Bob Jensen's Year 2004 New Bookmarks Editions for January 1 thru March 31, 2004 Archives

New Bookmarks
Year 2004 Quarter 1: January 1-March 31 Additions to Bob Jensen's Bookmarks
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

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

Once again Trinity University receives a top ranking --- http://www.trinity.edu/Home/usranking.htm

Choose a Date Below for Additions to the Bookmarks File

March 11, 2004 March 1, 2004

February 20, 2004 February 10, 2004

January 31, 2004 January 20, 2004

March 11, 2004

Bob Jensen's New Bookmarks on March 11, 2004
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

This is a great Iraq War News Blog with archives --- http://www.brandonblog.homestead.com/
“... we will not relent until your country is free.” President Bush

Quotes of the Week

I dedicate this edition to my enemies who have helped me so much in my career.
Camilo José Cela

Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.
Charles Frohman

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Paul Valéry

A fruitful conversation springs only from minds absorbed in reinforcing their own confusion.
Emil Cioran

My concern is not to know whether I am great or not, rather whether I am developing as a person with every day that passes.
Eduardo Chillida

I firmly reserve the right to contradict myself.
Paul Claudel

Limited expectations yield only limited results.
Susan Laurson Willig as quoted by Mark Shapiro at http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-03-04-04.htm

To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
Theodore Roosevelt as quoted recently in an email message from Ceil Pillsbury

Especially a neighbor with perpetually barking dogs.
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
Eric Hoffer

Future wars will be fought over the issue of survival (especially with adverse weather) rather than religion, ideology or national honor.
"Key findings of the Pentagon," Guardian, February 22, 2004 --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1153547,00.html

A Woman in Georgia was once sentenced for seven years after taking a chair from the porch of a vacant house.
The Association of Defense Lawyers wrote the following in a lobbying letter --- http://snipurl.com/DefenseLawyers
Note that a $1 million theft may ultimately get you “41-51” months.

The incremental increases in offense levels at the higher end of the consolidated theft and fraud table instituted via the ECP significantly exceed those of their previous separate tables. For example, a $1 million loss in year 2000, even with application of the more than minimal planning offense characteristic, would result in a 30-37 month sentencing range; in contrast, the same offender after the implementation of the ECP loss tables is subject to a 41-51 month range, an approximately 25% increase. Thus, the upward trend will accelerate over the next few years as the sentence increases built into the ECP begin to take effect.
For more of this March 17, 2003 lobbying letter go to http://snipurl.com/DefenseLawyers
Bob Jensen's threads on white collar crime leniency are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#CrimePays

Granted, there are a few parents who support the school's endeavor to provide a rigorous, challenging curriculum. Unfortunately, these parents are few and far between. In over ten years of teaching high school in California, I have encountered two or three such parents. Most parents of high school students, however, appear to believe that their proper role is to defend their children against the school.
Elise Vogler, "Stop Teaching My Kid" --- http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-03-04-04.htm

"Poetry, like love, depends on a kind of recognition. So often with Duffy does the reader say, 'Yes, that's it exactly,' that she could well become the representative poet of the present day."
Sean O'Brien in the Sunday Times
See Carol Ann Duffy's Home Page --- http://www.geocities.com/klf67/duffy.html

That's the bottom line: The war has begun, and the telecom, cable, and related industries may be about to enter the bloodiest battle in their history.
Olga Kharif, Business Week, March 2, 2004 --- http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2004/tc2004032_4116_tc076.htm

Forwarded on March 2, 2004 by Ed Scribner [escribne@NMSU.EDU]

On the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Seuss, it seems fitting to revisit his insight into peer review and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board:

Oh, the jobs people work at!
Out west, near Hawtch-Hawtch,
there’s a Hawtch-Hawtcher Bee-Watcher.
His job is to watch...
is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee.
A bee that is watched will work harder, you see.

Well...he watched and he watched.
But, in spite of his watch,
that bee didn’t work any harder. Not Mawtch.

So somebody said,
“Our old-bee-watching man
just isn’t bee-watching as hard as he can.
He ought to be watched by another Hawtch-Hawtcher!
The thing that we need
is a Bee-Watcher-Watcher!”

WELL...

The Bee-Watcher-Watcher watched the Bee-Watcher.
He didn’t watch well. So another Hawtch-Hawtcher
had to come in as a Watch-Watcher-Watcher!
And today all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch
are watching on Watch-Watcher-Watchering-Watch,
Watch-Watching the Watcher who’s watching the bee.
You’re not a Hawtch-Watcher. You’re lucky, you see!

From: http://spoerlein.iwarp.com/lucky3.html

Reply from Barbara Scofield [scofield_b@UTPB.EDU]

I use the video of Horton Hears a Who in my class in Professional Ethics to talk about accountability and corporate ethical programs. Horton and the Mayor only save Who-ville by getting "a very small, very small shirker named Jo-Jo" to get with the rest of the town and "YOPP." "And their whole world was saved by the Smallest of All!"

Barbara W. Scofield

On the Serious Side
A Must-Read For Updates in Finance, Economics, and the Scandals (tons of links)
Jim Maher's Update on trials, Greenspan on everything!, Much new research, Economy and energy prices climb, and much more!
FinanceProfessor News February 27, 2004 --- http://snipurl.com/Maher022704

March 8, 2004 message from neil glass [neil.glass@get2net.dk]
Note that you can download the first chapter of his book for free. The book may be purchased as an eBook or hard copy.

Dr. Jensen,

I just came across your website and was pleased to find you talk about some of the frauds and other problems I reveal in my latest book. If you had a moment, you might be amused to look at my website only-on-the-net.com where I am trying to attract some attention to my book Rip-Off: The scandalous inside story of the Management Consulting Money Machine.

best wishes

neil glass

The link is http://www.only-on-the-net.com/

Bob Jensen's links to related books on fraud are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#References

Bob Jensen's January-March 2004 Updates on Frauds and the Accounting Scandals --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud033104.htm

On the Lighter Side
Martha Stewart's New Magazine and Her Latest Products --- http://www.justsaywow.com/funpages/view.cfm/2232
Martha's Latest Press Cartoons --- http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/MarthaStewartCONVICTED/main.asp
Bob Jensen's scandal humor --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#Humor

The Tragedy of Jacqueline Saburido

I checked to see if this is a hoax fund raiser. Unfortunately, it appears to be for real. The PowerPoint show should be shown in all driver's education courses and to all persons arrested for drunk driving.

Check out http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/adults/saburido.htm

The above site has a link to download the horrific PowerPoint show.

Auntie Bev sent the pictures to me, and I found the above link by using Google.

A citation guide for Internet sources --- http://www.h-net.org/about/citation/
Note the links under the words “ East Tennessee State University .”

Of course the huge problem is that Internet links get broken quite often. It is very important to give other details such as the name and address of the authors, journal reference specifics, publisher address, etc.

A major problem arises when they are permanently deleted to create storage space on the server for newer items.

A major problem arises when the path to a particular document is changed without providing a new path at the old site.

A major problem, especially in Bob Jensen's Web documents, is that the link may be the same but the content is being continuously updated and otherwise revised.

How Stuff Works!

How Income Taxes Work (including history) --- http://money.howstuffworks.com/income-tax.htm
IRS --- http://www.irs.gov 
Bob Jensen's tax helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation

How Web Pages Work --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page3.htm 
How Internet Infrastructure Works --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm 
Protect yourself with a cookie jar --- http://www.stealthsurfer.biz/ 
Stay Safe Online --- http://www.staysafeonline.info/ 
How Internet citations work --- http://www.h-net.org/about/citation/
Long URL's can be shorted by using SnipURL (this is neat) --- http://snipurl.com/index.php

How Computer Things Work (including buying guides) --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/ 
Bob Jensen's computing bookmarks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm

How E-commerce Works --- http://money.howstuffworks.com/ecommerce.htm 
Bob Jensen's threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce.htm

How government works
FirstGov at http://www.firstgov.com/   
Yahoo Government --- http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/ 
Yahoo Regional --- http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/

How electronic stuff works --- http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/

How mortgage stuff works --- http://money.howstuffworks.com/mortgage.htm 
Bob Jensen's helpers for mortgages are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#mortgages

How Buying a Car Works --- http://money.howstuffworks.com/car-buying.htm 
Bob Jensen helpers for buying real estate and vehicles --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob3.htm#RealEstate

Beyond Martha Stewart
How home stuff works --- http://home.howstuffworks.com/

How health things work --- http://health.howstuffworks.com/ 
How Cholesterol Works --- http://home.howstuffworks.com/cholesterol1.htm

How travel stuff works --- http://travel.howstuffworks.com/ 
How Frequent Flier Programs Work (or don't work) --- http://money.howstuffworks.com/ff-programs.htm 
Bob Jensen's travel helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob3.htm#Travel

How Entertainment Stuff Works --- http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/
Yahoo Entertainment --- http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/ 
Yahoo Recreation and Sports --- http://dir.yahoo.com/Recreation/ 
Bob Jensen's entertainment helpers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#History  .edu

How science stuff works --- http://science.howstuffworks.com/ 
Yahoo Science --- http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/ 
Yahoo Social Science --- http://dir.yahoo.com/Social_Science/ 
Yahoo Science and Culture --- http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/

How education/learning stuff works --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm 
Bob Jensen's threads on learning assessment --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm 
U.S. Department of Education --- http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml

From Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2004, Page 27 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2004/news_web.htm

A Forecast for the Future
www.financialwonder.com
CPAs will want to check out this Web site to find free tools for corporate budgeting and forecasting. Users can build forecasts using the formulas found here for free. They then can use the results on their individual balance sheets or income statements and copy the results directly to their spreadsheets or word processors.
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm

Nix Pop-Up Ads
toolbar.google.com
Web users tired of disruptive automatic ads can get rid of most of them by downloading this Google toolbar to their browsers. In addition to blocking pop-ups, it features an Autofill button, which eliminates the need to retype personal information into e-forms such as those in e-commerce checkouts.

Terms Explained
www.legal-definitions.com
CPAs who need help deciphering “lawyerspeak” can find concise definitions of legal terminology at this e-stop as well as the meaning of general business terms such as bankruptcy.

www.commerce-database.com
Need to know the difference between an act of God and an act of nature? The legal terms section of this online business dictionary defines them as one and the same. The Commerce Database categorizes words into separate business and legal dictionaries: The business one offers categories such as accounting.

www.computer-acronyms.com
This Web site offers visitors short definitions for technical terminology such as, for example, cable modem. Also users can find brief explanations of acronyms for high-speed Internet concepts such as DSL—digital subscriber line.

www.legal-database.com
CPAs interested in legal topics such as bankruptcy, civil rights, employment, labor and tax laws can find various terms explained in the articles section for each category at this Web stop. In addition visitors can register for free monthly newsletters on bankruptcy, employment, family and tax law.

Also see FindLaw --- http://www.findlaw.com/

Also see Legal Information Databases --- http://www.wlu.ca/~wwwlib/subject/legal/databases.html

Bob Jensen's links to glossaries are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm

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

Updated
Bob Jensen's helpers for small businesses and small accounting firms (including expert witness links) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#SmallBusiness

Bob Jensen's Threads on Professional Practice, Fees, Choosing Accountants, Financial Advisors, and Consultants --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fees.htm

Services Offered by Professional Accounting Firms (including how to find them) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fees.htm#ServicesOffered

There is an enormous problem of assuming that students who wrote high evaluations of any course actually learned more than high performing students who hated the course. Happiness and learning are two different things.

Reasons why students often prefer online courses may have little or nothing to do with actual learning. At the University of North Texas where students can sometimes choose between an onsite or an online section of a course, some students just preferred to be able to take a course in their pajamas --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#NorthTexas
Some off-campus students prefer to avoid the hassle and time consumed driving to campus and spending a huge amount of time searching for parking. Some Mexico City students claim that they can save over five hours a day in commuting time, which is time made free for studying (Jim Parnell, Texas A&M, in partnership with Monterrey Tech, deliver an ALN Web MBA Program in Mexico City) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

In general, comparisons of onsite versus online test and grade performance will tend to show "no differences" among good students, because good students learn the material under varying circumstances. Differences are more noteworthy in weaker students or students who tend to drop courses, but there is a huge instructor effect that is difficult to factor out of such studies. For more on this, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Online Learning Styles

Here are a few links of possible interest with regard to student evaluations and online learning styles. In some cases you may have to contact the presenters to get copies of their papers.

Probably the best place to start is with the Journal of Asynchronous Learning --- http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/index.asp

For example, one of the archived articles is entitled “"Identifying Student Attitudes and Learning Styles in Distance Education" in the September 2001 edition --- http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/v5n2/v5n2_valenta.asp

Three opinion types were identified in this study: Students who identified with issues of Time and Structure in Learning, Social Interaction in Learning, and Convenience in Learning. These opinions can be used to aid educators in reaching their students and increasing the effectiveness of their online courses. At UIC, this insight had direct application to the evolution of course materials. Early application of technology merely supplied a web site on which were posted syllabus, readings and assignments. No opportunity existed for conferencing; thus, there existed no opportunity for social learning. In a subsequent semester, conferencing software was made available to the class, in addition to the website. Thus, the opportunity was added for social learning. The faculty learned, however, that every time a new technology was added, it experienced an increase in the level of effort necessary to support the student. Ultimately, the University made available a course management system, which significantly streamlined the effort on the part of faculty to make course materials available to the student. The system provides through a single URL the student's access to course materials, discussion forums, virtual groups and chat, testing, grades, and electronic communication.

This study is qualitative and confined to University of Illinois at Chicago graduate and undergraduate students. The three opinion types identified through this study, however, correlate closely with results reported in the literature. All three groups of students, representing the three opinion types, shared a belief in the importance of being able to work at home. The studies of Richards and Ridley [9] and Hiltz [10] described flexibility and convenience as both reasons students enrolled in online courses and as the perception of students once enrolled. On the other hand, all three groups of students thought unimportant the need to pay home phone bills incurred in online education, whereas Bee [13] found that students felt the university should provide financial assistance to offset the associated costs of going online. There is evidence in the literature (viz., studies by Guernsey [8] and Larson [18]) that support the opinion identified in this study of the need by some students for face-to-face interaction. Since none of the students taking the Q-sort had ever taken an online course, they were unaware of the opportunities provided by technology [8,10] to potentially increase individual attention from instructors above that normal in face-to-face course offerings. Since no post-enrollment Q-sorts were administered, there was no way to tell whether students continued to hold that opinion, or whether that opinion has changed. It is anticipated that even if the Q-set were administered to a larger number of students, similar viewpoints would still emerge.

The authors wondered whether there was an association between the opinion set held by the student and his or her learning style. Preliminary data using the Canfield Learning Styles Inventory [27] show that the factor one group--Time and Structure in Learning--exhibited a much higher than expected proportion of independent learners. (74% of the students who had high factor loadings on factor one were also classified as independent learners. This difference was significant Z = 3.00, p < .025.) One might be tempted to hypothesize a relationship between being an independent learner and having the time and structure opinion of technology and education. Similarly, one might also expect that individuals who had high factor loadings for factor two (Social Factors in Learning) would be more likely classified as social learners. Further research is necessary to understand how learning styles contribute to the experience of online education.

There is a movement in both education and business to harness the power of the World Wide Web to disseminate information. Educators and researchers, aware of this technological paradigm shift, must become invested in understanding the interactions of students and computing. The field of human-computer interface design, as applied to interaction of students in online courses, is ripe for research in the area of building better virtual learning communities (thus addressing the needs of the social learner) without overwhelming the ability of the independent learner to excel on his or her own.

Learning and Teaching Styles (Australia) --- http://library.trinity.wa.edu.au/teaching/styles.htm

Online Learning Styles --- http://www.metamath.com/lsweb/dvclearn.htm

Adapting a Course to Different Learning Styles --- http://www.glue.umd.edu/~jpaol/ASA/

FasTrak Consulting --- http://www.fastrak-consulting.co.uk/tactix/features/lngstyle/style04.htm

VARK Questionnaire --- http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire

Selected professors --- http://online.sfsu.edu/~bjblecha/cai/cais00.htm

JCU Study Skills --- http://www.jcu.edu.au/studying/services/studyskills/learningst/

Cross-Cultural Considerations --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/cultures/culture.htm

"How Do People Learn," Sloan-C Review, February 2004 --- 
http://www.aln.org/publications/view/v3n2/coverv3n2.htm

Like some of the other well known cognitive and affective taxonomies, the Kolb figure illustrates a range of interrelated learning activities and styles beneficial to novices and experts. Designed to emphasize reflection on learners’ experiences, and progressive conceptualization and active experimentation, this kind of environment is congruent with the aim of lifelong learning. Randy Garrison points out that:

From a content perspective, the key is not to inundate students with information. The first responsibility of the teacher or content expert is to identify the central idea and have students reflect upon and share their conceptions. Students need to be hooked on a big idea if learners are to be motivated to be reflective and self-directed in constructing meaning. Inundating learners with information is discouraging and is not consistent with higher order learning . . . Inappropriate assessment and excessive information will seriously undermine reflection and the effectiveness of asynchronous learning.

Reflection on a big question is amplified when it enters collaborative inquiry, as multiple styles and approaches interact to respond to the challenge and create solutions. In How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, John Bransford and colleagues describe a legacy cycle for collaborative inquiry, depicted in a figure by Vanderbilt University researchers (see image, lower left).

Continued in the article

Bob Jensen has some related (oft neglected) comments about learning at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on online learning styles can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#StudentEvaluations

From MIT's Emerging Technologies on March 10, 2004

Productivity's Technology Iceberg
Productivity may be economists' single most important statistic. Productivity determines the ultimate success of companies; it is the source of the wealth of nations; and it is the key to our standard of living. From the 1970s into the 1990s, U.S. labor productivity grew by barely 1.4 percent a year. Many economists thought it would be stuck at that level forever. Fortunately, the growth rate jumped to more than 2.5 percent in 1995 and has averaged more than 4 percent since 2001. MIT productivity expert Erik Brynjolfsson writes that this boom is rooted in a revolution in the way American companies apply information technology. However, he warns, organizations that sit back and wait—assuming that technology alone will quickly or automatically introduce gains—are setting themselves up for failure.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_brynjolfsson031004.asp?trk=nl

Film Promises Terabit Storage
Researchers in China have recorded marks as small as 1.1 nanometers in a single-molecule-thick film of organic material. Such tiny marks could yield a storage medium that packs the equivalent of more than 250 DVDs worth of data into each square centimeter.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/rnb_030204.asp?trk=nl

"Where the Net is Headed in 2004," Alex Salkever, Business Week, December 23, 2004 --- http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2003/tc20031223_1093_tc047.htm

Everyone Guns for Google

Microsoft (MSFT ) has already made it known that it's planning to invest massively to build its own search engine. It has even started hiring key personnel from Overture, among other places. Yahoo! (YHOO ) is doing the same, having snapped up Overture as well key assets of search companies AltaVista and FAST.

However, a new wave of startups is also taking aim at Google -- as well as at Yahoo, the two search leaders (see BW Online, 12/16/03, "Google Here, There, and Everywhere"). Kanoodle provides paid-search placement technology that it claims is better than Google's or Overture's. Groxis, a search tool that works as a desktop application, has just launched with Google clearly in its sights. Vivante, a new entrant aimed at giving surfers better geographically specific search capabilities, is tuning up for battle. And Ask Jeeves has improved up its Teoma search engine to the point where it's a very solid Google competitor.

More competition is on the way as venture capitalists are throwing money at search startups. That's no surprise, considering the eye-popping $15 billion pre-IPO valuation that Google-watchers are placing on the company. Google is a tempting target, and it'll draw an increasing number of competitors in the coming year.

Your Cable Company Is Your Phone Company

The Baby Bells that provide local phone service to most of America are in a nasty fix. They rely on old-style phone technology for the majority of their revenues. Yet Americans will begin cutting that local cord in droves in 2004. Instead, they'll opt for wireless phones or Internet-based calling (known as voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP). Wireless number portability now lets mobile customers take their number from plan to plan, making cell phones far more attractive as a full-time replacement for land lines.

At the same time, VoIP has soared in quality. And a host of cable and big long-distance companies are set to offer it to tens of millions of local customers. To fight back, the Bells are going to have spend big bucks to further upgrade their already outdated DSL broadband networks. To date, they've spent close to the bare minimum to compete with cable.

Now the moment of truth is coming, and if they don't improve their networks enough to deliver, say, a viable video service, they'll be toast. Otherwise, they'll have to somehow support an incredibly expensive legacy network mainly by selling Internet access, a service that's rapidly becoming a near-freebie offering from competitors.

Wi-Fi: Wait Til Next Year

Everyone expects 2004 to be the year that Wi-Fi finally hits the mainstream. Intel (INTC ) is busily building Wi-Fi into every laptop it makes. And announcements of public Wi-Fi hotspot networks are coming fast and furious.

Too bad it's still a technology not quite ready for prime time. Installing Wi-Fi nodes at home remains a big problem because configuration isn't always intuitive, and many people get frustrated with what they thought would be a plug-and-play system. Also, they have concerns about the security of data passing over wireless networks, and setting up even the most basic security isn't as easy as it should be.

What's more, services offering hotspot networks for paying subscribers are still glitchy at best and totally awful at worst. All of these things should improve quickly as phone companies and wireless providers roll out their networks and slowly start to work out the same problems that originally plagued DSL access when it launched in the late 1990s. But if you're expecting 2004 to be the year of Wi-Fi, you'll be in for a disappointment.

The International Digital Divide Shrinks

In December, the U.N. held its first annual Internet Summit in Geneva. The event drew 12,000 attendees from 150 nations. The main goal was to discuss the Net's future governance and how the developed world could help the developing world close the digital divide.

Many delegates had beefs with how the U.S. now dominates Internet governance. Others proposed that the developed world set up funds to assist poorer countries in getting wired. But on the eve of the summit, the International Telecommunications Union released its first World Telecommunication Development Report, which examined Internet access and other communications trends -- and came up with some surprising results.

Most important: that the digital divide in the developing world has been grossly overstated. The study found that Net usage in Lima, Peru, alone actually eclipsed government estimates for usage in the entire country. And in Jamaica, user surveys pegged Net penetration at 23% of the population vs. the government's estimate of 5%. The discrepancies came from the complete lack of real research into this area. Governments had given estimates floated from headquarters with no field studies to back them up.

This points to the rapid disappearance of the digital divide in terms of barebones Internet access. In 2004 as the technologies that provide this access become cheaper and telecom and data transport costs remain very low, an increasing percentage of the world's population will get a chance to at least surf the Web. Much of this will be driven by Internet cafés, a wonderful way to provide cheap access and distribute the costs of the computers and bandwidth.

None of this is to say developed nations shouldn't help erase what remains of divide even more quickly. But it's heartening that the Net's basic qualities have made it also totally adaptable for both the rich and the poor.

And That's Not All...

Of course, loads of other interesting things are in store for the Internet next year. Digital music downloads should hit the mainstream, while America Online (TWX ) hits the skids due to the proliferation of low-cost dial-up Net access. Microsoft will likely struggle with more viruses. True, that's no revelation, but...expect the period between vulnerability revelation and malicious code that attacks it to shrink.

Here's one thing that's certain: The coming year will bring many more changes to the Internet compared to the past few years. That seems inevitable given how many more people will be using it, the key court cases coming down the pike that could affect it, and more capital investments and startups now looking at it as a rejuvenated source of income. Here's hoping that your 2004, both online and off, is a safe and healthy one.

"Leading-Edge Technology Trends," by Peter Cohan, Financial Executive, March/April 2004, Page 70

Since March 2000, a change in the way technology is financed has changed the way it is bought and sold--money for technology is not "free" anymore. With cash scarce, companies are looking to squeeze more performance out of lower IT budgets. Technology vendors that offer cost-cutting tools--like VolP, Linux and outsourcing firms--are taking a growing share of these dwindling budgets. This dynamic will produce the following 12 technology trends through 2004:

Convergence of cable and telecom industry services.

Targeting digital advertising to consumers who are skilled at avoiding it.

Shakeout among medium-sized software companies.

Pressure to squeeze higher performance from lower-cost IT infrastructure.

Chine will continue to emerge as an important market for IT, but it must be approached cautiously.

Spam avoidance as a major venture investment opportunity.

Industry-wide focus on security.

Linux as an emerging standard.

Outsourcing IT will continue.

IT suppliers will learn to sell products that solve real business problems and generate tangible investment returns.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is likely to fall short of the hype.

Wi-Fi growth will continue.

"Whither the Stock Option? by Ira Kay, Financial Executive, March/April 2004, pp. 46-49 --- http://www.fei.org/mag/articles/3-2004_comp.cfm

  While stock options lose more luster as executive motivators, compensation committees face challenges, including selecting other forms of stock incentives.
   During the late 1990s, companies issued billions of dollars worth of stock options to motivate their employees. Those days are likely over, for a variety of reasons, including potential new rules requiring companies to expense them. But getting the best out of executives through other forms of stock incentives - including actual ownership - will no doubt continue, according to a recent study of executive compensation conducted by Watson Wyatt.

   Indeed, stock options' best days may be behind them - not just because they will soon have to be expensed, but because institutional investors are increasingly worried about them. Moreover, there is perennial concern over perceptions of excessive CEO pay and disconnects between pay and performance. Finally, there is the crisis in governance created by corporate accounting standards and a gap between the cost and value of options created when a company's future accounting cost of stock options exceeds their value to employees.

   These factors do not appear to be lessening in importance and have already resulted in a huge drop in the value of options granted to employees. From 2001 to 2002, the value of stock option grants at major companies fell by 29 percent, from $139.6 billion to $99.6 billion.

   When data for 2003 becomes available, it will likely show a further decline of 10 percent to 15 percent from 2002. The magnitude of this drop cannot be overstated: the only other event in the history of executive compensation as important is the sharp increase in executive pay levels that took place during the 1990s. However, the recent bull market has softened this trend, as 2004 values are expected to be up from 2003.

   Some analysts believe that the decline in option value was caused entirely by stock price declines - for example, a company granting one million stock options at $30 in 2001 and one million at $20 in 2002. Other things being equal, their value would have declined by 33 percent, solely due to stock price movement. But this is not what happened. In fact, declines in both stock price and the number of stock options granted are responsible.

   For the average company, the 29 percent total decline in stock options value cited above came about as a result of a 20 percent decline in the average number of stock options granted to all employees, from 7.6 million to 6.1 million, and a 16 percent decline in the average value per option, from $17.25 to $14.50, almost entirely due to stock prices falling.
Options Reflected in Stock Prices

   Consistent with findings in a prior study, investors consider stock option expenses as real expenses, even if reported only in the footnotes. As expected for a bear market year, the relationship was negative: those with the highest option expenses in 2002 had the lowest total returns to shareholders (stock price appreciation plus dividends). Dividing up the 998 major companies in the recent Watson Wyatt study into three groups, the companies with the lowest option expenses - those with a 2002 expense of $266 per employee - had total return of negative 4.3 percent. Those in the highest expense group, with a 2002 expense of $3,997 per employee, had a total return of negative 12.4 percent.
Pay and Performance Linked

   Another important finding is that pay and performance are strongly linked. Analysis shows a strong, positive relationship between company performance and executive compensation levels. For example, companies whose CEOs had higher total pay opportunities from 1998 to 2002, as measured by their total direct compensation over the five years, had higher total returns to shareholders during the period than those with CEOs having lower pay opportunities. The relationship between pay and performance is apparent in other measures as well:

Annual increases in a CEO's total cash compensation are positively related to the company's stock performance.
CEOs of companies that performed below a one-year total return to shareholders median had a decline in actual pay and stock option profits in 2002.
Companies having CEOs with high stock ownership were superior investments compared to those with low ownership. Companies with high CEO ownership realized a three-year median total return of 3.9 percent for their shareholders for the period ending December 2002, while low CEO ownership companies saw a return of negative 3.4 percent on their investment during the period.
Investors are willing to pay a premium for companies where senior management and shareholder interests are aligned.

Stock Option Overhang Declining

   Stock option overhang has continued to grow - despite efforts by a large number of firms to reduce their overhang levels between 2001 and 2002 - primarily from a large reduction in the amount of options being exercised. Stock option overhang is a measure of potential dilution from granted and approved stock option programs (calculated as options granted and outstanding, plus shares that remain to be granted, expressed as a percentage of total shares outstanding). The average stock option overhang increased one-half percentage point over the average of the same time last year - from 15.6 percent in 2001 to 16.1 percent in 2002 for companies with December 2002 year-ends.

   However, there is strong evidence of a decline in the growth rate of overhang during this same period. Between 1997 and 1999, overhang levels increased at an annual rate of 11.8 percent, while growth slowed to 7.9 percent between 1999 and 2002. Moreover, the earlier growth occurred as a result of larger option grants and more extensive programs covering more employees during a bull market. The current increase can be attributed to fewer options being exercised as they are increasingly out of the money (worth more than the current price of the stock), due to declining share prices without an offsetting decline in new share authorizations.

   There are substantial differences in overhang levels by industry (see Figure 2). Technology and health care firms have consistently exhibited higher overhang levels than other industries, while utilities have exhibited the lowest levels of overhang. This is consistent with economic theory, which predicts that stock-based incentive compensation is more important in industries with a high share of value derived from intellectual property.

   The study also found that firms with higher overhang levels have more options outstanding and higher run rates (a measure of shares granted annually to employees, which are calculated as options granted and expressed as a percentage of total shares outstanding).

Continued in the article

Bob Jensen's threads on stock options are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory/sfas123/jensen01.htm

"Equity Compensation: The Future Is Now," by Blair N. Jones and Jesse Purewal, Financial Executive, March/April 2004 --- http://www.fei.org/mag/Exclusives/3-04.cfm

In lieu of simply replacing stock options with the next 'big thing,' two consultants say companies have an opportunity to strategically rethink their approach to equity compensation.

Although the spate of corporate scandals and accompanying backlash on stock options are seemingly starting to recede, changes resulting from these events are just now taking hold as the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) moves ahead with issuing new rulings on stock option accounting.
A number of high-profile companies as diverse as Microsoft Corp., Kraft Foods Inc., Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. and Amazon.com Inc. have replaced at least some stock option grants with restricted stock. Dilution caused by large stock option grants, the egregious behavior of a few executives who allowed short-term stock price to serve as the hallmark of success and tighter corporate governance requirements for shareholder votes (loss of the broker vote), have made new equity authorizations less of a sure thing.
The implication of these events is that board compensation committees and management teams have had to start with a clean slate when designing long-term incentive strategies. But, therein lies an opportunity: Rather than simply basing changes and adjustments to equity plans on accounting considerations and stock performance, companies now have an chance to strategically rethink their approaches to equity compensation. Which begs the question: Are companies doing so in a thoughtful manner, or simply acting like lemmings by chasing the "next big thing" to replace stock options?
Before answering that question, it is important to consider the changes companies have already begun making to their stock option and other equity incentive programs over the last two years. For the most part, companies have responded to the stock option backlash by making some changes to stock option programs, but not by eliminating stock options altogether. According to a September 2003 survey of 336 publicly traded U.S. companies, conducted by Sibson Consulting and WorldatWork, the prior 18 months had seen companies make changes to the size and mechanics of stock option grants, including vesting, terms and the timing and frequency of grants. These changes have occurred primarily in response to shareholder concerns, accounting scandals and internal concerns about the company's ability to attract, retain and motivate employees. This survey was a follow up to a similar Sibson/WorldatWork survey conducted in March 2002. A comparison of both surveys' findings provides insight into the direction these changes are taking.
Fewer stock options for lower levels. Any discussion of changes to stock option accounting invariably raises concerns that reported earnings will suffer even if there is no change in company performance. Associated with this concern is the warning issued by some opponents of stock option expensing that an accounting change will cause companies to reduce or rescind stock option awards to lower-level employees, thereby hurting certain segments of the workforce more than others. So far, that warning is proving to be prescient. Changes to stock option plans are primarily affecting lower-level employees, according to the both the 2002 and 2003 surveys.
Eligibility for stock options decline at lower levels. While eligibility remains largely unchanged for employees at the professional level and above, employees below that level saw eligibility decline. For example, two thirds of sales staff were eligible for stock options in 2002, but only half were eligible in 2003. Eligibility among nonexempt employees fell from 37 percent in 2002 to 27 percent in 2003. Additionally, the survey found that the value of stock option grants over the 18-month period of March 2002 to September 2003 decreased more for non-exempt employees than for any other group.
Restricted stock on the rise. With stock options losing appeal, companies are looking for alternative equity-based incentive vehicles. Enter restricted stock. More companies use or plan to use restricted stock than any other vehicle to replace or supplement stock options. Approximately 60 percent of companies responding to the survey plan to grant restricted stock by September 2004, and more than 40 percent have already established restricted stock as a component of compensation for at least some employees. (See box at the end, "Restricted Stock: Caveat Emptor," for cautions about this trend.)
Performance counts. Companies are taking steps to tie stock option eligibility more strongly to company performance and evidence of value creation. The survey found that 28 percent of companies now use group, unit or company performance to determine stock option eligibility, compared to 17 percent in the earlier survey.
Stock option effectiveness still a question mark.
Despite changes in programs, companies still struggle to achieve their key goals for stock option plans. A majority of respondents report that their plans are only moderately effective at helping to achieve key objectives such as attracting and retaining talent, focusing employee attention on corporate performance and aligning shareholder and employee interests. Even so, equity is still a compelling benefit to most employees. Sibson Consulting Group's 2003 "Rewards of Work" study, which focused on the attitudes of 1,108 workers about the "deal" between employer and employee, found that one fourth of workers who have not received stock options or grants in the prior 12 months would switch employers for just 40 shares of a $10 stock. Workers who had received stock options or grants in the prior 12 months were a little harder to entice but would still change employers in exchange for 100 shares of the same value.

The future of incentives

To avoid the lemming syndrome, companies need to clearly define design objectives for long-term incentive plans. Few companies can depend on a single incentive vehicle to address all objectives, and simple tweaks to existing stock option plans are likely to be insufficient. A complementary plan or plans that focus on intermediate drivers of shareholder value may be in order.
If a new performance-based plan is to be introduced, financial executives will play a central role in identifying appropriate measures and goals for these plans. Performance measurement is at the heart of good long-term incentive design. Poorly chosen measures, at a minimum, can lead to a sub-optimal plan and, at worst, to significant unintended consequences. Well-chosen measures and goals can enhance organizational focus and lead to superior performance.

Continued in the article

Bob Jensen's threads on stock options are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory/sfas123/jensen01.htm

Beta Gamma Sigma honor society --- http://cba.unomaha.edu/bg/

I’ve been a member of BGS for 40 years, but somehow I’ve managed to overlook B-Zine

From Beta Gamma Sigma BZine Electronic Magazine --- http://cba.unomaha.edu/bg/

CEOs may need to speak up
by Tim Weatherby, Beta Gamma Sigma
As more Fortune 500 companies and their executives are sucked into the current crisis, it may be time for the good guys to put their two cents in. The 2002 Beta Gamma Sigma International Honoree did just that in April.
http://www.betagammasigma.org/news/bzine/august02feature.html

How Tyco's CEO Enriched Himself
by Mark Maremont and Laurie P. Cohen, The Wall Street Journal
The latest story of corporate abuse surrounds the former Tyco CEO. This story provides a vivid example of the abuses that are leading many to question current business practices.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/790996.asp

A Lucrative Life at the Top
by MSNBC.com
Highlights pay and incentive packages of several former corporate executives currently under investigation.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/783953.asp

A To-Do List for Tyco's CEO
by William C. Symonds, BusinessWeek online
The new CEO of Tyco has a tough job ahead of him cleaning up the mess left behind.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_32/b3795050.htm

Implausible Deniability: The SEC Turns Up CEO Heat
by Diane Hess, TheStreet.com
The SEC's edict requires written statements, under oath, from senior officers of the 1,000 largest public companies attesting to the accuracy of their financial statements.
http://www.thestreet.com/markets/taleofthetape/10029865.html

Corporate Reform: Any Idea in a Storm?
by BusinessWeek online
Lawmakers eager to appease voters are trying all kinds of things.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_32/b3795045.htm

Sealing Off the Bermuda Triangle
by Howard Gleckman, BusinessWeek online
Too many corporate tax dollars are disappearing because of headquarters relocations, and Congress looks ready to act.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jun2002/nf20020625_2167.htm

Identity Theft Articles and Links

Is Your Identity Safe?
by Tim Weatherby, Beta Gamma Sigma
How much do you REALLY know about identity theft?
http://www.betagammasigma.org/Feb04article.htm

Welcome to the Federal Trade Commission
U.S. Government site designed to aid consumers.
http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/

Identity Theft and Fraud
U.S. Department of Justice
Helpful tips and information about Identity Theft.
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/idtheft.html

You’ve Got (Stolen) Mail
by Greg Hunter, ABC News
Is your mailbox a lure for identity theft?
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/Business/Mailbox_Identity_Theft_040217-1.html

Identity Crisis
by Sue Cant, Sydney Morning Herald Online
”Stealing an identity or creating a new one is not new but it has become much simpler with a personal computer, scanner and laser printer.”
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/23/1077497503111.html

Identity Theft Worries Consumer Advocates
While businesses and universities can do more to prevent identity theft, federal lawmakers have opened loopholes in some state laws that previously didn't exist, making it easier for crimes to occur.
by Peter Brownfeld, FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,110923,00.html

Businesses appeal date identity-theft law goes into effect
Citing higher-than-expected upgrade costs, businessmen asked legislators to approve a bill that would give them more time to comply with a state law designed to curb identity theft.
by Elbert Aull, MaineToday.com
http://www.centralmaine.com/news/local/439761.shtml

Bob Jensen's threads on identity theft are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#IdentityTheft

Have a Nice Day

By 2007 violent storms smash coastal barriers rendering large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable. Cities like The Hague are abandoned. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento river area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south.
· Between 2010 and 2020 Europe is hardest hit by climatic change with an average annual temperature drop of 6F. Climate in Britain becomes colder and drier as weather patterns begin to resemble Siberia.
· Deaths from war and famine run into the millions until the planet's population is reduced by such an extent the Earth can cope.
· Riots and internal conflict tear apart India, South Africa and Indonesia.
· Access to water becomes a major battleground. The Nile, Danube and Amazon are all mentioned as being high risk.
· A 'significant drop' in the planet's ability to sustain its present population will become apparent over the next 20 years.
· Rich areas like the US and Europe would become 'virtual fortresses' to prevent millions of migrants from entering after being forced from land drowned by sea-level rise or no longer able to grow crops. Waves of boatpeople pose significant problems.
· Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt and North Korea. Israel, China, India and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb.
· By 2010 the US and Europe will experience a third more days with peak temperatures above 90F. Climate becomes an 'economic nuisance' as storms, droughts and hot spells create havoc for farmers.
· More than 400m people in subtropical regions at grave risk.
· Europe will face huge internal struggles as it copes with massive numbers of migrants washing up on its shores. Immigrants from Scandinavia seek warmer climes to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa.
· Mega-droughts affect the world's major breadbaskets, including America's Midwest, where strong winds bring soil loss.

· China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which contaminates the inland water supplies.

Special report
Climate change

Graphics
CO2 emissions
The world in the 2050s
The greenhouse effect

Interactive
Guide to drilling for oil in the Arctic
Calculate your personal carbon count

Key resources
The Kyoto protocol
Bjorn Lomborg: Are we doing the right thing?

Useful links
UN framework convention on climate change
Greenpeace
Friends of the earth

March 10, 2004 reply from Aaron Delwiche

Scary, isn't it? Check out this trailer for an exaggerated view of these predictions.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/dayaftertomorrow/

Aaron

Aaron Delwiche, Ph.D.
Department of Communication
Trinity University
e-mail: aaron.delwiche@trinity.edu

March 8, 2004 message from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]

So-called "environmental accounting" seems to have faded from glory, but I can't help but wonder what impact the following NASA findings may have in the long run:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/05mar_arctic.htm

Some speculate that your property on the French Riviera may shortly look like Bob's New England retreat in January.

I'm still dismayed that no one has looked at the effect of "pavement" on the global climate. Anyone who has walked across a Florida (or Texas) parking lot in July, and then gone into the adjacent woods, can't help but wonder whether the "pavement quotient" is outstripping the "greenhouse gasses" effect in terms of warming things up. And then there are those maddening wastemongers who drive those huge gas-guzzling SUV's, which require not only more gas, but more pavement! (There was a local petition in our paper to enlarge parking spaces to accommodate the larger vehicles!)

I'm going to spend my fall semester in Antwerp, Belgium. The preliminary orientation meetings have been eye-openers in terms of recognizing the wasteful practices of American culture. It's a wonder that the Europeans are still speaking to us. And if the NASA report is true ...

(Of course, I've always taken these reports with a couple of grains of salt... is anybody on this list old enough to remember the "Club of Rome" and their book "The Limits to Growth"? giggle giggle...)

David R. Fordham
PBGH Faculty Fellow
James Madison University

Marketing and Purchasing
ClickZ's Search Engine Watch released its annual list of outstanding Web search services for 2003. Your favorites are among them, but there were also surprises and controversial predictions for the coming year --- http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3319991

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

Bob Jensen's bookmarks for marketing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#Marketing

SCO Group filed lawsuits against DaimlerChrysler and AutoZone, broadening its legal attack on Linux to users of the popular operating system.

SCO Refutes Allegation That Microsoft Is Funding Suits
A leaked E-mail appeared to provide evidence that SCO Group and aconsultant were looking to Microsoft to fund SCO's legal strategy and licensing initiatives. http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/efeF0BcUEY0Gly0CPKx0AU

"SCO Broadens Its Attack on Linux," by David Bank, The Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107832489299545323,00.html?mod=technology%5Fmain%5Fwhats%5Fnews

Suits Against AutoZone,
DaimlerChrysler Claim
Breach of Rights on Unix

SCO Group Inc. filed lawsuits against auto maker DaimlerChrysler AG and auto-parts retailer AutoZone Inc., broadening its legal attack on Linux to users of the popular operating system.

SCO, a software company based in Lindon, Utah, claims copyright ownership over the older Unix operating system, and contends that part of Linux violates those copyrights. The company already is in litigation with Linux vendors International Business Machines Corp. and Novell Inc., and said the new actions were the first of many against corporations that use the open-source software.

Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive, said he was taking a page from the playbook of the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed more than 1,000 lawsuits against computer users it claims illegally distributed music over the Internet. In a conference call, he said those suits highlighted the legal risks facing those computer users. "We believe that the legal actions we have taken and will continue to take will have a similar impact on end users of Unix and Linux," he said.

The suit against Germany's DaimlerChrysler, filed in a Michigan state court, involves software license agreements that SCO says the auto maker signed for using Unix. In December, SCO sent DaimlerChrysler a letter demanding that it certify compliance with the license, including restrictions on the transfer of the underlying source code to Unix. SCO's suit doesn't allege such a transfer from Unix to Linux, but said DaimlerChrysler's failure to respond implies violations of the terms of the licenses.

Continued in the article

Congress is considering a bill that would allow companies to copyright databases and 
other sets of information. Critics say the bill would circumvent the core of copyright 
law, which says no one can own a fact --- 
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,62500,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html

And to think that I moved from the south up to the northern mountains in anticipation of global warming. (Sigh!)

March 8, 2004 message from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]

-----Original Message-----
From: Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU] On Behalf Of David R. Fordham
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 8:48 AM
To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU Subject: Hot and Cold...

So-called "environmental accounting" seems to have faded from glory, but I can't help but wonder what impact the following NASA findings may have in the long run:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/05mar_arctic.htm

Some speculate that your property on the French Riviera may shortly look like Bob's New England retreat in January.

I'm still dismayed that no one has looked at the effect of "pavement" on the global climate. Anyone who has walked across a Florida (or Texas) parking lot in July, and then gone into the adjacent woods, can't help but wonder whether the "pavement quotient" is outstripping the "greenhouse gasses" effect in terms of warming things up. And then there are those maddening wastemongers who drive those huge gas-guzzling SUV's, which require not only more gas, but more pavement! (There was a local petition in our paper to enlarge parking spaces to accommodate the larger vehicles!)

I'm going to spend my fall semester in Antwerp, Belgium. The preliminary orientation meetings have been eye-openers in terms of recognizing the wasteful practices of American culture. It's a wonder that the Europeans are still speaking to us. And if the NASA report is true ...

(Of course, I've always taken these reports with a couple of grains of salt... is anybody on this list old enough to remember the "Club of Rome" and their book "The Limits to Growth"? giggle giggle...)

David R. Fordham
PBGH Faculty Fellow
James Madison University

"Teachers fight against Internet plagiarism," by Kimberly Chase, The Christian Science Monitor,
March 2, 2004 --- http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0302/p12s01-legn.html

On www.research-assistance.com , for example, students can browse an alphabetical list 
of categories - Cuba, evolution, or racism, just to name a few - to find the paper of 
their choice. For $136, a frantic high school or college student can download a 19-page 
paper on "Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt." It can be faxed for $9.50 or delivered 
overnight for $15.

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

Walt presents his first annual buyer's guide to digital cameras. It's a quick road map 
to the most important features to look for when buying a digital camera, and to the 
terminology sales people and "experts" are likely to hurl at you.

I recommend printing this article if and when you go shopping for a camera!

"Missed Moments: Pitfalls of Buying A Digital Camera," by Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107827125013744724,00.html?mod=gadgets_lead_story_col

Like all high-tech products, digital cameras are described by a dense jargon of techno-babble, designed in part to confuse civilians and separate them from their money. As the cameras have soared in popularity, this terminology problem has actually grown worse.

So here's our first annual buyer's guide to digital cameras. It's a quick road map to the most important features to look for when buying a digital camera, and to the terminology sales people and "experts" are likely to hurl at you.

This guide is meant for average, casual photographers. If you are a photo hobbyist or enthusiast, you will likely want to consider many more features than these, and you may want to focus more on such traditional photographic issues as lenses and optics. This guide mainly focuses on the cameras' basic digital characteristics.
Continued in the article

Honey, They Shrunk the Cameras

In tests of the newest crop of mini digital cameras, it turns out that the best pictures came from the camera with both the lowest price and the lowest megapixel rating, writes Walt. Go figure.

"Honey, They Shrunk the Cameras," by Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107706028702331957,00.html?mod=gadgets%5Fprimary%5Fhs%5Flt

In technology, as in the rest of life, numbers don't tell the whole story. When comparing digital cameras, you might expect that the best pictures would come from the most expensive models in any given class, or from the models with the highest megapixel rating -- a measure of maximum picture resolution. But it ain't necessarily so.

In fact, after testing four similar, name-brand digital cameras for this column, it turned out that the best pictures came from the camera with both the lowest price and the lowest megapixel rating. Go figure.

My assistant Katie Boehret and I tested four slim, lightweight digital cameras from Casio, Sony, Konica Minolta and Pentax. These are point-and-shoot models that are designed to be tiny enough to carry around in a pocket, while still capturing high-quality photographs. Each camera measures slightly larger than the size of a credit card and has a 3x optical zoom lens.

Whenever high-tech products get really small, their price tags get bigger, and these cameras are no exception. The least expensive of the four cameras goes for $300, while the most expensive costs a whopping $550.

Each is under an inch thick, but all have plenty of features to keep an amateur photographer happy. All can take short videos as well as still photos, and all have multiple shooting modes and flash settings. Two of our test cameras even boasted the hot new trend in digital cameras -- larger liquid-crystal-display screens that take up most of the camera's back side.

In our tests, I took mostly indoor photos with each camera at a favorite hangout of mine, my local cigar store. Katie snapped outdoor pictures of landscapes, monuments and people while wandering around Washington, D.C.

All four cameras took good pictures, and deciding which did best is necessarily a subjective judgment. But, after comparing similar pictures from the four cameras side by side on a computer screen, Katie and I consistently found the images from the low-end $299 Konica Minolta Dimage Xg to be the best overall.

The fast and easy way to print pictures, but the price at fifty to seventy cents per picture is about double the price for online prints. Newsweek recommended the Olymbus P-10 and the Sony PictureStation DPP-EX50 on Page 65, February 23, 2004. Both models sell for under $200.

PC Magazine reviews these and others --- http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a=112333,00.asp

"Inside the Home of the Future," by Kelly Greene, The Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107712037785532703,00.html?mod=gadgets%5Fprimary%5Fhs%5Flt

Houses that make your coffee, lock your doors and even measure your health are closer than you think

As you pour the detergent into your last load of laundry, you realize the bottle is almost empty. But instead of making a mental note to add it to your grocery list, or running to the kitchen to scribble it down, you simply say out loud, "Remember: Buy laundry detergent." The word "remember" is picked up by a microphone in the wall and triggers a computer to transcribe your words to your to-do list.

It might sound like a sci-fi vision of the future. But it's actually a project called Audio Notes, currently in the works at the Georgia Institute of Technology's 5,000-square-foot Aware Home, a combination house and laboratory in Atlanta where scientists are dreaming up futuristic housing technology.

"I love that shopping list," says Eileen Lange, a 68-year-old retiree from Lithonia, Ga., who toured the house and tried out some of its projects last year.

Researchers and commercial labs around the country are building experimental homes to test technology that could make domestic life easier and extend the independence of older homeowners. Such efforts go beyond so-called universal design, a trend toward building houses with wider doorways, grab bars and adjustable kitchen cabinets that took off in the early 1990s.

"These are lifestyle services empowered by a new generation of technology," says Joseph Coughlin, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AgeLab in Cambridge (web.mit.edu/agelab/research/hnh.html).

In many cases, the mechanics for the gizmos already exist -- mainly wireless sensors, cellphones, broadband access and home computers. What's been missing, and what researchers now are trying to develop, are ways to harness the hardware to run your entire house with little effort or technological savvy -- letting you turn up the heat remotely, anticipating when you want the lights on, or deciding automatically how long your food should cook.

Continued in the article

"European Smart Phone Is Trim and Sharp, But Poor on E-Mail," by Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,personal_technology,00.html

In cellphones, as in so many other things, Europeans are different from Americans. I was reminded of this again last week in France, where I attended the world's biggest cellphone conference and exhibition, an event called the 3GSM World Congress.

What I saw at the show was an impressive display of cellphone features and designs. Many of these advances are unavailable in the U.S., where we have crippled our wireless phone system by failing to adopt a single transmission standard and by handing too much power to slow-moving wireless carriers.

The European cellphone industry is preparing for the widespread rollout later this year of so-called 3G phone networks, which will supposedly operate at broadband speeds. And the carriers and phone makers there were showing off various services they hope to sell over these networks.

At one booth, I was amazed to be able to carry on a perfect real-time video phone call, via a small cellphone, with a woman in Japan. At another, I was able to surf the Web almost as quickly and easily on a cellphone as on a networked PC at home. Numerous companies were showing advanced phones on which you could play games, and take and send photos and videos, at speeds and quality levels far exceeding what's available in the U.S.

Yet there is one aspect of wireless communications that the Europeans and Asians don't do as well as the North Americans -- the melding of a phone, an organizer and serious e-mail capabilities in a small, portable device.

U.S. and Canadian companies have produced two fine high-end smart phones that are also great e-mail devices: the Treo 600, from PalmOne, and the BlackBerry, from Research in Motion. A third combo gadget, the Danger Sidekick sold by T-Mobile, is also an excellent portable e-mail device, but it's too clumsy as a phone.
Continued in the article

"Apple's New Chapter in the Classroom," by Alex Salkever, Business Week, March 3, 2004 --- http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2004/tc2004033_0360_tc056.htm

Despite some some setbacks lately in its education efforts, Apple has been able to keep building market share and excitement

Has Apple (AAPL ) fallen back into a school daze? It sure seems that way from a recent series of bad tidings. The Mac folks just lost a massive one-to-one computing deal for the state of Michigan to tech giant Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ). These state programs, which seek to give every student a laptop and tightly integrate the machines' use into the curriculum, are seen as the holy grail of the now stumbling K-12 education business. And the Michigan contract was the proverbial mother lode. Worth $68 million over four years, it calls for HP to provide laptops to as many as 132,000 middle-school students in the Wolverine State.

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

An Innovative Cookie Jar

The big question is whether Microsoft will adapt to StealthSurfer or introduce a competitive product for Internet Explorer. My guess is no! We may have to install Netscape once again just to keep pesky cookies off the main hard drive.

"Furtive Surfers Find a Way to Keep Their Travels Secret," by Howard Millman, The New York Times, March 4, 2004 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/04/technology/circuits/04quie.html

A new thumb-size U.S.B. drive from a company called StealthSurfer aims to guard your privacy by keeping the records of your Web activity close to the vest. When you plug in the StealthSurfer and use its customized version of the Netscape browser, the device stores the cookies, U.R.L. history, cache files and other traces of your Web browsing that would ordinarily accumulate on your computer's hard drive. When you're done surfing, you unplug the drive and take the records of your travels with you.

StealthSurfer's name is a bit of an overstatement. It does keep your Web-hopping and file-sharing activities away from prying eyes after the fact. But since it uses your computer's Internet connection, the Web sites you visit can still track your Internet protocol address as you move around online.

The StealthSurfer comes in four capacities, ranging from 64 megabytes ($70) to 512 megabytes ($299). You may experience a slight reduction in performance when you use the device because its flash memory writes data at slower speeds than a full-size hard drive does.

On the other hand, installation is a breeze - computers running Windows Me, 2000 and XP recognize the StealthSurfer as a drive when it is plugged in. (If you're running Windows 98, you must download a driver

The StealthSurfer home page is at http://www.stealthsurfer.biz/
Don't you hate it now that some businesses now use biz instead of com in their URLs?

Bob Jensen's threads on computer security are under "Security" (in the S-Terms) at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm
Also look under the C-Terms for "Cookies."

Training magazine conducts extensive research for the Top 100 through a multi-tiered nomination, application and interview process. In many cases, companies are nominated by vendors, while others respond to mass mailings and marketing initiatives targeted at Training magazine's 45,000-plus circulation base. Companies who wish to be ranked answer a detailed questionnaire providing both quantitative and qualitative data. Training magazine's editorial staff evaluates the information provided and conducts follow-up interviews, where appropriate, on the many qualitative questions.
http://www.trainingmag.com/training/reports_analysis/top100/2004/rankings.jsp

The Top 10 are as follows:

1. International Business Machines (IBM)
2. Pfizer, Inc.
3. Sprint Corp.
4. Booz Allen Hamilton
5. KLA-Tencor Corp.
6. Deloitte & Touche (Deloitte), US, LLP
7. AT&T
8. Ernst & Young, LLP
9. Lockheed Martin Corp.
10. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., LLC

Others in the list are as follows:

58. PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP

95. Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division
96. Continental Airlines
97. Ho-Chunk Casino
98. United States Postal Service
99. CDW Corp.
100. Advanced Micro Devices

For some reason, the AccountingWeb failed to even mention the fact that Deloitte & Touche was in the Top 10 at a slightly higher rank than Ernst & Young. No mention was also made that PwC was in the Top 100.
"E&Y Named Outstanding Training Organization Third Straight Year." AccountingWeb, March 5, 2004 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=98818

Hi Deborah,

The AICPA has some standardized achievement tests at http://www.aicpa-eca.org/

You might be interested in the broader spectrum of the AICPA's resources for educators at http://www.aicpa.org/members/div/career/edu/index.htm

Also see http://www.troyst.edu/sacs/selfstudyreport/chapter3.doc

Trinity University does not require uniform examinations at any level of the program. In many ways standardized examinations are dysfunctional in that they encourage faculty to "teach to the tests" rather than teach to educate. We consider our main goal to be one of teaching students how to learn rather than filling them with facts to be memorized.

The closest thing we come to standardized assessment is the performance of our students on the CPA examination. Trinity's success in this regard is generally at or near the top for the State of Texas. However, we don't take full credit since most of our students take coaching courses such as the Becker program of courses before they sit for the examination. Our success probably lies more with the quality of students coming into our program than our teaching toward the CPA examination.

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message-----
From: XXXXX
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 12:05 PM
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: Senior Accounting Exam

Hi Bob,

I posted this question on the listserv, and I particularly wanted to get your feedback on this question. You do so very much in accounting education and you know a lot about the various accounting programs across the country.

Do you know if there is a standardized exam available to assess fourth year accounting majors? How does Trinity University assess its graduating accounting seniors?

Thanks for the help!

Deborah XXXXX

December 12, 2003 message from Tracey Sutherland [return@aaahq.org]

THE EDUCATIONAL COMPETENCY ASSESSMENT (ECA) WEB SITE IS LIVE! http://www.aicpa-eca.org

Lanny Arvan's "dialogic approach" to Teaching and Learning. I think Amy Dunbar has been using this approach for some time but just did not have a clever name for it --- http://www.sba.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/genesis_of_an_online_course.pdf

Lanny Arvan is a veteran distance education economics professor at the University of Illinois. I wrote about him some years back when he was engaged in one of the most intensive control group experimentation of performance and communication differences between live (traditional) classes versus distance education classes taught by the same instructor. He was one of the leaders in this expensive SCALE project funded by the Sloan Foundation and the University of Illinois --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois

You can also read about and listen to Dan Stone's evaluation of the SCALE experiment at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm#2000

The SCALE program focused on 30 courses from various departments (science, humanities, social sciences, economics, etc.) over multiple years in which communication and performance was compared for full-time resident students partitioned into sections that had a traditional onsite course versus an online course from the same instructor in each course. Lanny taught an intermediate microeconomics course and helped supervise the entire SCALE program. He experimented over the years with how to best handle distance education and achieved some amazing success with what he learned.

The University of North Texas followed the University of Illinois in allowing for selected courses to be taken by full-time resident students either online or onsite in a traditional classroom --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#NorthTexas

Lanny just came out with a short overview about what he discovered in his own "dialogic approach" experience (although this article does not delve into the amazing results of the SCALE program itself).

"eLearning Dialogue: Dialogic Learning Objects: Inviting the Student Into the Instructional Process," by Lanny Arvan, Syllabus News --- http://www.syllabus.com/news_article.asp?id=8949&typeid=155

Arvan argues that properly employed, course management systems can change the model for teaching and learning in ways that engage students more and increase their learning. He offers the "dialogic approach" to using a question-answer-feedback cycle to accomplish this and provides sample files for reader experimentation.

Viewed from the vantage of the student, the typical instructor uses a course management system as a publicly accessible file drawer and little more. We know from the literature (Faculty Use of Course Management Systems; Morgan, 2003), and Student Satisfaction and Perceived Learning via a Course Management System; Bielema, 2002) that the main CMS use is posting lecture notes and the syllabus. Perhaps this offers convenience over distributing notes through the copy shop, but does it have a fundamental effect on learning? How can we get beyond the "lecture note phase" and have instructors produce sites with interactivity, where there is an overt benefit to the learner, where the online part of the course complements the face-to-face part, and vice versa?

On most campuses, there are some exceptional course Web sites that are well regarded by the students and faculty alike. Nonetheless, the earlier adopter faculty who produce these well-done sites don't have the broad coattails that might help change overall campus behavior (Interesting Practices and Best Systems in Faculty Engagement and Support; Hagner, 2000). Many instructors who are not doing innovative online course development feel overburdened. A common concern, especially among those who have been teaching the same course for some time, is that what they are doing is stale. Their reading lists are not current, their assignments need to be redone (the fraternities and sororities have on file papers that received high marks on these assignments) and their own enthusiasm for teaching has waned as a consequence; it is hard for them to be straight-faced with the students when they are not proud of the content they teach. They see the need to re-invest in their course, but where do they find the time?

It seems incumbent on those of us who support educational technology to make the teaching and learning benefits more obvious to the typical instructor, and then help them to deliver those benefits, regardless of their aptitude for designing Web pages. One important benefit is the ability to co-mingle presentation, absorption of content, and assessment of student comprehension, moving from the traditional pedagogy toward something that is closer to the way people actually learn.

One promising approach is to model instruction as question-response rather than lecture, a challenging idea for a large course but ideally suited to CMS delivery. On my campus, where there has been extensive reliance on sophisticated quiz software (which allows the students to repeat the quiz until correct) we have found that students often go directly to the quizzes and only seek out the presentation material as needed to complete the quiz. A well-designed quiz encourages the student to absorb the material in the process of completion. A poorly designed quiz, on the contrary, allows the student to mechanically get the right answers while remaining puzzled why the responses were correct or how they were related to the course learning objectives. The framing of the questions as well as the associated response and sequencing of the dialog are critical to learning.

Imagine that instead of lecture notes, instructors delivered "content surveys" where similar to the TV show Jeopardy, every few paragraphs a special text insert appeared "in the form of a question." This would require a written response from the students, then more instructor content followed by additional questions. The effect is to move from a discursive to a dialogic approach to learning.

For these exercises to have meaning to the students, their responses must be reviewed. Conceivably, the instructor could critique these individually. Yet that would entail substantial effort. An ensemble critique done in class places more modest demands on the instructor's time and should make the live class relevant for the students, since the focus will be on their work. What insights did the responses show? Where did students react in a way the instructor didn't anticipate? Were there patterns or commonalities among student errors? Can those errors be used to help steer the discussion "on course?"

After a few experiences with these content surveys, students will become comfortable with the format. At this point the instructor can "go meta." Instead of assigning a term paper, have the students design their own content survey. On campuses that have the third-party quiz software, Respondus (which works with Blackboard, eCollege, and WebCT), the technical part of making the survey is easy to manage. Students can submit Respondus files and the instructor can upload them into their course site so that other students might take the student created survey. (On campuses without Respondus, this can be done with the students submitting text documents as long as the instructor is willing to do some cutting and pasting to make the surveys.) The hard part is designing and researching the survey, selecting the right topic, and creating a presentation that is compelling and illustrates the key points. Whereas students often view term papers as drudgework unconnected to the rest of the course, here the motivation for the student should be much greater because their work will be viewed and utilized by other students. This is a powerful way to promote student engagement and interaction.

The fundamental change we are after is to encourage students to become the creators of learning objects and to move the instructor's role from the reluctant author who doesn't have time for the task to the enthusiastic mentor whose main job regarding learning objects is choice of topic and coach of the students during the creation stage. If this strategy works and students willingly donate their intellectual property, then we have an organic learning system. Instructors can use the better content surveys made by students in prior semesters to amplify or even substitute for their own creations in subsequent offerings. In this way, the online materials in the course and the topics that are covered grow and are refreshed over time.

Can this really work? Certainly there are places for both the instructor and the students to stumble. It is just as apparent, however, that the benefits from making this approach work are substantial. Students become more engaged in the learning process and faculty exercise their instructional skills in rewarding new ways. With proper faculty training, our course management systems can support this new approach to learning.

Some samples of the approach are available at: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/l-arvan/www/ContentSurveys/

Lanny Arvan --- http://www.economics.uiuc.edu/Faculty_Profiles/arvan.html: Assistant CIO for Educational Technologies; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Champaign, IL; (217) 333-1078; larvan@uiuc.edu

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

From The American Assembly --- http://www.hypermediative-dev1.net/index.php
The Future of the Accounting Profession --- http://snipurl.com/AccountingFuture

What Went Wrong?
As the bubble economy encouraged corporate management to adopt increasingly creative accounting practices to deliver the kind of predictable and robust earnings and revenue growth demanded by investors, governance fell by the wayside. All too often, those whose mandate was to act as a gatekeeper were tempted by misguided compensation policies to forfeit their autonomy and independence. The technology stock bubble of the late 1990s – and the puncturing of that bubble in 2000 – coincided with significant failures in corporate governance.

Preface
On November 13, 2003, fifty-seven men and women, including leaders from the worlds of accounting, finance, law, academia, investment banking, journalism, non-governmental organizations, as well as the current and former regulatory officials from The Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the General Accounting Office (GAO), the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) gathered at the Lansdowne Resort, Leesburg, Virginia, for the 103rd American Assembly entitled “The Future of the Accounting Profession.” Over the course of the Assembly, the distinguished professionals considered three broad areas of the accounting profession: its present state, its desired future state, and how it might reach that future state.

This Assembly project was co-directed by Roderick M. Hills, Partner, Hills & Stern, and former Chairman of the SEC, and Russell E. Palmer, CEO, The Palmer Group, former CEO, Touche Ross & Co. Initiated by the co-directors in fall 2000, this project showed an extraordinary prescience of the material events that subsequently unfolded. The project benefited greatly from the advice and active guidance of an eminent steering committee, whose names and affiliations are listed in the appendix of this report.

There are too many conclusions and recommendations to summarize concisely.

Bob Jensen's other proposed solutions are documented at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm

So they've had a year before they really had to do this. There are two complicated standards—the financial-instrument standards (IAS 32 and 39) — so we've said don't do the comparatives. But basically, we were given the 2005 deadline, so we have to meet it.
Sir David Tweedie

New World Order
Sir David Tweedie explains the relationship between good governance and international accounting standards.

IASB chairman Sir David Tweedie says global accounting standards are within reach.

A CFO Interview, CFO Magazine, http://www.cfo.com/article/1,5309,12320||M|827,00.html

March 01, 2004

Sir David Tweedie is on a quest. The 59-year-old chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is overseeing the development of a single set of international accounting standards for the European Union (EU) by March and intends to converge those standards with U.S. rules.

Can it be done that quickly? It must be, according to Sir David. The engine of capital formation and investment has been stalled long enough by the anachronism of 26 separate European accounting methods, with another in America. Developing a single international system is "not about arcane bookkeeping matters," says the former head of the UK's accounting standards board. "It's really about something much bigger." Indeed, what the IASB is really targeting when it designs an accounting system for the world "is inward investment, growth, employment, and world trade," he says.

The accounting scandals infecting both the New and Old Worlds give convergence more urgency. While Sir David won't blame the Enron and Parmalat fiascos on an absence of international standards, he believes that some frauds would be much harder to pull off. Having a set of standards based on principles, rather than mere rules, might dissuade executives from simply "checking the boxes and not looking at the whole picture."

Sir David's quest, however, has not been uniformly well received. There's been much displeasure among European banks and the French government over the new rules for financial instruments. And the implications for expensing stock options have already met opposition in the States. Meanwhile, critics everywhere charge that without a European enforcement agency on the scale of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the rules will lack teeth. Sir David says that a plan to address enforcement is in the works.

He firmly believes that now is the time for international standards. In January, during a break at an IASB meeting in London, he sat down with CFO deputy editor Lori Calabro and CFO Asia editor Tom Leander to discuss the board's hopes and his vision of a "three-legged-stool" arrangement—rules combined with good corporate governnace and auditing standards—for deterring abuses.

The IASB promised a workable set of standards by March, and the European Commission mandated that all European companies switch to international standards by 2005. How has the process evolved? When we started in the summer of 2001, we inherited 34 standards from our predecessor body [the International Accounting Standards Committee]. Now, of those inherited standards, 30 had been an attempt to get together with the International Organization of Securities Commissions [IOSCO] to produce standards of appropriate quality, so that users could list on any stock exchange worldwide. But 14 of the standards were heavily criticized. Then, only about a month or two after we began, the EU announced this 2005 deadline. So we had a choice. We knew we had to fix these [inherited] standards, if international standards were going to be acceptable to New York and the SEC. But we also had the 2005 deadline. So should we just gradually change them, meaning that anyone coming on board would have to change twice in a matter of a year or two? Or should we have a real blitz on these standards, and really change them? That's what we did. We ended up publishing in November, and we actually changed 17 of the 34—pretty fast for a standard setter in two and a half years.

Are the changes drastic? We've tried to keep the fundamentals as best we could. But we did make changes. And we also produced a standard last year [that covers] what you do the first time you switch to international standards. Broadly speaking, you have to show in 2005 all the assets and liabilities that we require, measured as we require them, with certain cost-benefit allowances. We are not, for example, going to make you undo all business combinations you've done before.

The upgrades were to be completed in enough time for companies to meet the 2005 deadline. Is there any flexibility? None.

None? They've known for ages that it was coming. We've had the standards up on our Website since October. We said here are the 17 we altered. There may be cross-reference differences, which is why we aren't publishing them officially. But all the standards are here. So they've had a year before they really had to do this. There are two complicated standards—the financial-instrument standards—so we've said don't do the comparatives. But basically, we were given the 2005 deadline, so we have to meet it.

Continued in the article

American InterContinental University (AIU) Online--- http://www.aiuniv.edu/

"Al Gore Keynotes AIU Online Graduation Ceremony," Lycos, March 5, 2004 --- http://snipurl.com/LycosGore

Millions of future students will owe a debt of gratitude to those who today are blazing a new trail in online education, said former United States Vice President Al Gore during the online commencement ceremony of American InterContinental University (AIU) Online, one of the nation's fastest-growing universities.

"Even those of us who have promoted and believe in this new technology stand in awe of what you have done," Mr. Gore told the AIU Online graduates and their families and friends during the Web-based event held Saturday, February 28. "You are the ones who have supplied the hard work, the stamina, the dedication, the endurance and the will to succeed that we recognize today."

In addition to Mr. Gore's remarks, a highlight of the online graduation ceremony was the reading of the names of recipients of bachelor's degrees and master's degrees in the curricular programs of Information Technology, Business Administration, Visual Communication and Education. Also announced were the names of students who had earned Honors designations.

Mr. Gore said that with the information revolution replacing the industrial revolution, education is far more important today than at any other point in human history. "America's gross domestic product has tripled in value over the last half-century while the gross tonnage of everything we make and sell actually has declined slightly. That's because materials like steel and wood and rubber and plastic are being replaced by ingenuity, knowledge and the ability to use information in more creative ways.

"The degree you receive today certifies that you have obtained the knowledge and skills to deal with information more effectively than those who lack this credential and who have not gone through the experience that you have just successfully navigated," Mr. Gore said. "But the value of your online education extends beyond opening up new career opportunities for you. It also will enrich life for you and your families."

American InterContinental University is a wholly owned subsidiary of Career Education Corporation (NASDAQ: CECO). CEC operates 78 campuses in the U.S., Canada, France, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates and had approximately 83,200 students as of January 31, 2004. AIU Online is the Web-based virtual campus of American InterContinental University, an international university with onsite campuses located in Atlanta, GA; Los Angeles, CA; Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Houston, TX; London, England; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. American InterContinental University has been educating students for more than 30 years and is regionally accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Bob Jensen's links to this and other distance education alternatives can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm

Pivot Tables Should Be Used More Often

Roberta has a new article on pivot tables.
"Make Exel and Instant Know-It All," by Robert Ann Jones, Journal of Accountancy, March 2004, pp. 40-43 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2004/jones.htm

You’re sitting at your computer working on a spreadsheet that displays revenue generated by individual salespersons. Your CEO, hovering anxiously at your elbow, asks you for one employee’s third-quarter sales total. You sort the Salesperson column and then the Order Date column. Then you write you write a formula to identify third-quarter sales. Finally, you sum the order amounts and give your boss the number he wants. Just as you congratulate yourself for coming up with the answer in less than three minutes, he says, “OK, now compare that with the results of the whole sales team.”

You roll your eyes in frustration, scrap all the work you just did and re-sort the columns and rows and write a new set of formulas.

There has to be a better way, you think.

And there is. Instead of repeatedly sorting columns and rows and customizing formulas to answer each question your boss asks, you take a new tack: Immediately after you initially put the worksheet data together you can spend a minute or two using Excel’s PivotTables, which will let you easily reconfigure the data with a mouse so you can produce near-instant answers to most any question about them.

Continued in the article

Bob Jensen's Excel Tips and Videos (Pivot Tables and Charts)
Did you know that Microsoft Corporation presents some of its financial history in Excel pivot tables? You can download the Excel Workbooks containing pivot tables from "Financial History" at http://www.microsoft.com/msft/tools.htm

I also found a link to the 1999 Microsoft financial reports --- these had much better Pivot tables than the Year 2000 annual reports. Take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/msft/ar99/lts.htm

For extensions into OLAP (including the Microsofts FinWeb), see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm

I prepared a video on how to download and use the Microsoft pivot tables. The video can be downloaded from PivotMicrosoft.rm

I also have a video illustrating how to make a pivot table at PivotTable01.rm

In addition, I provide a video illustrating how to make a pivot chart at PivotChart01.rm

Budgeting with Pivot Tables --- www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=9748&d=47
A tutorial on using Excel pivot tables to create a budget, created by David Carter of Accounting Web

See other videos linked at --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm

March 5, 2004 message from MIT's Technology Review [newsletter.reply@technologyreview.com]

Jenkins: The Christian Media Counterculture
Over the past several decades, culture war rhetoric has served both to estrange evangelical Christians from the American cultural mainstream and to blind liberals to just how many people are consuming Christian media. But many conservative Christians simply want to protect and promote their own cultural traditions in the face of what they see as the onslaught of contemporary media, and they have been quick to embrace new technologies—such as videotape, cable television, low-wattage radio stations, and the Internet—that allow them to route around the gatekeepers of the media establishment. The result, writes columnist Henry Jenkins, has been the creation of a Christian media parallel universe with products that mirror the genre conventions of popular culture but express an alternative set of values.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_jenkins030504.asp?trk=nl

March 5, 2004 message from MIT's Technology Review [newsletter.reply@technologyreview.com]

Webcams and Astronomy
For a dedicated group of amateur astronomers, webcams have become an inexpensive way to perform digital astrophotography.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1304&trk=nl

"Justices Hear Arguments on Internet Pornography Law," by John Schwartz, The New York Times, March 3, 2004 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/politics/03SCOT.html

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday about Internet pornography, one of the most vexing issues at the intersection of technology and First Amendment rights.

Neither side got a free ride from the justices in the discussion of the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 law that makes it illegal for commercial Web sites to make available to children 16 and under material that is not necessarily obscene but could be considered "harmful to minors" under a complex, three-part formula in the law.

Just minutes into his argument, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson was interrupted by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who asked why the government was fighting for new laws when it was not enforcing the old ones. "There are very few prosecutions, and there's all kinds of stuff out there," Justice O'Connor said.

Mr. Olson said the Bush administration was stepping up its prosecution of pornography cases in the online and offline world and had issued 21 indictments in the last two years.

Regulation of Internet pornography is urgently needed, Mr. Olson said, because "it's causing irreparable injury to our most important resource — our children." The materials are "as available to children as a television remote," he said, and turn up when youngsters make the most innocuous searches.

He argued that the world of online pornography was exploding, and said that typing the words "free porn" on a search engine produced 6,230,000 sites. "I did this this weekend," he said. When asked whether all of the sites could be considered obscene, he said, "I didn't have enough time to go through all of those sites," drawing laughs from justices and spectators.

At another point, Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked for specific examples of Web sites that were not pornographic but could run afoul of the law's prohibitions. Justice Breyer said that he looked at examples provided by the American Civil Liberties Union in its legal brief and could not find one that fell that into that middle ground.

Ann Beeson, a lawyer for the civil liberties union, cited examples that included "lesbian and gay pleasure" and "the pleasure of sex outdoors," and the works of a sex columnist, Susie Bright. But the discussion moved on without growing more explicit, and decorum was preserved.

Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act in 1998 after the court struck down its first major effort to restrict pornography in cyberspace, the Communications Decency Act, which Congress passed in 1996. That law, which would have made it a crime to provide "indecent" material to minors online, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1997.

In passing the Child Online Protection Act, Congress was trying to produce a law narrower in scope than its first try, Mr. Olson said. The new law prohibits commercial Web sites from publishing material "harmful to minors" unless the site can show that it has made good faith efforts — requiring a credit card, for example — to keep out all Web surfers younger than 17. Violators could be fined as much as $50,000 and spend six months in jail, with higher penalties for repeat offenders.

The civil liberties union challenged the law in federal court and was joined by a broad coalition of Web sites, booksellers and civil liberties organizations, as well as online stores like Condomania and online publications like Salon, which discuss sex frankly.

The oral arguments on Tuesday were the second time the justices have taken up this law. In a ruling last term, they reversed a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which had declared the law unconstitutional. The appeals court said that the law's reliance on "community standards" would mean, in practice, that the most tolerant communities would still be held to "the decency standards of the most puritanical communities." The Supreme Court said that the lower court should not have declared the law unconstitutional based on a finding of only that single major flaw. The Third Circuit reviewed the case again and, last March, found multiple grounds for declaring the act unconstitutional.

Continued in the article

Ethical Dilemma for Writers: Toot or Not to Toot Your Own Horn

Question
What recently sent a shudder through the writing community?

Answer
"The Amazon Epidemic: Writers Addicted to Rankings," by Sara Nelson, New York Observer, March 5, 2004 --- http://www.observer.com/pages/covers.asp

Most writers have a lot of romantic notions about what will happen to their lives the minute they publish a book. Fame and fortune figures in, of course, and some of the most ambitious dream that soon they’ll quit their days jobs to enjoy the writerly life full-time. But the most common and immediate change upon publication is far less anticipated: From the day their book first lands in stores, most writers will start spending minutes, hours—nay, days, weeks, months and years—tracking its progress on Amazon.com.

Never mind that the online retailer accounts for only about 10 percent of a trade book’s total sales (slightly higher for business books, somewhat lower for children’s). By my count, the reviews and the ranking system on Amazon.com count for about 95 percent of writers’ hopes, anxieties and dreams.

Which is why last month’s glitch on the Canadian version of the site—which for a week revealed the reviewers’ real names—sent a shudder down the collective spine of the writing community. Even if few were as publicly honest as the author John Rechy, who cheerfully admitted to The New York Times that he had praised his own book on the site, many had their own dirty little secrets. I, for one, was suddenly panicked that the world would know that several (though, I must say, far from most) of the positive reviews of my book, So Many Books, So Little Time, were written by people I know. (A further sign of my insanity: When a negative review of the book would appear on the title’s home page, I’d suggest to friends that if someone were to write a positive one, the bad guy’s piece would slip further down—and maybe even eventually off—the home page.) The writer Katherine Russell Rich, for example, told me that when her book, The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancer—and Back, was published in 1999, she was coincidentally seated in a restaurant next to a colleague whom she knew had hated the book; after making uncomfortable pleasantries, Ms. Rich said, the two diners left the restaurant and raced home to Amazon. Ms. Rich wrote a positive review to offset the negative one she knew was coming from her colleague. (Sure enough, both reviews appeared shortly.) Even far more established authors pay attention, if not homage, to Amazon: James Marcus, author of the forthcoming Amazonia, an incisive and funny account of five years working for the Seattle-based company, says that he once came upon a review posted by Paul Theroux, defending his own book, Sir Vidia’s Shadow.

As for the rankings: Don’t get me started. At a publishing party last fall, I met up with a well-known and very successful journalist who kept making trips to the host’s bedroom to check his (and my) book’s status on Publishers Marketplace, one of several sites that allow users to track the movement of many books at once at both Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com. "Do you want to check one more time before you leave?" he asked me as I headed for the door. (It goes without saying that I did.) In the ensuing months, I’ve had dozens of friends and acquaintances comment, unsolicited, on my book’s rise and fall, and one radio interviewer told me he’d decided to invite me on the show because "your Amazon numbers have gotten good again." It doesn’t matter how many times editors and agents tell us that "Amazon doesn’t matter"—authors are addicts, and Amazon is easily as habit-forming and even more accessible than crack. Not to mention, of course, that it’s also free.

Continued in article

An Award Winning PowerPoint Show

I thought some of you might enjoy the PowerPoint show forwarded by Kristin.

I made it available at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/temp/kristin.ppt

March 2, 2004 message from Trinity University's Kristin Oliver

I am attaching a powerpoint file that won first place in the American Psychological Association's Psychology Teachers at Community Colleges (PT@CC) electronic project contest. The presentation depicts differing standards of beauty among diverse cultures. I thought you all would be interested in sharing this with students and/or colleagues.

More information about the award (as well other winners) can be found at the following link:

http://mirror.apa.org/ed/pcue/elprowinners.html

Aloha,

Kristin E. Oliver, Ph.D.
Trinity University Counseling Services
One Trinity Place
San Antonio, TX 78212
koliver@trinity.edu

Wiley Technology Seminars and Helpers

March 1, 2004 message from Mary Kay Woods --- MWoods@wiley.com

The Faculty Resource Network is a peer to peer network of Faculty designed to help support and implement the use of technology in the classroom. These seminars are Accounting specific. If you are interested in an FRN session that has already passed or you would like more information/demonstration on technology such as eGradePlus, you can click on the "Connect with a Faculty Mentor" to set up a one-on-one session.

I've highlighted the upcoming seminars in Red and bolded the dates. To register for a free virtual seminar, please go to www.facultyresourcenetwork.com . Click on "upcoming seminars", then click on the link to the appropriate seminar.

Airline Ticketing Advice

March 3, 2004 Message from Jim McKinney [jim@MCKINNEYCPA.COM]

See the WSJ 2/25/2004 article (note www.sidestep.com which searches Southwest airlines:

Using Connections (the Airport Kind) And Other Tips on Scoring Cheap Fares

It's the question I get asked most often by readers and relatives, especially at this time of year: How do you get the best price for an airline ticket?

Carriers have dozens of different prices for the same seats on the same planes, and they sometimes change those prices several times a day -- all trying to scrape an extra dollar out of your pocket. If airlines ran grocery stores, you'd have to cruise the produce aisle several times just to see if the price of green beans changed.

But there are some excellent tricks to help beat the system. Here are my favorites.

Watch carefully for airline announcements of new routes or flights. When carriers add service, that means a lot of empty seats, at least initially -- and airlines typically offer cheap prices to build traffic.

Looking for new routes or added service isn't as much of a shot in the dark as it sounds: After all, planes generally go places where people want to go. If you want to go to Europe this summer, for example, lots of airlines are adding seasonal capacity and rebuilding trips canceled after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Airlines list new service additions on their Web sites, along with other press releases. (And we run new service announcements in The Wall Street Journal.)

This month, for example, American Airlines said it would add a second daily round-trip between Los Angeles and London starting April 4. Armed with that news, I checked for a weeklong trip leaving March 27 -- before the new flights -- and was quoted $1,503. One week after the new service begins, when American had twice as many seats to sell, the same Saturday-to-Saturday itinerary was 56% lower at $662.

On top of scouring the usual Big Three online ticket-buying Web sites -- Expedia.com2, Travelocity.com3 and Orbitz.com4 -- I add an extra weapon, SideStep.com5. In fact, it's my newest favorite tool. You download SideStep onto your PC, and then when you launch an online search, it pops up asking if you'd like SideStep to try the same search. SideStep searches airline Web sites themselves and lots of other travel vendors you wouldn't normally search, such as discount carriers like Southwest Airlines, that aren't in the big centralized reservation systems. SideStep is only a referral service -- it connects you to the airline or Web site you want.

Sometimes it finds the same prices, sometimes it does better. I searched for New York-Paris fares in early June on Travelocity, and the best price was $797 on Air France. SideStep found a $532 Air France price on onetravel.com.

Online search engines have radically changed the ticket marketplace, of course, giving travelers a lot more power. And while they are still far from perfect, they have a few tricks up their sleeve. Travelocity and Orbitz will show when the lowest prices are available -- handy if your dates are flexible. Orbitz has a "Deal Detector" that lets you register a price you want, then alerts you if it shows up. Travelocity has a "Fare Watcher" function that alerts when prices change on a route. All offer packages of airfare and hotel bookings that can yield savings. And they'll search alternative airports near your destination -- a key money-saver.

But I still recommend searching all three of the main online booking sites because I've found each, at any given moment, may produce a better result. Orbitz, for example, last week listed the best prices for a nonstop Chicago-Zurich trip in June at $1,261 on American Airlines or $1,322 on Swiss. Travelocity and Expedia, in turn, both had a $586 fare on Swiss. Orbitz has its winners, too, and its matrix display gives the most information in the easiest format.

Airfare consultant Bob Harrell says his research shows very little difference -- on average. "Route by route, they can be quite different. They do have different pricing negotiated with different carriers," says Mr. Harrell, president of Harrell Associates in New York.

Connections are usually cheaper than nonstop flights. Struggling to find a good price to Rome, one of the pricier cities for trans-Atlantic airfare? Instead of paying $824 to Alitalia for a nonstop New York-Rome trip leaving June 2 and returning June 9, why not pay Swiss $563 with a connection in Geneva? Some may not like the hassle of a longer trip or the risk of missing a connection. Still, a few hours of extra travel may be worth saving enough to afford an extra day at your destination.

And pay attention to consolidators, either the online variety like Priceline.com, or those that advertise in travel sections. But these days the savings over published fares may be small, and restrictions can be high -- I'm not sure the pain justifies the gain.

Another route: Bestfares.com, a membership club, also offers unpublished fares. Ken Day of Baltimore couldn't find tickets to Rome in June for much less than $1,000 on Travelocity and Orbitz, but nabbed a $750 round-trip on Bestfares.com after paying a $60 annual membership fee. And for many people, a top-notch travel agent who can do repeated searches for you and find good deals can be worth far more than the fee you'll pay for the agent's service.

For ambitious do-it-yourselfers, try building itineraries with discount carriers in Europe. Barcelona is another pricey nonstop European city -- New York-Barcelona is currently $824 in early June on Delta Air Lines. Why not use that $532 Air France fare to Paris, then easyJet to Barcelona? Together you'd save about $150 a ticket. One issue: easyJet flies to Barcelona from Orly Airport in Paris, so you'd have to change airports -- a shuttle bus runs for about $10.

Or just enjoy some time in Paris. What better way to spend your airfare savings?

Bob Jensen's travel helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob3.htm#Travel

AccountAbility Forum --- http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/af/af1.htm

AccountAbility and Greenleaf Publishing are pleased to announce the launch of AccountAbility Forum.

AccountAbility Forum is a quarterly journal dedicated to providing the most up-to-date information on the practice and theory of social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting worldwide. By bringing together contributions from practitioners working in the field, it provides insight through practice, and offers experiences and perspectives in order to demonstrate how accountability drives performance.

AccountAbility Forum provides an essential resource for businesses, NGOs, governments and academia to learn about the most recent and important developments in accountability for sustainable development. Through consultation with AccountAbility’s networks and partnerships, each issue focuses on a current development or trend in the area, and in this way ensures that topics are both timely and relevant.
Issue 1 Spring 2004

Special double issue on
Responsible Competitiveness for Sustainable Economic Development

Contents

Welcome to AccountAbility Forum

Editorial
Peter Raynard

Responsible Competitiveness
John Sabapathy and Simon Zadek, AccountAbility
Read abstract

Corporate Responsibility: Measuring National Competitiveness
Alex MacGillivray, freelance writer
Read abstract

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s Economic Performance Indicators: Measuring Impacts One Stakeholder at a Time
Alyson Slater, Global Reporting Initiative
Read abstract

Walking in Order to Run: Practical Challenges in Measuring Community and Economic Development
John Weiser, Brody•Weiser•Burns, and Steve Rochlin, Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College
Read abstract

Lessons from Under-served Markets
Bill Boler, Business in the Community
Read abstract

Responsible Competitiveness in London
Mike Tuffrey, The Corporate Citizenship Company
Read abstract

SMEs as Engines of Economic Development in Developing Countries: The Importance of SME Clusters and Corporate Responsibility
Kai Bethke, UNIDO, and Peter Raynard, AccountAbility
Read abstract

The Mining Industry and Economic Development in Chile
Soledad Teixidó, Fundación PROhumana
Read abstract

Improving the Development Impacts of Large-scale Mining Projects
Edward Bickham, Anglo American plc
Read abstract

Corporate Responsibility, Multinationals and Government: Fitting the Pieces Together
Eddie Rich, Department for International Development
Read abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility as the New Competitive Edge in Brazil
Ricardo Young, Instituto Ethos
Read abstract

Responsible Competitiveness: An International Perspective
Hugh Pullen, European Commission Directorate-General for Trade
Read abstract

The Sustainable Service Delivery of a Scarce Resource: The Case of Sydney Water
Amanda Steele, Sydney Water
Read abstract

AccountAbility News and Publications

Journal of Corporate Citizenship --- http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/jcc/jcchome.htm

The Journal of Corporate Citizenship (JCC) aims to publish the best ideas integrating the theory and practice of corporate citizenship in a format that is readable, accessible, engaging, interesting and useful for readers in business, consultancy, government, NGOs and academia. This peer-reviewed journal encourages practical, theoretically sound, and (when relevant) empirically rigorous manuscripts that address real-world implications of corporate citizenship in global and local contexts. Topics related to corporate citizenship can include (but are not limited to): corporate responsibility, stakeholder relationships, public policy, sustainability and environment, human and labour rights/issues, governance, accountability and transparency, globalisation, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as multinational firms, ethics, measurement, and specific issues related corporate citizenship, such as diversity, poverty, education, information, trust, supply chain management, and problematic or constructive corporate/human behaviours and practices.

March 2, 2004 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

In "2004: The Turning Point" (UBIQUITY, vol 4, issue 46, January 21- 7,

2004) Stephen Downes makes some predictions based on what he thinks is "driving the hearts of those who will make the final decisions on the future of the Internet, those who use it." He believes that the "deluge of spam" will be addressed in the near future, although not without mass marketers going to court to block anti-spam legislation.

Some other predictions: We will begin to see more personalization of Web browsing environments "so that all a person's essential Web reading (and very little non-essential Web reading) will be available through a single application." We will also see the resurgence of videoconferencing in the form of IP videoconferencing. And learning objects will gain and reach their potential outside traditional education settings. The complete article is available online at http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v4i46_downes.html

Ubiquity is a free, Web-based publication of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), "dedicated to fostering critical analysis and in-depth commentary on issues relating to the nature, constitution, structure, science, engineering, technology, practices, and paradigms of the IT profession." For more information, contact: Ubiquity, email: ubiquity@acm.org; Web: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/ For more information on the ACM, contact: ACM, One Astor Plaza, 1515 Broadway, New York, NY 10036, USA; tel: 800-342-6626 or 212-626-0500; Web: http://www.acm.org/

For more predictions, see "Roundup of Articles Predicting IT Trends," CIT INFOBITS, issue 67, January 2004; http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/bitjan04.html#1

Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm

From Syllabus News on March 2, 2004

Department of Education Funds Study on Education Technology The U.S. Department of Education is undertaking a study to determine the effectiveness of educational technology for learning reading and math and to measure how technology can improve student achievement in those subjects. The $10 million study, to begin during the 2004-05 school year, will be funded by two divisions of the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute of Education Sciences and the Office of Educational Technology.

The study fulfills the president’s education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act, and involves testing the effectiveness of 16 different software products in the areas of early reading, reading comprehension, pre-Algebra, and Algebra. The study will be conducted by Mathematica Policy Research and SRI International, two independent research companies who will assess student achievement gains over three years using a random-assignment study design. Although the study is aimed at K-8 learning, it’s results will be useful in establishing benchmarks for the effectiveness of educational technology overall.
 

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

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

New business Education Discussion Group --- http://www.ssn.flinders.edu.au/commerce/research/Discussion%20forum_files/frame.htm

Trinity University Came a Long Way Under the Leadership of John Brazil and Chuck White

The Princeton Review has ranked Trinity University in the top quarter of the nation’s most technologically advanced colleges and universities. Trinity came in No. 84 of 351 schools listed on America’s Most Connected Campuses. The ranking signifies that Trinity is one of the technology leaders among peer institutions. Read the full story --- http://www.trinity.edu/departments/public_relations/news_releases/connected_campus_award.htm

Forwarded on March 2, 2004 by Neal Hannon [nhannon@COX.NET]

IMA Launches New Research Program!

In a recent survey, members indicated that one of the reasons they join IMA is to keep up with new developments in management accounting that focus on the best tools and methods for planning, control, support, and decision making. As a result of this and other input, IMA is reentering the research arena. IMA is already the premier organization in managerial finance and accounting, but to maintain this leadership position, IMA must not only be on the cutting edge of research - it must create it.

Therefore, IMA's Foundation for Applied Research/Management Accounting Committee (FAR/MAC) invites academics to submit research proposals for consideration. The goal is to create discussion papers, Statements on Management Accounting, and practitioner-oriented articles based on completed research for publication in Strategic Finance magazine and/or Management Accounting Quarterly.

The research program brochure provides complete information about the program's objectives, research topics and proposal guidelines. Please contact James Cooke, Assistant Vice President - Research, for more information about the program at (800) 638-4427, ext. 1526, or via e-mail: jcooke@imanet.org .

Neal J. Hannon, CMA
XBRL Editor, Strategic Finance Magazine
IMA Board of Directors Member
University of Hartford

The IMA home page is at http://www.imanet.org/ima/index.asp

Forwarded by William Consuegra

"10 Colleges with Dorms Like Palaces," The Princeton Review --- http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/college/?article=dorms

Most colleges are notorious for their prison-cell dorm rooms. But a few colleges have dorms like palaces--spectacular views, loads of space, and convenient amenities. The Princeton Review surveyed college students around the country about their campus digs. These ten sport the swankiest dorms.

2004 Rankings

This year's rankings are in! The Princeton Review ranks The Best 351 Colleges. This is just one on the list. Get the full set!

1. Loyola College in Maryland

Welcome to a New Yorker's paradise, a place where "people have walk-in closets so large they debate what kind of room they can convert the closet into" and "even the freshman-year dorms are gigantic." When students tell us that their campus is a truly "positive living environment," their comments reflect not only the quality of the dorms but also the fact that "The school keeps the campus spotless, the flowers are changed regularly, the grass is always green, and every morning they have people who not only clean up any litter but every cigarette butt on the ground."

2. Smith College

Smith College has "a unique housing system...where everyone lives in houses instead of dorms." These houses have "at least one professor serving as House Fellow" who typically "comes to teas, candlelight diners, and altogether make students feel important and valued." Students love the system as well as the houses themselves, which provide "country-club comfort." It's a good thing too, because the housing system plays a major role in Smith's social scene. According to one student, "Life at Smith revolves mainly around the housing system. On average, 80 percent of your friends are in your house."

3. Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr's "unparalleled" dorms serve as an integral part of the college's support network. Here, incoming students are assigned to custom groups, "groups of freshmen separated by dorm and hall, and led by sophomores in order to adjust to the college life together." Also, "Every dorm and every hall is mixed with all four classes, and even in the throes of thesis-writing, seniors are supportive of freshmen." When they grow tired of all the support, students can retreat to their "cavernous" rooms.

4. Scripps College

Scripps's residence halls, in which "almost everyone has a single," are "ridiculously luxurious. We have living rooms with grand pianos and fireplaces in every dorm. Between the residence halls and the good food, my mom thinks I'll never live this well again." One undergrad gushed, "We have the best on-campus housing I have ever seen! I mean, I have a balcony, a walk-in closet, a sink and two windows! I'm in love with my room!" Perhaps best of all, "because the school is all women, the dorm environment is relaxed," so it's easy to get studying done.

5. Agnes Scott College

Scotties enjoy "homey and spacious" dormitories. "Even the worst first-year room beats the best room at Georgia Tech," wrote one undergrad at this all-women's college (she didn't elaborate on how she knew so much about Tech dorm rooms). One student admitted, "Really, we are spoiled with our historic dorms with high ceilings and hardwood floors."

6. Skidmore College

Skidmore housing not only offers "the biggest rooms of any campus I've seen, but our residences also build a sense of community that makes it really easy to meet people when you're a freshman." Student housing is "arranged in suites, so that you don't have to share a bathroom with a lot of people," and "there are pool tables in dorm basements," meaning you needn't brave the chilly Saratoga Springs winter to enjoy a fun study break. On the downside, perhaps, "The dorms are absolutely teeming with bongos and guitars!"

7. Claremont McKenna College

CMC provides hotel-style amenities to its appreciative students. One student explained, "Our rooms are great, and we have cleaning service that takes out our trash cans, dusts our rooms, and stuff." If the school starts placing mints on the pillows and tiny complimentary bottles of shampoo in the bathrooms, it may just top this list next year.

8. Bowdoin College

At Bowdoin, "first years have two-room triples, which are good" but "really feel like they are made for two people." Housing improves as students move up the ranks. Some upperclassmen move to social houses, "converted frats" (Bowdoin did away with its Greek system in 1997) that "provide a place where anyone can socialize with just about all types of students." Residents of the houses "are given budgets by the school to have parties, community service events, art shows, concerts, and annual events such as the school-wide Olympics or softball tournament."

9. Mount Holyoke College

Many of Mount Holyoke's "lovely" dorm rooms "have hardwood floors, huge windows, and high ceilings," and nearly all "are huge and really nice." The accommodations are luxurious enough to move one student to opine that "the dorms are better than most four-star hotels." They're also "usually very quiet and easy to study in," which, given the mountain of work Holyoke women usually face, is definitely a good thing.

10. The George Washington University

GW has "put a lot of money into making the dorms comfortable," and students have responded by telling us that their housing ranks among the nation's best. The school places students in apartment-style dorms. One undergrad bragged, "In my freshman dorm, I have a kitchen and a bathroom that is shared with my three roommates. The college is proving to us they think we're ready for responsibility by granting us this living environment."

Think this list is bunk?

Voice your own opinion on the Discussion Board of The Princeton Review.

Each year, The Princeton Review surveys tens of thousands of college students to get the inside word on what's going on at the nation's top colleges. For more inside information about these schools, go to The Princeton Review's College Rankings.
 

Cooking the Books

March 1, 2004 message from Mike Groomer

Bob,

Do you have any idea about who coined the phrase “Cooking the Books? What is the lineage of these magic words?

Mike

Hi Mike,

The phrase "cooking the books" appears to have a long history. Several friends on the AECM found some interesting facts and legends.

However, there may be a little urban legend in some of this.

I suspect that the phrase may have origins that will never be determined much like double entry bookkeeping itself with unknown origins. And I'm not sure were the term "books" first appeared although I suspect it goes back to when ledgers were bound into "books."

Bob Jensen

March 1 messages from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

-----Original Message-----
From: David Albrecht
Sent: Monday, March 01, 2004 9:56 PM
Subject: Acct 321: Cooking the books

The phrase "Cooking the Books" has been part of our linguistic heritage for over two hundred years. Here is a discussion of the origination of the phrase. Enjoy! Dr. Albrecht

http://www.wordwizard.com/clubhouse/founddiscuss1.asp?Num=3093

Just found another page.

from http://www.wordwizard.com/clubhouse/founddiscuss1.asp?Num=3093

I'm doing a google search. Interesting links so far:

Cost to society of cooking the books - from Brookings Institute http://www.brookings.edu/comm/policybriefs/pb106.htm

Cookie jar accounting - http://www.investorwords.com/1121/cookie_jar_accounting.html

The bubbling corporate ethics scandal and recipes for avoiding future stews. - http://research.moore.sc.edu/Publications/B&EReview/B&E49/Be49_3/cooking.htm

Andersen cartoon - http://www.claybennett.com/pages/andersen.html

Cooking the Books with Mike - http://www.moneytalks.net/book.asp

Cartoons - http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/c/cooking_the_books.asp

Cooking the books, an old recipe - http://www.accountantsworld.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=2&faid=290 --> "No one knows for sure when all the ingredients in the phrase 'cooking the books' were first put together. Shakespeare was the first to refer to "books" as a business ledger (King Lear, Act III, Scene iv, "Keep...thy pen from lenders books"). The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms cites 1636 as the first time the word 'cook' was used to mean falsify (but it didn't also include the word 'books'). Combining 'cook' and 'books' may be a 20th century innovation. Even the origin of "cooking the books" is controversial.

This is all I have time to search,

David Albrecht

March 1, 2004 reply from Roy Regel [Roy.Regel@BUSINESS.UMT.EDU]

A related term is "cookbooking," as used in Gleim's 'Careers in Accounting: How to Study for Success.' Per Gleim ". . .cookbooking is copying from the chapter illustration, step-by-step. Barely more than rote memorization is required to achieve false success. Do not cookbook!"

Isn't English wonderful? :)

Roy Regel

March 1, 2004 reply from Richard C. Sansing [Richard.C.Sansing@DARTMOUTH.EDU]

According to http://www.businessballs.com/clichesorigins.htm , the phrase dates back to the 18th century, to an (unattributed) report that used the phrase "the books have been cooked." The report dealt with the conduct of George Hudson and the accounts of the Eastern Counties Railways.

Richard Sansing

Following up on Richard Sansing's lead, Mike answered his own question --- http://www.businessballs.com/clichesorigins.htm

Bob Jensen

Original Message-----
From: Groomer, S. Michael [mailto:groomer@indiana.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 9:40 AM
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: RE: Acct 321: Cooking the books

Hi Bob,

Yes… very interesting… See below… Thanks for your efforts.

Best regards, Mike

cook the books - falsify business accounts - according to 18th century Brewer, 'cook the books' originally appeared as the past tense 'the books have been cooked' in a report (he didn't name the writer unfortunately) referring to the conduct George Hudson (1700-71), 'the railway king', under whose chairmanship the accounts of Eastern Counties Railways were falsified. Brewer says then (1870) that the term specifically describes the tampering of ledger and other trade books in order to show a balance in favour of the bankrupt. Brewer also says the allusion is to preparing meat for the table. These days the term has a wider meaning, extending to any kind of creative accounting. Historical records bear this out, and date the first recorded use quite accurately: Hudson made a fortune speculating in railway shares, and then in 1845, which began the period 1845-47 known as 'railway mania' in Britain, he was exposed as a fraudster and sent to jail. Other cliche references suggest earlier usage, even 17th century, but there appears to be no real evidence of this. There is an argument for Brewer being generally pretty reliable when it comes to first recorded/published use, because simply he lived far closer to the date of origin than reference writers of today. If you read Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable you'll see it does have an extremely credible and prudent style. The word 'book' incidentally comes from old German 'buche' for beech wood, the bark of which was used in Europe before paper became readily available. The verb 'cook' is from Latin 'coquere'

Bill Gates announced a detailed vision on how technology can be used to help end spam. Microsoft "believes that system-wide changes to the e-mail infrastructure are needed to provide greater certainty about the origin of an e-mail message and to enable legitimate senders to more clearly distinguish themselves from spammers." http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/feb04/02-24RSAAntiSpamTechVisionPR.asp.

These Would Be Hilarious If They Were Not True
Selected samplings are shown below. Go to Easterbrook's article for the rest of the absurdities.

"Everyone was completely wrong about everything! by Gregg Easterbrook, NFL.com --- http://www.nfl.com/nflnetwork/story/7075491

When It Absolutely, Positively Has to Get There Eventually

According to the Wall Street Journal, studies find that the United States Postal Service's Priority Mail, priced at $3.85 for a letter, is slower than standard first-class mail, priced at 37 cents. Only 65 percent of Priority Mail is delivered within three business days, versus 81 percent for standard first class.

When It Absolutely, Positively Has to Move About 150 Feet

If you FedEx a letter from one place in your city to another part of the same city, the letter is first flown to Memphis, Tenn., to be sorted, then flown back to your city. Today a letter can be picked up, transported to a distant location, transported back and delivered a few blocks away the next day for $12. Only in America!

To TMQ, this reached the height of absurdity the other day when I received a FedEx from another company located in my building. Someone had made out an address label not realizing my address was identical to their address; FedEx had picked it up without the courier noticing. The parcel had been flown from Washington, D.C. to Memphis, sorted, flown back and delivered to the same building where it originated. All for only $12!

NFL Coaches Join the Pass-Wacky Party

Australia has barred the use of "contrived names" for political parties. Among the names rejected by election officials were the Stupid Party; the Deadly Serious Party; the Party-Party-Party Party and the Sun-Ripened Tomato Party. The last sounds pretty legitimate to TMQ, though you can't tell which side of the sun-ripened tomato controversy they are on.

Over in New Zealand, you might want to join the United Future Party. Mega-babe Sharee Adams, Miss Universe of New Zealand, ran for parliament as a United Future candidate --- http://www.missuniverse.com/delegates/2003/country/NZ.html

Equal-Time Beefcake

Reader Anna Carol Dilger from Purdue University suggests this site with pin-up quality views of classic Hollywood swoon stars. --- http://www.wonderbred.com/beefcake/

For more go to http://www.nfl.com/nflnetwork/story/7075491

Knowledge Wants to Be Openly Shared: One Day We Will Beat the Selfishness Out of Academe
"DSpace partners led by MIT have bet the farm." (See Below)

Why do some leading universities openly share knowledge while a few other leading universities go so far as to claim property rights over the notes students take in courses? Why do some share instructor course notes, software, and research papers without charge whereas others charge for every word written by a faculty member?

My really good friends in the Computer Science Department invited me to dinner on March 2 with our Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Hal Abelson from MIT --- http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/%7Ehal/hal.html
The following are more-or-less footnotes to the above home page (note the free video lectures):

Everyone interested in university education should read Edwin Land's 1957 speech Generation of Greatness.

An on-line version of Structure and Interpreration of Computer Programs, and also a complete series of video lectures, made in 1986, of Gerry Sussman and me teaching the course.

Some old phonograph records

Microsoft's first explicit anti-GNU/Linux ad, which appeared in the October 23, 2000, issue of the German language magazine c't.

Trinity University was fortunate to be one of eight universities on this year's schedule for Professor Abelson --- http://www.pbk.org/advocacy/visitscholar/abelson.htm#schedule

Hal Abelson is professor of electrical engineering and computer science and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is winner of several teaching awards, including the IEEE's Booth Education Award, cited for his contributions to the teaching of undergraduate computer science. His research at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory focuses on "amorphous computing," an effort to create programming technologies that can harness the power of the new computing substrates emerging from advances in microfabrication and molecular biology. He is also engaged in the interaction of law, policy, and technology as they relate to societal tensions sparked by the growth of the Internet, and is active in projects at MIT and elsewhere to help bolster our intellectual commons.

A founding director of the Free Software Foundation and of Creative Commons, he serves as a consultant to Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. He is co-director of the MIT-Microsoft Research Alliance in educational technology and co-head of MIT's Council on Educational Technology.

Professor Abelson is one of the founding fathers of the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI/OCW) and DSpace knowledge sharing databases that are probably the leading programs for free and open sharing of knowledge and education materials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

He is also the Director of Public Knowledge --- http://www.publicknowledge.org/

OKI and DSpace

The OCW (Open Courseware) announcement, almost three years ago, was open for easy inference. MIT officials insisted that the university was not offering online courses to students; rather, MIT faculty were putting their course materials—syllabi and supporting resources—on the Web for others to use. In other words, one could see the syllabus and review some of the course materials, but not take the class. And not just a few classes. OCW’s announced goal is to make the complete MIT curriculum—everything in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum, across all fields, totalling some 2000 courses—available over the next few years. Speaking at the November 2003 EDUCAUSE Conference, Anne Margulies, executive director of the OCW project, announced that MIT has made significant progress towards this goal: as of fall 2003, the resources for some 500 MIT courses had been posted on the Web.
Kenneth C. Green, "Curricular Reform, Conspiracy, and Philanthropy," Syllabus, January 2004, Page 27 --- http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=8718

The main Open Knowledge Initiative site at MIT is at http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

In the first week on the Web, the OCW site received more than 13 million visits from users, about 52 percent from outside of the United States. The OCW team also processed more than 2,000 e-mails in those first days, more than 75 percent of them supportive of the project. The remaining 25 percent were a mix of technical questions, inquiries about specific course offerings, and questions about content. Less than 2 percent of those e-mails were negative.
"Open Access to World-Class Knowledge," by Anne H. Margulies, Syllabus, March 2003, pp. 16-18 --- http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=7360

In another program for storage and sharing of knowledge, Professor Abelson and his colleagues have persuaded leading universities to participate in another program called DSpace or the Self-Managing Library. The participating universities now include such giants as Stanford University, University of Chicago, and other leading research universities of the world --- https://hpds1.mit.edu/index.jsp

John Schmitz from the University of Illinois writes as follows at http://web.aces.uiuc.edu/AIM/john/kellogg.html

All these can be subsumed by the biggest issue that does not seem to be more than a blip on the land grant radar, the highly visible trend called institutional repositories. For example, the DSpace project is building an institutional repository for public use, aiming at posting as much of their content as possible. Extension services and land grants routinely post free, online content, but the DSpace partners led by MIT have bet the farm. Will the extension service create institutional repositories too? How far do the land grants go? DSpace, Merlot, and other 'open content' efforts cannot help but appear as paradigmatic land grant projects. But we're apparently not at the table.

The main Open Knowledge Initiative site at MIT is at http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

Bob Jensen's comments about sharing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/AAAaward_files/AAAaward02.htm

Open Share Final Examination from the University of Georgia

The message below speaks for itself. Denny is currently on the faculty of The University of Georgia and is on the Board of Directors of some leading corporations like Worldcom/MCI where he was also appointed to Chair of the Audit Committee as part of Worldcom's effort to emerge from bankruptcy and restore integrity to accounting at Worldcom.

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Beresford
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 6:12 AM
Subject: Difficulty of Examinations

Sometimes our students complain about accounting exams being much tougher than those for other classes. That certainly seems to be the case as compared to the final exam of the University of Georgia's Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball class taught by former assistant coach Jim Harrick Jr. A copy of his final exam can be seen at: http://www.ajc.com/uga/content/sports/uga/0304/03test.html

Not surprisingly, each of the students in Professor Harrick's class "earned" an A in the class, including three starters for the basketball team coached by his father Jim Harrick. Those particular student athletes apparently never actually attended the class but they were still able to ace the challenging final.

Denny Beresford

Student Derivatives and Course Notes: The Gray Zone of Knowledge Sharing
What students take away from a course falls into the "gray zone" of property rights. We cannot erase what a student learns in a course, nor would we want to ever do so. However, we are uneasy when that student commences to write about the content of the course or blends the contents of the course into his/her writing.

"In the meantime, University of California faculty generally own their copyright-protected property (see the UC Policy on Copyright Ownership, August 19, 1992) and, if concerned about notes being distributed on the web, have rights to stop it." (See below)

"Student Notes on the Web," Business Contracts Office, UC Davis --- http://vcadmin.ucdavis.edu/contracts/Student%20Notes.html

First, the October 1, 1999, issue of The Chronicle for Higher Education contains an article entitled "Putting Class Notes on the Web: Are Companies Stealing Lectures?" Interestingly, one of the companies discussed in the article is also the one prompting the current round of complaints - StudentU.com. If you do not have access to The Chronicle in your office you may wish to borrow this issue from a colleague. The article, while not going into depth on the legal issues involved, makes clear that many institutions of higher education across the nation are facing this same problem.

The issue of making individual student notes available to others is not new to the University of California, of course. Here at Davis ASUCD has provided the "Classical Notes" service to UCD students for some time, but authorization has not been a complaint as note-takers are required to obtain the written permission of the instructor. In 1969 a UCLA instructor sued a commercial publisher for hiring a student to take notes for publication without the instructor’s permission, and the court held that such action was a violation of the California common law copyright (California Civil Code 980 et. seq.) as well as an invasion of privacy, and both enjoined the company from continuing while ordering compensatory and punitive damages. (Williams v. Weisser (1969) 273 C.A.2d 726.) This settled the issue in California at the time.

However, the world-wide web and the value of E-commerce have brought the problem back to California in the last few years, likely because the individuals (often students) who are starting these nationwide companies are not aware of state laws, instead operating under the assumption that the federal copyright law governs all. I believe it is helpful to understand how federal law does not clearly protect instructors in this situation. Federal copyright protection of the rights to make copies, make derivative works, distribute, perform publicly, and display, applies to "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, from which they can be perceived, reproduced or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." (17 USCA section 102.) Although the federal law was written long before the Internet was conceived, its application is no different whether applied to paper class notes or the Internet version posting of them.

Certainly, no one will dispute that federal law creates a copyright interest in the instructor’s written/printed lecture notes, to the extent they are original work. If an instructor is reading or reciting from his/her lecture notes, he/she is exercising his/her performance rights under copyright law, and a duplication of that performance by taking notes so accurate as to allow a repeat performance would be a copyright violation. However, most instructors do not lecture so precisely from their notes, although portions such as a poem or critical passage may be read. If the words being said in a lecture are not otherwise "fixed" the public performance does not of itself constitute publication (17 USCA section 101, definition of publication), so does not trigger federal copyright protection. Even if it did, in a federal court case that looked at the applicability of copyright to course lectures, the court held that most statements made in a lecture can be categorized as facts or ideas that do not belong to anyone, neither of which is copyrightable. (University of Florida v. KPB, Inc (d.b.a. "A Notes"), 89 F.3d 773; 1196 U.S. LEXIS 18778 (11th Cir. 1996)).

The argument being made by the web-based services, however, is that even if the lecture is protected by copyright under federal law, each note-taker is merely writing down his/her perceptions of the instructor’s exercise of his/her copyrights. Rather than violating the existing copyright, the note-taker is creating a new original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium, and, as the author, can exercise any of the rights provided by federal copyright law, including transferring ownership to a note-distribution service. The services have been very careful not to duplicate class handouts or syllabi, which would clearly be a copyright violation. The merit of this argument has not been tested in court. One response to this might be that the note-taker is creating a derivative work rather than a new work. However, if so, every college student who takes notes is creating a derivative work without express authorization of the instructor, leading some campus attorneys to advise instructors to begin expressly authorizing notes made for personal use to differentiate notes for personal use from notes for sale.

Fortunately, we don’t have to get into this can of federal worms so long as the California common law copyright continues to be good law and is not preempted by federal law to the contrary. In the meantime, UC faculty generally own their copyright-protected property (see the UC Policy on Copyright Ownership, August 19, 1992) and, if concerned about notes being distributed on the web, have rights to stop it. Since an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, instructors can announce at the first class, and put in every syllabus, on their course web-sites, and in/on any other teacher-student communication, a statement to the effect of:

Copyright (author’s name) (year). All federal and state copyrights reserved for all original material presented in this course through any medium, including lecture or print. Individuals are prohibited from being paid for taking, selling, or otherwise transferring for value, personal class notes made during this course to any entity without the express written permission of (author). In addition to legal sanctions, students found in violation of these prohibitions may be subject to University disciplinary action.

Bob Jensen's comments about sharing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/AAAaward_files/AAAaward02.htm

"Scientists behaving badly," by Jim Giles , Nature, March 4, 2004 --- http://www.nature.com/nsu/040301/040301-9.html

They lie, they cheat and they steal. Judging by the cases described by a group of medical journal editors, scientists are no different from the rest of us.

Last week's annual report¹ of the Committee on Publishing Ethics details the misdemeanours that the group of journal editors grappled with in 2003. Although the number of cases - 29 - is tiny compared with the tens of thousands of papers published in medical journals every year, the cases cover a wide range of unethical activity, from attempted bribery to potential medical malpractice.

Many of the tricks will be familiar to schoolchildren. Two complaints concern cases where researchers were accused of copying someone else's work. When editors investigated, they agreed that the papers were almost identical versions of previously published material, and that plagiarism was the most likely explanation.

Confronted with the evidence, researchers behind one paper insisted that their paper contained only 5% overlap with the original. Another author, when eventually reached by mobile phone, admitted some similarities; but at that point the call ended abruptly.

Duplicate publication, where the same paper is printed twice in different journals to boost publication records, is the most common offence, accounting for seven of 29 cases. This fits with previous studies of the practice.

A 2003 survey of opthalmology journals estimated that at least 1.5% of all papers are duplicates². Some researchers seem to have perfected the art: a study released last month identified two papers that had each been published five times³.

Compulsory action

Conflicts of interest also rear their head in the report. One journal ran a paper on passive smoking from authors who omitted to mention that they had received funding from the tobacco industry. Further probing revealed that the author had received tobacco company money throughout his career and even lobbied for the industry.

In cases where the misconduct concerns medical treatments, the report becomes more disturbing. The editors discuss several studies where medical procedures were run by researchers who did not have proper ethical clearance.

One paper revealed that blood samples were taken from healthy babies to set up a control group for a study. This was a painful procedure that the paper's authors later said wouldn't normally be sanctioned for research purposes. The nature of their ethical approval for the procedure was never cleared up.

When confronted with such issues, journal editors usually contact the researchers' employers or ethics committees, who may take action. But this is not compulsory.

The publishing committee wants to formalize this course of action in a code of ethical conduct for editors. It has published a draft of such a code alongside its report, and a final version should be ready in the next few months. The committee wants all editors of medical journals, including its 180 or so members, to sign up to the code and agree to be bound by the associated disciplinary procedures.

Such a code should clarify editors' duties. It should also make clear, if it is not already, which activities are inappropriate. The report describes one bid to persuade an editor to accept a manuscript, in which an anonymous caller offered to buy 1000 reprints of the published paper. "And," the caller added, "I will buy you dinner at any restaurant you choose."

Bob Jensen's main academic fraud document is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm

Better Than Beta: Read About a Three Factor Market Risk Model
Jim Maher pointed this article out to me.

"Interview with Kenneth French," Index Funds --- http://www.indexfunds.com/articles/kennethfrench_20031015_interview_with_kenneth_french.htm

Kenneth R. French was the former NTU of Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management (and is now on the Tuck School faculty at Dartmouth) . He is an expert on the behavior of security prices, investment strategies, and the management of financial risk. His recent research focuses on tests of asset pricing models, the trade up between risk and return in domestic and international financial markets, the cost of capital and the relation between capital structure and firm value. Professor French is past director of the American Finance Association, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an associate editor of the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies and others. Despite this impressive history, he defers, modestly, to Eugene Fama: "Our partnership is supposed, total misunderstanding because Gene turned in this good stuff."

Kenneth French and Eugene Fama are credited with identifying multiple risk factors in the stock market and developing the three-factor model to measure different types of risk. This three-factor model changed the world of finance. "I guess we were trying to answer the question: If you were trying to form a portfolio with high expected returns or low expected returns, how would you go about doing that? At the time, the capital asset pricing model was the basic theory that said high beta stocks--high expected returns, low beta stocks--low expected returns. And so we looked at that and we looked at a bunch of other things that people had already identified and what we discovered was, gee, beta didn`t seem to work very well, knowing the stocks beta didn`t seem to tell me anything about what its average return was going to be."

French remembers that others had already developed results indicating that small stocks tend to buy average returns more than big stocks. "And the result was that variables, like the ratio of the book value of equity to the market value of equity, mattered a lot in terms of identifying stocks with high expected returns and stocks with low expected returns. What we`ve discovered since then is there`s no magic about book-to-market. You can measure it with dividend yield, earnings price, cash flow to price, basically anything where you have some fundamental value in the numerator and price in the denominator. So, it`s a way to scale price, basically, and the way I like to think of it is, we`re looking a discount rate. You get a discount, for example, for future cash flows at the expected return on the market. If you have a high-expected return, you get a high cash fair price. So a high cash fair price maps in higher expected return. Basically, it`s using the idea that the expected return that we as investors are looking at on the stock is the same thing as the discount rate or the cost of capital that the firm has to be thinking about. That`s an easy way to identify differences in expected returns."

Since the three-factor model seems to be so effective, investors may be wondering if the capital asset pricing model is no longer relevant. "That`s a tough question. The evidence is pretty strong that as far back as we can see, there seems to be little relation between beta, the fundamental variable of the capital asset pricing model, and average returns on stocks. Maybe it`s my upbringing, but if the argument is so compelling that stocks that vary a lot with the market bring a lot of risk to people`s portfolio, they`re bringing a lot of risk, people are going to demand a higher premium. So, I`m not willing to say no, there`s nothing that the cap end tells us about differences in expected returns, but what I think we can say is, you have to add other variables. In addition to beta, I think what matters is sensitivity to what we call size risk and then, sensitivity to something we call distress risk . And the size risk, it`s basically the size factor we see. Small stocks, again, have more of this size risk and more of the expected return. The distress risks, that`s the book-to-market, or the cash flow to price, earnings price, that`s that variable that we`re talking about. Companies that are really sick, bad opportunities, poor investments, they have a higher expected return." Professor French opines that investors are seeking a premium when investing in a company with poor prospects. "Companies that have great opportunities, very robust, things are going well in their industry, it appears that the market is willing to invest at a lower expected return for those companies."

Continued in the article

Jim Maher's Updates on the Stock Market, February 27, 2004 --- http://lists.topica.com/lists/FinanceProfessor/read/message.html?mid=1716163938&sort=d&start=85

WOW!
What a great article The equity risk premium has puzzled researchers for years. In a nutshell it is the finding that the equity risk premium demanded by investors is too large to be explained by changes in stock returns or changes in consumption unless very high levels of risk aversion were assumed. (See Grossman-Schiller, 1981, Mehra-Prescott 1985). In a forthcoming JF article, Ait-Sahalia, Parker, and Yogo may have taken much of the mystery out of the puzzle. Acknowledging that the puzzle can not be explained by looking at co-movements with overall consumption, the authors, break consumption down into basic and luxury components. Predictably the luxury component of consumption is more volatile AND “covaries significantly more with stock returns than does aggregate consumption.” Then when the equity premium is examined relative to the consumption of the luxury consumption, the size of the premium can be explained by a much lower risk aversion. Additionally, rather than relying on inaccurate government data or biased reported data, the authors look at actual consumption of luxury goods. A VERY cool paper!!!!!!! I was so excited by this one I ran down and interrupted a colleague. Be sure to read it!
http://www.afajof.org/Pdf/forthcoming/AitSahalia-Parker-Yogo.pdf

While there now seems to be evidence that herding happens, I still am not really sure what to make of the herding papers. Of course they conflict (at least partially) with the more extreme views of efficient markets, but I am not sure how much. For example, it is logical to watch and observe other traders in order to better gauge the supply and demand curves other investors have. That said, the papers are always almost always interesting (especially Grinblatt, Titman, and Wermers (1995)). A forthcoming JF article by Feng and Seasholes is no exception. Using a cool data set that identifies where the locale of the individual Chinese traders, the authors find that trades are "highly correlated" even when geographically separated. This suggest to be "evidence of market-wide shocks…and little evidence of…group psychology." Additionally it appears that those traders who live nearer firm's HQ have better information. http://www.afajof.org/Pdf/forthcoming/feng_seasholes_20031023.pdf

In spite of an abundance of studies that suggest the existence of calendar anomalies (days of the week, late summer, year end, month end) they make no sense to me. (and yes I realize some can be explained away using microstructure or tax explanations). That said I was very happy to stumble upon this paper by Gerlach when at the Southern Finance Association meetings. He finds that macro news events can describe most of the anomalies away. So score one more for efficient markets :)
http://faculty.wm.edu/jrgerl/calendar%20anomaly.pdf

Sports time. NASCAR is hot! How hot? Even FinanceProfessors are writing about it! In a working paper Sullivan and Dussold (who BTW was/is a runner) look at the stock performance of the sponsor of the winning car in various races. They find a positive and statistically significant price jump. http://www.siue.edu/BUSINESS/econfin/papers/NASCAR%20paper%20for%20SEA%20meeting.pdf

The Unfinished Women's Revolution, Stanford Graduate School of Business --- http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/strober_workandfamily.shtml

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Helen K. Chang, 650-723-3358, Fax: 650-725-6750

February, 2004

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — In the '70s and '80s, women battled for equality. They wanted to enter the workplace, work as hard as men, and be rewarded the same way. Unfortunately, says Myra Strober, Stanford professor of education, many of them got most of what they wanted. Now their daughters realize that their mothers didn't ask for enough.

Strober drew a primarily alumnae audience in January for her talk "Work and Families, the Unfinished Revolution," sponsored by alumni Lifelong Learning. Many professional women are finding that they cannot work 50 or 60 hour weeks, travel at the drop of a hat, and still care for their children. Many men whose wives are employed also cannot adequately balance work responsibilities and their desire to help raise their children. Society, she said, needs to reconstruct the workplace, to rethink responsibilities for raising children, and to learn to talk about a work life balance, not simply work and family.

The roles of men and women have changed in the past 30 years, but there has been no serious discussion of changing the workplace. Strober called for part-time jobs that are not labeled as "mommy tracks" designed for people who aren't serious about their careers, for pro-rated benefits for part-time employees, and for genuine flexibility in career tracks. She also suggested that the United States enact legislation that provides for a one year partially paid parental leave for the arrival of a new child, which both parents can share; and for an overhauled child-care system she estimates will cost $26 billion per year.

At the heart of many of her calls for change is the need to overhaul our attitudes toward child rearing. If we don't change services available and attitudes toward raising children, Strober warned, "people will opt out entirely and choose not to have children."

"Children are a public good that we all have to support," she said.

To see how lives have changed, Strober cited statistics showing that in 1977 the average combined workweek for a couple was 81 hours per week. In 2002 that had risen to 91 hours. The time parents spent with children increased from 5.2 to 6.2 hours per day in the same period. Not surprisingly, the time men and women spent on themselves also changed. In 1977 fathers spent an average of 126 minutes on themselves, compared to 78 minutes today while mothers dropped from 96 minutes to 54 spent on themselves.

Strober's most recent book is The Road Winds Uphill All the Way: Gender, Work, and Family in the United States and Japan that surveyed 1981 men and women graduates of Stanford and Tokyo universities.

HooRay for Google! Down With Yahoo!

Yahoo is expanding a program that lets advertisers pay to ensure that their sites are included in its search results.

Is this new Yahoo policy an abuse of advertising? I don't seem to mind the tiny advertising boxes that appear on many Google searches, because I know they are advertisements, and they are not obtrusive. But I can't say that I go along with the following new policy of Yahoo. It's just one step away of the highly abusive policy of listing all advertiser sites before listing the most relevant sites in a search outcome.

The new Yahoo policy is CAO --- Crap Always Out

The most abusive in what I call CFO --- Crap First Out.

"Yahoo Search Results To Include Paid Links," by Mylene Mangalindan, The Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107817895456643322,00.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news

Approach Means Surfers Won't Be Able to Tell
Which Sites Made Payments to Be Included

Yahoo Inc., the nation's second largest search engine, is aggressively expanding a program that lets advertisers pay to ensure that their sites are included in search results.

Yahoo executives say the payments won't improve a site's ranking on the list of results that appear after a search. But at the same time, Yahoo acknowledged that there will be no distinguishing marks to alert Web surfers that a company had paid to be included.

Yahoo's new approach is expected to begin Tuesday. The Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company has already been using a similar approach on its shopping-oriented Web pages, but it's now expanding the program to its entire site.

The move is likely to add fuel to the growing battle between Yahoo and its main rival, Google Inc., which has surpassed Yahoo to become the nation's most popular search site.

Google (www.google.com), of Mountain View, Calif., says it doesn't let advertisers pay to be included in its traditional search results. Google does allow advertisers to pay for promotions that appear alongside search results, but these are clearly labeled as "sponsored links." Google executives say their users favor this neutral, technology-driven approach. (Yahoo also continues to have a separate "sponsored" section for advertisers.)

Google co-founder Larry Page said Google separates and labels advertising, much the way newspapers distinguish between news stories and advertising. He questioned whether Yahoo would prevent advertisers from influencing search rankings, as well as results. "It's really tricky when people start putting things in the search results," he said.

The problem for Yahoo users is that they won't be able to tell which results are paid for and which aren't. Currently, search results are divided into two parts: For example, type in "dog walkers" and hit "return." At the top of the page that then pops up -- and also in the right-hand column -- are "sponsored" links, listing dog walkers or related businesses that paid for the premium position. Below that are what until now have been unsponsored findings listed under the heading, "Top 20 Web Results."

Under the new system, that second layer of findings will include both paid and unpaid links. But there is no way to find out if a specific company that comes up has paid or not. Yahoo will include only a general disclosure about the new program, on a separate page. (To read it, Web surfers must click on the phrase "What's this?")

If Web site operators want to be included in the new program, they must pay an annual subscription fee of $49 to list one Internet address and $29 each for their next nine addresses. On top of that, companies must pay Yahoo a fee for each person that clicks on their search listing.

The move comes two weeks after Yahoo dropped search technology from Google in favor of its own technology. Google is the top-ranked site that Internet users visit when conducting Web searches. About 35% of all Web searches in the U.S. are conducted on Google's sites, while 28% of them are done on Yahoo's sites, according to comScore Media Metrix, a unit of comScore Networks Inc., a market-research firm.

Analysts say Yahoo's move may arouse suspicions among computer users that the search results, and rankings, are being influenced by advertisers. It's a "trust issue," said Charlene Li, an analyst at market-research firm Forrester Research Inc. "Is this really the most relevant result or not?"

Yahoo says the program helps users by delivering information that its own or other search technology might miss. "Our goal is to deliver the highest quality search results," said Tim Cadogan, Yahoo's vice president of search. "We're going to gain users," he says, because "we're delivering better results."

Under Yahoo's "content acquisition program," advertisers pay to have their sites surveyed by Yahoo software that "crawls" the Web periodically, looking for new or updated Web pages.

Forrester's Ms. Li said she thinks consumers ultimately will accept the program, because they will come to understand Yahoo's policy of including advertisers in searches, but not allowing advertising to influence search rankings. (Do you really think this constraint will remain?)

Continued in the article

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

Marketing and Purchasing Searches
ClickZ's Search Engine Watch released its annual list of outstanding Web search services for 2003. Your favorites are among them, but there were also surprises and controversial predictions for the coming year --- http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3319991
Note that Yahoo is Number One for marketing searches.

Bob Jensen’s search helpers for products and marketing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#ProductsAndMarketing

"Ask Jeeves Discontinues 'Paid-Inclusion' Search Plan," by Mylene Mangalindan, The Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2005 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107827881934145010,00.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news

Ask Jeeves Inc., an Internet search technology company, is dropping its program allowing advertisers and Web site operators to pay to ensure inclusion in the company's search index. The company's "paid-inclusion" program adversely affects the results that Internet users see, Ask Jeeves said.

"We've found it impacts relevance of the results" for the users, said Jim Lanzone, vice president of product management at AskJeeves. "That's something that we don't think is in the best interest of our users."

Paid-inclusion programs have been controversial because some users worry that the payments by Web site operators influence their ranking among the search results. Instead, some users prefer a neutral, technology-driven approach that clearly distinguishes advertisements from the results generated by search technology.

Ask Jeeves is eliminating its paid-inclusion program called Index Express over the next 30 days, when most of its remaining contracts expire, said Mr. Lanzone. The Emeryville, Calif., company says it makes enough money from search-related advertisements that it can afford to drop the paid-inclusion program, which doesn't have a material impact on the company's revenue.

Yahoo Inc., the second-ranked search site, began aggressively expanding its own paid-inclusion program Tuesday. Google Inc., the top-ranked Web search site, doesn't have a paid-inclusion program.

How About a Game of Bingo for Ethics Fun and Learning?

Using Games to Enhance Student Understanding of Professional and Ethical Responsibilities,” by M. Elizabeth Haywood, Dorothy A. McMullen, and Donald E. Wygal, Issues in Accounting Education, February 2004, pp. 85-100 --- http://aaahq.org/ic/browse.htm

ABSTRACT: Given recent corporate scandals, the credibility of the accounting profession has been called into question. In order to restore public trust, accounting educators need to devise ways to convey the importance of ethics in our profession to our students. An alternative approach to using a traditional lecture to teach ethics is to use games. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a game strategy to teach ethics and professionalism to students. Using games makes learning more fun and also helps to maintain student interest and involvement in the learning process. Student feedback has been positive and encouraging on the use of this format to teach ethics and professional responsibilities.

Bob Jensen's threads on resources for accounting educators are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources

Where are some great resources (hard copy and electronic) for teaching ethics?

"An Inventory of Support Materials for Teaching Ethics in the Post-Enron Era,” by C. William Thomas, Issues in Accounting Education, February 2004, pp. 27-52 --- http://aaahq.org/ic/browse.htm

ABSTRACT: This paper presents a "Post-Enron" annotated bibliography of resources for accounting professors who wish to either design a stand-alone course in accounting ethics or who wish to integrate a significant component of ethics into traditional courses across the curriculum. Many of the resources listed are recent, but some are classics that have withstood the test of time and still contain valuable information. The resources listed include texts and reference works, commercial books, academic and professional articles, and electronic resources such as film and Internet websites. Resources are listed by subject matter, to the extent possible, to permit topical access. Some observations about course design, curriculum content, and instructional methodology are made as well.

Bob Jensen's threads on resources for accounting educators are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources

I have some comments on Billy’s fine contribution that provides a start to inventorying resources. It is especially great for early history to some of the classic works such as Carl Devine’s great essays. There are huge historical oversights as well, notably the early warnings of the decline in ethics and professionalism from Abe Brilhoff --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#References

Where Billy’s inventory is really weak is on the current books and journals that probably provide more interesting reading to young students in ethics courses. For example, he makes no mention of the truly shocking books by Watkins, Tofler, Glass, and the various other more current books listed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#References

He makes no references to the truly important articles written by Paul Volker (The Culture of Greed Sucked the Blood Out of Professionalism ) and Art Wyatt (They Still Don’t Get It). See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#References

There are Web citations and links to the literature of scandals in the big accounting firms such as those listed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#others

I guess my criticism is that Billy’s inventory is better for teaching the history of accounting ethics literature than for teaching current documents, current learning games (e.g., Bingo ethics), and current videos available on the Web such as the Enron party and the Worldcom party videos --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm

Billy provides the start of a great inventory, but it badly needs to be expanded and updated.

Whereas most college Web sites are "static" our primary and secondary school sites are rapidly becoming more dynamic.

March 9, 2004 message from techLEARNING news [techlearning@news.techlearning.com]

School Web Sites Change with the Times

The day of the school web site as a static bulletin board filled with rapidly aging news is fading. Schools are moving toward using their sites as interactive portals that facilitate communication between parents, students and teachers.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor http://news.techlearning.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/efjC0FHYLa0E2V0CPiY0Aq

* The BackPage: Girls Building a Home on the Web

A new survey reveals that girls are more likely than boys to have personal Web sites. “Children, Families, and the Internet” found that 12.2 percent of girls online have their own sites compared to 8.6 percent of boys. Find out more about kids online from The BackPage http://news.techlearning.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/efjC0FHYLa0E2V0CPic0A1

The IT Guy: Origin of Computer Viruses

Where do viruses come from and how are they made? Read the short answers here. http://news.techlearning.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/efjC0FHYLa0E2V0CPif0A4

[Archives] http://news.techlearning.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/efjC0FHYLa0E2V0CAkF0AK

"Where Are All the Poison Pills?" by Robin Sidel, The Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107818176447743400,00.html?mod=home%5Fwhats%5Fnews%5Fus

The poison pill, one of the most popular corporate-takeover defenses of the past two decades, is getting tougher to swallow.

Faced with opposition from activist shareholders and new pressures to clean up governance after corporate scandals, companies are dismantling what has been one of the best known of the antitakeover mechanisms. In the past month, Circuit City Stores Inc., Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., FirstEnergy Corp., PG&E Corp., and Raytheon Co., among others, all took steps toward eliminating their pills.

So far this year, a dozen companies have taken steps to dismantle their pills, compared with 29 for all of 2003 and just 18 in 2002, according to TrueCourse Inc., which tracks corporate-takeover defenses. Although such actions typically are heaviest just ahead of the annual-meeting season in which shareholders air gripes, people who follow corporate-governance issues say the trend is likely to continue through the year.

Meanwhile, fewer companies are putting the measure in place: The rate of new poison-pill adoptions fell to a 10-year low in 2003, according to TrueCourse. About 99 companies adopted new plans in 2003, down 42% from the prior year.

While there may still be a net gain in pills this year, the figures show the sharp decline in the rate of increase. "In the current environment, there is an increasing desire by boards to be viewed as following good governance and not be entrenched," says Alan Miller, co-chairman of proxy-solicitation firm Innisfree M&A Inc. "This is the flavor of the day, and it's going to accelerate."

Continued in the article

Bob Jensen's threads on corporate governance are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#Governance

March 5, 2004 message from editor jda [editor.jda@gmx.de]

Journal of Derivatives Accounting (JDA)

First Issue on "Stock Options: Development in Share-Based Compensation" You can downloand Papers online (http://www.worldscinet.com/jda/jda.shtml)

The second issue deals with Hedging Theory and Practice in Risk Management and Trading (Financial instruments and strategies, Impact of accounting rules and taxation). The titles of forthcoming papers for the second issue are also shown.

For subscription information follow the following link

(http://www.worldscinet.com/jda/mkt/order_information.shtml)

Mamouda Mbemap Ph.D

Editor In Chief

Vol. 1, No. 1 (March 2004)

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Articles

ACCOUNTING FOR EMPLOYEE STOCK OPTIONS: A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO HANDLING THE VALUATION ISSUES
JOHN HULL and ALAN WHITE

RISK-AVERSE EXECUTIVES, MULTIPLE COMMON RISKS, AND THE EFFICIENCY AND INCENTIVES OF INDEXED EXECUTIVE STOCK OPTIONS
SHANE A. JOHNSON and YISONG S. TIAN

STOCK OPTIONS AND MANAGERIAL INCENTIVES TO INVEST
TOM NOHEL and STEVEN TODD

CEO COMPENSATION, INCENTIVES, AND GOVERNANCE IN NEW ENTERPRISE FIRMS
LERONG HE and MARTIN J. CONYON

EVIDENCE ON VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURES OF DERIVATIVES USAGE BY LARGE US COMPANIES
RAJ AGGARWAL and BETTY J. SIMKINS

THE EFFECT OF TAXES ON THE TIMING OF STOCK OPTION EXERCISE
STEVEN BALSAM and RICHARD GIFFORD

THE VALUE AND INCENTIVES OF OPTION-BASED COMPENSATION IN DANISH LISTED COMPANIES
KEN L. BECHMANN and PETER LØCHTE JØRGENSEN

Industry Perspective

AN INTRODUCTION TO US TAX ASPECTS OF EXECUTIVE/EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION WITH A STOCK OPTION FOCUS
STEWART KARLINSKY and JAMES KROCHKA

Book Review

Book Review: AN INTRODUCTION TO EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION
Steve Balsam

Forthcoming Papers

Vol. 1 No. 2

Does Allowing Alternative Hedge Designation Affect Financial Statement Comparability?
Arlette C. Wilson and Ronald L. Clark
Alternative Hedge Accounting Treatments for Foreign Exchange Forwards
Ira G. Kawaller and Walter R. Teets
Divergent FAS-133 and IAS 39 Interest Rate Risk Hedge Effectiveness: Problem and Remedies
Jim Bodurtha
Interest Rate Swap Prices, Fair Values, and FAS 133
Donald Smith
Optimal Hedging with Cumulative Prospect Theory
Darren Frechette and Jon Tuthill
Hedging, Operating Leverage, and Abandonment Options
Keith Wong
Hedging Against Neutral and Non-Neutral Shock: Theory and Evidence
Marcello Spano
Pricing S&P 500 Index Options under Stochastic Volatility with the Indirect Inference Method
Jinghong Shu and Jin E. Zhang
Structural Relationships between Semiannual and Annual Swaps Rates
D.K. Malhotra, Mukesh Chaudhry and Vivek Bhargava
Valuing and Hedging American Options under Time-Varying Volatility
In Joon Kim
The Introduction of Derivatives Reporting in the UK: A Content Analysis of FRS 13 Disclosures
T. Dunne, C. Helliar, D. Power, C. Mallin, K. Ow-Yong and L. Moir

Bob Jensen's threads on derivatives accounting are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

Our wonderful English language!

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meaning than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP." If you are not confused after reading this you must really be messed "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list but when we waken in the morning, why do we wake UP. At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends, we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, mess UP and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special, and this is confusing.

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP.

To be knowledgeable of the proper uses of UP, look UP the word in the dictionary. In a desk size dictionary, UP takes UP almost 1/4th the page and definitions add UP to about thirty.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so I'll shut UP...!!!!!!

Just one last thing....when we pass on I hope we go UP ^^^^^^^^

There are also various sites devoted to "Our Wonderful English Language"

National Lampoon loads a new word each day --- http://www.nationallampoon.com/english/wordofweekus.html

Howard Drake's Insult Generating Machine --- http://www.howarddrake.com/lodge/insultomatic.asp

Double Meanings --- http://snipurl.com/DoubleMeanings

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn: 
1) The bandage was wound around the wound. 
2) The farm was used to produce produce. 
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. 
4) We must polish the Polish furniture. 
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out. 
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. 
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
present the present. 
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum. 
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes. 
10) I did not object to the object. 
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid. 
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row. 
13) They were too close to the door to close it. 
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present. 
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line. 
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow. 
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail. 
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number. 
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear. 
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests. 
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine
in pineapple.

English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. 
Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet and are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that
quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is
neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't 
groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? 
One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you
have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do
you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats 
vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the English speakes should be committed to an 
asylum for the verbally insane.

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship 
by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a
wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your 
house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling
it out, in which an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the 
creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. 
That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the 
lights are out, they are invisible.

Forwarded by Team Carper

Do you have a 710 on your car?
A few days ago I was having some work done at my local garage. A blonde came in and asked for a seven-hundred-ten. We all looked at each other and another customer asked, "What is a seven-hundred-ten?" She replied, "You know, the little piece in the middle of the engine, I have lost it and need a new one.." She replied that she did not know exactly what it was, but this piece had always been there. The mechanic gave her a piece of paper and a pen and asked her to draw what the piece looked like. She drew a circle and in the middle of it wrote 710. He then took her over to another car which had its hood up and asked "is there a 710 on this car?" She pointed and said, "Of course, its right there."

If your not sure what a 710 is, go to:

http://rtccom.net/~mfjgolf/710.jpg

I just can't get this melody out of my head!

Barb Hessel

When the moon hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie,
That's amore.

When an eel bites your hand
And that's not what you planned,
That's a moray.

When our habits are strange
And our customs deranged,
That's our mores.

When your horse munches straw
And the bales total four,
That's some more hay.

When Othello's poor wife
Gets strangled in strife,
That's a Moor, eh?

When a Japanese knight
Waves his sword in a fight,
That's Samurai.

When your sheep go to graze
In a damp marshy place,
That's a moor, eh?

When your boat comes home fine
And you tie up her line,
That's a moor, eh?

When you ace your last tests
Like you did all the rest,
That's some more A's.

When on Mount Cook you see
An aborigine,
That's a Maori.

A comedian-ham
With the name Amsterdam,
That's a Morey.

When your chocolate graham
Is so full and so crammed,
That s'more.

When you've had quite enough
Of this dumb rhyming stuff,
That's "No more!" eh?

Forwarded by Nancy Jenson

Everything I need to know about life, I learned from Noah's Ark...

One: Don't miss the boat.

Two: Remember that we are all in the same boat.

Three: Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark.

Four: Stay fit. When you're 600 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.

Five: Don't listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.

Six: Build your future on high ground.

Seven: For safety sake, travel in pairs.

Eight: Speed isn't always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.

Nine: When you're stressed, float a while.

Ten: Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.

Eleven: No matter the storm, when you are with God, there's always a rainbow waiting.

Forwarded by The Happy Lady

Ramblings of a tired mind

I was thinking about how a status symbol of today is those cell phones that everyone has clipped on. I can't afford one so I'm wearing my garage door opener

You know I spent a fortune on deodorant before I realized that people didn't like me anyway.

I was thinking that women should put pictures of missing husbands on beer cans!

I was thinking about old age and decided that it is when you still have something on the ball but you are too tired to bounce it.

I thought about making a fitness movie for folks my age and calling it "Pumping Rust."

I have gotten that dreaded furniture disease...that's when your chest is falling into your drawers!

I know when people see a cat's litter box, they always say, "Oh, have you got a cat?" Just once I wanted to say, "No, it's for company!"

Employment application blanks always ask who is to be notified in case of emergency. I think you should write, "A GOOD DOCTOR!"

Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we supposed to do...write to these men? Why don't they just put their pictures on postage stamps so the mailmen could look for them while they delivered the mail?

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older, then it dawned on me... they were cramming for their finals.

As for me, I'm just hoping God grades on the curve!

 Howard Drake's Laughing Loon Lodge --- http://www.howarddrake.com/lodge/default.asp 
Including his insult generating machine.

We're growing old gracefully.
Forwarded by the Cha Cha Lady

Reporters interviewing a 104 year-old woman:

"And what do you think is the best thing about
being 104?" the reporter asked.

She simply replied, "No peer pressure."

------------------------------------------ * * * * *

The nice thing about being forgetful is
you can hide your own Easter eggs.

------------------------------------------ * * * * *

Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came
up to the very elderly widow and asked, "How old was
your husband?"

"98," she replied. "Two years older than me."

"So you're 96," the undertaker commented.

She responded, "Hardly worth going home is it?"

------------------------------------------------- * * * * *

I've sure gotten old. I've had 2 By-pass surgeries
A hip replacement, new knees. Fought prostate
cancer, and diabetes.

I'm half blind, can't hear anything quieter than a
jet engine, take 40 different medications that make
me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts.

Have bouts with dementia. Have poor circulation,
hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. Can't
remember if I'm 85 or 92. Have lost all my friends.

But..... Thank Goodness, I still have my Florida driver's license!

------------------------------------------------ * * * * *

God, grant me the senility
To forget the people
I never liked anyway,
The good fortune
To run into the ones I do,
And the eyesight to tell the difference.

------------------------------------------------------ * * * * *

An elderly woman from Brooklyn decided to
prepare her will and make her final requests.
She told her rabbi she had two final requests.

First, she wanted to be cremated, and second, she
wanted her ashes scattered over Bloomingdales.

"Bloomingdale's!" the rabbi exclaimed. "Why Bloomingdales?"

"Then I'll be sure my daughters visit me twice a week."

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

One Monday morning, a mother went in to wake her son and tell him it was time to get ready for School, to which he replied, "I'm not going."

"Why not?" she asked.

"I'll give you two good reasons," he said. "One, there are 53 teachers and they all don't like me, and two, there are 500 kids and they don't like me either.

His mother replied, "I'll give YOU two good reasons why you SHOULD go to School. One, you're 54 years old, and two, you're the Principal!"

*******************

A drunk was in front of a judge. The judge says "You've been brought here for drinking."

The drunk says "Okay, let's get started."

*******************

About Worms

Little Johnny watched the science teacher start the experiment with the worms.

Four worms were placed into four separate jars.

The first worm was put into a jar of alcohol.

The second worm was put into a jar of cigarette smoke.

The third worm was put into a jar of sperm.

The fourth worm was put into a jar of soil.

After one day, these were the results:

The first worm in alcohol - dead.

Second worm in cigarette smoke - dead.

Third worm in sperm - dead.

Fourth worm in soil - alive.

So the Science teacher asked the class - "What can you learn from this experiment."

Little Johnny quickly raised his hand and said

"As long as you drink, smoke and have sex, you won't have worms."

Forwarded by the Cha Cha ~~Lady~~ Real Woman

Ladies To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.

Real Women Buy boxed mashed potato mix and you don't have to worry about the potatoes growing arms and legs.

* * *
Ladies When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking pan, use a bit of the dry cake mix instead and there won't be any white mess on the cake.

Real Women Go to the bakery - they'll even decorate the sonofabitch for you.

* * *
Ladies Brush some beaten egg white over piecrust before baking to yield a beautiful glossy finish.

Real Women Sara Lee frozen freakin pie directions do not include brushing egg whites over shit, so don't do it.

* * *
Ladies If you have a problem opening jars, try using latex dishwashing gloves. They give a non-slip grip that makes opening jars easy.

Real Women Go ask the very HOT neighbor guy to do it.

* * *
And finally the most important tip....

Ladies Don't throw out all that leftover wine. Freeze into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces.

Real Women Leftover wine??

Emperor Penguins
Let me tell you a cute story about Southwest Airlines. My neighbor's daughter flew from Dallas to San Antonio recently on Southwest Airlines. Buckled in the front seats were two Emperor Penguins bound for Sea World. The crazy flight attendants (they generally are lots of fun) on Southwest announced that they would let the Penguins walk down and back up the main aisle of the plane if the passengers promised not to touch. And so the penguins waddled up and down while a flight attendant followed with a pooper-scooper. It seemed to the passengers that the one-hour flight was over in about ten minutes.

Survivor Texas Style

Due to the popularity of the Survivor shows, NBC is planning to do a new survivor show entitled Survivor-Texas Style".

The contestants will start in Dallas , travel to Waco , Austin ! , San Antonio , over to Houston , and down to Brownsville . They will then proceed up El Paso , then to Midland , Odessa , Lubbock , and Amarillo . From there they will proceed to Ft. Worth , and finally back to Dallas .

Each will be driving a pink Volvo with bumper stickers that read: "I'm gay...I love the Dixie Chicks....I'm a vegetarian....I voted for Al Gore....George Strait Sucks....Hillary in 2004!... and I'm here to confiscate your guns!"

This will be the first show on television with no survivors.

It was all his mother's fault --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/muther2.htm
If the music doesn't begin soon, scroll down for the start button at the very bottom of the page.

And that's the way it was on March 11, 2004 with a little help from my friends.

Jesse's Wonderful Music for Romantics (You have to scroll down to the titles) --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/

I highly recommend TheFinanceProfessor (an absolutely fabulous and totally free newsletter from a very smart finance professor) --- www.FinanceProfessor.com

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/
I also like SmartPros at http://www.smartpros.com/

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

Jack Anderson's Accounting Information Finder --- http://www.umsl.edu/~anderson/accsites.htm

Gerald Trite's great set of links --- http://www.zorba.ca/bookmark.htm

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

The Finance Professor --- http://www.financeprofessor.com/about/aboutFP.html

Walt Mossberg's many answers to questions in technology --- http://ptech.wsj.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

Click on www.syllabus.com/radio/index.asp for a complete list of interviews with established leaders, creative thinkers and education technology experts in higher education from around the country.

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

The Training Top 100 is a ranking of organizations that excel at human capital development, as determined each year by Training Magazine --- http://www.trainingmag.com/training/reports_analysis/top100/2004/rankings.jsp

March 1, 2004

Bob Jensen's New Bookmarks on March 1, 2004
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

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

Oh How We Danced --- I Loved Stan Kenton's Big Brassy Band
The Stan Kenton Orchestra http://www.52ndstreet.com/kenton/kenton.htm
There are eight full-length Kenton/Christie recordings available free at http://mysite.freeserve.com/guynew/guy1/junemp3.htm
Stan Kenton in those days appeared at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa and the Roof Garden on Lake Okiboji .
Other big band free downloads are available at the following sites:

Guy Mitchell --- http://mysite.freeserve.com/guynew/guy1/guymp3.htm
Gap Mangione --- http://www.gapmangione.com/diana.htm
Bill Chapin --- http://www.chapinguitars.com/gigs.html

Yahoo's Music Artist List --- http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/music/artists/
Worldwide Music Internet Resources (from Indiana University ) --- http://www.music.indiana.edu/music_resources/

This is a great Iraq War News Blog with archives --- http://www.brandonblog.homestead.com/

Forwarded by Dr. Wolff
Stars Who Played Combat Roles in Real Life --- http://www.palletmastersworkshop.com/flipside.html

Quotes of the Week

Scientists hail a discovery that they say could lead to drugs able to combat or even prevent AIDS infections in humans.
Wired News, February 25, 2004 --- http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62437,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html

American investigators have discovered that KPMG marketed a tax shelter to investors that generated more than $1bn (£591m) in unlawful benefits in less than a year.
David Harding, Financial Director --- http://www.financialdirector.co.uk/News/1135558
For more about KPMG see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#KPMG

Reports coming out of the US tell us that Ernst & Young has been selling wealthy US citizens four legal techniques for reducing their income tax bill, one of which experts claim could be illegal.
Accountancy Age --- http://www.financialdirector.co.uk/News/1129611

There is a "moral high ground" when all the largest accounting firms sold illegal tax shelters to banks like Wachovia and other audit clients like Worldcom. At least they preyed on tax cheats like big corporations or wealthy individuals rather than widows and orphans. The same moral high ground was claimed at Morgan Stanley when it sold illegal derivative instruments to pension fund managers. The quote is as follows from http://www.derivativesstrategy.com/magazine/archive/1997/1197fea6.asp

"I sold to cheaters, not widows and orphans. That was the moral high ground if there was a moral high ground in derivatives. I sold to cheaters."
Frank Partnoy, Morgan Stanley

A child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit.
François Rabelais

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amid appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation... He is the world's eye.
Ralph Waldo Emerson as quoted by Mark Shapiro at http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-02-27-04.htm

Not surprisingly, IT departments view the act (Sarbanes-Oxley) as an opportunity to show their impact on the company's bottom line by helping forge tighter links between business processes and technology. However, the compliance process is turning out to be more costly and time-consuming than originally expected, and in many cases, according to at least one study, companies are not turning to their IT departments to manage compliance.
Dennis Callaghan, eWeek, February 16, 2004 --- http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1527170,00.asp

I think I'm glad I never met Mark Siskind when he was flying high in San Antonio.
Mark Nutritionals settled its FTC charges in October by agreeing to cease to exist. Apart from this corporate death penalty, Siskind's partner, Edward D'Allesandro, Jr., agreed to pay a $140,000 fine and pledged to refrain from false weightloss claims in the future. Charges are still pending against the dogged Siskind, who reportedly once won an endurance contest with Superman, after spending weeks in the bushes of a rehabilitation clinic to snap the first tabloid shot of Christopher Reeves in a wheelchair.
Andrew Wheat, "Radio Fraudcasting," Texas Observer, December 5, 2003, Page 10

Three decades ago, Patrick Moore helped found Greenpeace. Today he promotes nuclear energy and genetically modified foods -- and swears he's still fighting to save the planet
Wired Magazine, March 2004 --- http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/moore.html

From MIT's Technology Review
Your Daily Digital Doctor Advanced analysis of home medical data can offer continuous care for patients with diabetes and other life-threatening chronic diseases --- http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_bender022004.asp?trk=nl

A sure-fired way to "demonstrate" improved learning.
This was in the Arizona Republic (Jan. 25, 2004) --- http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-02-19-04.htm

"On Monday, the State Board of Education will consider making it easier for this year's eighth-graders to pass the AIMS (Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards) math test they'll face in April. "This is the correction of an error," Arizona schools chief Tom Horne said. "The problem is the way the test is scored." In the past four years, no more than 21 percent of Arizona's eighth-graders have passed the AIMS math test, well below the passing rate of students who take the test in other grades. To pass, eighth-graders must get 78 percent of the 50 math questions correct. State officials want to change that passing score to about 72 percent, allowing students to miss three more questions. Had the change been in place in 2003, Horne said, 32 percent, instead of 21 percent, of Arizona's eighth-graders would have passed the test."

Due to extremely high public interest in NASA's Mars exploration program, the space agency's Web portal has received more than 6.5 billion hits since early January.
Randall Edwards --- http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0216/web-nasa-02-20-04.asp

Never seek the wind in the field
It's useless to try to find what is gone.
As quoted at http://www.jessiesweb.com/wind2.htm

Hanoi Jane's Legacy
The photographer who snapped John Kerry attending a 1971 anti-war rally says he and his photo agency intend to track down -- and possibly sue -- whoever doctored and circulated a photo that made it appear that the then 27-year-old Vietnam veteran was appearing alongside actress Jane Fonda.
Carla Marinucci --- http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/02/20/MNG4S54RGO1.DTL

To hear the wonderful music at Jesse's site, you must click on your selection and wait until it opens in a new window. If the music does not start automatically, scroll clear down to the bottom of the page (I mean the very bottom of the page following a large black space) and click the on button on the control bar at the bottom of the page. Then scroll back up to the top to watch the animation while the music plays.
"WARNING" by Jenny Joseph --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/warning2.htm

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in the slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now!
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

The above poem fits my high school literature teacher to a T, although I'm certain she never dressed shabbily or "learned to spit." Her name was Mrs. Kahlar. She wore large colorful hats and appeared outdoors dressed at all times like she was going to a wedding --- generally in purple and lavender and pink. She rattled about, occasionally a bit tipsie, inside an enormous three-story mansion where she lived all alone beside our high school. She took a personal interest in each and every student. Any student was invited to stop by at any time day or night for a Coke and conversation.

On the pillared front porch of that mansion, she had an antique school desk that was always stacked with books that friends and strangers could walk off with --- she hoped they did as long as they intended to read them. There were also apples on the desk, because teachers are always associated with apples since the early days of education on the prairie when farmers with no money sent food to school for the teacher. After she died, her big house was a treasure trove of collectables and trash. Some time later, a seven-foot tall man named Randy fixed up the old mansion. It's now known as The Heartland Bed and Breakfast Inn --- http://www.nwiowabb.com/heart.htm

My wife and I stayed in The Heartland after we sold my parents' house. The fabulous inside of the house and the front porch brought back many fond memories of a tiny literature teacher in purple and lavender and pink.

On July 8, 2004 the Iowa town of Algona will celebrate its sesquicentennial --- http://www.algona150.org/
Ah yes I remember it well --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm

It was really great to visit with David and Lynn Jenson in San Antonio last Thursday. Lynn is in charge of the July 8 festivities which will include a country band in --- you guessed it --- in the country. My cousin Don will have his big team of black Percherons hauling kids in the parade.

Question
Do you know what happened this week back in 1850? 

Answer from The Happy Lady
California became a state.      
The state had no electricity.      
The state had no money.      
Almost everyone spoke Spanish.      
There were gunfights in the middle of the streets.           
So it was just like California today except then, the women had real breasts...

WiredSafety --- http://www.wiredsafety.org/
This is a great site for data about use of the Internet. It is also a very good sight about safety in use of the Internet, including dangers of fraud, crime, and sexual predators.

Bob Jensen's threads about how to prevent and report frauds and crimes are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ThingsToKnow

"Starting Salary Offers for Grads on the Rise, But Accounting Salaries Remain Flat," SmartPros, March 1, 2004 --- http://www.smartpros.com/x42651.xml

BETHLEHEM, Penn., Feb. 26, 2004 (SmartPros) — This year's crop of college graduates will be in a better position than their 2003 counterparts. A new report shows upward movement in starting salary offers to new college graduates.

Released this month, the Winter 2004 Salary Survey report by the National Association of Collegse and Employers shows "positive signs in the job market for new college graduates," said Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. "It's important to recognize that the job market isn't booming, but we are seeing improvement."

Mackes said that last year at this time, nearly half the disciplines tracked in a salary survey were experiencing decreases in their average starting salaries. In contrast, in the Winter 2004 Salary Survey, just under a third saw average offers drop.

In general, there is a conservative movement among the business disciplines. Salary offers to accounting majors have remained flat, nudging up a mere 0.1 percent to $42,045. Offers to business administration/management majors rose two percent for an average of $37,368. And marketing/marketing management majors saw their average offer tick up one percent to $36,071.

NACE will release an updated salary report in April.

"In summer, we fish and make love," one Laplander deadpanned. "In winter, we fish less."

"The White Stuff," By Alan Riding, The New York Times, February 29, 2004 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/arts/design/29RIDI.html

ROVANIEMI, Finland

There is not much to do in Finland's Lapland in winter. Kemi, a port city at the northern end of the frozen Gulf of Bothnia, has a Snow Castle that includes a hotel where tourists can sleep on slabs of ice; 90 miles to the north on the frozen River Ounasjoki, Rovaniemi is gateway to Santa Claus Village, where letters can be mailed to the old benefactor in his hideaway on the North Pole.

"In summer, we fish and make love," one Laplander deadpanned. "In winter, we fish less."

But an unusual outdoor art exhibition called "The Snow Show" has briefly added Kemi and Rovaniemi to the circuit of destinations for adventurous art tourists eager to brave subzero temperatures. Earlier this month, mysterious multicolored sculptures of snow and ice began rising from the frozen landscape. Then, as natural and transient as their setting, the works of art will begin to melt and be gone by early April.

For the next four weeks or so, though, they should stand proud. They come in all shapes and sizes, some abstract, some figurative, but the key variable is their material. Those made of snow are interesting mainly for their geometric forms because, at least from afar, packed snow looks as ordinary as white concrete. Happily, most works have used ice, which exudes an effortless translucent beauty, at times radiating a soft pale green, at other times evoking a shattered window pane.

Continued in the article

"Microsoft Proposes Caller ID for E-Mail," by Michael Singer, InternetNews.com, February 25, 2004 --- http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3317611

In his quest to kill spam, Microsoft Chief Software Architect Bill Gates Tuesday appealed to security leadership, asking them to adopt his fledgling "Caller ID for E-mail" program.

The multi-tiered project would act much like how caller identification for telephones shows the phone number of the person calling. The proposal is part of the Redmond, Wash.-based company's Coordinated Spam Reduction Initiative (CSRI).

"Spam is both a nuisance and a security threat," Gates said to attendees at week's RSA Conference 2004 here emphasizing that using white lists or what Microsoft calls "rich safe-listing" e-mail is key. "Having e-mail come in, and not really being able to identify where it comes from, this is a huge security hole. And like so many of the standards and protocols that grew up on the Internet in the early days, we need to strengthen these in this environment where there is malicious activity."

Despite heavy industry and government involvement, however, Microsoft is moving ahead with its own plans. The company is calling for system-wide changes to the e-mail infrastructure and asking for high-volume e-mail senders to demonstrate their compliance with reasonable policies and viable alternatives for smaller-scale senders to distinguish themselves from spammers.

"We have some patents around this, we're saying are royalty free, available for everyone to use..." Gates said.

The pilot implementation of Gate's Caller ID for E-Mail is debuting on Microsoft's popular Hotmail service, which began publishing outbound IP addresses this week. The testing will be extended to check inbound addresses on some 100 million free e-mail accounts early this summer.

Gates said the project would then be extended to Microsoft Exchange systems to run filtering.

Continued in the article

"Vonage Makes Phoning Through the Internet Convenient and Cheap," by Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,personal_technology,00.html

Now, Internet phone calling has come into the mainstream. A New Jersey company called Vonage is selling a service that allows you to use your regular home phone and your current phone number to place calls via the Internet to regular phone numbers anywhere in the world. All you need is a broadband Internet connection.

"Geeks do *so* have friends," b y Lucy Sherriff, The Register, February 25, 2004 --- http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/35840.html

Gaming fans are a deeply social and friendly people, not isolated geeks. This is the main finding of a survey of gamers, published by GameMore, a UK gaming event co-ordinator.

The survey of GameMore's users showed that most people prefer to play in multiplayer mode, rather than against the computer. Of those remaining, very few expressed a preference for flying solo.

Matt Bellringer, technical director of GameMore, said computers were a new way to interact with people, not a way to hide from them.

"We found that the main reason people enjoy computer games so much is because they like to compete and co-operate with other gamers, and that playing against the computer just isn’t so much fun."

He argued that games developers should put more emphasis on the social aspect of gaming. Games with the right modes, connectivity and server support will be more successful because they will capitalise on the social experience of playing games in groups. It will also interest a wider section of the population in the pastime.

To prove its point, GameMore is running a series of group gaming sessions around the UK. The plan is that gamers will have a chance to meet and talk in the flesh, as well as play each other online. More information on that on their website.

Continued in the full report

Honey, They Shrunk the Cameras

In tests of the newest crop of mini digital cameras, it turns out that the best pictures came from the camera with both the lowest price and the lowest megapixel rating, writes Walt. Go figure.

"Honey, They Shrunk the Cameras," by Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107706028702331957,00.html?mod=gadgets%5Fprimary%5Fhs%5Flt

In technology, as in the rest of life, numbers don't tell the whole story. When comparing digital cameras, you might expect that the best pictures would come from the most expensive models in any given class, or from the models with the highest megapixel rating -- a measure of maximum picture resolution. But it ain't necessarily so.

In fact, after testing four similar, name-brand digital cameras for this column, it turned out that the best pictures came from the camera with both the lowest price and the lowest megapixel rating. Go figure.

My assistant Katie Boehret and I tested four slim, lightweight digital cameras from Casio, Sony, Konica Minolta and Pentax. These are point-and-shoot models that are designed to be tiny enough to carry around in a pocket, while still capturing high-quality photographs. Each camera measures slightly larger than the size of a credit card and has a 3x optical zoom lens.

Whenever high-tech products get really small, their price tags get bigger, and these cameras are no exception. The least expensive of the four cameras goes for $300, while the most expensive costs a whopping $550.

Each is under an inch thick, but all have plenty of features to keep an amateur photographer happy. All can take short videos as well as still photos, and all have multiple shooting modes and flash settings. Two of our test cameras even boasted the hot new trend in digital cameras -- larger liquid-crystal-display screens that take up most of the camera's back side.

In our tests, I took mostly indoor photos with each camera at a favorite hangout of mine, my local cigar store. Katie snapped outdoor pictures of landscapes, monuments and people while wandering around Washington, D.C.

All four cameras took good pictures, and deciding which did best is necessarily a subjective judgment. But, after comparing similar pictures from the four cameras side by side on a computer screen, Katie and I consistently found the images from the low-end $299 Konica Minolta Dimage Xg to be the best overall.

PC Magazine reviews these and others --- http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a=112333,00.asp

Mitsubishi's Newest Projector Sells for $995 The SE1U is a portable unit that delivers 1200 ANSI lumens and carries a low retail price --- http://www.mitsubishi-presentations.com/pr_021704.asp

Low Cost Conference Calls --- http://www.ecom-universe.net/mortgage/conf/

Information and Technology Services (ITS) has a great FAQs site that may suggest questions you never thought to ask --- http://www.trinity.edu/its/faqs/

Question
How can you look up a listing of the current movies, read somewhat frank reviews, and type in your zip code to look up the theatres conveniently close by and your movie choice's start times?

Answer
Internet Movie Database --- http://us.imdb.com/
You should first find the links to listings of current movies, select any one, and find out something about it. You then click on "Showtimes" and will be prompted to feed in a zip code. You can also click down to reviews that are sometimes quite critical so that you don't waste your time. Sometimes the reviews tell you what to expect. For example, one review of The Passion of Christ was a " Ten Thumbs Up" review (it's rare to get more than six thumbs up) --- http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0335345/usercomments-107

This movie was good to watch. I am not really that much of a religious man but I was very impressed. This movie was very well done and it was also very vivid. I cringed when Jesus was getting scourged on the back with those spikes. He was so torn. Those Romans were just laughing the entire time they were doing this. I guess there are those who really do find joy in other people's pain. I think that at the end, they had wondered what the heck they had done. I could see a few faces that had looks of concern after Jesus died.

The movie was good and I shall not yearn to see it again. It is just a little too hard to watch. It's pure torture. Good movie though.

I could not find a negative review about the above movie, although many of them were quite frank about the level of violence. One example of a review that will save you some money is the review of the current film "Twisted" at http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0315297/

However, `Twisted' dies at almost the very moment it begins. Logic is a big tripwire, and the script sidesteps a lot of problems by having characters just disappear for no reason, or in Jessica's case, simply blackout. The ending is also a jumble, containing a complete lack of sense, and it feels like the product of a screenwriter who was already two weeks late on delivering a draft and needed something quick. The entire film is poorly paced and awkwardly constructed, leaving little interest in the thriller proceedings that pop up occasionally to remind the audience what they came for.

Ashley Judd is another blunder of the film. I've liked Judd in the past, especially in her trademark thriller roles (`Double Jeopardy,' `High Crimes'), but she falters massively trying to bring Jessica to life. The appeal of the textured character is evident, but Judd can't quite get a grip on the psychological complexity of the role, relying on a hard-ass approach that her elfish features betray. As Jessica's world continues to dissolve and suspicions arise, Judd just gets worse, peaking with one scene that asks this hardened cop to open the floodgates of tears, unexpectedly eliciting big laughs in the process.

A rather long listing of opposing reviews of many other movies is at http://us.imdb.com/user/ur1214854/comments

There are also listings and comments about forthcoming movies and rental movies --- http://us.imdb.com/

The nicest part is being able to type in your zip code and get an immediate listing of nearby theatres and start times

There are also rental movie listings and reviews of older movies.

For a fee, Amazon.com will send you email once each week with current movie schedules --- http://snipurl.com/MovieSchedules

Texas is not on the list, but its beginning to look bad for California, New York, Illinois, Vermont, and 15 Other States
Folks in New Hampshire do not have to pay sales tax even in local retail establishments (this is really great when it comes to big ticket items like new vehicles).

The 19 states making the first stab are adding a line to their income tax returns asking tax payers to 'fess up to what they bought on the Net (or through a catalog, for that matter) and to pay the sales tax due. If you don't have the receipts handy, they'll just take a likely amount based on your income --- http://money.cnn.com/2004/02/25/commentary/wastler/wastler/index.htm?cnn=yes

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching --- http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/

NEW PUBLICATION
Balancing Acts: The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Academic Careers, by Mary Talor Huber --- http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/publications/balancing_acts.htm

How can faculty integrate the scholarship of teaching and learning into their academic careers? Balancing Acts addresses this question through the experience of four scholars who have been innovators in their own classrooms, leaders of education initiatives in their institutions and disciplines, and pioneers in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Drawing on interviews with Dan Bernstein (psychology, University of Nebraska), Brian Coppola (chemistry, University of Michigan), Sheri Sheppard (mechanical engineering, Stanford University), Randy Bass (American literature, Georgetown University), and colleagues within and outside their institutions and fields, the author looks at the routes these pathfinders have traveled through the scholarship of teaching and learning and at the consequences that this unusual work has had for the advancement of their careers, especially tenure and promotion.

Lessons from these case studies will be of interest to scholars of teaching and learning and their advocates at colleges and universities of all kinds.

Mark Shapiro asserts the following in "Irreverent Commentary on the State of Education in America Today," --- http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-02-27-04.htm

Over the years some inside and outside the academy have characterized teaching and learning as fundamentally different from research and scholarly activities. In the Irascible Professor's opinion, that view is flawed. In many disciplines, a significant lore exists outside the knowledge found in conventional textbooks. Often one cannot learn the real essence of a discipline from the classroom experience alone. Students who have the opportunity to work with faculty members on research or scholarly projects gain much greater insights into the quality of knowledge in a discipline than those who learn only in the classroom. At the research universities it is primarily the graduate students who are able to learn through research; but, in the PUI's (Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions) many undergraduate students get this opportunity.

Visible Knowledge Project --- http://crossroads.georgetown.edu/vkp/

• developing new kinds of student assignments: faculty investigating the connections between critical and creative work in new media environments

• examining the intermediate thinking processes of student and experts: faculty investigating the strategies students and experts use to do thinking tasks such as asking questions or coming to interpretative positions

• shifting time and space for learning: faculty investigating the impact of new communications technologies on student learning in classroom discussions and other venues.

Thanks to Barbara Scofield for calling my attention to Transparency International

International Corruption Surveys and Indices --- http://www.transparency.org/cpi/

TI Bribe Payers Survey

TI Corruption Perceptions Index

TI-Kenya Urban Bribery Index

TI-Mexicana Encuestra Nacional de Corrupcion y Buen Gobierno

National Survey on corruption and Governance (NSCG) (in Spanish)

Transparência Brasil Survey

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

February 24, 2004 message from Rene Leblanc [ReneLeblanc@communityproducts.co.uk]

Hello Bob Jensen,

Readers interested in Kierkegaard resources who visit your site might be very interested in this full length ebook in PDF format (448 pages!), offered as a public resource.

Please consider linking to it at your links page at: www.trinity.edu/rjensen/openshare.htm

Here is the link information:

Bruderhof Ebooks - Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard http://www.bruderhof.com/e-books/Provocations.htm

Here is a longer description:

There are few authors as repeatedly quoted and consistently unread as Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard himself is partly to blame for this: his style is dense, his thoughts complex. And yet embedded within his writings and journals are metaphors and truths so deep and vivid, they can overwhelm you with an almost blinding clarity.

Editor Charles E. Moore (a former professor at Denver Theological Seminary) has done us an invaluable service by putting together arguably the most accessible and complete Kierkegaard volume to be published in decades. Here is a book for anyone who takes the search for authenticity seriously.

Thank you for your consideration.

Best Wishes,

Rene LeBlanc

for the webteam at http://www.bruderhof.com
email: reneleblanc@communityproducts.co.uk
phone (In the UK) 044 01580 88 3336

The Online Bookstore as Competitive Edge --- http://www.universitybusiness.com/page.cfm?p=450

Question
Can you do email from a cruise ship?

Answer
The cruse ship itself may offer such a service. Most of us can do email from our universities if we have access to the Internet.

Wall Mossberg has this to say about cruse ships and Europe --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,mossberg_mailbox,00.html

Reader
Q: Does the new IBM ThinkPad X40 have a PS/2 port for an external keyboard and/or mouse, and if not, must one purchase the expensive docking station? Also, do you know why International Business Machines omitted the parallel printer port?

Mossberg
A: No, the X40 doesn't have a dedicated keyboard or mouse port, but you don't have to buy a docking station to connect an external keyboard or mouse. Most modern keyboards and mice connect via the ubiquitous USB port, and the X40 has two of those. In fact, the PS/2 keyboard port is on the way out. The parallel printer port is also becoming obsolete, again in favor of the USB port, which is now used by nearly all popular printers. Some corporations still use the PS/2 and parallel ports, however, and they would have to buy the dock for the X40, which includes both of these ancient connectors.

Q: My family will be traveling for almost three weeks in Europe this summer, much of the time on a cruise ship. My husband would like to find a device that will allow him to access e-mail from abroad without going to an Internet café. Would a BlackBerry be a good choice for e-mail access, or is there something better?

A: Yes, a BlackBerry would work, if it had certain characteristics. It would have to be one of the models with a built-in phone that runs on the GSM/GPRS network and works in the frequency bands used in Europe. You might get such a model from T-Mobile, Cingular or AT&T Wireless.

However, I am partial to the Treo, by palmOne, which is available in a GSM/GPRS version that works in Europe. You can buy this version from palmOne itself or from Cingular. You may have to install extra software or subscribe to an e-mail service.

There are two caveats with either of these options: Just getting the right hardware isn't enough. You also have to get a calling plan that allows for international calls and data. And I doubt either type of device will work well on the ship, unless it is very close to shore. Either device probably would be useless while you're on the open ocean.

Information for Faculty Who Receive Law Enforcement Inquiries Under the USA Patriot Act --- http://www.aaup.org/Issues/Homeland%20Security/lawenfo.htm

Believe it or not, I resist forwarding advertising. Whenever I communicate about products, there is no remuneration to me in any way.

The following message is an advertisement, and I have never tried these products (i.e., no free samples for Bob). But these products do sound interesting, so I thought you might like to know about them. It's a really competitive world for vendors of course authoring tools. Products have to have something special to be "survivors."

I added the product message below to the following sites:

Assessment and Testing --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

History of Course Authoring Systems --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

And yes Richard, I do know that Toolbook (in greatly modified form) still has its nose out of the water.

February 25, 2004 from Leo Lucas [leo@e-learningconsulting.com]

Hi Bob, thanks for providing information about authoring tools on http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm. I have two new authoring tools that may be of interest to you and your readers.

e-Learning Course Development Kit

URL: http://www.e-learningconsulting.com/products/authoringtool.html

Many people use HTML editors such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage to create e-learning courses. While these editors are great for creating information they lack essential e-learning features. The e-Learning Course Development Kit provides these features. The Kit provides templates to create questions, course-wide navigation, a table of contents and links for a glossary and other information. The Kit creates courses that work with SCORM, a standard way to communicate with a Learning Management System (LMS). The support for SCORM lets you run the course in multiple sessions, keep track of bookmarks and record the student's progress through the course. The Kit can be purchased online for $99.

Test Builder

URL: http://www.e-learningconsulting.com/products/testbuilder.html

Test Builder lets you author tests quickly and easily with a text editor. Absolutely no programming is required. With Test Builder you can create tests and quizzes with true-false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank and matching questions. It can randomize the sequence of questions and choices and it can randomly select questions from a question pool. You can limit the number of attempts and set the passing score. Test Builder supports SCORM. Test Builder can be purchased online for $149.

We wanted to create e-learning tools that would work in an academic setting. So we created tools with these capabilities:

- The tools are affordable.

- They work for the casual user. You can create a small course or test without much fuss.

- They come with documented source code so you can modify or extend the tools to meet your specific needs.

- They add value to your existing investments in technology. They will deliver courses/tests in a browser and work with an LMS that supports SCORM 1.2.

Please let me know if you need more information about these tools. Thanks, Leo

Leo Lucas
leo@e-learningconsulting.com
www.e-learningconsulting.com

P.S. Your home in the white mountains is beautiful.

February 26, 2004 reply from Elliot Kamlet SUNY Account [ekamlet@BINGHAMTON.EDU]

Since I just found a great device, I thought I'd share it with you too.

As more faculty become technology aware, classrooms with computers, projectors and internet access are becoming harder to get.

In order to serve as many technology needs as possible, our school is preparing technology ready rooms - rooms in which a laptop may be hooked up to a projector, internet access, etc.

Carrying the laptop around campus is not my favorite activity. I use the laptop to display PowerPoint, prepared spreadsheets, and internet access for news stories and financial statements.

Now for the solution. Margi products produces "Presenter to Go". Now I prepare my spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and search out my news, save the files or webpages to my Sony Clie (works with Palm Pilots too) and display it with a tiny little device that hooks in to the technology ready system. All I need to carry is my Clie and the 2 oz., 2"x2" device and plug.

As I see the process, the Margi software sends the PowerPoint or excel or anything else to a print file (it comes with its own printer driver) that is saved to my Clie and displayed with the help of the tiny device.

http://www.margi.com/products/prod_ptg.htm

Elliot Kamlet
Binghamton University (I too have no financial arrangement - I just like this product, a lot)

Aw shucks!
We didn't make the Top 10, but I think some of our students really tried. Note that some of the Top 10 party schools are also the Top 10 accounting schools. Must be an example of spurious correlation!

February 23, 2004 message from

Trinity University failed again to be one of the top ten party schools.

See http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/college/?article=PartyHeartySchools for the losers.

Don Mathis

From Ira Kawaller and Walter Teets --- http://www.kawaller.com/pdf/AB_02_10_04.pdf
"Commitments: Coalescing on an Accounting Treatment," is an opinion piece, co-authored with Walter Teets, Associate Professor of accounting at Gonzaga University . It appeared in The American Banker, February 10, 2004 . It has relevance to companies that originate mortgages that are intended for re-sale.

"Greenspan Says Congress Should Limit Fannie, Freddie," by Dawn Kopecki and Josepth Rebello, The Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107763512493737729,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us

Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could pose a threat to the financial system, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Mr. Greenspan called on Congress Tuesday to impose stringent restrictions on the ability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to issue debt and purchase assets, saying the growth of the institutions poses a risk to the safety of the U.S. financial system.

"The Federal Reserve is concerned about the growth and the scale of the [government-sponsored enterprises'] mortgage portfolios, which concentrate interest and prepayment risks at these two institutions," Mr. Greenspan said in written testimony to the Senate Banking Committee. Although he said he didn't think a crisis was imminent, "preventative actions are required sooner rather than later."

"GSEs need to be limited in the issuance of GSE debt and in the purchase of assets, both mortgages and non-mortgages, that they hold," he added in the written testimony.

Free Jack Welch Video (complete with short commercials from McDonalds)

Jack Welch, the infamous former CEO and hero among his peers, has resurfaced on a free video from Business Week --- http://businessweek.feedroom.com/iframeset.jsp?ord=993679
The audio was fuzzy but when I watched this video, but I could follow all that Jack had to say.

He discusses the state of the world economy and what it takes to be a CEO following the depressing scandals and corruption of the past decade. He is very committed to improving public schools NYC, the nation, and the world. A great deal of this video is devoted to how business leaders can help public education.

Dilemma: Following a five-way bypass the GE Board offered Jack a $100 million departing "gift" which he turned down, but agreed to the accompanying perks including use of GE's corporate jets. He discusses his subsequent highly publicized divorce and his decision to give back the perks. In spite of the perks, Jack Welch is devoted to doing something good for society for the rest of his life. He's got a lot to offer.

His forthcoming book is called Win. In discusses how people do not shoot straight in communicating and how frustrating this is life. It is difficult to separate reasons from rationalizations at times, but the video is worth watching.

"Fannie Mae Scolded for Relying On Obsolete Accounting System," by John D. McKinnon and James R. Hagerty, The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107774602918839236,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us

Federal financial regulators said that Fannie Mae relies on 70 outmoded manual accounting systems that could lead to more problems similar to October's $1.1 billion error.

In a letter to the company Tuesday, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said the mortgage giant's use of so many manual systems, as opposed to fully automated and integrated ones, raises concern. The agency told Fannie Mae officials to submit a remediation plan within 30 days.

The letter marks the latest rebuke by regulators against Fannie Mae and its mortgage-market sibling, Freddie Mac. Last year, Ofheo imposed a $125 million penalty on Freddie Mac after the federally sponsored company was forced to restate its accounting by almost $5 billion. Chief among Freddie Mac's sins was deliberate manipulation of its books by executives, but investigators also found sloppy accounting methods, including overreliance on manual systems.

Manual accounting systems typically refer to computer programs that are separate from the main accounting program, and allow for manual overrides. They are a concern to regulators because they create more room for human error, and thus require more review and controls, sapping resources from other accounting duties.

In July, soon after Freddie's problems came to light, Fannie Chairman Franklin Raines held a news conference to distance his company from the mess at Freddie Mac, where employees were sifting through years of old transactions while also reviewing and sometimes reversing longstanding accounting policies.

At the time, Mr. Raines said that unlike Freddie, Fannie had strong internal accounting controls. Last October, though, Fannie Mae had to correct a $1.1 billion accounting mistake that it briefly made in its financial reports. The error stemmed from a manual system that was being used to account for part of the company's derivatives business. Now the Ofheo letter suggests that the company has many more such manual systems. Fannie also faces a full-scale review by Ofheo of its accounting policies.

In response, a Fannie Mae spokesman, Chuck Greener, said the company is "a leader in the use of technology in financial services," and added that "virtually every financial institution in America" has similar manual systems, also known as end-user systems. Mr. Greener said the company is "very comfortable we will be able to respond to Ofheo's request fully."

In written testimony prepared for a Senate Banking Committee hearing Wednesday, Mr. Raines said: "We have effective controls in place to protect against mistakes, and we have effective protections in place in the rare chance that something dramatic does happen."

The committee is preparing legislation that would tighten regulation of Fannie, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank System.

A day earlier, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told the same committee that Fannie and Freddie pose "very serious" risks to the U.S. financial system because of the large amounts of mortgage loans they hold on their books, and the large amounts of federally subsidized debt they use to buy them up. Mr. Greenspan suggested explicit curbs on their debt. But Mr. Raines asserted that Fannie does a better job of hedging against risk than do banks. Both he and Richard F. Syron, Freddie's chairman and chief executive, urged Congress to avoid putting undue constraints on their growth.

Continued in the article

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting problems in the Freddie and Fannie family are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm

Basic accounting students At BYU have great success learning accounting from special videos --- http://snipurl.com/videoBYU

Contact Information:
Cameron Earl 801-836-5649 cameronearl@byu.edu
Norm Nemrow 801-422-3029 nemrow@byu.edu

Also see David Cottrell's approach at BYU --- http://www.business.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/AAA-CPE/AAA2003Cottrell.pdf

Advanced Video Technology
Amy Dunbar developed the following links for all participants in her workshop in Hawaii . She also gave me permission to share it with readers of New Bookmarks. Thanks to Amy and her other team members for sharing their presentation materials.
Using Technology to Distribute Course Content On and Off Campus AAA Annual Meeting - 2003
Continuing Education Workshop --- http://www.business.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/AAA-CPE/agenda.htm

Bob Jensen's threads and videos, including a video on how to develop your own course materials using the cheap and easy Camtasia Studio software can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

February 28 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

I am doing a comparison of Robodemo v5.0 elearning edition and Camtasia v2.02. I use both - sometimes in the same project. Both are very easy to use.

Robodemo advantages over Camtasia: The Flash hotspot output allow for quizzing that can be sent to a LMS (Learning Management System). Robodemo allows for limited scriptability with Javascript.

Camtasia has more output options - avi - mov - real - wnv - Camtasia v2.02 has some minor crash issues for some people,

Camtasia has a "Theater" utility which allows you to chain swf files together. Ehelp did have a utility called RoboPresenter that was and is more flexible that Camtasia's Theater More on this later.

Richard Campbell

February 28, 2004 reply from Bob Jensen

Thank you for the update Richard.

The one feature that I would like to see added is a convenient way of choosing between microphone audio versus line-in audio versus audio that is already stored on the computer. Sometimes what I would really like is to use Camtasia to record audio and/or video clips that are playing on the computer so I can insert these segments.

For example, suppose that I was recording a Camtasia video on fraud. It would be nice to be able to insert a small video segment of an ex con while explaining fraud in some program like Excel, PowerPoint, or Internet Explorer.

I realize that the Camtasia video degrades captured video due to a lower sampling rate (usually 5 frames per second) versus normal video frame rates of 30 per second. However, this may not be a huge problem in short video clips as long as the audio is good.

In Camtasia it is possible to run a hard wire from the audio out jack on the back of the computer to the microphone jack, but this is a pain in the tail and does not generally lead to good capturing of audio.

Is there any solution for this until Tech Smith finally upgrades for better audio and video recording of something other than microphone voice while capturing Camtasia video?

Is this also a problem in Robodemo?

Bob Jensen

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

February 28, 2004 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Bob: To integrate video into Powerpoint you could try the free Microsoft Producer or try apresso:

www.apreso.com

The link below will integrate a number of alternative file formats and was marketed by ehelp as RoboPresenter until Macromedia bought ehelp.

http://www.articulateglobal.com/main.html

February 29, 2004 reply from John Schatzel [jschatzel@STONEHILL.EDU]

I have been looking into this type of Flash tutorial creation software myself and found that Camtasia was well featured but not as powerful as RoboDemo, which is probably why Macromedia acquired the company. RoboDemo is also the most expensive: $500 Yikes! although educational pricing may be available. At the other end, I like Wink, which is FREE! If it does what you want then you can't beat Wink: http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ If it doesn't, then you have to pay. If your school is picking up the tab, then I would say go for RoboDemo unless you find it too difficult to use. I believe there is a 15-day trial version on the Macromdia site.

John Schatzel
Professor of Accounting and Information Systems
Stonehill College

The Complete Guide to Googlemania

They named it after the biggest number they could imagine. But it wasn't big enough. On the eve of a very public stock offering, here's everything you ever wanted to know about Google. A Wired Magazine special report --- http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/google.html

Guardian's great tips on using Google --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1117818,00.html

Bob Jensen's search helpers (including help in finding books, journals, pictures, media, colleges, and scholars) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm

I like the cartoon (outside my door) where the student asks:
”Is this an open-Google examination?”

February 25, 2004 reply from Jim Borden

Bob,

Here is another good article on Google from Fast Company (April 2003):

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/69/google.html

and here is another one from Wired (January 2003):

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/google_pr.html

"Roman Catholic Church of England: 'Love Your Taxes'," AccountingWeb, February 24, 2004 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=98767

Could an 11th commandment—love your taxes—be far off in England? The Roman Catholic Church of England and Wales has launched a campaign to encourage its 4.6 million members in the U.K. and Northern Ireland to embrace their inner taxpayer. A 40-page booklet called "Taxation for the Common Good," offers the premise that rather than seeing taxes as an unfair penalty, they should be seen as a way people can participate morally in society, Reuters reported.

"Taxes are very much based on the principles of solidarity, which is based on the commandment to love your neighbor," former Bishop Howard Tripp, Chairman of the Church's Committee for Public Life, told Reuters.

On average, Britons pay a basic rate on income of 22 percent and 40 percent on anything over 29,900 pounds ($55,550) but the Church’s book doesn’t get into what tax rate it considers equitable.

"This document is suggesting taxes are a way to play our part and it is something we should be pleased to do...It's all part of our duty to our neighbor, stemming from our duty as social animals," he said.

The Church claims the booklet is not a party political statement and does not mention the tax policy of British Chancellor (Finance Minister) Gordon Brown, who has hiked taxes to help fund the country's ailing health service, Reuters reported.

Tripp said the booklet is intended to jumpstart public debate on the issue and to give taxation a moral standing in society. He said tax dodgers cheat themselves and their country.

"If a person felt bound not to pay some tax to a certain cause they disagree with then they must follow their conscience, but I would urge them to look at other ways to deal with that problem, such as lobbying members of parliament."

Careers in Languages

Translation in the Age of Terror
A new U.S. government center will connect linguists on the front lines of the war against terror with translation assistance technologies that can digitize, parse, and digest raw intelligence material.
From MIT's Technology Review --- http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/erard0304.asp

This is a really neat site for history and art history enthusiasts, including accounting historians! --- http://www.eternalegypt.org/EternalEgyptWebsiteWeb/HomeServlet

Welcome to Eternal Egypt, which brings to light over five thousand years of Egyptian civilization. Eternal Egypt is a living record of a land rich in art and history, people and places, myths and religions. The stories of Eternal Egypt are told using the latest interactive technologies, high-resolution imagery, animations, virtual environments, remote cameras, three-dimensional models and more.

There are many ways to begin your journey through Eternal Egypt. The guided tour is a quick way to experience the best that the site has to offer. You can also begin with one of the cultural highlights below, or make your own discoveries using one of the many other ways to explore.

When I searched on the word "accounting," I got eleven hits. Not all of these were really accounting, but some were about accounting and were very interesting. For example, see Ancient Egyptian Tools for Writing --- http://snipurl.com/EgyptWriting

"Museum without walls' displays Egypt's glories," by Stephen Strauss, The Globe and Mail, February 24, 2004 --- http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040224.gtegypt24/BNStory/Technology/

Website designed by Toronto team gives close-ups of ancient and modern wonders

Experiencing the glories of Egypt, both ancient and modern, will become a lot easier starting today thanks to a groundbreaking joint effort of the Egyptian government and a Toronto-based team of Web designers.

The result of their three-year collaboration is a new website known as "Eternal Egypt," paid for by a $2.5-million (U.S.) donation from the IBM corporation.

"This project will enable us to treat the entire country of Egypt as a single museum that can be toured by individual visitors or a global audience," is how Farouk Hosni, Egypt's Minister of Culture, describes the endeavour that is being officially launched from Cairo today.

By going to the website -- http://www.eternalegypt.org -- a person sitting at a computer will be able to do such things as visit the Temple of Luxor or watch how the seated statue of Ramses II has changed over historical periods (once it was sheltered at the front of a temple, now it sits naked to the elements).

Tutankhamen's death mask is seen in such fine detail that holes made by decay or by the creation of the mask itself are visible. Structures that have disappeared, like the Lighthouse of Alexandria, destroyed in a 14th-century earthquake, are not just digitally recreated but can be viewed at different angles from all around the city's ancient harbour.

One of the project's revolutionary aspects is that people can download information while viewing various icons of Egyptian culture. Described as a "museum without walls," the website can send information to the cellphones or hand-held computers of tourists who find themselves mesmerized but confused by the history of the monuments they see.

The information is accessible in English, French or Arabic, and can be heard as well as read.

The website provides the same sort of detail to people touring the Egyptian Museum, where many ancient artifacts are stored. It is, acknowledge all who see it, not the easiest museum to walk through because material is not well identified.

"Why go to a museum and look at an object when you are not sure what you are looking at . . . and there are thousands of items [in the museum] which have no or confusing labels?" said Aiden Tierney, a software developer with IBM in Toronto. Voice interpretation devices are available, but the new software package holds out the possibility of a more detailed presentation.

"It's like nine books all together with different things devoted to everyone's different taste," is how Valerie Fox, senior creative director for IBM, describes the complexity of the website.

Not only does the site show ancient Egypt, but there are panoramic representations taken by web cams of the Temple of Luxor and the streets of Old Cairo.

The Toronto group, which was in charge of mounting and presenting information on the website, said the project held a number of challenges.

Bob Jensen's guides to history and museums are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#History

February 23, 2004 message from Don VanEynde

Because I am involved with NASA, on a daily basis I read space.com (link below). An added bonus for me is what I have learned in the various science areas.

It dawned on me today that I never thought to share this fascinating site with you all. For those of you who were not aware of it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Don

http://space.com/news

Reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Don,

The Space.com site is terrific. One of the links took me to "Top 10 Winter Sky Targets" --- http://www.space.com/spacewatch/top_10_winter_040220-1.html

Under a clear, crisp winter sky, there are many objects that can be enjoyed with your unaided eye or binoculars or a small telescope. With so many targets to choose from, I've compiled what I consider the Top 10 deep space objects to see in the evening hours during late February and early March.

Bob Jensen’s threads on computing technologies for sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/senses.htm

Please don't send any comments about how Bob Jensen's email messages should smell.

"E-mail tries out a sense of smell," BBC News, February 19, 2004 --- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3502821.stm

An e-mail would contain a code for a particular scent You could soon be able to spice up your e-mails with your favourite perfume. UK net provider Telewest Broadband is testing a system to let people to send aromatic e-mails over the internet.

It has developed a kind of hi-tech air freshener that plugs into a PC and sprays a smell linked to the message.

Telewest say it could be used by supermarkets to tempt people with the smell of fresh bread or by holiday companies seeking to stir up images of sun-kissed beaches.

"This could bring an extra whiff of realism to the internet," said Chad Raube, director of internet services at Telewest Broadband.

"We are always looking at ways to enhance the broadband internet experience of the future and this time we are sure consumers will come up smelling of roses."

Emotional response

The technology behind the idea was originally developed by US company Trisenx. Scientists at Telewest's labs in Woking, Surrey, have built on that research to come up with the idea of a "scent dome".

Continued in the article.

Sharing Professor of the Week from The Chinese University of Hong Kong

This site is about financial institutions (FIs). Most people find FIs confusing and boring. Yet the things that FIs do are quite simple and are critical to society.
Hugh Thomas

Hugh Thomas' Financial Institutions Site --- http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b100534/

This site includes an excellent online set of notes on financial institutions --- http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b100534/FIM/fim.htm

I found the following chapters most useful:

Chapter 11 Market Risk --- http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b100534/Courses/sau_ch13.pdf

Chapter 14 Off-Balance-Sheet Risk --- http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b100534/Courses/sau_ch14.pdf

Chapter 15 Foreign Exchange Risk --- http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b100534/Courses/sau_ch15.pdf

Chapter 18 Managing Risk --- http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b100534/Courses/sau_ch18.pdf

Chapter 19 Capital Adequacy --- http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b100534/Courses/sau_ch19.pdf

Chapter 20 Forward Contracts and Swaps --- http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b100534/Courses/sau_ch20.pdf

Chapter 21 Futures (including macro hedging) --- http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b100534/Courses/sau_ch21.pdf

Chapter 22 Options, Caps, Floors, and Collars --- http://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b100534/Courses/sau_ch22.pdf

Forwarded by Jim Borden
The top 500 universities in the world according to Shanghai Jiao Tong, University Institute of Higher Education --- http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm

Your request is vague Douglas.

To become an administrator at a college, you should earn a doctorate and probably gain experience on the faculty before you decide to become demoted to an administrator. God bless our administrators who serve so diligently day to day so the rest of us can do whatever we feel like doing.

One thing you might want to do is track the same literature that college Presidents track. These include the following:

The Chronicle of Higher Education --- http://chronicle.com/

AAUP --- http://www.aaup.org/

University Business --- http://www.universitybusiness.com/

The Pew Hispanic Center --- http://www.pewhispanic.org/index.jsp

Bob Jensen's higher education bookmarks are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas Luke [dlluke@SWBELL.NET]
Subject: Assistance or Suggestions

I am a Graduation student doing an intern with Local University in Administration. I have the opportunity to meet with VP's of selected areas as well as the President.

I am searching or inquiring about possible questions that I could pose that would relate to Higher Education and hopefully the possibility of I becoming an Administrator.

You help/assistance is greatly appreciated

Douglas

Track the Same News Stories that Your University's Top Administrators are Tracking

University Business --- http://www.universitybusiness.com/

Professional Media Group LLC, located in Norwalk, Connecticut, publishes the following education related magazines:

University Business is a publication for presidents and other senior officers at two- and four-year colleges and universities throughout the United States. University Business is circulated to 42,000 leaders who manage enrollment, technology, academic affairs and legislation. The magazine covers current and emerging trends in all areas of university and college management.

District Administration is for leaders in K-12 education. District Administration, which has a circulation of 75,000, is the only education magazine to reach every superintendent in the country, along with assistant superintendents, technology directors, school board presidents and federal funds administrators, among others. The magazine covers current trends and pressing issues in the K-12 education industry along with strong coverage of emerging technologies and leadership issues for district-level administrators.

488 Main Avenue, Norwalk, CT 06851 Phone: 203.663-0100 Fax: 203.663-0149

Bob Jensen's higher education bookmarks are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm

The Pew Hispanic Center --- http://www.pewhispanic.org/index.jsp

The Pew Hispanic Center's mission is to improve understanding of the diverse Hispanic population in the United States and to chronicle Latinos' growing impact on the nation. The Center strives to inform debate on critical issues through dissemination of its research to policymakers, business leaders, academic institutions and the media.

Hong Kong's Electronic-Money Card Is a Hit

In Hong Kong, the payment method known as the Octopus card has become a widely accepted electronic currency, used to buy a newspaper at 7-Eleven, a meal at a fast-food restaurant and even coffee at Starbucks.

"Electronic-Money Card In Hong Kong Is a Hit," by Evan Ramstad, The Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107715002812233389,00.html?mod=gadgets%5Fprimary%5Fhs%5Flt

HONG KONG -- When this city of nearly seven million began offering a way to pay for subway, ferry and bus fares electronically six years ago, it hoped its residents would quickly catch on.

Instead, the payment method, known as the Octopus card, has done more than just replace pocket change on the bus. It has become a widely accepted electronic currency, used to buy a newspaper at 7-Eleven, a meal at a fast-food restaurant, even coffee at Starbucks.

In all, more than 12,000 locations across Hong Kong accept the card, including parking meters, municipal swimming pools and the popular horse-racing tracks.

It also has made the chief developer, subway operator MTR Corp., an unlikely consultant on electronic money to cities around the world. And while banks and credit-card companies have for years hyped a coming cashless society, Hong Kong's mass-transit operators appear to have an early edge, though no one thinks cash will disappear soon.

About 1% to 2% of all cash transactions in the city are made with the card, says Octopus Card Ltd., a joint venture of the transit agencies that operates the card. "Our business assumption is we're going to compete with cash," says Eric Tai, the venture's chief executive.

Octopus is a stored-value card and behaves like a debit card. Money is subtracted when the card is held over a reading device, which is a low-range radio transmitter that can be incorporated into doors, turnstiles and countertops. Because reading devices can detect a card through leather and plastic, many people never remove their card but rather wave their purse or wallet over the reader. There is even a $35 Octopus wristwatch, with the card technology built in. Funds can be added to the cards at machines in subway stations, convenience stores and via an automatic draw from a bank account.

Sometimes called smart cards, these stored-value cards are common in Asian cities, though with varied capabilities. In Seoul, South Korea, subway riders can use stored-value cards or some credit cards. In 2002, Taipei in Taiwan launched Easy Card for use across transit systems. Singapore's CashCard, developed in 1996, has had the most success in moving beyond mass transit, and is accepted at 10,000 locations. But none have become as widely accepted as Octopus, or been able to match it as a standard suitable for being rolled out elsewhere.

In Hong Kong, Octopus emerged when MTR in the mid-1990s determined it was spending too much on magnetic-strip tickets, similar to those used in New York City and Washington, D.C. As the company studied the cost of implementing an all-electronic fare system, some managers suggested lowering the burden by sharing it with the city's major bus and ferry companies. (In Hong Kong, mass-transit operators are private companies that compete for routes.)

"Some people said all we were going to do is give away market share" to other operators, says Phil Gaffney, MTR's chief operating officer. "But the view that prevailed was that we as a public-transport operator would benefit if there were an increase in public-transport trips overall."

MTR took a 57% stake in the Octopus Cards joint venture while other mass-transit firms split the rest. Octopus takes a small percentage of each transaction, just like a credit-card company does. The closely held company had revenue last year of around $21 million.

Meanwhile, MTR began to receive requests from other cities that wanted to emulate Hong Kong's success in getting citizens to adopt Octopus. Last fall, top executives met with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on that agency's ideas for a system that would serve the transit systems around New York.

"Mailblocks Will Keep Your Mail Spam-Free, Without the Guesswork." by Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,personal_technology,00.html

Most antispam programs take the form of add-ons to your normal e-mail program or service. And most rely on filtering, the effort to guess, usually imperfectly, which e-mails you receive are spam and which are legitimate.

But I've been testing an antispam system that takes a better approach. It's a complete e-mail service that has antispam intelligence built right in. Instead of filtering, it uses a far more effective method that stops 100% of mass-mailed spam.

The program is called Mailblocks, and despite a few downsides, I like it a lot. It's aimed at consumers and small businesses, and doesn't work with corporate e-mail. But it has lots of sophisticated features, and can consolidate all of your e-mail accounts -- even AOL accounts -- into a single in-box.

Mailblocks is a Web-based e-mail service, like Yahoo Mail or Hotmail, that works on both Windows and Macintosh computers. But it is slicker and cleaner than Yahoo or Hotmail, with a very good, uncluttered interface that responds to commands quickly. If you'd rather use a traditional e-mail program, you can read Mailblocks e-mail using Outlook, Outlook Express or Eudora on Windows, or Apple Mail or Entourage on the Macintosh.

The service is inexpensive. A free version, which has ads, gives you five megabytes of message storage and a Mailblocks e-mail address. For $9.95 a year -- that's a year, not a month -- you get 15 megabytes of storage, an ad-free screen, a Mailblocks e-mail address and the power to consolidate other e-mail accounts. For $24.95 a year, you get all of that and 100 megabytes of storage. On Hotmail or Yahoo, 100 megabytes of storage costs more than twice as much, and you get less effective spam protection and have to look at ads. Yahoo and Hotmail, however, have more features.

Mailblocks also allows you to send e-mail attachments of up to six megabytes each, a generous limit that's enough for multiple high-resolution photos. And if you don't like having the clumsy word "mailblocks.com" in your e-mail address, you can choose from 19 alternatives, including "mailster.com," and "emailwhiz.com."

You can divert e-mail from up to 10 of your current e-mail accounts to Mailblocks, and Mailblocks will apply its antispam system to all, including popular services like EarthLink, AOL, MSN, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. You can also import address books from Outlook or Outlook Express and other programs, though you may have to go through several steps to do so.

Mailblocks uses a spam-control system called challenge/response. It's designed to stop all e-mail from the automated mass-mailing programs spammers use, while letting in e-mail from humans. Mailblocks isn't the first program to use challenge/response, but it does a very nice job with it. Here's how the system works.

All e-mail you receive from people in your address book is passed directly to your Mailblocks in-box. If any are sent to you from addresses not in your address book, they are met by an automatically generated "challenge" e-mail that asks the sender to copy a randomly generated number into a box. These E-mails aren't placed in your in-box, but go into a special Pending folder while awaiting a response.

If the sender copies the number correctly, the e-mail is moved to your in-box, and the address is added to your address book. Mailblocks will also add the sender to a master list, so he or she will never be challenged again when sending e-mail to any other Mailblocks user.

If the sender doesn't respond correctly to the challenge within 14 days, the e-mail will be deleted from the Pending folder.

All automated spam systems will fail this test, either because they can't stop and copy the number, or because they use false return addresses. Only human senders with genuine return addresses can pass the challenge.

If you don't want to subject unknown senders to the challenge, you can turn this feature off, but then you will get spam.

To receive "good" automated e-mail, such as online newsletters or purchase confirmations, Mailblocks lets users create special "tracker" e-mail addresses that can be used to sign up for various Web stores or services. When an automated mailing system sends an e-mail to one of your tracker addresses, it goes right to your in-box.

In my tests, these features worked perfectly, eliminating spam from my Mailblocks account and from those accounts consolidated inside Mailblocks.

Mailblocks also offers advanced e-mail features like automatic signatures, multiple folders, rules for sorting e-mail and automated vacation messages.

But there are some downsides. It doesn't scan e-mail attachments for viruses. It lacks a "preview pane," so you can see what's in a message without opening it. It can't auto-complete e-mail addresses you start to type in. And there's no easy way to designate an entire domain -- a whole company, for instance -- as immune from challenges. The company says it plans to remedy some of these shortcomings in a new release due this summer that will also include a calendar function.

Overall, Mailblocks is a very good system for eliminating spam. And it will only get better.

Message from FERF on February 24, 2004

Auditor Fees

An FEI member recently asked research as to whether a database exists of how much audit firms charge in audit fees relative to size of clients and billable rates per hour.

FERF researchers found information broken down by company size in the recent FEI Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 survey results issued earlier in February http://www.fei.org/news/404_survey.cfm. Although billable rates are not given, an excel table details incremental audit fees for the Section 404 attestation and the % increase this fee represents of their current audit fee. Various groupings of responses are given by size of company based on revenue.

In April 2003, FEI's Committee on Corporate Reporting (CCR) surveyed its members on 2002 audit fees. Twenty-five companies with total US assets of between $0.4 billion and $1,097 billion responded. Findings and an excel table are available under Finance Tools at http://www.fei.org/financetools/audit_fee.cfm

Aspen Publishing recently released the 5th edition of "Professionals Guide to Value Pricing." The book discusse related value pricing vs. audit firm hourly rates. A description of the book can be found at: http://www.aspenpublishers.com/Product.asp?catalog%5Fname=Aspen&category%5Fname=&product%5Fid=0735543178&Mode=SEARCH&ProductType=M.

Bob Jensen's guides to fees and related matters are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fees.htm

Meet an Ex Con Named Walter Pavlo Who Did Time in Club Fed

What you find below is a message (actually three messages and a phone call) I received from a man involved in MCI's accounting fraud who went to prison and is now trying to apologize (sometimes for a rather high fee) to the world.

You can read details about Walter Pavlo's fraud at http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/0610/064.html

I wrote the following last year at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm

I watched the AICPA's excellent FBI Webcast ( Nov. 6, 2003 ). One segment that I really enjoyed was a video of Walter Pavlo, a former MCI executive who served prison time for fraud. This was a person with all intentions of being highly professional on a fast track to being in charge of collecting reseller bad debts for MCI. In that position, he just stumbled upon too much temptation for what is tantamount to a kiting scheme.

Message 1 from Walter Pavlo on February 24, 2004

Bob,

I routinely do a search on my name over the Internet to see if there are comments on my speeches that I conduct around the country. I saw that you had a comment on a video in which I appeared but was unable to find the complete comment on your extensive web-site. Whether positive or negative I could not ascertain but am still interested in your thoughts and would appreciate them.

I did read some of your comments regarding the stashing of cash off-shore by executives who commit crimes and the easy life they have at "club fed". Here I would agree that there are a few who have such an outcome, but this is not the norm. However, I would disagree that there is a "club fed" and on that you are misinformed.

I had off-shore accounts and received a great deal of money. However, the results of story are more tragic. All of the money is gone or turned over to authorities (no complaints here, this is justice), I lost my wife of 15 years and custody of my children, I lost all of my assets (retirement, etc.) and at 41 I am starting life over with little to show of my past accomplishments (which were many). Stories like mine are more common among rank and file middle managers who find themselves on the other side of the law. There are few top executives in prison but that appears to be changing. Time will tell if they fare as well.

Prison, while deserving for a crime of the magnitude that I and others committed, is a difficult experience and one that is difficult from which to recover. In the media and in comments such as the ones your offer, it appears that this part of the story is not revealed and that it is better to appeal to the fears and anger of the general population. I would encourage you to consider other view points for reasons of understanding the full story. I feel that this is important for people to know.

Thank you for your time and would appreciate receiving your feedback.

Walt Pavlo
125 Second Avenue, #24 New York, NY 10003
Phone: (201) 362-1208

Message 2 from Walter Palvlo (after he phoned me)

Bob,

Attached is an article that appeared in Forbes magazine in the June 10, 2002 issue. I was interviewed for this article while still in prison and some six months prior to WorldCom's revelations of the multi-billion dollar fraud that we know of today.

It was a pleasure to speak with you and I hope to correspond with you more in the future.

Walt Pavlo

125 Second Avenue, #24 New York, NY 10003

Phone: (201) 362-1208

This is part of a resume that he sent to me (I think he wants me to promote him as a speaker)

Walter "Walt" Pavlo holds an engineering degree from West Virginia University and an MBA from the Stetson School of Business at Mercer University. He has worked for Goodyear Tire in its Aerospace division as a Financial Analyst, GEC Ltd. of England as a Contract Manager and as a Senior Manager in MCI Telecommunication's Division where he was responsible for billing and collections in its reseller division.

As a senior manager at MCI, and with a meritorious employment history, Mr. Pavlo was responsible for the billing and collection of nearly $1 billion in monthly revenue for MCI's carrier finance division. Beginning in March of 1996, Mr. Pavlo, one member of his staff and a business associate outside of MCI began to perpetrate a fraud involving a few of MCI's own customers. When the scheme was completed, there had been seven customers of MCI defrauded over a six-month period resulting in $6 million in payments to the Cayman Islands.

In January 2001, in cooperation with the Federal Government, Mr. Pavlo pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering and entered federal prison shortly thereafter. His story highlights the corrupt dealings involving the manipulation of financial records within a large corporation. His case appeared as a cover story in the June 10, 2002 issue of Forbes Magazine, just weeks before WorldCom divulged that it had over $7 billion in accounting irregularities.

Currently, Mr. Pavlo is the Director of Business Development at the Young Entrepreneurs Alliance (YEA), a non-profit organization in Maynard, Massachusetts. YEA's mission is to provide at-risk and adjudicated teens with the opportunity to attain long-term economic independence by teaching them about business ownership. Mr. Pavlo's primary responsibility is to develop the business programs, raising funds through speaking engagements and charitable donations to YEA.

Mr. Pavlo has been invited to speak on his experiences by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Attorney's Office, major university MBA programs, corporations and various professional societies. The purpose of these speeches is to convey to audiences an understanding of the inner-workings and motivations associated with complex white-collar crimes, with an emphasis on ethical decision-making.

Message 3 from Walter (following my inquiry about his pro-bono presentations):

Walter Pavlo sent me the following information regarding my question whether he makes pro-bono presentations. He replied as follows:

Bob, On the note of pro-bono work, most of what I have done to date has been pro-bono. Whenever I am in an area with a paying gig, I try to reach out to universities in the area to offer my services at no charge. I could have done this for Trinity when I was in San Antonio last year for the Institute of Internal Auditors. I'll be sure to look you up if I'm going to be in the area.

Walt

Bob Jensen's threads on the Worldcom/MCI frauds are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#WorldCom

Message from FERF on February 24, 2004

Fraud Checklists

Another FEI member responsible for a Sarbanes-Oxley 404 engagement recently inquired about a "checklist that can be used at the process level to help identify the types of fraud concerns related to a specific process."

FERF researchers found the following references:

An Appendix to Statement on Auditing Standards No. 99, Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit (SAS 99), provides examples of fraud risk factors. The appendix is available at the AICPA website at: http://www.aicpa.org/antifraud/business_industry_govt/assessing_organization_vulnerability/identify_assess_risk/38.htm

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners provides a fraud prevention checkup that can be used to assist in determining an "entity's vulnerability to fraud." http://www.cfenet.com/pdfs/FrdPrevCheckUp.pdf

In January 2003, the Institute of Internal Auditors conducted a survey on red flags used to detect fraud. Though the survey is closed, the text can be used as a checklist. http://www.gain2.org/redflags.htm

Somewhat related to the issue of fraud, Mutual Interest published an article about SAS 99 and fraud: http://www.auditnet.org/articles/SAS%2099%20Friend%20or%20Foe.PDF

FERF also wrote an article on fraud detection that will be published in the March/April 2004 issue of FE Magazine that will soon be available at http://www.fei.org/mag/.

Bob Jensen's main fraud links are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm

Audit Committee Oversight Responsibilities Checklist
http://www.fei.org/download/iia_2_13_04.pdf

February 25, 2004 message from Jim Borden

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience (either in the classroom or personally), with using the Cashflow board game sold by Rich Dad (Robert Kiyosaki). It seems to have gotten a favorable review in the New York Times (http://www.richdad.com/news/article_NYTimes.asp) and sounds intriguing.

Thanks,

Jim Borden

Villanova University

February 25, 2004 reply from

Cashflow is a great game! It effectively teaches you the philosophy of how to create passive income to create a positive cashflow. But what it does even better than that is teach you how to shift your paradigm of money and its role in your life. It teaches you how to get out of the "rat race" (there is an actual rat race in the game) so you can accomplish the things in life that add real value to you and your family. The game requires the player to make about 50 -100 business-like decisions every game ranging from personal finance to stock market investing to entrepreneurial opportunities. The decisions are difficult at first but become second nature after playing several times--- and that is the key to this game--- repetition

The only criticism I have of the game is some of the scenarios introduced into the game are a little unrealistic.

I have played the games many times but never in the classroom environment. However, my brother used it in the classroom at his school. They played it one or two times per week for the whole semester (I think) with great success.

Its a great game, but comes with a hefty price.

Cameron Earl

Brigham Young University

There is a less expensive eGame version at http://www.richdad.com/rat-race-board-game.html

February 327, 2004 reply from Linda Kidwell, Charles Stuart University, Australia [lkidwell@CSU.EDU.AU]

Aside from the merits of the game, we used the book at Niagara for our introduction to business class for a few years. The students liked the brash style of the writer, and some of them took away good information about too much debt. But I wonder whether the game has some of the same problems as the book, from an accountant's point of view? The two that come to mind are the intentional re-definition of assets and liabilities and the discussions about home ownership. On the first topic, it caused some serious confusion among our introductory accounting students. On the second, as one with elderly in-laws now suffering the rent squeeze because they never bought a house, I question the wisdom of giving young adults the advice that they should not buy a home. I don't think they have the sophistication to understand the difference between not buying a home and not buying too much home. Just my opinion.

Linda Kidwell

February 25, 2004 message from Dave Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

As some know, my instructions for playing Monopoly and doing the accounting are on-line at www.profalbrecht.com/publish/realmoney2003

Today, I came across an interesting site for Monopoly gift accessories --- http://www.etailgifts.com/moncollectibles.htm

David Albrecht

Trivia Games (not free) for Accounting Education

February 22, 2004 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Here is a link to "Trivia Countdown" which is analogous to those movie trivia quizzes that you see in between the commercials as you wait for the movie to start in the movie theater. It is completly modifiable so that you can add your own questions and answers as well as the time to respond.

http://www.tricalico.com/

It is written in Toolbook (yes Bob Jensen, Toolbook still lives on in its new release - Toolbook 2004).

This is a useful tool to calm your students down as they file into your classroom in eager anticipation of the knowledge they are about to gain. I learned my lesson about making sure the trivia show was up and running after a couple of students nearly got into fisticuffs before class. They were having an argument over which method was better for the Statement of Cash Flows - the direct method or indirect method. It was only after I told them "Ladies - you are BOTH right" that they calmed down.

Richard Campbell

A Story of Record Setting Pork in a Barrel

Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005 --- http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/budget.html

Bob Jensen's links to economic data are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics

Some Business School News

Congratulations to Professors Bjorn Jorgensen and Michael Kirschenheiter KPMG and UIUC Competitive Manuscript Award on Risk Measurement and Disclosure --- http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/news/articles/2004/11204_awards.html
Mike developed Columbia University's online accounting course for UNEXT and made a presentation that you can listen to at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm#2000
Other Columbia University research awards are noted at http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/news/articles/2004/11204_awards.html

A number of prestigious organizations presented Columbia Business School faculty members with awards and posts in recognition of achievement within their fields. In 2003, those achievements included best paper awards, new editorships of prestigious academic journals and several awards from the private and public sector.

Free Andy Grove Video Available from Stanford University --- http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/

Intel Chairman Andy Grove challenged the Business School to take a leadership role in finding ways to restore faith in America's business institutions. Grove's remarks came as he received the 2004 Arbuckle Award presented by the School's Alumni Association at a banquet Feb. 11.
Video File, 42:04 minutes

It has been years since Intel was simply a chipmaker.
What does the company see itself doing 10 years from now? http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/efQc0BcUEY0Glu0CNyh0A2

Congratulations to the new Rady School of Management

The new B-School at the University of California at San Diego finally has a name -- The Rady School of Management. It honors Ernest Rady, a San Diego commercial real-estate executive, founder of a privately held conglomerate called American Assets, and chairman of both Insurance Company of the West and Westcorp. Rady and the Rady Family Trust donated $30 million to the school. That's the second-largest gift in the university's history and is all-important for Dean Robert Sullivan, who has been fund-raising nonstop since he left the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School for U-Cal San Diego a year ago.
"U-Cal San Diego's Big Backer," Business Week, February 9, 2004 --- http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/feb2004/bs2004029_2029_bs047.htm

London Business School's Research by Nigel Nicholson --- http://www.london.edu/news_events/

Examining the lessons that can be learned by today's business leaders Professor Nicholson argues that the Maasi view of leader as ‘chief-servant' is a compelling proposition largely ignored by today's managers. He has also observed some clear parallels with his work on family business – witnessing, in this very different setting, further evidence that the ties of kinship create working bonds which are far more resilient than any created relationship.

Who is the new Dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina? http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/news/newdean.cfm

Are they really claiming MBAs have no "technical skills?"

Most B-school officials say offshoring hasn't hit new MBAs. "The bulk of the jobs currently outsourced require technical skills"
"Hiring Outlook for 2004: Part 2,: Business Week, February 22, 2004 --- http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/feb2004/ca20040210_5285_ca004.htm

And what do MBAs without technical skills want?

"From Coffee to Jets, Perks for Executives Come Out in Court," by Alex Berenson, The New York Times, February 22, 2004 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/22/business/22PERK.html

Question
What is RFID?

Answer

RFID works with Wal-Mart directing its suppliers to attach radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to product shipment pallets by 2005, the technology is finally coming into its own. This animated infographic shows how RFID will automate the supply chain, from an object's manufacture to its arrival at a consumer's home. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/visualize0304.asp?trk=nl

"FDA Expects RFID Use To Combat Drug Counterfeiting," Information Week, February 18, 2004 --- http://snipurl.com/RFIDdrugs

"RSA Keeps RFID Private," by Dennis Fisher, eWeek, February 23, 2004 --- http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1532740,00.asp?kc=EWNWS022304DTX1K0000599

RSA Security Inc. will unveil a finished version of its RFID "Blocker Tag" technology that prevents radio-frequency identification tags from being read.

The technology, which RSA plans to demonstrate at its namesake conference this week in San Francisco, is one of the industry's first attempts to secure the anticipated oceans of consumer tracking data to be gathered by the tiny radio-powered tags. As Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Gillette Co. press on with massive RFID rollouts, tags are expected to be attached, in increasing numbers, to all kinds of products, including manufactured goods, food and apparel.

Continued in the article

February 20, 2004 reply from Scott Bonacker [lister@BONACKERS.COM]

The February 2004 issue of Baseline magazine also has in depth information about Wal-Mart's RFID program, RFID in general, and Albertson's competitive goals.

http://www.baselinemag.com/

February 20, 2004 reply from Denise

There's good multimedia material available from Accenture that discusses RFID at

http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enweb&xd=services\technology\vision\tech_vision.xml

Just click "Accenture Chief Scientist Glover Ferguson presents Accenture's 
new technology vision in detail", select your choice of streaming media 
(don't try this on dialup!), listen and watch.

There are also several other interesting looking links (
"Reality Online" is the one above) at www.accenture.com/techlabs/realityonline  
that I haven't tried.

Denise Nitterhouse
DePaul University
1 East Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60604
dnitterh@condor.depaul.edu

"Jamming Tags Block RFID Scanners," Wired News, March 1, 2004 --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,62468,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html

A security technology company introduces a device that can prevent radio-frequency tags from being tracked. It could protect the privacy of shoppers, but it won't come out for a few years -- and it could be banned.

Legends of our Times: Native Ranching and Rodeo Life on the Plains and Plateau --- http://www.conexus.si.edu/legends/main.html

At long last, the IASB decrees that employee stock options must be booked!

Message from SmartPros on February 22, 2004 --- http://www.smartpros.com/x42573.xml

Feb. 20, 2004 (San Jose Mercury News) — International accounting rule-makers decreed Thursday that companies must begin to deduct the cost of stock options from corporate profits starting in 2005, dealing a blow to the U.S. technology industry that had been hoping global political pressure would derail the rule.

The long-anticipated rule by the International Accounting Standards Board will affect an estimated 7,000 publicly traded companies in 90 counties, but not the United States.

But the IASB's counterpart in the United States, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, plans to issue a similar proposal in March. And the two accounting groups have been working closely together to make the two rules as symmetrical as possible.

"It doesn't change much in terms of what's happening in the United States, but it certainly dashes any hope the IASB would back down," said Ellie B. Kehmeier, a deputy national tax leader for Deloitte & Touche in San Jose. "And it provides a decent preview of what to expect when FASB issues its draft standard sometime in March."

The London-based IASB developed the global standard because a mish-mash of national rules generally do not require companies to account for options on their financial statements. That has resulted in understated expenses and inflated profits, IASB Chairman David Tweedie said in a release.

The rule, Tweedie added, "will improve the qualify of financial reporting by giving a clearer and more complete picture of an entity's activities, which will assist investors and other users of financial statements to make informed economic decisions."

The U.S. tech industry -- which doles out options more heavily than other industries -- has lobbied hard against such rules and sought political intervention in Washington. Though many still hold out hope, there is a growing sense that such rules are inevitable, said Roger Stern, a partner with Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, a high-tech law firm in Palo Alto.

"A lot can happen between crouch and leap," Stern said. But, he added, "I think most people think mandatory option expensing is inevitable."

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Educators' Review on February 27, 2004

TITLE: Foreign Firms to Expense Options
REPORTER: David Reilly
DATE: Feb 19, 2004
PAGE: A2 LINK: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107713353964432916,00.html
TOPICS: Financial Accounting, Financial Accounting Standards Board, International Accounting Standards Board, Stock Options

SUMMARY: Firms following International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) will be required to expense stock options as of January 1, 2005. European companies "have realized this is coming and have changed their ways of remunerating employeses," said an analyst with UBS in London. Questions focus on understanding the use of IASs in comparison to USGAAP and on the implications of accounting standards for economic behavior.

QUESTIONS:
1.) What factors determine which companies follow International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)? What standards currently govern European companies' reporting practices?

2.) What are the major differences between current USGAAP and the new IFRS on stock compensation?

3.) How much will the standard being adopted by the IASB influence development of a new accounting standard on stock compensation in the US? What other factors influence the potential change in US reporting in this area?

4.) An analyst with UBS in London is quoted: "The big European companies have realized this is coming and have changed their ways of remunerating employees." Should accounting standards impact economic contracting and behavior? Support you answer.

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: Major Economies at Loggerheads Over Global Accounting Rules
REPORTER: Andrew Peaple
ISSUE: Feb 08, 2004
LINK: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107628352527524027,00.html

Bob Jensen's threads on stock options are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory/sfas123/jensen01.htm

As Hustler magazine nears its 30-year anniversary, Larry Flynt reflects on how technology has changed the adult entertainment business -- and how the Patriot Act relates to porn. Wired News February 19, 2004 interview by Xeni Jardin --- http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,62343,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html

Wired News:
How has the Internet changed porn?

Larry Flynt:
It's had a dramatic effect. In the 1980s, publishing was 80 percent of my business. Now it's about 20 percent, and the rest is Internet or video. I don't think many people anticipated how the Internet was going to revolutionize the way we disseminate information. Now everybody does -- but some did in time, and some didn't. That's one of the reasons Penthouse filed for bankruptcy. They were relying totally on publishing. We knew in the early 1990s that we needed to diversify and branched out into a lot of different areas.

Technology still has many surprises for us down the road, particularly in the wireless area. It's going to be absolutely phenomenal. In the next two to five years, you'll see the computer and your home television set merging. You'll have one remote control, and they'll effectively be one device.

Continued in the article

February 23, 2004 message from PwC

7th Annual Global CEO Survey (Managing Risk: An Assessment of CEO Preparedness)

This edition of the Annual Global CEO Survey focuses on the critical issue of risk, with particular emphasis on enterprise risk management (ERM). Nearly 1,400 CEOs in 40 countries shared their views with PwC on how they are managing enterprise risk. ERM provides a framework for CEOs and management teams to deal effectively with uncertainty, and the risks and opportunities associated with uncertainty, in order to enhance value. This year's edition features management strategies and performance forecasts from the CEOs as well as interviews with several chief executives. Nearly 40 percent of the CEOs report that they already have effective and efficient ERM in place, while 46 percent view this as a one to three year project.

Here are a few additional highlights:

68% of US CEOs believe the current environment is making companies risk averse

9 out of 10 US CEOs are confident about their prospects for revenue growth over the next 12 months

67% think the business environment is riskier now than it was a year ago

US CEOs see overregulation as a big threat, with almost half voicing that concern

It is obvious from the survey that US CEOs are concerned with risk, which is a reasonable and expected reaction to Sarbanes-Oxley. The full survey can provide you additional insights into what businesses are facing.

PwC's 7th Annual Global CEO Survey is available electronically through our website. We'd like to make this available to you, so that you may explore the contents of the Survey in an interactive manner. Additionally, you may download a PDF copy of the Survey from the website. We felt that the Survey could useful for classroom discussions.

http://www.pwc.com/CEOsurvey

So, the naturalists observe, the flea,
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em;
And so proceed, ad infinitum.
Jonathan Swift

Great fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
And so ad infinitum.
DeMorgan, (1915)

Urban Legend Paradox
What about claims that may be false? Is there any site devoted to setting the record straight about urban legends that are not urban legends?

Urban legends have urban legends about urban legends that claim not to be urban legends but really are urban legends that may in fact not be urban legends and so on infinitum. Some are blatantly false from the beginning; others are embellished over time. One definition is as follows from http://support.airmail.net/faq/glossary_mz.php

Urban legend - A story, which may have started with a grain of truth, that has been embroidered and retold until it has passed into the realm of myth. Some legends that periodically make their rounds include "The Infamous Modem Tax," "Craig Shergold/Brain Tumor/Get Well Cards," and "The $250 Cookie Recipe."

One thing not to be believed is the typical claim that "This is not an urban legend." That's generally a signal that what follows is all or mostly bull.

Urban legends are thus lies about what somebody said or wrote and are circulated wildly across the Web. The best way that I found to check on something before I forward it is to select an identifying phrase such as part of the title of a story. Then I go to http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
I enter the selected phrase into the "exact phrase" box and then in the "all of the words" box above I enter the word "urban" and the word "legend" without quote marks. Then I hit the Google Search button.

There are hundreds of sites that explain and/or archive supposed urban legends, some of which are as follows:

A great article on how urban legends work ---
http://science.howstuffworks.com/urban-legend.htm
http://www.snopes.com
http://www.urbanlegends.com/
http://www.urbanlegends.com/
http://www.ulrc.com.au/

We should always check to see if something is an urban legend before we pass it along. However, once something is claimed to be an urban legend, there is a tendency to immediately conclude the claim that it is urban legend is a true claim.

What about claims that may be false? Is there any site devoted to setting the record straight about urban legends that are not urban legends?

Proving a legend to be true is often a scholarship question, such as when a writer claims that "X did not say yyyy." A scholar may then search among the archives of the world for proof that X really did say "yyyy." What is more difficult, however, is when claims cannot be researched in any archives. For example, one might claim that President Lincoln had an affair during his presidency. To my knowledge, there is no archived record of such a claim. And people who might know first hand are no longer living. All we can do is criticize all unsupported claims for not being supported by any credible evidence.

After my Google search finds a site that boldly asserts that something is an urban legend, like most people I immediately concluded that it is an urban legend. Proving it to be otherwise may be impossible or impractical relative to the time and money available to prove it otherwise.

One thing I do know! When one urban legend site claims something is an urban legend, the other urban legend sites follow the leader blindly like lemmings. Is there any site devoted to false claims about urban legends?

Bob Jensen

February 27, 2004 reply from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]

Bob, one of the modules in my AIS class is devoted to what I call “identification of trustworthy sources”.

While not a foolproof methodology, it is better than the “no methodology at all” approach used by the general population.

In a nutshell: use your own experience (supplemented by the experience of actual acquaintances whom you trust based on your own experience with them) to accumulate a repertoire (or harem, or collection, or …) of websites run by organizations which you trust to tell you the truth. Examples from my own collection include snopes, Symantec, McAfee, DataFellows, etc. I then rely on these “trustworthy” sites to tell me what is “the truth” vs. what is fiction.

Google searches return everything, and it is very easy to Spoof a legitimate site, even to Google. My experience has been thus: when someone tells me of a strange story, I check it out with one of my “trustworthy” sites, and 999 times out of 1000, I am surprised to learn that the trustworthy site not only tells me the story is a hoax, but that the hoax has been around since 1998, where it originated, why it is still circulating (e.g., the grains of truth which tend to bring the story to present consciousness, etc.), and other information which I didn’t know. Further, these sites often are “up to the minute” on new stuff, too.

There is no substitute for determining “who ya gonna call?”

I really like that quote, although I don’t know who to attribute it to: “The trouble with keeping an open mind is that people are always dropping their garbage in it.” Perhaps this was Pogo, too?

David R. Fordham
PBGH Faculty Fellow
James Madison University

Religion News Service --- http://www.religionnews.com/

The following article from Religion News Service was forwarded by George Klersey at Birmingham-Southern College

Physicist puts odds of God at 2-to-1

Using the Bayesian theorem, an Ohio consultant worked the numbers on God.

By KAREN R. LONG

Religion News Service

Stephen Unwin calculates the probability that God exists at 67 percent.

The idea of math favoring God by a 2-to-1 ratio is cheeky. So is the subtitle to Unwin's new book, "A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth," a flourish from Crown Forum's marketing department that makes the author wince.

But Unwin, a witty physicist who has spent his career calculating probabilities, thinks there is real merit in his figuring.

There is something to annoy everyone in that number," Unwin told a Cleveland bookstore audience recently. "I've found a great number of people don't value uncertainty. Some tell me that they don't appreciate my number and they know my address."

Despite inflamed camps of atheists and theists who assign probabilities of zero or 100 percent to the Creator, the book is coming out in paperback this fall. Unwin's travels have taught him that many people privately occupy a murky middle. A Harris poll last October found that 12 percent of Catholics, 8 percent of Protestants and 25 percent of Jews don't buy the existence of God.

"That alone tells us that belief systems are pretty strange things," Unwin said.

As a scientist who earned a doctorate in quantum gravity from the University of Manchester in England , Unwin likes numbers. "If you have a hammer, you tend to see every problem in terms of a nail," he jokes in an interview. "As a theoretical physicist, my bias is to want to work the numbers in some way. Answering a problem otherwise seems like working with a numberless bank statement - trivial and insubstantial."

In his day job, Unwin runs a consulting firm in Columbus , Ohio , figuring the odds of nuclear-power-plant disasters and the likelihood of complex equipment failures. A key tool is called the Bayesian theorem, a way to represent uncertainty in an equation.

Boldly, Unwin plugs evidence of God into this theorem. He points out, for instance, that giving money to the homeless with no thought of reciprocal reward is evidence of good, and good is more likely to occur if God is in the universe. At another point, Unwin weighs natural disasters such as earthquakes, tornadoes and cancer to swing the equation against the probability of God. After six sets of evidence consideration, ranging from the existence of evil to the case for miracles, the probability comes out at 67.

For those who want to run their own version and set their own probabilities, his book includes a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for individual tabulation.

"This book is very bad news for anyone planning a career in Evil," writes Rob Grant, co-creator of the "Red Dwarf" television series, in his book blurb.

One of the best things about the book is its humor. It seems the theoretical physicist can barely resist a joke.

"Is it realistic that the awesome machinery of probabilistic mathematics be used to power a concept so fluffy and blond as degrees of belief?" Unwin writes. "In the Bayesian world, this is precisely what a probability represents: a degree of belief or level of confidence that a proposition is true.

"You cannot, for example, vote for, say, a particular scientific or mathematical theory from a point of utter ignorance the way you can vote for, say, a presidential candidate. So rather than relying smugly on the fact of the broad applications of Bayesian methods as justification for our use of them, let's consider their pros and cons a little further and then proceed smugly."

The Rev. Richard Wing, pastor of First Community Church in Columbus , said Unwin's ideas have had an enthusiastic reception at home.

"I've got a highly educated congregation," Wing said. "Ninety-five percent are college educated. We've got guys here working on chaos theory. We aren't afraid of the questions."

Unwin, born 47 years ago in Manchester, England, was stunned by the religious expression, even aggression, he found in America when he moved here in 1984, first as a minor diplomat, then as a worker for Batelle Corp. in Columbus .

Some of Unwin's most ferocious critics have been proponents of Intelligent Design, demanding to know why it is absent from Unwin's equations. The author looks at the arguments and concludes that religion and science best occupy separate planes.

"To plagiarize and adapt from the best," Unwin writes, "render unto the physical world those things that are physical and render unto God those things that are God's."

Working the Bayesian theorem into his own spiritual. life gives Unwin the pleasure that comes from clarity. It also helps when he calculates 40 years more of