MBA Programs and 80 courses offered	Columbia, Chicago, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and the London School of Economics	DETC
Cenquest	Offers graduate business degrees and training	1 certificate 2 Master's program	Partnered with Babson, U. of Texas, Oregon Institute, Adelaide University, Monterey Institute of Technology	No
Fathom	Columbia's for-profit spin-off; niche is to provide high-quality content, courses to include arts and humanities	600 courses listed; 75,000 registered users; several hundred students enrolled in online courses	13 member institutions including U. of Chicago, American Film Institute, London School of Economics, NY Public Library	No
Global Education Network	Brainchild of Weilliams professor Mark Taylor and investment banker Herbert Allen; trying to attract faculty with star power; will offer core curriculum including arts and humanities	3 or 4 courses currently in development; no degree programs available	Corses by individual faculty from Williams, Wellesley, Brown, Amherst, Yale	Seeking accreditation
Quisic (formerly University Access)	Offers undergraduate, graduate business courses, training; original focus undergraduate DE	Clients incoluding Cisco, United, Citigroup, Lexus, IBM	200 corporate clients; university partners indlude Dartmouth, London School of Economics, North Carolina, USC	No
Universitas 21	Global network of 18 institutions; joint venture with Thompson Learning	In planning stages	Seeking U.S. institutional participants	No

Beginning with specialized business courses in the summer of 1999, today Cardean offers a complete online MBA and a total menu of almost 100 courses. Masters courses, which require 25 to 30 hours, cost $500 each. Shorter quantum courses, each requiring two to three hours, are priced at five for $380. Teaching at Cardean is unbundled, with "senior" faculty planning the curriculum, "advisory" faculty counseling students and supervising adjuncts, and "adjunct" faculty members working with students by grading assignments, answering e-mail and directing online discussions.

Another ambitious online joint venture is Global Education Network (GEN) (Table 3), the product of an alliance between Williams College humanities professor Mark Taylor and investment banker Herbert Alan Jr. As with Fathom, GEN is one of the few for-profit DE providers committed

to bringing the "soft" subjects of the humanities online. GEN, in fact, plans to offer a full undergraduate core curriculum in a few years, with faculty drawn from small, prestigious liberal arts colleges, which are not usually associated with distance education. Not surprisingly, GEN markets itself as a high-quality DE access point; currently on the Web site are courses from individual faculty at Williams, Wellesley and Brown. The privately owned GEN reportedly has institutional relationships with Wellesley, Brown and Duke, although many other institutions-including Williams (Taylor's home campus) have chosen not to affiliate with GEN. The main objection at Williams was that associating with a DE provider would hurt its quality reputation.[21]

Other distance education joint ventures-some with significant outside funding-are attempting to capture the estimated $4 billion that corporations spend each year on DE training for their employees.[22] Founded in 1997, Cenquest (Table 3) offers business courses and graduate degree programs in partnership with a number of university MBA programs. Cenquest's original affiliates were the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Texas at Austin.

Working with these institutions, Cenquest adapts their courses for the DE market by dividing them into shorter units, which are then offered on a rolling schedule either for individual applications or degree and certificate programs such as accounting, which are more readily standardized and modularized. In December 2000, Cenquest affiliated with the prestigious Babson College to provide an MBA program to Intel employees. Cenquest has been successful in attracting venture capital. It began offering DE courses, which now number over 100, in 1998.

Update from Bob Jensen:  
I think Quisic abandoned all or most of its college courses.  You can read more about Cardian and listen to some of its faculty discuss course development and delivery from my August 2001 workshop in Atlanta --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001cpe/01start.htm 

A typical undergraduate course at Phoenix lasts five weeks; graduate courses are six weeks. Students attend one four-hour "workshop" per week or meet for longer sessions on alternate weekends. Students also take classes sequentially-one at a time-so they can better focus on the subject matter while working full-time. An additional requirement is that students work in teams. As Phoenix's online catalog explains,

The university organizes each class into problem-solving teams of the type employed successfully in business and industry. Thus, in addition to the development of intellectual and technical knowledge, the student is able to grow emotionally so that the potential for practical application of knowledge and skill is optimized.[26]

An estimated 90 percent of Phoenix faculty (both online and classroom) teach part-time. At its Northern California brick-and-mortar campus, Phoenix employs 20 full-time faculty and 550 part-timers. These part-time "facilitators," as they are called, must possess a graduate degree from a regionally accredited institution and must work full-time in a field related to the courses they teach.

Links to these and many other online programs can be found at the following sites:

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm 

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm 

Accreditation issues and other matters of distance education can be found at the following site:

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

Quotations on the Dark Side from Kriger's article can be found at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm 

The Ohio CPA Journal (October 1, 2001) has published an in-depth article explaining the likelihood of CPAs being faced with liability claims and how risk can be mitigated. The article explains the expectations of insurance companies and offers six warning signs of an impending claim. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/64075 

The article suggests that working with a risk advisor can increase the odds of:

• avoiding a claim
  
• controlling the situation
  
• keeping a lid on damages, or
  
• prevailing when litigation occurs.

The article explains the expectations of insurance companies, and offers six warning signs of an impending claim:

1. Clients who won't pay
   
2. Uncooperative clients
   
3. Fraud/embezzlement defalcation
   
4. Subpoenas
   
5. Gray tax positions/IRS audits
   
6. Divorce or partnership disputes

The complete article is at http://covia.yellowbrix.com/pages/covia/Story.nsp?story_id=25292158&category=Accounting&ID=covia&noad=1 

ECCH Case Awards Reflect e-Commerce Era --- http://www.ecch.cranfield.ac.uk/ 

Over the years, I have viewed a lot of departmental Webpages for prospective students.  Among those that I have seen, I think to the designs of the Arizona State University pages for prospective students are among the best available.  

For example, see http://www.cob.asu.edu/acct/undergraduate/prospective/cis.cfm 

There are ways that prospective students pages can be improved at most any university.  Several suggested improvements are listed below:

1. In a FAQ area, have short answers but link to where students can find longer answers to questions.
   
   
2. Add data on the number of graduates in each concentration for the past three years.  
   
   
3. Provide information regarding job placement or graduate school admissions (where relevant).
   
   
4. Add outside links to where prospective students can find more information about careers in the concentration.
   
   
5. Link to some alumni letters where recent graduates discuss their job duties, travel, and other matters of interest to prospective students who wonder what it is like out there for recent graduates.  It would even be better to have some video clips of alumni being interviewed where they work.
   
   
6. Provide short comments about what particular faculty in the program bring to bear on particular courses and then provide links to the faculty Web pages.

Why we stress that current and former employees are the weakest link in IT security!

Two former Cisco Systems Inc. accountants who admitted to stealing more than $5 million in company shares by hacking into the company computer systems have been sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/64703 

"Education System Aims to Improve Services for Special Needs Students," T.H.E. Journal, November 21, 2001, p. 38 --- http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3712.cfm 

Help4Life recently launched PortEP, a new collaborative education system that seeks to improve the way schools provide services to students with special needs. PortEP enables educators to help students with behavioral health and learning needs achieve improved results by reducing administrative and logistical barriers so educators can identify, assess and provide interventions more efficiently and with lower costs. The system offers three performance modules for general education intervention,online team evaluations and special education tracking. The general education component delivers a databased problem-solving process that helps teachers identify and quickly help children before major problems develop.

PortEP also enables educators to coordinate student evaluations online, including input from parents, teachers, psychologists and physicians. The evaluation module makes collecting, organizing and acting on information more efficient, leaving more time for educators to work directly with students and families. The tracking module makes monitoring progress and making corrections less time-consuming, and allows administrators to manage resources more effectively. Help4Life, Nashville, TN, (866) 476-7863,  www.help4life.com .

If you think you're an Einstein, maybe you just know a little bit more than those around you. If you think you're a dim bulb but want to feel bright, surround yourself with people who know less. Critics say the study is mentally challenged --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,48576,00.html 

That sound you hear is audio e-books, magazines and newspapers clamoring for attention.

"Audio E-Books Seek a Buzz," by M.J. Rose, Wired News, November 27, 2001 --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,48620,00.html 

Audible's on-demand audio files include top national newspapers and magazines, and both classic and best-selling novels. They offer more than 32,000 hours of audio programs and 165 content partners.

Audible hopes the campaign, appropriately called Spread the Word, will increase its customer base by 60,000 to 90,000 users.

To achieve this goal, Audible has sent marketing kits to about 30,000 of its most dedicated customers. In return for their customers' free marketing efforts, Audible will give away free audio files and $5,000 worth of tech prizes.

Spread the Words builds on the customer-referral volume the company has experienced informally.

"Our current customers have already played an essential role in our rapid growth, which has almost tripled our customer base within a year," said Donald Katz, CEO of Audible, Inc.

Customers who spread the word about Audible deserve to be rewarded, Katz said. In fact the kernel of the Spread the Words idea came from a customer and shareholder.

Brainteasers 
These links to quick brainteasers and workouts provide exercises you can easily work into your daily routine. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/64193 

Richard always likes to try out the latest and greatest.

Below is a demo on using Microsoft Agent - in this case just for fun. After the required files are downloaded and installed - click on the link below to see Merlin in action.

This Demo requires the Microsoft Agent ActiveX Control and the Merlin character.

You can Download the required files from the Microsoft Agent webring ( www.msagentring.org ) You need to download and install files from the MS Agent from step 1 and step 2 on the Agent 2.0 page. You also need to download and install the Merlin character in step 5.

Here is the link to the demo: www.VirtualPublishing.NET/agent1.htm 

Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU] 

From Syllabus eNews on November 27, 2001

Palm to Distribute eBooks from HarperCollins

Palm, Inc. said it reached an agreement to distribute the HarperCollins PerfectBound line of eBooks through Palm Digital Media, its line of eBooks for handheld computers. PerfectBound's eBook list includes a variety of popular fiction and non-fiction. David Steinberger, president of corporate strategy for HarperCollins, said Palm technology "lets us offer readers the editorial and technological special features that are exclusive to PerfectBound eBook editions, while also protecting our authors' copyrights." Palm also has distribution agreements with top trade publishers Random House, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin's Press and Time Warner Trade Books.

For more information, visit: http://www.palm.com/ebooks 
(Bob Jensen's ebook threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm )

---

Bookstore Operator to Offer Adobe e-Book Guides

College store operator Follett Higher Education Group said it would start offering study guides and other course material in Adobe as well as Microsoft eBook formats. The company's website, efollett.com, opened earlier this year with eBook titles in Microsoft Reader format. Last week it said it would now add thousands of titles in Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader format as well. Higher education publishers participating in the launch with eBook study guides include Thomson Learning Higher Education Group, Wiley Higher Education, Houghton Mifflin College Division and Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishers. Follett is also working with OverDrive, Inc. to support course material conversion into eBook formats.

For more information, visit: http://www.efollet.com 

---

Louisville Installs Advanced Smart Card Platform

The University of Louisville has issued students an advanced smart card equipped with Java and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) security technology. The new card system, provided by Tallahassee-based Cybermark Inc., will allow students to store electronic currency for ATM- type transactions, use the card with their meal plan, check out books in the library, and gain access to various buildings around campus. The university will also use the platform to verify student digital identities, check student status at multiple campus locations, as well as host web-based student government elections. The card is the first to be provided by CyberMark under a partnerhsip with card maker SchlumbergerSema.

---

At Britannica, Print Makes A Comeback

After publishing soley on the Internet and CD-ROM for almost a decade, Encyclopaedia Britannica has just issued a revised printing of the venerable 32-volume encyclopedia for the first time in four years. Editor Dale Hoiberg said the reason for the new set is that demand for the books is strong. "Computers are great, but many people still love the feel of paper and ink between two covers," he said. "Books aren't as fast as the Internet, but they provide pleasures and benefits that no other medium can." But despite the affection for books, digital encyclopedias do have their advantages -- like cost. Britannica's CD-ROMs and DVDs range in price from $39.95 to $69.95. In contrast, the new print edition will retail for $1,295.

For more information, visit: http://www.britiannica.com 

"e-cheating: Combating a 21st Century Challenge," by Kim McMurtry, T.H.E. Journal, November 21, 2001, pp. 36-41 --- http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3724.cfm 

The early part of the paper is not quoted here.

The Frequency of Plagiarism

The purpose of this article is not to discuss ethical issues or to examine the downfall of American values, but let me give you some statistics. First of all, it's impossible to determine the actual frequency of cheating. Out of the 61 students in my English composition classes in spring 1999, I caught five plagiarists, all of whom had downloaded papers from the Web. That's 8 percent and there may have been more plagiarized papers I did not catch, copied from books or journals, sold by another student, etc. But we do have the self-reports of students, which offer a glimpse of the problem. For example, a 1998 survey from Who's Who Among American High School Students reported that of 3,123 students, 80 percent of them "admitted to cheating on an exam, a 10-point increase since the question was first asked 15 years ago" (Bushweller 1999). In addition, 50 percent of them "did not believe cheating was necessarily wrong," and 95 percent of those who had cheated "said they have never been caught" (Kleiner and Lord 1999). According to the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University, 75 percent of all college students "confess to cheating at least once" (Kleiner and Lord 1999). This finding confirms earlier studies by Baird, and by Stern and Havlicek, who reported that between 70 percent and 85 percent of American college students "engaged in some form of cheating" (Lupton, Chapman and Weiss vol. 75, no. 4).

Cheating and the Web

There are several ways a student can use the Internet to cheat on a writing assignment. The easiest way is to type a topic into a search engine like Yahoo!, find a Web page that someone has posted on that topic with the requisite number of words, copy the text and paste it into a word processing program. Another possibility is to share assignments with friends at other schools - one student can simply e-mail a paper as an attachment to another student. For example, one of my students submitted a paper that I found to be the text from an online magazine article. When I confronted the student about it, he said he had never seen the online article; a friend at another college had e-mailed him the paper, and he assumed that his friend had written it. But the most blatant form of e-cheating is the use of "Web paper mills," sites that collect and distribute papers on the Web, either free or for a fee.

In a cursory search for these paper mill sites, I found more than 30. Such sites are easy to find - just type "free essays" into any Web search engine - and easy to use. However, many of these sites duplicate the same database of papers for whatever reason. For example, 15000Papers.com, Phuck School (www.phuckschool.com ) and T.O.P. Thousands of Papers (www.termpapers-on-file.com ) are all owned by The Paper Store and appear to offer the same collection of papers.

And with names like Evil House of Cheat, most of these sites claim to assist students in cheating and boast slogans such as "Download your workload." However, some offer interesting disclaimers, like this one from EssayWorld.com: "The purpose of Essayworld.com is to provide an additional resource for students to obtain information and additional ideas from the insights of fellow students. Plagiarism is a serious offense and Essayworld.com does not condone or encourage plagiarism. By continuing the use of this site, you acknowledge that Essayworld.com will in no way, shape or form, be held responsible for the improper use of the contents of this site. Information obtained from the essays on Essayworld.com should be treated as if it were acquired from a book and be cited in the references. Should you need instructions on how to cite information obtained from essays on the Internet, please visit our Resources section." Such disclaimers appear to be an effort to avoid liability.

Students perusing these sites can find papers in any discipline, from biology to business, from chemistry to computer science, from health to history, from philosophy to physics. The majority of these sites, however, provide papers on high school rather than college topics. For example, literature papers tend to focus on books like The Great Gatsby and A Tale of Two Cities. In addition, many of the sites, although apparently not owned by the same entity, offer the same papers. For example, I found the same essay on irony in Kate Chopin's Story of an Hour in EssayWorld.com, in Planet Papers (www.planetpapers.com ) and in Other People's Papers (www.oppapers.com ). Some of these sites even require you to submit a paper to gain access to their collection of papers. I suspect what students have done is taken a paper from a free site and submitted it to one of these sites, resulting in duplications like this. The cost of papers from these Web paper mills ranges from free to varying prices per page. The sites that require payment provide abstracts of papers with particulars, including word count, number of sources used, and sometimes grade received and course level. Many sites also offer custom essays with costs ranging from $18.95 to $35 per page.

Combating E-Cheating

The ease of finding and downloading papers from sites like these makes plagiarism very tempting. How can an instructor combat e-cheating? I have eight suggestions:

Continued at  http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3724.cfm 

Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

From Infobits on November 29, 2001

"Forget About Policing Plagiarism. Just Teach" (THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, vol. 48, issue 12, November 16, 2001, p. B24) by Rebecca Moore Howard, associate professor of writing and rhetoric, and director of the writing program, at Syracuse University.

Howard argues that "[i]n our stampede to fight what The New York Times calls a 'plague' of plagiarism, we risk becoming the enemies rather than the mentors of our students; we are replacing the student-teacher relationship with the criminal-police relationship. Further, by thinking of plagiarism as a unitary act rather than a collection of disparate activities, we risk categorizing all of our students as criminals. Worst of all, we risk not recognizing that our own pedagogy needs reform. Big reform." The article is online to CHE subscribers at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i12/12b02401.htm

I can't buy this argument. It would bother my conscience too much to give a higher grade to a student that I strongly suspect has merely copied the arguments elsewhere than the grade given to a student who tried to develop his or her own arguments. How can Professor Howard in good conscience give a higher grade to the suspected plagiarist? This rewards "street smart" at the expense of "smart." It also advocates becoming more street smart at the expense of real learning.

I might be cynical here and hope that Professor Howard's physicians graduated from medical schools who passed students on the basis of being really good copiers of papers they could not comprehend.

What is not mentioned in the quote above is the labor-union-style argument also presented by Professor Howard in the article.  She argues that we're already too overworked to have the time to investigate suspected plagiarism.  Is refusing to investigate really being professional as an honorable academic?

My threads on plagiarism are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

Reply from John Rodi [jrodi@IX.NETCOM.COM] 

I think that administration is the culprit in this situation. Many years ago when I first began to teach if you caught a student cheating on a single examination or a single paper the instructor could fail the student for the entire course. One day a student protested over an issue of whether homework was copied. As a result we have a three page document that we must now follow in order to charge a student with cheating. One of the recommendations is to have a witness to the cheating. Suddenly, I find that the integrity of the instructor is at issue and not that of the student. How did the inmates get the keys?

John Rodi 
Cal State Los Angeles

Reply from Merrie & John Hayden [m.j.hayden@PRODIGY.NET] 

Again, I say, how many textbooks and other educational writings out there would pass the plagiarism test?

John Hayden, CPA 
The PJA School

The recent news of Enron Corp.'s need to restate financial statements dating back to 1997 as a result of accounting issues missed in Big Five firm Andersen's audits, has caused the Public Oversight Board to decide to take a closer look at the peer review process employed by public accounting firms. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/64184 

Once-mighty energy trader Enron faces almost certain bankruptcy after its credit rating is downgraded to junk status, scuttling a planned acquisition by smaller rival Dynegy --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48696,00.html 

"I believe we all misunderstood how dramatic a credibility crisis can be in a recession in a bear market," he said. "The speed at which Enron collapsed caught us all off guard."

Enron, which earned $979 million on $100.8 billion in revenue in 2000, last month revealed that partnerships run by its executives had allowed the company to keep about half a billion in debt off its books and allowed the executives to profit from the arrangements. Enron's dealings with those partnerships are now the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation.

The company ousted its top financial officer in October, and several weeks ago restated its earnings back to 1997 eliminating more than $580 million in reported income over that span.

Bob Jensen's threads on the Enron scandal are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

A Message from Duncan Williamson [duncan.williamson@TESCO.NET]

I'm sticking my neck out a bit and offering you all a PDF file I put together on the Enron Affair. I've taken a wide variety of sources in an attempt to explain where I think we are with this case. What Enron does (or did), what has happened and so on. It's a sort of position paper that attempts to explain the facts to non accountants and novice accountants. It's 24 pages long but doesn't take that much time to download. I have used materials from messages on this list and hope the authors don't mind and I have credited them by name. I have used Bob Jensen's bookmarks, too; as well as a whole host of other things.

I'd be grateful for any comments on this paper, or even offers of help to improve what I've done. I have to say I did it in a bit of a hurry and won't be offended by any criticism, providing it's constructive.

I have tested my links and they work for me: let me know of any problems, though. It's at http://www.duncanwil.co.uk/pdfs.html  link number 1

Incidentally, if you haven't been to my site recently (or at all), you can see my latest news at http://www.duncanwil.co.uk/news0212.html . I have a very nice looking Newsletter waiting for you: complete with Xmas theme. Please check my home page every week for the latest newsletter as it is linked from there (take a look now, you'll see what I mean). At the moment I am managing to add content at a significant rate; and will point out that I have developed several new features over the last three months or so, as well as the materials and pages themselves.

My home page (sorry, my Ho! Ho! Home Page) is at http://www.duncanwil.co.uk/index.htm  and is equally festive (well, with a name like Ho! Ho! Home Page it would have to be, wouldn't it?)

Looking forward to seeing you on line!

Best wishes

Duncan Williamson

Hi Joel,

I think the "state of affairs" in the public accounting profession is balanced on much more serious problems than the XYZ Credential and the 150-hour requirement.

Rhoda Icerman, bless her heart, informed me that the same newspaper that forced President Nixon to resign in the wake of The Watergate Scandal is going to run a two part series that all CPAs and accounting educators should take a careful look at. I am taking the liberty of quoting part of her message:

************************************************************** 

Just came from AICPA Group of 100 meeting where it was announced that the Washington Post will be carrying a 2-part series, starting this Sunday (12/2), on the failure of the auditing profession to serve the public's interest...Enron, PWC and independence, POB's deferrals, et.al.

Thought you'd like an early 'heads-up.'

Thanks for keeping us current on so many issues. I thoroughly enjoy your AECM posts. 

Warmest regards, 

Rhoda 

**************************************************************

Now we're beginning to encounter really serious media concerns for this image of this profession.

Bob (Robert E.) Jensen Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212 Voice: (210) 999-7347 Fax: (210) 999-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen 

-----Original Message----- From: Joel Peralto [mailto:peralto@HAWAII.EDU] Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 1:29 PM To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU Subject: The UAA and future of the "CPA"

I just spent an hour on the telly with a small local accounting practitioner who is fuming angry at the state of affairs within the profession and the apparent "selling of the profession" (specifically, the trusted CPA designation) down the river, "by the AICPA". I'm sure this is a scenario that is showing it's ugly face all over the country lately. The points of greatest contention are the 150 hour requirement, the new experience requirements, and the "XYZ" designation, to name but a few. Does anyone care to comment, relating to similar dialog occurring in your part of the country? Of particular concern is the apparent absence of 5-year programs geared specifically to the guidelines set forth by the AICPA. Thanks!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
Joel C. Peralto, CPA, CMA 
Professor-Accounting, 
Division Chair Business Education and Technology Division 
UH-Hawaii Community College 
Hilo, Hawaii 96720 Email: peralto@hawaii.edu  808-974-7327 Voice 808-974-7755 FAX

"The Internet Didn't Kill Enron," By Robert Preston, Internet Week, November 30, 2001 ---  http://www.internetweek.com/enron113001.htm 

"We have a fundamentally better business model."

That's how Jeffrey Skilling, then president of Enron Corp., summarized his company's startling ascendancy a year ago, as Enron's revenues wer