New Bookmarks
Year 2000 Quarter 2:  April 1-June 30 Additions to Bob Jensen's Bookmarks
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

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For the April 1-June 30, 2000 Additions and Summaries scroll down this document 
For the other editions go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
For the full set of Bob Jensen's Bookmarks go to http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm
    (The full set is never up to date with the latest additions to my New Bookmarks.)

Click here to go to Bob Jensen's home page http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

Choose a Date for Additions to the Bookmarks File

June 29, 2000        June 24, 2000        June 14, 2000        June  7, 2000    

May 31, 2000        May 17, 2000        May 10, 2000        May 03, 2000   

April 25, 2000        April 18, 2000        April 11, 2000        April 04, 2000 

For the other editions of my 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.  Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.

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

My 332nd and 333rd workshops will be for the American Accounting Association workshops and are scheduled as follows:

332
"Innovative Learning Programs for Accounting and Business:  the Ivy League Goes Online, the Sloan Foundation Experiments in Asynchronous Learning, and Experiments in Self-Learning at Major Universities Using the BAM Pedagogy," with Anthony Catanach, Chuck Hickman, Bob Jensen, Michael Kirschenheiter, and Dan Stone, Continuing Education Program Workshop at the Annual Meetings of the American Accounting Association, Philadelphia, August 12, 2000.  This is an all-day workshop on August 12http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe1.htm 

333
"Overviews and Teaching Cases for FAS 133 and IAS 39 on Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments and Hedging Activities:  Strategies and Accounting Trouble Spots," with Bob Jensen, Paul Pacter and Walter Teets,  Continuing Education Program Workshop at the Annual Meetings of the American Accounting Association, Philadelphia, August 13, 2000. This is an afternoon workshop on August 13.  http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe34.htm 

All August 12 and August 13 AAA workshops are described at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpelist.htm 

You can download the registration form from http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/2000annual/cpeform.pdf 

Other scheduled workshops and presentations of Bob Jensen --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations 


June 29, 2000


Quotes of the Week:  

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein

A program is like a nose.
Sometimes it runs, sometimes it blows.

Howard Ross

Computers are useless.
They can only give you answers.

Pablo Picasso

The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.
Appears at the bottom of email messages from Patrick Charles.

The hard part about doing nothing is knowing when you are through.
Anonymous

There are lies, damn lies, and STATISTICS!
Benjamin Disrarli

I found out that you don't need to wear a necktie if you can hit.
Ted Williams

The customer is always right, at least some of the time.
Yogi Berra

Sneezing is one of the three most pleasurable things a human being can experience.
Chris Kruze
(Not when its some nearby human being's sneeze.)


I was invited to present a paper in Taipei in November on the Past, Present, and Future of Computers in Accounting.  I have a draft of that paper available at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/310wp/310wp.htm 
Your suggestions for improvements will be greatly appreciated.  My email address is rjensen@trinity.edu 


To aid you in finding threaded messages on various topics, I have created a new document of links called "Bob Jensen's Threads."  Give it a try at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 


Bob Jensen's new Threads on  Invisible Computing, Ubiquitous Computing, and Microsoft.Net --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm 

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Thursday unveiled plans for a platform that the company hopes will extend its Windows dynasty into the Internet era --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm 


This has got to be good!

"How to Teach Accounting With E-Books," Pro2Net, June 19, 2000 http://accounting.pro2net.com/research/solutions/education/soed000619.asp 
By Terri Folks terfolks@aol.com 

(June 19, 2000) - Are electronic books or e-books the next generation of textbook publishing? As the world has moved toward electronic communication, the educational community has been forced to reevaluate learning opportunities including supplemental course materials. With the advent of interactive software programs, students can practice equations, take sample tests and download their textbooks a chapter at a time.

According to Trinity University Accounting Professor Robert Jensen in San Antonio, Texas, the main advantages are hypertext navigation, hypermedia, animation, live links to the Internet, text search and content updating frequency. Jensen is the Webmaster of a site at the San Antonio University that follows accounting trends ( www.trinity.edu/rjensen  ).

"Electronic textbooks can, in theory, be updated in real time," he said. "Users of Softbooks, for example, can download early editions of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times each morning."

The rest of the article is at http://accounting.pro2net.com/research/solutions/education/soed000619.asp 

You can read more about electronic books at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm#eBooks 


If music can be shared so easily on Napster and computer files can be shared so easily on Wrapster, Gnutella, Pointerra, FreeNet, etc.( http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm  ), what is to prevent books from being freely shared between online "friends?"  "FreeNet has the potential to be particularly troubling."

"Book Publishers Aim to Get Ahead Of the Electronic-Piracy Game" 
By ERIN WHITE
The Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2000, p. B1.

Book publishers have been watching anxiously as their peers in the music business have been upended by digital file-trading programs like Napster that allow Internet users to pass around free copies of CDs. Seeing their recording brethren caught flat-footed as Napster use surges has book executives adopting the mantra: Don't let it happen to us.

"We don't want to be in a reactive mode the way the recording industry is," says Peter Jovanovich, former chairman of the Association of American Publishers and chief executive of Pearson PLC's Pearson Education unit. Instead, publishers are trying to control the direction of electronic books themselves and to establish piracy protections.

Publishers say it's only a matter of time before copying programs like Napster start penetrating their industry, making unauthorized copies of electronic books just as publishers expand their e-book offerings.

A free program available on the Web called FreeNet has the potential to be particularly troubling, publishers and industry executives say. Touted as a way to defeat censorship, FreeNet lets users anonymously trade any sort of file, including text and pictures. Unlike Napster, it works without a central server, meaning it's much harder to police its use and for authorities to pull the plug to shut it down. On the other hand, the lack of a central directory means the system isn't very user-friendly: Users have to know the exact name of a FreeNet file in order to retrieve it. FreeNet's designer, Ian Clarke, says an easier-to-use version should be available within months.

Other programs that could pose problems for book publishers industry include Wrapster, an outgrowth of Napster created by Napster users that lets people share text, video and other files. Another program, Gnutella, functions similarly but like FreeNet, doesn't rely on a central server.

Such copying programs aren't likely to have a major on sales of print books, industry observers say. The time and effort needed to type or scan in text to create digital versions of printed books is far greater than to copy a music CD. But if the programs prosper, book publishers could stand to lose a chunk of revenue in the fast-growing e-book market.

You can find links to all of the software mentioned above at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm 


Welcome to @cademyonline Issue 5.0! --- http://www.academyonline.com/ 

What is a learning portal? Will learning portals change management education? In "At Issue" we answer these questions and more about the rapidly evolving world of learning portals.

The technology choices that business schools make often reflect more than the institutions' desire to have a distance learning program. In our feature "It's Academic" we compare some of the different technological choices that schools have made and the reasons behind them.


At the University of Notre Dame, distance education means teaching courses live from the campus using videoconferencing. "We started with a different approach," said Arnold Ludwig, Assistant Dean and Director of the Executive Education Program. "It was our concept to deliver the same quality education that we deliver on campus and we concluded that [to do so] we needed live interactive involvement." In many people's homes and offices, the connection to the Web is not yet capable of efficiently handling this type of video interaction. So, Notre Dame chose to design their program using high-speed, dedicated T-1 lines that provided 1.5 megabytes of bandwidth. The classes are held live on campus in South Bend and simultaneously videoconferenced to students at four distant locations-the world headquarters of Owens Illinois glass company in Toledo, Ohio; Ameritech in Indianapolis; a site in downtown Chicago at the Union League Club, and Hoffman Estates, Illinois, the world headquarters for Ameritech. Each site serves about ten students and is outfitted with two videoconferencing screens and another one that allows for PowerPoint presentations. Students at these remote sites also have the capability of hearing live presentations from anywhere in the world.

Ludwig admits that one disadvantage in setting up the program this way is the expense when compared to Web-based programs. But, "it's a quality issue," he says. "The program also saves students time, and about four thousand dollars a year in travel expenses to the main campus."

"Faculty have been most cooperative," according to Ludwig. "This is considered part of their normal workload, and they feel they are relating to what's happening in the world today."


Through a distance-learning program called Masters of International Management in Latin America (MIMLA), Thunderbird offers degrees to students throughout Mexico and in Lima, Peru. The realities of the location of the students and the technologies available to them influenced the choices Thunderbird made while designing the program.

There are both synchronous and asynchronous components to the program, according to Rich Zbylut, Thunderbird's chief information officer and vice president for business development. This program is run in cooperation with Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Supereriores de Monterrey (ITESM), or, as Zbylut calls it, Monterrey Tech. Mexican and Peruvian students seeking an executive degree in international management assemble at one of the six locations where they can access teleconferencing facilities made available through ITESM. The Thunderbird faculty teach a class, which is sent via an ISDN phone line to one of the six locations. At this site, the students can interact in real time with Thunderbird faculty broadcasting from T-Bird's home studio in Glendale, Arizona. The ISDN line allows for a crystal-clear point-to-point video connection. This transmission is then beamed via satellite to the remaining five sites where there is, unfortunately, no two-way videoconferencing; however, students at these locations e-mail their questions to the faculty who then respond via the TV. Additionally, facilitators from the host country are present at all of the videoconference sessions to answer questions and make sure things run smoothly, lead discussions, and coordinate with the Thunderbird faculty back in Arizona. Each student receives a lifetime e-mail account and access to a variety of resources including online databases, faculty and student profiles, campus news and chat rooms, and drop boxes where they can leave their assignments.

"Its been working very well," according to Zbylut. "There seems to be a high level of motivation for our students. Enrollment is growing and we are addressing a market need. There are always some adjustment issues," he continued. "But, some students have already become familiar with distance learning at ITESM where Monterrey Tech has been involved in distance learning in Mexico for years. Given the fact it would be difficult for these students to come to America for advanced studies they're getting a little bit of the best of both worlds."


In spite of the exemplary successes of several programs, big decisions loom for how schools will conduct distance learning in the coming years. The technology upon which distance learning is based will continue to reflect the institution's particular need to reach students as well as ensure effective administration and pedagogy. Rapidly advancing Web technologies will force schools to question their current methods. Queen's College, for example, has shown the scalability of videoconferencing technology, offering courses and programs across Canada. As broadband Internet access becomes the standard in homes and businesses however, the same classroom-type interaction will be available over the Web. Will the cost of running videoconferencing programs at this scale be economically feasible for the same level of interaction?

Eugene Ziegler foresees institutions combining for economies of scale. "I think you are going to see one school or several schools in a consortium put together first year MBA core courses online," Ziegler says. "That material has a long shelf life. What you are going to have is a much larger number of students taking the core program [online]. Today, many students are quitting after the certificate, and the rest are going on to compete for the slots in branded MBA programs."

Ziegler noted that USC is running a core program online for a company in Japan. "They're putting about 300 students a year through the program, and now they beginning to apply to business schools across the U.S. to finish their MBA," he said. "That kind of model is going to be a cash cow for somebody."

Note from Bob Jensen --- Chuck Hickman, the Academic Vice-President of University Access and Editor of Academy Online, was a top executive of the AACSB for over 20 years and is very knowledgeable about trends in higher education in business.  He is one of the featured speakers in the American Accounting Association CPE Workshop No. 1 on Saturday August 12 in Philadelphia.  This is an all-day workshop.  See http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe1.htm 


@AACSB --- http://www.academyonline.com/aacsb/index.htm 

Management educators may not agree with him, but they will nevertheless want to heed Motorola executive Bill Wiggenhorn, senior vice president of Education and Training and president of Motorola University. Wiggenhorn recently told @cademyonline that distance learning is rapidly becoming the primary influence on corporate and institutional-based management education. Wiggenhorn's message was simple: business schools must embrace Web-based learning or risk extinction. His comments drew mixed responses from business deans, AACSB accreditation staff, and others.

Wiggenhorn: E-commerce has compressed the planning time from years to quarters. One question for schools is how they're going to keep up with being the experts in content because they're not going to have years to design a course.

"So very true," responded Timothy S. Mescon, dean of the Michael J. Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University. "Traditional response time for business schools to market trends can be measured in decades. This is rapidly being compressed to the need to respond in months ... a huge challenge to our profession."

"Everything is changing at an ever increasing pace," said Gene L. Ziegler, e-Learning advisor with Learning Technology Partners and former chief technology officer at Cornell's Johnson School. "Everything, that is, except the university, which still uses the same planning cycles of the long gone agrarian society that gave it shape. How do you plan a 'course' for a phenomenon that evolves into a new form even as you describe it? How do you lay a track for a runaway train?"

"Business schools are adapting to the speed of change," said Paul Danos, dean of the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, "and we are doing it in faster cycles. Having said that, it is still fair to criticize us for not moving fast enough. I believe that the best schools are really very responsive to current trends, certainly more so than other academic institutions."

Schools are building more ties between faculty and corporations, said Milton R. Blood, AACSB managing director of accreditation. "Faculty will operate as intelligence gatherers and, also, they will invite more corporate presenters into courses," he said. "This already is happening as faculty members recognize the need for enhanced connections to practicing managers to keep their knowledge fresh."

Wiggenhorn: More and more, the brand is going to be an individual faculty member. So the brand is not USC. It will be Professor Lawler at USC.

"The branding phenomenon has existed for some time," said Danos. "I believe that in a world of massive and inexpensive communications, both professors and business schools who are known for quality will have new and growing advantages. The power of the business school brand should not be underestimated."

"There will be opportunity in the new information economy for faculty to develop personal brand, but I don't think that will be the norm," said Ziegler. "A more startling development will be the emergence of new brand, a Phoenix rising from the ashes of the industrial-age university."

"Actually, we see a greater emphasis on branding b-schools and leveraging the potency of accreditation," said Mescon. "I do see a greater propensity to attract key executives from industry to supplement curricular content and delivery."

"Faculty members will maintain their institutional positions for a number of reasons," said Blood, "but they also will have opportunities to 'sell' their intellectual properties (teaching) through other outlets and as 'freelancers.' Intellectual property rights, thus, become an important issue, and few campuses have worked out the agreements they will need for resolving ownership of products and efforts. These issues will be further complicated as teams of faculty from multiple institutions work together to design learning experiences that may then be delivered by a vendor separate from all of the institutions."

Wiggenhorn: The premier schools will survive because people want to go there and socialize with others. But the second-tier and third-tier schools are under threat. Because individuals can have access to some of the premier experts anywhere in the world, they don't need to go to a local institution.

"Truthfully, I do not concur," said Mescon. "I think the survivors will be those b-schools that are fast, focused, and ferocious, regardless of reputation or historical positioning."

"More than just the premier schools will survive," said Ziegler. "If teaching 'stars' are available everywhere, then colleges and universities will have to evolve new differentiators in order to claim a share of the market. The whole system will be threatened as the earthquake of economic change causes cracks in the traditional foundations."

" [Wiggenhorn's] is a useful speculation about the reaction of the market," said Blood, "but we don't know yet how much migration of the market will take place. The basic market factors of price, quality, and convenience will all come into play, and it may be that the top reputation schools will dominate on all three factors. If so, this threat will be realistic; on the other hand, coalitions with some schools as product providers and others as marketers and servicers may provide different roles for schools to play. We need not think that institutions will be static in the face of change."

Said Danos, "The brand advantage will draw quality people to the best brands, but there will remain a very 'atomized' business school industry, with thousands of schools worldwide. The best brands, however, will have to make tradeoffs between quality and volume. How many MBA degrees should a top-quality school grant? There is a limit beyond which quality, perceived and actual, will diminish."

Wiggenhorn: There will be consolidation because the for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix and Jones International will erode the marketplace. As more and more course work goes online and the online educators are able to maintain the same student satisfaction, they will take students away from traditional schools.

"The University of Phoenix has grown by defining new markets rather than eroding the markets of others, but that will soon change," said Ziegler. "Their real success is in selectively redefining the value chain to be more efficient without the overhead of tradition."

"I don't believe that top quality students are going to choose 'for profit' degrees when they have other high quality choices," said Danos. "An important issue is how 'for profit' degree grantors will ever actually make profits competing with such highly subsidized 'not-for-profits.' And, how will 'for profit' grantors create the faculty expertise that lies at the heard of good teaching ?"

"We believe many of the 'traditional' universities are now responding," said Mescon. "The consortium of five business schools in Georgia that will be delivering a WEBMBA this fall is a great illustration."

"The size of the market for electronically delivered courses is not yet established," said Blood, "nor do we know yet whether new delivery systems are stealing market or creating market. We know new patterns will emerge, but it is too early to predict the results. If traditional institutions can respond to new competitors by meeting the competition's price, quality, and convenience advantages, they will emerge whole; if they try to compete without making changes, they are likely to suffer, especially at the undergraduate level. It seems likely there will be a continuing market for traditional residential education," he said. "Even there, the competition will force changes in what goes on in the classroom (or whether there will be traditional classrooms)."

Wiggenhorn: Business schools are running a dual system (as far as incorporating distance technology into the educational experience). They're still keeping their traditional online campus system in which they incorporate technology, but it's only moving them from the blackboard to the computer. Other than that, everything stays the same. They have not integrated those two. They are two separate product lines. I think one product is used to protect the other.

"These lines are now eroding," responded Mescon. "The statement is true, but change is occurring in traditional business schools now at a much faster pace."

"Experimentation within the system is rational," said Ziegler. "Running dual systems for the short term may be inevitable. But in the end, schools will have to either complete the transformation or fold the innovation into the existing structures and hope that is enough."

"Faculty expertise is at the heart of the value added by universities," said Danos. "The method of delivery, face-to-face or distance, for instance, is not as important as connecting expert professors with brilliant students. Of course, many basic skills and theories can be taught with digital assistance, but behind it all will be a professor whose research informs her/his teaching."

"Yes, we need more fundamental rethinking of the entire educational process," said Blood. "Here is where the new competitors have an important advantage. They can imagine education happening in new ways and without some of the features and structures of traditional higher education institutions." Blood said modular curricula, integrated courses, problem-based learning and other techniques are being tried, but few schools are committing themselves to fully rethinking content and how they are delivering management education. "Even those schools that serve as examples of change often have altered only one or a few features of their programs," he said. "New competitors can begin with the problem and try to solve it without preconceptions. Traditional providers often start with the current solution and try to change it."

Wiggenhorn: With the explosion in the use of technology and the kind of re-certification that people will need, it'll be a forty-year or even fifty-year education process. So instead of ending studies at age 22, you'll just be picking up steam. The degree you get at 28 will be your baseline. Then every four to five years, you're going to have to be re-certified. You won't need one MBA. You're going to need five MBAs.

"This is true ... lifetime affiliations with graduate business programs is a great concept whose time has come," said Mescon. Why not educational insurance policies that annuitize educational benefits from colleges and universities for alumni?"

"Except that I don't think it will be every four or five years," said Ziegler. "It will be a continuous process of learning and recertification just as in the medical profession."

"Five (MBAs) is perhaps a stretch," said Danos, "but the basic idea is sound. I predict a new array of educational experiences will be created. Lifelong learning will be as much a part of our mission in the future as have been traditional degree programs."

"The mantra of 'life-long learning' soon will be replaced with 'learning on demand," said Blood. "Learning programs and degree sequences after the first basic preparation will be supplemented with intense, in-depth and highly focused learning as people make career shifts and as new business practices require changes. People will ask for such education when and where they need it. Providers who can respond will reap the market benefits."


Corporate universities from the perspective of the President of Motorola University and the president of  Westerbeck Communications, Inc. --- http://www.academyonline.com/corp_ed/index.htm 

Westerbeck:
Let's talk about what you're doing at Motorola. Describe the landscape at your company in terms of how distance learning is being used strategically in the "e-learning" context.

Wiggenhorn:
I would say we've had about 10 percent of our formalized learning take place outside of classrooms and labs. Even though we offer 700 to 800 courses online, we have had resistance from people about taking online courses. Consequently, we are changing our policy and our offerings. Our policy used to require every individual to take five days of job-related training per year. We now are putting into effect a learning policy that requires every individual to take forty hours of job-related education or training per year.

But 30 percent of total learning must be in an e-learning format by 2001 and 50 percent by 2003. All senior middle managers and above must spend at least eight hours as a facilitator at one of these company learning communities. The goal is to get a manager to use technology as a tool to help manage and develop teams.

Then instead of having four vendors providing online education as we do today, we will probably end up with thirty or forty vendors worldwide that will provide course content in multiple languages.

But the
driver in this situation is not cost reduction; it's really trying to get people to use Web-based technology as a normal means of conducting business.


Buzz books about biz. business education, and education in general  --- http://www.academyonline.com/bookshelf/index.htm 

Bear's Guide to the Best MBA's by Distance Learning. 
John and Maria Bear. A solid reference on the top distance-learning MBA degree programs. Bear's Guide not only provides a list of the programs, but also offers good advice on selecting the right school. This book reports on MBA programs that are entirely online, and those with a significant online portion. See Think Tank for a complete list of MBA programs and links to their websites.
(
Note from Bob Jensen:  You may want to check out http://www.freshman-year.com/bearguide.html 
There are links to over 100 colleges that offer accredited distance education programs.)

A University For The 21st Century. 
James J. Duderstadt. As
former president of the University of Michigan, Duderstadt is well positioned to comment on the forces now driving the evolution of higher education. These changes - some that are coming and some that have already begun -- offer significant opportunities for universities that are ready for them, and considerable problems for schools that are not.

The Online Teaching Guide: A Handbook of Attitudes, Strategies, and Techniques for the Virtual Classroom.
Ken W. White and Bob H. Weight. Ever taught an online course that was so impersonal that you wonder why you bothered? Ever try to lead an online discussion that was so dry and bland only its death could save it? Ever wonder how to organize an online course that communicates your passion for teaching to online students? Ever wonder how to make lectures that fit the online environment? Not only does this book address those questions and more, the authors offer real ideas on how to solve these problems.

Teaching Online. 
William Draves. This book is a beginner's guide to online instruction, providing a context for instructors who are new to the field. Draves shares his thoughts on the changes online learning may bring to education.

The Cluetrain Manifesto. Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger. The "first book that is a sequel to a web site" has created a stir with its combination of immediate relevance and irreverent style. The World Wide Web has forever altered how companies operate, and the time has come, say the authors, to jump onboard the train or get run over. A must read for anyone who works in, studies, or teaches business.

Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom.  
Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt. The authors offer good, practical advice for teaching and administrating an online course, based around the concept of a 'learning community.' Read the review in "Intelligent Life" in the Summer 1999 Issue of @cademyonline.

Managing Technological Change
Tony Bates. Bates, a distance learning administrator at the University of British Columbia, has put together a strategic analysis of the myriad changes that the Internet and technology have brought to higher education. His analysis will prove useful to any administrator grappling with these huge upheavals.

Dancing with the Devil: Information Technology and the New Competition in Higher Education
Various Authors. A must-read for all change agents at institutions of higher education. As the academic environment evolves with the influx of information technology, the book serves as a blueprint for institutions to successfully strategically position themselves for this sea of change.

Future Wealth. 
Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer. The authors of the best-selling Blur return for a companion piece on the future of capital. They share their predictions on how wealth will be created by both organizations and individuals in a world where everything of value, including talent and human potential, will be traded in open markets. See the review in this issue's Intelligent Life.


New Things Everybody Should Know About PDF Files

With a little help from my friends, I learned some new things about PDF files.  You can read my comments and the threaded messages at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acrobat.htm 

I illustrate how it is quite easy to convert a HTML document into a PDF document (an almost perfect conversion) versus converting a PDF document back into a HTML document ( a less-than-perfect conversion).

I thread Richard Campbell's message about how to secure an online PDF document such that nobody can copy any part of the document or print any part of the document (other than to capture portions of pages as graphics files).  It is also possible to secure an online PDF document such that it cannot be converted into HTML using Adobe's conversion program.

I provide update threads on Adobe's new and frustrating PDF search engine that appears to be outsourced to Altavista.  Craig Polhemus mentions some alternative PDF search engines being considered by the American Accounting Association.

Once again those threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acrobat.htm 


Hi Patrick,

This is not quite what you asked for, but Microsoft has a somewhat unique set of "What if" tools in Excel that accompany the financial statements. See http://www.microsoft.com/msft/tools.htm 

Microsoft also provides summary statements in both different languages and different nations' GAAP rules. Bob (Robert E.) Jensen Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212 Voice: (210) 999-7347 Fax: (210) 999-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu  
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Patrick Charles [mailto:charlesp@MAIL.CWDOM.DM]  
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2000 1:55 PM 
To: CPAS-L@VAX.LOYOLA.EDU Subject: An Exercise...

Greetings too all

Every country has its own way of presenting financial statements and each industry is unique. [Jensen, Robert] I am interested in seeing how financial statements are presented in different regions of the World.

If anyone has any sample financials done in excel I would be grateful, if they could send it to me.

Purpose of this exercise is comparison, to find the best presentation and use of excel.

What are your views?

Regards


Bob: Although Paintshop Pro does perform screen captures the best screen capture program on the market (IMHO) is Snagit! at www.techsmith.com  This program will capture entire web pages, even below the fold in a variety of file formats. This is another program I'll be demoing at the AAA. See http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe19.htm 

Richard J. Campbell www.VirtualPublishing.Net 
mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.Net 


Bob,

I thought you'll be interested in the following. I did not post it to AECM since I was not sure it is relevant.

Regards,

Jagdish -- Jagdish S. Gangolly, Associate Professor ( j.gangolly@albany.edu ) State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY 12222. Phone: (518) 442-4949 Fax: (707) 897-0601 URL: http://www.albany.edu/acc/gangolly 

VIDEO DISTRIBUTION COMPANY TO USE GNUTELLA SOFTWARE The digital video and music distribution company Sightsound.com is going to use the Gnutella software to transmit movies over the Internet as encrypted files. Giga Information group analyst Rob Enderle says, "We believe that these kinds of distribution schemes will become increasingly common as the music and movie industries realize the kind of threat they are under. SightSound executives are not commenting on the plan because the company is in a "quiet period" before an initial public offering. With Gnutella, the various files shared are stored locally on individual users' machines. The company has said it will use commercially available encryption technology to protect its content. (New York Times 14 Jun 2000) http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/06/biztech/articles/14movie.html 


Just to follow up on the Snagit! program, techsmith.com makes other great programs as well, which have been mentioned here before. In particular, Camtasia Recorder is great for doing movies like Lotus Screen Cam, and then Camtasia Producer is useful for editing those files, and one of the options is to then save those "movies" in Real Media format for streaming purposes.

Jim Borden 
Villanova University

The TechSmith Corporation website is at http://www.techsmith.com/ 


Anyone who creates dynamic content for the Web should evaluate Macromedia's polished and user-friendly Dreamweaver UltraDev 1.0, says eWEEK Labs.  http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0006211/2587941/ 


As one who has spent several thousand dollars to hire an intellectual property attorney to defend my own copyright, here are my observations: 

1. The most powerful words in publishing are "cease and desist". Once the owner of a copyright issues a notice to a copyright infringer, the offense, if continued becomes potentially a criminal violation. And does the FBI respond? A software developer friend of mine said to me that he got hysterical, plaintive phone calls from his offending copyright infringer. The FBI had a search warrant to find knockoff CDs at he time of the call.

2. From a practical standpoint, in my area of the country, (Ohio) it takes 2 years and $50,000 to take a copyright infringement to trial. BUT, the legal fees for the defender to negotiate a settlement can be significant.

3. The very technology that makes it easy to pirate copyrighted material also makes it easy to catch pirates. Just post a message to a newsgroup about pirating Microsoft software and see what happens. The day after I posted a message about a demo of Microsoft Liquid Motion (now deceased), my web site was visited 23 times from the Microsoft campus. Big Brother is watching. And Mr. Gates, yes, I bought the copy. Although Liquid Motion was good, Macromedia's Flash is better.

4. My attorney also successfully defended an artist of statue collectibles. He regularly goes to flea markets, and when he finds a knockoff he finds a way to collect damages for his client, and a fee for himself.

So, IMHO, copyright is not dead. I do believe the era of the traditional print publishers is over, as well as the music publishers. Authors and musicians can easily eliminate the middleman.

Richard J. Campbell www.VirtualPublishing.Net 
mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.Net
 


Education Statistics --- The Condition of Education, 2000_ --- http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2000062 


From CPA-Net Online on June 15, 2000 --- http://www.cpanet.com/home/new.asp 

Forecasting Resources

Forecasting from Wharton - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=03 

Cash Flow Forecasting - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=01 

Int'l Institute of Forecasters - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=04 

Famous Forecasting Quotes - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=02 

Investment Forecasts - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=05 

Biz History Mish-Mash

1,000 Years of Work and Money - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=07 

300 Years of Business History - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=06 

Alan Greenspan Fan Club - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=08 

Tax History Museum - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=10 

Financial Scandals - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=09 

Corporate Finance Resources

Top 10 Technologies 2000 - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=12 

Report on Employee Stock Options - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=13 

All About Value at Risk (VaR) - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=14 

Excellence in Financial Mgmt - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=15 

E-Analytics - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=11 

Investment Advisor Resources

Financial Planning Interactive - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=16 

Financial Engineering News - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=18 

D&T Personal Finance Advisor - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=19 

Investor Access - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=17 

IPO Underwriter Directory - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=20 

Investment Advisor Magazine - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=21 

CPA Toolbox

Adobe Search PDF Online - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=22 

Work From Anywhere - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=26 

Business Traveler Online - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=25 

iFigure - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=24 

Research-It - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=23 


From the FEI Express Issue 36 on June 21, 2000 (Financial Executives Institute)

FEI position on SEC International Accounting Standards Concept Release
Last week our Committee on Corporate Reporting filed an important comment letter with the SEC, which is considering the acceptability of the recently adopted set of international accounting standards. Currently, foreign companies must reconcile their financial statements to U.S. GAAP. Some important facts I learned in reading the letter: the SEC currently receives statements in over 40 different country GAAPs which have been reconciled before filing. Foreign registrants file interim statements only as often as required in their local country. This translates to semi-annual statements for most European companies!! While the ultimate goal of one global GAAP for all companies is coming, the intermediate steps are going to be a challenge. Our full letter is on the website, but here is a short summary of the key points:

"FEI believes that U.S. capital markets are better served by having foreign registrants use an investor-oriented accounting model like IAS in the primary financial statements rather than providing bits and pieces of financial data that reconcile to U.S. GAAP supplementally. We also believe that the expanded use of IAS in world markets, which is much more likely to occur with SEC acceptance in the U.S., will further improve the comparability of financial results between U.S. and foreign companies. We would therefore support the Commission's acceptance of IAS for use in U.S. capital markets, provided that the following additional steps are taken:

  • Limit the choices of GAAP available to foreign registrants to two: U.S. GAAP or IAS.
  • Require that foreign registrants comply fully with the same regulations that apply to U.S. public companies, including reporting U.S. or IAS GAAP financial statements for all interim periods.
  • Actively support processes that will accelerate the development of a single set of global accounting standards that will be used in all securities markets.
  • Ensure that U.S. and foreign registrants are treated equally in all respects under federal securities laws, including the right of all registrants to follow IAS standards.
  • Require that these changes be effected over a time frame of no greater than five years and do not "grandfather" existing foreign registrants.
 

From the Scout Report on June 13, 2000

Cybersoc.com http://www.cybersoc.com/home.html 

The brainchild of Robin Hamman a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster's Hypermedia Research Centre, this Website bills itself as "an online resource for social scientists interested in the study of the internet, cyberspace, computer mediated communication, and online communities." The site offers issues of _Cybersociology Magazine_ -- "an e-zine for those interested in the social-scientific research of Cyberspace and Life Online," as well as links to bibliographies and reviews of pertinent Websites and software. Also featured here are papers by Hamman, whose reports and columns about the Internet have been widely published in British newspapers and journals. Clearly the product of an informed enthusiast and his like-minded colleagues, this Website suggests in miniature the ways in which Internet culture and academia have begun to cross-pollinate, at least in the United Kingdom.


Click-and-mortar brigade is born --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0006141/2582809/ 


Hi Craig,

Probably the best place to begin is to look up the Accounting II courses at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/search.htm 

You may also find some useful glossaries at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbus.htm 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Craig XXXXXX
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 11:52 AM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu  
Subject: Cost Account Questions

I happen to came across your web site and wanted to ask if you could give me a little direction. Are there any sites that can assist me with a few questions from my Acct II (cost accounting class).

Thank You,

Craig


Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls (UNICEF) http://www.unicef-icdc.org/pdf/domestic.pdf 


Inequality.org http://www.inequality.org/ 


Ancient Egypt  (The British Museum) ---  http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/menu.html 


Traditional Grammar: An Interactive Book http://www.niu.edu/english/deh/grammarbook/title.html 


National Statistics: the Official United Kingdom Statistics Site http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ 


Digital Signatures: Big Step Forward, Two Tiny Steps Back 
By Nate Zelnick
Internet World News, June 15, 2000

Congress's overwhelming passage of the E-Sign bill is huge, of course, but probably not the short-term e-commerce catalyst boosters believe it to be. Unlike such tech-driven business sectors as the computer or network-equipment markets -- which play to an audience that's primed for online commerce -- trust-based transactions face social lag in the movement to the Internet. Nonetheless, formal standards for how parties identify and authenticate each other when negotiating a deal, which prove intent to short-circuit later disputes, are critical if electronic commerce is going to be more than shopping for commodity goods. In particular, B2B is DOA without the necessary infrastructure for binding agreements with legal consequences.

Though the issues behind electronic signatures seem to be technical, the real barriers to widespread usage remain social. The analogy of consumer credit card usage on the Web -- which turned out not to be a major barrier to the rise of online shopping -- doesn't map well to widespread adoption of electronically signed contracts, in which the consequences of fraud are larger. Credit card fraud carries little real risk to consumers, because even if a number is snatched out of the ether, the total liability a person carries is limited to a pittance. As anyone who has been tricked into a long-term service agreement that costs more than the equipment it warranties knows, contracts are worthy of respect.

Also see at: http://daily.webshots.com/?961079987 


Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body (Biology) --- http://www.bartleby.com/107/ 


From thr Scout Report on June 15, 2000

ebusinessforum http://www.ebusinessforum.com/ 

Created and maintained by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by a variety of high-powered ebusinesses, including Cisco Systems, Dell Computers, Intel, and Oracle, ebusiness forum "provides insight and analysis to help senior executives build successful strategies for the global digital economy." After a quick, free registration, users have access to the wide spectrum of ebusiness-related news and information on this site. The "Today's New Analysis" feature contains electronic business news from around the world from information sources including _European Voice_, _The Journal of Commerce_, and _Financial Times_. The site offers resources on leadership and practice, as well as a variety of informative sources on doing ebusiness in countries around the world.


National Endowment for Financial Education --- http://www.nefe.org/ 

This "action area" of the National Endowment for Financial Education® (NEFE®) was created to provide Americans with practical money management skills and an introduction to financial planning through course work that covers the fundamentals of insurance, investments, tax planning, retirement planning, and estate planning.

Although not restricted to a particular age group, the Education Programs area has focused largely on increasing financial literacy among the nation's youth. This focus is exemplified by the organization's longest-standing public service effort, the NEFE High School Financial Planning Program (HSFPP).

The innovative HSFPP uses contemporary materials to teach the basics of personal finance to young people while they are developing habits and attitudes about money that will influence them for the rest of their lives. It is based on the philosophy that learning about money is as important as earning it—and that effective money management results from a disciplined behavior, which is most easily mastered if learned early in life. This practical and objective program is available at no cost to all high schools throughout the country. (Click on the highlighted term above for more information about the NEFE High School Financial Planning Program.)


Beyond the Bull (momentum theory of trading volume in a stock investment) http://www.beyondthebull.com/index.cfm 


Principles of Graphic Design --- http://www.mundidesign.com/presentation/index2.html 

3-D whirlies and banners --- http://www.hi-res.net/sb/clickhere.html 
(A slow loader!)


edads for today's father --- http://www.edads.com/ 


Crime news and information --- http://www.crime.com/ 


From PBS Victorian Houses (I love them!)  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/1900house/ 


The Orphanage of Cast-Off Mascots (Things lost from my generation)  http://www.lileks.com/institute/orphanage/index.html  


Hi Dr, Jensen: 
My website, http://www.QuickTrainingTips.com  is visited each month by thousands of higher ed instructors, school teachers, corporate trainers, e-learning developers, and other folks who teach other people to use computers or use technology as a teaching tool. The free Tips and other resources are largely contributed by the teachers and others who stop by. I regularly receive email from folks telling me how much they love the site and how they put the instructional tips to immediate use. They also say that a lot of the tips are quite usable in other types of (non-computer) courses as well.

I would much appreciate it if you'd take a peek at our site and see if you agree that it has enough worthwhile content to recommend. You have so many links in so many categories I'm not sure what link list to suggest but if you like QTT, I hope you'll put a link somewhere that educators looking for instructional techniques are likely to find it.

Thank you in advance for considering my request.

Sincerely,

Loretta Weiss-Morris http://www.QuickTrainingTips.com 


Hi Dianna,

Thank you for your message.

I will forward your message to some contacts. However, our entire graduating class was booked up one year before graduation.

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

-----Original Message----- 
From: DIncivilito@RainBird.com [mailto:DIncivilito@RainBird.com
 Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 6:50 PM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu Subject:

Dear Prof. Jensen:

I happen to run across your website and thought perhaps I might network with you.

I am recruiting for a privately held organization in So. California who has an opening for a Credit Manager in their Tucson, Arizona facility.

Requirements for the position include a bachelor's degree, preferably a master's from a learning institution on par with Trinity or Stanford.

If you know of any recent grads who might have an interest in such a position, would appreciate your forwarding their names, resumes etc.

Thanks for your help.

Diana Incivilito Placement Consultant 626-852-7203


Welcome to the June 18th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Pointera's Impact on Business Grows 
2. Inktomi Re-enters Battle For Biggest Search Engine 
3. Priceline.com Groceries Update 
4. Quote of the Day: Happiness, Freedom and Peace of Mind 
5. Everything's Free....If You Are Listening/Watching Ads 
6. From Taxman86: Marriage Penalty Here We Come 
7. Consumer Now: The Consumer Digest for the Internet.


The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 48 http://www.accountingweb.com  
1.  AccountingWEB Calls on the Accounting Profession to Join in a 
    Campaign to Help Fight Diabetes 
2.  Workplace Misconduct seems to be the Norm
3.  Should US Companies Pay European Taxes?  What's Your Opinion?
4.  Accounting Firm Press Conferences Go Live on the Internet
5.  Quick Pointers on Business Valuation
6.  New Grads Find Meaningful Employment
7.  Expense Reduction Ideas:  Don't Forget These
8.  QuickBooks Workshop Answered Many Questions
9.  What Do HR Directors Want in a Resume?
10. Excel/Word Tip: Use AutoCorrect to Spell Out Abbreviated Name

The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 47 June 16, 2000
Logon to http://www.accountingweb.com  for more resources.

1. CPE Price War Erupts! 
2. Increase the Speed of Your Internet Connection 
3. Caliber Learning Offering Free CPE 
4. Internet Businesses with European Sales Face Taxation 
5. Audit Improvements Recommended 
6. 38% of Job Applicants Lack Basic Skills 
7. House Paves the Way for Estate Tax Repeal 
8. Prospects for Accounting Interns are Sunny 
9. TaxMama Visits AccountingWEB 
10. Internet Tip: Match Time Zones with Area Codes


Pro2Net Accounting Weekly Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of June 19, 2000 

1. Earn Last-Minute CPE Before June 30 
2. Today's Top Accounting News 
3. This Week's Feature Solutions Articles 
4. Survey Results: What will the effect of a Microsoft breakup be on consumer choice? 
5. Our Tip of the Week: When Issuing Stock-Based Compensation, What Items to Consider and How They Relate to Your Company


Pro2Net Accounting Weekly Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of June 26, 2000 

1. Today's Top Accounting News 
2. Opinion: Rick Telberg's Insider 
3. This Week's Feature Solutions Articles 
4. Check Out Accounting and Finance Jobs 
5. Survey Results: To what do you attribute the CPA shortage? 
6. Need New Books? Check out Pro2Net's Expanded Catalog


AccountingStudents Newsletter: June 20, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. Win an Online CPA Exam Review from Bisk-Totaltape 
2. Building Your Presentation Skills 
3. Site of the Week: Napster 
4. Tip of the Week: Managing Your Personal Finances, Part II 
5. Preview Our New Site 6. Contest Winner Announced


Oklahoma's two largest airports are named after celebrities who were killed in airplane crashes --- Will Rogers and Wiley Post!


Two elderly professors met at a conference.  One said to the other, "I've known you for years.  But I just cannot recall your name at this moment.  I'm afraid I need help.  What is your name?"

After a long awkward pause, the other professor finally answered, "How soon do you need to know?"


Only for Texas A&M Alumni:  Secret virus removal instructions 

Please delete all the files on your hard disk, then forward this message to every Aggie you know. 
Thank you for your cooperation.

Gig Em Aggies!


Forwarded by Bob Overn

The transcript of the new Voice Mail service recently installed at the Mental Health Institute:

Hello, and welcome to the mental health hotline.

If you are obsessive-compulsive, press 1 repeatedly.

If you are codependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you now.

If you have multiple personalities, press 3, 4, 5 and 6.

If you are paranoid, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call.

If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be transferred to the mother ship.

If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press.

If you are a depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press - no one will answer anyway.

If you are dyslexic, press 9696969696969.

If you have a nervous disorder, please fidget with the star and pound keys until a representative comes on the line.

If you have amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, phone number, date of birth, social security number, and your mother's maiden name.

If you have bipolar disorder, please leave a message after the beep or before the beep. Or after the beep. Please wait for the beep.

If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9.

If you have low self esteem, please hang up. All of our operators are too busy to talk to you.

Thank you and have a nice day.


Also forwarded by Bob Overn

When my husband and I arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up our car, we were told that the keys had been accidentally locked in it. We went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the driver's side door. As I watched from the passenger's side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered it was open. "Hey," I announced to the technician, "It's open!" "I know," answered the young man.- "I already got that side."


I was at the airport, checking in at the gate, when the airport employee asked, "Has anyone put anything in your baggage without your knowledge?" I said, "If it was without my knowledge, how would I know?" He smiled and nodded knowingly, "That's why we ask."


-----Original Message----- From: AuntieBev

1. It is well documented that for every mile that you jog... you add one minute to your life... This enables you at 95 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $5000 per month.

2. The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

3. I joined a health club last year, spent about $400. Haven't lost a pound. Apparently you have to show up.

4. I have to exercise early in the morning before my brain figures out what I'm doing.

5. I don't exercise at all. If God meant us to touch our toes, he would have put them further up our body.

6. I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

7.I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.

8. The advantage of exercising every day is that you die healthier.

9. If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country.

10. And last but not least- I don't jog. It makes the ice jump right out of my glass.


I hope you might be amused by the attached posting which presumes that Dr. Seuss has been as flummoxed by his computer as we have all been at some time. The piece is not mine, so I can claim no credit. If it's offensive, of course the blame is mine. Sincerely, David Middleton

WHAT IF DR. SEUSS WROTE A COMPUTER MANUAL?

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, 
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, 
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, 
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, 
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, 
and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash, 
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash.

If the label on the cable on the table at your house, 
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, 
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol. 
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, 
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse, 
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'cause as sure as I'm a poet, 
the sucker's gonna hang.

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk, 
and the micro-code instructions cause unnecessary risk, 
then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM, 
Quickly turn off the computer, and be sure to tell your mom.


If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.

 



And that's the way it was on June 24, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

  Hline.jpg (568 bytes) Hline.jpg (568 bytes)

 Hline.jpg (568 bytes)

 

June 24, 2000 


Quotes of the Week:  

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein

A program is like a nose.
Sometimes it runs, sometimes it blows.

Howard Ross

Computers are useless.
They can only give you answers.

Pablo Picasso

The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.
Appears at the bottom of email messages from Patrick Charles.

The hard part about doing nothing is knowing when you are through.
Anonymous

There are lies, damn lies, and STATISTICS!
Benjamin Disrarli

I found out that you don't need to wear a necktie if you can hit.
Ted Williams

The customer is always right, at least some of the time.
Yogi Berra

Sneezing is one of the three most pleasurable things a human being can experience.
Chris Kruze
(Not when its some nearby human being's sneeze.)


I was invited to present a paper in Taipei in November on the Past, Present, and Future of Computers in Accounting.  I have a draft of that paper available at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/310wp/310wp.htm 
Your suggestions for improvements will be greatly appreciated.  My email address is rjensen@trinity.edu 


To aid you in finding threaded messages on various topics, I have created a new document of links called "Bob Jensen's Threads."  Give it a try at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 


Bob Jensen's new Threads on Invisible Computing, Ubiquitous Computing, and Microsoft.Net --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm 

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Thursday unveiled plans for a platform that the company hopes will extend its Windows dynasty into the Internet era --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm 


This has got to be good!

"How to Teach Accounting With E-Books," Pro2Net, June 19, 2000 http://accounting.pro2net.com/research/solutions/education/soed000619.asp 
By Terri Folks terfolks@aol.com 

(June 19, 2000) - Are electronic books or e-books the next generation of textbook publishing? As the world has moved toward electronic communication, the educational community has been forced to reevaluate learning opportunities including supplemental course materials. With the advent of interactive software programs, students can practice equations, take sample tests and download their textbooks a chapter at a time.

According to Trinity University Accounting Professor Robert Jensen in San Antonio, Texas, the main advantages are hypertext navigation, hypermedia, animation, live links to the Internet, text search and content updating frequency. Jensen is the Webmaster of a site at the San Antonio University that follows accounting trends ( www.trinity.edu/rjensen  ).

"Electronic textbooks can, in theory, be updated in real time," he said. "Users of Softbooks, for example, can download early editions of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times each morning."

The rest of the article is at http://accounting.pro2net.com/research/solutions/education/soed000619.asp 

You can read more about electronic books at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm#eBooks 


If music can be shared so easily on Napster and computer files can be shared so easily on Wrapster, Gnutella, Pointerra, FreeNet, etc.( http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm  ), what is to prevent books from being freely shared between online "friends?"  "FreeNet has the potential to be particularly troubling."

"Book Publishers Aim to Get Ahead Of the Electronic-Piracy Game" 
By ERIN WHITE
The Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2000, p. B1.

Book publishers have been watching anxiously as their peers in the music business have been upended by digital file-trading programs like Napster that allow Internet users to pass around free copies of CDs. Seeing their recording brethren caught flat-footed as Napster use surges has book executives adopting the mantra: Don't let it happen to us.

"We don't want to be in a reactive mode the way the recording industry is," says Peter Jovanovich, former chairman of the Association of American Publishers and chief executive of Pearson PLC's Pearson Education unit. Instead, publishers are trying to control the direction of electronic books themselves and to establish piracy protections.

Publishers say it's only a matter of time before copying programs like Napster start penetrating their industry, making unauthorized copies of electronic books just as publishers expand their e-book offerings.

A free program available on the Web called FreeNet has the potential to be particularly troubling, publishers and industry executives say. Touted as a way to defeat censorship, FreeNet lets users anonymously trade any sort of file, including text and pictures. Unlike Napster, it works without a central server, meaning it's much harder to police its use and for authorities to pull the plug to shut it down. On the other hand, the lack of a central directory means the system isn't very user-friendly: Users have to know the exact name of a FreeNet file in order to retrieve it. FreeNet's designer, Ian Clarke, says an easier-to-use version should be available within months.

Other programs that could pose problems for book publishers industry include Wrapster, an outgrowth of Napster created by Napster users that lets people share text, video and other files. Another program, Gnutella, functions similarly but like FreeNet, doesn't rely on a central server.

Such copying programs aren't likely to have a major on sales of print books, industry observers say. The time and effort needed to type or scan in text to create digital versions of printed books is far greater than to copy a music CD. But if the programs prosper, book publishers could stand to lose a chunk of revenue in the fast-growing e-book market.

You can find links to all of the software mentioned above at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm 


Welcome to @cademyonline Issue 5.0! --- http://www.academyonline.com/ 

What is a learning portal? Will learning portals change management education? In "At Issue" we answer these questions and more about the rapidly evolving world of learning portals.

The technology choices that business schools make often reflect more than the institutions' desire to have a distance learning program. In our feature "It's Academic" we compare some of the different technological choices that schools have made and the reasons behind them.


At the University of Notre Dame, distance education means teaching courses live from the campus using videoconferencing. "We started with a different approach," said Arnold Ludwig, Assistant Dean and Director of the Executive Education Program. "It was our concept to deliver the same quality education that we deliver on campus and we concluded that [to do so] we needed live interactive involvement." In many people's homes and offices, the connection to the Web is not yet capable of efficiently handling this type of video interaction. So, Notre Dame chose to design their program using high-speed, dedicated T-1 lines that provided 1.5 megabytes of bandwidth. The classes are held live on campus in South Bend and simultaneously videoconferenced to students at four distant locations-the world headquarters of Owens Illinois glass company in Toledo, Ohio; Ameritech in Indianapolis; a site in downtown Chicago at the Union League Club, and Hoffman Estates, Illinois, the world headquarters for Ameritech. Each site serves about ten students and is outfitted with two videoconferencing screens and another one that allows for PowerPoint presentations. Students at these remote sites also have the capability of hearing live presentations from anywhere in the world.

Ludwig admits that one disadvantage in setting up the program this way is the expense when compared to Web-based programs. But, "it's a quality issue," he says. "The program also saves students time, and about four thousand dollars a year in travel expenses to the main campus."

"Faculty have been most cooperative," according to Ludwig. "This is considered part of their normal workload, and they feel they are relating to what's happening in the world today."


Through a distance-learning program called Masters of International Management in Latin America (MIMLA), Thunderbird offers degrees to students throughout Mexico and in Lima, Peru. The realities of the location of the students and the technologies available to them influenced the choices Thunderbird made while designing the program.

There are both synchronous and asynchronous components to the program, according to Rich Zbylut, Thunderbird's chief information officer and vice president for business development. This program is run in cooperation with Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Supereriores de Monterrey (ITESM), or, as Zbylut calls it, Monterrey Tech. Mexican and Peruvian students seeking an executive degree in international management assemble at one of the six locations where they can access teleconferencing facilities made available through ITESM. The Thunderbird faculty teach a class, which is sent via an ISDN phone line to one of the six locations. At this site, the students can interact in real time with Thunderbird faculty broadcasting from T-Bird's home studio in Glendale, Arizona. The ISDN line allows for a crystal-clear point-to-point video connection. This transmission is then beamed via satellite to the remaining five sites where there is, unfortunately, no two-way videoconferencing; however, students at these locations e-mail their questions to the faculty who then respond via the TV. Additionally, facilitators from the host country are present at all of the videoconference sessions to answer questions and make sure things run smoothly, lead discussions, and coordinate with the Thunderbird faculty back in Arizona. Each student receives a lifetime e-mail account and access to a variety of resources including online databases, faculty and student profiles, campus news and chat rooms, and drop boxes where they can leave their assignments.

"Its been working very well," according to Zbylut. "There seems to be a high level of motivation for our students. Enrollment is growing and we are addressing a market need. There are always some adjustment issues," he continued. "But, some students have already become familiar with distance learning at ITESM where Monterrey Tech has been involved in distance learning in Mexico for years. Given the fact it would be difficult for these students to come to America for advanced studies they're getting a little bit of the best of both worlds."


In spite of the exemplary successes of several programs, big decisions loom for how schools will conduct distance learning in the coming years. The technology upon which distance learning is based will continue to reflect the institution's particular need to reach students as well as ensure effective administration and pedagogy. Rapidly advancing Web technologies will force schools to question their current methods. Queen's College, for example, has shown the scalability of videoconferencing technology, offering courses and programs across Canada. As broadband Internet access becomes the standard in homes and businesses however, the same classroom-type interaction will be available over the Web. Will the cost of running videoconferencing programs at this scale be economically feasible for the same level of interaction?

Eugene Ziegler foresees institutions combining for economies of scale. "I think you are going to see one school or several schools in a consortium put together first year MBA core courses online," Ziegler says. "That material has a long shelf life. What you are going to have is a much larger number of students taking the core program [online]. Today, many students are quitting after the certificate, and the rest are going on to compete for the slots in branded MBA programs."

Ziegler noted that USC is running a core program online for a company in Japan. "They're putting about 300 students a year through the program, and now they beginning to apply to business schools across the U.S. to finish their MBA," he said. "That kind of model is going to be a cash cow for somebody."

Note from Bob Jensen --- Chuck Hickman, the Academic Vice-President of University Access and Editor of Academy Online, was a top executive of the AACSB for over 20 years and is very knowledgeable about trends in higher education in business.  He is one of the featured speakers in the American Accounting Association CPE Workshop No. 1 on Saturday August 12 in Philadelphia.  This is an all-day workshop.  See http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe1.htm 


@AACSB --- http://www.academyonline.com/aacsb/index.htm 

Management educators may not agree with him, but they will nevertheless want to heed Motorola executive Bill Wiggenhorn, senior vice president of Education and Training and president of Motorola University. Wiggenhorn recently told @cademyonline that distance learning is rapidly becoming the primary influence on corporate and institutional-based management education. Wiggenhorn's message was simple: business schools must embrace Web-based learning or risk extinction. His comments drew mixed responses from business deans, AACSB accreditation staff, and others.

Wiggenhorn: E-commerce has compressed the planning time from years to quarters. One question for schools is how they're going to keep up with being the experts in content because they're not going to have years to design a course.

"So very true," responded Timothy S. Mescon, dean of the Michael J. Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University. "Traditional response time for business schools to market trends can be measured in decades. This is rapidly being compressed to the need to respond in months ... a huge challenge to our profession."

"Everything is changing at an ever increasing pace," said Gene L. Ziegler, e-Learning advisor with Learning Technology Partners and former chief technology officer at Cornell's Johnson School. "Everything, that is, except the university, which still uses the same planning cycles of the long gone agrarian society that gave it shape. How do you plan a 'course' for a phenomenon that evolves into a new form even as you describe it? How do you lay a track for a runaway train?"

"Business schools are adapting to the speed of change," said Paul Danos, dean of the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, "and we are doing it in faster cycles. Having said that, it is still fair to criticize us for not moving fast enough. I believe that the best schools are really very responsive to current trends, certainly more so than other academic institutions."

Schools are building more ties between faculty and corporations, said Milton R. Blood, AACSB managing director of accreditation. "Faculty will operate as intelligence gatherers and, also, they will invite more corporate presenters into courses," he said. "This already is happening as faculty members recognize the need for enhanced connections to practicing managers to keep their knowledge fresh."

Wiggenhorn: More and more, the brand is going to be an individual faculty member. So the brand is not USC. It will be Professor Lawler at USC.

"The branding phenomenon has existed for some time," said Danos. "I believe that in a world of massive and inexpensive communications, both professors and business schools who are known for quality will have new and growing advantages. The power of the business school brand should not be underestimated."

"There will be opportunity in the new information economy for faculty to develop personal brand, but I don't think that will be the norm," said Ziegler. "A more startling development will be the emergence of new brand, a Phoenix rising from the ashes of the industrial-age university."

"Actually, we see a greater emphasis on branding b-schools and leveraging the potency of accreditation," said Mescon. "I do see a greater propensity to attract key executives from industry to supplement curricular content and delivery."

"Faculty members will maintain their institutional positions for a number of reasons," said Blood, "but they also will have opportunities to 'sell' their intellectual properties (teaching) through other outlets and as 'freelancers.' Intellectual property rights, thus, become an important issue, and few campuses have worked out the agreements they will need for resolving ownership of products and efforts. These issues will be further complicated as teams of faculty from multiple institutions work together to design learning experiences that may then be delivered by a vendor separate from all of the institutions."

Wiggenhorn: The premier schools will survive because people want to go there and socialize with others. But the second-tier and third-tier schools are under threat. Because individuals can have access to some of the premier experts anywhere in the world, they don't need to go to a local institution.

"Truthfully, I do not concur," said Mescon. "I think the survivors will be those b-schools that are fast, focused, and ferocious, regardless of reputation or historical positioning."

"More than just the premier schools will survive," said Ziegler. "If teaching 'stars' are available everywhere, then colleges and universities will have to evolve new differentiators in order to claim a share of the market. The whole system will be threatened as the earthquake of economic change causes cracks in the traditional foundations."

" [Wiggenhorn's] is a useful speculation about the reaction of the market," said Blood, "but we don't know yet how much migration of the market will take place. The basic market factors of price, quality, and convenience will all come into play, and it may be that the top reputation schools will dominate on all three factors. If so, this threat will be realistic; on the other hand, coalitions with some schools as product providers and others as marketers and servicers may provide different roles for schools to play. We need not think that institutions will be static in the face of change."

Said Danos, "The brand advantage will draw quality people to the best brands, but there will remain a very 'atomized' business school industry, with thousands of schools worldwide. The best brands, however, will have to make tradeoffs between quality and volume. How many MBA degrees should a top-quality school grant? There is a limit beyond which quality, perceived and actual, will diminish."

Wiggenhorn: There will be consolidation because the for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix and Jones International will erode the marketplace. As more and more course work goes online and the online educators are able to maintain the same student satisfaction, they will take students away from traditional schools.

"The University of Phoenix has grown by defining new markets rather than eroding the markets of others, but that will soon change," said Ziegler. "Their real success is in selectively redefining the value chain to be more efficient without the overhead of tradition."

"I don't believe that top quality students are going to choose 'for profit' degrees when they have other high quality choices," said Danos. "An important issue is how 'for profit' degree grantors will ever actually make profits competing with such highly subsidized 'not-for-profits.' And, how will 'for profit' grantors create the faculty expertise that lies at the heard of good teaching ?"

"We believe many of the 'traditional' universities are now responding," said Mescon. "The consortium of five business schools in Georgia that will be delivering a WEBMBA this fall is a great illustration."

"The size of the market for electronically delivered courses is not yet established," said Blood, "nor do we know yet whether new delivery systems are stealing market or creating market. We know new patterns will emerge, but it is too early to predict the results. If traditional institutions can respond to new competitors by meeting the competition's price, quality, and convenience advantages, they will emerge whole; if they try to compete without making changes, they are likely to suffer, especially at the undergraduate level. It seems likely there will be a continuing market for traditional residential education," he said. "Even there, the competition will force changes in what goes on in the classroom (or whether there will be traditional classrooms)."

Wiggenhorn: Business schools are running a dual system (as far as incorporating distance technology into the educational experience). They're still keeping their traditional online campus system in which they incorporate technology, but it's only moving them from the blackboard to the computer. Other than that, everything stays the same. They have not integrated those two. They are two separate product lines. I think one product is used to protect the other.

"These lines are now eroding," responded Mescon. "The statement is true, but change is occurring in traditional business schools now at a much faster pace."

"Experimentation within the system is rational," said Ziegler. "Running dual systems for the short term may be inevitable. But in the end, schools will have to either complete the transformation or fold the innovation into the existing structures and hope that is enough."

"Faculty expertise is at the heart of the value added by universities," said Danos. "The method of delivery, face-to-face or distance, for instance, is not as important as connecting expert professors with brilliant students. Of course, many basic skills and theories can be taught with digital assistance, but behind it all will be a professor whose research informs her/his teaching."

"Yes, we need more fundamental rethinking of the entire educational process," said Blood. "Here is where the new competitors have an important advantage. They can imagine education happening in new ways and without some of the features and structures of traditional higher education institutions." Blood said modular curricula, integrated courses, problem-based learning and other techniques are being tried, but few schools are committing themselves to fully rethinking content and how they are delivering management education. "Even those schools that serve as examples of change often have altered only one or a few features of their programs," he said. "New competitors can begin with the problem and try to solve it without preconceptions. Traditional providers often start with the current solution and try to change it."

Wiggenhorn: With the explosion in the use of technology and the kind of re-certification that people will need, it'll be a forty-year or even fifty-year education process. So instead of ending studies at age 22, you'll just be picking up steam. The degree you get at 28 will be your baseline. Then every four to five years, you're going to have to be re-certified. You won't need one MBA. You're going to need five MBAs.

"This is true ... lifetime affiliations with graduate business programs is a great concept whose time has come," said Mescon. Why not educational insurance policies that annuitize educational benefits from colleges and universities for alumni?"

"Except that I don't think it will be every four or five years," said Ziegler. "It will be a continuous process of learning and recertification just as in the medical profession."

"Five (MBAs) is perhaps a stretch," said Danos, "but the basic idea is sound. I predict a new array of educational experiences will be created. Lifelong learning will be as much a part of our mission in the future as have been traditional degree programs."

"The mantra of 'life-long learning' soon will be replaced with 'learning on demand," said Blood. "Learning programs and degree sequences after the first basic preparation will be supplemented with intense, in-depth and highly focused learning as people make career shifts and as new business practices require changes. People will ask for such education when and where they need it. Providers who can respond will reap the market benefits."


Corporate universities from the perspective of the President of Motorola University and the president of  Westerbeck Communications, Inc. --- http://www.academyonline.com/corp_ed/index.htm 

Westerbeck:
Let's talk about what you're doing at Motorola. Describe the landscape at your company in terms of how distance learning is being used strategically in the "e-learning" context.

Wiggenhorn:
I would say we've had about 10 percent of our formalized learning take place outside of classrooms and labs. Even though we offer 700 to 800 courses online, we have had resistance from people about taking online courses. Consequently, we are changing our policy and our offerings. Our policy used to require every individual to take five days of job-related training per year. We now are putting into effect a learning policy that requires every individual to take forty hours of job-related education or training per year.

But 30 percent of total learning must be in an e-learning format by 2001 and 50 percent by 2003. All senior middle managers and above must spend at least eight hours as a facilitator at one of these company learning communities. The goal is to get a manager to use technology as a tool to help manage and develop teams.

Then instead of having four vendors providing online education as we do today, we will probably end up with thirty or forty vendors worldwide that will provide course content in multiple languages.

But the
driver in this situation is not cost reduction; it's really trying to get people to use Web-based technology as a normal means of conducting business.


Buzz books about biz. business education, and education in general  --- http://www.academyonline.com/bookshelf/index.htm 

Bear's Guide to the Best MBA's by Distance Learning. 
John and Maria Bear. A solid reference on the top distance-learning MBA degree programs. Bear's Guide not only provides a list of the programs, but also offers good advice on selecting the right school. This book reports on MBA programs that are entirely online, and those with a significant online portion. See Think Tank for a complete list of MBA programs and links to their websites.
(
Note from Bob Jensen:  You may want to check out http://www.freshman-year.com/bearguide.html 
There are links to over 100 colleges that offer accredited distance education programs.)

A University For The 21st Century. 
James J. Duderstadt. As
former president of the University of Michigan, Duderstadt is well positioned to comment on the forces now driving the evolution of higher education. These changes - some that are coming and some that have already begun -- offer significant opportunities for universities that are ready for them, and considerable problems for schools that are not.

The Online Teaching Guide: A Handbook of Attitudes, Strategies, and Techniques for the Virtual Classroom.
Ken W. White and Bob H. Weight. Ever taught an online course that was so impersonal that you wonder why you bothered? Ever try to lead an online discussion that was so dry and bland only its death could save it? Ever wonder how to organize an online course that communicates your passion for teaching to online students? Ever wonder how to make lectures that fit the online environment? Not only does this book address those questions and more, the authors offer real ideas on how to solve these problems.

Teaching Online. 
William Draves. This book is a beginner's guide to online instruction, providing a context for instructors who are new to the field. Draves shares his thoughts on the changes online learning may bring to education.

The Cluetrain Manifesto. Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger. The "first book that is a sequel to a web site" has created a stir with its combination of immediate relevance and irreverent style. The World Wide Web has forever altered how companies operate, and the time has come, say the authors, to jump onboard the train or get run over. A must read for anyone who works in, studies, or teaches business.

Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom.  
Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt. The authors offer good, practical advice for teaching and administrating an online course, based around the concept of a 'learning community.' Read the review in "Intelligent Life" in the Summer 1999 Issue of @cademyonline.

Managing Technological Change
Tony Bates. Bates, a distance learning administrator at the University of British Columbia, has put together a strategic analysis of the myriad changes that the Internet and technology have brought to higher education. His analysis will prove useful to any administrator grappling with these huge upheavals.

Dancing with the Devil: Information Technology and the New Competition in Higher Education
Various Authors. A must-read for all change agents at institutions of higher education. As the academic environment evolves with the influx of information technology, the book serves as a blueprint for institutions to successfully strategically position themselves for this sea of change.

Future Wealth. 
Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer. The authors of the best-selling Blur return for a companion piece on the future of capital. They share their predictions on how wealth will be created by both organizations and individuals in a world where everything of value, including talent and human potential, will be traded in open markets. See the review in this issue's Intelligent Life.


New Things Everybody Should Know About PDF Files

With a little help from my friends, I learned some new things about PDF files.  You can read my comments and the threaded messages at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acrobat.htm 

I illustrate how it is quite easy to convert a HTML document into a PDF document (an almost perfect conversion) versus converting a PDF document back into a HTML document ( a less-than-perfect conversion).

I thread Richard Campbell's message about how to secure an online PDF document such that nobody can copy any part of the document or print any part of the document (other than to capture portions of pages as graphics files).  It is also possible to secure an online PDF document such that it cannot be converted into HTML using Adobe's conversion program.

I provide update threads on Adobe's new and frustrating PDF search engine that appears to be outsourced to Altavista.  Craig Polhemus mentions some alternative PDF search engines being considered by the American Accounting Association.

Once again those threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acrobat.htm 


Hi Patrick,

This is not quite what you asked for, but Microsoft has a somewhat unique set of "What if" tools in Excel that accompany the financial statements. See http://www.microsoft.com/msft/tools.htm 

Microsoft also provides summary statements in both different languages and different nations' GAAP rules. Bob (Robert E.) Jensen Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212 Voice: (210) 999-7347 Fax: (210) 999-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu  
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Patrick Charles [mailto:charlesp@MAIL.CWDOM.DM]  
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2000 1:55 PM 
To: CPAS-L@VAX.LOYOLA.EDU Subject: An Exercise...

Greetings too all

Every country has its own way of presenting financial statements and each industry is unique. [Jensen, Robert] I am interested in seeing how financial statements are presented in different regions of the World.

If anyone has any sample financials done in excel I would be grateful, if they could send it to me.

Purpose of this exercise is comparison, to find the best presentation and use of excel.

What are your views?

Regards


Bob: Although Paintshop Pro does perform screen captures the best screen capture program on the market (IMHO) is Snagit! at www.techsmith.com  This program will capture entire web pages, even below the fold in a variety of file formats. This is another program I'll be demoing at the AAA. See http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe19.htm 

Richard J. Campbell www.VirtualPublishing.Net 
mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.Net 


Bob,

I thought you'll be interested in the following. I did not post it to AECM since I was not sure it is relevant.

Regards,

Jagdish -- Jagdish S. Gangolly, Associate Professor ( j.gangolly@albany.edu ) State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY 12222. Phone: (518) 442-4949 Fax: (707) 897-0601 URL: http://www.albany.edu/acc/gangolly 

VIDEO DISTRIBUTION COMPANY TO USE GNUTELLA SOFTWARE The digital video and music distribution company Sightsound.com is going to use the Gnutella software to transmit movies over the Internet as encrypted files. Giga Information group analyst Rob Enderle says, "We believe that these kinds of distribution schemes will become increasingly common as the music and movie industries realize the kind of threat they are under. SightSound executives are not commenting on the plan because the company is in a "quiet period" before an initial public offering. With Gnutella, the various files shared are stored locally on individual users' machines. The company has said it will use commercially available encryption technology to protect its content. (New York Times 14 Jun 2000) http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/06/biztech/articles/14movie.html 


Just to follow up on the Snagit! program, techsmith.com makes other great programs as well, which have been mentioned here before. In particular, Camtasia Recorder is great for doing movies like Lotus Screen Cam, and then Camtasia Producer is useful for editing those files, and one of the options is to then save those "movies" in Real Media format for streaming purposes.

Jim Borden 
Villanova University

The TechSmith Corporation website is at http://www.techsmith.com/ 


Anyone who creates dynamic content for the Web should evaluate Macromedia's polished and user-friendly Dreamweaver UltraDev 1.0, says eWEEK Labs.  http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0006211/2587941/ 


As one who has spent several thousand dollars to hire an intellectual property attorney to defend my own copyright, here are my observations: 

1. The most powerful words in publishing are "cease and desist". Once the owner of a copyright issues a notice to a copyright infringer, the offense, if continued becomes potentially a criminal violation. And does the FBI respond? A software developer friend of mine said to me that he got hysterical, plaintive phone calls from his offending copyright infringer. The FBI had a search warrant to find knockoff CDs at he time of the call.

2. From a practical standpoint, in my area of the country, (Ohio) it takes 2 years and $50,000 to take a copyright infringement to trial. BUT, the legal fees for the defender to negotiate a settlement can be significant.

3. The very technology that makes it easy to pirate copyrighted material also makes it easy to catch pirates. Just post a message to a newsgroup about pirating Microsoft software and see what happens. The day after I posted a message about a demo of Microsoft Liquid Motion (now deceased), my web site was visited 23 times from the Microsoft campus. Big Brother is watching. And Mr. Gates, yes, I bought the copy. Although Liquid Motion was good, Macromedia's Flash is better.

4. My attorney also successfully defended an artist of statue collectibles. He regularly goes to flea markets, and when he finds a knockoff he finds a way to collect damages for his client, and a fee for himself.

So, IMHO, copyright is not dead. I do believe the era of the traditional print publishers is over, as well as the music publishers. Authors and musicians can easily eliminate the middleman.

Richard J. Campbell www.VirtualPublishing.Net 
mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.Net
 


Education Statistics --- The Condition of Education, 2000_ --- http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2000062 


From CPA-Net Online on June 15, 2000 --- http://www.cpanet.com/home/new.asp 

Forecasting Resources

Forecasting from Wharton - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=03 

Cash Flow Forecasting - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=01 

Int'l Institute of Forecasters - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=04 

Famous Forecasting Quotes - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=02 

Investment Forecasts - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=05 

Biz History Mish-Mash

1,000 Years of Work and Money - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=07 

300 Years of Business History - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=06 

Alan Greenspan Fan Club - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=08 

Tax History Museum - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=10 

Financial Scandals - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=09 

Corporate Finance Resources

Top 10 Technologies 2000 - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=12 

Report on Employee Stock Options - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=13 

All About Value at Risk (VaR) - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=14 

Excellence in Financial Mgmt - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=15 

E-Analytics - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=11 

Investment Advisor Resources

Financial Planning Interactive - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=16 

Financial Engineering News - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=18 

D&T Personal Finance Advisor - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=19 

Investor Access - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=17 

IPO Underwriter Directory - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=20 

Investment Advisor Magazine - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=21 

CPA Toolbox

Adobe Search PDF Online - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=22 

Work From Anywhere - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=26 

Business Traveler Online - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=25 

iFigure - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=24 

Research-It - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0006.asp?ID=23 


From the FEI Express Issue 36 on June 21, 2000 (Financial Executives Institute)

FEI position on SEC International Accounting Standards Concept Release
Last week our Committee on Corporate Reporting filed an important comment letter with the SEC, which is considering the acceptability of the recently adopted set of international accounting standards. Currently, foreign companies must reconcile their financial statements to U.S. GAAP. Some important facts I learned in reading the letter: the SEC currently receives statements in over 40 different country GAAPs which have been reconciled before filing. Foreign registrants file interim statements only as often as required in their local country. This translates to semi-annual statements for most European companies!! While the ultimate goal of one global GAAP for all companies is coming, the intermediate steps are going to be a challenge. Our full letter is on the website, but here is a short summary of the key points:

"FEI believes that U.S. capital markets are better served by having foreign registrants use an investor-oriented accounting model like IAS in the primary financial statements rather than providing bits and pieces of financial data that reconcile to U.S. GAAP supplementally. We also believe that the expanded use of IAS in world markets, which is much more likely to occur with SEC acceptance in the U.S., will further improve the comparability of financial results between U.S. and foreign companies. We would therefore support the Commission's acceptance of IAS for use in U.S. capital markets, provided that the following additional steps are taken:

  • Limit the choices of GAAP available to foreign registrants to two: U.S. GAAP or IAS.
  • Require that foreign registrants comply fully with the same regulations that apply to U.S. public companies, including reporting U.S. or IAS GAAP financial statements for all interim periods.
  • Actively support processes that will accelerate the development of a single set of global accounting standards that will be used in all securities markets.
  • Ensure that U.S. and foreign registrants are treated equally in all respects under federal securities laws, including the right of all registrants to follow IAS standards.
  • Require that these changes be effected over a time frame of no greater than five years and do not "grandfather" existing foreign registrants.
 

From the Scout Report on June 13, 2000

Cybersoc.com http://www.cybersoc.com/home.html 

The brainchild of Robin Hamman a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster's Hypermedia Research Centre, this Website bills itself as "an online resource for social scientists interested in the study of the internet, cyberspace, computer mediated communication, and online communities." The site offers issues of _Cybersociology Magazine_ -- "an e-zine for those interested in the social-scientific research of Cyberspace and Life Online," as well as links to bibliographies and reviews of pertinent Websites and software. Also featured here are papers by Hamman, whose reports and columns about the Internet have been widely published in British newspapers and journals. Clearly the product of an informed enthusiast and his like-minded colleagues, this Website suggests in miniature the ways in which Internet culture and academia have begun to cross-pollinate, at least in the United Kingdom.


Click-and-mortar brigade is born --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0006141/2582809/ 


Hi Craig,

Probably the best place to begin is to look up the Accounting II courses at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/search.htm 

You may also find some useful glossaries at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbus.htm 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Craig XXXXXX
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 11:52 AM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu  
Subject: Cost Account Questions

I happen to came across your web site and wanted to ask if you could give me a little direction. Are there any sites that can assist me with a few questions from my Acct II (cost accounting class).

Thank You,

Craig


Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls (UNICEF) http://www.unicef-icdc.org/pdf/domestic.pdf 


Inequality.org http://www.inequality.org/ 


Ancient Egypt  (The British Museum) ---  http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/menu.html 


Traditional Grammar: An Interactive Book http://www.niu.edu/english/deh/grammarbook/title.html 


National Statistics: the Official United Kingdom Statistics Site http://www.statistics.gov.uk/ 


Digital Signatures: Big Step Forward, Two Tiny Steps Back 
By Nate Zelnick
Internet World News, June 15, 2000

Congress's overwhelming passage of the E-Sign bill is huge, of course, but probably not the short-term e-commerce catalyst boosters believe it to be. Unlike such tech-driven business sectors as the computer or network-equipment markets -- which play to an audience that's primed for online commerce -- trust-based transactions face social lag in the movement to the Internet. Nonetheless, formal standards for how parties identify and authenticate each other when negotiating a deal, which prove intent to short-circuit later disputes, are critical if electronic commerce is going to be more than shopping for commodity goods. In particular, B2B is DOA without the necessary infrastructure for binding agreements with legal consequences.

Though the issues behind electronic signatures seem to be technical, the real barriers to widespread usage remain social. The analogy of consumer credit card usage on the Web -- which turned out not to be a major barrier to the rise of online shopping -- doesn't map well to widespread adoption of electronically signed contracts, in which the consequences of fraud are larger. Credit card fraud carries little real risk to consumers, because even if a number is snatched out of the ether, the total liability a person carries is limited to a pittance. As anyone who has been tricked into a long-term service agreement that costs more than the equipment it warranties knows, contracts are worthy of respect.

Also see at: http://daily.webshots.com/?961079987 


Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body (Biology) --- http://www.bartleby.com/107/ 


From thr Scout Report on June 15, 2000

ebusinessforum http://www.ebusinessforum.com/ 

Created and maintained by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by a variety of high-powered ebusinesses, including Cisco Systems, Dell Computers, Intel, and Oracle, ebusiness forum "provides insight and analysis to help senior executives build successful strategies for the global digital economy." After a quick, free registration, users have access to the wide spectrum of ebusiness-related news and information on this site. The "Today's New Analysis" feature contains electronic business news from around the world from information sources including _European Voice_, _The Journal of Commerce_, and _Financial Times_. The site offers resources on leadership and practice, as well as a variety of informative sources on doing ebusiness in countries around the world.


National Endowment for Financial Education --- http://www.nefe.org/ 

This "action area" of the National Endowment for Financial Education® (NEFE®) was created to provide Americans with practical money management skills and an introduction to financial planning through course work that covers the fundamentals of insurance, investments, tax planning, retirement planning, and estate planning.

Although not restricted to a particular age group, the Education Programs area has focused largely on increasing financial literacy among the nation's youth. This focus is exemplified by the organization's longest-standing public service effort, the NEFE High School Financial Planning Program (HSFPP).

The innovative HSFPP uses contemporary materials to teach the basics of personal finance to young people while they are developing habits and attitudes about money that will influence them for the rest of their lives. It is based on the philosophy that learning about money is as important as earning it—and that effective money management results from a disciplined behavior, which is most easily mastered if learned early in life. This practical and objective program is available at no cost to all high schools throughout the country. (Click on the highlighted term above for more information about the NEFE High School Financial Planning Program.)


Beyond the Bull (momentum theory of trading volume in a stock investment) http://www.beyondthebull.com/index.cfm 


Principles of Graphic Design --- http://www.mundidesign.com/presentation/index2.html 

3-D whirlies and banners --- http://www.hi-res.net/sb/clickhere.html 
(A slow loader!)


edads for today's father --- http://www.edads.com/ 


Crime news and information --- http://www.crime.com/ 


From PBS Victorian Houses (I love them!)  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/1900house/ 


The Orphanage of Cast-Off Mascots (Things lost from my generation)  http://www.lileks.com/institute/orphanage/index.html  


Hi Dr, Jensen: 
My website, http://www.QuickTrainingTips.com  is visited each month by thousands of higher ed instructors, school teachers, corporate trainers, e-learning developers, and other folks who teach other people to use computers or use technology as a teaching tool. The free Tips and other resources are largely contributed by the teachers and others who stop by. I regularly receive email from folks telling me how much they love the site and how they put the instructional tips to immediate use. They also say that a lot of the tips are quite usable in other types of (non-computer) courses as well.

I would much appreciate it if you'd take a peek at our site and see if you agree that it has enough worthwhile content to recommend. You have so many links in so many categories I'm not sure what link list to suggest but if you like QTT, I hope you'll put a link somewhere that educators looking for instructional techniques are likely to find it.

Thank you in advance for considering my request.

Sincerely,

Loretta Weiss-Morris http://www.QuickTrainingTips.com 


Hi Dianna,

Thank you for your message.

I will forward your message to some contacts. However, our entire graduating class was booked up one year before graduation.

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

-----Original Message----- 
From: DIncivilito@RainBird.com [mailto:DIncivilito@RainBird.com
 Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 6:50 PM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu Subject:

Dear Prof. Jensen:

I happen to run across your website and thought perhaps I might network with you.

I am recruiting for a privately held organization in So. California who has an opening for a Credit Manager in their Tucson, Arizona facility.

Requirements for the position include a bachelor's degree, preferably a master's from a learning institution on par with Trinity or Stanford.

If you know of any recent grads who might have an interest in such a position, would appreciate your forwarding their names, resumes etc.

Thanks for your help.

Diana Incivilito Placement Consultant 626-852-7203


Welcome to the June 18th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Pointera's Impact on Business Grows 
2. Inktomi Re-enters Battle For Biggest Search Engine 
3. Priceline.com Groceries Update 
4. Quote of the Day: Happiness, Freedom and Peace of Mind 
5. Everything's Free....If You Are Listening/Watching Ads 
6. From Taxman86: Marriage Penalty Here We Come 
7. Consumer Now: The Consumer Digest for the Internet.


The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 48 http://www.accountingweb.com  
1.  AccountingWEB Calls on the Accounting Profession to Join in a 
    Campaign to Help Fight Diabetes 
2.  Workplace Misconduct seems to be the Norm
3.  Should US Companies Pay European Taxes?  What's Your Opinion?
4.  Accounting Firm Press Conferences Go Live on the Internet
5.  Quick Pointers on Business Valuation
6.  New Grads Find Meaningful Employment
7.  Expense Reduction Ideas:  Don't Forget These
8.  QuickBooks Workshop Answered Many Questions
9.  What Do HR Directors Want in a Resume?
10. Excel/Word Tip: Use AutoCorrect to Spell Out Abbreviated Name

The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 47 June 16, 2000
Logon to http://www.accountingweb.com  for more resources.

1. CPE Price War Erupts! 
2. Increase the Speed of Your Internet Connection 
3. Caliber Learning Offering Free CPE 
4. Internet Businesses with European Sales Face Taxation 
5. Audit Improvements Recommended 
6. 38% of Job Applicants Lack Basic Skills 
7. House Paves the Way for Estate Tax Repeal 
8. Prospects for Accounting Interns are Sunny 
9. TaxMama Visits AccountingWEB 
10. Internet Tip: Match Time Zones with Area Codes


Pro2Net Accounting Weekly Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of June 19, 2000 

1. Earn Last-Minute CPE Before June 30 
2. Today's Top Accounting News 
3. This Week's Feature Solutions Articles 
4. Survey Results: What will the effect of a Microsoft breakup be on consumer choice? 
5. Our Tip of the Week: When Issuing Stock-Based Compensation, What Items to Consider and How They Relate to Your Company


Pro2Net Accounting Weekly Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of June 26, 2000 

1. Today's Top Accounting News 
2. Opinion: Rick Telberg's Insider 
3. This Week's Feature Solutions Articles 
4. Check Out Accounting and Finance Jobs 
5. Survey Results: To what do you attribute the CPA shortage? 
6. Need New Books? Check out Pro2Net's Expanded Catalog


AccountingStudents Newsletter: June 20, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. Win an Online CPA Exam Review from Bisk-Totaltape 
2. Building Your Presentation Skills 
3. Site of the Week: Napster 
4. Tip of the Week: Managing Your Personal Finances, Part II 
5. Preview Our New Site 6. Contest Winner Announced


Oklahoma's two largest airports are named after celebrities who were killed in airplane crashes --- Will Rogers and Wiley Post!


Two elderly professors met at a conference.  One said to the other, "I've known you for years.  But I just cannot recall your name at this moment.  I'm afraid I need help.  What is your name?"

After a long awkward pause, the other professor finally answered, "How soon do you need to know?"


Only for Texas A&M Alumni:  Secret virus removal instructions 

Please delete all the files on your hard disk, then forward this message to every Aggie you know. 
Thank you for your cooperation.

Gig Em Aggies!


Forwarded by Bob Overn

The transcript of the new Voice Mail service recently installed at the Mental Health Institute:

Hello, and welcome to the mental health hotline.

If you are obsessive-compulsive, press 1 repeatedly.

If you are codependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you now.

If you have multiple personalities, press 3, 4, 5 and 6.

If you are paranoid, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call.

If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be transferred to the mother ship.

If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press.

If you are a depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press - no one will answer anyway.

If you are dyslexic, press 9696969696969.

If you have a nervous disorder, please fidget with the star and pound keys until a representative comes on the line.

If you have amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, phone number, date of birth, social security number, and your mother's maiden name.

If you have bipolar disorder, please leave a message after the beep or before the beep. Or after the beep. Please wait for the beep.

If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9.

If you have low self esteem, please hang up. All of our operators are too busy to talk to you.

Thank you and have a nice day.


Also forwarded by Bob Overn

When my husband and I arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up our car, we were told that the keys had been accidentally locked in it. We went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the driver's side door. As I watched from the passenger's side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered it was open. "Hey," I announced to the technician, "It's open!" "I know," answered the young man.- "I already got that side."


I was at the airport, checking in at the gate, when the airport employee asked, "Has anyone put anything in your baggage without your knowledge?" I said, "If it was without my knowledge, how would I know?" He smiled and nodded knowingly, "That's why we ask."


-----Original Message----- From: AuntieBev

1. It is well documented that for every mile that you jog... you add one minute to your life... This enables you at 95 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $5000 per month.

2. The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

3. I joined a health club last year, spent about $400. Haven't lost a pound. Apparently you have to show up.

4. I have to exercise early in the morning before my brain figures out what I'm doing.

5. I don't exercise at all. If God meant us to touch our toes, he would have put them further up our body.

6. I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

7.I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.

8. The advantage of exercising every day is that you die healthier.

9. If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country.

10. And last but not least- I don't jog. It makes the ice jump right out of my glass.


I hope you might be amused by the attached posting which presumes that Dr. Seuss has been as flummoxed by his computer as we have all been at some time. The piece is not mine, so I can claim no credit. If it's offensive, of course the blame is mine. Sincerely, David Middleton

WHAT IF DR. SEUSS WROTE A COMPUTER MANUAL?

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, 
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, 
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, 
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, 
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, 
and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash, 
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash.

If the label on the cable on the table at your house, 
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, 
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol. 
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, 
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse, 
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'cause as sure as I'm a poet, 
the sucker's gonna hang.

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk, 
and the micro-code instructions cause unnecessary risk, 
then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM, 
Quickly turn off the computer, and be sure to tell your mom.


If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.

 



And that's the way it was on June 24, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

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June 14, 2000


Quotes of the Week:  

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin  (As quoted on the bottom of email messages from Neil Hannon.)

Students are often in no position to judge "relevance" until long after the fact.
Thomas Sowell, A Personal Odyssey (Free Press)

I can't remember where I saw this quote last week, but it was something to the effect that Madonna "went ballistic" when she discovered that her latest single recording was free on Napster before it was even released to the public via normal music recording channels.  Can't say as I blame her!.  
You can read more about Napster and Gnutella at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm 

"A lot of companies don't seem to get it: It's not the technology that sells a toy, it's the play value, and sometimes a toy with no technology is better," says Todd Wiener, president of TechTrends, a Boston-based toy and electronics consultancy. "This is a silly phase where companies are trying everything."
Kelly Barron at http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0612/6514140a.htm 

Naturally, this has capitalists up in arms and there are plenty of court cases attacking such practices. But it won't help. It's impossible to stop because property now changes hands in seconds while the court system takes years. The pirates are 21st century and the lawyers and lawmakers are 18th century.
(See below.)

The great tragedy of Science --- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
T.H. Huxley (on the bottom of email messages from Jerry Turner.)

Accounting in New Mexico --- Refried beans are harder to count.
On the bottom of email messages from bean counting professor Ed Scribner.
(Maybe we should change the name of derivative financial instruments to refried beans.)


It will be a couple of weeks before I get another edition of New Bookmarks posted.  I will be doing a gig for GE most of next week in Stamford.  Also, I broke my left elbow --- this makes keyboard typing very slow and awkward.  Old men should not climb ladders --- although in this case my ladder actually broke.  One old man I know needs to go on a diet.

I wrote a new introduction to FAS 133 and IAS 39 on Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments and Hedging Activities.   It includes audio clips from experts.  
See http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/133intro.htm 

The portal to many of my Excel files on this topic can be found at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/13300tut.htm 

Of course my main (huge) document is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133glosf.htm 


What are the best and worst colleges according to the controversial website called TeacherReviews.com? --- http://www.teacherreviews.com/ 

The rankings are not consistent with the US News rankings at 
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/cohome.htm
 

For information on distance education programs, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245progs.htm 

For information on prestige programs, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm 


Teachers and professors are fighting back against online student evaluations such as can be found at TeachersReview.com linked above.

Dissed Teachers and Dot Coms by Jay Greenspan 11:00 a.m. Jun. 12, 2000 PDT --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36935,00.html 

Jay Greenspan discusses the lost appeal of the dot-com suffix with Joanna Glasner and whether teachers can make a case against their online student critics.


Tuition Plans for each of the 50 states --- http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/dollars/dstuit.htm 


Thank you Roger Collins for the tip.
"Intellectual rights may be Net casualty," by Diane Francis,  Financial Post, June 10, 2000 
http://www.nationalpost.com/financialpost.asp?f=000610/313783
  

Naturally, this has capitalists up in arms and there are plenty of court cases attacking such practices. But it won't help. It's impossible to stop because property now changes hands in seconds while the court system takes years. The pirates are 21st century and the lawyers and lawmakers are 18th century.

. . . 

What's interesting about this trend is that the pirates are usually not profiteers. They believe that cultural and intellectual property belong to humanity and many go to great lengths just to provide people with free copies of things.

In other words, what we are seeing is the creation of the world's first Virtual Library for movies and music offered by cyber volunteers


From The Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18593-2000Jun7.html 

Gnutella-Based Engine Finds Way to Internet
E-Mail This Article
By Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 8, 2000; Page E07

A group of open-source developers quietly posted on the Internet last week a bare-bones search engine based on the technology behind the controversial software tool Gnutella, which lets users bypass central computing authorities and trade files directly among themselves.

So far, the search program is limited to five sites. It often becomes hung up. It sometimes crashes. It's so shaky that one of the main links on its site is "examples." But some computer experts who have examined the technology believe that it could someday supplement or even threaten the Yahoos and Googles of the world.

The new search technology makes traditional engines appear antiquated because it has the potential to scan every machine on a network, creating a snapshot of the system as it exists that moment, and display any type of file in response to searches. It could, for instance, show maps in response to queries about directions or the value of variables in a pair of quadratic equations.

In contrast, today's popular search engines catalogue about 10 percent to 50 percent of the more than a billion machines hooked up to the World Wide Web, according to various estimates, and can for the most part only return text files.

Devotees of Gnutella say the new program--nicknamed "Infrasearch"--is legitimizing a technology that some had dismissed as tools for creating black markets for copyrighted material. Tim O'Reilly, considered to be one of the grandfathers of computer science, said people may talk about "Napster-style hype about pirated data" but "ultimately, this is a technology, not a political movement."

Infrasearch was developed by three Silicon Valley programmers working in their spare time: Gene Kan, 23, a recent University of California at Berkeley graduate who in the past few weeks has become one of the most outspoken advocates of Gnutella technology; Yaroslav Faybishenko, 22, one of the original developers of the popular programming language Java; and Cody Oliver, 21, a former engineer for America Online Inc.'s Nullsoft music software development house.

Today, the group plans to announce that it has signed on its first corporate backer. That company is Kan's employer, a privately held Silicon Valley venture called Wego.com, which has developed specialty portal sites for more than 600 universities and other organizations.

Industry analysts say that's a major milestone for the technology. "If I were a search technology company like Google and if I were serious about remaining in the search business, I would pay attention to this newcomer," said Billy Pidgeon, a Web technologies analyst with research firm Jupiter Communications Co.

. . . 

But many people who are involved in what they call the "Gnutella movement," including Spencer Kimball, a Wego programmer who is heading up the development of the hybrid search engine, believe that the spread of Gnutella's technology to search engines is "inevitable." "The only question," Kimball said, "is how quickly it will end up taking over the Internet."

You can read more about Gnutella and Infrasearch at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm 


From the Chronicle of Higher Education --- http://chronicle.com/free/2000/06/2000060801t.htm 

"Scholar Fears That Banning Online Recordings Could Lead to Banning Ideas, Too" By SCOTT CARLSON

Jeremy Harris Lipschultz is a professor of communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he directs graduate studies in the communication department. In 1994, he shifted his study of regulations in traditional media to a study of the Internet. His latest book, Free Expression in the Age of the Internet (Westview Press, 2000), shows that people and issues online have already posed challenges to traditional conceptions of the media, the Constitution, and copyright and other laws. Consider, for example, the sticky matter of Napster, a World Wide Web site that can distribute copyrighted songs without the copyright owners' permission. A rock band recently sued three universities that let students use the site. Universities have responded by blocking access to Napster, a move that has raised more questions about the universities' loyalty to free expression and free inquiry.

Q. Where should universities stand on the Napster issue? 
A. As a free-expression issue, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of universities' blocking anything. As a legal issue, I would understand why they do it, because they're concerned about the liability of making this program available. People such as [the rock band] Metallica, who are concerned about this kind of trading, should be addressing those concerns at the sources of the problem. The precedent that I'm concerned about from a university perspective is that once we start blocking, where do you draw the line? I think it becomes too easy to start blocking sites because we don't like their ideas.

Q. Many tech-savvy students find their way around the blocks. Would it be better if universities offered educational programs about copyright laws? 
A. At the university, we should do more for media literacy. Given the day and age that we live in, every student should not only understand copyright laws, but should also be able to critically evaluate all media, including that which we find on the Internet. It's unfortunate that we don't do more media education, beginning in the elementary and middle schools.

Q. In what way are people uninformed? 
A. People should be able to deconstruct a media message and really look at how and why it was constructed. I know that as we move our students through that process, they become more-critical consumers at the end. That's how you elevate the level of dialogue and debate. I doubt that most of the folks who are trading music on Napster have thought much about what they are doing beyond, "Here's a song I want." They don't understand the process that exists in the music industry.

Q. Some years ago, people said the Internet would be a forum for ideas, but has it really just become a tool for consumers? 
A. Well, it has become more commercialized, and what happens when you commercialize a medium is that it tends to favor the values of the marketplace, and those are not always the interests that we want to favor. It's really rather predictable. If you study the origins of radio or television or cable, the level of innovation is always highest at the beginning. But it is also true that every new medium shares the commonalities of old media -- that old-media concepts are transferred to new media. The Internet is becoming a mass medium, and what comes with that are the advantages and disadvantages that are common to other mass media.

Q. How will the convergence of digital television and the Internet affect the media? 
A. It will probably further commercialize and standardize them. The Internet started out as a place that was wide open. People were communicating without commercial pressures. It was a text-based system that favored ideas. That has evolved to become more and more like television. If you look at the Shockwave plug-ins, the digital graphics -- it starts to look a lot more like that rapid-fire medium that we've seen on television.

You can read more about Napster at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm 


Music Bigwigs: Stop Napster Now Reuters 7:00 a.m. Jun. 13, 2000 PDT --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36956,00.html 

SAN FRANCISCO -- The record industry sought an injunction against Napster.com on Monday, saying it was depressing sales of compact discs near college campuses.

The motion for a preliminary injunction was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Music Publishers' Association.


The above injunction will not prevent the downloading of a free MP3 audio bible --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36936,00.html 


Hi Bob,

This weekend, I will be working on a paper for Charlie Hoffman and the XBRL team on how to extend the use and effectiveness of XBRL by using technology like www.pointera.com  to distribute financial information and analysis. I have been following your discussion list threads with interest and hope to include the best from those postings. Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated.

Neal Hannon
Bryant College 

Mailto: nhannon@tiac.net  nhannon@bryant.edu   
http://web.bryant.edu/~nhannon 

Note from Bob Jensen:  You can read the following at http://www.pointera.com/ 

The Pointera Sharing Engine is the only service to let portals and content site users share legitimate files through a standard Web browser. Pointera's service is conceptually similar to Napster and Gnutella but focuses on legitimate file sharing. The Pointera Sharing Engine is available now.


Taxation and Financial Instruments

A leading expert on taxation of financial instruments is John Ensminger at JENSMINGER@email.msn.com 
John has a great paper that he might share with you. The title is "Concerto for Piano vs. Orchestra: Can Tax and Financial Accounting Harmonize on Hedges?" (Working paper to be published in law review article).

You might also enjoy a project of one of my students at http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/jbies/jensen.htm 

I also suggest that you contact Barbara.Campbell@riag.com

You might also find some helpful information at http://www.kawaller.com/articles.htm 

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

-----Original Message----- 
From: Eva Parenti [mailto:eparenti@umich.edu]  
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 4:01 PM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu Subject: Information request

Dear Mr. Jensen,

I just graduated from a Master in Economics at UofM and I am in the process of writing up a thesis for my doctoral program in Italy. I am dealing with the problem of taxation of new financial instruments. I found all the literature on SFAS 133 very helpful. Your web site provodes a great support for a great variety of derivative issue. However I was wondering if you have knowledge of most specific facts and literature on tax issues.

Thanking you in advance 
Eva Parenti


An excellent source for financial risk publications --- http://www.riskpublications.com/ 


Hi Germain,

I try to keep what you are mainly looking for (distance education at Prestige Universities) up to date at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm 

I also have a longer document at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm 

Some of the learning and memory theory aspects are contained in http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm 

I have lined up some top experts on these things for the August 12 workshop in Philadelphia that is described at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe1.htm 

I should note that as far as UNext is concerned, Bill Beaver has been replaced by a stronger UNext expert from the accounting faculty at Columbia University. For our August 12 CEP Proposal, Bill Beaver had to back out as a speaker. He has been replaced by Michael T. Kirschenheiter from Columbia University. In some ways this is better, because Dr. Kirschenheiter is directly involved in Columbia University's UNext partnership, and Dr. Beaver did not have any direct involvement in UNext.

Bob

-----Original Message----- From: Germain Boer [mailto:Germain.Boer@owen.vanderbilt.edu] Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2000 10:46 AM To: 'rjensen@trinity.edu' Subject: UNext, etc.

Bob, what is the url for the material you have collected on what the top MBA programs are doing with e-learning and distance learning?

Germain Boer
<<Boer, Germain (E-mail).vcf>>


Stephen King, the E-Publisher by M.J. Rose 1:00 p.m. Jun. 11, 2000 --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36915,00.html 

An open letter to his readers appeared on Stephen King's official website Friday that has far-reaching implications for the publishing industry.

"Dear Constant Reader," the letter begins, going on to describe an epistolary novel called The Plant which King began in the 1980s but gave up when other projects intervened.

Stephen King's official website is at http://www.stephenking.com/ 
I recommend that you take a look at this website!


Trinity University Courses of Study ---
http://www.archivesolutions.com/cgi-bin/om_isapi.dll?infobase=trin00-01.nfo&softpage=Browse_Frame_Pg42 


From Phil Livingston, President of the Financial Executives Institute, June 9 --- http://www.fei.org/newsletters/indexnws.htm 

Author and leading strategist Gary Hamel spoke at our annual conference two weeks ago. He is a riveting speaker who challenged our members to recognize that incumbency has never been worth less and that insurgents are creating most of the new wealth. He noted that the top business school students go to work for companies that are insurgents and that in fact it's the second-tier students that go to work for the investment banks these days. Insurgent companies don't simply compete on the fringes anymore.

Unlike many of our other speakers, Gary warned that the day of value building through cost savings, merger synergies and efficiencies is over. He argues that business concept innovation is the required path to wealth creation. Strategies that are different, diverse and not infected by the standard thinking around an industry or product lead to such business innovation. He admires most the "grey-haired revolutionaries" that constantly reinvent themselves and their strategies. He observes that one-time visionaries rarely reinvent themselves.

One metric he encouraged was the amount of wealth created per employee. He suggested you compare your company to your peers and companies you admire. Also ask yourself who in the company is responsible for fundamental shifts in strategy - don't appoint the CEO. Also look for ways to give young people access to experimental capital within your business.


From Phil Livingston, President of the Financial Executives Institute, June 9 --- http://www.fei.org/newsletters/indexnws.htm 

In his presentation, "Cracking the Value Code," Arthur Andersen country managing partner Steve Samek traced the exponential growth of knowledge and its impact on creating value. Human knowledge, he said, is doubling every 18 months, far faster than a millennium ago, when that process took centuries. This is bringing instability and "discontinuity" to business models, which are quickly being made obsolete.

Samek said we are now in the "Knowledge Age," which began precisely on Oct. 15, 1995 - the day that Microsoft's market capitalization surpassed that of IBM. But this new age has brought an inability to value new and untested business models, creating tremendous stock gyrations. He presented a template showing five distinct "asset" classifications for "new economy" companies: physical, financial, customers, employees and suppliers, and organization. Successful companies leverage several of these, he argued; building a model on one or two may not be sustainable.

Judith Sprieser, executive vice president of Sara Lee Corporation, spoke about a dramatic new venture in the consumer packaged goods industry. That venture, which began organizing in March, is known as eCPG.Net - a network of consumer packaged goods companies around the world linked by a common e-commerce platform. Sprieser is acting head of the fledgling operation, which hopes to incorporate and have a chief executive in place by early June.

As Sprieser described it, eCPG.Net will be revolutionary in a number of ways. It will link erstwhile competitors in an open, global, standards-based system intended to improve what has been a fragmented and inefficient supply chain. Transaction data will be owned by individual companies, but aggregate information will be owned by the consortium entity. The architecture would connect the supply-side and demand-side markets, she said, noting that the packaged goods industry had taken its lead from cooperative e-commerce moves among leaders in the automobile business.

Successful companies need to identify where they can extract real value along the value chain, argued David Morrison, vice president and director of Mercer Management Consulting, in his talk. It's no longer effective simply to rely on gross margins, he said; corporations need to understand their operating environment and priorities and understand what creates opportunity.

Morrison, a co-author of The Profit Zone, offered several examples of companies he said successfully found where they could maximize profits. Coca-Cola did so in the 1980s by realizing that the vending and fountain areas were far more profitable than supermarkets, and by reorganizing to take over the bottling and logistics systems that it once had little control over. For Disney, on the other hand, rich rewards were to be had in spin-offs from successful movies like "The Lion King" - videos, toys, puzzles, sweatshirts, etc. And Charles Schwab realized it could capture more value by setting up new designs, such as a fee-based planner channel, to augment its basic self-service discount brokerage model.

The FEI Yellow Pages are designed to help you find the resources you need for your business. Or, to help you market your talents to FEI members. All FEI members are entitled to one free entry. All others can post entries for $749 each for one year. Be sure to check out this great new service. We're still in launch mode with this product, so the offerings are thin right now, but we will be aggressively marketing the concept to members and b2b providers in the corporate finance arena. Be sure to let us know how you like it.  Go to http://www.fei.org/yellowpages/ 
(Note that there are no entries in most of the categories to date.  These Yellowpages will not be of much use until more advertisers post entries.)


I was asked by Dan Gode to recommend sources of cases and examples for FAS 52 and FAS 133 accounting rules and foreign currency transactions in general.  

I would probably start with http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/teets/index0.html  
Note that you can also download the Excel spreadsheets. Walter Teets is doing an August 13 workshop with me as described at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe34.htm 

You may want to take a look at a student project at http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/rgrant/ 

Even though there is not much about accounting rules in the links below, you might also take a look at the tutorials and other helpers available at the following:

http://www.cboe.com/education/ 

http://www.cme.com/educational/index.html 

http://www.cbot.com/ 


Subject: Foreign Currency News
I subscribe to a daily report which gives any foreign currency report you can imagine.
The address to subscribe to it is --- http://www.xe.net/cus/ 

For Bob Jensen....
I don't know if this is available in web format, but if it is perhaps it is a good addition to your booknotes.

Roger Dimick, CPA Lamar Institute of Technology Beaumont, Texas
Roger Dimick
[RogerTex@SWBELL.NET

On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Roger Dimick wrote:

> >I subscribe to a daily report which gives any foreign currency report > >you can imagine. > > > >The address to subscribe to it is > > > > http://www.xe.net/cus/   > > > >

For Bob Jensen....I don't know if this is available in web format, but if  it is perhaps it is a good addition to your booknotes. 
Roger--

I believe that if you change the "cus" part of the URL to "currency" (http://www.xe.net/currency/), you get an up-to-the-minute interactive currency converter.

Ed

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ed Scribner (escribne@nmsu.edu ) Professor of Accounting Department of Accounting & Business Computer Systems MSC 3DH New Mexico State University PO Box 30001 Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001 (505) 646-5163 Fax: (505) 646-1552 escribne@nmsu.edu 


The American Accounting Association's Teaching and Curriculum Section is pleased to announce that the Spring 2000 edition of The Accounting Educator, the Section Newsletter, is available on the T&C web site at:

http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/tccomm/Spring00/news86.htm 

Please share this information with your colleagues.
Janet D. Cassagio
[JSBKC@prodigy.net

Have You Seen? From: Carolyn A. Strand, Assistant Professor, Seattle Pacific University, Chair of the Teaching and Curriculum Research in Accounting Education Committee --- http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/tccomm/Spring00/item03.htm 

  1. Assessing Service-Learning: Results from a Survey of "Learn and Serve America, Higher Education" by Maryann J. Gray, Elizabeth Heneghan Ondaatje, Ronald D. Fricker, Jr., and Sandy A. Geschwind in Change (March/April 2000, p. 30-39). 
  2. Successful Strategies by Award-Wining Teachers, edited by S. Holly Stocking, Eileen T. Bender, Claude H. Cookman, J. Vincent Peterson, and Robert B. Votaw, 1998, publisher: Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN). 
  3. Teaching with Writing by Toby Fulwiler, 1987, publisher: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc. (Portsmouth, NH). 
  4. Teaching Excellence and the Inner Life of Faculty by Robert G. Kraft, in Change (May/June 2000, p. 48-52. 
  5. Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers, 9th Edition, by Wilbert J. McKeachie, 1994, publisher: 

Hi Peter,

I added your message to the following documents:

1. New Bookmarks Edition for June 14  --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q2.htm 

2. http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/muppets.htm  (Where I also pay tribute to pioneers in education through mystery novels.)

3. http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm 

Thanks,

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

-----Original Message----- From: Peter Kruger [mailto:pkruger@steinkrug.co.uk]  
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2000 6:25 AM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu 
Subject: The Genesis Modification

Bob

I thought that the readers of your ebook newsletter might be interested in this.

Please find below the announcement of our on-line novel 'The Genesis Modification.'

The title, which in view of the recent controversy regarding the accidental release of GM oil seed rape is highly topical, can be found at www.steinkrug.com 

regards
Peter Kruger

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Novel, 'The Genesis Modification', is Available for eBooks and Pocket PCs.

9th June 2000. Cambridge UK. Steinkrug Publications have released an on-line version of the novel 'The Genesis Modification' compatible with a range of eBook portable readers. The release of the title has been timed to coincide with the launch of a number of new Windows CE driven pocket PCs capable of supporting on-line publications. ____

Man continues to play Russian Roulette with the environment. BSE and the accidental release of Genetically Modified crops are the result of reckless gambles we have made with our future. Every time we get lucky, our belief that we will always be lucky grows. But this is a game where we will only get the chance to be unlucky once

The Genesis Modification is set forty years into future. The Green Alliance Party dominates European politics and dictates economic policies in the US. The party is clear who was to blame for the accidental release of the Genetically Modified crops which triggered a string of environmental disasters. But these assumptions are challenged when a body is discovered in a run down hotel in London. _____

The Genesis Modification is supplied as a Microsoft Reader file for Windows CE driven Pocket PCs or as Word file. The Pocket PC is proving to be a simple and convenient way of accessing eBooks. The title is also available for the Nuvomedia Rocket eBook - which the May edition of Red Herring suggested 'might be the next portable device you can't live without.'

Steinkrug believe that the Web, as a delivery medium, will influence both the style and content of fictional works. Emerging technology such as 3G will improve this delivery mechanism and, in time, the eBook could replace the hardback book.

The first section of Genesis Modification is available free and the complete book costs US$7.99 It can be found at www.steinkrug.com 

[ends]

About Steinkrug

Formed in 1995 Steinkrug Publications have developed a range of Web based interactive content. The company sees the growth of the World Wide Web as an opportunity to replace the hardback element of the book publishing cycle. It also feels the global nature of the Web and the availability of reading devices will bring about a revolution in the book publishing industry similar to the one caused by MP3 in the music industry.

For further details contact:-

Peter Kruger. Steinkrug Publications Ltd. 20 Leaden Hill, Orwell, Royston, Herts. SG8 5QH
www.steinkrug.com
Tel:- ++ 44 (0) 1223 208926 Email pkruger@steinkrug.co.uk 


From NewMedia [Insiders0608@promo.newmedia.com] on June 8, 2000

Our Awesome Product this week is Oracle's Internet File System (iFS). This extension to Oracle's 8i database provides a reliable and secure environment in which to store and manage all your content. It supports more than 150 file types, from Word to XML and rich media files.


Priceline claims that you can save up to 50% on groceries --- http://www.priceline.com/ 

Other grocery links can be found under "Food and Drink" at http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/ 


InternetWorld Online --- http://www.internetworldnews.com/idx_rn.htm 


Free online health checkup for your computer --- http://www.pcpitstop.com/ 

At PC Pitstop we can help you get your PC in top form -- running fast, stable and secure. PC Pitstop runs diagnostics on your PC to identify things that might help improve performance. The process is fully automated, private and safe. After the diagnostics run, we'll give you tips for improving all kinds of things. Best of all, the service is free!

Our diagnostic tests are safe, passive evaluations of your system. The test will not change any settings on your PC. As for privacy, we've adopted a stringent policy that protects any personal information you give us.


Some claim that Bill Gates should have sold automobiles from the start.  In an effort to diversify, Microsoft is now selling cars.  See http://carpoint.msn.com/home/New.asp?newguid=EADAF9B2412011D4ACC700805FD7E96E 
This website also gives prices and product reviews.

You can also buy new and used vehicles through eBay --- http://www.ebay-autotrader.com/ 


Population Reference Bureau --- http://www.prb.org/ 


From IWNews on June 9, 2000 (marketing, website design)

OshKosh B'Gosh was one of four finalists and more than 50 companies -- ranging from Fortune 100 firms to dot-com start-ups -- that entered the "personalization challenge" competition sponsored by Net Perceptions Inc. and Wheelhouse Corp. The three other finalists were Harvard Business School Publishing, New York Life, and Procter & Gamble Co.

The challenge's call for entries was made at the Personalization Summit 2000, held this past April, and the winner was announced this week during Iconocast's Web Attack marketing conference, in New York.

As a provider of personalization software to more than 180 Internet and traditional offline retailers -- including Ashford.com, eToys, CDNow, and JC Penney -- Net Perceptions, according to some, might not need to offer a contest such as this. Yet as the new-and-improved site is developed, it will exist as a working model that Net Perceptions and Wheelhouse will be able to point to as an example of the services the two firms provide.

"We're trying to advance the science of personalization," said David Cameron, senior director of systems integration at Wheelhouse.

The OshKosh B'Gosh website is at http://www1.oshkoshbgosh.com/ 


Free Books --- http://www.bookface.com/ 

At Bookface.com, we are committed to providing online reading experiences. It's as simple as that. You, the reader, log onto our site, and within seconds, you can dive into your next book.

The catch? There isn't one. The entire experience is free and instant.

Our mission, at Bookface.com, is to provide you with the best access to great books.


WannaLearn.com --- http://www.wannalearn.com/ 
A large, perspicuously organized directory of free online tutorials, guides, lessons and other instructional sites, covering many subjects and areas of interest.


Safemedication.com --- http://www.SafeMedication.com/ 


Free online security assessment (a multiple choice questionnaire) plus some other services.  This is a great resource site for both security evaluation and information about how to insure (meaning insurance) against online security losses and many other types of losses such as audit committee lawsuits.  I recommend that you look at this website at http://www.netsecuresite.com/ 


BBC Evolution Website --- http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/darwin/index.shtml  


Build a smarter e-Business (Business Intelligence) --- http://www.oracle.com/start/intelligence/index.html 

Oracle Business Intelligence helps e-businesses to set goals, increase revenues, improve operating costs, and measure performance.

Oracle Business Intelligence:


e-Commerce News from Levy Mitchell --- mitchell.levy@ecnow.com 

Wireless Applications Become More Common * Jul'00 Survey Question --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000  
* Management Perspective: Wireless Applications Become More Common by Mitchell Levy --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/management.perspective.htm  
* Sponsors --- Web Value Creation Conference, Online Affiliates Conference, Etail2000, Conference, ECMsym.com Symposium, WorkZ.com --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/sponsors.htm  
* M-Commerce Drivers by Veronica Williams --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/feature.article.htm  
* Wireless Internet Now &#8211; Transcribed talk by Philippe Kahn --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/feature.article2.htm  
* Readers Comments --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/readers.comments.htm  
* E-News Sections --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/all-enews.htm - E-Strategies --- sponsored by ECnow.com --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/e-strategies.htm  - 
E-Products --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/e-products.htm  - 
E-Services --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/e-services.htm  - 
E-Marketing --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/e-marketing.htm  - 
E-Commerce Supply Chain --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/supply.chain.htm  - 
Governance & Going Global --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/governance.going.global.htm  - 
Partners & Deals --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/partners.deals.htm  - 
Movers & Shakers --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000/movers.shakers.htm  
* Becoming a Sponsor --- http://ecmgt.com/sponsor.info.htm  
* Contributing to ECMgt.com --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000  
* Contacting Us --- http://ecmgt.com/contact.htm * Miscellaneous Info --- http://ecmgt.com/June2000 


E-tailers to get help designing their supply chains By Maria Seminerio, eWEEK June 13, 2000 --- http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2586964,00.html 

Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., a Chicago-based paper packaging maker, on Monday launched a new business unit dedicated to building out supply chains for online retailers.

The new unit, NextPak.com Corp., based in Canton, Mass., will help B2C and B2B firms develop a quicker process for their customers to return unwanted goods, and will help them build their brand more efficiently by designing custom packaging, said John Kiley, vice president and general manager of NextPak


Brick-And-Mortars Fight Back from Information Week Online on June 13, 2000

Dotcom retailers, brandishing fully-loaded bags of cash and bravado, staked claim to the e-commerce turf a few years back by muscling in on timid brick-and-mortars, enticing consumers with cheap prices and perks like free shipping. And while they wounded many old-guard companies, what's clear following this spring's market correction is that the retail pure-plays are on the decline and the online brick-and mortars--the dotbams--have fought back strong with a highly successful click-and-mortar strategy.

Take Staples.com, the online arm of Staples Inc. in Framingham, Mass. The company's push to compete and improve online customer service prompted a complete revamp in early May of the office supplier's 18-month-old site. Staples.com streamlined the checkout process, installed two new search tools, added several small business services and improved purchasing management. It also created a centralized one-stop rebate center in response to complaints that tracking down forms and information around the site was difficult.

"We listened to customers and have collected consumer feedback since the first launch," says CIO Mike Ragunas. He says Staples took advantage of user focus groups, an in-house users group and an independent survey to identify customer needs.

Many other dotbams are also working feverishly to enhance the customer experience.


I think the name of this website is a shame.  However, it does provide news about failed and failing dot.com businesses --- 
I won't print the name or the link here, but you can click here to go to this poorly-named website.


Resources for Phonograph Collectors --- http://members.aol.com/allenamet/PhonoBooks.html 


What (Ohio) Tree Is It? --- http://www.oplin.lib.oh.us/products/tree/ 


From Internet World News on June 8, 2000

European Union Seeks U.S. E-Commerce Taxes By John Zipperer

More tax, please -- we're European: The European Union (EU) is considering a proposal that would impose a value-added tax (VAT) on services sold over ( from non-European) the Net to Europeans countries. That plan puts them on a collision course with American businesses eager to exploit the United State's current low-regulation atmosphere for the Internet. The proposed amendment to rules on electronically delivered services intends to level the playing field for EU and non-EU businesses and reinforce "the fundamental principle that taxation should take place in the jurisdiction where the consumption occurs," according to a European Commission statement. Currently, products shipped to Net buyers are taxable when they go through customs, but services (which is what the EU considers software programs) that are sold and delivered over the Internet escape taxation.

For American online retailers, the proposal "is a lose-lose situation," said Aaron Lukas, analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies and a former adviser to the Federal Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce. U.S. vendors have a competitive advantage over their European counterparts who have to charge the VAT. "Why would we want to give that up just because Europe has a tax-collection problem? It's their problem."

Even if it's enacted, the plan may be unworkable, because buyers can use credit card billing addresses located in non-EU nations or they can use anonymous e-mailers to disguise their location. "There is no existing technology that determines customer location, nor is there any agreement by a third party, such as credit card processors, to disclose the billing address of the customer to facilitate taxation," Ken Wasch, president of the Software and Information Industry Association, said in a statement. He called the proposed VAT plan unenforceable and intimated that the EU may have stepped beyond international law in an attempt to impose legal obligations on U.S. businesses.

Doomed or illegal it may be, but the proposal is an indication of how European countries are trying to come to grips with globalization and the new economy. Their tax and regulatory policies are suddenly competing against non-EU nations, giving advantages to nations with lower taxes and less regulation.

The VAT plan is one way to attempt to even out the playing field by getting others to raise their taxes to the level of the EU; the difficulty in making it work may create the opposite effect, Lukas noted, by encouraging e-tailers to locate in the United States or to abandon sales to Europe. And because the EU proposal suggests non-EU companies register with one of the European nations and charge that country's VAT rate, it could create downward pressure on national VATs within Europe to attract foreign e-tailers.

"Just as businesses are being forced to compete ever more with each other," Lukas said, "governments are being forced to compete on lower tax rates."


Is this a win-win solution for online sex seekers and avoiders? http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36867,00.html 

Senator Joseph Lieberman wants to segregate Internet smut.

The Connecticut Democrat said Thursday that the U.S. government should consider alternative ways of shielding children from sexually explicit material, such as creating a new top-level domain such as ".sex" or ".xxx."


If you are looking for online pictures of the U.S. Flag, try http://www.dwmlawprocedures.com/flag.html.


Guggenheim Virtual Art Museum --- http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/virtual/virtual_museum.html 


Hi,

I was visiting your web page today ( http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q1.htm  ) and noticed that you had a link to jobs.com.

I was wondering if you would be kind enough to add a link to my website,

http://www.net-temps.com  "Net-Temps, A world of Jobs neatly Packaged"

Please let me know if this is ok with you, the people that visit your site can visit ours and create a Free Desktop for their Job Hunt.

Thanks, Billy Moliter Net-Temps


Learn more about topics of interest to you --- http://www.zooba.com/ 

Our free service is based on a simple idea: no matter who you are, you can always be smarter. And Zooba makes getting smarter easy.

Just register and subscribe to as many of our 46 topics as you want. We'll take care of the rest, all through email.

For example, select "Great Minds" and get weekly emails on fascinating personalities such as Einstein, Confucius, or Stephen Hawking. Or choose "The Movies" and receive weekly emails on topics such as Citizen Kane, the Hollywood Studio System, or James Bond.


Pro2Net Accounting Weekly Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of June 12, 2000 

1. Today's Top Accounting News 
2. This Week's Feature Solutions Articles 
3. New Pro2Net Site Previews at Los Angeles Show 
4. Survey Results: Ever considered leaving accounting to pursue a more profitable career in the tech industry? 
5. Our Tip of the Week: How to Improve Your Web Site


June 11th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Pointera.com Offers Legal Alternative To Napster 
2 . How Priceline for Groceries Works 
3. Estate Tax Reform Coming? 
4. Expedia.com adds hotel bookings to Web site 
5. Avoid Microsoft's Attempt At Outlook Security 
6. Check Your Connection Speed to the Internet 
7. Free Voice Mail... Really 
8. Business.com Opens For Net Business


AccountingStudents Newsletter: June 13, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. CPA Exam Tips: It's Not Too Early to Begin Your Studies! 
2. What Kind of Company Would You Like to Work For? 
3. Site of the Week: TeacherReviews.com 
4. Survey Results: Are campus rep programs an effective marketing tool for companies? 
5. Tip of the Week: Managing Your Personal Finances 
6. Recruitment Continues to Be Top Challenge for Firms


Email message from Bob Jensen to the Administrative Assistant to David Brain in the Office of the Controller of General Electric Corporation:

Hi Maria,

Sorry about my date mix up on June 19. Please change my hotel reservations to June 20 and June 21. I am changing my airline arrival to June 20 at 4:22 p.m. My departure is on June 22.

I think I got the second trip correct for June 29 arrival.

My wife, Erika, can tell you stories like you can't believe --- like the time we flew into Reno a day early for a conference (and one day before our reservation at the MGM Grand Hotel) on a weekend when every hotel in Reno was booked. 

Or the time I gave Erika a wedding anniversary card on her birthday (I knew that the date was important for something.) 

Then there was the time I forgot that we were crossing the International Dateline when I was invited to speak in Christchuch, New Zealand!

You must remember that professors have to led by the hand. Purportedly, Professor John von Neumann once took a train from Princeton to Philadelphia in a very absent state of mind. When he arrived at the Philadelphia train station, he called his wife back home and asked why he was in Philadelphia.  And there is also the true story about a friend (and professor of finance at the University of Illinois) who was turned away at a stranger's  front door by a woman (not his wife) who repeatedly tried to explain that he really did not live in her house.  

Sorry for the troubles I cause.

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


(It actually rained in Texas last weekend!.)
Some things that you will never read at any Texas Chamber of Commerce website:

It's so DRY in Texas, the trees are whistling for the dogs.

It's so DRY in Texas, the cow teats are filled with powdered milk.

It's so HOT in Texas, the birds have to use pot holders to pull worms out of the ground.

It's so HOT in Texas, the potatoes cook underground and all you have to do to have lunch is to pull one out and add butter, salt and pepper.

It's so HOT that the farmers are feeding the chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hard boiled eggs.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN TEXAS WHEN. . .

..... vinyl upholstery in a car is thought of in the same way as a cooking bag for roast turkey

..... you no longer associate bridges (or rivers) with water.

..... you eat hot chili to cool your mouth off.

..... you can make sun tea instantly.

.....you learn that a seat belt makes a pretty good branding iron.

..... you discover that in July, it takes only 2 fingers to drive your car.

..... you notice the best parking place is determined by shade instead of distance.

..... hotter water comes from the cold water tap.

..... it's noon in July, kids are on summer vacation, and not one person is out in the streets.

..... you wear a welder's glove to avoid burning your hand while opening the car door.

..... your biggest bicycle wreck fear is, "What if I get knocked out and fry on the pavement?

..... you realize that asphalt has a liquid state.


Actual slogans found on various business fronts:

Podiatrist's office: "Time wounds all heels."

Plumber: "We repair what your husband Fixed."

On the trucks of a local plumbing company in NE Pennsylvania: "Don't sleep with a drip --- call your plumber."

Pizza shop slogan: " 7 days without pizza makes one Weak."

At a tire shop in Milwaukee: "Invite us to your next blowout."

Door of a plastic surgeon's office: " Hello, can we pick your nose?

Sign at the psychic's Hotline: "Don't call us, we'll call you."

At a Towing Company: "We don't charge an arm and a leg. We want tows..

Billboard on the side of the road: "Keep your eyes on the road and stop reading these signs."

On an Electricians truck: "Let us remove your shorts."

In a Nonsmoking Area: "If we see you smoking we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action."

At an Optometrists Office "If you don't see what you're looking for you've come to the right place."

On a Taxidermist's window: " We really know our stuff."

On a Butchers window: "Let me meat your needs."

At a car Dealership: "The best way to get back on your feet - miss a car payment."

Outside a Muffler Shop:" No appointment Necessary, we'll hear you coming."

Outside a Hotel: "Help! We need inn-experienced people."

In a Veterinarians waiting room: "Be back in 5 minutes, Sit! Stay! "

At the Electric Company: " We would be de-lighted if you send payment for your bill.  However, if you don't you will be."

On the door of a Computer Store: "Out for a quick byte..

In a Restaurant window: "Don't stand there and be hungry, come on in and get fed up."

Inside a Bowling Alley: "Please be quiet, we need to hear a pin drop..

"In the front yard of a funeral home "Drive carefully, we'll wait."

In a counselor's office: "Growing old is mandatory, growing wise is optional." 


Forwarded by Dick Haar

So the big game hunter gets talked into taking both his wife AND her mother along on one of his expeditions.

It does not go well. The mother-in-law is, if anything, harder to get along with in the wilds than she was in the city. And to make matters worse, she won't even abide by the simple camp rules designed to keep the safari safe.

One night after dinner, the hunter's wife realizes her mother is missing. Panicked, she rushes to her husband and begs him to institute a search.

He sighs, and together they set out. But before they've gone far, they hear throaty growling and soon they come upon a small clearing in which the mother-in-law stands, backed up against thick, seemingly impenetrable jungle brush, and facing a huge male lion.

The wife whispers urgently, "What are we going to do?"

"Nothing whatever," responds her husband. "The lion got himself into this mess, now let him get himself out of it.  Besides, lions are not on the endangered species list."


Dilbertisms

Assmosis - The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss.

Blamestorming - Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.

Seagull Manager - A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps over everything, and then leaves.

Chainsaw Consultant - An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee headcount, leaving the brass with clean hands.

"CLM" - Career Limiting Move - Used among microserfs to describe ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM.

Adminisphere - The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the Adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.

404 - Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message, "404--URL Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located. Used as in: "Don't bother asking him . . . he's 404, man."

Generica - Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, subdivisions. Used as in: "We were so lost in generica that I forgot what city we were in."

Ohno-second - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.

Percussive Maintenance - The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

Umfriend - A sexual relation of dubious standing or a concealed intimate relationship, as in "This is Dylan, my... um... friend."

Body Nazis - Hard-core exercise and weightlifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively.

Cube Farm - An office filled with cubicles.

Idea Hamsters - People who always seem to have their idea generators running.

Mouse Potato - The online, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.

Prairie Dogging - When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.

SITCOMs - What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. Stands for Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.

Starter Marriage - A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property, and no regrets.

Stress Puppy - A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.

Swiped Out - An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.

Xerox Subsidy - Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.

Going Postal - Euphemism for being totally stressed out, for losing it. Makes reference to the unfortunate track record of postal employees who have snapped and gone on shooting rampages.

Alpha Geek - The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group.

G.O.O.D. Job - A "Get-Out-Of-Debt" job. A well-paying job people take in order to pay off their debts, one that they will quit as soon as they are solvent again.

Irritainment - Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials were a prime example.

Yuppie Food Stamps - The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATMs everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after a meal: "We owe $8 each, but all anybody has are yuppie food stamps."


If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.

 



And that's the way it was on June 14, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

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June 7, 2000


Quotes of the Week:  

You don't owe me a thing, I've been there too.
Someone once helped me out the way I'm helping you.
Don't let the chain of love stop with you.
Lyrics of a country song on the radio when I was driving to work this morning.

Posted On the Office Door of Sankarin Venkateswar
Associate Professor of Accounting at Trinity University

People are often unreasonable, illogical, 
and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, People may accuse you 
of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some
false friends and some true enemies
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway

What you spend years building, someone
could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway
.

You see, in the final analysis,
it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

-Mother Teresa

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
Flannery O'Connor.  (and that was before the writing explosion on the web.)

Many have predicted that the global network of affordable multimedia computers, on-line libraries, student-centered "learningware," and enhanced human communications in general will improve access to high-quality education on a scale that simply cannot be accomplished today.  Although this may be a compelling vision of the future, many details, methods, capabilities, and even principles necessary to achieve it are not yet clear.  Recent rapid progress on several fronts, however, suggest that much of this vision can be realized --- an sooner rather than later.  There is an exciting ferment in the entire field, both within and outside traditional institutions of higher education.
Carol A. Barone and Mark A. Luker, Preparing Your Campus for a Networked Future, Edited by Mark A. Luther (San Francisco:  Josey-Bass Publishers, 2000, An Educause Book, p. 1


The Napster/Gnutella paradigm shift in networking technology is so important to the world that I would like to see continued dialog from other friends and acquaintances on this real paradigm shift taking place in front of our eyes and ears.  The founder of Netscape, Mark Andreessen, states the following:

It's a big deal," said Andreessen, who met with Gnutella developers last week and quickly became an admirer. "It will be a way for businesses to expose what they want people to find more easily." 

Note that there are other file sharing systems such as X:drive ---  http://www.xdrive.com/.

For my threads on this paradigm shift, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm --- Accountants and investors should especially note Reply 4 from Jagdish Gangolly.


Thank you Jagdish for this tip
From Stanford University --- "Internet grading service reduces tedium for teachers, students," by Katherine O'Toole --- http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/may31/gradegrind-524.html 

After dinner when he needs a pick-me-up, John Etchemendy often sneaks off to watch students submit their homework. Tapping into the Internet from his home computer, the professor of philosophy and author of logic textbooks and software reaches one of two Sun workstations named Grade Grinder. He can watch as the wannabe historians and lawyers taking logic from Professor John Justice at Randolph-Macon Woman's College and the tech majors taking logic from Professor Selmer Bringsjord at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) submit answers to their problem sets.

These students and others taking introductory logic courses around the country use the Internet to interact with Grade Grinder, a robotic teaching assistant that doesn't give them answers to problems, but gives them hints and reminders of principles they have previously encountered. The robot's advice is personalized to address the specific shortcomings of the last answer each student has submitted, and it is delivered by e-mail in seconds. That compares to the week or more that is typical of feedback from a human grader.

Grade Grinder is an Internet grading service that is provided with purchase of a new textbook, Language Proof and Logic, and four pieces of software. Etchemendy co-authored the package with the late Jon Barwise of the University of Indiana and formerly of Stanford, and a team of researchers at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) and Indiana's Visual Inference Laboratory. Co-published last fall by CSLI Publications and a commercial textbook house, Seven Bridges Press, the textbook/software package for introductory logic is priced at $43.95, slightly less than most logic textbooks alone. There is one catch: Because the purchaser is buying lifetime tutoring help from Grade Grinder, each educational package comes with a unique registration number, and the student cannot resell that ID to another student. But the textbook covers more ground than most introductory courses, so the student can continue to receive tutoring from Grade Grinder years after taking a formal course.

"We are grading about half of the students' exercises live at a central point, so I get to watch their progress, and that is one of the most rewarding things," says Etchemendy, who has authored other textbooks and software but without this interactive component. (He also chaired the university's Commission on Technology in Teaching and Learning, which funded proposals for developing learning technologies on campus.) "First you'll see a student submit an answer that is wildly incorrect, then get some feedback from Grade Grinder and keep resubmitting until it's correct. As a textbook author, you don't usually get that chance to see how students learn from it, except your own."


"E-Books Push Bookselling Envelope," by M.J. Rose, Wired News, June 5, 2000 --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36745,00.html 

With archives of over 4,000 reviews and hundreds of author interviews, at least five to seven new book reviews are posted at Bookreporter.com weekly and blurbs of those reviews are starting to show up on book covers including new releases from Pocket Books, Bantam, and Doubleday.

Reading Group Guides debuted this week with several titles from Vintage Books, a division of Random House. Jessica Willett, manager of promotion and new media at Vintage said that reading groups are a huge focus for the paperback imprint.

"We devote a lot of time and energy to our guides because we've found the word of mouth these groups generate is invaluable to us and Fitzgerald's site reaches the audience we are looking for."

More than 600 free guides, provided by various publishers, will be available on the Reading Group Guide site by late June. Editorial features include practical information about forming and running a reading group, articles about offbeat reading group ideas, and interviews with various groups, which are updated monthly by the site's editor, Liz Keuffer.

The Bookreporter.com website is at http://www.bookreporter.com/.

Bob Jensen's threads on e-Books can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm 


Evolution of Business and Business History in the e-Commerce Era --- a new online free magazine called Darwin Magazine --- http://www.darwinmagazine.com/ 

For a sample, you may want to look at e-Business Basics at http://www.darwinmagazine.com/learn/ebusiness/basics.html 

Have all companies jumped on the e-business bandwagon? Not yet. PricewaterhouseCoopers and The Conference Board found that 70 percent of the global companies they surveyed derive less than 5 percent of their revenues from e-business. Several factors have kept some companies surveyed from rolling out e-business initiatives, including the following: potentially high and uncertain implementation costs; lack of demonstrated ROI within their industry; concern about tax, legal, and privacy issues related to e-business; and scant use of the internet among their customers.


Bill Gates unveils NGWS --- Next Generation Windows Services --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0006061/2581842/ 


Yahoo's Choice of the 101 Most Useful Websites:  Categories include Finance, Reference, At Home, Personal, Entertainment, Medical/Legal, Travel, Automotive, Mail Sites, and Shopping --- http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/content/101most/index.html 


Some advice from a former student who is totally dedicated to living and working in the Far East.

Dear Dr. Jensen, 
Good news on your trip to the Far East - you will really enjoy it I think. Taiwan is quite westernized so you should understand most of everything going on. You may consider looking at a good book called "Put Your Best Foot Forward - Asia" that contains a section on Taiwan. Being able to talk about Chen Shui Bian, the new President, is good. 
Jeremy Blodgett
[JEREMY.BLODGETT@prodigy.net

I deleted some of Jerry's other advice his original message, but the gist of what I deleted is that the U.S. culture is probably more tolerant than Asian cultures of irascible professors who can openly criticize each other's work without (hopefully) taking things personally.  As I recall, Jerry cursed his way through most of my accounting theory course, but we're still the best of  friends.

Put Your Best Foot Forward - Asia: A Fearless Guide to International Communication and Behavior
  Mary Murray Bosrock  Craig Macintosh (Illustrator)
Format: Paperback, 2nd ed., 572pp.
ISBN: 096375307X
Publisher: International Education Systems
Pub. Date: June  1997
bn

Electronic Sources of Information:  A Bibliography by Marian Dworaczek --- http://library.usask.ca/~dworacze/BIBLIO.HTM 

Electronic Journals: A Selected Resource Guide --- http://www.harrassowitz.de/ms/ejresguide.html 


Thank you Scott Armstrong from The Wharton Business School for sharing Forecasting Principles (economics, finance) --- http://www-marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/forecast/  (includes Excel spreadsheets)


I recommend a wonderful article by Diana Oblinger and Jill Kidwell entitled "Distance Learning:  Are We Being Realistic?" in EDUCAUSE Review, May/June 2000, pp. 30-39.  It is not yet available online, but eventually it will be available at http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm.html 


But then again, traditional institutions may not be the dominant players in distance education.  The following is from Infobits on May 31, 2000:

"The new distance education force transforming higher education may not be controlled by the traditional structures or providers of education services or by traditional academic policies. Not only do the new forms of distance education portend a change for student populations, but also they will force faculty to develop new modalities of teaching and administrators to provide a new infrastructure for support. As a result, the advent of distance education is forcing many institutions to review and amend many of their existing policies and procedures." The American Council on Education (ACE) Division of Government & Public Affairs has produced "Developing a Distance Education Policy for 21st Century Learning" as a primer to help colleges and universities rethink and reformulate policies dealing with intellectual property rights and ownership of distance education courses. The complete report is available on the Web at http://www.acenet.edu/washington/distance_ed/2000/03march/distance_ed.html 


Also from Infobits on May 31, 2000

"The media seemed to have gotten caught up in the Internet craze, almost in a pop culture sense, and became prone to endlessly repeating a single idea: that the new technologies were going to profoundly change our lives in the realms of business, education, health care, and just about any other realm of human activity that could be thought of." Thomas S. Valovic, past editor-in-chief of Telecommunications magazine and currently a research manager at International Data Corporation and an adjunct lecturer in scientific and technical communications at Northeastern University, has observed the transformation of the Internet from a government and academic communications network into a "potent force in the world economy." His recently-published collection of essays, DIGITAL MYTHOLOGIES: THE HIDDEN COMPLEXITIES OF THE INTERNET (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000; ISBN: 0-8135-2754-6), examines the social and political aspects of the Internet and provides a behind-the-scenes look at the industry that grew out of the Internet.

Valovic shares some of his thoughts on the Internet's present and future impact on education in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education interview ("Logging In With . . . Thomas S. Valovic: Author Warns That the Digital Age Will Be No Utopia," by Scott Carlson, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 28, 2000, p. A46). You can read the interview on the Web at http://chronicle.com/free/2000/03/2000031601t.htm 


But then again, things aren't so hot with American education in general according to Irreverent Commentary on the State of Education in America Today by Mark Shapiro. I subscribed to Mark's free newsletter that appears twice each week.  He often makes commentaries on new books and studies in education.  He does not have much good to say about distance education and online degree programs.  At the same time, he is pretty hard nosed about making students sweat and earn their credentials. 

The purpose of these pages is to provide intelligent commentary on the successes, failures, and foibles of the American education establishment.  We hope to do this with a modicum of wit, and without the rancor and mean-spiritedness that characterizes so much commentary today.  The primary author and web master has had more than 30 years experience in American public higher education.  He holds a Ph.D. in physics from a reasonably reputable Ivy League university, and has been teaching at a second rate tier "comprehensive" university in southern California for most of the last 30 years.  In addition, he has held a number of petty administrative posts within the education establishment.  He is well known among his colleagues as a person who is fearlessly irascible.  Neither his alma mater, nor his current employer should be held accountable for the comments that he makes, no matter how temperate and reasonable they may be.

His highest praise goes to an instructor who makes students read two dozen books and  write 30 essays in her course (see http://members.home.net/mshapiro2/comments-5-24-00.htm.)

An example of his irascible style appears in his April 12 newsletter entitled "Another Dirty Little Secret from the 'University' of Phoenix."

Regular readers of The Irascible Professor will recall that back in January we exposed several of the techniques that the "University" of Phoenix uses to maximize its profit at the expense of quality education. One of those techniques was the use of "short fill" courses. I.e., courses that contained significantly less content than similar courses taught at a real university. Well it seems that this particular technique has come back to bite the "University" of Phoenix in its wallet. According to Stephen Burd, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the "University" of Phoenix has agreed to pay the federal government and various lenders $6-million to settle a dispute with the U.S. Department of Education over financial aid. Originally the U.S. Department of Education Inspector General, Ms. Lorrain Lewis, had recommended a repayment of $50.6-million for federal student loans that had been improperly granted to "University" of Phoenix students.

Update insert on January 14, 2002

Dear Bob,

Some of your links to The Irascible Professor are out of date. Owing to the demise of Excite@Home, The Irascible Professor has moved to a new web hosting provider.

The new URL is http://irascibleprofessor.com 

All the good stuff should be accessible at this new address.

Thanks for your comments about our work.

Sincerely,

Dr. Mark H. Shapiro 
Editor and Publisher The Irascible Professor http://irascibleprofessor.com 


New Additions to ERIC Digests Database 

http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/index/2000-5-18.html  http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/index/2000-5-19.html  
ERIC Digests Index Page http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/index/ 

Some of the more interesting ones that attracted my attention are as follows:

Simply put, a learning strategy is an individual's approach to complete a task. More specifically, a learning strategy is an individual's way of organizing and using a particular set of skills in order to learn content or accomplish other tasks more effectively and efficiently in school as well as in nonacademic settings (Schumaker & Deshler, 1992). Therefore, teachers who teach learning strategies teach students how to learn, rather than teaching them specific curriculum content or specific skills

In the colonial colleges, the faculty was responsible for the intellectual, social, and spiritual development of students. As faculty found less time to focus on the social and personal development of their students, student affairs professionals emerged to fulfill that need. Increasingly throughout the history of American higher education, the gap between the roles of faculty and student affairs professionals has widened (Bloland et al, 1994, 1996). The incorrect perceptions and lack of knowledge about each other's jobs, the alienating and confusing jargon, the increased specialization and the financial competition between these two groups has led to misunderstandings between faculty and student affairs professionals (Knefelkamp, 1991; Kuh et al, 1994; Love & Love, 1995). The need for integration of these roles, and an attempt to change the culture of learning from separatist to seamless, has been a recent focus of higher education administrators.

There are many other abstracts.  The above listing is a sampling from a much longer set of abstracts.  


The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid at http://www.slofi.com/ 

Introduction: Tunneling Ahead

Chapter 1: Limits to Information

Chapter 2: Agents and Angels

Chapter 3: Home Alone

Chapter 4: Practice Makes Process

Chapter 5: Learning—in Theory and in Practice

Chapter 6: Innovating Organization, Husbanding Knowledge

Chapter 7: Reading the Background

Chapter 8: Re-education

Afterword: Beyond Information


John Howland clued me in a what seems to be a free quality online degree program with limited for computer science wannabe's.  It is free due to foundation support.  Go to http://arsdigita.org/university/ 

The ArsDigita University operated by the ArsDigita Foundation states its mission as follows:

Our goal is to offer the world's best computer science education, at an undergraduate level, to people who are currently unable to obtain it.

There is an onsite campus in Cambridge, MA that only admits 30 students per year.  But the main focus is on distance education where students only take one course at a time:

ArsDigita University exists to provide the world's best on-campus experience. That said, we also do everything in our power to make our curriculum, lectures, and teaching materials available to interested learners worldwide. This includes making all assignments and lecture notes available on the Web. We endeavor to videotape lectures and serve them as streaming media.

Faculty salaries are on the high side (over $150,000 per year), but then again how else can to get competent computer science faculty in these times.  

For a threading of distance education programs, see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245progs.htm 


Will Phi Beta Kappa eventually have to pay? --- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/05/31/BU45601.DTL 

STUDENT PRIZES: Besides Phi Beta Kappa, magna and summa cum laude and other academic awards, college students these days also are seeking financial prizes. They want lucre as well as lux.

In one of the latest examples, more than 600 college teams representing more than 2,000 student entrepreneurs entered the first National Student Business Plan Competition sponsored by Garage.com ( http://www.garage.com/  ).

Last week, four doctoral students at the University of California at San Francisco won the $150,000 grand prize for their Quicksilver Genomics. Their post-genomic drug development venture would create technology to let pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic researchers rapidly discover patentable compounds from unclassified gene sequences.


A Guide to Alternative Library Culture on the Web
Two librarians created this set of links to personal web pages and other "underground" topics --- http://www.libraryunderground.com/ 


Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, May 14, 2000,
Eyetracking Study of Web Readers --- http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000514.html 

In May 2000, the Poynter Institute released an eyetracking study of how people read news on the Web, mainly focusing on newspaper sites. Their results confirm the findings from my previous studies in 1994 and 1997 of how users read on the Web. This despite the fact that these studies used different methodologies, tested different users and different sites, had different goals, and were conducted at very different stages of the growth of the Web.

As discussed in a sidebar, there are a few methodological weaknesses in the Poynter study that make a few of their minor conclusions suspect, but the main findings are very robust and credible. When different people keep finding the same results year by year, it is time to take the findings seriously and to base Web design on the data and not on wishful thinking.

Web content is intellectually bankrupt and almost never designed to comply with the way users behave online. Almost all websites contain content that would have worked just as well in print. Even online-only webzines are filled with linear articles with traditional blocks-of-text layouts. No hyperlinks, no scannability. New forms of content that are optimized for online are exceedingly rare, and I keep returning to the same four examples when I am asked to name good writing for the Web: Tomalak's Realm, AnchorDesk, the Feed Daily mini-column, and Yahoo Full Coverage.

I agree with most of the findings. 

Text Attracts Attention Before Graphics

It was almost twice as common for users to fixate on the text as on the images upon their initial visit to a page. In general, users were first drawn to headlines, article summaries, and captions. They often did not look at the images at all until the second or third visit to a page.

Keep Headlines Simple and Direct

Confirming our findings from 1997, the users in the current study also preferred straightforward headlines to funny or cute ones. A new finding was that users often praised the Web headlines for being better than the headlines in print newspapers. It seems that several of the news sites have taken the earlier findings to heart and have started rewriting their headlines for online.

Shallow Reading Combined With Selected Depth

It was more than three times as common for users to limit their reading to a brief as opposed to reading a full article. Even when reading a "full" article, users only read about 75% of the text.

In other words, the most common behavior is to hunt for information and be ruthless in ignoring details. But once the prey has been caught, users will sometimes dive in more deeply. Thus, Web content needs to support both aspects of information access: foraging and consumption. Text needs to be scannable, but it also needs to provide the answers users seek.

Interlaced Browsing

Users in the Poynter study frequently alternated between multiple sites:

I observed this behavior as early as 1994: users would interlace browsing sessions in several windows. Doing so is particularly easy on big monitors that show several full-page windows simultaneously, but can also be done on small screens. The Windows task bar facilitates session interlaced browsing as long as users stay below eight sessions or so.

I admit that I was surprised when we started seeing interlaced browsing in 1994. Previous studies had not identified this behavior, so I originally expected people to browse a specific site and stay with its navigation features until they decided that they were done with it. In retrospect it is clear why interlacing was not seen in the old days: we were simply not studying sufficiently rich hyperspaces.

The lesson for site designers is that users are not focused on any single site. There is not even such a thing as "a visit" to a site: even while the user is "visiting" your site, he or she is also checking out the competition. Truly, the Web as a whole forms the user experience.

Site design must accommodate people who leave and return frequently:


The History of the Ideas of a University --- http://quarles.unbc.edu/ideas/gen/history/history.html 


It's got Barbie Dolls --- Incomplete History of Art (photography) --- http://users.erols.com/browndk/art.htm 


Career note:  Accounting professors may want to mention to accounting students that salaries are going UP UP and AWAY!  I learned last week that some top universities are now offering newly-minted (usually ABD) assistant professors of accounting $120,000 for nine months plus 2/9 for virtually every summer for research (as long as this research is productive.)  I won't mention names of the universities here, but it is surprising that a few of them are between the  Missouri River and California in parts of the U.S. having universities that typically attract faculty at lower salaries due to climate, lifestyle, and scenery.  I might also note that those salaries are not restricted to AIS professors where extreme shortages are expected to force salaries even higher.  One director of a school of accountancy told me that compression is now an accepted fact of life --- most tenured accounting faculty in the U.S. earn less than new (ABD) faculty in accountancy at top universities.  Bob Jensen's advice is to tear up that dusty old dissertation and start writing a new one so you can regain ABD status and request a starting salary.

At the same time, the number of accounting majors continues to decline.  On May 29, 2000, the Accounting Student Newsletter reported the following at http://www.accountingstudents.com/news/press/0005/decrease.asp 

American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) recently announced that the number of students enrolled in accounting degree programs continues to drop significantly. 192,330 students were enrolled in accounting degree programs in 1995. That number has decreased by 23 percent with only 147,880 students in 1999.

Though many are quick to blame the 150-hour rule, AICPA president Barry Melancon does not believe it is the problem. The 150-hour rule, a provision of the Uniform Accountancy Act approved by the AICPA and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA), requires 150 hours of college-level accounting study for people to sit for the CPA exam or to qualify for licensing. All but five states have adopted the rule. In last week's AICPA council meeting, Melancon pointed out that all states, whether or not they have enacted the rule, have seen the number of enrolled students decrease.

I disagree with Barry Melancon on this issue.  I think the 150-hour rule has had dramatic impact in large measure, because it kicked in for many of us at a time when employment opportunities for finance, information systems, and other business majors rose dramatically in a boom economy.  Soaring salaries for computer science majors also played a huge role.  Why go for five years when jobs at higher salaries are available after only four years of college in another major?

There are other problems in the accounting careers, some of which are being exacerbated by the SEC.  If the above items interest you, you may want to look at my Career Passed Away article at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/cpaaway.htm 


On the web, what is "roaming authentication?"  From Internet World News on June 2, 2000:

Ameritrade Adopts VeriSign's "Roaming" Authentication 
By Dave Carr

When VeriSign Inc. announced earlier this week a new technology to manage digital certificates for roaming users, it echoed a claim many other vendors and service providers have been making. But VeriSign's solution is different and more secure than other certificate plans, according to Alain Zarinelli, director of information security at Ameritrade. His company plans to use VeriSign's technology to improve the security of its Internet trading service and allow users to digitally sign documents such as enrollment applications and SEC W9 forms.

But it's not easy to see the difference in VeriSign's approach, particularly as the company is keeping some of the details under wraps while it applies for a patent.

VeriSign is one of several services that issue X.509 digital certificates, used in systems for authenticating users and Web sites, for encrypting communications, and for adding digital signatures to documents. A number of vendors provide Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) software, letting customers issue their own certificates. Each certificate contains a private key (a secret mathematical code used as a unique identifier) and is validated with the digital signature of an authority.

VeriSign has been very successful selling its certificates to Web sites for use in the authentication process that kicks off SSL connections -- a fundamental key to Web commerce. But applying the technology to the mass market of Web users has been more difficult; it traditionally required getting the digital credential installed in the user's browser on a particular computer.

Even then, the certificate would really be associated with a particular machine, not an individual -- a factor that becomes more important as users begin to access the Web from an office PC, a home PC, a laptop, a mobile phone, and a kiosk at the airport and are expected to sign onto the same applications from each.

Smart cards that let users carry the certificates in their wallets might be an answer if there were more smart card readers installed. Currently, attention is being focused on solutions that store the certificates in a centralized repository, rather than on each Web client. Microsoft's Active Directory supports this approach; Entrust uses a similar approach for mobile phone Web users.

Ameritrade's Zarinelli is skeptical of most of these schemes. "Some vendors store the certificate on a server and access it with a username password, in which case I ask, 'Where is the added security?' Usually if someone compromises your username and password, they've compromised one site. But if they compromise the server where the certificate is held, for all intents and purposes, on the Internet they are you," he said.

VeriSign's solution is "actually more secure than having the certificates stored in a personal laptop that you carry around," he said.

The Verisign home page is at http://www.verisign.com/ 


Resampling, bootstrapping, and a good statistics site for links --- http://www.statistics.com/ 

Two good links are as follows:

http://www.resample.com/cgi-bin/DCshop/dcshop.cgi?action=view_category&database=resamp&category=3 

http://members.aol.com/johnp71/javasta3.html 


Literary History.com http://www.literaryhistory.com/ 


From May 17-19, I attended an e-Education Conference courtesy of Ernst & Young, LLP and the American Accounting Association.  The theme of the conference was "Implementing e-Business in Your Curriculum."  Its purpose was to inspire invited participants to revise business curricula for changing times and technologies.  

A nice parting gift from the conference was a book Future Wealth by Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer (Harvard University Press, 2000, ISBN 1-57851-194-1).  

The basic theme of the book is that shares of intangible assets within a firm, including intellectual capital assets and even individual employees, will have their values traded in equity markets.

Financial markets already provide investors with a place for betting on the future performance of corporations through stocks and bonds. We now need to build comparable markets for packaging and trading human capital. The architects and erectors of this new securities industry stand to reap huge rewards in the coming millennium. The operatives and the asset-rich also stand to gain by preparing themselves to trade both others' and their own human capital, starting by posting resumes and surfing the Internet for talent.  (pp. 162-163)

This has tremendous implications for accounting. Human resources not presently valued at zero on the balance sheet will become recorded assets on the balance sheets of other companies. An employer may even buy shares in its employees. As shares of employees are bought and sold daily, it becomes possible to value comparable employees who have not yet gone to market.

Even risks might be purchased, sold, and managed like investments.

Companies must analyze their risks to determine not only which to take, but also how best to manage and trade the highest bidder. For example, should a company buy its key supplier or hedge against the loss of supply? Strategic risk units (SRUs) can measure and trade the risks that go with such situations. As equal partners of strategic business units (SBUs), they can help companies to trade risk actively. As such, they'd leverage core value and discover new value they may cut across SBUs and the entire company. Risk presents opportunity as well as trouble. Companies should seek out and optimize it. (p. 165)

The main point here is that corporations will deconstruct in a variety of ways, including the equity trading of subsets of human resources, SRUs, logo value, in-process R&D, etc. The entire concept of a "corporation" is being redefined.

E&Y also sent us home with a list of other suggested readings.  These include the following:

Electronic Commerce: A Manager's Guide
Ravi Kalakota with Andrew B. Whinston, Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., December 1996

Electronic Commerce: A Manager's Guide is the ideal starting point for business managers and professionals involved with electronic commerce, as well as professionals/users who want to keep abreast of the latest trends and issues in management practices affected by electronic commerce technology.

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business School Publishing, April 1997

In his cut-to-the-core wake-up call to all businesspeople, Christensen proves that even the greatest companies can be destroyed by new technologies.  According to a recent Forbes cover story, "The Innovator's Dilemma ought to chill any executive who feels bulletproof -- and inspire entrepreneurs aiming their guns."

Connexity: How to Live in a Connected World
Geoff Mulgan, Harvard Business School Publishing, January 1999

Connexity, an inspiring new book by Geoff Mulgan, contends that although the pursuit of individual freedom is frequently at odds with the progress of global connectedness, the two forces must work in tandem if freedom is to flourish.  Business, according to Mulgan, is fundamentally linked to our greater existence, and we must conduct it accordingly.

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
Geoffrey A. Moore, Harper Collins Publishers, Inc., August 1999

Based on the revolutionary model derived from Geoffrey Moore's extensive experience in high-tech markets, Crossing the Chasm is the definitive book on a vital, rapidly growing but capricious market.  "Crossing the Chasm should be the Bible for high-tech companies looking for direction with marketing and distribution challenges." -- Robert K. Weller.

Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy
Stan M. Davis and Chris Meyer, Warner Books, Inc., February 1999

In this book, Stan Davis and Chris Meyer offer readers a working model to illustrate and benefit from the new rules of the connected economy, where advantage is temporary and nothing is fixed in time or space.  Davis and Meyer build a new framework for delivering and capturing value, evaluating success, developing strategy, and managing organizations in an economic world no longer determined by static measures of supply and demand.

Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy
Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, Harvard Business School Publishing, October 1998

Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian, professors at the University of California, have created an eminently useful and hype-free guide to understanding the new information-based economy.  Information Rules is destined to become a business classic and will help anyone who has to make an intelligent decision about a company's information assets.

The Hundredth Window: Protecting Your Privacy and Security in the Age of the Internet
Charles Jennings and Lori Fena, The Free Press, May 2000

Security experts often say that if you put bars across ninety-nine of your windows but leave the hundredth window open, the invaders can still get in.  For computer privacy, then, the question becomes, "How can you best monitor that hundredth window?"  Jennings and Fena answer that question by providing a comprehensive guide to privacy and security in today's fast-moving online world, identifying winning and losing strategies for users and businesses alike.  And for companies doing business on the Web, they demonstrate the critical importance of ensuring a private and secure environment for one's customers.

John Jordan Home Page
http://www.businessinnovation.ey.com/center/homepages/jjordan/jmjhome.htm
(John gave us a terrific dinner speech.  He will be leaving E&Y since he is part of the consulting side of E&Y that was sold to a French company.)

John Jordan directs electronic commerce research at Ernst & Young's Center for Business Innovation in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He also writes a twice-monthly newsletter scanning the landscape of e-commerce.  His primary interests lie at the intersection of technology, strategy, and economics: he studies network effects, emergent properties of technology adoption, and business models for a connected economy.
You may especially want to note John's archive at http://www.businessinnovation.ey.com/center/homepages/jjordan/jjarchive.html 

One of John's documents (with Alan Cohen) that is very forward looking is "Electronic Commerce:  The Next Generation" at http://www.businessinnovation.ey.com/journal/issue3/features/ecomm/loader.html 

Given the coming advancements in agents, directories, and databases, along with the rapid increase in the capacity of both fiber optics and computation, we see four structural changes accelerating.

Some of the materials in our pre-arrival assignments are available on the web:

http://www.businessinnovation.ey.com/journal/issue3/features/ecomm/loader.html  

The Big Idea
     Electronic Commerce: The Next Generation 
     Information Rules: A Conversation with Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian 

Innovation in Action
     Making the Grade: Standard & Poor's Provided Real-Time, Customized 
             Ratings Information on the Web 

A Blueprint for Change
     Watchdogging the Web

http://www.business2.com/articles/1999/03/text/cover-story.html 

Are You Next?

Provided in hard copy only

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Collaborative Commerce - April 2000

"Electronic Commerce: The Next Generation," by AlanCohen John M. Jordan
 http://www.businessinnovation.ey.com/journal/issue3/features/ecomm/loader.html 

Given the coming advancements in agents, directories, and databases, along with the rapid increase in the capacity of both fiber optics and computation, we see four structural changes accelerating:

The question is not whether these structural changes are coming, but when. We believe that within the next 18 months, most of these inhibitors will give way to advances in technology and acceptance to changes in decades-old business processes. Companies will miss these trends at their own peril: yet coordinating business and technology change at unprecedented speed will test most corporations' capability as never before. The winners in the new environment will have to earn their mantle the hard way.


How does Ernst & Young spell e-Business?
After selling its consulting division to a French company, Ernst & Young is looking for new ways to branch out. One way is to take a huge equity position in the e*Trade online company. From Internet World News online on June 2, 2000:

E*Trade and E&Y to Offer a Human Touch By Jason Black <mailto:jblack@iw.com

At a time when online brokerage has suffered heavy drops in use, E*Trade <http://www.etrade.com>  announced this week a partnership with financial services firm Ernst & Young that will expand the services available to the online brokerage house's customers. E*Trade and E&Y are forming a new, yet-to-be-named company that is developing a "sophisticated electronic advice service that will combine high tech and high touch to deliver a superior end-to-end customer experience," says Jerry Gramaglia, president and COO of E*Trade. In this partnership, E*Trade will own 50.1 percent of the company, and E&Y will own the remaining 49.9 percent. This partnership gives E&Y the ability to tap into E*Trade's 2.6-million customer base, and it represents an "absolute transformation" in the way the firm delivers its services, says Beth Brooke, vice chair for strategy and corporate development.

Note from Bob Jensen:  E*Trade is becoming more widely known due to its TV commercial where the young man asks h is local banker if he can earn four percent interest on his checking account.  His local bankers think that is hilarious and cannot stop laughing.  Apparently you can earn such rates of interest on checking accounts in E*Trade.


Although a PwC link is most certainly hyped with marketing pitches, there are some "success cases" that help those of us trying to develop e-Business curriculum topics an idea of what one Big 5 firm is calling e-Business.  Go to http://www.pwcglobal.com/e-showcase/ and click on the link to Client Success Stories.


From the Scout Report

eCompany Now_ http://www.ecompany.com 

The online counterpart to the newly launched _eCompany Magazine_, _eCompany Now_ strives "to be the straight-talking, sophisticated companion to business people who face the risks and opportunities the Web brings to the business world." Along with articles lifted from the print publication, _eCompany Now_ has created several value-added features, including Web Files, which are online resources that correlate to articles in the paper version of the magazine. The site also provides interactive bulletin boards in its Discussion section, links, news headlines, and Hot Topics, which are groupings of articles, links, and bulletin boards related to single topics. While this site obviously has been created to enhance the print edition, _eCompany Magazine_, even those who don't subscribe to the hard copy will find the information on Web businesses helpful and interesting.


"Survey: Online Finance"  (and banking)  form The Economist  http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/20000520/index_survey.html 


The Millennium Digital Commerce Act, which will make digital signatures as legally binding as "wet ink" signatures, is on its way to becoming law in the U.S. --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0005305/2578062/ 


Voyeur Dorm Sues CBS (I guess porn sites really don't want to bare all!) --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36683,00.html 


Financial Management Training Center  --- http://www.exinfm.com/training/index.html 


United States Growth Charts --- http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/ 


Anthropologists are already studying Silicon Valley --- The Silicon Valley Cultures Project Website --- http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/anthropology/svcp/ 


From InformationWeek Newsletter on May 31, 2000

Palm Pilot Leaps From Hand To Server

With a speed that can only make Microsoft shudder, Palm Inc. is becoming a must-have business tool. The Palm Pilot has found its way, in fact, to the server. Palm on Tuesday released software that lets a Palm Pilot synch up with Windows NT servers, literally putting up-to-the-minute corporate data in employees' hands.

Palm HotSync server software provides management services such as centralized data backup and restoration, application deployment, configuration, and usage tracking. Packaged with the software is a Microsoft Exchange conduit, which integrates Exchange E-mail and calendar functions with the Palm's date book and mail apps.

For more information on the Palm HotSynch Server, go to http://www.palm.com/products/enterprise/server.html 

The Palm home page is at http://www.palm.com/ 


From InformationWeek Newsletter on May 30, 2000

Google Adopts a Gaggle of Linux Servers

Search engine Google has deployed 4,000 Linux servers, with plans to increase to 6,000 this year, making it possibly the largest Linux installation in the world.

Google said it turned to Red Hat Linux primarily because of the cost. The OS itself costs nothing, compared with $500 to $900 per server for Windows servers. And the hardware is also cheap; Red Hat runs on commodity white-box PCs rather than more expensive RISC Unix servers.

You can read more about Google and other search engines at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 


MagPortal: Magazine Articles on Business http://MagPortal.com/c/bus/ 


Inside the Mind of a "Short"  (a nice summary of a short sales strategy)
Reuters --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,36568,00.html 


When business and science collide --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,36747,00.html 


Survey of Electronic Money Developments (finance) --- http://www.bis.org/publ/cpss38.htm 


Click to sample products (marketing) --- http://www.startsampling.com/ 


African Voices (in multimedia from the Smithsonian) ---  http://www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices/ 

Gentleman's Agreement: Discrimination in Metropolitan America ---  http://www.brookings.edu/es/urban/reflections/essay7.pdf 


Make a million if you are good at math --- Millennium Prize Problems ---- http://www.ams.org/claymath/ 


Feminist Anthropology http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/fem.htm 

Gender Differences In Pay" --- http://www.russellsage.org/publications/working_papers/blaukahn_jep.pdf 


Trends (and warnings) about online therapy. See "Online Therapy Isn't Shrinking,"
by Lynn Burke at http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36584,00.html 


CanDo.com - community for people with disabilities. --- http://www.cando.com/ 


This website about the problems of homeless people asks you to rate panhandlers (sociology) --- charity.artificial.com --- http://charity.artificial.com/ 


Violence in Families ---  http://www.nap.edu/books/0309054966/html/index.html 


Bob, 
I saw your comment about guns and registration, and I thought you might find the following book interesting. It is written by a left leaning criminologist at Fla State and is one of the best books I have found on the topic. The author uses empirical data to address all sorts of views about guns and the book is full of interesting statistics. The author is a good writer too.

Author: Kleck, Gary, 1951- Title: Point blank : guns and violence in America / Gary Kleck. Publication info: New York : A. de Gruyter, c1991. Description: xv, 512 p. ; 24 cm.

Germain Boer
Vanderbilt University
Germain Boer [Germain.Boer@owen.vanderbilt.edu]


Oxford University Press Reading Room (Online Books) --- http://www.oup.co.uk/readingroom/ 


The Record of American Democracy, 1984-1990 (from Harvard) ---  http://data.fas.harvard.edu/ROAD/ 


Compaq's H3600 thrashes Pocket PC foes
This new handheld is faster, lighter, less expensive and easier to upgrade than rival devices, finds eWEEK Labs. --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0006051/2580428/ 


From Yahoo Picks of the Week (anthropology, history, literature)

The Tale of Murasaki --- http://www.taleofmurasaki.com/ 

The newly published Tale of Murasaki is a novel about a novelist. Written by author-anthropologist Liza Dalby, it's a memoir by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, 11th-century author of The Tale of Genji, a classic of love and intrigue in Heian-era Japan. There are illustrated biography pages for all the major characters, and the menu of subject pages offers background articles on all aspects of Heian culture and court life including beauty, fashion, food, music, poetry, and architecture. Enjoy thousand-year-old cosmetic tips (plucked brows and blackened teeth) or learn how to write a waka.


JustFree web hosting --- http://home.justfree.com/ 

Justfree.com - Superior Free Webhosting With JustFree.com, everyone can enjoy their own place on the web at absolutely no cost! Sign up today and get 40 Megs of space and as much bandwidth as you can use completely free!

Having a hard time finding a home for your commercial website? At Justfree.com we don't put any restrictions on banner advertising. You are more than welcomed to use click thru programs on your website.

Are you tired of other free hosting companies deleting your account because of inactivity? At Justfree.com the only accounts we've ever deleted were extreme violations of our Terms and Conditions. You can relax knowing that your website will still be around if you haven't worked on it for awhile


It may not matter a great deal how the U.S. and other nations modify their copyright, tax, and other Internet-related laws.  See "A Data Sanctuary Is Born" by Declan McCullagh in InternetWorld News Newsletter, June 4, 2000 --- 
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,36749,00.html 

A windswept gun tower anchored six miles off the stormy coast of England is about to become the first Internet data haven.

A group of American cypherpunks has transformed the rusting fortress, erected by the British military during World War II to shoot down Nazi aircraft, into a satellite-linked virtual home for anyone looking for a secure place to store sensitive or controversial data.

The founders of HavenCo, which will announce operations on Monday, believe the concept will appeal to individuals and businesses looking for a "safe haven" from governments around that world that are becoming more and more interested in Internet regulation and taxation.

It's for "companies that want to have email servers in a location in which they can consider their email private and not open to scrutiny by anyone capable of filing a lawsuit," says Sean Hastings, the 32-year-old chief executive of HavenCo.

Hastings says that because a 1968 British court decision effectively recognized the basketball court-sized island as a sovereign nation called Sealand, HavenCo can provide more privacy and legal protections then anyone else on the planet.

To create HavenCo -- which will offer Linux servers for $1,500 a month -- the founders signed an agreement with Roy Bates, the quirky "crown prince" of Sealand who landed on the abandoned platform in 1966 and claimed it as an independent nation with its own currency, stamps, and flag.

The new Sealand nation's website is at http://www.sealandgov.com/.

Reply from Trey Dunn

Dr. Jensen,
Thanks so much for turning me on to this little bit of knowledge. It is the most interesting piece I have read in a long time. I was more interested in the island history and it's family. I did some looking around and found this site which seems to be more information than the other web site. http://www.fruitsofthesea.demon.co.uk/sealand/ 

Amazing what someone can do if the get real creative.
Thanks again. Have a great week.
Trey Dunn Trinity University Computing Center User Services Support Tech I

 


From the Scout Report

Expert Guides -- Accounting Web http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/expert_guides/index.html 

Accounting Web, a UK-based accounting site, has created this growing collection of Web-based learning resources related to accounting. The 20 listed guides include thoughtful manuals on reporting financial performance, Excel productivity points, and a guide on the new Enterprise Management Incentive due to be made law in England this summer. Each expert guide is helpfully annotated, and guides are authored mainly by the staff of AccountingWeb. This site is also the only place where users can take advantage of the sage advice of Dave Carter, perhaps one of the leading pivot table experts, through his series of excellent online tutorials.


From InformationWeek Online --- June 7, 2000

PricewaterhouseCoopers Partners With ASP

PricewaterhouseCoopers is joining with E-commerce software maker and application service provider Pandesic LLC to enhance the consulting firm's E-business service offerings. Together, according to the pair, they should generate at least $1 billion in new revenue during the next three years.

PricewaterhouseCoopers wants to "offer electronic solutions to our consumers quickly, through an ASP model," says Dave Padmos, a PricewaterhouseCoopers partner. Pandesic provides services such as electronic shopping carts, shipping services, E-payment services, and data-warehouse management. Working with Pandesic gives the Big Five consulting company that ability, he says.

Pandesic gains contacts from the deal. "PWC has a broad base of offices. They complement our efforts and take us into other areas without us having to stretch our resources to get into those strategic and geographic areas on are own," says Catherine Yetts, Pandesic executive VP of customer success. Pandesic counts among its clients the Children's Place, clothing maker Osh Kosh B'Gosh, and Express.com. PricewaterhouseCoopers will train its consultants to deploy and operate Pandesic products and will integrate and implement those products for customers.

It is not unusual for professional services firms to partner with technology providers, says Stephan Lane, research director of professional services for the Aberdeen Group. There are several small E-business consulting firms and systems integrators that the large, traditional firms have to compete with. Says Lane: "Because consulting firms need to meet different levels of customer requirements, offering something that is pre-configured--but can be customized--becomes the service model."


June 4th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Napster Technology and the Finance Department 
2. The Five Worst Security Mistakes of Ave. PC Users 
3. Free Activity-Based Costing Study Reveals Lessons Learned 
4. Accounting Students Dropped 23% 1995-99 
5. Cox @Home.. Cable, Digital and Phone Service... 
6. Making XML Work for Your Company 
7. Priceline.com Does Groceries 
8. The Best Business Web Sites? Place Your Vote Now


The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 45 June 2, 2000 http://www.accountingweb.com  

1. CPAs to the e-Rescue
2. SEC Steps Up Efforts To Investigate Financial Fraud 
3. What Every A/P Manager Needs To Know About Digital Signatures 
4. "Cap Gemini Ernst & Young" Rebranded and Restructured 
5. Maximizing Referral Systems in a Practice 
6. Legal Eagles Stack Up in Accounting Firms 
7. New Leadership at the Institute of Management Accountants 
8. E&Y, E*Trade To Create New Company To Provide Financial Advice 
9. Benchmarking - Follow Up Materials 
10. Marketing Tip: Increase Your Newsletter Exposure


Pro2Net Accounting Weekly Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of June 5, 2000 

1. This Week's Accounting-Specific Headlines 
2. Win a Free Mark's CPA Review Course 
3. Feature Articles 
4. Find Out About Accounting and Finance Jobs 
5. Survey Results: Do you approve of the 150-hour rule? 
6. Our Tip of the Week: Advantages of Web-Native Business Solutions


AccountingStudents Newsletter: June 6, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. What's Your Input? Tell Us What You Want! 
2. Non-Traditional Benefits 
3. Survey Shows Relaxed Attire May Be Too Relaxed At Firms 
3. Site of the Week: MSNBC 
4. Survey Results: Have you ever taken an accounting course online? 
5. Tip of the Week: Five Attributes of Online Courses 
6. Last Chance to Redeem Your Discount!


Question:  What turns on an old Iowan?  

Answer:  A webcam pointed on a cornfield that lets you watch corn grow over the entire growing season.  If you're patient, you can even watch it tassel, ear out, and get harvested. http://www.iowafarmer.com/corncam/corn.html 

Having spent some late summer nights in corn fields during in my (distant) high school years, I can vouch for the fact that you can hear corn grow during about a month its growth season.  Iowa boys often try to prove to their dates that they really can hear corn grow --- and you can --- almost!  Honest!


A lot us from Iowa and Minnesota have ancestral roots in Norway or Sweden.  That's one of the reasons we have more time to watch corn grow (see above).  It's that almost thing!

Did you hear about the swede who was asked how often he had sex with his wife? --- 
"Almost every day..... almost Monday, almost Tuesday, almost Wednesday..
."

More like this at http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/Floor/4220/SwedeEverHeard.html 


Jokes about investing, finance, government, and economics --- http://www.dimgroup.com/stockjunkies/jokes/jokes.html 

1. Economists are armed and dangerous: "Watch out for our invisible hands."

2. Economists can supply it on demand.

3. You can talk about money without every having to make any.

4. You get to say "trickle down" with a straight face.

5. Mick Jagger and Arnold Schwarzenegger both studied economics and look how they turned out.

6. When you are in the unemployment line, at least you will know why you are there.

7. If you rearrange the letters in "ECONOMICS", you get "COMIC NOSE".

8. Although ethics teaches that virtue is its own reward, in economics we get taught that reward is its own virtue.

9. When you get drunk, you can tell everyone that you are just researching the law of diminishing marginal utility.

10. When you call 1-900-LUV-ECON and get Kandi Keynes, you will have something to talk about.


Tidbits about Funny People --- From Pun of the Day at http://www.punoftheday.com/pun_08.htm 

Click below for tidbits about funny people.

Ogden Nash | Edward Lear | Bennett Cerf
Erma Bombeck | Bill Cosby | Rowan Atkinson

There are great websites for the above humorists.  One of my search hits was at http://www.bemorecreative.com/one/1694.htm.  Examples of Cerf 's limericks are shown below:

"When God Created Mothers," Erma Bombeck --- http://www.jps.net/joehorn/homily32.htm 

When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into his sixth day of "overtime" when an angel appeared and said, "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."

And the Lord said, "Have you read the specs on this order?

She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; Have 180 movable parts... all replaceable; Run on black coffee and leftovers; Have a lap that disappears when she stands up; A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair; And six pairs of hands. The angel shook her head slowly and said, "Six pairs of hands... no way." "It's not the hands that are causing me problems," said the Lord. "It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have."

"That's on the standard model?" asked the angel.

The Lord nodded. "One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say, 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word."

"Lord," said the angel, touching His sleeve gently, "Go to bed. Tomorrow..."

"I can't," said the Lord, "I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick... can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger... and can get a nine-year-old to stand under a shower."

The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed.

"But she's tough!" said the Lord excitedly. "You cannot imagine what this mother can do or endure."

"Can it think?"

"Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator.

Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek. "There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told You You were trying to push too much into this model."

"It's not a leak," said the Lord. "It's a tear."

"What's it for?"

"It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride."

"You are a genius," said the angel.

The Lord looked somber. "I didn't put it there," He said.

Which is why Bob Jensen would say to Bill Joy that the world will always need mothers --- Computers will never have tears of  "joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride."  Computers only trigger such tears in real people!
 http://wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html  


Forwarded by Dick Haar.

WOMEN

Women have strengths that amaze men. They carry children, they carry hardships, they carry burdens, but they hold happiness, love and joy. They smile when they want to scream. They sing when they want to cry. They cry when they are happy and laugh when they are nervous. Women wait by the phone for a "safe at home call" from a friend after a snowy drive home. Women have special qualities about them. They volunteer for good causes. They are pink ladies in hospitals, they bring food to shut-ins. They are child care workers, executives, attorneys, stay-at-home moms, biker babes, and your neighbors. They wear suits, jeans, and they wear uniforms. They fight for what they believe in. They stand up for injustice. They are in the front row at PTA meetings. They vote for the person that will do the best job for family issues. They walk and talk the extra mile to get their children in the right schools and for getting their family the right health care. They write to the editor, their congressmen and to the "powers that be" for things that make for a better life. They don't take "no" for an answer when they believe there is a better solution. They stick a love note in their lover's lunch box. They do without new shoes so their children can have them. They go to the doctor with a frightened friend. They love unconditionally. Women are honest, loyal, and forgiving. They are smart, knowing that knowledge is power. But they still know how to use their softer side to make a point. Women want to be the best for their family, their friends, and themselves. They cry when their children excel and cheer when their friends get awards. They are happy when they hear about a birth or a new marriage. Their hearts break when a friend dies. They have sorrow at the loss of a family member, yet they are strong when they think there is no strength left. A woman's touch can cure any ailment. They know that a hug and a kiss can heal a broken heart. A woman can make a romantic evening unforgettable. Women come in all sizes, in all colors and shapes. They live in homes, apartments and cabins. They drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail you to show how much they care about you. The heart of a woman is what makes the world spin! Women do more than just give birth. They bring joy and hope. They give compassion and ideals. They give moral support to their family and friends. And all they want back is a hug, a smile and for you to do the same to people you come in contact with.

MEN

Men are good at lifting heavy stuff and killing bugs.


For Selected Works of Ogden Nash (with a lot of typos), go to http://www.westegg.com/nash/   One example is shown below:


A Lady who Thinks She Is Thirty
by Ogden Nash
 
Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.

Miranda in Miranda's sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining.

Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then--
How old is Spring, Miranda?


THE FLY 
God in his wisdom made the fly 
And then forgot to tell us why.

THE TERMITE 
Some primal termite knocked on wood 
And tasted it, and found it good, 
And that is why your Cousin May 
Fell through the parlor floor today.

REQUIEM 
There was a young belle of old Natchez 
Whose garments were always in patchez. 
When comment arose On the state of her clothes, 
She replied, When Ah itchez, Ah scratchez


The Unofficial Bill Cosby Sound Page --- http://www.netwalk.com/~hammer/ 


A weird cartoon site about Clerks (a TV show from ABC) --- http://www.clerksthecartoon.com/main.html 


From The Bartend's Joke of the Day --- http://www.thebartend.com/JOTD/JokeDetails.asp?JokeID=82 
McQuillan walked into a bar and ordered martini after martini, each time removing the olives and placing them in a jar. When the jar was filled with olives and all the drinks consumed, the Irishman started to leave.

"S' cuse me", said a customer, who was puzzled over what McQuillan had done, "what was that all about?"

"Nothin', said the Irishman, "my wife just sent me out for a jar of olives!"



If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.



And that's the way it was on June 6, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

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May 31, 2000 


Quotes of the Week:  

Freedom is not free.
Korean War Memorial

Although I favor gun registration and safety licensing as a condition of purchase, the following quotation forwarded by Dick Haar is interesting from a historical perspective about a time where the streets were most definitely not safe for some citizens:

"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!"  
Adolph Hitler, 1933

If you are not working on the edge, you are taking up too much space.
Author unknown (quoted on May 18 at the EY/AAA e-Education Conference in Cambridge, MA)

ON PUBLISHING OR PERISHING 
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. 
English Professor, Ohio University

ON LITERATURE REVIEWING 
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. 
Dorothy Parker

ON PROPHECY 
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they're too weak to refuse.

ON MATERIALISM 
He who dies with the most toys is, nonetheless, still dead.

BEEN EVERYWHERE, DOING THAT
Deja You: The feeling that somehow, somewhere in a former life, Shirley made love with you.
ShirleyMaclaine.com --- http://www.shirleymaclaine.com/ 

ON MARTIAL ARTS AND METAPHYSICS 
Deja Fu: The feeling that somehow, somewhere, you've been kicked in the head like this before.

ON WORLD POLITICS 
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.

ON LAW ENFORCEMENT
Germany has less trouble with drunk drivers even though beer vending machines are popular in German gas stations.
Things That Have Been Sold in Vending Machines --- http://www.chaparraltree.com/vending/ 

NOT ENOUGH OF A GOOD THING
34% of the homeless people in Silicon Valley have jobs.
inequality.org --- http://www.inequality.org/ 

ON DEEP THOUGHTS 
A day without sunshine is like night.

ON YOUTH 
Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I have the heart of a young boy. In a jar. On my desk. Steven King

ON PROBLEM SOLVING 
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.

ON INFINITY 
If you had everything, where would you keep it?  (My office of course.)

ON ECONOMICS 
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.

ON REVISIONIST HISTORY 
What was sliced bread the greatest thing since?

ON MATERIAL SCIENCE 
Character density: The number of very weird people in the office. (especially the accountants.)

ON EXTINCTION 
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.


I recommend a wonderful article by Diana Oblinger and Jill Kidwell entitled "Distance Learning: Are We Being Realistic?" in EDUCAUSE Review, May/June 2000, pp. 30-39. It is not yet available online, but eventually it will be available at http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm.html .  I will provide more details in the next edition of New Bookmarks.


Barnes & Noble University --- It's "NotHarvard.com" (But all the courses are "free.")
From InternetWorld News on May 30, 2000

Barnesandnoble.com Opens Its Own Cyber College By Anastasia Ashman

Barnesandnoble.com may have a reputation of being a day late and an Amazon.com patent short, but it is the first online bookseller to found its own cyber college, with courses tailored to the offerings on its shelves. Beginning this summer, the company announced Tuesday, the online bookstore will offer free, online courses with the help of notHarvard.com, a software firm specializing in "eduCommerce," the fusion of education and commerce. The bookseller will also become the anchor tenant for notHarvard.com's bookstore, as well as a minority investor in the one-year-old, Austin, Texas, builder of online universities. Other investors in the company's second round of funding, totaling $26 million, include Impact Venture Partners and Merrill Lynch's employee investment fund. NotHarvard.com lists Motorola's Metrowerks and TalkCity among its clients.

Barnesandnoble.com is banking on the success rate of notHarvard.com's three online universities created since mid-February. "The average class has 1,000 students, with tech classes averaging 5,000 per class," said Judith Bitterli, chief executive officer at notHarvard.com. She also said 46 percent of visitors to the cybercolleges choose to enroll and 18 percent of students purchased the associated courseware.

The challenge, however, is to offer courses ideally suited to distance learning, and beyond that, to capture the students' business. Fields of study that have right and wrong answers, like standardized test preparation, are a sweet spot for Internet learning, said Ken Cassar, a senior analyst at Jupiter Communications. "But something like film review may require more human interaction, especially among the students themselves."

That will be an added consideration for Barnesandnoble.com, which plans to shape its initial curriculum based on consumers' early responses. The present catalog of 39 courses range from the slightly esoteric (Introduction to Film Noir) to straightforward tech (Using PCs and Macs Together) to issues of life management (Dying of Embarrassment: Help for the Socially Challenged). NotHarvard.com will provide instructors and writers, and Barnesandnoble.com said it will eventually enlist authors to lead courses.

Industry watchers are split on the issue of consumer loyalty, though. "When a company creates a community and a sense of belonging, people will reward them with their business," said Mark Rowen, senior analyst at Prudential Securities.

Cassar, however, cited the findings of a recent Jupiter survey, which showed a surprising percentage of people taking advantage of online offerings of one player and purchasing related material at a lower cost elsewhere. N.B. to BN.com: film noir devotees frequent used bookstores.

For more on this issue, see  http://www.notharvard.com/ 

For a course listing, go to http://www.barnesandnoble.com/frames/bnuniversity/ 

The majority of courses are more along the lines of how to improve your life (training, inspiration, culture refinement, etc.).  Technology training will be popular since the courses are free.  Some of the more interesting free training courses are as follows:

Running Your Small Business with QuickBooks 
Building Your First Web Page 
Introduction to C++ Intermediate C++ 
Introduction to PowerPoint Photoshop Basics 
Advanced Photoshop Tools and Applications 
Introduction to XML 
Tune Up Your Windows 98 PC 
Introduction to Programming 
Introduction to MS Excel 
Using PCs and Macs Together 
Protecting Your Data for Mac IBook and iMac 
Web Site Design and Management
The Art of Networking
The Art of Networking 
Online Investing 
How to Start a Home-Based Business 
Improving Communication Skills to Get What You Want 
How to Research a Company for a Successful Interview 
A Street-Smart Guide to Landing Your First Professional Job

But there are also other interesting courses (at least to me) that include the following:

Introduction to Jazz 
Introduction to Classical Music 
The Night Sky: An Introduction to Astronomy 
Introduction to Film Noir
Walking Through Shakespeare: The Comedies

Keep your eye on this website.  I suspect that the listing of interesting free courses will grow and grow.


I love the free and freshly updated Guru.net at http://www.guru.net/ 
Guru.net automatically downloaded a new upgrade that will now do more than just provide a definition for most any word I select in a document that appears in my web browser (simply select the word and press the Alt key and click the mouse in sequence).  Now you can click on a telephone area code and automatically pop up the city and a location map.  You can also get statistics (sports, weather, stock prices, etc.) by simply using the Alt and Click procedure.  

GuruNet is a free new one-click information service that works whenever you're online. It automatically analyzes pointed-to text in context and pops up a simple window without linking or leaving your document. You don't even have to select the word.

GuruNet's got reference information (dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia) and real-time information (e.g. news, sports, weather or stock quotes). And lots more exciting content on the way. Best of all, GuruNet works in any PC application, such as e-mail, MS-Office, PIMs and, of course, any browser.

Visit our news and user reactions pages and see why industry experts like Walt Mossberg, Larry Magid, Dan Gillmor, Peter Lewis, Tim Jackson, Bill Machrone and many regular users think GuruNet is so unique and cool.

I learned about Guru.net from the extremely high praises of  that curmudgeon Walt Mossberg (Technology Editor of the Wall Street Journal).  I have been using Guru.net for what seems like a couple of years.  I sometimes forget that it is only an Alt Click away, but when I remember, I am usually pleased with the pop up window.  

I don't know why this company keeps giving me all this wonderful free software, but I love the service.  Guru.net is by far the easiest software to install and use with your web browser.  It simply lurks in the background and awaits your Alt Clicks.


Create your own indexed database --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,36600,00.html 
The WebBrain home page is at http://www.webbrain.com/ 

WebBrain can be placed on top of any indexable and searchable database. It's not limited to HTML links and files, but can also index Microsoft Office documents and other files as well, making it usable on a corporate intranet.

"Our objective here is to demonstrate a superior navigation, search, and discovery capability," said Peter Fuchs, CEO of Santa Monica, California-based TheBrain.com. "The technology is designed to separate the navigation from the Web pages. Instead of the typical search, where you have long lists of textual information where you could get hundreds or thousands of search results, now you see it in a visual form."

The WebBrain.com interface is split in half, with the top part completely written in Java. It gives a Star Trek-like visual representation of the search results by category and shows all of the threads and branches from that category. As you select categories, links appear in the lower half of the screen and submenus are drawn in the upper half.

Instead of building its own database, TheBrain.com used the ODP database to demonstrate its support for others. The technology can work with any database from major vendors, including Oracle and IBM; all that's necessary is to build the connection between the interface and the data. The software is available from the single-user, Windows version, called PersonalBrain, up to enterprise-scale search engines, such as the one powering WebBrain.com.

Updated search engine helpers ---- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm  


Digest of Education Statistics, 1999 --- http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/digest99/ 


Remaking the Academy: Twenty-First Century Challenges to Higher Education in the Age of Information
by Jorge Klor de Alva, Educause Review, March/April 2000 http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0023.pdf  


Hi Walter,

I am very pleased that you will be sharing your tremendous expertise on derivative financial instruments accounting and risk  hedging activities.  You will have about 75 minutes on August 13 afternoon in Session 34 described at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe34.htm

I have no idea how large the audience will be for Session 24. There is a tremendous amount of competition in that afternoon. However, IAS 39 and FAS 133 are very hot topics since they are scheduled for implementation and confuse virtually every educator and practitioner. Paul Pacter draws a crowd whenever he speaks, because he is very articulate and has the longest record in history of research and service to both the FASB and the IASC.

I suggest that you spend about half of that on your Derivatives Implementation Group and FAS 133 updates. Then I suggest that you provide an overview of the highlights of your online FAS 133 cases and case solutions. Of course, you can choose to devote your time to any FAS 133 topic that you choose.

I will start out with about 40 minutes giving a FAS 133 and IAS 39 overview from http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/133summ.htm 

After my introduction, you will have about 75 minutes. Keep in mind that your audience will be quite varied with respect to background. Since the DIG updates are so complex, I am certain that your summary overview will be greatly appreciated by every member of the audience.

After the break, Paul Pacter will have about 60 minutes for updating us on the IASC and IAS 39 in particular. I don't know how well you know Paul, but he was the lead player in the development of IAS 39 and is author of key documents on similarities and differences in international versus U.S. standards on accounting for derivative financial instruments and hedging activities.

Then I will use whatever time is left to go into more depth with two cases --- CapIT and Mexcobre most likely. However, if you cover options accounting, I will shift to the MarginWHEW or MarginOOPS futures contract hedge accounting cases. See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/133cases/000index.htm 

We might vary the end of the workshop according to requests of our audience.

All workshops are posted at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpelist.htm.

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

-----Original Message----- 
From: Teets, Walter [mailto:teets@gem.gonzaga.edu]  
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2000 5:22 PM 
To: 'Jensen, Robert' Subject: RE: CPE Session 34 for AAA Annual Meeting

Bob,

I am now getting around to thinking about the rest of the summer, so let me follow up on this with you. Seminars are on Sunday preceding the conference, but is ours morning or afternoon? Also, I believe I am doing some of my cases, but am I doing anything else? I have been doing conferences with Ira Kawaller, a DIG member, for a couple of years, and could bring in some material from those conferences as well. Let me know how you want to proceed with specific plans/coordination, etc. I am certainly looking forward to working on this with you.

Walter

All August 12 and August 13 AAA workshops are described at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpelist.htm 

You can download the registration form from http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/2000annual/cpeform.pdf 


I ordered my copy!
In its ongoing effort to bring the latest and most critical information to the higher education information technology and resources community, EDUCAUSE is an online source for the following publication:


The T.H.E. Journal, May 2000, pp. 82-86 has a Jim Schneider feature on web authoring.  The online URL is at http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A2858.cfm   It features the following software (samples only;  for others go to the main article):

Also from Macromedia comes CourseBuilder for Dreamweaver, an extension to Dreamweaver 3 that aids in creating interactive Web-based learning applications. It facilitates the quick and cost-effective authoring of engaging learning material without the need for programming knowledge. CourseBuilder extends the functionality of Dreamweaver with more than 40 pre-built learning interactions. These include editable multiple choice, true or false and fill-in-the-blank questions and answers. The CourseBuilder interactions, built using HTML and JavaScript, create Web-native content that allows courses to be delivered in most browsers on both Windows and Macintosh platforms.


101 Information Hub:  Free books and tutorials on-line free on-line information, tutorials, books (computer, internet, education, entertainment, finance, business, health, home, cooking) --- http://www.whatsnu.com/ 


Texboox.co.uk - free online resource for used student textbooks.   Free online resource for buying and selling used student and university textbooks. If you have old, used or nearly new textbooks here is the place to sell them --- http://www.texboox.co.uk/  


One opinion on the top 10 investment resource sites.
InvestMove.com --- www.investmove.com 

Top Ten Financial Portals

     1. Yahoo Finance
     2. MSN MoneyCentral
     3. Quicken.com
     4Wall Street City
     5Inter@ctive Investor
     6Motley Fool
     7Wall Street Research Net
     8Morningstar
     9Stockmaster
   10Silicon Investor

Yahoo's picks of the top finance web sites --- http://www.zdnet.com/zdsubs/yahoo/content/101most/101finance.html 


"Cash Flow Forecasting: Keeping Your Company One Step Ahead" --- http://www.treasurypoint.com/knowledge/article/cash_flow_forecasting.asp 


Thank you Barry Rice for this tip.  Also congratulations to the award winners, especially to my former Trinity University student named Igor Vaysman.  You can download a PDF version of this Activities Based Costing Study for colleges and universities at http://endowment.pwcglobal.com/grants/mgdpiv.asp 

Project Title: "Using Activity-Based Costing to Manage More Effectively"

Other ABC websites of possible interest:

Activities Based Costing (ABC) Costing Bibliography
http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/SAFFM/FMC/ABC/bibliography.htm

Activities Based Management and ABC Costing http://www.rpm-abm.com/cami_idx.htm 

Accounting, business, and finance glossaries http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbus.htm 

For those who wish to obtain the report in Adobe Acrobat format, the link is http://endowment.pwcglobal.com/grants/mgdpiv.asp .


If you travel via the major airlines, it is probably best to heed this tardy arrival reimbursement alternative from Biztravel Guarantee that made headline coverage in USA Today on May 23, 2000.  I would have been reimbursed over $100 on an American flight May 25 and $641 on a Delta flight on April 30.  You will be reimbursed even for weather-related delays.  The website is at http://www.biztravel.com/ 

Biztravel.com is revolutionizing the travel industry. Effective immediately, we will refund our customers for inconveniences or cancellations of flights, as well as provide payment for unmet service needs on the part of biztravel.com.

We are proud to stand behind our service and the service of some of the world's largest carriers. It's a great time to be a biztravel.com customer so if you have not registered already, please do so now.

Airline Flight Guarantees
  • $100 for flights arriving 30 min. late
  • $200 for flights arriving 1 hour late
  • Complete refund for flights arriving more than 2 hours late
  • Complete refund for cancelled flights
  • $25 refund when seat assignment not honored
  • $25 refund when choice of entree not available in First or Business class
  • Up to $200 for incidentals when luggage is lost

Our Service Guarantees
  • $10 payment for slow phone answering speed
  • $10 payment for slow e-mail response
  • $10 payment for slow on-line chat response
  • $10 payment for slow call-back service
  • $50 payment for slow response to a customer service inquiry
  • $50 payment for unprofessional travel services associate
  • $25 payment for non-receipt of ticket

A great source for all U.S. and Canada airline schedules is at http://www.flightarrivals.com/ 


Safety tips for foreign travel --- http://www.travel.state.gov/ 
Bureau of Consular Affairs Home Page


Find a restaurant (Travel, Food) --- http://www.restaurant.com/ 


American Heritage Book of English Usage (Dictionaries) --- http://www.bartleby.com/64/ 

Duhaime's Law Dictionary --- http://www.duhaime.org/diction.htm 

Two documents from Bob Jensen on dictionaries and glossaries:


From the Scout Report on May 16, 2000 (Literature, English, Poetry)

Renascence Editions http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/ren.htm 

This Website from the University of Oregon offers an alphabetically indexed collection of electronic editions of works printed in English from 1477 to 1799. Of course, this is not a comprehensive collection, but it is a substantial one, including all of the plays of Shakespeare, the poetry of Spenser, prose and poetry of John Milton, the major writings of Thomas Browne, and works by Hobbes, Defoe, Gascoigne, Caxton, Bacon, Rachel Speght, and Jonathan Swift, just to name a few. Some editions include links to annotations. All have been prepared by reputable scholars in the field.


Modern Humorist (Literature) --- http://www.modernhumorist.com/ 


Do you suppose I can order my generation's white bucks with pink soles or Buddy Holly's blue suedes?  
Design your own shoes at http://www.customatix.com/ 

Welcome to customatix.com the only place in the world where you can completely design your own shoes using up to three billion trillion (that's over 3,420,833,472,000,000,300,000 per shoe!!!) combinations of colors, graphics, logos and materials.

When I asked about white bucks, the email response made me feel old.  I mean in my generation, white bucks were the in thing.  I even wore white bucks with my Navy uniform.

Dear Dr. Jensen,

Thank you for the message.

I am not familiar with the style of shoe you are referring to. We have 9 styles from which to choose from (4 sk8, 3 running, and 2 boot) Please try to use these designs to create a shoe for you. Contact us again if you need any further assistance.

Aaron customatix.com --- 'help@customatix.com' [help@customatix.com

Another good source for product searching in general is at http://www.solutionscatalog.com/ 


What will happen as colleges and universities become more like businesses?
From Phil Livingston in the FEI Newsletter No. 33 May 19, 2000 
http://www.fei.org/newsletters/express/feiexpress33.htm
  

The elements of the company's success:

1) Focus on core competency 
2) Outsource with world-class partners (Chellam stressed the need to select partners carefully, after getting to know their business models, their economics and their competitors). 
3) Develop key metrics such as revenue per employee, or price to sales, and track them. 
4) Understand that in the Information Age, people are investments, not costs. 
5) Don't scale functions that dilute the key metrics.

You can read more about making colleges and universities more business oriented at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm 


From the Director of the Trinity University Library

As part of the library's continued efforts to offer the latest resources, we've licensed access to 500 carefully selected titles from netLibrary electronic books. Before those become available, they've given us free access to the entire library of 18,000 titles for a short time (thru June 5th). Later this summer we'll announce permanent access to the shorter list of current, scholarly titles thru this forum.

Please take a look. You can click on: http://www.netlibrary.com. The interface is very easy; some brief instructions appear below. The attached Word document offers some added details. The titles include some that I think you will appreciate.

Please submit your comments or thoughts to your liaison librarian or me. Our marketing rep indicates he also will be happy to address questions about this exciting new technology. See his email address below....

Thanks.
Richard Meyer [rmeyer@Trinity.edu


From Internet World News on May 23, 2000

Time Warner Trade Publishing announced on Tuesday the creation of iPublish.com 
( http://www.twbookmark.com/features/ipublish.com/ ) , an open-platform publishing site that will take manuscripts from anyone and, unlike most other online publishing companies, trash the ones that aren't fit for print.

"Without an intermediary's vetting process, readers cannot determine what's good," said Time Warner Trade Publishing vice president Gregory Voynow, who will be senior vice president and general manager of the new enterprise. "We plan to use the Internet as an actual publishing channel, rather than just a distribution channel."

The company's structure will be trifold: an area called iRead, to highlight and electronically distribute previously printed works; iWrite, to function as a publishing engine for new authors, with both editors and other readers reviewing and rating the submissions; and iLearn, to provide expertise from the publisher's top-selling writers and editors for their readers and prospective writers.

iPublish introduces something not often found in online publishing: editing. But is a lack of editing what's giving electronic books an uneven reputation? In a recent interview with Internet World magazine, Chris MacAskill, CEO of FatBrain.com, says that Web readers are more than capable of judging a book's content. MacAskill started MightyWords.com to offer an outlet for material that is between magazine and book length; he cites a potential $100 billion market for such documents.


The Intangible Asset and Liability Problem
From Phil Livingston in the FEI Newsletter No. 33 May 19, 2000 
http://www.fei.org/newsletters/express/feiexpress33.htm
  

Market value for S&P 500 companies averages 6.7 times book value. New York University Professor Baruch Lev is deeply troubled by this number. "It means that out of seven dollars of market value, only one dollar appears on the balance sheet!" he exclaimed before an audience at New York's Plaza hotel today. Lev went on to say that this has nothing to do with the fact that book values reflect historical rather than replacement costs, noting that even if prices were 100% inflated, the real ratio would still reflect a big difference between book and market values. Why? Lev suggests the problem is that GAAP is too outdated and doesn't correctly account for values in a world where intangibles rule.

But, Lev and fellow panelists struggled with the issue of how to measure value, both for external reporting and internal management purposes. How, for example, can one devise reward and incentive systems to encourage managers to create a valuable culture of communication and information sharing? "Companies have assets that perhaps even their managers don't know," Lev observed at one point. Indeed. Much of the discussion around these issues in the morning's first session had a distinctly academic tone, and demonstrated that it is far easier to identify problems with GAAP and management accounting than to solve them in practice. Lev strongly encouraged management teams to experiment with internal reporting systems that attempted to more accurately reflect the value of intangibles. A system developed by practitioners is far more likely to succeed than a system designed by the regulators.

Along these same lines, Phil writes as follows:

Session 4: Engines of Value for the Information Age

"The absolute destruction of the relationship of market value to book value, and attempts to value intangibles, are the key themes of this conference," Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard observed, and noted that networks, new business models and brands are the key engines of intangible value.

Sun Microsystems CFO Michael E. Lehman kicked off this session with a discussion of why "the network" is important, what companies can get from it, and what role the CFO plays in it. "The network" is the vast array of devices connected electronically, not just what people think of as the Internet.

"The network" is important because it is ubiquitous and inexorable, he said. People can connect to the network through devices as various as cars, computers and cellular phones. They connect in order to get services. "The network" allows companies to take costs out of the system and to build closer relationships with their customers and suppliers. For example, Lehman spoke of using "the network" to collect auction-type bids from office furniture suppliers interested in getting the contract for a new Sun office park. Sun maintains a database of every customer contact so that anyone calling on the customer will know who was there last and what was discussed. This use of the network helps build closer relationships with customers.

"The CFO is the guardian of the business model," he concluded, "Make sure you evangelize the huge value creation opportunity from networking, and understand how the network will affect your company."

Next, Xilinx CFO Kris Chellam discussed the radically new business model that has allowed his company to outperform other chip manufacturers over the past decade. "Our value proposition is different," Chellam said, "We don't manufacture and we don't sell. We partner."

Managerial accountants might be interested in reading more about the following:

Continental makes detailed information about flight profitability available to station managers so that they will know which customers and which flights make the most money for the company. The information helps managers decide which passengers deserve extra attention; helps them, in other words, make decisions that add value.


Hi Robert,

It was a pleasure to share the platform with you at the Kent IMA conference.

I mentioned that I would link you up with a friend who also shared a platform with me in San Diego. I actually met Pete Mazany when I lectured at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Pete has a PhD in simulation gaming from Yale University and studied under a famous scholar in that field known as Martin Shubick. Pete formed his own company for writing network simulation management strategy games. Some of his work can be found at http://www.netmike.com/.

I thought perhaps Andersen Consulting might be interested in viewing some of his interactive networked management stragegy simulations.

I thought you might be interested in seeing some of Pete's work. This is a section that I developed on Pete for our San Diego workshop last August.

 

C. Peter Mazany, PH.D.
Senior Lecturer in Operations Management
The Department of Management Science and Information Systems
Private Bag 92019
School of Business and Economics
University of Auckland
Auckland, NZ
Voice: +64 9 373 7599 x7154 Fax: +64 9 373 7430 Email: pmazany@visionplus.co.nz
Web Site: <http://www.business.auckland.ac.nz/departments/msis/staff/p.mazany>
A famed operations research professor (Martin Shubik) at Yale asserted that Pete Mazany takes full advantage of “learning by doing” using a newer cross-functional approach to networked simulations that “greatly enhance the learning experience both in speed and quality.” Pete Mazany is a strategy, game theory and simulation faculty member at the University of Auckland. His company, Active Learning Online, is producing a high quality business education simulation package described at http://www.netmike.com .

Pete also helped develop the team-orientated management systems for the yacht racing team that won the 1995 America’s Cup competition for New Zealand. His TeamThink book on this experience is described at http://visionp.co.nz/team_think/book.htm . Pete’s research focuses on cross-functional, computer-aided business simulations on networks, and TeamThink-based strategy development.


The full text of SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt's May 10 speech on auditor independence, the structure of public accounting firms, and oversight of the public accounting profession is available at http://www.sec.gov/news/speeches/spch370.htm.


From the Scout Report on May 18, 2000

CPANet http://www.cpanet.com 

CPANet is a full-service portal for the professional accounting community. The information found on this site is divided into four sections. Zones covers resources for a variety of difference accounting issues, including consulting, audit, financial planning, and tax. Information compiles news and industry sources, as well as government resources and legal information. Resources offers a CPA toolbox, as well as sections on career planning and education. Finally, the Community section contains a CPA forums, FAQs, and links. While offering an important service to the accounting community, CPANet can be somewhat difficult to navigate, since the site relies on a clumsy directory system.


Question:  What is the Bluetooth and why will it one day be important in your life?
Hint:  The Bluetooth was featured in a re-run of a Computer Chronicles episode last Sunday on PBS.  You can read about segments of this show at http://www.cmptv.com/computerchronicles/shows/99-00/1713comdex/1713-summary.html

Answer:  You can read the following at http://www.bluetooth.com/ b

The new figure mark is based on the Bluetooth history as it is made up of the two runic characters "H" and "B" - short for "Harald Bluetooth". Harald Bluetooth was the Danish king who unified Denmark and Norway in the 10th century.

The main component of this little device is a chip developed by Intel, IBM, and Nokia.  The Bluetooth uses radio waves to connect wireless devices, including cell telephones with computers.  For example, email messages from a computer can be beamed into a telephone and vice versa.  You can read the following at http://www.bluetooth.com/pressroom/pressrelease/press_release_14.asp 

The Bluetooth Access Point from Axis represents the first view of a new family of innovative products and services, developed for the new world of mobile Internet applications. These offerings will support both voice and data services, extending the capabilities and usability of both wireless devices and fixed network resources. General availability is expected in the fourth quarter. The Bluetooth Access Point will be used to create local “hot spots,” areas where instant wireless broadband access to the Internet or a network is available to Bluetooth devices, such as cell phones, PDAs, laptops and emerging Webpads. These hot spots will enable new and innovative services for a variety of user environments, in the office, home, hotels, retail establishments and other public places such as the airport.

In the hotel of the future, while you check into your room, your laptop checks into the office - retrieves e-mail, voicemail and accesses corporate Intranet services - all with broadband speed. Phone calls will be routed automatically via telephony services to your personal mobile phone, providing one number simplicity and lower-cost phone bills. The hotel will offer new conveniences: such as easy wireless faxing and printing from anywhere in the hotel to the business center, poolside food service ordering and streamlined checkout payment all from your PDA. IDC recently forecast that by the end of 2002, there will be more wireless subscribers capable of Internet access than wired Internet users. This will drive a fundamental shift in the thinking of the Web community and the IT industry on what kind of services will need to be offered. “The proliferation of wireless devices will radically change not only how people will access the Internet, but also where and what they use it for,” said Mikael Nilsson, vice president of Strategy, Axis Communications. “Axis’ solutions will recognize these devices automatically and provide new broadband services that make them even more productive. These offerings are designed to address the needs of a wide range of participants in the value chain, including end users, ISP’s, telcos and major communications infrastructure players.”


Important New Development:  From InformationWeek Newsletter on May 30, 2000

Don't Talk To Your PC--Talk Through It

If Intel has its way, Web surfers will spend more time talking via their computers than on the phone. The chipmaker is set to announce a deal in which Internet telephony vendor ITXC will incorporate Intel's Internet Telephony voice-over-IP software into its webtalkNow service, through which businesses can embed a Web link that users can click to talk to a company representative.

Intel's hope: A more user-friendly Net will stimulate demand for Intel-powered desktops and servers. By virtue of its clout, Intel could help bring voice-over-IP services to the masses. "We're talking about a real heavyweight that has the power to drive the development of this market," says John Cha, a Frost & Sullivan analyst.

Company execs say they expect Intel's Internet Telephony software to be in commercial use by this summer. The deal with ITXC is nonexclusive.


From Internet World News on May 25, 2000

Finally, after months of teasing and testing, Priceline.com unveiled its name-your-own-price long-distance calling service in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. Priceline also said this service will be the first offering in its new business-to-business portal for American Express's 2 million small-business customers, set to launch in the third quarter of this year.

Priceline Long Distance LLC, which signed with IP telephony provider Net2Phone several months ago, announced additional three-year marketing agreements with similar providers Deltathree.com and ZeroPlus.com. The Priceline subsidiary will collect participation fees from the telecommunications companies in the multimillions, and the participants gain access to Priceline's consumer base.
IWNews
[IWNews@iwnews.iw.com


The buzz words are "Business Network Model" 
From NewMedia on May 16, 2000 --- http://www.newmedia.com/ 

Dean Alms on the Future of E-commerce (Friday, 26 May 00) What's the future of e-commerce now that the IPO bubble has burst? Dean Alms is in a position to know. He's the chief strategy officer for Groundswell, a San Francisco e-consulting firm.

Q&A: Dean Alms Interviewed by Jane Irene Kelly

NewMedia: What is your view of the current Internet marketplace?

Dean Alms: For quite some time now, we have watched companies make their move from the old economy to New Economy. Now, however, it's not about bricks-and-mortar companies becoming dot-coms. Instead, it's about companies moving from enterprise models to business network models.

After the recent shakeout on Wall Street, it has become painfully obvious that many e-commerce companies have been operating without a viable business model. What do you think the current survivors will be doing to stay alive and grow?

The real leaders are figuring out how to sustain success. They are not looking at a product or service independently. Rather, they are seeing if and how [their offerings] fit into a bigger, people-centric network. They are moving away from an enterprise mentality to a more customer-focused approach.

I think a lot of commerce-only companies right now are feeling the pain because their [offerings] are limited and they've been unable to go deeper with consumers and build loyalty. It's time for them to take a business network point of view.

Groundswell is now advising clients to take part in what you call "e-business communities." Describe how this e-commerce model works.

E-business solutions are created around consumer-oriented events, such as planning a wedding, moving to a new home, or taking a trip. Essentially, a number of companies come together to form opportunistic relationships. They are assembling their products and services for a specific purpose, and then can simply dissolve that network once the event or need has passed.


Making videos and animations from successions of still screens
Hi Richard,
 
Although I have not done so, it is my understanding that you can play a Flash movie within Authorware using Macromedia Flash Asset Xtra described at http://www.macromedia.com/support/authorware/documentation/awflash1/awflash1.html 
 
I do not know how to create a flash movie from Authorware.  This seems a bit awkward since Authorware is an interactive hypermedia learning software.  Presumably, Nancy would like to create multiple movies for alternative hypermedia paths.  The purpose, I assume, is to avoid having to download the Authorware player and/or to make the presentation more like going to the movies rather than having to click your way through a maze of buttons and hotwords. 
 
If alternative hypermedia paths were each placed in a Flash or other movie, it would be possible to link each path's movie with simple HTML links.  But if that is the main purpose, it would seem that using Authorware in the first place is not an optimal choice.  I assume that Nancy already has the Authorware files authored and is now seeking a way to present parts of them in online videos.
 
Making avi files seems a bit heavy in terms of bandwidth and storage capacity required.   Isn't there an MPEG alternative?

I might add some notes that I placed in New Bookmarks on March 12, 1999I really like Lotus ScreenCam for making animations or videos of successions of screen images.  This software does not come with a user's manual because the software is so easy to use that no manual is necessary. You can also capture audio, although Brian Zwicker once noted that even professionals have problems with ambient noise (I also have this problem).    Lotus ScreenCam is great when you want to show students a succession of steps (software usage, journal entries, mathematics calculations, statistical tests, etc.) and narrate while you go. The reader is free (and not even necessary if you save the animation as a video).

In response to Brian's question, I don't think the quality of the audio or the video has a much of anything to do with whether you use Lotus ScreenCam, Microsoft Camcorder, or Hyperionics. HyperCam.  The quality issue depends more upon the hardware of the particular computer used when the video or animation is captured.

I will comment on Lotus ScreenCam scm animation files versus avi video files. When I make an animated scm file it looks great and requires a small amount of disk space, say 249Kb of space for a 62 second animation. If I save the same file as a video avi file the same segment requires up to 55,092Kb of disk space for the highest quality video.

A minor difference is that the scm player must be downloaded to play the 249Kb file or any other scm files (this free scm player is very quick and easy to download and install from the Lotus web site). Most computers already have some capability to play avi files without downloading a proprietary player.

The essence of this problem arises in terms of web bandwidth. I once downloaded a 3,153Kb avi file from Ronald Tidd's web site at http://www.sbea.mtu.edu/rrtidd/avi/Excel/excel97.htm. It took 78 minutes to download across a T1 line startingOf course the download would have been much faster when I arrived at work before 5:00 a.m. At either time of day, however, the download would have been much faster if Ronald had instead made a scm or other animation file of the same screen events the file would have been much smaller and flowed over the web much more efficiently.

As a compliment to Ronald, I want to stress that the quality of the audio and video is magnificent. However, It took 78 minutes to download a 3,153Kb file that only yields 45 seconds of playing time. One of the reasons for the high quality is his high sampling rate used in capturing the audio and video. A high sampling rate yields great quality at a great cost in terms of file size and bandwidth requirements on the Internet. I doubt that the software used matters nearly as much as the video/audio sampling rate, the quality of the microphone, the quality of the computer's capture hardware, and the screen resolution and video adapter quality of the computer itself (since we are talking about capturing successions of screen images here). I would opt for the Lotus ScreenCam scm file unless higher quality audio is absolutely essential. Users will save immense amounts of downloading time and disk storage space savings.

One drawback of the Microsoft Camcorder and the Hyperionics. HyperCam appears to be that they will only capture avi video files. Lotus ScreenCam provides a choice between the scm animation or the avi video options.

In any case, the relevant web sites are as follows (prices may have changed since March 12, 1999):

Lotus ScreenCam free trial version
http://www.lotus.com/home.nsf/tabs/screencam
$28 PC Zone price at 800-419-9663

Microsoft Camcorder
Free inside the MS Office 97 Package
Reviewed at http://winweb.winmag.com/library/1996/1296/12r48.htm

Hyperionics. HyperCam
http://www.hyperionics.com/
$30 for downloading at the Hyperionics web site

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard J. Campbell [mailto:campbell@RIO.EDU]
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2000 3:37 PM
To: AECM@VAX.LOYOLA.EDU
Subject: Re: Authorware and Flash

Nancy:
I'm a Flash author, but not into Authorware, but I am sure that you can play a Flash movie WITHIN Authorware. Alternatively, you can capture a non-interactive Flash movie as an avi file using a product like Camtasia (www.techsmith.com), which is one product I'll be showing at my CEP workshop - "Techie Teaching Tips: Beynd PowerPoint" at the annual AAA meeting Session # 19.
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpe/00cpe19.htm
 
Richard J. Campbell
www.VirtualPublsihing.Net
mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.Net
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Nancy Lapierre [mailto:nlapierr@nbnet.nb.ca]
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 9:28 PM
To: rjensen@trinity.edu
Subject: Authorware and Flash

Hello!
I would like to know how I can convert an Authorware presentation into a flash movie?

Background Report: Employee Stock Options ---  http://www.fmcenter.org/pdf/BRapril2000R3b.pdf 


Count Me In - a national fund to provide small business loans and scholarships for women.--- http://www.count-me-in.org/ 

Women and Business (From California State University at Long Beach) --- http://www.csulb.edu/~sbsluss/Women_and_Business.html 


Bob.

I was most impressed with your sundry of information you provide to the accounting and financial people of the world. I have you booked marked for future reference.

I looked your site head to toe to see how I can submit a suggested link, so I am resorting to sending you an email directly.

I am the President of CPE Outlet a low cost CPE provider for CPAs. We are focused on serving CPAs quality, affordable CPE courses. We are NASBA approved and excited to be helping our fellow CPAs.

Can you please add http://www.cpeoutlet.com  to your links of CPE providers. I would appreciate giving consideration to our services and adding us to your listings.

Bradley Nicklin, CPA President, CPE Outlet


From InformationWeek Newsletter on May 29, 2000

SAP Faces More Internet Skepticism

BERLIN -- At its annual European user conference, SAP was selling mySAP.com as a significant e-commerce play. But not everyone was buying.

SAP is under fire for being an Internet laggard, and its assertions this week that mySAP.com has evolved from a marketing concept to a viable product line didn't change matters much. Overall, the conference has underwhelmed some attendees, who lament SAP's lack of marketing prowess and its defensive posture as it struggles to become an e-commerce player.

You can read my SAP and ERP threads at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245glosap.htm 


inequality.org --- http://www.inequality.org/ 


News for kids - KidsPost.com --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/kids/ 


Everyday Science --- http://www.everydayscience.org/ 


US Census: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1999
Selected portions --- http://www.census.gov/statab/www/index.html  
Complete Report [.pdf, accessible by sections, 1045 pages] --- http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-us.html 


Will the economic bubble burst?  (finance, investment) --- http://www.bubbleeconomy.com/ 

Also see FundAlarm at http://www.fundalarm.com/ 


Early history of film and video (The Early Video Project) --- http://davidsonsfiles.org/ 


Good advice for home buyers and sellers --- http://www.domania.com/ 


Arthur Szyk: caricature artist for freedom --- http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/szyk/ 

Dr. Seuss Went to War --- http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/ 


Sahara (a thing of beauty from PBS) ---  http://www.pbs.org/sahara/ 


Jim's huge fine art collection --- http://www.spectrumvoice.com/art/index.html 


SwapVillage --- http://www.swapvillage.com/ 


Toys for techies --- http://www.thinkgeek.com/ 


Alcuin and Clemens Libraries: Resources for Language Students --- http://www.csbsju.edu/library/research/humlangs.html 


Great graphics and animation (biology, anatomy)
Put more meat on those bones (The eSkeletons Project) --- http://www.eSkeletons.org/ 


American Express doesn't accept everywhere --- you can no longer use your American Express Card at porn sites on the web --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,36608,00.html 

"At Suzee's Smut Shop Dot Com, you can see enough naked booty to make your libido boil over -- but bring your Visa, because Suzee'll take off all her clothes before your eyes, but she won't take American Express. In fact, no online smut site will take American Express."


May 21th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. The New Virus; Microsoft Outlook and .vbs 
2. Outlook Security Patch can be 'Burdensome,' Gartner Warns 
3. Not Enough Time to Go to the Pub? Go Online 
4. Virus Hoax Information Center 
5. Gizmo.com: The Marketplace for Unwanted Assets 
6. AICPA Offers New Tech Designation 
7. First Auction.com Rules


Pro2Net Accounting Weekly Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of May 29, 2000 

1. This Week's Accounting-Specific Headlines 
2. Feature Articles 
3. Pro2Net Previews New Site at Conference 
4. Survey Results: Should online sales transactions be taxed? 
5. Our Tip of the Week: Evaluating Tax-Planning Idea Designed to Reduce a Company's Effective Tax Rate 
6. Correction


The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 44 May 26, 2000 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/ 

1. AICPA Council Approves Plans For Internet Portal 
2. Activity Based Costing Proves Worthwhile 
3. Resource: Get Complete Access To AICPA Tech2000 Conference Presentations Online 
4. Auditors Can Perform Non-Attest Services And Still Be Independent Too 
5. US Unveils New $5 and $10 Notes This Week 
6. 10 Hottest Jobs For The Future 
7. Resource: New Tools Available on AccountingWEB For Credit Reports, Company Information, Market Research and More 
8. Benchmarking Strategies To Improve Your Practice 
9. Resource: Pivot Tables Tutorials on Financial Modeling 
10. Internet Advisor: What's an ASP and How Can It Benefit Me?


AccountingStudents Newsletter: May 23, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. Take a Study Break! Enter to Win a CPA Review Course 
2. Accounting and Finance Internship Postings Increase 
3. Site of the Week: Garage.com 
4. Survey Results: How do you prepare for final exams? 
5. Tip of the Week: Pretesting and the CPA Exam 
6. Professionalism is Essential for Job Seekers 
7. Save 25 Percent: "You Can Pass the CPA Exam: Get Motivated"


Sounds "Daffy" to me
A Giant Duck Ruled the Earth --- http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_5041.html 

A 15 foot giant bird-beast, closely related to the modern duck, may have ruled the Earth after dinosaurs died out, scientists believe.

The flightless Bullockornis planei weighed half a ton and was the most ferocious meat-eater of its day.

It had a huge serrated beak which it used to tear chunks out of its prey, according to Dr Steve Wroe, a mammalogist at the Australian Museum.

The duck ruled the roost after the dinosaurs died out 15 million years ago and bit the dust itself 50,000 years ago, the New Scientist magazine says.


Forwarded by Bob Overn --- It all depends upon each blonde's perspective
So there's this blonde out for a walk. She comes to a river and sees another Blonde on the opposite bank. "Yoo-hoo" she shouts, "How can I get to the other side?" 

The second blonde looks up the river, then down the river, then shouts back, "You are on the other side."


Forwarded by Bob Overn --- This time, the woman is the engineer.  

A rather inhibited (redundant adjective) accountant finally splurged on a luxury cruise to the Caribbean. It was the "craziest" thing he had ever done in his life.

Just as he was beginning to enjoy himself, a hurricane roared upon the huge ship, capsizing it like a child's toy. Somehow the accountant, desperately hanging on to a life preserver, managed to wash ashore on a secluded island.

Outside of beautiful scenery, a spring-fed pool, bananas and coconuts, there was little else. He lost all hope and for hours on end, sat under a palm tree when a beautiful woman in a small rowboat appeared.

"I'm from the other side of the island," she said. "Were you on the cruise ship, too?"

"Yes, I was, " he answered. "But where did you get that rowboat?"

"Well, I whittled the oars from gum tree branches, wove the reinforced gunnel from palm branches, and made the keel and stern from a Eucalyptus tree."

"But, what did you use for tools?" asked the accountant.

"There was a very unusual strata of alluvial rock exposed on the South side of the island. I discovered that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. Anyhow, that's how I got the tools. But, enough of that," she said. "Where have you been living all this time? I don't see any shelter."

"To be honest, I've just been sleeping on the beach," he said.

"Would you like to come to my place?" the woman asked. The accountant nodded dumbly.

She expertly rowed them around to her side of the island, and tied up the boat with a handsome strand of hand-woven hemp topped with a neat back splice. They walked up a winding stone walk she had laid and around a Palm tree. There stood an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white.

"It's not much, but I call it home." Inside, she said, "Sit down please; would you like to have a drink?"

"No, thanks," he said. "One more coconut juice and I'll throw up!"

"It won't be coconut juice," the woman replied. "I have a crude still out back, so we can have authentic Pina Coladas."

Trying to hide his amazement, he accepted the drink, and they sat down on her couch to talk. After they had exchanged stories, the woman asked, "Tell me, have you always had a beard?"

"No," he replied, "I was clean shaven all of my life until I ended up on this island."

"Well, if you'd like to shave, there's a razor upstairs in the bathroom cabinet."

The accountant, no longer questioning anything, went upstairs to the bathroom and shaved with an intricate bone-and-shell device honed razor sharp. Next he showered -- not even attempting to fathom a guess as to how she managed to get warm water into the bathroom -- and went back downstairs.

He couldn't help but admire the masterfully carved banister as he walked.

"You look great," said the woman. "I think I'll go up and slip into something more comfortable."

As she did, the man continued to sip his Pina Colada. After a short time, the woman, smelling faintly of gardenias, returned wearing a revealing gown fashioned out of pounded palm fronds.

"Tell me," she asked, "we've both been out here for a very long time with no companionship. You know what I mean. Haven't you been lonely, too...isn't there something that you really, really miss? Something that all men and woman need? Something that would be really nice to have right now!"

"Yes, there is!" the accountant replied, shucking off his shyness. "There is something I've wanted to do for so long. But on this island all alone, it was just...well, it was impossible."

"Well, it's not impossible, any more," the woman said.

The man, practically panting in excitement, said breathlessly: "You mean... you actually figured out some way we can CHECK OUR E-MAIL HERE!!??!!"


Forwarded by Dick Haar

A man was getting a haircut prior to a trip to Rome. He mentioned the trip to the barber who responded, 

"Rome? Why would anyone want to go there? It's crowded and dirty. You're crazy to go to Rome.  So, how are you getting there?" 

"We're taking Airline X," was the reply. "We got a great rate!" 

"Airline X?" exclaimed the barber. "That's a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they're always late.  So, where are you staying in Rome?" 

"We'll be at the downtown International Marriott." 

"That dump! That's the worst hotel in the city. The rooms are small, the service is surly and they're overpriced.  So, what are you doing when you get there?" 

"We're going to go to see the Vatican and we hope to see the Pope." 

"That's rich," laughed the barber.  "You and a million other people trying to see him. He'll look the size of an ant. Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You're going to need it."

A month later, the man again came in for his regular haircut. The barber asked him about his trip to Rome. 

"It was wonderful," explained the man, "not only were we on time in one of Airline X's brand new planes, but it was overbooked and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine and the service were wonderful.  And the hotel -- it was great! They'd just finished a $25 million remodeling job and now it's the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us the presidential suite at no extra charge!"

"Well," muttered the barber, "I know you didn't get to see the Pope." 

"Actually, we were quite lucky. As we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder and explained that the Pope likes to personally meet some of the visitors, and if I'd be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me.  Sure enough, five minutes later the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand, and he spoke a few words to me."

"Really?" asked the barber. "What'd he say?"

He said, "Where'd you get the sh___y haircut?"



Debbie's Corner

NASCAR Homepage

Danville Area Chamber of Commerce

Danville Register & Bee (this did not have a link directly to the paper, but did have the following)

Information Technology

Tony Canody:  Manager of Information Technology, Media General Community Newspapers Group

Duties at Media General Community Newspaper Group


Averett College

The Business Administration Department provides programs to expand the educational foundation of students for successful service in commercial, nonprofit, and government organizations or for entering graduate programs.  Students first acquire knowledge and skills that are generally needed in business and may then concentrate on a specialized business function such as accounting, management, or marketing.  Students may earn a degree with two concentrations in Business Administration by completing all requirements for both concentrations.  A minor in Business Administration is also available.

The Master of Business Administration program is designed to assist in the development of the business executive who, upon completion of the degree, is both prepared and equipped to fulfill the needs and expectations of today's employers. The program concentrates on the functional areas of business. These include, but are not limited to, management, accounting, finance, economics and strategic planning.

The following program objectives prepare the MBA graduate for expanded roles within their organization.

The Associate of Science degree in Business Administration is designed for those in the early stages of management or professional career. The program includes a solid foundation in the arts and sciences as well as introductory courses in management and business principles

The Bachelor of Business Administration Program is designed to enable students to work effectively in today's complex business environment. The program includes, but is not limited to courses in management theory, marketing, finance, computer information systems, economics and accounting. Designed to provide an effective balance of theory and practical experiences, the program promotes a complementary relationship between job skills and classroom applications. Skill development in the areas of decision making, business communications, and quantitative analysis.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

400 Accounting Information Systems  (3)
A study of the organization and use of accounting information systems.  Emphasis is on the analysis and design of accounting systems in business entities.  Course also enables the student to develop an understanding of the relationships between computer hardware and software.  Prerequisites:  Senior status and completion of CSS 113, BSA 325, 343.


Avila College

Since 1916, Avila College has existed to serve the mission of the Sisters of St. Joseph: to create opportunities for people to succeed. We help people define success on their own terms and then equip them with skills, knowledge, and conviction to achieve their goals.

The Bachelor of Science in Accounting prepares students for careers in public, corporate, governmental, or non-profit accounting. Depending on their interests, students may pursue either the Public or the Corporate Accounting track. Working with an accounting faculty advisor, students can choose the track which fits their interests.

Students majoring in Accounting are versed in all aspects of accounting including practice, theory, and professional ethics. In addition, graduates who complete both the Bachelor of Science in Accounting and the MBA in Accounting will satisfy the 150 hours requirements of both Kansas and Missouri to sit for the CPA exam.

Accountants need critical business skills to advance in the ranks of management. The accounting program includes appropriate business coursework so that students develop those skills.

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

ACCOUNTING CONCENTRATION

    The Accounting concentration is designed for students to further their accounting education and careers.  Advanced class work in accounting theory, tax and cost accounting, and auditing are included in this concentration.  An individual's course of study may include class work that will satisfy state requirements to sit for the CPA.

 

UNDERGRADUATE COURSE DESCRIPTION:

AC 365. Accounting Information Systems. (3)

Study of the design and use of the accounting information system within the organization. Prerequisite: AC 202, BU 110 (or equivalent). II, as needed.

 

GRADUATE PROGRAMS/COURSES

BU 661. Management Information Systems. (3)

Designed to assist students in developing the ability to determine an organizations information needs, to relate key organizational decisions to their underlying sources of data and to evaluate overall information systems. Prerequisites: AC 501, BU 610, BU 621, BU 630 or equivalents. AC 650 is recommended.


Azusa Pacific University

The School of Business and Management 
The SBM is a candidate for accreditation by the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs. Institutional membership in the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business also provides information for curriculum review and upgrading of degree programs. Curriculum content in the undergraduate business program is correlated with graduate school requirements for those who wish to pursue an advanced degree such as a Master of Business Administration (MBA) or Master of Arts in Human and Organizational Development (MAHOD).
The SBM offers two undergraduate degrees, the Bachelor of Arts and the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. The B.S. degree requires students to complete the common professional component (i.e., the business core) and then select a concentration area: Business Administration, Accounting, Management Information Systems, or Marketing. The B.A. degree requires students to complete the business administration core and then select elective courses deemed most appropriate for their career objectives in business and management.

The Accounting concentration surveys the principles, theories, and concepts of the accounting profession while providing an intensive review of the economic, quantitative, and managerial aspects of business. Its practical component leads to work assignments in local certified professional accountant (CPA) firms in students' junior and senior years. The combination of classroom theory and actual experience also prepares candidates for the CPA examination administered by the various state boards of accountancy in the United States.
BUSI 240 Introduction to Information Systems (3)
A study of the fundamentals of information systems methods and equipment, computer characteristics and concepts, and elements of programming is offered. Business applications of computers are discussed and demonstrated. A working knowledge of personal computer productivity tools such as Web browsers, Microsoft Windows 95, and Microsoft Office is provided.

 

BUSI 240 Introduction to Information Systems (3)
A study of the fundamentals of information systems methods and equipment, computer characteristics and concepts, and elements of programming is offered. Business applications of computers are discussed and demonstrated. A working knowledge of personal computer productivity tools such as Web browsers, Microsoft Windows 95, and Microsoft Office is provided.
 

The Master of Business Administration Program offers advanced professional education leading to or enhancing a career in a variety of organizational settings, including business, government agencies, or nonprofit enterprises. Careers in these areas become more demanding each day; the need for a wide range of management skills has never been greater.

BUSI 514 Management of Technology (3)
This course surveys a variety of topics dealing with technology: how to think strategically about technology; organizational design and controls; business process design through technology; an overview of hardware and software platforms, databases, and networking; Internet; and computer-supported cooperative work.

Services:

Estate Planning
Technology

Information Service and Technologies


If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.

 



And that's the way it was on May 31, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

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May 17, 2000


Quotes of the Week:  

What would you say to a young person who asked about how you would live your life if you were given a chance to rewind and record over the tape of your life?  I'd probably sing the lyrics of one of my favorite folk songs recorded by Jud Strunk, one of my favorite entertainers during the years I lived in Maine.

If I had to do it all again --- Today,
I would do it all --- The way we did back then.

I'd probably run the same old races,
Stumble in the same old places.
I'd prefer to do it all again.

All the sorrows are gone now,
My thoughts are never sad.
The number of the good times,
Far outweigh the bad.

And some of our bad times,
Are the best we ever had.

If I had to do it all again --- Today,
I would do it all the way we did back then.

And I'd hope some day --- along the way,
We'd meet again --- I'd say
I prefer to do it all --- The way we did back then.


From May 17-19, I will be in Cambridge, MA at an e-Education Conference courtesy of Ernst & Young, LLP and the American Accounting Association.  The theme of the conference is "Implementing e-Business in Your Curriculum."  Its purpose is to inspire invited participants to revise business curricula for changing times and technologies.  

Some of the materials in our pre-arrival assignments are available on the web:

http://www.businessinnovation.ey.com/journal/issue3/features/ecomm/loader.html  

The Big Idea
     Electronic Commerce: The Next Generation 
     Information Rules: A Conversation with Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian 

Innovation in Action
     Making the Grade: Standard & Poor's Provided Real-Time, Customized 
             Ratings Information on the Web 

A Blueprint for Change
     Watchdogging the Web

http://www.business2.com/articles/1999/03/text/cover-story.html 

Are You Next?

Provided in hard copy only

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Collaborative Commerce - April 2000

"Electronic Commerce: The Next Generation," by AlanCohen John M. Jordan
 http://www.businessinnovation.ey.com/journal/issue3/features/ecomm/loader.html 

Given the coming advancements in agents, directories, and databases, along with the rapid increase in the capacity of both fiber optics and computation, we see four structural changes accelerating:

The question is not whether these structural changes are coming, but when. We believe that within the next 18 months, most of these inhibitors will give way to advances in technology and acceptance to changes in decades-old business processes. Companies will miss these trends at their own peril: yet coordinating business and technology change at unprecedented speed will test most corporations' capability as never before. The winners in the new environment will have to earn their mantle the hard way.

"Are You Next?  20 INDUSTRIES THAT MUST CHANGE,"  Edited By Jeffery Davis, Graphics By XPLANE  at http://www.business2.com/articles/1999/03/text/cover-story.html 

Just a few years into its evolution, the commercial Internet has delivered impressive rewards to its earliest adopters--stratospheric market capitalization, millions of electronic customers, unlimited virtual partnerships, and skyrocketing online revenues. Radical change is already underway in electronic markets for books, music, computers, and software.

Behind the scenes, however, tectonic shifts loom for many more industries soon to face the Internet's full impact. Physical distribution channels are vanishing. Boundaries between buyers and sellers are breaking down. Dozens of industries, reluctant to adapt for many reasons, are suddenly pondering an uncertain future.

In the following pages we examine some of the lessons in attitude and action illustrated by five industry segments where the ecommerce winners and sinners have yet to be defined-plus statistical snapshots of 15 others to keep your eyes on.

Jeffrey Davis does not predict "bumping" of many traditional colleges and universities in the above article.  However, I think that many are extremely vulnerable and have focused on possible futures in the following documents:


Question:  What should all instructors do at this very moment? 
Answer:     See if their textbooks are now available as electronic books.  The list of available textbooks includes many of the leading textbooks of the world.

How do WizeUp electronic books differ from more traditional eBooks?

Have you adopted any textbooks that have become WizeUps?  There is a long listing of some of the world's leading textbooks in various disciplines from accounting to philosophy that are now digitized under WizeUps.

Do you want to sell WizeUp textbooks (this one is a controversial matter of ethics!)

I have added a lot about WizeUp, in http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm#051500 


Where can you find a great listing of accounting journals?  Try http://www.csu.edu.au/anet/research/index.html 


Why the future doesn't need us.
Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
By Bill Joy at http://wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html 

Bill Joy, cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, was cochair of the presidential commission on the future of IT research, and is coauthor of The Java Language Specification. His work on the Jini pervasive computing technology was featured in Wired 6.08.

In my own work, as codesigner of three microprocessor architectures - SPARC, picoJava, and MAJC - and as the designer of several implementations thereof, I've been afforded a deep and firsthand acquaintance with Moore's law. For decades, Moore's law has correctly predicted the exponential rate of improvement of semiconductor technology. Until last year I believed that the rate of advances predicted by Moore's law might continue only until roughly 2010, when some physical limits would begin to be reached. It was not obvious to me that a new technology would arrive in time to keep performance advancing smoothly.

But because of the recent rapid and radical progress in molecular electronics - where individual atoms and molecules replace lithographically drawn transistors - and related nanoscale technologies, we should be able to meet or exceed the Moore's law rate of progress for another 30 years. By 2030, we are likely to be able to build machines, in quantity, a million times as powerful as the personal computers of today - sufficient to implement the dreams of Kurzweil and Moravec.

As this enormous computing power is combined with the manipulative advances of the physical sciences and the new, deep understandings in genetics, enormous transformative power is being unleashed. These combinations open up the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse: The replicating and evolving processes that have been confined to the natural world are about to become realms of human endeavor.

In designing software and microprocessors, I have never had the feeling that I was designing an intelligent machine. The software and hardware is so fragile and the capabilities of the machine to "think" so clearly absent that, even as a possibility, this has always seemed very far in the future.

But now, with the prospect of human-level computing power in about 30 years, a new idea suggests itself: that I may be working to create tools which will enable the construction of the technology that may replace our species. How do I feel about this? Very uncomfortable. Having struggled my entire career to build reliable software systems, it seems to me more than likely that this future will not work out as well as some people may imagine. My personal experience suggests we tend to overestimate our design abilities.

Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn't we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn't we proceed with great caution?
More at http://wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html 

Other references of interest along these same lines:

Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies --- http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com 

Also don't forget about that controversial Brave New World by Ray Kurzweil at http://www.kurzweiltech.com/WIRED/ 


From Webmonkey Frontdoor [wiredmail-info@lists.wired.com] on May 16, 2000 

Feeling the pressure from sleek newcomer Google perhaps, or maybe just caught up in 5K fever, AltaVista has unveiled a new, lean, ad-free interface to their powerful search engine at  Raging.com.   Mysteriously, though, Raging detects and blocks Lynx users.

I think Raging.com is a great search engine!
Note the "Customize" options
You can use Boolian operators. For exact searches of word strings, use quotation marks.

You will find the following at http://www.raging.com/ 

What makes Raging Search results the best on the Web? At Raging Search, we use the most advanced technology to sort through the ever-expanding World Wide Web, and provide you, the user, with only the most relevant Web pages for your query.

In order to do that, we start with the biggest and freshest index of Web pages. Our index contains every word found on more than 350 million unique Web pages, and we are constantly updating our index by removing dead links and adding new pages. Our goal is to create an index of the entire World Wide Web!

But having the best index is only half the battle. We also rely on sophisticated technology to sort through that index and find exactly the pages you want. There are many ways to judge whether a Web page is relevant to your query, and Raging Search combines many different factors to find the best matches, including text relevance and link analysis.

Text relevance searches every Web page for exactly the words you enter. Many factors enter into text relevance, such as how important the words are on the page, how many times the words appear, where on the page they appear, and how many other pages contain those words.

Link analysis uses the many connections from one page to another to rank the quality and/or usefulness of each page. In other words, if many Web pages are linking to a page X, then page X is considered a high-quality page. In this way, Raging Search technology uses the judgment of actual people across the Web to improve our rankings.

These and many other factors are combined to insure that you receive the results you need right away. Raging Search is the only search site you will ever need.

Bob Jensen maintains updates to search engine news at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 


Following on the heels of Morningside Ventures started up by Columbia University, the new E-SKOLAR venture firm of Stanford University may set a whole new trend in the missions of universities and further blur the bright line between non-profit education versus corporate education --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm#Education 

Stanford University, which has trained many of the best minds in Silicon Valley, jumped into the Internet fray Tuesday, spinning off its first startup company to market a high-speed medical search engine for physicians.

E-SKOLAR, based on an internal service developed and used by Stanford's medical school, will allow doctors to search multiple medical references including textbooks, medical journals, drug databases, and clinical guidelines.

The Push for Online Medical Info Why Doctors Hate the Internet Safe E-Health Requires Patience Docs in the Dark Ages Check yourself into Med-Tech Mind your own Business news

"E-SKOLAR has provided us with a great opportunity to respond to the needs of physicians worldwide," Eugene Bauer, vice president for Stanford University Medical Center and dean of Stanford's School of Medicine, said in a news release.

"We believe the service will significantly raise the bar of medical practice by bringing one-click knowledge to the point of care."

As one feature of the e-SKOLAR service, physicians will be able to earn continuing medical education credits -- a "Webucation" strategy designed to place the company in the forefront of those developing Internet-based training schemes, which some investors believe could be the "next big thing" for Internet companies.

Paul Lippe, chief executive of the new company, said it would help physicians to take advantage of Stanford and turn the university, "from a training resource to a sustaining resource."

"Addressing important challenges, such as improving medical care, by leveraging the Web, can do good while creating a very good business," said Lippe, a former senior vice president of business and market development at Synopsys, an electronic design automation company.

This is where the line between non-profit versus profit training and education gets blurry:

E-SKOLAR marks the first direct Internet play for Stanford, which boasts former professors and alumni who started companies ranging from computing giant Hewlett-Packard Co. to Internet portal Yahoo. Stanford owns a majority stake in the new company, which plans to distribute stock options to employees and hopes one day to achieve a successful initial public offering on the stock market.

For another take on this same news release, see "Stanford Launches Clicks-and-Mortar Play" by Barbara Gengler at http://www.line56.com/news/display.cfm?NewsID=809 

One feature of the e-Skolar service will allow physicians to earn continuing medical education credits, a "Webucation" strategy designed to place the company in the forefront of those developing Internet-based training schemes.

By 2003, Web-based training for businesses will grow to $11.4 billion, up from $2.2 billion this year, according to International Data Corp.

Paul Lippe, CEO of the new company, said e-Skolar would help physicians take advantage of Stanford's ever developing medical knowledge base and turn the university "from a training resource to a sustaining resource."

"The thing that's distinct about e-Skolar is that it's not just about the university commercializing technology, but it is actually a click-and-mortar play for the university on the Web," he said.

Stanford's School of Medicine will support e-Skolar with technology transfer, content collaboration and oversight. The search engine itself, Stanford Skolar, M.D., evolved out of the internal Stanford health information network developed over the past four years by faculty and students at the university's schools of computer science and medicine.


From InformationWeek Online on May 15, 2000
Poe of today might say "Quoth the Raven, `Evermore' "

IBM and its Lotus Development Corp. subsidiary today will unveil a business unit dedicated to distance learning over the Web.

IBM plans to make a considerable investment in E-learning. The move is expected to help Lotus deliver on a strategy in which the company plans to focus on three areas: distance learning, knowledge management, and its core messaging and collaboration software. "It's my intention to have Lotus established as the franchise player in the knowledge-management and distributed- learning space," says Lotus CEO Al Zollar. The rate of new technology development is outpacing companies' abilities to train workers, he says. Consequently, businesses aren't realizing the benefits of newly implemented technologies as quickly as they should. "We're finding that in some cases, the time to training is exceeding the time to market," Zollar says.

Proponents of distance learning say it can help meet key business goals by allowing companies to quickly train employees and speed delivery of products and services to the markets they serve. "It's a great and growing space, and gaining momentum," says Fred McCrea, a research analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners. According to E-learning company Hungry Minds Inc., IBM's entrance could provide a big boost to the industry. "We're among the early movers, and we're looking for validation," says Hungry Minds CEO Stuart Skorman. "It takes [a company the size of] IBM doing this to get it off the ground."

Lotus' first E-learning product, Learning Space Anytime 3.0, was released last year. The company's first knowledge-management system, Raven, is being tested at 250 customer sites. The software will let companies retrieve content from throughout their IT systems and locate people who can provide needed knowledge and expertise. Lotus plans to make Raven available in the second half of this year.

From InternetWeek Newsletter [newsletter@news.internetwk.com] on May 15, 2000

Lotus Stakes Claim On E-learning

IBM and its Lotus Development subsidiary today will unveil a business unit dedicated to distance learning over the Web.

IBM said it plans to make a considerable investment in e-learning. The move is expected to help Lotus deliver on a strategy in which the company plans to focus on three areas: distance learning, knowledge management, and its core messaging and collaboration software.

"It's my intention to have Lotus established as the franchise player in the knowledge management and distributed learning space," said Lotus CEO Al Zollar. --Diane Rezendes Khirillah and Rick Whiting, InformationWeek

For the rest of the story: http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20000515S0004 

IBM has high hopes with the above venture, but the market share leader with zooming popularity is Blackboard.  You can read more about Blackboard and the other competitors at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245soft1.htm.


"The Full-Time Stress of Part-Time Professors:  For the pittance they're paid, adjunct profs at our colleges might as well be sweatshop workers" By Michele Scarff, Newsweek, May 15, 2000, pg. 10.  The online version is at http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/dept/my/a19556-2000may7.htm 

Retiring professors are rarely replaced by full-time professors anymore. Why should administrators worry about tenure and sabbaticals when they can hire part-time or temporary adjuncts for a fraction of the cost? Unfortunately, these savings don't usually benefit the student.

And then there is the problem of plagiarism.

Then there was the question of plagiarism. I allowed students to write their research essays on any subject of their choice. I wanted students to be enthusiastic, but giving them so much freedom meant I lost control over the sources. When I read paragraph after paragraph without errors I wanted to believe that students had improved so much between writing their last essay and their research paper but, and I say it with great sadness, many were not able to resist temptation. Does anybody know how many search engines there are? Do you have any idea how much work it is to try to find the original source?


I stumbled onto the following by accident --- http://www.cs.umass.edu/~ehaugsja/tech.html?from=SNI.html 
This is a great website to bookmark!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CRITICAL THINKING about TECHNOLOGY

Why The Future Doesn't Need Us. (April 2000, WIRED Magazine)
By Bill Joy, co-founder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems

Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.

Commercial Alert
Use of Psychology to Exploit Children, Commericalism in schools and education, etc.

Confronting Technology
A mountain of books and articles to read

NetFuture - Technology and Human Responsibility
A weekly newsletter. Excellent stuff. Maybe even more useful than the above link to books. Look at the extensive topical index for articles on EDUCATION and COMPUTERS, HUMAN FREEDOM, TECHNOLOGICAL INEVITABILITY, and COMPUTERS vs. PEOPLE

For Teachers

The Computer Delusion
(The Atlantic Monthly; July 1997; The Computer Delusion; Volume 280, No. 1; pages 45-62.) My favorite article about education and computers.
"There is no good evidence that most uses of computers significantly improve teaching and learning, yet school districts are cutting programs -- music, art, physical education -- that enrich children's lives to make room for this dubious nostrum, and the Clinton Administration has embraced the goal of "computers in every classroom" with credulous and costly enthusiasm."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Note from Bob Jensen:  The Atlantic Monthly Editor has obviously not seen the following:
Do you recall the praise that I lavished on the ethics website of a Carnegie-Mellon University Philosophy Professor named Robert Cavalier in my March 22, 000 edition of New Bookmarks?  See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q1.htm#032200 

Robert Cavalier now has an article entitled "Cases, Narratives, and Interactive Multimedia," in Syllabus, May 2000. pp. 20-22.  The online version of the Syllabus article is not yet posted, but will eventually be available at http://www.syllabus.com/ 

The purpose of our evaluation of A Right to Die?  The Case of Dax Cowart was to see if learning outcomes for case studies could be enhanced with the use of interactive multimedia.  My Introduction to Ethics class was divided into three groups:  Text, Film, and CD-ROM.  Equal distribution was achieved by using student scores on previous exams plus their Verbal SAT scores.

Two graders were trained and achieved more than 90 percent in grader variabilility.  The results of the students' performance were put through statistical analysis and the null hypothesis was rejected for the CD/Film and CD/Text groups.  Significant statistical difference was demonstrated in favor of interactive multimedia.

For a more complete debate on these issues see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Internet and Gutenberg
In history's sweep, it may also rank behind the car, the plane and antibiotics among others, Newsweek, 1/24/00

Hang on lads, I’ve got an idea
Writing at the beginning of the 17th century, Francis Bacon, an English philosopher of science, maintained that the three most important inventions were gunpowder, the magnetic compass and printing. We agree, and add another seven made after Bacon died. The Economist Millenium Special, 12/25/99

Some easy reads that will probably be in your local library:


Students Receive Live Tutoring Online (for younger children) --- http://www.toptutors.com/ 
This service is reviewed in T.H.E. Journal, May 2000, pg. 42.

TopTutors.com offers the convenience of in-home tutoring, while allowing parents to select the best tutor for their child from a large national talent pool of credentialed, screened, and trained teachers. Our multimedia system is simple to use and delivers a rewarding learning experience for the student. All you need is a Windows 95/98 compatible computer (Macintosh support by Fall 2000) and Internet access. TopTutors.com will take care of the rest.

The TopTutors.com service is available at an average cost of $35 per tutoring session. Click here to go directly to the sign up pages to find the details on our special charter offer.


Find the font that you once liked but can no longer remember what it was called.  You can scan the font and upload the file to MyFonts.com --- http://www.myfonts.com 


U.S. Justice Department launches new fraud reporting website --- https://www.ifccfbi.gov/.  The Internet Fraud Complaint Center. The Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C).

IFCC's mission is to address fraud committed over the Internet. For victims of Internet fraud, IFCC provides a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities of a suspected criminal or civil violation. For law enforcement and regulatory agencies at all levels, IFCC offers a central repository for complaints related to Internet fraud, works to quantify fraud patterns, and provides timely statistical data of current fraud trends. 


From FEI Express --- http://www.fei.org/ 

  1. In This Issue: SEC Chairman Levitt Calls For New Rules To Govern Auditors 

  2. FEI Survey on Auditor Independence 

  3. Harvard Case Studies 

  4. MCI WorldCom 1999 Annual Report 

  5. Stock Option Compensation and Dilution

  6. Transforming Into an E-Business 

  7. Asset Allocation: What's New with Investment Styles?

  8. SEC and Electronic Media


From Phil Livingston, President of the Financial Executives Institute

SEC Chairman Levitt Calls For New Rules To Govern Auditors
In a major policy address today decrying a "culture of gamesmanship" in financial reporting and conflicts of interest at audit firms, Chairman Levitt called for new SEC rulemaking and other measures to tighten the screws on auditors. Addressing an audience at New York University's School of Law, Levitt said, "Independence is the core of the profession," and criticized the AICPA for being "unable to discipline its own members for violations of its own standards of professional conduct".

Issues to be addressed by the rulemaking include:

"I am concerned that the audit function is simply being used as a springboard to more lucrative consulting services," Levitt said.

In a May 1 letter to chief accountant Lynn Turner, FEI's Committee on Corporate Reporting recommended that the SEC "refrain from a further historical review of independence matters" and instead focus on the future. But Levitt said that "Nothing less than a serious assessment of the scope of yesterday's control deficiencies is needed to provide a basis for improvement."

Levitt harked back to the Savings and Loan crisis and called for "stronger, more effective oversight" of the accounting profession, including more power for the Public Oversight Board. He said he was "saddened" to learn last week that the AICPA's SECPS Planning Committee had informed the Public Oversight Board (POB) that it was "cutting off" funding for the special independence compliance reviews, noting that "This development is a significant setback to self-regulation and independent oversight."

(In a media briefing immediately following the SEC Chairman's speech, POB Chairman Charles Bowsher, sharing the dais with Chairman Levitt, was even more blunt. "The POB is not going to be intimidated or pushed around by people cutting off our funding. We want to make sure that in the future people understand this clearly.")

In addition to new SEC rulemaking, Chairman Levitt also called for modernization of rules prohibiting investments by audit firm professionals in audit clients. He said that changes to the rules could be expected within sixty days, and would also address mutual fund investments and investments by family members especially in dual income families.

The full text of the chairman's speech is available here. --- http://www.fei.org/download/SEC_Speech_5-10-00.pdf 

FEI Survey on Auditor Independence
As noted above, auditor independence is a hot public policy issue. Last month we surveyed 218 FEI members on the subject of auditor independence and consulting work. The full results of the survey can be accessed here. Basically, we tried to find out the level of spending on non-audit or attest function services compared to the fees paid for audit work. Only 15% of the respondents paid NO fees (did no consulting work) with their auditors.

One of the most interesting parts of the survey was an open-ended question at the end that asked "Do you have any comments on the relationship of consulting work as it relates to the independence of your external auditor?"

Here is a sampling of the comments. I think this reflects the bulk of the comments, but you can view all the comments (cleaned of all names) here.

"We try to limit it to tax. Tax because of the expertise and knowledge of company. We use other big five firms for consulting in other areas to maintain independence."

"We spent considerable time with our audit committee reviewing the nature of non-audit services provided, and our auditors have reviewed with them steps taken inside the firm to protect independence."

"This is a value-added service to us. The accounting firm understands our business … which makes the consulting work more effective."

"We believe that any consulting work performed by our auditors should exclude any areas which may impact the financial statements. Such areas would include valuation of derivatives or valuations of purchase business acquisitions."

"We monitor consulting work done by our audit firm very closely to ensure independence."

"We have used our audit firm in various capacities over the years and independence has never been a real concern."

 

For FAS 133 and IAS 39, one of my students found this comprehensive tutorial on derivative financial instruments (but not on accounting for derivatives) 
Applied Derivatives Trading's Beginners Guide http://www.adtrading.com/adt1/begin1.htm 


"Real Options:  Another Way to Value Internet Initiatives," by Dan Latimore, Financial Executive, May/Jun 2000, pp. 23-27.  This issue is not yet online, but it will soon be posted to http://www.fei.org/magazine/default.htm 

Indeed, many executives instinctively know Internet initiatives have some sort of value that discounted cash flow analysis (DCF) fails to capture.  The market value Wall Street ascribes to many dot-coms cannot be derived using DCF, yet billion-dollar companies without a profitable quarter are commonplace.  What justification can there be for this apparent irrationality?

The root of the problem is that static valuation methods tend to undervalue investments made under uncertainty.  For several years, the oil and gas industry and pharmaceutical companies, business characterized by large capital investments with extremely volatile payoffs, have been using "real options" to help them quantify the risks and potential rewards associated with making investments in risky environments.


There is a free lunch ---  educationwise!
Accounting Students Newsletter's Web Site of the Week --- http://www.accountingstudents.com/news/sow/index.asp 

FreeEdu.com  ( http://www.freeedu.com/ ) is an Internet-based learning company whose goal is to offer free online education to the general public. Through free access to hundreds of online courses, organized Personal Folders and friendly animation, FreeEdu.com establishes a fun and convenient work environment for kindergarteners and post-graduates alike.

Overview FreeEdu.com, recently launched on May 1, 2000, provides free classes online provided you fill out a quick and easy registration form and agree to the terms provided. Once you are registered you will receive 100 free Knowledge Points, points that are accumulated with each hour spent on a FreeEdu.com course. There are currently a handful of designated courses you may take for free to rack up Knowledge Points for future courses, such as "Competencies for Tomorrow's Managers" and "Negotiating: Closing the Deal."

The Course Directory is divided into six folders: Business, IT Technical, Desktop Computing, K-12, Personal Skills and Certification Exam. Each course needs an average of 100 Knowledge Points in order to take the course for free. If you don't have enough Knowledge Points, you may put down a fully refundable deposit, ranging from $50 to $100. The deposit is refundable once you complete the course in the recommended number of hours (ranging from 2.5 to 5 hours). Click on About FreeEdu.com in the top navigation bar for further information.

Perhaps the best part of FreeEdu.com is the Personal Folder. Once you are registered a Personal Folder is automatically created for your account. You can access it from anywhere on the site. It includes your name, course enrollment, total Knowledge Points, total hours spent on courses, deposit amounts and more.

Content We tested the free trial course, "Negotiating: Closing the Deal." The content is more appropriate for a secondary student -- it teaches how to control anger when negotiating. The course title, therefore, was not very reflective of the course content. The navigation was very simple with forward and back buttons. Quizzes were given after only a minute of reading, which is good for younger students with limited attention spans. We also tried "Exploring the New Basics of Business Writing," another free trial course. This course has a different format and navigation, targets a higher-education audience, and has more in-depth content.

Navigation You should have no problems jumping around this virtual file cabinet. Flip through, open and close folders with a click of a button. Jump from Personal Folder to Course Directory easily. The only thing to get used to is the format variations between courses.

Design Creating a Web site with a design that targets five-year-olds to fifty-year-olds is no easy feat, but FreeEdu.com meets the challenge with simple and fun animation.

Note from Bob Jensen:  Don't expect too much in the way of college credit material at this website, at least not at the moment.  There are, however, many practical course modules.  What is impressive is the highly reputable advertisers that keep this site going (Cisco, Acer, etc.).  It is also clever how this website makes it possible to take courses for free, but the required deposit strategy discourages students who are not serious about finishing a course.

There are quite a few courses in software usage such a Quickbooks.  This may be of some use to instructors who want students to use Quickbooks or other software without having to spend class time on such matters.  

There are many computer-related courses such as database courses on Datawarehousing, Oracle 8, SQL, Sybase, etc.  


Dr. Jensen:

I've been reading your new bookmarks for about a year now (as to many of my colleagues), and I really love them!

I have a request. Although there are many publishers, I noticed you have only 2 listed under Online Publishers on your home page. (BTW, Wadsworth is our sister company.) Would you consider adding www.swcollege.com ? In addition to producing the largest-selling text book of all time (Warren/Fess/Reeve's Accounting), we have some very good online products:

Taxpoint: http://taxpoint.swcollege.com/taxpoint_2001/taxpoint.html 

StudyLive: http://www.swcollege.com/acct/studylive/studylive.html 

INTACCT: http://www.swcollege.com/acct/rama/intacct/intacct.html 

Computerized Principles of Accounting:

http://www.swcollege.com/acct/klooster_introacct/klooster.html 

There are others, but these are some highlights. Please feel free to email questions.

Sincerely, 
Paul Van Ness
South-Western College Publishing
http://www.swcollege.com 


The international equivalent of the DIG arose when the International Accounting Standards Committee issued proposed Questions and Answers about IAS 39 on accounting derivative financial instruments recognition, measurement, and hedging activities --- http://www.iasc.org.uk/docs/0005qa39.pdf

This document is the international equivalent of the DIG reports on the FASB's FAS 133.  See DIG at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133glosf.htm#D-Terms 


Press Release from Oracle --- http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/index.html?192373.html 

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Apr. 26, 2000 - ( http://www.oracle.com/tellmemore/?192373  ) Understanding that companies in the age of the Internet need to move with record speed, Oracle Corp., the largest provider of software for e-business, today announced Oracle(r) FastForward(sm) OnLine FinancialsRPM. This solution helps meet customers’ needs for rapid time to market giving them a full-functionality financial management system in just 5 days. Oracle FastForward OnLine FinancialsRPM enables growing companies to quickly take advantage of Oracle’s enterprise-strength financial applications without sacrificing the necessary flexibility and functionality needed for future growth. A fully integrated offering of applications, consulting, education and support, Oracle FastForward OnLine FinancialsRPM is available immediately in most countries with a base price in the United States of $140,000 for 10 named users.


Princeton was asked to alter textbooks, including books that were used last year in unaltered form --- http://www.studentadvantage.com/news/article/1,3847,c8-i83-t0-a29483,00.html 

In response to demands by Beijing Normal University officials, faculty from this year's Princeton in Beijing program were recently forced to eliminate a substantial amount of course material considered to be critical of Chinese domestic policies.

Officials at Beijing Normal University, which hosts the Princeton in Beijing program, demanded the removal of several textbook chapters, including those referring to China's population control policy and press restrictions, according to East Asian studies professor C.P. Chou, who heads Princeton in Beijing.


CyberPorn may be a public health issue

The study, published in the March edition of the journal Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity, was conducted by psychologists at Stanford and Duquense universities.

More than 9,000 people were surveyed via the MSNBC news Web site, and about 1 percent of them were classified as "cybersex compulsives."

Researchers defined a "cybersex compulsive" as anyone who spent more than 11 hours a week accessing pornographic materials on the Internet and scored high on a questionnaire about relationships and attitudes toward sex.

More details of this study are at http://www.studentadvantage.com/article_story/1,1075,c8-i0-t0-a23690,00.html 

CyberPorn and evolving technologies for sexual pleasure may become part of the curriculum in some universities --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36105,00.html 

It's back to the three Rs at San Francisco State University: reading, 'riting and, of course, raunchy cybersex.

Beginning Sunday, SFSU will sponsor a university-level course on cybersex. Instructor Mary Madden said the two-day seminar will address everything from images of cybersex in films like Sleeper to the basics of "hot chat."

"The time has come for cybersexuality to be studied on an academic level," she said. "It's a medium that's just emerging so far, but it's come a long way in just a few years."

She also wants to show how adult sites have pushed the development of online technologies and continue to champion new tech-like Web-controlled sex toys.

"As technologies emerge, they're being pushed along by pornographers," she said. "Live Web video, interactive chat -- they got their start at adult sites, and once perfected there these technologies began to be a possibility for other kinds of sites."

Anyone can sign up for the extended-learning course, though it doesn't count for credit toward a degree.  
(Note from Bob Jensen:  Maybe the tests are too tough!)

Controversial research on new pleasure devices --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36198-2,00.html 

Another far-fetched notion, Web-controlled sex toys, is also already a reality. Companies like SafeSexPlus have created toys for men and women that respond to patterns of light emitted from a monitor.

Other companies are introducing products that produce computer-controlled sensations -- from scratch-and-sniff printouts to force feedback devices that produce tactile sensations just by touching a mouse or joystick.

"Of course, these companies don't often talk about the 'adult' implications of their work," Madden says. "But horny geeks will find a way to turn these tools to sexual satisfaction."

Researchers are also experimenting with recording and transmitting physical sensations and emotions. UK researcher Kevin Warwick is at the forefront of such work with his-and-her silicon chip implants he plans to wear along with his wife to test the effects of sending a sensation to another person.

Other researchers are working on sophisticated devices that provide tactile feedback and input, hyper-realistic visuals, and audio.

But until these devices are a reality we'll have to be content with the same old sex, which despite its low-tech status has proved pretty popular in human history.

"Sex is great already," Madden says. "Technology can improve things somewhat, but there's no substitution for two people connecting intimately."


That's often the trouble with the law --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36325,00.html 

The new Children's Online Privacy Protection Act is having some unintended effects. Legitimate children's sites are forced to shut down their email communications with kids. Thomas the Tank Engine is the latest victim. 


All search engines above can be used to search for plagiarized phrases or entire works.  Searchers should keep in mind that some search engines require that quotation marks be placed around the phrase being searched.  For search engine links and advice, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 

This is part of a message sent by a university professor on May 12, 2000 about  plagiarism:

My second comment concerns the program I used to find conclusive evidence that the paper had been plagiarized. The paper had a number of telltale signs when I read it (no reference to class readings, no page references to sources, a very unstudent-like, encyclopedia-ish prose style, jumping around from one topic to another, etc.). I had received the paper via an email attachment, so I used it to try out a program called EVE2. If you convert a document into plain text format, EVE2 will search the internet to try to find matching text. It then displays the paper with the text it was able to match highlighted and gives a set of links to sites with matching material. It also gives the percentage of the paper for which it found matching material. In my case it found pages at two sites (infoplease.com and britannica.com) from which about a third of the paper had been stolen (combination of word-for-word borrowing and very close paraphrase). (I'm sure the rest of the paper was also plagiarized but it didn't turn up anything for the rest.) (If you don't convert the document to plain text, the program will still find sites with matching material but won't estimate the percentage or display the paper with matching portions highlighted.)

The program wasn't perfect -- to my puzzlement it highlighted some parts of the paper which I couldn't find in the sites it listed, while other parts of the paper that clearly *were* lifted from those sites weren't highlighted. Nevertheless I found it extremely useful. I had already tried using a couple of the major search engines on bits of text from the paper without finding anything, and I'm not sure I ever would have tracked it down on my own.

This was a trial version of the program, but I think I'm going to pay the $20 to register it. If anyone's interested it can be downloaded from http://www.canexus.com/eve/
Signed XXXXXXXXX

The following appeared in my December 1, 1999 Edition of New Bookmarks at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book99q4.htm#120199 

In the November 23 Edition of New Bookmarks, I reported that the following:  Plagiarism.org will soon be an important web site for many educators and many others, including investigators and journal editors, who want to check if any writer's work is authentic.  Entire schools may be interested in paying for this service.  This site was featured on November 22 on CNN television.  I discovered it at breakfast while watching the news.  Go to  http://www.plagiarism.org/  

 

Paul Myers replied as follows:

 

The following URL -- with spelling error and all -- provides background on the Berkeley plagiarism-detection program --- http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9911/21/plagerism.detective/index.html 
J. Paul Myers, Jr. Associate Professor Department of Computer Science Trinity University 715 Stadium Drive San Antonio, Texas 78212


From Yahoo (How the Internet Works.)

Warriors of the Net --- http://warriorsofthe.net/ 

Created at Ericsson Medialab, a research unit of the Swedish telecommunications giant, Warriors of the Net is a short movie that uses exquisite computer animation, a rousing electronic soundtrack, and sophisticated streaming video to demonstrate and explain how the Internet works. In the whimsical tradition of the Brave Little Toaster, with the righteous enthusiasm of a propaganda film, and the attention to accuracy of an industrial training video, Warriors is an entertaining account of the trans-network journey of a perky data packet -- over the LAN, across the firewall, and out to the Net. "He came with a message, with a protocol all his own...he's fast he's strong, he's TCP/IP and he's got your address." Just one word of caution -- this charming cartoon is a real bandwidth hog -- if you don't have a high-speed connection you may want to wait for a CD-ROM or kiosk version. Or tune in to the 55 second trailer. It's only 5 MB.

From Yahoo (Tom Hicks will love this one since he is always writing on napkins.)

Word Perhect --- http://www.chisenhale.org.uk/ch2/ 

Word Perhect takes an irreverent look at word-processing software and how it has altered our experience of writing down things. Try it now at ch2, an online exhibit space curated jointly by Chisenhale Gallery and e-2. You'll need the Flash 4 browser plugin. Simulate the bygone days of writing on paper -- create hastily scrawled reminders, phone numbers, and maps drawn on cocktail napkins, or crumpled notes stuffed into pockets and run through the laundry. Created by artist Tomoko Takahashi and programmer Jon Pollard, the software offers an "idiosyncratic hand drawn interface leading to a set of functioning but strangely altered tools." Now, if only we could figure out how to synch it with our PDA...


A visit to St. Petersburg, Russia highlights different attitudes towards technology and availability of workstations --- http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt0005116/2560115/ 


Newsweek, May 15, 2000, pg. 4 contains a short review of the New Internet Computer (NIC) being pushed by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison (the mega billionaire arch enemy of Bill Gates and Microsoft).  The NIC is an inexpensive (less than $200 without the monitor) computer designed primarily for Internet access in classrooms.  This computer runs on the Linus operating system with CD-ROM software that NIC will update free for schools.  Projected sales in schools exceeds 10 million unites.  


AUGSBURG, Germany -- A German museum denounced by the World Jewish Congress for concealing the past of its Nazi art dealer patron said Thursday it backed probes into looted artworks and would open its archive on the Internet.

Augsburg cultural affairs spokesman Ekkehard Gesler told Reuters the city's Municipal Art Museum was also considering employing a historian to catalog documents relating to major donor Karl Haberstock, who sold Hitler more than 100 paintings.--- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36271,00.html  


Interviews 50 Cents --- http://www.journale.com/interviews50cents/  (Actually the interviews are free.)

Traveling around America with a card table and a handmade sign, producer Ray Farkas and reporter Alex Chadwick turned an idea into a series of poignant interviews about life in America. From a housewife in Indiana who wonders why her marriage can't be better to a man with AIDS traveling through Key West, Florida in search of spiritual healing, these interviews reflect the daily concerns and hopes of many. Experience Interviews 50 Cents in its original video form as QuickTime movies, or browse through the interviews as text versions. After viewing the interviews, we invite you to give us your stories about related experiences through Tell Your Story.


Fortune online at --- http://www.fortune.com/fortune/ 

What's a New Economy Without Research? Paul Allen just shut down his fancy R&D facility. So who's going to pay geeks to sit around and dream up the ideas that will drive the next new economy? by Stewart Alsop --- http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/alsop/ 

I was really sorry to see that Paul Allen closed his Interval Research lab in Palo Alto. Paul is a nice guy who continues to do interesting things--it is amazing what you can do when you have $20 billion or so. But my sorrow has little to do with Paul and more to do with a creeping pessimism about our economic future. Put simply, without research the new economy is flying blind.

Thanks to the Internet and the World Wide Web, our economic systems are becoming efficient and almost friction-free. So much so, in fact, that there is no room left for some of the old inefficiencies--even the valuable inefficiencies. Like research.

That's a big worry. Much of the technology underlying our efficient economy was developed under conditions that did not demand an immediate return on investment. The microprocessor was developed at AT&T Bell Labs. Many of the elements of the networked personal computer--the local area network, graphical user interface, laser printer, graphical word processor, and so on--were developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The mouse was developed at Stanford Research International (SRI), a private but mostly government-funded research unit in Menlo Park, Calif. The Internet Protocol was originally developed at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). The main protocol for the World Wide Web was developed by a British programmer at a Swiss research lab. There are plenty of other examples of noncommercial research that drove big commercial changes.

The key word is research. The product development unit in most companies is known as research and development (R&D). But companies are mostly focused on the "D" part, looking to convert ideas into products--usually ones where the technology and the opportunity are pretty well understood. The "R" part is different. It involves behavior like sitting around, sucking on your fingers, and conjuring crazy ideas that everyone thinks will never work. Not surprisingly, as every company tries to become more efficient, the "R" in R&D has come to matter less and less.

AT&T doesn't own Bell Labs anymore (it's now part of Lucent). Instead, AT&T tries to buy entire industries, like the cable television business. SRI still operates; one project it's running now would create a functional wireless network for home appliances, with a kind of GPS system that could track the humans in the house. But SRI is under pressure to develop commercially interesting technologies that its parent can license or spin out into viable companies. Xerox isn't spending much time on computing these days, other than on elements that fit into copiers and document storage systems. The Department of Defense is defending itself against budget cuts, since we aren't at war with anyone.

Want to Stop Napster? Forget It--It's Too Late Even if a judge stops Napster, there are other companies that have already launched similar products. By William Gurley at --- http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/gurley/ 

The obvious question is, Can anything be done to stop the free trading of music on the Internet? The answer is likely to be no. For one, the cat is already out of the bag. Every multimedia PC is capable of converting a music CD to a digital MP3 file. This means that more than 100 million encoding devices already exist. It's unlikely that we would recall either the PCs or the CDs. Could we produce new CDs that are "unrippable"? This is not likely if you want them to work in the 200 million CD players that are already in people's homes, offices, and cars.

Could we create a new type of CD or encrypted file type that couldn't be copied? The potential certainly exists to do this. However, as long as recorded music can be played, it will be extremely easy for someone to rerecord this into a digital file. No ifs, ands, or buts. The music industry believes a Holy Grail exists that can save the day. They assume that a technological solution is imminent. But the wait for a white knight will be a long one.

Could litigation and legislation stop Napster? The Recording Industry Association of America has sued Napster in an attempt to shut it down. Napster claims that, just like Betamax and the RIO MP3 player, the service has appropriate uses and therefore should not be liable just because its customers use it for illegal purposes. Even if a judge enjoins Napster, there are five or six more companies that have already launched similar products. I'm equally pessimistic that legislation can stop this movement. Make these illegal, and someone will launch one from another country. Shutting this down would require the Internet equivalent of wiretapping, which would send privacy advocates into a frenzy.

Another barrier that will make Napster difficult to stop is community. Napster's nine million users are passionate about it. Universities attempting to shut down Napster to prevent network overload are met with active protests. Today's college students are quite serious about their freedom to transfer digital files--whatever the content of those files may be. Stewart Brand's famous statement that "Information wants to be free" has become a rallying cry of this fervent young community.

The world will eventually settle into a new equilibrium some years in the future, and it will look very different from today. Musical artists may make more money from appearances, sponsorships, and product licensing than from the sale of the actual music. Advertising may play a role, as may new business models such as subscriptions to electronic distributions. We may even find that artists can deal directly with consumers via the Internet, bypassing the need for the large record companies. Innovative industry leaders will embrace the new models and increase their chance for survivability and success. Others will fight and increase the odds of failure. And all through this, only one thing will remain certain--dramatic and fundamental change.


Nature Explorer --- http://www.natureexplorer.com/index1.html 
This has an index to topics and people.


Some good news sources:

A great news source can be found at http://www.line56.com/ 

Technology and gadget news and reviews --- http://www.edgereview.com/ 

If you want to drill down to e-Commerce news, go to http://www.ecompany.com/ 

A great travel news source can be found at http://www.verde.com/ 


Katie.com --- http://www.katiet.com/ 

One teen turned a frightening encounter with an Internet predator into an experience she hopes will help educate others about how to be safe on the Web.


XHTML:  A Bridge to the Future, Information Week, May 8, 2000, pp. 210-214.  The article is not yet posted online, but eventually you will find it at http://www.informationweek.com/maindocs/archive.htm 

XHTML: A Bridge To The Future

THE W3C'S RECOMMENDATION BLENDS XML AND HTML TO PRODUCE EXTENSIBLE WEB-PAGE FORMATTING

Hypertext Markup Language, an aging, inflexible formatting standard, has fueled the phenomenal growth of the Web.  Now a new technology, a flexible data-markup standard called Extensible Markup Language, promises nearly complete flexibility.  In a flash of brilliance, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has combined HTML and XML into the new XHTML recommended standard, which reformulates HTML 4.02 -- the latest version -- with XML document type definitions (DTD).

HTML is the language behind one of the fastest, most widespread technology adoptions ever.  Derived from Standard General Markup Language (SGML), HTML is simple to learn and reasonably flexible for formatting text and graphics, but it doesn't have the extensibility to adapt to dynamic Web applications.  Most every site with valuable content is more of a Web application than a Web site, requiring code components, multimedia effects, and other features that strain the limits of HTML.

HTML is usually extended by innovations in a single browser, usually Microsoft's Internet Explorer or America Online's Netscape Communicator, and these changes gradually make their way into other browsers.  Inevitably, the implementations are different enough that Web authors have a tough time making their sites viewable from different browsers, much less older versions of those browsers.  The more popular extensions eventually make their way into the group's HTML standard -- frames and scripting languages, for example.

In the last couple of years, XML has been taking the Web by storm.  Whereas HTML formats and presents information, XML marks up data so that the individual pieces of information on a Web page are identified as being of a particular type.  In a bank's data, for example, $4,562.03 is marked as the outstanding balance of a customer's loan, and $123.90 as the monthly payment, identifying them as particular kinds of data points.  Without XML, these would be just two character strings in a sea of text on a Web page.  XML provides metadata -- data about data.

The most important feature of XML is the "X."  HTML has a fixed set of tags, but with XML you can create multiple namespaces that define custom tags.  Industries can band together and create namespaces that facilitate the exchange of information.

Continuing the bank example, <Balance> and <Payment> can identify the two character strings as being specific types of information.  This facilitates exchanging data between applications and computer systems, limiting the need for expensive, complex data-conversion programs.

For more on the history of XML, XHTML, RDF, and XBRL, to my update threads at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm 


Gadget reviews --- http://www.edgereview.com/ 

For example, see "Dataplay disc," By Nick Hanlon at http://www.edgereview.com/categories.cfm?ID=57 

500 MB discs to hit market by 2001--- http://www.dataplay.com/  
Imagine this…You reach into your pocket, pull out a disc roughly the size of a quarter and stick it in your computer. On that single disc, you have your favorite songs, photos from your last vacation, a new book, and anything else you can imagine. This may soon become a reality if Colorado-based DataPlay, Inc. has their way. By 2001, DataPlay hopes to make compatible technology available worldwide. On one 500 MB disc, you can store any type of information available (Much like today’s 3.5” floppy discs, but with nearly 400x the storage space!) Up to 4 hours of CD quality music can be stored on a single disc.

DataPlay’s new optical medium promises to bring huge amounts of portable storage space to the average consumer with a small budget. Retailing for $5-10, blank DataPlay discs have one drawback. They only offer permanent recording (like CD-R). Once something is on there, you can’t get it off. A dual-recording feature known as Recordable Mastered Media will make it possible to record onto pre-recorded discs. You can buy published content at the store or on the internet and add your own content or add to the pre-existing content on the same disc.


The person that manages this website finds interesting (usually Christian) websites (Religion) --- http://home.earthlink.net/~markhas/links.html .  But he has a sense of humor with the weird link to Moist Towelette Collecting ...here's proof that serious collecting need not be expensive, or that server space need not have any useful purpose! 


WalksInside Venice --- http://www.walksinsidevenice.com/ 


Henry Baltazar says that education, not equipment, is the best way to make technology more accessible.  http://www.pcweek.com/b/pcwt0005126/2560851/ 


Press Freedom Survey 2000 http://www.freedomhouse.org/pfs2000/ 

Thanks for the tip Scott Bonacker --- http://www.ecommercetax.com/doc/042300.htm 

A law enforcement organization has recently issued a report on best practices for seizing electronic evidence. This report should be of interest to anyone engaged in electronic commerce, not just would-be criminals. It is not unheard of for law enforcement officials to seize records of the innocent as well as the guilty. It is useful to know what might happen if the police decide to take an interest in data stored on your Web server. These methods of seizing electronic information may be used by those charged with enforcing tax laws, as well as other laws.


Technology and Learning (A website and hard copy journal aimed heavily at K12 levels) --- http://www.techlearning.com/ 

"The Skinny on Thin Clients," Technology and Learning, May 2000, pp. 56-58.  Details are not available online.  The main conclusions for schools is that thin clients are overcoming a disastrous beginning, but are now becoming a viable and inexpensive alternative in schools.  The main advantages are low cost (since thin clients do not need big hard drives and software) and over basic computing such as email, Internet access, and word processing.  The server contains heavier duty software and can be easily upgraded.  This means less need for technical support of client computers.  Also client computers have longer expected life since there is less that can go wrong with hardware and software.

Thin clients are still a limited alternatives for flexibility, installation of custom software for particular teachers such as mathematics and science teachers, and loss of the "P" in the "PC."   

Thin client alternatives include the WT 300 from Acer, the WT 120 from BocaVision, the T1000 and T1500 from Compaq, the 2200 series from IBM, the Sun Ray 1 "enterprise appliance" from Sun Microsystems, the ThinPort from Tangent Computer, and the Winterm 3000 series from Wyse Technology.  Software and application services are available from i-Mind Education Systems and The LearningStateion.com.


Technology and Learning (A website and hard copy journal aimed heavily at K12 levels) --- http://www.techlearning.com/ 

"Inventions and Inventors on the Net," Technology and Learning, May 2000, pg. 73.  Details are only available in hard copy.


Pro2Net Accounting Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of May 15, 2000 

1. This Week's Accounting-Specific Headlines 
2. E-Business Tops List of Most Important Accounting Issues 
3. Feature Articles 
4. Deadline Approaching for Online Scholarships 
5. This Week's Hot Talk: Howard Chernin 
6. Check Out Accounting and Finance Jobs 
7. Survey Results: What is your occupational status? 
8. Our Tip of the Week: Important Facts on Section 179


May 14th edition of the Internet Essentials --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. After Napster; Net File-Swapping Now Goes Way Beyond Music 
2. How to "Fix" Your Microsoft Outlook Security Problem 
3. ActiveX flaw can help Spread Viruses (Thank's Microsoft!) 
4. Links to IMA's Internet Skills Regional Educational Assistance Program (REAP) 
5. Security Update (From the IMA's Internet Skills REAP) 
6. Pricewaterhouse to Challenge Digital-Certificate Players 
7. Web Security Kicks into Gear 
8. Network Fusion Security Center 
9. Microsoft denies blame for Netscape Browser Bug 
10. SECURITY EXPERT SAYS SOFTWARE INDUSTRY IS FALLING SHORT 
11. Today's Focus: Unauthorized vulnerability scans


AccountingStudents Newsletter: May 9, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. Sponsors Increase Online Scholarship to Ten $1,000 Awards 
2. Win a Mark's CPA Review Course 
3. What Do You Want to Do When You Grow Up? 
4. Survey Results: What kind of work environment would you most prefer to work in? 
5. Tip of the Week: The Benefits of a Small or Mid-Sized Company 
6. What to Expect the First Day on the Job 
7. Site of the Week: FreeEdu.com 
8. Save 25 Percent: "You Can Pass the CPA Exam: Get Motivated"


CPAnet Forum Revamp --- http://www.cpanet.com/forum/ 
The CPAnet Forum has received a major overhaul. You can now read all posts without logging in. You can be e-mailed on responses received to your posts. Plus, all threads are quickly and easily searchable. Current discussions include Accounting, Auditing, Financial Planning, Consulting, VAS, Software, Technology, E-Commerce, Tax and Legal Issues. Start your posting!


Poetry in Music
Demented Lyrics (Sorted by artists and Title) --- http://php.indiana.edu/%7Ejbmorris/lyrics.html 
For a humorous sample, you might try http://php.indiana.edu/%7Ejbmorris/LYRICS/parakeets.html 

A Daisy a Day --- http://www.myna.com/~dwcoote/lyric/daisyaday.html 


The Useless (Web) Pages --- http://www.go2net.com/useless/ 
Includes a useless site of the week.

The founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen, calls this "One of the best sites on the Web."

I doubled up when viewing the "useless" Lawyers Dance page at http://www.lawyerdance.com/ 
Sponsored by The International Society for the Promotion of Cruelty to Lawyers at http://www.theispca.com/ 


Then there is the NerdPerfect website at http://www.nerdperfect.com/ 

And the website of Dork Links --- http://hometown.aol.com/Wedge55/DORKlinks.html 

And there is Jason's Collection of Weird Links at http://www.dimatisah.com/weird.html 
For example, Jason links to the following website on how to ask stupid questions in French --- http://www.fortunecity.com/bennyhills/sellers/117/frenchtr.htm 

International Society for the Promotion of Cruelty to Attorneys


Derek's Big Website of Wal-Mart Receipts is funny and weird --- http://lightning.prohosting.com/~receipts/ 

Derek has a page of "Pro-WalMart Links" at http://lightning.prohosting.com/~receipts/prowalmart.shtml 

Derek has a page of "Anti-WalMart Links" at http://lightning.prohosting.com/~receipts/antiwalmart.shtml 


Signs That Make You Stop and Think

IF WE AIN'T GOT IT, YOU DON'T NEED IT (Sign on Bill Jone's General Store in Stratton, Maine)

EARS PIERCED WHILE YOU WAIT (Otherwise be sure to hang onto the claim check.)

DAYCARE CENTER FOR HUSBANDS (Seen over benches by a fountain in a shopping mall.)

PARKING FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY (Seen at a funeral parlor.)

ENTER IN REAR (Purportedly seen at a birth control center.)

CAN''T READ? --- CALL 916-1872 

WOMAN'S PURSE WITH DRAWERS (Sign on a secretary's desk.)

ACCOUNTANTS KNOW THE COST OF EVERYTHING AND THE VALUE OF NOTHING

INVESTED ALL I HAD IN PREPARATION G (Sign carried by a beggar at a busy intersection.)

FOOTBALL GIVES ME A LINGERING HEADACHE (Sign that mysteriously appeared beside my TV's remote control)


Hi Bob,

A student of mine sent me this poem, he says it helps him remember the accounting cycle. I am not sure if after all the lumber discussion anyone is still up for some light hearted look at accounting. I have thus decided to email this beautiful piece of poetry to you and will leave it to you if you think its warranted to be unleashed to the world....

I will CREDIT you my love, if you will DEBIT me your love. 
I'll record our romance in a JOURNAL, and POST it to the LEDGER of my heart.

I'll keep an ACCOUNT of our love, based on DOUBLE-ENTRY. 
This way you'll know the BALANCE c/d, and the AMOUNT of love I have for you.

Our courtship, is carried out on WORKSHEET. 
ADJUSTING ENTRIES are necessary, to make our love steady. 
TRIAL BALANCE shows, we are meant for each other, Because the TOTAL of our love, is one and the same. CLOSING ENTRIES are made, when down the aisle we take.

PROFIT & LOSS statement, tells what has happened. 
Let's see our BALANCE SHEET, What are our ASSETS & LIABILITIES? 
Oh, my goodness! It shows a dozen kids!!!

Regards,

Themin Suwardy [Themin.Suwardy@buseco.monash.edu.au



Debbie's Corner

Aurora University

John & Judy Dunham School of Business and Professional Studies
Business/Accounting
Accounting is one of the most active of professions. The demand for accountants has been increasing for a number of years and is expected to continue to rise. The accountant’s activities address two major concerns in the organization. First, the accountant reports at regular intervals on the progress and financial situation of the organization. Second, the accountant supplies detailed analyses and studies of costs and revenues by which management makes decisions for the future.

The Aurora University accounting program is designed to prepare students for careers in profit, non-profit and government organizations. Students have the opportunity to select courses emphasizing managerial or public accounting and, if interested, prepare for the Certified Management Accounting (CMA) or Certified Public Accounting* (CPA) professional examinations.

Course Descriptions

ACC551 Accounting Information Systems (3 semester hours)
The study of the accounting systems design, implementation and application within the functional areas of the firm. Hardware and software applications as it relates to accounting will be covered, as will be the internal control of the systems.
Prerequisite: ACC313.

 

Quality and Systems Management Program

Aurora University offers two programs based upon the management philosophy of W. Edwards Deming. These programs are offered using distance learning techniques and require a computer and access to the Internet. The programs are geared to the needs of working professionals in a wide variety of organizations. Since these programs do not require that students meet in the standard classroom format, they are particularly suited to those whose job responsibilities require them to travel frequently, those who do not live near a college or university campus or those whose circumstances do not permit them to attend classes offered in a campus setting.
Two certificates are offered, one, the Certificate in Deming Management, after the completion of four courses and the second, the Advanced Certificate in Deming Management, after the completion of three additional courses. Students will normally complete the first certificate in ten months and the second certificate in approximately seven additional months. A student must successfully complete one course in any twelve month period to maintain active status in the program.

Community Programs and Services at Aurora University

Schingoethe Center for Native American Cultures

The Schingoethe Center for Native American Cultures is a museum which holds both historic and contemporary artifacts from all culture areas in North America. The Museum is open to the public and provides tours, educational resources and public programs.

 


Austin College

BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

A major in business administration consists of a minimum of eight course credit units including Economics 11 and 45, Business Administration 25, 61 and 99, and at least three other courses in business administration or economics, one of which must be numbered 50 or above.

 

These look like they would be great courses to take!

GS 40 A COMIC BOOKS AS CULTURE

Comic books, generally regarded as disposal light entertainment for children, have been part of American culture for over 60 years. They have been the basis of radio and television program, as well as motion pictures. Some of the characters are cultural icons. They are connected to classic mythology. In short, they are worthy of analysis and discussion. This course will examine the history of this medium, the way it works as a medium and as a business, and will analyze several outstanding examples of the form as literature. Students will be expected to meaningfully and critically discuss the cultural and literary aspects of the medium orally and in writing.

 

HWC 55 C/N FRANKENSTEIN AND EQUUS: THE DREAM AND THE NIGHTMARE

Within societies that were rapidly becoming more secular, scientific, and industrial, the Romantics and Freudians emphasized the liberating and, sometimes, destructive qualities of strong individual imaginations that resisted mechanization and conformity. Frankenstein (1831) and Equus (1975) indelibly demonstrate this conflict as well as blur distinctions between once "seemingly" stable binarisms: the Enlightenment and Romanticism; science and religion; the rational and the irrational; conformity and rebellion; eros and thanatos; freedom and bondage; revelation and obsession; the dream and the nightmare.

 

HWC 55 U/X MARY SHELLEY AND MARK TWAIN AS SOCIAL CRITICS

This special focus will examine the role played by writers who express social criticism in their work. In the first session we will read and discuss Mary Shelley’s critique of Enlightenment ideas in her novel Frankenstein (1818); in the second session we will read and discuss Mark Twain’s novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) which critiques the industrial revolution.

 

HWC 55 W/Z GEORGE III, THE ELEPHANT MAN, AND GENETIC DISEASES

Rudyard Kipling said of 18th-century medicine: "Wonderful little, when all is said,/ Wonderful little our fathers knew,/ Half of their remedies cured you dead,/ Most of their teaching was quite untrue." The same could be said of our understanding of genetic disorders prior to the 20th century. In the first session we will read the play The Madness of King George and collect pertinent clues about King George’s genetic disorder. In the second special focus, we will read The Elephant Man and learn of John Merrick’s plight. By the time we complete the course, students will utilize information about the human genome to discuss these genetic disorders in modern terms.

 

Lifelong Learning at Austin College

What is "Telling our Stories"? 

Texas Millennium Book: The Way Things Used to Be is the third book of stories published by "Telling Our Stories," a humanities project at Austin College which provides support and training for individuals who want to write personal stories and family histories.

The first book, entitled Grayson County Reminiscences—1846-1996, was published in February 1996, to celebrate the sesquicentennial of Grayson County. Texas Family Secrets, published in 1997, was the second book. Copies of all three books may be purchased from Big Barn Books, 608 N. Cleveland, Sherman, TX 75090. Telephone: (903) 813-2357.

Funding for "Telling Our Stories" has been provided by Austin College, Sherman Council on the Arts and Humanities, the Summerlee Foundation, and private individuals.

Class Format

1. Each member is encouraged to bring a 2-4 page life story on a specific theme to each meeting and read aloud his/her story. This short story may be complete in itself, or be a starting point for a longer story to be developed later, or it may be a synopsis of a story that has already been written. The reason for specifying a 2-4 page limit is to insure that each group member has time to read and receive comments.

2. A list of sensitizing questions on each theme will be provided to help you get started. These questions are meant to stimulate thinking and to guide but not to structure or limit one's thinking. Try to write freely and simply without much concern for grammar, punctuation or style. Later revisions can address matters of clarity and correct form. The first concern in verbalizing your memories.

3. Interaction in the group is promoted in a nonjudgmental atmosphere of acceptance and support. It is essential that we create and maintain an atmosphere where every member feels welcome and able to share her/his memories and stories.

4. Each class will have a different major theme and class members are encouraged to write a story on that theme. Sensitizing questions for each of these themes will be provided in advance. However, you are always free to bring a story on any theme.

MISC.

- Mountain Bike Trails
- Texas State Parks
- North Central Texas Council of Governments


Austin Peay State University

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS

Carmen C. Reagan, Dean Office: Kimbrough 104 Phone (615) 648-7674, Fax (615) 648-5985

MISSION Commensurate with the University mission and goals, the mission of the College of Business is the constant pursuit of excellence in student development through accessible educational services. Quality is continuously enhanced in a student-centered environment where the process of learning is a partnership of students, faculty, staff, and the community at large.

THE BACHELOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

The College of Business offers the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) with a major in business and concentrations in accounting, economics, general business, finance, management, and marketing. Minors are recommended but not required of business majors.

ACCT 3210 COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN ACCOUNTING (3) Prerequisites: 2020, MIS 1100 or admission to the BBA Program Course concentration on the use of the microcomputer as an aid in decision making with accounting data. Practical applications are emphasized. The course uses Lotus 1-2-3 and VP Planner

ACCT 3710 ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEMS (3) Prerequisites: 2020, MIS 1100, or admission to the BBA Program Principles of systems analysis and design. Activities necessary to implement computerized accounting systems; a study of accounting computer systems and file design. Evaluations and justification of systems proposals, internal controls, and selection of computer hardware and software.

Distance Learning enables the University to reach beyond the traditional campus via compressed video, Internet based courses, videotape programs and cable-based delivery systems.

In accordance with the university’s vision statement, the Distance Education program offers both traditional and non-traditional students an opportunity to pursue their goal of obtaining a college degree. The Distance Education program also affords the community a chance to participate in informational exchanges relevant to their professional experiences. Austin Peay State University is a participating member of the Project DIANE consortium, which offers a wide variety of economic development programs, K-12 educational exchanges, and community oriented offerings via ISDN two-way interactive phone lines. 

APSU/GOVNET

Distance Education Operates within the Business and Community Solution Center, and enables the University to reach beyond the traditional campus. Currently APSU features GOVNET, which is a compressed video network.

APSU's GOVNET links Houston, Robertson, Dickson, Humphreys, and Stewart Counties via two way interactive video.  Both graduate and undergraduate courses are available.  Classes originate in Harned Hall room 307, Claxton room 216, and connect with the Lifelong Learning Center in Springfield, the Center for Teaching and Learning in Dover, and Houston County High School in Erin.  Students may register for GOVNET classes (Other than Dickson county classes) through AP-TALK, Austin Peay's voice response system, available at 221-7000.  To find out what courses are available via GOVNET, please refer to the current schedule of classes.

The Elderhostel Program provides older adults enrichment experience through education and interaction with peers.

For many people, the second fifty years of their lives is a time for new beginnings - for finding and enjoying new adventures and new challenges. Elderhostel, a not-for-profit organization with 25 years of experience providing high quality, affordable educational adventures for adults who are 55 and older, provides short-term educational programs that are a fun and exciting way to share new ideas, explore new places and make new friends.

Based on the simple fact that learning is a lifelong process that is rewarding at any age, each Elderhostel program consists of 1 to 4 weeks of engaging learning adventures, including lectures, discussions, field trips and activities. This is learning for the sheer pleasure of it - no homework and no tests! Programs are held at universities, national and state parks, museums, conference centers, and other learning sites in the United States, Canada, and around the world.

Austin Peay State University proudly sponsors a number of different Elderhostel programs each year, held on our campus, and in Tennessee State Parks.


If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.

 



And that's the way it was on May 17, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

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May 10, 2000


Quotes of the Week:  

I once spent an academic year (1971/72) in a think tank (The Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences on the campus of Stanford University) with Harvard's famous/infamous Alan Dershowitz.  At the time, Alan received the text (without pictures) of forthcoming Playboy articles for review of legal exposure in those articles.  His comment was that buying the magazine turned into a dead giveaway if you already had all the text without the pictures.

I think that my favorite quote of all time came from a Playboy interview with Marshall McLuhan in 1969.  Decades before the Internet and the world wide web, this visionary anticipated the next millennium as follows:

"... in which the human tribe can become truly one family and man's consciousness can be freed from the shackles of mechanical culture and enabled to roam the cosmos."    (Free To Be)

Another McLuhan quote from Understanding Media  is as follows:

"After 3,000 years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding."   (Inward Compression)

When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
Aldo Leopold

In the new mental geography created by the railroad, humanity mastered distance.  In the mental geography of e-Commerce, distance has been eliminated.  There is only one economy and only one market.  The competition is not local anymore --- it knows no boundaries.
Peter  F. Drucker, "Beyond the Information Revolution, Atlantic Monthly, October 1999, pp. 47-57.

If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you. I came to live out loud. 
Emile Zola

I played all the roles that were expected, and I seldom asked why I had my wings closed up, but now I'm ready to fly, ~ I've been awakened, and I finally see the light ~ I'm about to make some changes and set a few things right ~ With my new attitude and the knowledge I possess ~ I may create a whole world order and clean up all this mess! Stand back and watch me. ~ I'm getting ready to unfold!
Mona Lake Jones

Love your calling with passion, it is the meaning of your life.
Auguste Rodin

The Internet became a place where people could talk to other people without constraint. Without filters or censorship or official sanction — and perhaps most significantly, without advertising. Another, noncommercial culture began forming across this out-of-the-way collection of computer networks. Long before graphical user interfaces made the scene, the scene was populated by plain old boring ASCII: green phosphor text scrolling up screens at the glacial pace afforded by early modems. So where was the attraction in that?

The attraction was in speech, however mediated. In people talking, however slowly. And mostly, the attraction lay in the kinds of things they were saying. Never in history had so many had the chance to know what so many others were thinking on such a wide range of subjects. Slowly at first, a new kind of conversation was beginning to emerge, but it would achieve global reach with astonishing speed.
Christopher Locke (See Below)


Chapter 1 of The Cluetrain Manifesto:  The End of Business as Usual.   The first chapter is free at http://www.cluetrain.com/apocalypso.html.   Chapter 1 is called "Internet Apocalypso" by Christopher Locke.

Personally, some of Locke's first chapter makes me think that he spent more time reading about the history  of corporations than he spent living amongst the corporate natives in the past decade.  For example, I do not agree with the following assertion:

But companies don't like us human. They leverage our longing for their own ends. If we feel inadequate, there's a product that will fill the hole, a bit of fetishistic magic that will make us complete. Perhaps a new car would do the trick. Maybe a trip to the Caribbean or that new CD or a nice shiny set of Ginsu steak knives. Anything, everything, just get more stuff. Our role is to consume.

Those same companies invest heavily in our training and put us in contact with challenges, resources, travel, clients, customers, and colleagues that stretch our skills and aspirations.  It is easy to be totally negative if you always overlook the positives.  I look at the genuine, and frankly amazing, progress that large public accounting firms have made toward identifying the real obstacles to promotion and performance of women and minorities in their firms, and I conclude that such firms "like us to be human" and are trying all sorts of experiments to deal with our humanity. This includes many of the Internet and work-from-home alternatives revered by Locke.  His proposals are hardly revolutionary if he took a close look at work practices that have already evolved in public accounting and consulting practices.  

Locke stresses the deconstructionist power of the Internet.  On this I have to agree, only I would take it a step further.  This power is growing stronger with respect to politics, government controls, and democratization of the global community.

And Internet technology has also threaded its way deep into the heart of Corporate Empire, where once upon a time, lockstep loyalty to the chairman's latest attempt at insight was no further away than the mimeograph machine. One memo from Mr. Big and everyone believed (or so Mr. Big liked to think).

No more. The same kind of seditious deconstruction that's being practiced on the Web today, just for the hell of it, is also seeping onto the company intranet. How many satires are floating around there, one wonders: of the latest hyperinflated restructuring plan, of the over-sincere cultural-sensitivity training sessions Human Resources made mandatory last week, of all the gibberish that passes for "management" — or has passed up until now.

I find myself agreeing with much of what Locke is saying.  My criticism is that it takes him too many pages to say what he has to say --- the word "overkill" comes to mind.  For those of you who want to delve into the history of change and the tremendous paradigm shift that is taking place in global communications, economics, socialization, and politics, there are some very good passages in The Cluetrain Manifesto:  The End of Business as Usual.  Those of you who despise big corporations and big governments will take solace in the Cluetrain philosophy of deconstruction. 

But the true visionaries like Marshall McLuhan, Peter Drucker and even Dilbert established the beachheads long before Cluetrain commenced laying down rails.  Once more I will repeat my favorite quote of all time came from a Playboy interview with Marshall McLuhan in 1969.  Decades before the Internet and the world wide web, this visionary anticipated the next millennium as follows:

"... in which the human tribe can become truly one family and man's consciousness can be freed from the shackles of mechanical culture and enabled to roam the cosmos."    (Free To Be)

Deconstructionists and anarchists must also be held accountable.  The problem with technology is that every good thing seems to have an evil twin.  Marshall McLuhan would be pleased to learn that the LoveBug roaming the cosmos last week invaded millions of homes around the world at the speed of light.  Unfortunately, the word LOVE became a four-letter word in breaking down communications and commerce.  Without some corporate and governmental restraints, anarchists will work their WORMs into our lives with too much LOVE and too little accountability --- God bless the "accountants."


One marked example of the controversy of Internet freedom versus Internet accountability is in the area of online performance reviews such as student reviews of instructors.  Are the students being truly accountable in the teacherreview.com website mentioned below?

In partnership with Northern Light Technology, Inc., Student Advantage provides online research tools for students at http://www.studentadvantage.com/ (for me the Intro link at this website is yet another example of fancy animations that are just too slow for our present Internet even when using a T1 line.)  I find this website to be frustratingly slow.

One of the news items at the above website (actually from USA Today on May 8) concerns a professor who sued over nasty student evaluations --- http://www.studentadvantage.com/article_story/1,1075,c4-i0-t0-a28832,00.html   

San Francisco Superior Court will hear motions this month in a lawsuit brought by English professor Daniel Curzon-Brown against his employer, City College of San Francisco, and teacherreview.com, a Web site where students can grade instructors.

The battle lines are drawn over the site, which demystifies teachers from all-knowing sages to ranked commodities.

Curzon-Brown, whose negative reviews at Teacher Review turned viciously personal, feels that the site has as much to contribute to education as CliffsNotes. He says the site is used mostly by those who seek retribution for low grades.

The site's founder and Webmaster, 27-year-old Ryan Lathouwers, sees his creation as an informal collegiate Consumer Reports that helps students improve course choices.

Note from Jensen:  The reviews for both City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University are available at http://teacherreview.com/ .  In addition to listing all reviews, the website has buttons for the Top 15 and the bottom 10 Reviews.  Daniel Curzon-Brown is fourth from the bottom at http://teacherreview.com/ccsf/ (warning the language at this website contains obscenity).  This English professor's homepage is at http://fog.ccsf.org/~dbrown/.

Added note from Bob Jensen:  Student reviews of faculty from many universities around the world are also available at http://teacherreview.com/.  However, I did not find any (yet) for Trinity University. What makes me wonder is quality control.  What is to prevent me from writing a good/bad review about a professor even though I am not a student in the course at XYZ university?

 

Reply from David Fordham from James Madison University --- David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU

Bob, you've done it again. Thanks for another great URL  

But I'll not be using it the way some people might at first think!

"First amendment rights, free speech, and the Internet" complaints such as this one have become as common and as blase and tiresome as allegations about a Roswell incident coverup. Neither is going to go away, and they both have about the same impact on the bulk of general American society.

No, what this site really means to me is, we had better make sure our elementary school teachers are doing a good job of educating students as to what constitutes valid research (on which you can base decisions) vs. collecting biased personal opinions.

The problem with the Internet is that its "open access" policy for postings results in much "information" which isn't really information as much as it is simple assertion/opinion/statement.

There is a marked "self-selection" bias in postings, participation, etc.

And like much of today's network news, biased opinion and interpretation is packaged and sold as empirical observation, or worse yet, as fact.

If the children aren't being taught how to differentiate anecdotal stories/myths/ fairy tales from rigorously-designed scientific studies, there won't be a basis for the critical thinking we use in upper level coursework. In short, the next generation might enter a type of critical thinking "dark ages".

I plan to use this URL as an opener. Indeed, I might even post my own "plants" (also known as stooges) on the website (for myself, of course) and then ask first-day students what valid conclusions about a faculty member's abilities can be drawn from the "anonymous" postings. "None" is the correct answer, of course.

But how many students do you think would get that question right? Hmmmm.

My class will visit the site again, later in the semester, when we talk about how NOT to design a good web page. The slowness you mention in loading derives from its astoundlingly poor page design -- talk about your "too-busy" layouts... sheesh!

David Fordham


Can you believe this one?
I did check out Mary Madden's teaching evaluations (using the http://teacherreview.com/  website mentioned above) of a popular new course at San Francisco State University according to the article entitled "This Course is a Turn On" at http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36198,00.html 

San Francisco State University gave the world's first university-level class on Sunday that takes an academic approach to cybersex. The course material -- including a tour through interactive adult CD-ROM Virtual Valerie -- was a whole lot more titillating than Geometry 101.

Instructor Mary Madden began with a historical tour through the long and convoluted connection between technology and sex. It began in earnest in the 19th century, when many women were diagnosed with "hysterical disorders" which could only be relieved by a "hysterical paroxysm" -- in other words, an orgasm.

Weary of manually producing the healing paroxysm, doctors invented tools ranging from steam tables to primitive vibrators to help out female patients.

"After that we were off and running," Madden says. "Whenever a new technology emerged, we found a way to turn ourselves on."

Madden reports that the course is interactive.

"Stand up and show us your behind!" Madden types to A1Sexy, whose blurry webcam images update every few seconds. A1Sexy obliges with a quick flash.

"There's just tons of this out there but usually you have to pay for it," Madden says, delighted to find a free performance.

I could not find Mary Madden's reviews in the http://teacherreview.com/ database even though Wired reports that it is more "titillating than Geometry 101."  Sorry about that Rick!  But CyberSex 101 will never beat Accounting 101 for excitement.


Do you recall the praise that I lavished on the ethics website of a Carnegie-Mellon University Philosophy Professor named Robert Cavalier in my March 22, 000 edition of New Bookmarks?  See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q1.htm#032200 

Robert Cavalier now has an article entitled "Cases, Narratives, and Interactive Multimedia," in Syllabus, May 2000. pp. 20-22.  The online version of the Syllabus article is not yet posted, but will eventually be available at http://www.syllabus.com/ 

The purpose of our evaluation of A Right to Die?  The Case of Dax Cowart was to see if learning outcomes for case studies could be enhanced with the use of interactive multimedia.  My Introduction to Ethics class was divided into three groups:  Text, Film, and CD-ROM.  Equal distribution was achieved by using student scores on previous exams plus their Verbal SAT scores.

Two graders were trained and achieved more than 90 percent in grader variabilility.  The results of the students' performance were put through statistical analysis and the null hypothesis was rejected for the CD/Film and CD/Text groups.  Significant statistical difference was demonstrated in favor of interactive multimedia.


An experiment in participatory history from the National Museum of American History --- http://americanhistory.si.edu/csr/lightproject/ 


I am not too keen on the names (Babylon.com and Babylon Extranet) of this website, but it does want to become the "one-click information tool" at http://www.babylon.com/ and http://limon.babylon.co.il/.  Since they like my stuff, however, they must be "fabulous."  (Babylon.com does feature information translation into 12 languages.)

Hi Dr. Jensen,
I am the content manager of Babylon.Com, the webs' premier One-Click Information tool. I visited your website and found your glossaries to be simply fabulous. I would like to offer you the opportunity to have your glossary viewed by millions of our registered users. This will promote both your glossaries and your site.

Babylon's new client will enable everybody to use the content provided in your glossary with the ease of a single click.

To be a part of this revolutionary new release, just click here NOW. Should you have any questions please contact me.

Sebastiaan van Rooijen Content Manager, Babylon.com http://www.babylon.com/ 


Although not restricted to distance education, SearchEdu.com has over 20 million university and education pages indexed and ranked in order of popularity --- http://www.searchedu.com/ 
Trinity faculty and staff may be especially interested in the 6,355 hits given from a search for "Trinity University" using the quotation marks in the search box.

Another connection between students and possible schools is WiredScholar at http://www.wiredscholar.com/.  This website features checklists for students when applying for admission, visiting the campus, interviewing, and making choices when accepted by alternative schools.

How do you analyze acceptance and financial aid award letters from schools? If you've been accepted to a school and now are trying to decide on where to go to school, wiredscholar's online award analyzer can help. The award analyzer is designed to help you understand and compare award letters and is customized to take into account your personal finances.

For MBA Info go to http://www.mbainfo.com/ and http://www.mbazone.com/index.asp 

GE Center for Financial Learning --- http://www.financiallearning.com/ 

For a more complete list of distance education and other links, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245progs.htm 


This is what I call sharing on the Internet.
Essential Principles of Economics: A Hypermedia Text --- http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/prin/txt/EcoToC.html 

Do you understand what Alan Greenspan is telling you?  If not, you can find an "Easy Economics" glossary for such things as the Phillips Curve  and Price Controls in the Home of the Unofficial Alan Greenspan Fan Club--- http://www.getexuberant.com/ 

Phillips Curve: Named for economist William Phillips, the Phillips curve demonstrates an inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. Its main implication is that low inflation and low unemployment are incompatible. This theory holds true most of the time, but has had some significant failures. Most recently in the US, we had high inflation and high unemployment during the administration of Jimmy Carter. And during the Bush and Clinton administrations, largely due to Alan Greenspan we have achieved low inflation and "frictional unemployment". Frictional unemployment occurs when everyone who wants to be employed is.  (That is the way the sentence ends.)


From Ed Scribner:

Bob,

When trying the Trinity search engine from your page I didn't find "netlingo." If you don't have a link to it you might want to take a look at www.netlingo.com  to see if you want to add it to your resources (which have taken on such monumental proportions that I now refer to the Bob Jensen page as "BobWeb").

Ed Scribner (escribne@nmsu.edu
Professor of Accounting Department of Accounting & Business Computer Systems 
MSC 3DH New Mexico State University PO Box 30001 
Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001 (505) 646-5163 Fax: (505) 646-1552 escribne@nmsu.edu 

Accounting in New Mexico--Refried beans are harder to count.  (Nevertheless, they are easier to form into a hill, which is our primary unit of measure, as in, "That asset ain't worth a hill of beans.")

Note from Bob Jensen:
I added netLingo to my listing of technology glossaries at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/booktech.htm
 


The Teaching and Technology Initiative at the University of Virginia --- http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/tti/ 

The Teaching+Technology Initiative (TTI) Fellowship Program, begun in 1995 under the auspices of the Vice President for Information Technology and the Provost, is now soliciting grant applications for the 2000 calendar year from faculty members who do a significant amount of undergraduate teaching. We ask your help in disseminating the attached information to your faculty and making the enclosed application guidelines available to them.

The program will operate on the calendar year with Fellows selected at the end of November 1999 to begin their Fellowship year in January 2000. This year the program will sponsor at least five different projects integrating teaching and technology.

Current Projects
School/Department Project Name Fellow Year
Drama Digital Deconstruction: Investigating the postmodern dialectic between word and picture Thomas A. Bloom 2000
History An Oral, Visual, and Documentary Archive of University of Virginia History Phyllis K. Leffler 2000
Italian Italy on Screen - One Hundred Years of Digital Memory: 1860s - 1960s Christina Della Coletta 2000
Mathematics Cavalier Calculus: Redesigning Math 121 Jeffrey J. Holt 2000
Slavic Multimedia Slavic Folklore Database   Natalie O. Kononenko 2000

"Darden School at the University of Virginia adds action, color, sound and speech to its cases," ECCHO:  The Newsletter of the European Case Clearinghouse, Spring 2000, 17-19.  The homepage for the ECCH is http://www.ecch.cranfield.ac.uk/ .  The Spring 2000 Edition of ECCHO is not yet online, but eventually it will be posted at http://www.ecch.cranfield.ac.uk/about/newslet.htm 

This article refers to the following websites:  http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/tti/ 

Different manufacturing process types (batch flow, assembly line) are appropriate to different types of products, but many Darden students unfamiliar with manufacturing processes have trouble visualizing the various process types. Plant tours are used to give students the feel for different types of manufacturing processes, but logistics and the number of different processes prevent students from visiting each type of plant. Professor Weiss is developing three-dimensional simulations of each type of process so students can take virtual tours of the various plants. These simulations will combine animation, images, and video to capture the richness of a real plant tour while focusing attention on the manufacturing process. An added benefit of this project is that it can provide a template for developing multimedia business cases across the Darden curriculum.

Tom Jenkins, manager of Quality Services at the Amore Frozen Foods plant had recently purchased three new filling machines for the packing lines for Amore’s 8-ounce beef-noodle casserole. Each machine had a standard output of 600 packages per minute. Tom could adjust the fill target as well as the production rate for each machine. Tom had set aside a weekend to experiment with the three machines to determine the best combinations of fill target and production rate, taking into account the likelihood of underfilling the casseroles, the amount of wasted (above 8 ounces) beef-noodle product, and the production rate of the machine.

This simulation allows you to go through Tom's process for the beef-noodle-casserole filling line. You must select three inputs for each experiment/test:

· Filling machine (A, B, or C) · Fill target (in ounces per casserole, between 7.0 and 9.0) · Production rate (between 500 and 700 casseroles per minute)

The output of each test is:

· A graph depicting the weight of individual casseroles sampled at 30-second intervals · The mean and standard deviation of the weight of 100 casseroles · The number of casseroles with a weight below 8 ounces

Introduction - Ted Snyder and George Barbee 56kbps | 128kbps | 200kbps PricewaterhouseCoopers video 56kbps | 128kbps | 200kbps The Dell Computer Story - Brandt Allen 56kbps | 128kbps | 200kbps Laws, Order, and Chaos on the Web - Paul Farris and Phil Pfeifer Enter Internet and Web Technology - Randy Smith 56kbps | 128kbps | 200kbps Live Q & A Session - Brandt Allen, Paul Farris, and Phil Pfeifer 128kbps


The University of Virginia has another great website called the Valley of the Shadow (Civil War History) that is featured in Syllabus, May 2000, pg. 16.  The online version of the Syllabus article is not yet posted, but will eventually be available at http://www.syllabus.com/ 

The Valley of the Shadow's website is at http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/choosepart.html 

The Valley of the Shadow Project takes two communities, one Northern and one Southern, through the experience of the American Civil War. The project is a hypermedia archive of thousands of sources for the period before, during, and after the Civil War for Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Those sources include newspapers, letters, diaries, photographs, maps, church records, population census, agricultural census, and military records. Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families. The project is intended for secondary schools, community colleges, libraries, and universities. You have the choice now of using Part I on the Coming of the Civil War or Part II on the Civil War years. The Valley Project Part II site on the Civil War will be continuously updated throughout 1999. New information will be added to this part of the archive on a daily basis.

The Valley of the Shadow will be published in CD-ROM by W. W. Norton & Co. for both educational and trade markets. The first CD-ROM, on the coming of the war, will be released in the fall of 1999. The goal is to follow that release one year later with the CD-ROM on the Civil War years and another a year later on Emancipation and Reconstruction.

The homepage for the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities is at http://www.syllabus.com/ 


How does your salary compare with the salaries of your neighbors?
Salary and benefit information by discipline --- http://www.salary.com/index.asp 
The Salary Wizard will compare your salary with the average salary in your profession and geographical locale.  For example, the graph that I generated for "Professors" in San Antonio's 78212 zip code have a purported range from $68,616 to $103,374. The median is given as $84,154 for professors.  The median for Level III secretaries in this same zip code is reported at $31,150 with a range from $28,367 to $34,265.  Controllers have a median of $109,328 in our 78212 zip code.  Medical directors have a median of $194,128.   The median for higher-end tax accountants in the same zip code is reported as $109,790

Roustabouts earn a median of $34,546 in the 78212 zip code. How much do your roustabouts earn?

Warning:  After playing with this website, I found that you may get the same answers using different zip codes.  For example, Professors purportedly earn exactly the same range and media in zip code 61820 as in zip code 78212.  I guess the University of Illinois and Trinity University professors are identical --- at least in terms of worth in the range $68,616 to $103,374. The median is given as $84,154 for professors in both locales. I am somewhat suspicious of the database.  For example, I doubt whether we have roustabout in the 78212 zone.

There are, however, some variations by zip code.  Out in the Stanford University area, professors have a range from $78,728 to $118,608 with a median of $96,556.  That's not enough for a one bedroom shack in the zip code 94305 zone such that 78212 and 61820 zones' paltry salaries stretch further in life for professors.


Although not restricted to distance education programs, the following notice in the Scout Report on May 4, 2000 provides links to over 2,000 MBA programs, many of which are developing online alternatives:

MBA Info http://www.mbainfo.com/

MBA Info showcases detailed information about "2200 MBA programs from 1150 Universities, Business Schools and Management Colleges in 126 countries worldwide." The easy-to-use pull-down menus of options allow users to search the databases in fields including program structure, locations, program durations, and name of the school. The MBA Advice section gives a variety of information about applying to MBA programs including how to select a program and how to properly apply for admission. For those who have already earned their MBAs, MBA Info invites them to join their MBA Graduates Network to advise people who are considering entering MBA programs.

Don't forget my more comprehensive threads about online degree programs at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245progs.htm 


Thank you Jagdish Gangolly for the tip on learning evaluation at http://thenode.org/networking/march2000/publications.html 

STUDENT SUCCESS AND THE USE OF NEW TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION (January 2000) McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd.

How do Canadian college and university teachers define "success" for their students and how do they use technology to achieve it? Student Success and the Use of New Technology in Education, a study commissioned by McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., attempts to come up with answers to these questions through a survey of 2500 of the publisher's faculty contacts in business, arts and science departments across the country.

"Critical thinking," the "ability to apply learning," and "analytical thinking" are the top ranking factors in post-secondary teachers' definitions of student success, but as separate groups college teachers place more emphasis on career/job preparation while university instructors stress mastery of knowledge. Both groups see "the teaching/learning environment" as the chief motivating factor in student success, view course preparation as the most important thing they do to contribute to student success, and rate "lack of time to devote to course preparation" as their most significant obstacle. Less than a quarter of respondents ranks technology as a "very important" tool in helping them achieve their objectives for student success.

The authors of the study note that "lack of time" is a constant theme throughout teachers' comments, especially in the use of technology "where it is frequently mentioned as the key reason why teachers fail to progress as quickly as they feel they should." In spite of time pressures and lack of support to integrate technology into their curriculum, 66 percent of respondents said they were either "extremely" or "very" interested in increasing their use of technology in the classroom. While they foresee decreasing their use of e-mail over the next 1-3 years, they predict making greater use of Web links, downloadable teaching notes and support readings, CD-ROM support materials, Web assignments, electronic study guides, and presentation slides.

In using the results of this study readers should bear in mind that fully 55 percent of respondents described themselves as "inventors," "super innovators" or "innovators" with learning technologies. And here we come to a very important caveat on any generalization from the findings: the group surveyed is not a representative sample of Canadian post-secondary teachers and the survey medium (computer disk) and rate of return (10 percent) may have further skewed the results. For balance, it may be useful to compare the findings here with those of a recent study by the University of California, Los Angeles in which 67 percent of professors reported they are stressed by keeping up with emerging technology, and relatively few use the Internet for research purposes (35 percent) or to prepare class presentations (38 percent).

Nonetheless, Student Success and the Use of New Technology in Education provides a valuable glimpse at the priorities of a small, experienced, technologically-adept group of college and university teachers. Indeed, these may be the very teachers to provide leadership and mentoring for their peers.

Copies of the study can be ordered from 1-800-565-5758 at a cost of $4.95 (CD). Quote ISBN 0-07-087117-5.


Choices for the 21st Century Education Project --- http://www.choices.edu/index.html 

A Program of the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies at Brown University


National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) --- http://nces.ed.gov/practitioners/ 


Thank you Denny Beresford for the tip on http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2000-53.txt 

SEC APPROVES ISSUANCE OF INTERPRETIVE RELEASE ON THE USE OF ELECTRONIC MEDIA

Washington, DC, April 26, 2000 - At an open meeting yesterday, the Commission approved the issuance of an interpretive release discussing the application of the federal securities laws to electronic media. The interpretations build on Commission interpretations in 1995 and 1996 and are intended to help promote the efficient dissemination of information to investors, security holders and the securities markets. In addition, the interpretations are intended to ensure that the evolving use of communication technologies to offer and sell securities is consistent with the Commission's goals of protecting investors and promoting fair and orderly markets.

Many publicly-traded companies are incorporating Internet- based technology into their routine business operations, including setting up their own web sites to furnish company and industry information. Some provide information about their securities and the markets in which their securities trade. Investment companies use the Internet to provide investors with fund-related information, as well as security holder services and educational materials. Issuers of municipal securities also are beginning to use the Internet to provide information about themselves and their outstanding bonds, as well as new offerings of their securities.

The increased use of the Internet by issuers as a means of widespread information dissemination has resulted in uncertainty about the application of the federal securities laws to these communications. Through the release, the Commission seeks to reduce this uncertainty and remove interpretively some of the barriers to use of electronic media, while preserving important investor protections.

Highlights of the Interpretations

1. Electronic Delivery

The guidance in the release resolves several issues that have arisen out of the Commission's 1995 and 1996 releases on the use of electronic media to satisfy delivery obligations. In brief, this guidance

ú clarifies that, in addition to written consent, investors and security holders may consent to electronic delivery of documents telephonically, as long as the consent is obtained in a manner that assures its validity and a record of the consent is retained;

ú permits market intermediaries (such as broker-dealers and banks) to obtain consent to electronic delivery of documents on a "global," multiple-issuer basis, as long as the consent is informed;

ú clarifies that issuers and market intermediaries may deliver documents electronically in portable document format, or PDF, as long as investors and security holders are adequately informed of the requirements to download PDF and are provided with any necessary software and assistance;

ú clarifies that a hyperlink embedded within a prospectus or any other document required to be filed or delivered under the federal securities laws causes the hyperlinked information to be a part of that document; and

ú clarifies that the close proximity of information on a web site to a public offering prospectus does not, by itself, make that information an "offer to sell," "offer for sale" or "offer" within the meaning of the federal securities laws.


History and Current Status of the IASC (International Accounting Standards Committee) (A Slide Show)
"Financial Reporting in the New Millennium," by Paul Pacter, http://www.iasc.org.uk/docs/overview.pdf 


3 May 2000: IASC today published International Accounting Standard IAS 40, Investment Property. IAS 40 prescribes the accounting treatment for investment property and related disclosure requirements. The Standard is effective for annual financial statements covering periods beginning on or after 1 January 2001. Earlier application is encouraged. The Standard replaces previous requirements in IAS 25, Accounting for Investments, which is withdrawn when this Standard comes into effect.

Investment property is defined as property (land or a building - or part of a building - or both) held (by the owner or by the lessee under a finance lease) to earn rentals or for capital appreciation or both, rather than for:

(a) use in the production or supply of goods or services or for administrative purposes; or (b) sale in the ordinary course of business.

The Standard requires enterprises to choose one of two accounting models and to apply that model consistently to all of its investment property. The two models are:

(a) a fair value model: investment property should be measured at fair value and changes in fair value should be recognised in the income statement; or (b) a cost model. The cost model is the benchmark treatment in IAS 16, Property, Plant and Equipment: investment property should be measured at depreciated cost (less any accumulated impairment losses). An enterprise that chooses the cost model should disclose the fair value of its investment property.

A change from one model to the other model should be made only if the change will result in a more appropriate presentation. The Standard states that this is highly unlikely to be the case for a change from the fair value model to the cost model.

http://www.iasc.org.uk/news/cen8_091.htm  


Updates on IAS 39 on Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments and Hedging Activities
For a more complete threading of issues see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133glosf.htm 

Side by Side: IAS 39 Compared with FASB Standards (FAS 133), by Paul Pacter, as published in Accountancy International Magazine, June 1999 --- http://www.iasc.org.uk/news/cen8_142.htm 

Why the bankers hate IAS 39 and FAS 133 --- http://www.iasc.org.uk/docs/basel.pdf 
Report to G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors on International Accounting Standards
Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, April 2000

At its meeting in March 2000, the Board appointed a Committee to develop implementation guidance on IAS 39, Financial Instruments: Recognition. The guidance is expected to be published later this year, after public comment, as a staff guidance document. The IAS 39 Implementation Guidance Committee may refer some issues either to the SIC or to the Board.  http://www.iasc.org.uk/frame/cen2_139.htm 

Derivative financial instruments accounting became a priority of the SEC, IASC, and FASB after the scandals of the early 1990s.  See "Derivatives Revisited," by Ed McCarthy, Journal of Accountancy, May 2000, pp. 35-43.  The online version is at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/may2000/mccarthy.htm

Derivatives debacles have provided some of the past decade’s most devastating financial headlines. Names such as Long Term Capital Management, Orange County and Baring Brothers bring to mind situations where derivatives failed—often miserably (see exhibit 1, below, for details). Several losses were enormous—an estimated $2 billion for Orange County and $4 billion for Long Term Capital. Other incidents resulted in highly publicized lawsuits between derivatives buyers and sellers, such as Procter & Gamble’s lengthy dispute with Bankers Trust.

The causes of these losses varied. Among those frequently cited were traders working without adequate supervision, pricing models that failed to account for extreme market movements and market illiquidity. Although derivatives abuses have been absent from the headlines lately, some incidents still make news, such as Sweden’s Electrolux AB’s 1999 loss of more than 55 million German marks (approximately $28 million) due to an employee’s unauthorized futures trading.


A Poem About Cash Flows --- http://beech.ait.fredonia.edu/course/99FA/ac301/WatchCashFlows.htm 
A sample verse is shown below:

Then I felt a queasy tingling and I heard the cash a-jingling
As a fearsome banker entered whom I'd often seen before.
His face was money-green and in his eyes there could be seen
Dollar-signs that seemed to glitter as he reckoned up the score.
"Cash flow", the banker said, and nothing more.

From:  Quoth the Banker, "Watch Cash Flow",
By Herbert S. Bailer, Jr
.


AICPA EDUCATION NEWSLETTER http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aicpa/2000May.pdf  
The AICPA Members in Education May 2000 Newsletter is now available online. This issue features AICPA Core Competency Framework for Entry into the Accounting Profession, CPA Exam Content Reformation, Computerization Update, New Information Technology Credential, and much more.


I added Bill's message below to my treaded messages on the paradigm shift in higher education at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm 

Because we are small, private, and hands-on university with much made of our faculty/student ratio and access to the interested, informed, and enthusiastic professors, the following article doesn't apply to us directly, but it is the consequence of the corporatizing of the University. It is an report from AFT entitled "The Vanishing Professor." and you might want to look at it while you enjoy your non-adjunct summer.

http://www.aft.org/higher_ed/reports/professor/index.html 

The Union label is everywhere.....

C. W. (Bill) Spinks,  mailto:cspinks@trinity.edu 
English Dept, Trinity University
715 Stadium Drive, San Antonio, Texas 78212 USA
office: 210-999-7577 fax: 210-999-7578

http://www.trinity.edu/cspinks/ 
http://www.tricksters.org/


"Running Out of Space," From Newsweek, May 8, 2000, pg. 83 (Although most articles in this edition of Newsweek are online, I could not find this particular item online at http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/issue/19_00a/common/index/index.htm )

This article lists the following three websites where you can store megabytes of personal backup data for free.


How XML unleashes data
PC Week Labs looks at XML, the simple and almost universally compatible language that is poised to become the key technology in e-commerce ---  http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt9911231/2396831/ 

Why XML is failing (in the eyes of one analyst)
According to John Taschek, the "unifying" technology is falling victim to its own popularity as big adopters bypass the standards bodies. http://www.pcweek.com/b/pcwt0004266/2551691/ 

"XML is Not Yet a Cornerstone Technology," Application Development Trends, April, 2000, pp. 55-60.  The online version is at http://www.adtmag.com/Pub/apr2000/fe401a.cfm 

Despite the promises, corporate developers need to make smart decisions about how to apply the technology as it is today to specific integration problems and challenges. Perhaps just as important, developers have to disregard some of the growing myths that surround the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). This article will show that while XML is not the cornerstone of EAI, it is an important enabler that, when used correctly, can be a key weapon in any corporation's IT arsenal.

Nevertheless, the Web as a delivery mechanism and XML as the delivery format is already a very powerful combination that can enable integration across the board for business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) and application-to-application (A2A) connectivity.

For these and other threads on XML, RDF, and XBRL, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm 


An ambitious air-travel Web site under development by several major airlines is facing growing opposition from competitors who want the government to take a closer look. http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth850.htm  


From the Scout Report

Business Incubation and Internet Accelerators http://www.rednecktech.com/powellb/ 

Created and maintained by Benjamin C. Powell, a PhD student at Wharton School's Department of Management at the University of Pennsylvania, this Website offers a concise collection of resources about business incubators. Along with an excellent assortment of up-to-date online articles and resources, Mr. Powell has arranged a comprehensive bibliography of helpful texts ranging from books and dissertations to journal articles. The site also contains links to incubators, by name and by location, as well as information about IPOs, associations, and other resources.


IRS Forms Search Page --- http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/plain/forms_pubs/findfiles.html 
Download IRS Tax Forms --- http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/plain/forms_pubs/forms.html
Other tax links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation 


From the Scout Report

Murray Research Center http://www.radcliffe.edu/murray/index.html 

This site is hosted by the Henry A. Murray Research Center at Radcliffe College, which "houses the nation's largest social science data archive on human development across the life span." The Website features a summary database for over 200 sociological surveys and studies conducted nationwide. Each entry provides data set abstracts and documentation, data specifications, a bibliography of associated publications and papers, and information about what data is held at the Center. The database is searchable by subject area or by various coding categories (such as sample size, race, age, gender, etc.). Requests for the actual data require registration and application. The requirements are given on-site: click on Accessing Data from the Archive. In addition to reporting on current research being conducted by scholars at the Center, the site also offers links to the Schlesinger Library and the Radcliffe Public Policy Center.


Although I got some helpful information from Paul Dierks, nobody of the AECM gave me a good definition of the ratio called Return on Capital Employed, so like the Little Red Hen, I scratched around my search engines.  Thank you for sharing buz/ed.  The best set of definitions that I encountered for calculating profitability ratios was at http://bized.ac.uk/stafsup/options/ratio/raprofe3.htm.  This, in turn, let me drill down to the definition of Return on Capital Employed at http://bized.ac.uk/stafsup/options/ratio/raprofe3.htm 

Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) - Explanation

ROCE, sometimes called Return on Net Assets (RONA), is probably the most popular ratio for measuring general management performance in relation to the capital invested in the business. ROCE defines capital invested in the business as total assets less current liabilities, unlike ROTA, which measures profitability in relation to total assets.

 
ROCE = Net Profit before Interest and Taxes (NPIT)
Total Capital Employed (CE)
x 100 = X%

Capital Employed may be defined in a variety of ways, the most common being Fixed Assets plus Working Capital, i.e. Current Assets less Current Liabilities. This definition reflects the investment required to enable a business to function.

In order for a business to maximise profitability, management should consider the two elements of ROCE. First, the business needs to sell goods and services at a price that exceeds the cost, which is measured by the net profit margin. Secondly, the business must use the capital employed in the business to generate sufficient sales volume and revenue to maximise profitability, which is measured by the net asset turnover. The relationship between the two elements of ROCE can therefore be expressed as follows:

 
ROCE = Net Profit before Interest & Taxes
Sales Revenue
x   Sales Revenue  
Capital Employed
NET PROFIT MARGIN NET ASSET TURNOVER

 

A shorter explanation is given below:

CAPITAL EMPLOYED
The total of fixed capital, deferred tax, tax equalisation account and all interest-bearing liabilities.
http://www.fintech.co.za/financial/definitions.htm 

(Note from Bob Jensen --- the numerator is generally profit before interest and income tax. See http://www.churcher.com/FOSM/foundations-of-senior-management-9108.htm 

A good illustration is available at http://www.altron.co.za/financial/sixyearreview.htm 

Another illustration can be found at 
http://jul-sep98.business-standard.com/98sep14/investor/story5.htm
 

An interesting listing of benchmarking criteria is given at 
http://www.dti.gov.uk/mbp/bpgt/m9jc00001/m9jc0000112.html
 

Paul Dierks replies to my ROCE question --- Paul.Dierks@mba.wfu.edu 

I don' t have an answer for your question - but see if the individual is aware of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative.

It is a very "aware" site on the Balanced Scorecard and they have a VERY active listserv. You have to register for the listerv, but I thought they were having very extensive and knowledgeable discussions on the Balanced Scorecard. Perhaps the question you asked can be posted there.

Their web site is at http://www.bscol.com/ :

Their mission statement is as follows: Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Inc. (BSCol) is a professional services firm that facilitates the worldwide awareness, use, enhancement, and integrity of the Balanced Scorecard as a value-added management process. Founded and led by the creators of the Balanced Scorecard concept, Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton <index2.cfm>, BSCol provides a global center of Balanced Scorecard excellence through consulting, education, training, publishing, research and development. Join Balanced Scorecard On-line <../sect9/index0.cfm> free for the latest insight and resources. For further information, call us at 781.259.3737.


Kieso and Weygandt Intermediate Accounting Resource Website --- http://mrburns.lsw.com/wiley/accountingweb/ 
Includes PowerPoint slides, Study Guide, Intel and Coca Cola annual reports, check figures, etc.


Every now and then I stumble on a very helpful website with many links. One of these is @theBeech from SUNY College at Fredonia. Thank you Fredonia for sharing these links on education in general and on accounting education in particular  The main website is at http://beech.ait.fredonia.edu/teaching.htm 

Learning Skills Links --- http://beech.ait.fredonia.edu/learning.htm 
Teaching Resources Links --- http://beech.ait.fredonia.edu/teaching.htm 
The above links are very comprehensive --- I am recommending making bookmarks on these pages.

For other education links go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm 

Some Course Web Pages Supported from SUNY College at Fredonia --- http://beech.ait.fredonia.edu/course/default.htm 

Newsgroup messages are located at http://beech.ait.fredonia.edu/newsgroups.htm 

Some Accounting Career Information from SUNY College at Fredonia --- http://beech.ait.fredonia.edu/careers.htm 
This is a great website with lots of useful links about accounting careers, continuing education, and certification specialties.  
In particular, note the Accounting Career Information Link at http://beech.ait.fredonia.edu/careersac.htm 

For other career information, scroll down to Careers in Accountancy at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm 


"Working With Databases:  How to add relationships to a table," by D.C. Hayes and J.E. Hunton, Journal of Accountancy, May 2000, pp. 71-79.  The online version is at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/may2000/hayes.htm 


Thank you for sharing these DHTML managerial accounting cost accounting tutorials Richard Campbell --- http://www.virtualpublishing.net/gallery.htm (an application of Toolbook from Click2Learn).  Many of these courseware examples may require specified plugins available at the above websites.

1. Process Costing DHTML tutorial. After this tutorial loads, click on the transparent buttons to get further information on the data presented.

2. Linear Regression With Excel Tutorial --- This is a Dynamic HTML demo.

3. Accounting for Merchandising Companies Quiz. This is a Dynamic HTML quiz.

4. Cost / Volume / Profit Tutorial . This is a dynamic HTML demo.

Richard J Campbell mailto:campbell@VirtualPublishing.net 


"Smart Stops on the Web," Journal of Accountancy, May 2000, pg. 20.  The online version is at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/may2000/news_web.htm 

INVESTMENT & RESEARCH SITES

Like E-Bay for 401(k)s --- www.401kexchange.com 

In contrast to e-bay.com, where sellers look for the highest bids for their wares, on Insight in Formation’s site, buyers look for the lowest bids from 401(k) service providers. Buyers can get price quotes anonymously from up to 10 service providers and tap into ratings reports compiled from surveys customers have filled out. These are updated quarterly and provide a sample of each service provider’s customers.

A Lesson in Investing --- www.numeraire.com 

This site, Global Value Investing with Stock Valuation, provides detailed information about value investing, including the processes of stock screening, selection and pricing. Other topics cover bonds, hedging and securities. A glossary of value investing terms is also available.

Pick a Stock—Any Stock --- www.stockpickers.net 

Stockpickers.net monitors financial sites to find the best stock selections and compiles them in four different categories: recently added sites, day trading and short-term stock picks, medium- to long-term picks and small- and micro-cap picks. Links to international trading sites, financial news, related press releases and message boards are also included.

An Investment Research Site --- www.multexnet.com 

This site gives users access to investment research, discussion groups and downloadable documents on current market concerns. Articles written by financial analysts on hot topics are featured in the Analyst Corner. Professionals, as categorized by the site, are offered a free trial membership.

More on Investment Research --- www.powerize.com 

This site offers free membership and access to national and international news reports and articles on topics such as investment, retirement funds and personal financial planning. Also included is a stock ticker, a business finder and a search engine that lets you look up data by company or industry name, specific term or date range.

An Investment Association --- www.aimr.com 

The Association for Investment Management and Research’s (AIMR) site provides information about its Chartered Financial Analyst program and continuing education offerings. The site also outlines and discusses AIMR’s four guiding principles—standards, ethics, knowledge and professionalism.

GENERAL INTEREST SITES

Go to GoTo.com  --- www.goto.com 

This search engine is extremely user friendly and simple in its design, making it perfect for the novice. A query on the term “investment research” brought up 40 different results. Also useful is the format of the responses: The site name in boldface is followed by a paragraph describing the site’s offerings, with the hotlink on a separate line—making cutting and pasting a URL quick and efficient.

Search for Schools --- www.searchedu.com 

This search engine is dedicated to university sites and all things scholastic. A search of the Rutgers University site brought up over 200 URLs ranked in order of popularity using the most hits as the basis. Also included are links to online dictionaries, census and government information, calculators, converters and equations.

Free Resources --- www.freeforum.com 

This site offers access to a variety of free products—including magazines and newsletters—services and software for educational and career purposes and some just for fun. Topic headings include catalogs, entertainment, gaming, gardening, sales and marketing, small and home offices, sports and hobbies and travel.

Who’ll Start the Bidding at…? --- www.bizbuyer.com 

Free registration entitles users to compare price quotes from vendors for business products and services. Categories include office equipment and supplies, telecommunications, insurance and employee benefits as well as IT consulting, financial, Internet and legal services.

Extra! Extra! Download and Read All About It! --- www.freecopy.net 

This site, sponsored by the Article Research Association (ARA), offers free registration for users to download and reprint articles with an ARA byline. While few JofA readers need this service, accessing the articles for read-only purposes should prove interesting and, maybe, helpful. Topics include camping, health, sports and travel.

The Big Apple Online --- www.citidex.com 

This site offers an online Yellow Pages of New York’s cultural events, products and services. Its well-organized and alphabetical search engine makes looking up a business or service provider easy. Included here are New York street maps, airport and railroad schedules and theater and museum information.

Note from Bob Jensen --- If you interested in the Big Apple's Broadway shows, the place to start is at http://www.broadway.com/ 


IBM redesigns ThinkPad line
The venerable portable computer gets a refresh with more user-friendly features -- as well as a new brand: the ThinkPad A and T families --- http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt0005022/2558464/ 


Two leads from the Scout Report

"One day in the making of a 'dot-com' dream" 11/15/99 http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/11/15/p11s1.htm  

"A 'dotcom dream,' Act II" 1/1/00 http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/05/01/fp15s1-csm.shtml 


For industrial engineering and cost accounting historians
The Gilbreth Network --- http://gilbrethnetwork.tripod.com/ 


Smithsonian's Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga --- http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/ 


Masters of Photography ---  http://www.masters-of-photography.com/index.html 


Agricultural Market Information Virtual Library (eCommerce) --- http://www.aec.msu.edu/agecon/fs2/market/contents.htm


Electronic Publishing
Information Automation Limited (IAL) Web: Collection Management and Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resource http://www.i-a-l.co.uk/CM_Bibl.htm 


StockMaster --- http://www.stockmaster.com/ 


Unexpected Everest --- http://www.discovery.com/exp/mteverest/mteverest.html 

Trek to Everest http://www.trektoeverest.com/  


Looking 4 something?  Try to find it at 4 Anything at http://www.4anything.com/ 


Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure (Literature, History) --- http://www.pbs.org/hemingwayadventure/ 


A great art history website from the Netherlands (You can choose between six different languages)
Rijksmuseum --- http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/ 


Guide to Digital Resources for the Humanities 2000 http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/index.html 


Bill Machrone explains why there's no easy way to detect whether you're being watched by keystroke monitors.
http://www.pcweek.com/b/pcwt0005036/2555158/ 


From Yahoo

Georgia Revealed --- http://www.oneworldjourneys.com/ 

A special feature from One World Journeys' team of photographers and journalists in association with the "Washington Post," this expedition to "the soul of the Caucasus" vividly explores the history, culture, and environment of the remote, mountainous republic of Georgia. Bordered by the Black Sea, Turkey, and troubled Russian autonomous regions to the north, Georgia is an isolated crossroad with rich and distinctive traditions. Exquisite colored maps, daily multimedia dispatches from the April journey, and lavish photo and video galleries of ancient forests will stir your imagination as well as your wanderlust.


Marketing researchers may be interested in Coca Cola's new and expensive marketing venture on the web.  See http://www.coke.com/gateway.html  


For you Ben and Richard --- Kodak Birdcam 2000 --- http://www.kodak.com/go/birdcam 

Peregrine falcons Mariah and Cabot-Sirocco have settled into the nest box to raise their third family atop the Kodak Tower. To watch the peregrine parents tend their clutch, visit the Birdcam and witness firsthand the life cycle of the falcon. Also watch for ongoing features that tell the story of Peregrines in the City. Learn about the natural and urban habitats of peregrine falcons, their rebound from threatened extinction, their role in human myth and history, the Cabot-Sirocco and Mariah family tree—and more!


The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 41 May 5, 2000 ---  http://www.accountingweb.com 

1. Deloitte May Be Forced To Restructure 
2. The Love Bug Strikes The World - Quickly 
3. The Future of Financial Reporting Defined 
4. Three Uses of the Web For CPAs 
5. AICPA To Launch New CPE Offering 
6. Budgeting With Pivot Tables - The Sequel 
7. It's Back To School For Financial Executives 
8. Corporate Acquisitions This Week 
9. Protecting Assets From Nursing Homes 
10. Web Resource: More For Those Interested in Not-For-Profits


May 7th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Now Repeat After me.. "Microsoft Outlook is Unsafe" 
2. Where Have all the Good Jobs Gone? Online, My Friend 
3. Deloitte May Be Forced To Restructure 
4. The Future of Financial Reporting Defined: xBRL 
5. Major League Baseball Simulation in Real Time 
6. Traditional EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) Continues to Grow in spite of XML 
7. Clues to a New Business Model from Cluetrain.com


Pro2Net Accounting Update http://accounting.pro2net.com For the Week of May 8, 2000 HIS ISSUE:

1. This Week's Accounting-Specific Headlines 
2. Feature Articles 
3. This Week's Hot Talk: Robert Handwerk, President, RLH & Associates 
4. Survey Results: What is your opinion of the tech stock market slump? 
5. Our Tip of the Week: The top features to look for in a Web-based bookkeeping system


AccountingStudents Newsletter: May 2, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. Job Competition and the Low Unemployment Rate 
2. Survey Results: Do you have second thoughts about your chosen major? 
3. Tip of the Week: Did you choose the right major? 
4. Opportunities at Small, Entrepreneurial Firms Lure Accounting Students 
5. Site of the Week: College Broadcast 
6. Save 25 Percent on "You Can Pass the CPA Exam"


Hello Bob,

My name is Brenda Mizgorski and I started CPAnet in March 1996 to provide the accounting profession with a way to easily find accounting-related resources on the Internet. I currently work by myself to provide this service and would be very appreciative if you include a link to CPAnet from your site.

Please consider a link to CPAnet at the following page(s): http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/booknew.htm  Under Accounting Resources and New Bookmarks

More About CPAnet: CPAnet is a web portal, Internet research resource and online community for accounting professionals. CPAnet includes over 3,000 links to various accounting related web sites and is a valuable Internet information and navigation resource. You can find CPAnet at the following URL: http://www.cpanet.com .

I also have another site that may interest you called MBA ZoNe - www.mbazone.com . Thank you for your consideration. Please let me know if you decide to link to CPAnet.

Best Regards, Brenda

Brenda Mizgorski, CPA Owner CPAnet - www.cpanet.com  Phone: 831.375.7060 (PST) E-mail: mizgorski@cpanet.com 

CPAnet - the web portal, Internet research resource and online community for the accounting profession.


Forwarded by my OLD friend Joe McCarty (This story reminds me of one of my favorite actresses of all time --- Ruth Gordan.  The forwarded story especially relates to her role in one of my all time favorite movies called Harold and Maude.  Critics tell us that she did not live the life she portrayed in films, but I prefer to remember Ruth Gordon as I saw her on film.)

DREAMS or sometimes called ROSE'S DREAM or THE ROSE

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being. 

She said, "Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?" I laughed and enthusiastically responded, "Of course you may!" and she gave me a giant squeeze. 

"Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?" I asked. She jokingly replied, "I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, have a couple of children, and then retire and travel." 

"No seriously," I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age. "I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!" she told me. After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake.

We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this "time machine" as she shared her wisdom and experience with me. Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.

At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I'll never forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium. As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor. Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, "I'm sorry I'm so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I'll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell you what I know." As we laughed she cleared her throat and began: "We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day. You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die. We have so many people walking around who are dead and don't even know it!" "There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up. If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight. Anybody can grow older. That doesn't take any talent or ability." "The idea is to grow up by always finding the opportunity in change. Have no regrets. The elderly usually don't have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets." 

She concluded her speech by courageously singing "The Rose." She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives. At the years end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago.

One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep. Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be.

If you read this, please send this peaceful word of advice to your friends and family, they'll really enjoy it! Remember, GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL.

Note from Bob Jensen:   Joe did not disclose the author or source of the above story.  I found an online copy where the author is listed as "Unknown."  See http://www.cameoroze.com/welcome/wel_ltrs.htmThe story can also be found at http://www.amcbroom.com/gossip.html and http://www.storytellerdesign.com/outloud.html.


You may like some of the "Outlouds" at http://www.storytellerdesign.com/outloud.html.


A quiz forwarded by Dick Haar

Name the five wealthiest people in the world.

Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.

Name the last five winners of the Miss America contest.

Name five people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer prize.

Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor.

Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:

List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.

Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.

Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.

Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

Name half a dozen heroes whose stories have inspired you.

Easier? The lesson?

The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care.



Debbie's Corner


Augsburg College

Department of Business Administration, Accounting and MIS

Welcome to Augsburg's Accounting Major

The major in accounting prepares students for professional careers in a wide variety of accounting related positions. This major has three tracks: General Accounting, Public Accounting, and Managerial Accounting.  Each of the accounting specializations requires completion of a 14 course Accounting Core.  Two additional course beyond the core provide the emphasis for the specialization in Public Accounting and in Managerial accounting.

General Accounting  - basis for a wide variety of business and accounting positions

Professional Accounting
    - basis for professional designation of Certified Public Accountant or Certified Management Accountant

MIS 375 Management Information Systems in the Organization
Broad understanding of using information systems to support organizational objectives. Topics include strategic uses of information systems, business process re-engineering, understanding the technology architecture, and information systems resources.

Star Tribune Online

City of St. Paul


Augustana College, Rock Island Illinois

Augustana's highly respected accounting program is designed to meet the professional requirements of accountants in public, private, and non-profit environments.

What is the new requirement to take the CPA Examination?

The implementation of the new requirement varies from state-to-state, so let's focus on Illinois. Anyone sitting for the CPA Exam for the first time after January 1, 2001 must have completed 150 semester hours of acceptable college level education, including a baccalaureate or higher degree. An accounting concentration is required, but not a graduate degree.

Will all accounting majors be affected by this change?

No, only those who intend to sit for the CPA Exam. The Department also supports the CMA Examination (Certified Management Accountant), the CIA Examination (Certified Internal Auditor), and other professional designations which are not affected by the change.

Accounting Course Description:

311 Accounting Systems and Control (3)
Information system concepts; computer technology; system analysis; design and application of computer-based accounting systems that provide adequate internal control. Prerequisite: 202; Computer Science 112.

 

Public Interest:

John Deere Planetarium

Fryxell Geology Museum


If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.



And that's the way it was on May 10, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

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May 3, 2000


Quotes of the Week:  

When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it's a nail.
Abraham Maslow (Might the same thing be said about the statistical analysis throne where all journal editors flush?)

If you aren't fired up with enthusiasm, you'll be fired with enthusiasm.
Vince Lombardi (Players for the Pack did not have tenure.)

Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.
Weller's Law

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
May West

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
Gloria Steinem

I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
Woody Allen

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth --- to see it like it is, and tell it like it is --- to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.
Richard Nixon

All I have is natural ability.
Mickey Mantle (and look at how he ended up.)

If there are no problems, only opportunities to excel, what do you call solutions?
David Auberson

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Last week's thoughts about sharing --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q2.htm#042500 


The best event of the year for me at Trinity University is the grand finale of the Department of Music. This particular year for me in Parker Chapel on April 30 was more than great --- it was exceptional. Conductor Ken Greene and the Trinity Symphony Orchestra allowed us to envision "The Promise of Living" from Aaron Copland's The Tender Land. Then over 125 members of the Trinity Choral Union joined the Orchestra to bring us, under the inspired direction of Scott MacPherson, an absolutely magnificent performance of Mass in C by Ludwig van Beethoven. It was a marvel to observe the perfect synchronization of instruments and voices. Bravo to all the performers who made my birthday a treasured day that will never be forgotten (not that any of them knew my secret about having another dreaded birthday). I hope this annual concert never dies on our wonderful campus.


I added these two links for Mary Ann Tetreault who will be joining our faculty next year in the Political Science Department.


Note the message below that I received this morning. For this and other message threads about Blackboard, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/blackboard.htm 

Steve Perez has us up and running on the latest version of the Blackboard Server.

Bob Jensen

Original Message----- 
From: Lim Poh Gek [mailto:PGLim@ntu.edu.sg]  
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2000 12:25 AM 
To: 'Jensen, Robert' Subject: RE: Blackboard Advice and threads

Dear Prof Jensen,

Yes, you can make use of my comments. However, only yesterday the regional manager of Blackboard Inc., Mr Simmons, came to NTU and he told us that the latest version of Blackboard platform will have this feature of setting the dates and times of release for several assessment quizzes. Also, they are incorporating question-mark software into Blackboard at no extra charge. Also, they are going to incorporate into Blackboard the ability to type in special characters, mathematical symbols, and equations even in the Discussion threads.

Thank you for your approval to make use of your write-up.

With Best regards! Lim Poh Gek, 
Julie Centre for Educational Development (CED) email :
pglim@ntu.edu.sg 
Technological University, Singapore

Note from Bob Jensen:  Question Mark Software's homepage is at http://www.questionmark.com/

Computerizing Testing, Surveys and Assessments with Question Mark! Question Mark is a powerful tool for computerizing quizzes, tests, assessments and surveys. It is easy to use by both the question designer and the candidate or participant. Question Mark saves time and money while allowing you to present questions with videos, graphics and a wide variety of styles.

How does it work?

Question Mark software allows you to create question files while the participant uses a run-time system or a Web browser to answer your questions. The participant receives the feedback that you have specified. Answers are then saved to a file for scoring and analysis.

Why two sets of hyper-links?

Question Mark operates worldwide and provides two web servers to provide easy access, one located in North America and one located in Europe. These servers contain unique and specific information for the territories they serve.


Over 400 participants attended our Ohio IMA presentations.  Thank you Norm for putting our pictures up at http://ohioima.org/ohioima/WEBSITE/INDEX.HTM.  Since the pictures are digital, you could have trimmed lots of pounds and edited a few years off of Bob Jensen.  I always wanted to look like Marlan Brando, and now that there is a resemblance I'd like to change my role model.

Norm Meonske, along with other members of the Board, did a terrific job organizing and promoting this event on the campus of Kent State University..  


Important links at the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching --- http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/ 

The goal of this program is to gain a better understanding of how scholars in different settings conduct themselves as educators, how cultures of teaching and learning develop and change, and how they connect with other aspects of academic life. We are, in particular, hoping to shed light on how richer and more informed cultures of teaching and learning on campus and in the disciplines can be encouraged and spread.

Senior Scholar Mary Huber is involved with the Cultures of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Program.

Senior Scholar Pat Hutchings directs the Higher Education Program. A Bibliography of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is available on this Web site.

Articles about the scholarship of teaching and learning are linked below:

There is also a K-12 Program at http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/OurWork/CASTL/k-12/k-12.htm 


At the above Carnegie Foundation website, a listing of the PEW Scholars is provided at http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/OurWork/WorkFrame.htm. One of those 1999 scholars is Professor Anthony H. Catanach, Jr. from Villanova University.  I persuaded Tony to make a presentation in a workshop on August 12 at the Hyatt Hotel.

You can read more about Tony's planned August 12 presentation and the other presentations planned for Workshop Number 1 listed at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpelist.htm 

Innovative Learning Programs for Accounting and Business: The Ivy League Goes Online, the Sloan Foundation Experiments in Asynchronous Learning, and Experiments in Self-Learning at Major Universities Using the BAM Pedagogy
Presenters: Robert E. Jensen, Trinity University; William H. Beaver, Stanford University; Anthony H. Catanach, Villanova University; Charles Hickman, University Access; Dan N. Stone, University of Illinois


All CPE workshops on August 12-13 in Philadelphia --- http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aen/meet00/cpelist.htm 

Click on any program in the list to read more details about that program.

The main web page for the entire set of our Year 2000 meetings is at 
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/2000annual/meetinginfo.htm
 


On April 25, ABC News reported that Harvard University may change its work rules for professors as a result of its lawsuit regarding Arthur Miller's outside work. You can read more about this (along with my commentary) at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm#HarvardSues 

The link to the ABC News article is provided at the above website.


The links to student projects in my ACCT 5341 (International Accounting Theories Course) are now available at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/projects/sp2000/000index.htm 


AICPA EDUCATION NEWSLETTER  http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/aicpa/2000May.pdf


AACSB Links to e-Business Education http://www.aacsb.edu/e-business/index.html  

Electronic Commerce (e-Commerce) Course Syllabi --- http://dossantos.cbpa.louisville.edu/ISNET/Ecomm/ 


Intangible Assets Links

Neil Hannon led me to "The 'Invisible' Balance Sheet" at http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html.  This, in turn, led me to The Sveiby Toolkit an interactive page that allows you to create your own firm's Invisible Balance Sheet --- http://www.gutenberg.com/~millennium/sveiby/ibs/millibs.htm 

Valuation Resources (includes a section on intangible assets) --- http://www.valuationresources.com/ 

Of course, don't forget the important link at http://www.fastcompany.com/online/31/lev.html 


One of my graduating students points out that a leading firm with human resource accounting for intangibles is http://www.skandia.com/flash/index_flash.htm 


Why XML is failing (in the eyes of one analyst)
According to John Taschek, the "unifying" technology is falling victim to its own popularity as big adopters bypass the standards bodies. http://www.pcweek.com/b/pcwt0004266/2551691/ 


This is a tremendous website that I have mentioned previously.  However, I would like to remind you that this is a free service for quickly and easily finding you the best price and shipping charges for online books.  Go to http://isbn.nu/ 


NEW! FEI KNOWLEDGE CENTER HIGHLIGHTS 
A monthly review of research covering topics of interest to senior financial executives, with references for further information. FERF's Robert Colson edits the Highlights.  Here's a link to the first issue: http://www.fei.org/research/Knowledge_Center_Highlights_0400.doc.


B2B is the acronym for Business-to-Business e-Commerce

MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE "Free" Extends into B2B Space by Mitchell Levy Executive Producer, ECMgt.com
mitchell.levy@ecnow.com
 

Just three short years after the introduction of free e-mail and free web hosting, the latest wave of free applications has been extended from the B2C market to the lucrative B2B market. The newest wave of free services targets businesses, and it includes e-commerce, messaging services, organizing applications, networking and storage services, and even vertical business portals supporting B2B auctions and providing complete portal management services.

While the "Free" model in the B2C space is based on building membership and accumulating knowledge of user profiles that can be leveraged for advertising, the business model for free B2B is not as clear. We'll examine a dozen entrants in the Free B2B space, propose a new model called "process share", and discuss up-selling business customers to premium services with recurring revenue as the Free B2B driver. An even more interesting model is developing where consumers and businesses both share benefits from portals that integrate community, content, and business processes.

Let's start with a quick tour of business productivity and infrastructure services, then move to B2B and market-to-market portal offerings, finishing with e-commerce and financial services.

* Dialpad, http://www.dialpad.com 

* OneBox, http://www.onebox.com 

* WebEX, http://www.webex.com 

* WebWire, http://www.webwire.com 

* Eletter, http://www.eletter.com 

* Microsoft bCentral, http://www.bcentral.com 

* PayPal, http://www.paypal.com 

* PlasticsNET, http://www.plastics.com 

* WebMD, http://www.webmd.com 

* Bigstep, http://www.bigstep.com 

* Econgo, http://www.econgo.com 

* FreeMerchant, http://www.freemerchant.com 

* JustWebIt, http://www.justwebit.com 

* Cardservice International, http://www.cardservice.com 

* OneCore, http://www.onecore.com 

* SmartOnline, http://www.smarton-line.com 

* Bizrate, http://www.bizrate.com 

* Hotmail, http://www.hotmail.com 

* Geocites, http://www.geocities.com 


Dot Com Statistics --- http://www.nsol.com/statistics/ 


If you are interested in downloading free recordings of your favorite artists, you have to see this website to believe it --- http://www.napster.com/

You just type in the name of your favorite artist and in seconds you get a long listing of recordings that you can simply download with a click of the mouse.

Napster is a completely new way of thinking about music online.

Imagine...an application that takes the hassle out of searching for MP3s. No more broken links, no more slow downloads, and no more busy, disorganized FTP sites. With Napster, you can locate and download your favorite music in MP3 format from one convenient, easy-to-use interface.

What else does it do? Quite a bit, actually. Some highlights include: CHAT - Allows users to chat with each other in forums based on music genre. AUDIO PLAYER - Plays MP3 files from right inside Napster, in case you don't have an external player or would prefer not to use one. HOTLIST - Lets you keep track of your favorite MP3 libraries for later browsing.


For about $99, Clipstream is not a bad option for streaming audio --- http://www.clipstream.com/purchase/index.shtml 

Instant Market Reach

Statistics show that 90-96% of people using the web use a JAVA compatible browser. With clipstream, that means 90-96% of people can hear your streaming audio message instantly. No Plugins or Players Required

End users can hear your audio clip without having to download and execute any new plugins or applications. This means that the greatest number of web viewers can hear your message. No Special Servers Required

If you are already running a web page, then you already have everything you need. No special server hardware or software to deliver high quality audio clipstream™. This means that you will be streaming quicker and less expensively. Extremely Small Download

It's only 25Kb including artwork! In the amount of time it takes to load a banner ad, your viewers will be hearing your audio clip! No Complex Programming

All you need to know is how to cut and paste. The clipstream™ web page will generate any code you need to add to your web page. High Compression

Your files are made so small that there is virtually no buffering time needed. This means your viewers hear your message without long waiting periods. High Quality Reproduction

clipstream™ provides high quality reproduction for the amount it is compressed. This means better than acceptable sound delivered quicker. The compressor auto-detects the capabilities of the end user and automatically optimizes the bit rate for their connection - 20kb for 56k or less connections, 32kb for isdn or better. Easy to Use Application

The compressor is very simple to use. Just drag and drop your audio files into the compressor and click compress. Add the auto generated code to your web page and upload it to your server. That's it! Customizable Player

The look and feel of the clipstream™ player can be customized for your needs by the people at Destiny.


America's Story from the U.S. Library of Congress --- http://www.americaslibrary.gov/ 

Library of Congress Bicentennial --- http://www.loc.gov/bicentennial/ 


Human rights abuses around the world --- Witness Rights Alert http://www.oddcast.com/witness/ 


Give to your favorite cause online at  Shine --- http://www.shine.com/ 


AltaVista Search Engine 3.0 might be just the ticket for companies hoping to improve lackluster search capabilities, says PC Week Labs --- http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt0004261/2553306/ 


Send free voice messages --- http://www.imbot.com/  (Includes an optional Palm Pilot service)


Colleges & Universities With Non-Discrimination Policies That Include Sexual Orientation --- http://www.hrc.org/issues/workplac/nd/coll.html 


GirlGeeks --- http://www.girlgeeks.com/ 

Katrillion Teen News --- http://www.katrillion.com/ 

Girltoday (Various Themes) --- http://193.207.29.16/ 


Iv you get the A&E Channel, there is a new program that will be ranking the top 10 in almost any category (although I have my doubts that the show will ever feature accounting professors).  If learning who is best in most everything else, you will find the archived rankings at http://www.aande.com/top10/ 


Net Events Guide --- http://events.yahoo.com/ 


Money for Women --- http://www.money.com/money/magazine/women/ 


Working for the Man --- she seems to be a rather frustrated executive assistant 
http://www.workingfortheman.com/
  

If I were a dog, any kind of dog, I would have sense enough to be outside enjoying the sunshine, living entirely on someone else's nickel with no guilt, eating whenever I felt like it, however much I felt like eating, and taking spur of the moment trips in whatever vehicle happened to be leaving my property at any given time. I would not be sitting behind a desk clicking "OK" in-boxes popping up on a computer screen and forwarding mail to someone who has already received it. Instead of politely answering ever-ringing phones with canned greetings such as, "Welcome to the executive office, how may I help you?", I would be barking at whatever I wanted to, whenever I wanted to. So you can see, that quiz, like all its predecessors (Why I'm secretly obsessed with painting by numbers because my favorite color is blue, Why my choice for favorite day of the week - Friday, of course - means I'm frugal, and Why I prefer peanut butter over tuna fish because I'm right-brained) revealed nothing about myself in any way rooted in reality. I haven't been spirited since I gave up Jack Daniel's, and the last real adventure I had was changing the toner cartridge in the fax machine.

It's time for a quiz that works, a quiz that's worth taking, a quiz that will impart information working people can use. So here it is: (Be honest, and answer all questions before scrolling down for the answers):

When you sit at your desk, you sit: a. Straight, with back rigid b. Slightly hunched over, with one elbow resting on the desktop c. Listing to the starboard, with both hands clutching your chest as if you were having a heart attack

With breakfast, you usually drink: a. Two cups of coffee b. Skim milk, reduced fat milk, goats milk, or heavy cream c. Orange juice, grapefruit juice, or Tang d. Jack Daniel's

When dressing for work, you strive for: A. A professional, "pulled together" appearance B. Comfort, "business casual" but without the running shoes C. Colors that sort-of match

And now for the answers, (and of course, you have to scroll down to get them).

Another website along the same cynical lines --- http://www.urbekah.com/housewife/working/ 


iExplore --- http://www.iexplore.com/ 


The C.I.A. in Iran --- http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html 
New York Times report on a 1953 covert operation that toppled Iran's nationalist regime.


Gay Health --- http://www.gayhealth.com/ 

Zap Health --- http://www.zaphealth.com/ 


Frugal Moms --- http://frugal-moms.com/ 


DoItYourself.com --- http://www.doityourself.com/ 


Just Say Wow --- http://www.justsaywow.com 
Why Bob Jensen does not own a dog (or cat) --- http://www.justsaywow.com/telltheweather.htm 


Feds Try Odd Anti-Porn Approach --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35800,00.html 

The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly recruiting critics of filtering software to help it defend a controversial anti-pornography law in court.

Government attorneys are asking librarians and academics who have published criticisms of the controversial filtering products to testify in an expected trial over the Child Online Protection Act.

The Justice Department's reasoning is simple: If products like Cyberpatrol and Surfwatch are so badly flawed that they don't block what they should, then the judge in the case should uphold a federal law making it a crime to post erotica online instead.

"What they want me for is a kind of technical assault on filtering software, but the end result is that nothing can protect kids on the Web except some kind of blanket age restriction," says John Bowes, an associate professor at the University of Washington. "I don't like filtering, but I dislike age restrictions even more."


Something that may border on porn at times.
From Yahoo

Timmy Big Hands --- http://www.timmybighands.com/ 

The veterans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 are back with a new venture -- an online humor magazine. We browsed the current essay, which uses an online translator to make mincemeat of Shakespeare (in honor of the bard's upcoming birthday?). We chuckled at the Cliparts, a comic strip composed entirely of clip art. Finally, we read a human anatomy review focusing on derriere style. Remember, this is the humor team that developed a cult following on late-night public television.


On the milder but still very silly side
From Yahoo

SpotLife --- http://www.spotlife.com/ 

SpotLife wants to be your gateway to the Internet's funniest home videos, so they've created a "personal broadcasting" service that lets you upload and share digital video and audio, photo galleries, and web cams with your family, friends, and the rest of the Internet world. Content is organized thematically into channels with names like Groove (trendy music multimedia), Warp (avant garde, urban, and sci-fi productions), Chemistry (dating and relationship content), Blister (sports, outdoors, and adventure broadcasts). Click around for a taste of what's playing or produce your own show. Guess what? It's free and easy.


Below is a description of the May-June 2000 issue of The Technology Source, a free refereed Web periodical at http://horizon.unc.edu/TS 
Edited by James L. Morrison [morrison@unc.edu

Greg Priest's vision of education transcends simply using the Internet to supplement current teaching methods. In an interview with editor James L. Morrison, Priest tells The Technology Source how technology can help educators create targeted materials for each of their students, update materials constantly for the most current learning experiences, and collaborate not only with students at adjacent desks but also with students half a world away.

As educators explore the potential of the Internet, options for international education will undoubtedly blossom: Students studying Spanish in San Francisco will be able to learn from an instructor living in Madrid. Historians interested in the Incan empire will be able to correspond with Peruvian professors working in Cuzco. Prospective entrepreneurs in Moscow will be able to study under economics professors based at Stanford or Harvard. In order to take advantage of these options, educators need to know how to negotiate the linguistic, economic, and sociocultural differences among themselves and with students. Stephen Downes provides enlightening commentary on the issues involved in international education.

Barry Willis gives away nine "secrets" about distance education in this issue's second Commentary article. Uncovering the problems both with some traditionalists' complete disdain for distance learning and with some advocates' unthinking embrace of it, Willis reminds readers that technology cannot alone transform the educational process. Instead, Willis argues, technology must be handled skillfully and sensitively as educators manage the dramatic changes he predicts it will effect.

Virtual universities often face many challenges in establishing themselves as equal players in the field of education. As these new institutions seek to earn prospective students' trust, they must prove not only that they can provide good academic training but also that they can maintain online privacy. As Gary Gatien tells Technology Source readers, trust will develop only when virtual universities consistently and carefully nurture quality relationships with their students.

When the Faculty Development Committee of the Indiana Partnership for Statewide Education asked Indiana teachers how they had incorporated technology to enhance their students' experiences, thirty faculty members responded with enthusiastic reports. Nancy Millichap summarizes some of their most exciting findings in this issue's case study. Some students had their needs fully met for the first time; other students had their needs fundamentally transformed.

In this issue's critical reading section, Gary Brown and Lisa Johnson-Shull report on several recent investigations into the difference between pedagogical theories of online education and actual classroom praxis. Brown and Johnson-Shull also survey current research on issues of student agency, involvement, and authority, as well as the balance between course content and facilitated student interaction. Educators interested in the most up-to-date research into online education won't want to miss Brown and Johnson-Shull's analysis.

If you have ever wished for free Web-based e-mail, your own listserv service, more efficient searching mechanisms, or a way to monitor your favorite Web sites for changes, Bernard Glassman has some free and handy tools for you. Drawing on his extensive explorations of the Web, Glassman evaluates and recommends several sites that will save lots of time and energy, leaving you with more of both to devote to reading The Technology Source.

Bucknell University has seen the number of its faculty members with online course materials increase threefold within two years. How has this happened? The simplicity of the answer to this question may come as a surprise. Robert Beard and a few of his colleagues, concerned about the reluctance of some other faculty members and administrators to pursue Web-based learning, designed a resource page that could connect interested instructors with experienced ones, provide technical assistance to beginners, and credit on-campus innovators in online learning. As Beard tells it, the success they experienced in this easy faculty and staff development effort makes their investment of just a little time more than worthwhile.

When the men and women at the United States Department of Defense wanted to ensure that cutting-edge training materials would be available to members of our armed forces, they created this issue's spotlight site, the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative Web page. Stephen Downes tells The Technology Source about the course models on the ADL page that are a must-see for any reader interested in new models for Web-based education.

This issue's Letter to the Editor continues a debate about Heriot-Watt University's distance learning MBA program, a conversation that began with Fred Nichols' article on Heriot-Watt in our January-February issue. The article prompted an exchange of letters printed in our last issue between Nichols and Peter Calladine, educational services manager of the Association of MBAs based in London. Now, a student in the Heriot-Watt MBA program joins the fray with a passionate defense of his institution. Read on to learn why Deepak Tripathi believes that Heriot-Watt deserves "unqualified praise."


Pro2Net Accounting Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of May 1, 2000 :

1. This Week's Accounting-Specific Headlines 
2. Feature Articles 
3. Learn about CMA Review Course Contest 
4. This Week's Hot Talk: Robert Handwerk, President, RLH & Associates 
5. Survey Results: Which business valuation software product would you recommend? 
6. Our Tip of the Week: How Web-based Applications Add Efficiency to Your Organization


April 30th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Using Genes to Meld Mind and Machine 
2. Free B2B, Can You Find Value for $0?? 
3. Creating an Invisible Balance Sheet 
4. VPN's Go Mainstream 
5. Oh where, oh where has my little NASDAQ portfolio gone? 
6. AOL Becomes Stronger, Revenues hit $1.8 billion per quarter 
7. PricewaterhouseCoopers Licenses UniCERT from Baltimore Technologies for beTRUSTed Digital Certificate Service 
8. Snipets of Interest from Internet World News


The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 40 April 28, 2000 http://www.accountingweb.com 

1. For Rent: ePeachtree Accounting Software For $9.95/Month 
2. AccountingWEB's XBRL Resource Center Now Open For Business 
3. Limit Your Fiduciary Liability By Following These Eight 401(k) "Commandments" 
4. Justification For Technology Projects 
5. A Time Management Tip That Really Works 
6. 24 Principles Of Globalization 
7. RSM McGladrey CEO Steps Down 
8. Finding and Retaining Good People 
9. IRS: Spending Millions To Collect Hundreds |
10. Software Tip: Customizing Bullets in Word


AccountingStudents Newsletter: April 25, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. Online Scholarship Program Offers Five $1,000 Awards 
2. Final Preparation for the CPA Exam 
3. Survey Results: Do you agree with the Federal Reserve's plan to eventually switch from paper checks to electronic checks? 
4. Site of the Week: eStudentLoan 
5. Pro2Net and BeckerConviser Announce CPA Review Winner 
6. Tip of the Week: Five Reasons to Join a Professional Association 
7. Save 25 Percent: "You Can Pass the CPA Exam: Get Motivated" 
8. Last Chance to Win a CPA Review from CPA Trak


Forwarded by Dick Wolff

Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said? Nothing, I just helped him cry." 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
Teacher Debbie Moon's first graders were discussing a picture of a family. One little boy in the picture had a different color hair than the other family members. One child suggested that he was adopted and a little girl said, "I know all about adoptions because I was adopted." "What does it mean to be adopted?" asked another child. "It means," said the girl, "that you grew in your mommy's heart instead of her tummy." 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
A four year old was at the pediatrician for a check-up. As the doctor looked down her ears with an otoscope, he asked, "Do you think I'll find Big Bird in here?" The little girl stayed silent. Next, the doctor took a tongue depressor and looked down her throat. He asked, "Do you think I'll find the Cookie Monster down there?" Again, the little girl was silent. Then the doctor put a stethoscope to her chest. As he listened to her heart beat, he asked, "Do you think I'll hear Barney in there?" "Oh, no!" the little girl replied. "Jesus is in my heart. Barney's on my underpants." 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
As I was driving home from work one day, I stopped to watch a local Little League baseball game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the first-base line, I asked one of the boys what the score was. "We're behind 14 to nothing," he answered with a smile. "Really," I said. "I have to say you don't look very discouraged." "Discouraged?" the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. "Why should we be discouraged? We haven't been up to bat yet." 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
Whenever I'm disappointed with my spot in my life, I stop and think about little Jamie Scott. Jamie was trying out for a part in a school play. His mother told me that he'd set his heart on being in it, though she feared he would not be chosen. On the day the parts were awarded, I went with her to collect him after school. Jamie rushed up to her, eyes shining with pride and excitement. "Guess what Mom," he shouted, and then said those words that will remain a lesson to me: "I've been chosen to clap and cheer." 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
A lesson in "heart" is my little, 10 year old daughter, Sarah, who was born with a muscle missing in her foot and wears a brace all the time. She came home one beautiful spring day to tell me she had competed in "field day" - that's where they have lots of races and other competitive events. Because of her leg support, my mind raced as I tried to think of encouragement for my Sarah, things I could say to her about not letting this get her down ? but before I could get a word out, she said "Daddy, I won two of the races!" I couldn't believe it! And then Sarah said, "I had an advantage." Ah. I knew it. I thought she must have been given a head start... some kind of physical advantage. But again, before I could say anything, she said, "Daddy, I didn't get a head start... My advantage was I had to try harder!" 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
An Eye Witness Account from New York City, on a cold day in December: A little boy about 10 years old was standing before a shoe store on the roadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold. A lady approached the boy and said, "My little fellow, why are you looking so earnestly in that window?" "I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes," was the boy's reply. The lady took him by the hand and went into the store and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her. She took the little fellow to the back part of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet, and dried them with a towel. By this time the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy's feet, she purchased him a pair of shoes. She tied up the remaining of socks and gave them to him. She patted him on the head and said, "No doubt, my little fellow, you feel more comfortable now?" As she turned to go, the astonished lad caught her by the hand, and looking up in her face, with tears his eyes, answered the question with these words: "Are you God's Wife?"


Questions to ponder from my daughter, Lisl:

Q:  What do Eskimos get when they sit on the ice too long?
A:  Polaroids

Q:  Are the needles carefully sterilized in Texas after lethal injections for criminals?
A:  ?

Q:  Why do they put braile on the keypads of drive through ATM machines?
A:  ?


Forwarded by a close friend who prefers to remain anonymous since, like me, he was not raised in Texas and is still learning how to deal with this culture.

ADVICE FOR ANYONE MOVING TO TEXAS 

1. Save all manner of bacon grease. You will be instructed later how to use it.

2. Just because you can drive on snow and ice does not mean we can. Stay home the two days of the year it snows.

3. If you do run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in the cab of a four wheel drive with a 12-pack of beer and a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them. Just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.

4. Don't be surprised to find movie rentals & bait in the same store.

5. Remember: "Y'all" is singular. "All y'all" is plural. "All ya'll's is plural possessive.

6. Get used to hearing, "You ain't from around here, are you?"

7. If you are yelling at the person driving 15 mph in a 55 mph zone, directly in the middle of the road, remember, many folks learned to drive on a model of vehicle known as John Deere, and this is the proper speed and lane position for that vehicle.

8. If you hear a redneck exclaim, "Hey, y'all, watch this!" Stay out of his way. These are likely the last words he will ever say.

9. Get used to the phrase "It's not the heat, it's the humidity". And the collateral phrase "You call this hot? Wait'll August."

10. There are no delis. Don't ask.

11. In conversation, never put your hand on a man's shoulder when making a point, especially in a bar.

12. Chili does NOT have beans in it.

13. Brisket is not 'cooked' in an oven.

14. Don't tell us how you did it up there. Nobody cares.

15. If you think it's too hot, don't worry. It'll cool down-in December.

16. We do TOO have 4 Seasons: December, January, February, and summer!

17. A Mercedes-Benz is not a status symbol. A Ford F-150 is.

18. If someone tells you "Don't worry, those peppers aren't hot" you can be certain they are!

19. If you fail to heed my warning in #18 above, be sure to have a bowl of guacamole handy. Water won't do it.

20. Rocky Mountain oysters are NOT oysters. Don't ask.

21. If someone says they're "fixin" to do something, that doesn't mean anything's broken.

23. Don't even think of ordering a strawberry daiquiri. What you really mean to say is 'margarita."

24. If you don't understand our passion for college and high school football just keep your mouth shut.

25. The value of a parking space is not determined by the distance to the door, but the availability of shade.

26. If you see a slower moving vehicle on a two lane road pull onto the shoulder that is called "courtesy".

27. BBQ is a food group. It does NOT mean grilling burgers and hot dogs outdoors.

28. No matter what you've seen on TV, line dancing is not a popular weekend pastime.

29. "Tea" = Iced Tea. There is no other kind.

30. Everything goes better with Ranch dressing.


Forwarded by Dr. Wolff
COMPANY AD SLOGANS:

These are the nominees for the Chevy Nova Award, which is given in honor of GM's fiasco in trying to market its car in Central and South America.

Of course, in Spanish "No va" means "it doesn't go."

1. The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are you lactating?"

2. Coors put its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer From Diarrhea."

3. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

4. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "Manure Stick."

5. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the smiling baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the labels of what's inside, since many people can't read.

6. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.

7. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I Saw the Potato" (la papa).

8. Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave" in Chinese.

9. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Kekoukela," meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax," depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "kokou kole," translating into "happiness in the mouth."

10. Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."

11. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." The company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant!"

12. When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its "Fly In Leather" campaign literally, which meant "Fly Naked" (vuela en cuero) in Spanish!


From a prominent attorney

A group of terrorists burst into the conference room at the Ramada Hotel where the American Bar Association was holding its Annual Convention. More than 500 lawyers were taken as hostages.

Scroll down...

 

 

 

The terrorist leader announced that, unless their demands were met, they would release one lawyer every hour.



Debbie's Corner


Auburn University

College of Business
Undergraduate Curriculum

0415. -- ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEMS (5). Pr., MNGT 0314 and ACCT 0417. Introduction to accounting information systems, including manual and computerized operations. Emphasis on documentation and controls for the various accounting cycles. Applications of Lotus and dBase software to accounting problems are involved.

COURSES FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS

Accounting Information Systems Concentration

The accounting information systems concentration is designed for students who desire to specialize in the area of micro and mainframe-based accounting information systems for careers in public accounting, industry, consulting, or government, or for additional graduate education.

0615. -- FINANCIAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS (5). Pr., ACCT 0313 or departmental approval. Analysis of critical information flows and integration of such flows into efficient and effective information systems serving management needs.

 

Auburn University's College of Business serves the people of Alabama through an extensive array of outreach programs.

Outreach programs are offered through seven units affiliated with the College of Business, as well as through departmental programs and individual consulting arrangements. For instance, the College of Business (through the Auburn Technical Assistance Center) is the "managing partner" of the recently-launched Auburn Industrial Extension Service -- a key initiative in the University's outreach strategy for the 21st Century. The College of Business is also a national leader in for-credit outreach work through distance education. The video MBA program currently enrolls over 250 students from throughout the U.S. These endeavors are described in more detail on the inside of this brochure.

The Auburn MBA

The successful business person in today's ever-changing global business environment must possess certain skills: a solid foundation in traditional business subjects, practical leadership and team building experience, a clear understanding of social and ethical issues, and a mastery of new technologies and their impact on the business environment. If your career would benefit from these skills, an Auburn MBA should be in your future. Every year approximately 300 of your peers are working toward getting the competitive advantage of an Auburn MBA. Highly trained, motivated and educated, they compete against you in both the labor and product markets. They graduate equipped with a formidable base of theoretical and practical knowledge directly relevant to the business world. If you would like this competitive advantage, you may be able to join us in the MBA program at Auburn University.

Video Outreach Program

Since 1990, the Auburn MBA has also been available off-campus through the Video-based Graduate Outreach Program. Well over 100 students have completed their degrees through this flexible, innovative program. This program offers professionals the opportunity to continue their education while maintaining full-time employment, wherever they may be located. This program also allows full-time students to accept a job and complete their degree off-campus; an option most other MBA programs cannot offer. Video-based MBA students receive the same instruction as on-campus students and complete all class assignments and tests. Students from across the United States in Fortune 500 companies, small firms, and all branches of the Military are currently earning an Auburn MBA through the Outreach Program. Admission is very selective for the limited number of Outreach slots available each Quarter.

EXECUTIVE MBA

The Executive MBA gives full-time working professionals the opportunity to earn a fully accredited MBA degree in less than two years, without career interruption. If you are a mid- or upper-level professional ready to take on the singular challenge of the executive suite, Auburn University’s innovative MBA program is for you. Contact us today for more information about Auburn University’s Executive MBA.

Executive MBA students have several opportunities to conduct projects, in conjunction with coursework, on topics of direct benefit to your firm. Under the direction of Auburn University's faculty, these projects provide direct access to tools that will improve your organizations performance and productivity, often yielding increased profits that may far exceed the cost of MBA sponsorship. Over a longer time horizon, there are even greater returns to MBA sponsorship. By investing in the professional development of your key decision-makers, you revitalize your organization. During the 18 months of the program, MBA participants build an exceptionally strong foundation for increased leadership responsibility. MBA students master the tools of business -- accounting, economics, finance, and operations management. They learn to identify, analyze, and diagnose business problems and opportunities, and they develop the insight and skills to create and implement strategic and tactical plans that solve the problems and capitalize on those opportunities.

If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.



And that's the way it was on May 3, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

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April 25, 2000


Quotes of the Week:  

I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Memorial Day Address in 1884

Friends share all things.
Pythagoras

Not what we give, but what we share ---
For the gift without a giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three ---
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.
James Russell Lowell

Goods which are not shared are not goods.
Fernado de Rojas in La Celestina

The man who does not work for the love of work but only for the love of money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life.
Source unknown.

Today I can whine because I have to go to work or I can shout for joy because I have a job to go to.
"From Today I Can" at http://members.tripod.com/OceanSerenity/todayican.html 

Today I can cry because roses have thorns or I can celebrate that thorns have roses.
"From Today I Can" at http://members.tripod.com/OceanSerenity/todayican.html 

Then: Trying to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor
Now : Trying
not to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor
Source unknown, but the author must be my age!
Other hilarious "Then" versus "Now" quips are shown below. 

When I publish my newborns on the web, these "living things" are either nurtured or pinched off at the roots by my friends.
See below.


I had to get some things about Larry Gindler off my chest --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/gindler.htm 
Note that I added the "Today I Can" link at the bottom of this tribute.


This section is somewhat personal and may mistakenly be viewed as bragging.  It is not intended to publicly pat myself on the back.  In a round about way, this section will end in tribute to two of my web heroes --- Dr. Gangolly and Dr. Teets.  But my real intent in this section is to inspire readers about the highs and joys of sharing freely online.  I recollect my colleague Mike Kearl (who has a renowned website at http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/ ) saying that he shared so freely on the web because the appreciations of users just "kept his tail wagging."  You can listen (on audio) to Dr. Kearl describing this experience at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ideasmes.htm#Kearl 

Over my academic career I focused almost all of my energy writing technical research papers for the leading journals.  It was, and to a great extent still is, the name of the game in building an academic reputation and achieving merit raises.  In most instances, my journal publications went through successive rounds of revision.  I once had a paper published six years after it was accepted by the editor.  Traditional publishing just takes too long, and that which is published becomes too dead (frozen) in time.  Now I post a newborn "living draft" on the web soon as its ideas are conceived.  These newborns start out crude and require on-going revisions in writing and in content (i.e., one risk is that there are almost always mistakes that mislead others.)   My new philosophy is that it is better to share freely and quickly.  Fortunately, technologies of web publishing also allow me to quickly make revisions when errors and shortcomings are discovered by me or my followers.  When I publish my newborns on the web, these "living things" are either nurtured or pinched off at the roots by my friends.

I rarely get letters of appreciation for the technical papers that I publish in top journals.  It is rewarding to be invited to leading universities to discuss these papers, but I often think that doctoral students appreciate my published papers for the wrong reasons (i.e., they aren't particularly interested in the results as much as in my use of new mathematical and statistical tools).  Practitioners never read or comment on most of my published research papers.  But I have hundreds of feedback messages from practitioners, students, and professors  regarding my web documents.

Now that I publish a wider variety of materials (cases, glossaries, and other helpers) on the web, my supreme "tail-wagging" joys are the messages of gratitude from professors, students, and practitioners.  Let me share with you some excerpts of a sampling of email messages received recently:


April 22, 2000 Messages

hi bob:

my name is benjamin preston. i have been trawling about the many sites
that have dedicated resources to FAS133, and have come across yours a
number of times. i work for goldman sachs in london, in commodity
sales. my clients are typically precious and base metal producers, and
some of them are US listed and are currently preparing for FAS133 (and
ultimately IA39) roll out.

could i have access to your solutions? i am very interested in the
implications of FAS133 for the industry that i work in. if i can
reciprocate with any knowledge that i can impart, i would be only too
happy to oblige. my background is in economics and mathematics, i have
been trading and marketing financial derivatives (with a particular
focus upon precious metals) for the past five years, and have worked in
sydney, johannesburg and london.

kind regards,
benjamin preston
[ben.preston@mail.com

goldman sachs in london


Bob Jensen: Lead cheerleader for XFRML XBRL

Bob Jensen from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas is a leading cheerleader for the quick adaptation of XML technologies into the accounting profession. His massive XML resource web site is a must visit for all wishing to learn about XML. Here is the table of contents:

XML, XFRML XBRL, XForm, and RDF Watch Bob Jensen at Trinity University

This is a threaded discussion about XML, XBRL, and RDF. I cannot overly stress how much these newer technologies will impact upon e-commerce, education, and the web in general.
Neil Hannon 
http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 


Dear Mr. Jensen,

I was extremely happy to finally stumble upon a web site that actually contains substantial information and analysis on a rather particular subject. Your site is certainly the most comprehensive site available on FAS133.

If i could just make one suggestion that would be that you somehow put together your presentation and analysis of 133 into one or more downloadable file(s) (pdf perhaps) in order to improve access and availability of data.

Could you please send me or give me access to the tutorial excel file you are mentioning? I would appreciate that very much.

Thanks,

Bogdan C. Popovici 
Head of Financial Planning and Analysis 
Ringier Romania
Bogdan Popovici [bcp@ringier.ro


Dear Sir, 
I'm a Portuguese accounting teacher and I'm developing an investigation study about derivatives accounting. I've visited your web page and I must congratulate you for it because it is fantastic. I am interested on the cases in hedging strategies that you've revised and other information that you'd might supply to me. I would be glad if you could send it to me and. Thank you for your attention and please excuse my poor English. 
Yours sincerily 
Kátia Lemos [klemos@ipca.pt


Dear Professor Jensen,

Now and then one comes across such an outstanding example of philanthropy that one simply has to applaud it.

I am working in Online Learning at the moment and have found much of interest on your site. I shall doubtless be a frequent returner!

Cheers, 
John Callaghan TCS Associate R&D Support Unit, 
Hope Hospital Salford M6 8HD tel 0161-787-4530 (fax 0161-787-4205) jcallagh@fs1.ho.man.ac.uk 


Thank you for your web site! I am working on business requirements for treasury software, and came to the conclusion, like you, that in no way did FASB provide enough information to work out the numbers in their Example 5.

On your web page, you reference two tutorials. Would you kindly grant me access to these two tutorials?

Regards,

Thomas Troup, CCM Senior Product Analyst Financial Applications Development Treasury
ttroup@us.oracle.com  650.607.2099
www.oracle.com 


I commend you for a very extensive and up to date information

sajjad rizvi
sajjad [lima@flash.net


Thank you very much for taking the time to respond. I appreciate your knowledge and dedication to the subject and people like you who actually have some sort of idea what FASB is talking about, helps us understand it. Thank you again.

Mitisek, Erik C [emitisek@kpmg.com
KPMG Consulting LLC


My point in this section is to stress that one of my greatest joys in life lies in serving others and helping them to join me in learning.  I only hope that anyone reading this will catch my fever!

Now I would like to pay tribute to one of my web heroes (among several of my web-sharing heroes) on the AECM listserv.  His name is Jagdish S. Gangolly from SUNY Albany.  Over the past few years it has been common for Jagdish to provide us with extremely informative messages.  What is especially noteworthy is that he sometimes writes relatively long essays in response to somebody's brief question about a topic.  His responses must take a great deal of time and some research before sending out the replies.  Examples can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm 

When I read a paper written by Dr. Gangolly, I admire the paper.  When I read his many web messages I admire the depth of scholarship much more than is evident on the web than in his published papers.  He is a river of knowledge that runs wide and deep in diverse disciplines of accounting, computer science, information systems, mathematics, statistics, operations research, linguistics, history, and literature.  His willingness to share his knowledge and his enthusiasm on the web is a wonder.  His web site is at http://www.albany.edu/acc/gangolly/.

If Dr. Gangolly is like me, occasional messages of gratitude (or even messages that cryptically correct our errors or take an opposite position on an issue) keep us enthused about helping to the best of our abilities and time available. When persons reading this someday begin to experience the joy of sharing that Jagdish and I experience almost on a daily basis, they will see the light that is brightening up an entire galaxy (the web) in the academy.  Increasingly, we see the light of sharing and adopt a willingness to serve without having to receive money, lines on a resume, or even a thank you each and every time we do a favor for a complete stranger.  Our inspiring rewards are those occasional messages revealing, from countries anywhere in the world, that us old duffers are still of some use to the academy.  During the last Christmas season I wrote a short story about this that some of you may not have read.  It is available at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm.

Another one of my heroes on the web is Walter Teets from Gonzaa University.  Dr. Teets shares in a somewhat different manner than Dr. Gangolly.  Instead of being an active contributor to a listserv, Dr. Teets, along with Dr. Uhl, provides a wealth of FAS 133 technical material, Excel spreadsheets, and cases for free on the web at http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/teets/index0.html .  

I also want to acknowledge some very sharing onsite professors here at Trinity University.  Most noteworthy are some of my close friends in the Computer Science Department (especially John Howland, Gerald Pitts, and Tom Hicks) who always seem ready and willing to help me even if their desks and calendars are overflowing with other work.  Thanks for sharing guys!  Its the stuff we do for free that counts most when the Great Scorer comes to write against our names.


Speaking of sharing, the University of Arizona shares many things (including lecture notes) in the study of finance.  See  http://www.studyfinance.com/ 


"XBRL - The emerging electronic reporting language," by Mike Willis --- http://www.accountingeducation.com/library/library147.html 

XBRL enables the users and preparers of existing financial statements to:

·    decrease the cost of accessing the information contained within the existing financial statements,

·    decrease the preparation cost,

·    increase the distribution of, and access to, existing financial statement information, and

·    increase and enhance the statement’s analysis.

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


I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity.
Samuel F. B. Morse

Question:  What is the most important thing every professor in higher education should do this very instant?
Answer:  Take a look at four articles  Newsweek, April 24 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm 

What is most important to me is "The New School" article that describes the planned pedagogy of how UNext intends to teach courses online developed by Columbia University, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Chicago, and the London School of Economics.  In a nutshell, the pedagogy is "problem-based learning" in a confrontational style that is not intended for the faint of heart.

Rosenfield's team wants to totally re-engineer professors' old-fashioned "stand-and-deliver" courses. At UNext, a "course" requires perhaps 30 hours of work. Four or five courses make up a "course suite," the equivalent of a campus semester of, say, marketing. (Tuition works out to 80 percent of the roughly $2,600 that a semester course costs at a top B-school.) Clients like Bank of America and Owens-Illinois, the packaging giant, are enrolling pilot groups of employees for classes that begin this spring. UNext will eventually offer M.B.A. and other graduate degrees; the sheepskins will be from Cardean (CAR-dee-an) University, a UNext subsidiary named for a Roman goddess who guarded doorways (think portals). This sounds better, Rosenfield says, than a degree from a dot-com.

Rather than take up more space here, you can read about these articles and threads to earlier articles about prestige universities that are going online at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm .


I might note a Columbia University professor who is leading the way in delivering Columbia's courses in Mike Milken's UNext online distance education program is mentioned in "The New School" article cited above in the April 24 edition of Newsweek:

Rosenfield's team wants to totally re-engineer professors' old-fashioned "stand-and-deliver" courses. At UNext, a "course" requires perhaps 30 hours of work. Four or five courses make up a "course suite," the equivalent of a campus semester of, say, marketing. (Tuition works out to 80 percent of the roughly $2,600 that a semester course costs at a top B-school.) Clients like Bank of America and Owens-Illinois, the packaging giant, are enrolling pilot groups of employees for classes that begin this spring. UNext will eventually offer M.B.A. and other graduate degrees; the sheepskins will be from Cardean (CAR-dee-an) University, a UNext subsidiary named for a Roman goddess who guarded doorways (think portals). This sounds better, Rosenfield says, than a degree from a dot-com.

Now suppose you do sign up for assessing profitability. You'll be grouped into a new class of about 25 students. You'll have two faculties instead of just one: a cluster of experts who've put together your course, and the part-time instructors—all with master's degrees or Ph.D.s —who were hired less for research scholarship than for teaching ability. Your course is the progeny of a Columbia professor named Michael Kirschenheiter and a UNext team led by Don Wortham, an educational psychologist. Taking the course resembles using the Net itself to research a problem: applying your wiles, rooting out information, piecing together solutions. "What we don't tell you," Wortham says, "is 'Here's what to do next.' It's an adventure."

I mention this because several months ago I lined Professor Kirschenheiter to present a module on the UNext program in a day-long workshop that I developed for August 12 (Saturday) in Philadelphia two days prior to the start of the American Accounting Association Annual meetings.  In addition, there will be modules from Chuck Hickman (Academic Vice President of University Access), Dan Stone (Illinois research professor who will discuss the SCALE program at the University of Illinois), and Tony Catanach (our AAA Pew Scholar from Villanova who will discuss the revolutionary lecture-free year of intermediate accounting in the BAM Program).  Of course Bob Jensen will also do his thing in that workshop.  Details are not yet available, but you will eventually find these details at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/meetings.htm 


There are also several good articles in the April 2000 issue of Business Officer published by NACUBO (Nat'l Assoc. of College and University Business Officers): "Lead or Bleed: Colleges, Universities, and the E-Universe," "Webster University Goes Online Big Time," "Hard Thinking About Soft Machines and Information Technology," and "Anatomy of a High Tech Learning Center." I have a copy in the Dean's Office, Sci., Math. & Engrg., if you want to borrow it or make copies.
Warinner, Pamela J 

Note from Jensen:  I found the link to the "Lead or Bleed" article at http://www.nacubo.org/website/members/bomag/00/04/bleed.html 

“The next big killer application for the Internet,” contends Cisco Systems chief executive officer John Chambers, “is going to be education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big it will make E-mail usage look like a rounding error!” Assuming there is any validity to Chambers’s assertion, colleges and universities had best ask themselves “Are we gonna hang 10 on this wave or wipe out?”

The "Webster University" article is at http://www.nacubo.org/website/members/bomag/00/04/webster.html 

The university’s answer was as audacious as it was ultimately prudent: Go online big time. Today, Rein’s world is decidedly different. She’s said goodbye to most of the shelves of books for which she was responsible, and Webster’s faculty and students have said hello to computers and printers, to ‘Passports’ (Webster’s online library and research system), to more than 60 searchable databases and 7,500 full-text periodicals plus everything available on the Web. If they can’t find the full-text article they want online, all they have to do is speed off an E-mail to the main library. A day or two later, they’re reading the hard copy fax of the article. If it’s a book they’re after and they live in the U.S., Webster will ship it to them by UPS second-day air. Some things remain unchanged even in a world turned upside down. Rein still has a staff and a budget and a main campus library full of books to run. And there are still physical satellite libraries—but these now contain only a reference collection and a small array of periodicals, as well of course as the ubiquitous computer terminals.

Also see http://www.nacubo.org/website/members/bomag/00/04/editor.html


Corporatization of the Academy --- see http://www.thenation.com/issue/000417/0417kirp.shtml 

If you have not yet checked out The Nation article ("New U" in April 17th issue) I mentioned, you may want to look at Aronowitz' book The Knowledge Factory -- LA227.4.A76 2000. It should be in browsing as soon as it clears book return.

Also, in Reference LB2324.N45 1999 there is Academic Keywords: A Devil's Dictionary of Higher Education by C. Nelson and S. Watt. You can't check it out, but it's a good read in reference.

Both books deal with the corporitization of the university and point out some of the absurdities, inconsistencies, and values that operate in such models. Nelson and Watt are funnier than Aronowitz, but Aronowitz gives a history of higher education in the US that is rather informative and chilling. Aronowtiz also has curricular comments that are relevant to our continual reinvention of the curricular wheels (for corporitization's sake). Since reduced health benefits and outsourcing are two parts of the same corporate downsizing strategies that are related to marketing imagery, faculty members might want to check out some of this info.

Remember to look for the Union label................

Bill Spinks mailto:cspinks@trinity.edu 
Professor of English at Trinity University


Trinity University joined over 1,500 colleges that installed an internal-system Blackboard server.  For Trinity University instructors and others who might want to use Blackboard or a related web authoring system, I have created several short scenarios on innovative ways to use Blackboard in your courses. The document is entitled Blackboard Advice and Message Threads.  In addition to the scenarios, my document is an on-going threading of messages that reveal positive and negative experiences from current and former users of Blackboard around the world.  You can access my message threads of the advantages and disadvantages of using Blackboard at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/blackboard.htm.

I want to thank those of you who provided positive and negative messages to date. I would still like to hear from other users of Blackboard.  The number of messages keeps building!

It would be of great help if some users of Blackboard requested that students in Blackboard courses provide some feedback to be threaded in the following document. My email address is rjensen@trinity.edu 


For those of you interested in the impacts of technology on learning, there is a very comprehensive article entitled "The Use of Technology in the Delivery of Instructional:  Implications for Accounting Educators and Education Researchers," by Stephanie M. Bryant and James E. Hunton, Issues in Accounting Education, February 2000, pp. 129-162.  It is not yet posted on the web, but it will soon be up at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/pubs/issues.htm 

The strength of this paper lies in the comprehensive set of references and citations to learning and cognition literature.  It should be noted by all accounting education researchers.  The weaknesses are simply the unavoidable limitations of any research on the impacts of technology upon learning.  These include the following:


Speechtips.com --- http://www.speechtips.com/ 


Occupational Outlook Handbook --- http://stats.bls.gov/ocohome.htm 

College and University Faculty
Employment of college and university faculty is expected to increase faster than the average for all occupations through 2008 as enrollments in higher education increase. Many additional openings will arise as faculty members retire. Nevertheless, prospective job applicants should expect to face competition, particularly for full-time, tenure-track positions at 4-year institutions.

Between 1998 and 2008, the traditional college-age (18-24) population will grow again after several years of decline. This population increase, along with a higher proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds attending college and a growing number of part-time, female, minority, and older students, will spur college enrollments. Enrollment is projected to rise from 14.6 million in 1998 to 16.1 million in 2008, an increase of about 10 percent.

. . . 

Despite expected job growth and the need to replace retiring faculty, many in the academic community are concerned that institutions will increasingly favor the hiring of adjunct faculty over full-time, tenure-track faculty. For many years, keen competition for faculty jobs forced some applicants to accept part-time academic appointments that offered little hope of tenure, and others to seek nonacademic positions. Many colleges, faced with reduced State funding for higher education and growing numbers of part-time and older students, increased the hiring of part-time faculty to save money on pay and benefits and to accommodate the needs of nontraditional-age students. If funding remains tight over the projection period, this trend of hiring adjunct or part-time faculty is likely to continue. Because of uncertainty about future funding sources, some colleges and universities are also controlling costs by changing the mix of academic programs offered, eliminating some programs altogether, and increasing class size.

. . . 

Earnings vary according to faculty rank and type of institution, geographic area, and field. According to a 1998-99 survey by the American Association of University Professors, salaries for full-time faculty averaged $56,300. By rank, the average for professors was $72,700; associate professors, $53,200; assistant professors, $43,800; instructors, $33,400; and lecturers, $37,200. Faculty in 4-year institutions earn higher salaries, on the average, than those in 2-year schools. Average salaries for faculty in public institutions—$55,900—were lower in 1998-99 than those for private independent institutions—$63,500—but higher than those for religiously-affiliated private colleges and universities—$49,400. In fields with high-paying nonacademic alternatives—notably medicine and law but also engineering and business, among others—earnings exceed these averages. In others—such as the humanities and education—they are lower.

Accountants and Auditors
Accountants and auditors held over 1,080,000 jobs in 1998. They worked throughout private industry and government, but about 1 out of 4 worked for accounting, auditing, and bookkeeping firms. Approximately 1 out of 10 accountants or auditors were self-employed.

Many accountants and auditors are unlicensed management accountants, internal auditors, or government accountants and auditors. However, a large number are licensed Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), Public Accountants (PAs), Registered Public Accountants (RPAs), and Accounting Practitioners (APs). Most accountants and auditors work in urban areas, where public accounting firms and central or regional offices of businesses are concentrated.

Some individuals with backgrounds in accounting and auditing are full-time college and university faculty; others teach part time while working as self-employed accountants, or as salaried accountants for private industry or government. (See the Handbook statement on college and university faculty.)

. . .

Capable accountants and auditors may advance rapidly; those having inadequate academic preparation may be assigned routine jobs and find promotion difficult. Many graduates of junior colleges and business and correspondence schools, as well as bookkeepers and accounting clerks who meet the education and experience requirements set by their employers, can obtain junior accounting positions and advance to positions with more responsibilities by demonstrating their accounting skills on the job.

Beginning public accountants usually start by assisting with work for several clients. They may advance to positions with more responsibility in 1 or 2 years, and to senior positions within another few years. Those who excel may become supervisors, managers, partners, open their own public accounting firms, or transfer to executive positions in management accounting or internal auditing in private firms.

Management accountants often start as cost accountants, junior internal auditors, or as trainees for other accounting positions. As they rise through the organization, they may advance to accounting manager, chief cost accountant, budget director, or manager of internal auditing. Some become controllers, treasurers, financial vice presidents, chief financial officers, or corporation presidents. Many senior corporation executives have a background in accounting, internal auditing, or finance.

In general, there is a large degree of mobility among public accountants, management accountants, and internal auditors. Practitioners often shift into management accounting or internal auditing from public accounting, or between internal auditing and management accounting. However, it is less common for accountants and auditors to move from either management accounting or internal auditing into public accounting.

. . .

As the economy grows, the number of business establishments will increase, requiring more accountants and auditors to set up books, prepare taxes, and provide management advice. As these businesses grow, the volume and complexity of information developed by accountants and auditors regarding costs, expenditures, and taxes will increase as well. More complex requirements for accountants and auditors also arise from changes in legislation related to taxes, financial reporting standards, business investments, mergers, and other financial matters. In addition, businesses will increasingly need quick, accurate, and individually tailored financial information due to the demands of growing international competition. These trends will positively affect the employment of accountants and auditors.

The changing role of accountants and auditors also will spur job growth. In response to market demand, these professionals will offer more management and consulting services as they take on a greater advisory role and develop more sophisticated and flexible accounting systems. By focusing more on analyzing operations rather than just providing financial data, accountants will help to increase the demand for their services. Also, internal auditors will increasingly be needed to discover and eliminate waste and fraud.

However, this trend will be counteracted somewhat by a decrease in the demand for traditional services and growing use of accounting software. Accountants will spend less time performing audits due to potential liability and relatively low profits, and will shift away from tax preparation due to the increasing popularity of tax preparation firms. As computer programs continue simplifying some accounting-related tasks, clerical staff will increasingly handle many routine calculations.

Accountants and auditors who have earned professional recognition through certification or licensure should have the best job prospects. For example, CPAs should continue to enjoy a wide range of job opportunities, especially as more States enact the 150-hour requirement, making it more difficult to obtain this certification. Similarly, CMAs should be in demand as their management advice is increasingly sought. Applicants with a master’s degree in accounting, or a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting, will also have an advantage in the job market.


Neither educators nor accountants have the high-end job outlooks that IT professionals now have and are likely to continue to have for the 21st Century.  See http://www.informationweek.com/783/salary.htm.

There is a dark "flip" side reported by 20% of this profession.  The following is stated in InformationWeek Online on April 24, 2000:

There's nothing like a good, old-fashioned labor shortage to fatten one's paycheck, and the current tight IT job market is no exception. InformationWeek's annual IT salary survey found that 45% of staff and 54% of managers are satisfied or very satisfied with their pay. While the survey paints a predominantly rosy picture, there are issues that employers still need to address.

First, the good news: Out of 16,900 respondents, more than half of IT staffers say they're satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs; almost two-thirds of managers feel the same way. And why shouldn't they be satisfied? It's a great time to be in IT. Information technology is more important than ever to the success of almost any business, and demand for the people who can design, operate, and manage IT continues to drive up salaries.

It doesn't hurt that "IT professionals are no longer pigeonholed; they're in business as well as technology," says Cleve Rowley, a partner at recruiting firm Matteson Partners.com in Atlanta. "I'm recruiting for the CIO position of a large telecom firm, and a key part of that job is to be part of the strategic-management team."

On the flip side, a quarter of staff respondents and almost a fifth of managers are dissatisfied with their pay. Also unsettling is a drop in respondents this year who said they're satisfied or very satisfied with all aspects of their jobs. The percentage of those saying that dropped eight points for both staff and managers, to 66% and 73%, respectively, since last year's survey.

Observers say declining satisfaction rates and pay dissatisfaction among the minority of respondents could boil down to the strong economy and a very low IT unemployment rate. The result could be longer work hours combined with greatly accelerated development cycles. Meanwhile, reports of workers who strike it rich at dot- com startups can breed resentment among IT workers at more traditional companies. - Diane Rezendes Khirallah

A special report looks at four companies that have done an exceptional job of attracting IT and e-business talent and keeping their turnover rates low. For the full story: http://www.internetwk.com/lead/lead042100.htm 


From InformationWeek Online on April 23, 2000

Anderson Tackles Transformation

Consulting is no longer a spectator sport, the CEO of Andersen Consulting said Wednesday night as he rolled out the strategic plan for the company.

Joe Forehand, elected managing partner and CEO of Andersen Consulting, introduced the strategic plan on Wednesday for the 65,000-employee, Chicago-based privately held consultancy. Andersen Consulting is the leading company in the $60 billion information technology consulting industry, according to Kennedy Information Research Group, of Fitzwilliam, N.H.

"We are trying to learn how to win in the new economy," Forehand said. "We are moving from a seller-driven market to a buyer-driven market; customers have perfect information and now technology drives business strategy." --Mo Krochmal

Get all the details: http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20000421S0001 


And then there is the piece from Andy Lymer in Double Entries about the job outlook for tax police in Russia

TAX COLLECTING RUSSIAN STYLE 
Tax collectors the world over are rarely thought of fondly - they usually rate fairly low on many people's list of most favoured professions! In Russia however, if you share this view you keep it to yourself as their 'Tax Police' is staffed by 1,000 ex-KGB men, paratroopers and marines! Interested? Find out more at http://www.accountingeducation.com/news/news1023.html 


If any one is still looking for information about stock options, this may be of interest to you.

http://www.scu.edu/SCU/Centers/Ethics/cgi-bin/thread.cgi?msg=2&board=Startup&type=&mo=&n=An+Engineer 

If that link doesn't work, try the home page for Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

http://www.scu.edu/SCU/Centers/Ethics/homepage.shtml 

and then choose the "Start-Up Ethics" item.

Scott Bonacker CPA, McCullough Officer & Co LLC CPA's [scottbonacker@CLAND.NET]


From the Scout Report

Knowledge-Based Economy and Society Pilot Project (KBES) [.pdf] http://policyresearch.schoolnet.ca/networks/kbes/kbes-e.htm 

Stemming from a 1996 initiative by the Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet of Canada, the Knowledge-Based Economy and Society Pilot Project studies the effects of the "technological and information revolution and the globalization of markets brought about by the rapid introduction of information and communications technologies" in transforming aspects of the Canadian economy and society. Included on this site is the conference summary report from the June 1999 conference on Skills Development in the Knowledge-Based Economy, several research papers, and links to related sites.


Some of you are negative about tax shelters and some of you happily use tax shelters such as interest deductions on home mortgages. Whatever your feeling about how corporate employees (at virtually all levels in some companies), you may be interested in trends in use of and pending legislation regarding tax shelters. I am an active member of the Financial Executives Institute and receive the FEI newsletter. The enclosed excerpt of the edition received today may stimulate some of your thinking and possibly even your research on taxation, economics, and society:

CORPORATE TAX SHELTERS
The politicians and media have been taking all their least favorite tax incentives and 
lumping them into a target basket called "Corporate Tax Shelters." With our 
Committee on Taxation, we recently prepared a letter on this subject to various 
parties and media outlets. Grace Hinchman, our VP of government relations, was 
included in an NPR piece on the subject, too. Here's a link to FEI's letter: 
http://www.fei.org/download/FEITalisman207.doc  and the audio of the interview: 
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20000414.me.08.ram 

Statistics about network usage (Business, U.S., and International) --- http://www.nsol.com/statistics/ 

What city has the top ranking --- it might surprise you unless you're from South Korea?


Find where and when online chats are taking place on topics of interest to you --- http://www.enow.com/website/home.html 


Look up the financial reports, budgeting information, and names of officers in your favorite college, charity, church, or other non-profit organization.  These organizations must file a Form 990 with the IRS and, thereby, are on the web.  For short and easy-to-find summaries see http://www.guidestar.org/index.html 

Posting Form 990 images is an ongoing process. If a Form 990 image is available for your selected charity, you will see a "Form 990" option on the left side of its GuideStar Pages™. More images are being added to the database. Meanwhile, you will find easy-to-read profiles and financial reports derived from IRS Forms 990 by searching for an organization and reading its GuideStar Pages.

Linda Phingst sent me a link to another source for Form 990 copies.  Go to http://www.nccs.urban.org.
Linda C. Pfingst, CPA [mailto:lcpfingst@SPRINTMAIL.COM


Tax History Museum   http://www.tax.org/museum/default.htm 


On diversity --- From Yahoo

PBS: The New Americans --- http://www.pbs.org/kcet/newamericans/ 

Here's a new look at the intrinsically American story of immigration -- part of a project designed by the National Immigration Forum to foster understanding and correct misconceptions often held by native-born citizens. This site and companion television film tell the stories of ordinary 21st-century immigrants and refugees from countries as diverse as India, Nigeria, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. Teaching resources abound, including a timeline of U.S. immigration history that begins in 1492 and extends to the present.


More can be done to help them help themselves.

Many Web developers ignore the issue of making their sites accessible to the disabled, a move that's both bad for the disabled and bad for business --- http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt0004141/2505714/ 


American Association of Hispanic Certified Public Accountants --- http://www.aahcpa.org/ 


Children learn how to save --- http://www.saveforamerica.org/ 

Save For America is the only U.S. Department of Education approved Bank-At-School program. Participating students open a savings account at school and make regular deposits via the internet, to a bank of their choice. Over 2 million students have been transformed into regular savers since the computerized program was created in 1982.


To see if wireless networking is a good fit for organizations, PC Week Labs puts three 802.11b systems to the test at Cornell University. --- http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt0004181/2530201/ 


There are database buttons for English and German where attempts can be made to recover lost works of art --- http://www.lostart.de/index.php3?lang=english 

The Lost Art Internet Database is a project of both the Federal Government of Germany and its Federal States ("Länder"). It registers cultural goods which were transported or stolen because of persecution, especially of Jewish citizens, as a result of World War II or as a result of National Socialism.

The project is realized in co-operation of the Coordination Office and the Institute for Technical and Business Information Systems of the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg.


"Online Retail Revenue Will Double in 2000, Group Says" 
By Kathleen Murphy in Internet World Daily, April 17, 2000

"While stock prices may go up and down, fundamentally a significant shift is going on in America as the online retailers really take hold and the growth continues," said David Pecaut, senior vice president and global coleader of The Boston Consulting Group's e-commerce practice. The Boston Consulting Group conducted the study on behalf of Shop.org, a trade association of online retailers.

The study included data from 412 online retailers, and in addition to the consumer revenue, found that businesses spent $13.1 billion at retail sites, mostly in categories such as travel, office supplies, and computer software. Though business-to-consumer online revenue grew 120 percent in 1999 over the previous year, the study said, this accounted for only 1.4 percent of all retail sales in North America.

Pecaut said the top 50 online retailers make up about two-thirds of total sales, and such concentration will likely continue or increase as venture capitalists become more reluctant to fund weak business plans. The travel, computer hardware and software, financial brokerage, and collectible categories represented a commanding 70 percent of the market. Automotive, toys, and health and beauty sites showed significant revenue growth, the study found.


Women's Financial Network ---- http://www.wfn.com/

Women shattering the glass 
From NewMedia [Insiders_0413@promo.newmedia.com] on April 18, 2000
See http://www.newmedia.com/ 

Women in Management: Breaking the Glass Ceiling?
A new study finds the number of women in top management positions at 
high-tech firms doubled last year from the previous year. But how many
are CEOs? That's another story.

From InformationWeek Online April 4, 2000

Microsoft plans to release its next-generation handheld computer this week. It's going up against the megalith of tiny, Palm Inc.'s Palm Pilot. The new machine, the Pocket PC, reportedly will operate mini versions of Internet Explorer, Word, and Excel.

But it will run on an operating system based on Windows CE, and that has some who've worked with the kernel pessimistic about Microsoft's latest venture. Many refer to the operating system as WinCE (pronounced, wince). Ouch.


Speech Recognition Update From Internet World News, April 18, 2000
The NetByTel website is at http://www.netbytel.com/ 

NetByTel, a Boca Raton, Fla., company that announced its launch on Monday, has developed software that translates Web code into an automated voice -- "You want to buy a Gameboy, correct?" -- and human responses into Web code, so people can buy online products by talking to a Web site. When a company's Web developer updates a Web site or adds a new product, NetByTel's software, in theory, will read the new code and present customers with new options.

Neil Bernstein, the company's cofounder and CEO, said his company's voice-recognition software can be adjusted to communicate with the most unintelligible Web sites. He emphasized that NetByTel does not foresee a world overwhelmed by wandering, traffic-accident-causing, cell-phone shoppers. "People will call to check on a price or an order's status or to bid on something," he explained. "They won't be calling to surf a site and shop." Bernstein also said NetByTel will ask shoppers if they want to store credit card information in a virtual wallet.

NetByTel's business model is simple: Partners pay a per-transaction fee that amounts to a single-digit percentage of sales made over the phone (NetByTel provides the 800 number). The company also plans to offer automated customer service, for which clients will be billed per minute (Bernstein said this should amount to less than a dollar a call).


10th Avenue, where the wealthy furnish their homes (although there is a "bargain" basement.) --- http://www.10thavenue.com/  


From the Scout Report
iFigure http://www.ifigure.com/ 

iFigure is a collection of online calculators and worksheets gathered from all across the World Wide Web. These interactive tools help "in planning, solving and making decisions for a multitude of problems and tasks that come up daily, such as buying a home, checking on your health, investing money, figuring business profits, making statistical comparisons, or calculating pump pressure." Business tools include worksheets for finding accountants, helping entrepreneurs and small business owners manage their finances, and calculating the cost savings of discounts. iFinance also features resources for personal finance and a host of other personal and business-oriented issues such as nutrition, travel, and staffing. In addition, a short article on-site extols the virtues of online calculators and worksheets, and will help users figure out if these applications are right for them.

I provide links to other calculators at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob3.htm#080512Calculators 


If you are interested in downloading free recordings of your favorite artists, you have to see this website to believe it --- http://www.napster.com/ 


Art and Culture (especially note the guide to artists) --- http://www.artandculture.com/ 


"Why Girls Don't Compute," by Kendra Mayfield in Wired News, April 20, 2000 --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,35654,00.html 

"Math is hard," a talking Barbie doll told a generation of girls who grew up thinking they should be afraid of math and science.

Sadly, some of the Barbie mentality continues. A new study claims the current generation of girls lack technical skills and are being shut out from opportunities to enter high-paying, technology-related jobs because the educational system is keeping them from achieving equality.

Girls aren't afraid of technology, they're turned off by boring video games, dull programming classes, and uninspiring career options, according to a new report by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation (AAUW).

"They are not so much phobic, but are disenchanted," said Pamela Haage, the AAUW's director of research.

The report, "Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age," culminates a two-year study analyzing previous research, teacher survey responses, and focus groups of middle school and high school students.

The study suggests that educators must change the way that they teach to attract girls to technology at an early age. Instead of focusing on what's wrong with girls who dislike computing, researchers used their responses to examine what might be wrong with computer culture. "We looked at the picture they presented and there wasn't a whole lot to like," said Sherry Turkle, a sociology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-chaired the commission that wrote the report.

Statistics clearly indicate that women are under-represented in technology. For example, girls represent 17 percent of Computer Science AP test takers. Women make up only 20 percent of information-technology professionals, and receive fewer than 28 percent of computer science degrees -- a number that is actually declining.

With the rise of technology-related jobs in the new economy, experts fear girls who lack computing skills might be left behind.


Arthritis Insight - they understand what you're going through --- http://www.arthritisinsight.com/ 


From the Scout Report

Harpweek: The 19th Century World http://www.harpweek.com/ 

Harpweek, "a privately funded project begun in 1992 to digitize the entire contents of the nineteenth-century, illustrated periodical Harper's Weekly" (see the March 31, 2000 _Scout Report_) offers a number of free Websites archiving materials from _Harper's Weekly_ on specific historical topics of the nineteenth century. In addition to the materials on Black America, reviewed in the _Scout Report_ issue cited above, there are collections on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, Civil War literature, education, immigrant and ethnic America, the editorial cartoons of Thomas Nast, the American West, and 19th Century advertising. These free sites offer a wealth of primary documentation on their respective subjects, including, for example, over 200 article excerpts dealing with Andrew Johnson and his impeachment drawn from 1865-1869 issues; examples of 19th-century advertisements for appliances, packaged goods, pest killers, insurance policies, and memorabilia; political cartoons of the famous editorial illustrator Thomas Nast; and much more. The sections are well organized and are introduced by contemporary scholarship. This is a superb source for both researchers and those planning to teach primary historical and cultural research to secondary and post-secondary students. Note: those who purchase a subscription to Harpweek will have access to numerous other 19th Century _Harper's Weekly_ materials in addition to these.


Garden Review --- http://www.gardenreview.com/ 


History of Mexico --- Student Teacher Resource Center  http://northcoast.com/~spdtom/index.html 


A unique chance to track the biggest icebergs in history --- http://uwamrc.ssec.wisc.edu/amrc/iceberg.jpg 

In 1956, you had to be aboard the U.S.S. Glacier, then the U.S. Navy's most powerful icebreaker, to see the massive hulk of an Antarctic iceberg. In 2000, you can keep tabs on one simply by checking out the latest satellite images on your computer.

In the past few weeks, four massive icebergs, including one that is among the biggest ever, have broken free in Antarctica. "It's a natural occurrence but on this scale it's unusual," says Dr. Dean Peterson, science strategy manager at the New Zealand Antarctic Institute.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,35586,00.html   


XForms --- forwarded by J. S. Gangolly [gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU

INTERNET WORLD NEWS Tuesday, April 18, 2000 Vol. 2, Issue 75 http://www.internetworldnews.com 
Newfangled Forms from the W3C
By Nate Zelnick

It's been seven years since forms were added to the Hypertext Markup Language and, in the interim, a few things have changed.

For instance, in 1993 it was simply astounding to be able to collect user-supplied data from within a Web page itself through generic little widgets like text boxes, drop-down combo boxes, and Boolean radio buttons. The fact that doing anything with that data in the stateless Web meant submitting the form back up to the server and handing it off to some CGI script or other ancillary system -- which meant you could have one form per page that could be processed -- was a small price to pay. Later, client-side scripting helped relieve some of the tedium of this approach, but only by requiring a completely different development paradigm that would work only in the presence of the right version of JavaScript. In other words, a hack.

This week the World Wide Web Consortium ( http://www.w3.org ) published the first public view of where it wants to take the forms of the future. As with nearly everything coming out of the Consortium, the new XForms proposal ( http://http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-xhtml-forms-req-20000329 ) begins and ends with the core value it's been promulgating since its founding: If the Internet is going to work everywhere, on every kind of device for every type of person, then information needs strict barriers between its structure, its content, and how it looks.

This meant that the HTML Activity Group that built the XForm outline had to think about what a form is and what it does in the most generic sense. Dave Ragget, one of the editors of the XForm Data Modeling Draft and the XForm Requirements document and a participant in the development of HTML from nearly the beginning, stressed that XForms is a much larger concept than merely the Web. It needs to encompass archaic media like paper, as well. A form that requires a human signature needs to exist as more than electrons, but the minute it's printed or faxed, it loses the ability for filled field values to be extracted.

But because XForms defines its data model as separate from its presentation, the position of a named field's answers can be extracted by Optical Character Recognition systems even after the electronic life has been squeezed out of it. More familiar Web-expansion problems -- like how to present a form on a cell phone, television screen, or Web-enabled blender -- are less hairy variations of the same problem.

Tuesday's XForm announcement includes only the broad definition of the problem that needs to be solved -- the Requirements doc -- and a first draft of an XForm Data Model. Possible collisions with XML Schemas -- an evolving spec that deals with defining data types for XML vocabularies -- may create some intraconsortium grumbling, but the XForm group was careful to make distinctions between its model and that ongoing work.

Early backing for the work thus far came from form-centered companies like Xerox, JetForm, and Cardiff Software. The long road to consensus -- required for something to become a W3C recommendation -- means predicting a done date is impossible.

Note from Bob Jensen:  I have accordingly updated my tracking of XML, XBRL, XForm, and RDF happenings at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm.


New Media Studies: Web Culture, Design, and Reviews  http://www.newmediastudies.com/index.htm 
Internet history as well.


For Sankaran
Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion http://kaladarshan.arts.ohio-state.edu/exhib/meetgod/hp.htm 
Religion


From Yahoo

Vivianlives.com --- http://www.vivianlives.com/ 

Is it a cartoon, a comic strip, an online serial, or a very inventive multimedia marketing presentation? Meet Vivian, an appealing Silicon Alley avatar, who lives in a brownstone with a dog and a dot-com lifestyle. You'll need Flash to explore the colorful, bandwidth-intensive world of this fictitious twenty-something Manhattanite. Tune in to the vivcam and watch her at work; mouse through her apartment; meet her friends; and zoom in and out of her travel tips, career resources, and shopping recommendations.


Don't look now, but Oracle's Larry Ellison could overtake Bill Gates as the world's richest man, depending on another radical stock-market swing. Alpha males everywhere are taking cover --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,35711,00.html 


Pro2Net Accounting Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of April 24, 2000 

1. This Week's Accounting-Specific Headlines 
2. Pro2Net Will be Present at the AICPA Convention 
3. Feature Articles 
4. Pro2Net User Survey 
5. This Week's Hot Talk: Jack Fox, MBA 
6. Trying to better assess the needs of Pro2Net's audience 
7. Survey Results: What is your opinion of the recent bill passed in the Senate to address the Federal Income Tax "marriage penalty?" 
8. Our Tip of the Week: How To Evaluate Enterprise Budgeting Software


The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 39, April 21, 2000 http://www.accountingweb.com 
1. While You Were Out - A Recap Of Top Stories This Season
2. Top 20 Tips To Improve Excel Productivity
3. Four Prominent Consultants Join Forces
4. Free Tools To Help Explore Financial "What-Ifs"
5. Katie Couric, Watch Your Back
6. US Accounting Firm Association Adds International Network
7. SEC Announces Revenue Recognition Policies and Rules
8. Direct Marketing Tips:  Words That Work, Words That Don't
9. Firm Profitability:  It's a Simple Formula Really
10. Computer Tip:  Remote Mechanics Climb Right Inside Your PC

April 22th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Everything That's Current about XML. This listing includes over 20 articles on the use and developement of XML in business. 
2. Bob Jensen: Lead cheerleader for XFRML / XBRL 
3. Napster Squabble Pits Bands vs. Fans 
4. Super Small Business Links by Mark Deion 
5. Google's Easter Fun Page


AccountingStudents Newsletter: April 18, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. Accounting's Evolution: It's Not Just Number-Crunching Anymore 
2. Essay Questions, Problems, and What the Heck is an OOF? 
3. From Job-Hopping to Counter-Offers: What Generation-X Accountants Can Expect 
4. Survey Results: Do you belong to a CPA state society and/or the AICPA? 
5. Site of the Week: The American Association of Hispanic Certified Public Accountants 
6. Save 25 Percent: "You Can Pass the CPA Exam: Get Motivated"


Richard Newmark has the following quotation at the bottom of his email messages.  The matter of "timing" applies to a lot of things in life and love and tax and comedy and dying.

"In tax, as in comedy, timing matters,"
Judge Alex Kozinski (U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit)


Forwarded by Dick Haar

READING BETWEEN THE LINES _______

MEMO 1
John Jones, the head of the company asked his manager to write a detailed employment review describing Bob Smith, one of his programmers. 

1. Bob Smith, my assistant programmer, can always be found 
2. hard at work in his cubicle. Bob works independently, without 
3. wasting company time talking to colleagues. Bob never 
4. thinks twice about assisting fellow employees, and he always 
5. finishes given assignments on time. Often Bob takes extended 
6. measures to complete his work, sometimes skipping coffee 
7. breaks. Bob is a dedicated individual who has absolutely no 
8. vanity in spite of his high accomplishments and profound 
9. knowledge in his field. I firmly believe that Bob can be 
10. classed as a high-caliber employee, the type which cannot be 
11. dispensed with. Consequently, I duly recommend that Bob be 
12. promoted to executive management, and a proposal will be 
13. executed as soon as possible. 

Signed ... 
Jim 

A MEMO WAS SOON SENT FOLLOWING THE LETTER 
John, 
That idiot was reading over my shoulder while I wrote the report sent to you earlier today. Kindly read only the odd numbered lines above (1, 3, 5, etc...) for my true assessment of him. 
Regards ... Jim


Forwarded by Michael Robinson [mailto:robinson@saintmarys.edu

Baby Boomers, Then and Now (some of these are a little too close to home)

Then: Long hair
Now : Longing for hair

Then: A keg
Now : An EKG

Then: Acid rock
Now : Acid reflux

Then: Moving to California because it's cool.
Now : Moving to California because it's hot.

Then: Watching John Glenn's historic flight with your parents
Now : Watching John Glenn's historic flight with your kids

Then: Trying to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor
Now : Trying not to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor
(I especially liked this one!)

Then: The President's struggle with Fidel
Now : The President's struggle with fidelity

Then: Killer weed
Now : Weed killer

Then: The Grateful Dead
Now : Dr. Kevorkian

Then: Getting out to a new, hip joint
Now : Getting a new hip joint


Forwarded by Bob Overn, OvernBobLo@aol.com 

THESE ARE ACTUAL ANSWERS FROM STUDENTS ON MUSIC EXAMS

Diatonic is a low calorie Schweppes.

Probably the most marvelous fugue was the one between the Hatfields and the McCoys.

A harp is a nude piano.

The main trouble with a French Horn is that it is too tangled up.

An interval in music is the distance from one piano to the next.

The correct way to find the key to a piece of music is to use a pitchfork.

Agitato is a state of mind when one's finger slips in the middle of playing a piece.

Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you'd better not try to sing.

I know what a sextet is but I'd rather not say.

Most authorities agree that music of antiquity was written long ago.

My favorite composer was Opus. Agnus Dei was a woman composer famous for her church music.

Henry Purcell was a well-known composer few people have ever heard of.

Johan Sabastian Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic.

Rock Monanoff was a famous post-romantic composer of piano concerti.

The principal singer of nineteenth century opera was called pre-Madonna

It is easy to teach anyone to play the maracas. Just grip the neck and shake him in rhythm.

Gregorian chant has no music, just singers singing the same lines.

Sherbet composed the Unfinished Symphony.

All female parts were sung by castrati. We don't know exactly what they sounded like because there are no known descendants.

Young scholars have expressed their rapture for the Bronze Lullaby, the Taco Bell Cannon, Beethoven's Erotica, Tchaikovsky Cracknutter Suite, and Gershwin's Rap City in Blue.

Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel; if they sing without music it is called Acapulco.

A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.

Contralto is a low sort of music that only ladies sing.


Some tax humor from Vernon Jacobs --- http://www.rpifs.com/taxhelp/othumor.htm 


The drunk's difficult time with baptism!
Forwarded by Dick Haar

A drunk stumbles along a baptismal service on Sunday afternoon down by the river.

He proceeds to walk down into the water and stand next to the Preacher. The minister turns and notices the old drunk and says, "Mister, Are you ready to find Jesus?"

The drunk looks back and says, "Yess, Preacher...I sure am."

The minister then dunks the fellow under the water and pulls him right back up. "Have you found Jesus?" the preacher asked.

"Nooo, I didn't!" said the drunk.

The preacher then dunks him under for quite a bit longer, brings him up and says, "Now, brother, have you found Jesus?"

"Noooo, I did not Reverend."

The preacher in disgust holds the man under for at least 30 seconds this time, brings him out of the water and says in a harsh tone, "My God, man, have you found Jesus yet?"

The old drunk wipes his eyes and says to the preacher, "Are you sure this is where he fell in?"



Debbie's Corner


If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.

Debbie is spending a long Easter weekend in Las Vegas.  She has more "winning" things to do over the break than write for Debbie's Corner.



And that's the way it was on April 25, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

  Hline.jpg (568 bytes) Hline.jpg (568 bytes)

 Hline.jpg (568 bytes)

 

April 18, 2000


Quotes of the Week:  

Eat, drink, and lighten up,
for tomorrow you might get audited.

ALF

Friends with presents are the best kinds of friends
ALF

Doo onto others before they doo onto you.
Big Bird

Time's fun when you are having flies.
Kermit the Frog

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
Earl Asquith

In walking the tiger, use a long stick.
Mao Tse-Tung

Dear Lord, give me chastity and self-restraint, ...
But not yet, O Lord, not yet!
Saint Augustine

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.
George Wilhel Hegel

The greater your problem, the greater your opportunity.
Will Powers

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
Blaise Pascal

A person with one watch knows what time it is;
A person with two watches is never sure.

Source unknown.

For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
H.L. Menchken

You can observe a lot by watching.
Yogi Berra


I have not yet tried any of the quotations in Yahoo, but you can obtain a long listing of humorous quotations at http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/Quotations/Humorous/ 


The Technical Translator - Free online dictionary --- http://www.mouli-net.com/translator/ 
Free online dictionary for translation of technical words or expressions into English, French, German and Spanish.


Norm finally sent me the schedule for our two workshops on April 27 as listed at http://www.ohioima.org/workshop.html 
As of today, Norm had not posted the schedule to the website.

April 27, 2000
Carl: 
Sorry for the delay. I needed to speak with Bob Jensen on this matter. You saw the good news. 260 for Friday. and close to 100 for Thursday and we expect more registrations in the next two weeks.

NBC just interrupted As the World Turns and are projecting a sell out. It interrupted the ELIAN story

Here is the Thursday (April 27) Schedule:

8:30- 12:00 AM Dr. Robert Jensen Overview and Cases in Implementation of SFAS 133: Accounting for Derivative Financial Activities and Hedging Activities

12:00 - 1:00 LUNCH

1:00 - 2:00 Dr. Glen Gray Business Reporting on the Internet

2:00- 2:30 Dr. Robert Jensen History and Future of Course Authoring Techniques

2:30: - 2:45 Break

2:45 - 3:45 Charles W. Hickman Impact of New Technologies on Business Reporting and Education

3:45 - 4:15 Dr. Norman Meonske Power Point Presentations Using Humor, Sound, and Graphics

4:15: - 4:30 Question and Answer Session

Norman Meonske [nmeonske@kent.edu


In the University Club, one of our professors raised a question regarding how much the Trinity University endowment would have grown to if locked into the S&P 500 (assuming hypothetically that the endowment started was indexed totally to the S&P 500.)  I found some endowment data in Figure 29 of the Report of the Institutional Self-Study of Trinity University, 1996.  If it had been possible to take the 1987 endowment of $248.8 million and lock it into the S&P 500, the increase in value would have been $208.66 million between 1987 and 1995 according to my calculations.  The actual contributions  ($259.10 million from Figure 31) plus endowment earnings ($58.25 million from Figure 29) were $317.35 million over the same years.  This means that fund raising efforts plus actual  investing yielded about $108.69 million more than what would have been received from equity investing in the S&P 500.  The excess averages out to about $14 million per year better than the S&P 500.  These calculations do not take into account the annual expenditures of a substantial portion of the fund's annual revenues.  When contributions, earnings, and expenditures are taken into account, the 1995 balance of the endowment fund was $367.4 million.  In 1999, the endowment stood at $540 million.  According the IRS Form 990 data for Trinity University, the financial status of Trinity University was as follows for 1997 and 1998:

 
  Assets June 01, 1997 May 31, 1998

Change

Cash & Equivalent $54,622,705 $37,753,774 $-16,868,931
Accounts Receivable $3,256,746 $7,902,799 $4,646,053
Pledges & Grants Rec. $917,089 $813,309 $-103,780
Receivables/Other $11,073,583 $12,063,599 $990,016
Inventories for Sale or Use $1,197,540 $1,141,891 $-55,649
Investments/Securities $195,654,512 $253,172,167 $57,517,655
Investments/Other $13,864,000 $14,748,000 $884,000
Fixed Assets $86,618,015 $86,079,456 $-538,559
Other $241,486,400 $267,923,390 $26,436,990
Total Assets $608,690,590 $681,598,385 $72,907,795
       
  Liabilities June 01, 1997 May 31, 1998

Change

Accounts Payable $6,941,180 $6,936,003 $-5,177
Grants Payable $0 $0 $0
Deferred Revenue $2,522,816 $2,288,847 $-233,969
Loans and Notes $0 $0 $0
Tax-Exempt Bond Liab. $21,661,000 $19,261,000 $-2,400,000
Other $14,729,277 $15,034,240 $304,963
Total Liabilities $45,854,273 $43,520,090 $-2,334,183
 
FUND BALANCE $562,836,317 $638,078,295 $75,241,978
 

 Source:  http://www.guidestar.org/ 

Financial strength is one of the reason Trinity University has been rated as the best of the "Western Universities" by US News at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/wstunivs/wstu_a2.htm.  Faculty, staff, and students have benefited greatly from a very generous and devoted Board of Trustees, a hard-driving Dr. Calgaard, and all other persons who worked so hard to raise endowment funds at Trinity  University.  We are optimistic that our new President, Dr. Brazil, will continue in this grand tradition.  BRAVO  AND THANK YOU TO EVERYONE IN THE TRINITY COMMUNITY WHO HELPED TO MAKE TRINITY UNIVERSITY WHAT IT IS TODAY FOR 2,500 TOP-RATED STUDENTS !

I also want to acknowledge that the Board of Trustees do much more for Trinity University than help to raise funds.  As an example in front of those congregated for Sunday worship in Parker Chapel on April 16, a prominent attorney and Trustee, Paul Smith,  shared a very private moment, one that he never discussed  previously in public.  It was a moment where prayer made a huge difference in his life and family.


On April 16, the Digital Duo on PBS reviewed three websites for applying to college.  Their recommendations are linked at http://www.digitalduo.com/214_dig.html 

For online degree programs and courses, I maintain a helper guide at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245progs.htm 

For financial aid information, see http://dir.yahoo.com/education/financial_aid/ 


Norman Meonske also clued me in about this great gallery of annual reports.  This is a great website.
Report Gallery --- http://www.reportgallery.com/ 

The Report Gallery is the most complete and up-to-date listing of Annual Reports and related financial reports online today. Save time and paper by researching your reports online. The Report Gallery currently lists over 2,200 Annual Reports and covers the majority of the fortune 500 companies.

If this is your first time here we suggest that you visit the "New to Gallery Page" so that you can take full advantage of the information on this site.
Norman Meonske [nmeonske@kent.edu]

Also do not forget the annual reports available at http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Finance_and_Investment/Corporate_Profiles_and_Reports/ 

Larry Tomassini has some great links to annual reports at http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu/~tomassin/corps/corp.html 

Ohio State University Financial Data Finder  --- http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu/dept/fin/fdf/osudata.htm 
This is a great helper site for finding financial data


Facts about the Dow Jones Industrial Average (investments) --- http://averages.dowjones.com/java2.html 

Facts about the S& P 500 index --- http://www.spglobal.com/ssindexmain500.html 

Carl Hubbard helped me find the best source of historical graphs and data tables for the DJ Average, S&P 500 index, and related market summaries.  That source is at http://finance.yahoo.com/m1?u 
For example, in order to find the historical S&P 500 graph, click on 500 Index "Chart" and then choose Small or Big.  For the historical tables, click on choose "daily," "weekly," or monthly under the category "Table."  You then put in the desired start and stop dates and click on the button called "Get Historical Data."  

From the Scout Report

Global Financial Data [.pdf] http://www.globalfindata.com/ 

This impressive collection of historical global financial data stretches from the years 1264 to 2000. While most of the actual data must be purchased, this Website does offer several free series, including Stock Markets since 1693, Interest Rates since 1700, and Inflation Rates since 1264. The site also contains a decent-sized collection of research papers written about the Eurodollar and a links page with financial Websites from around the world.

The T-Theory for technical trading --- http://www.ttheory.com/ 


From the April 12 edition of Andrew Lymer's Double Entries:

TOTAL CORPORATE REPORTING - BP AMOCO DEMONSTRATES BP Amoco has recently published its first combined Financial, Environmental and Social report on the Internet, marking a further development in corporate reporting. The report can be found online on at
http://www.bpamoco.com/alive/ 


Financial Derivatives in Plain English --- http://www.iol.ie/~aibtreas/derivs-pe/ 
There are some good examples of hedging and speculating strategies.  I did not, however, see anything on accounting for derivatives under FAS 133 or IAS 39.


Look up the financial reports, budgeting information, and names of officers in your favorite college, charity, church, or other non-profit organization.  These organizations must file a Form 990 with the IRS and, thereby, are on the web.  For short and easy-to-find summaries see http://www.guidestar.org/index.html 

Posting Form 990 images is an ongoing process. If a Form 990 image is available for your selected charity, you will see a "Form 990" option on the left side of its GuideStar Pages™. More images are being added to the database. Meanwhile, you will find easy-to-read profiles and financial reports derived from IRS Forms 990 by searching for an organization and reading its GuideStar Pages.

Linda Phingst sent me a link to another source for Form 990 copies.  Go to http://www.nccs.urban.org.


There is an exceptionally interesting article entitled "Can Web-based Knowledge Sharing Tools Improve the Learning Process in an MBA Consulting Class," by Nory B. Jones and Mark Rice in T.H.E. Journal, April 2000, pp. 100-106.  The online version is at http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A2786.cfm 

I find a number if exciting innovations in an "advanced consulting class" of 18 students at the University of Missouri (Columbia).  Nory Jones is a professor and Mark Rice is with Xerox Corporation.  One of the intriguing things about this course is that the students were consultants to real-world client business firms.  The second intriguing thing is that the students and participating clients were trained on Xerox collaborative software known as DocuShare.  

You can read the following about DocuShare at 

DocuShare 2.0 reflects Xerox's ongoing commitment to deliver document solutions that move from simply managing documents to sharing the knowledge contained in those paper and electronic documents. Introduced 18 months ago -- and with a customer base that includes NASA, Ford Motor Co., and Stanford University -- DocuShare was created to work the way people work. DocuShare is intuitive, requires no centralized management, works on popular computing platforms and web browsers, and is low cost.

You can read the following at http://www.xerox.com/go/xrx/software/overview.jsp?id=DocuShare&cat=%2fSoftware%2fDocument+Management&trk=/Software/Document_Management/DocuShare/overview/ 

What also intrigued me about the Jones and Rice article is the candor regarding the dark side and well as the sunny side of technology experimentation in this class.  In many instances, the students found easier and more traditional forms of communication (email, telephone) and collaboration easier and faster.  The preference by students for face-to-face meetings was documented.  Having a central repository of records was appreciated, but "Sometimes too much technology can get in the way, especially if there are no complex needs." (pg. 102)  Students felt that higher technology was more beneficial in an asynchronous setting than a synchronous setting.

The concluding remarks are as follows:

Education can no longer take place in a just a brick and mortar setting. Collaboration with partners-in-learning, like Xerox Corporation and others, opens doors to education to understand and utilize the tools and practices that are needed to effectively run a business, a program or a project. As we see technology becoming more a part of the fabric of our daily lives, and no longer an obstacle, we can begin to weave and share content into a community of lifelong learners in education, business, organizations, cultural institutions, and the general public. With these knowledge-sharing tools, we all can share and play a part in the growth and success of our educational process.


An article somewhat on the dark side is "Students and Faculty Respond to Online Distance Courses at Grant MacEwan Community College," by Cheryl White in T.H.E. Journal, April 2000, pp. 100-106.  The online version is at http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A2814.cfm.

Many of the student complaints concerned hardware, training, broken links, and cumbersome navigations.  Faculty complaints were not altogether what faculty complain about in onsite traditional classrooms:


·        
Small class sizes.

·        
Lack of student incentive to participate in online discussions, which were mandatory but not marked.

 
·       Students went through the course at different rates, so were sometimes out of step with the content being discussed.

·        
The student dominating the discussion with minimal input from other students

Other faculty concerns were the time needed to respond on email and the time needed to respond to students on weekends.  Students did like the added interactions with instructors.

Concluding remarks are shown below:

Both faculty and students prefer learning computer skills as needed. Putting step-by-step tutorials on using TopClass and WebCT on the Learn Online Web site is one way to provide a basic training resource. At this early stage of online course development, much depends on the willingness of the faculty to take on the challenging prospect of online course development and on the forging of new collaborative relationships across departments within the college.


I started a new "Helpers in Searching the Web" site at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 
Highlights include:


Gainskeeper will keep a running account (at no cost to you) of your portfolio value --- http://www.gainskeeper.com/ 

Nobody begins investing because they like the record-keeping required for tax reporting. GainsKeeper takes care of the administrative hassles and empowers you to make better investment decisions.

GainsKeeper’s portfolio management and tracking tool allows you to enter your positions and monitor them for market movement just like any other portfolio tracker. That’s where the similarities end. Unlike other trackers available today, GainsKeeper automatically adjusts your portfolio for trading activity, corporate actions and wash sales. Backed by an experienced team of securities and taxation specialists, GainsKeeper uses the power of the Internet to deliver state of the art data analysis, allowing you to trade in a tax savvy way every day.

Main Features: 

You will find the above information and more at Bob Jensen's "Helpers in Searching the Web" at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 


This week's issue of The Nation (April 17th) has a review (pp. 25-29) by David Kirp of Stanley Aronowitz's The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning (and also of James Duderstadt's A University for the 21st Century -- which takes the other side of the arguments). You may want to check it out, but I will quote only one item here for the sake of the sport:

There is surely a place for the market in academic life, but the market needs to be kept in its place. The critical question is how to draw, and how to maintain, this line.

The line, at other universities besides are own, seems to have found a rather unhealthy persistence in changing the nature of the academic endeavor, and we still need to watch it closely.

Yours in hopes of a new extreme sport -- windmill jousting,
Spinks, William
[cspinks@Trinity.edu


What's on Microsoft's wish list today?  From Newsweek, April 17, 2000, pg. 43.  You can read the entire article online at http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/bz/a18441-2000apr9.htm  

The current rubric for this effort is "Next Generation Windows Services," with an emphasis on that final word. The Microsoft vision is to replace the bulk of its software with a collection of dynamic "services" that makes it easy for customers to access and manipulate information spread out over the Web. In Microsoft's telling, the Web you know and love is severely limited: you can view pages but can't really fool around with the information it offers. By making use of a recent standard for creating Web pages called XML, however, it's possible to use that data as smoothly as you can massage the numbers in your own little spreadsheet at home. A whole new set of possibilities open where minutiae stored in the bowels of Web-connected databases get integrated into your life. Want to travel? Your personal calendar could take into account the weather in destinations you're scheduled to visit, as well as whether seats remain for discount fares on your favorite airline. And if your stockholdings increase, you may automatically upgrade your hotel reservation to a suite. Another benefit of XML is that by unhooking data from a fixed page view, it can effortlessly display the same figures, facts and trivia in devices ranging from mobile phones to e-books.

Don't forget Bob Jensen's "XML, XFRML XBRL,  and RDF Watch" at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm.


Higher Education Solutions, Colleges, Universities, IBM Global Campus  --- http://houns54.clearlake.ibm.com/solutions/education/edupub.nsf/detailcontacts/edu_higher_education 

e-business for Higher Education The rapid pace of change in Higher Education and society is transforming the environments of many campuses. Student enrollments are up, competition is high and student and community expectations continue to rise.

IBM e-business solutions for Higher Education can help you overcome these challenges and meet expectations. IBM e-business for Higher Education is a framework of concepts and technologies designed to facilitate communication, collaboration and transaction execution in your environment, using the power and flexibility of the Internet.

Applying Powerful Ideas and Technology e-business solutions not only connects your systems, but also connects your constituents and transform their relationships. Student and faculty services can be Web-enabled, and can be accessed anytime, anywhere through portable laptops. Students no longer have to stand in long lines during registration. Staff have less paper to manage and more time for strategic activities. Faculty have access to tools and online information that supports their ability to teach and conduct research. With e-business for Higher Education, you can increase stakeholder satisfaction all around. The institution as a whole can better focus on its mission: to deliver a high quality educational experience to students.

Because of our project experience with customers, as well as our own experience as an e-business, IBM is uniquely positioned to understand your current IT situation and enable your transition toward a long-term IT vision. We provide infrastructure in terms of servers, proven middleware and innovative applications that are flexible and scalable to your needs. So you can start small and grow big.


Internet tax services --- H&R Block Goes Down for the Count and Turbo Tax Goofs on Computing Refunds

In "Tax Sites Go Down for the Count," in Internet World, April 15, 2000, pg. 28,  the metaphor for H&R Block's Internet tax server is that of a boxer who keeps going down but struggles back before the count of 10 claiming "I'm all right!  I've got him now, I can take him."  A few minutes later, the H&R Block boxer finds himself once again on the mat and unable to serve up a single punch.  After such flaws as having Internet the world being able to see the tax returns of some customers, Internet World claims the following about H&R Block's web servers:

Alas, we needed only to jab Block in the ribs to send it to the canvas for good.  We repeatedly clicked on four different links at the site's home page, and Netscape didn't find a server --- not once.  Next year, the company had better work its site a bit harder before throwing it into the ring.

The Turbo Tax web server at least worked, but according to Internet World, the server did not correctly compute the tax refund on a test case.  Also various navigation links within the tax return were messed up.

When we got up the energy to return to our taxes, we sat at the kitchen table and took pencil to paper.

The April 15 edition of Internet World is not yet posted to the web, but it will eventually be available at http://www.internetworld.com/ 

On April 15, there was also an Associated Press news release that H&R Block had an error in its "tax-filing program that misread intervals of $1,000 as intervals of $1."  About 3,000 customers underpaid their taxes as a result of this software glitch.  H&R Block will not pay the taxes due, but if there are IRS penalties resulting from this glitch, H&R Block will pay the penalties.


It's the biggest child pornography case in Internet history, and it all leads back to a Texas couple who masterminded a million-dollar business. What's more: All the customers left behind their credit card numbers --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35684,00.html  


Recipe for a successful website --- http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/recipe/ 


Trends in ubiquitous computing --- http://www.technocopia.com/ 


American Poetry --- http://members.xoom.com/Neca.1/ 


Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies --- http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com 

Also don't forget about that controversial Brave New World by Ray Kurzweil at http://www.kurzweiltech.com/WIRED/ 


Microsoft's news about Africa plus an encyclopedia of Africa (on CD-ROM) --- http://www.africana.com/ 


Cartography at its best:  The David Rumsey Collection --- http://www.kurzweiltech.com/WIRED/ 


History of Christmas and Easter --- http://www.prerapture.org/holiday/ 


All about insects --- http://www.insects.org/ 


The following passage from a promotional booklet (1999/2000) Edition of Gleim's CPA Review may be of interest to some accounting educators and students.  The Gleim website is at http://www.gleim.com/ 

The AICPA grades each question on a linear basis (i.e., individual questions are not curved). The grades will be totaled and two adjustments (not necessarily whole numbers) will be made.

1. Angoff adjustment. Points are added to each candidate's scores based on study of the May 1996 CPA exam, which established the following minimum unadjusted scores rather than a target pass rate as used in the past:

Business Law 65.4 TAX-MAN-GOV 54.8 Auditing 65.4 Financial 61.5

Thus, "adjustments" of 9.6, 9.6, 21.2, and 13.5 points, respectively, were established for each of the four exam sections to adjust to a passing score of 75.

2. Equating adjustment. An "equating" process that statistically equates each exam's difficulty with that of the May 1996 exam will determine the "adjustment" for each subsequent exam.

The scores of individual questions often are not whole numbers; e.g., if 60 multiple-choice questions were allocated 50 points, each correct answer would be worth .83333 point (50/60), and if a 10-point essay question had 13 possible grading concepts, each grading concept would be worth 0.7692 point (10/13). Accordingly, your score is rounded after "equated Angoff" points.


Human Suffering Gets a Witness 
by Lakshmi Chaudhry --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35461,00.html 

A frail, silver-haired nun weeps as she recalls the night rebel soldiers kidnapped 139 young girls from a boarding school in Uganda. The soldiers released all but 30 of the girls the next day. Of those 30, only nine managed to escape. Recounting her failed attempt to save them, the nun says, "I wish I had remained with them. I should have been with them."

Her testimony is part of the Witness Rights Alert, a collection of streamed video clips that document human rights abuses around the world.  (The Witness Rights Alert web site is at http://www.oddcast.com/witness/ )


National Youth Advocacy Coalition --- http://www.nyacyouth.org/  (a resource site for young homosexuals)


LYCOS FREE INTERNET ACCESS --- http://client.lycos.com/r.asp?CB&j7ESZfl5Uorno955040332 


From InternetWorld News on April 10, 2000

Developers Decry Microsoft Browser Plans 
By Nate Zelnick

Microsoft is quickly spending the goodwill it garnered when it switched gears on developer standards three years ago. After following Netscape's strategy of inventing new HTML elements whenever it wanted to, Microsoft saw the light (or the opportunity to make Netscape look bad while doing good) and vowed to hew close to the recommendations emerging from the World Wide Web Consortium. But -- as if the company has a desperate need to prove Adam Smith's caveat to capitalism that monopolies destroy market benefits -- Microsoft looks more and more like the mirror image of that once-arrogant Netscape now that it has the upper hand in browser share.

At issue are the exact same set of technologies that threatened to split the Web in 1997: the Document Object Model specification that defines how a page and its elements can be controlled programmatically and the Cascading Style Sheet approach to presenting a page and its elements. Unlike last time, though, there is a developers' advocacy group -- the Web Standards Project -- that has some hope of getting Microsoft's attention.

Which is what they are trying to do. The WSP issued a release Monday decrying Microsoft's announced plans for more proprietary DOM and CSS extensions in the upcoming Internet Explorer 5.5 for Windows. The extensions come even though Microsoft has yet to implement the full versions of the DOM spec and CSS1. Innovating ahead of supporting standards "mocks the dream of 'code once, read anywhere' that has driven so much of the Web's success," said WSP steering committee member Simon St. Laurent in the organization's release.

Ironically, the WSP praised Microsoft a few weeks ago for its latest version of IE on the Mac, which supports more of the W3C's standards than any other released browser. The divergence between different versions of IE on the different operating systems is exactly the kind of thing that makes it harder to build Web sites.

What made Netscape a bad market leader when its Navigator owned the browser market was that it arbitrarily introduced new presentation elements, ignored standards, and pushed technologies that served its interests instead of its customers. Following its directives meant building sites viewable in Navigator only. Developers who wanted to build universal sites had to ignore the proprietary technologies or, if they wanted to capitalize on the new features, build parallel sites available to Navigator, IE, and their various versions and subversions on different operating systems. Microsoft's decision to support standards cut Netscape off at the knees.


Campus Depot --- http://www.campusdepot.com/text_books.htm 

 Your College Superstore - Text Books CampusDepot.com has partnered with VarsityBooks.com a leading online retailer of new college textbooks and has established a platform for marketing goods and services to the nation’s 15 million college students.


I think your visitors will find value in the products and services offered through StudentMarket.com
Regards,
Oren Milgram
http://StudentMarket.com  


Dr. Jensen,
This is an email reminder that all Premium Support ToolBook customers (such as yourself) are entitled to access the monthly Electronic Technical Support Newsletter at this location:

http://www.click2learn.com/support/newsletter/ 

Thanks, Technical Support click2learn.com, inc., formerly Asymetrix Learning Systems


Bob
Please forward this information to your students and other CPA candidates.

1. "Last Minute Tips" for the May CPA Exam. Send May CPA candidates to http://www.gleim.com/maycpatips 

2. AICPA recently released 96 questions from recent CPA exams. We have prepared them for May candidates to use as review quizzes. See Recently Released CPA Questions at http://www.gleim.com/cpamay2000/released.html .

3. New, very-structured, online CPA Review courses for the November exam will be available by the end of June. More information is available at http://www.gleim.com/cpamy2000/otp.html .

4. Would you like to offer your senior/graduate students copies of CPA Review: A System for Success (2000-2001 Edition)? This 112-page book (available in June) provides extensive information about the CPA exam and how to PASS the CPA exam. It is available at no cost for distribution to your students. Also, if we can help you with providing CPA review materials for your students, please e-mail me at irv@gleim.com or Jennifer Dunlap Hurlbert at jenn@gleim.com  or call (800) 87-GLEIM, ext. 138.

Have a good day.
Irv Gleim


EEOC full text of the Americans With Disabilities Act --- http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/ada.html 


From InternetWorld News, April 13, 2000

The panelists may have been overstating the rosy attitude toward women entrepreneurs in general, however, and they agreed that the main obstacle facing women in search of funds was a lack of contacts in venture-capital-dom's old-boys network. The panelists said that this network is gradually changing as more female venture capitalists pierce its borders.


April 16th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Tech Troubles: What a Difference a Month Makes 
2. Windows 2000 Update 
3. IBM Makes a Strong Entry into Database Market 
4. DEMC.COM: The Original Small Business E-Magazine 
5. MICROSOFT ACKNOWLEDGES ITS ENGINEERS PLACED SECURITY FLAW IN SOME SOFTWARE 
6. XML Could be the Basis for Microsoft's New Generation Windows System (NGWS)


The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 38, April 14, 2000 --- http://www.accountingweb.com

1. AICPA: Restructuring As a Dot-Com IPO? 
2. The Future of Financial Reporting 
3. Global Business Professional Designation Proposed 
4. This Fourth Excel Pivot Table Tutorial Is The Best Yet 
5. Develop QuickBooks Training and Support As A New Service Area 
6. Internet-Based Perks Are Proving A Big Hit Among Employees 
7. Marketing Like a Pro on a Shoestring Budget 
8. Nine Steps To A Cash Management Procedure Manual 
9. Former AmEx Exec Joins 1st Global 
10. Internet Tip: Voice Mail While You're on the Internet


AccountingStudents Newsletter: April 11, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. Jumpstart Your Career in the First 100 Days 
2. Get Your Discount on "You Can Pass the CPA Exam: Get Motivated" 
3. Survey Results: What accounting-related periodicals do you find most useful? 
4. Plan Now for Your Internship 
5. Site of the Week: James W. Crawford, CPA 
6. Tip of the Week: Heads Up for the CPA Exam


Pro2Net Accounting Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of April 17, 2000 :

1. This Week's Accounting-Specific Headlines 
2. Feature Articles 
3. Survey Results: Which of the following traits is most important in a prospective employee? 
4. AICPA Spring Industry Conference


HOW CAN YOU TELL IF TWO ADULTS EATING DINNER AT A RESTAURANT ARE IN LOVE?

"Just see if the man picks up the check. That's how you can tell if he's in love." Bobby, age 9

"Lovers will just be staring at each other and their food will get cold... Other people care more about the food." Bart, age 9

"Romantic adults usually are all dressed up, so if they are just wearing jeans it might mean they used to go out or they just broke up." Sarah, age 9

"See if the man has lipstick on his face." Sandra, age 7

"It's love if they order one of those desserts that are on fire. They like to order those because it's just like how their hearts are on fire." Christine, age 9


For "College Humor," try http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Humor/College_Humor/ 
Much of the humor is vulgar or degrading in this category.

In the category of "Clean Humor," try http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Humor/Clean_Humor/ 

A gentleman, fresh out of gift ideas, bought his mother-in-law a large plot in an expensive cemetery. On her next birthday, he bought her nothing.

She was quick to comment, loud and long, on his thoughtlessness. The gentleman said only one thing - "Well, you haven't used the gift I gave you last year."


I especially enjoyed the College Dropout listing of famous people who succeeded in spite of being flunked out, booted out, or otherwise dropped out of college --- http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/7734/cdoaa.html 

Authors:
F Scott Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton, Dec. 1915
William Faulkner dropped out of the University of Mississippi
Edward Albee (playwright) dropped out of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, after 3 semesters

Comics:
Woody Allen (Woody Allen) was expelled from New York University and City College of New York
Steve Martin (wild & crazy guy) dropped out of Long Beach State College, where he was a philosophy major; though Steve had excellent grades, he says he became disillusioned upon reading Wittgenstein's view that "all philosophical problems can be reduced to problems of semantics"!!
Rosie O'Donnell (movies, tv, K-mart ads) dropped out of Dickinson College and Boston University
Ellen DeGeneres (tv) dropped out of University of New Orleans
Dan Aykroyd (SNL) dropped out of Carleton University, Ottawa

Computers:
Bill Gates (Microsoft) dropped out of Harvard, 1976
Steve Jobs (Apple, NeXT, Pixar) left Reed College in Portland, Oregon, after 1 semester
Steve Wozniak (with Jobs, founded Apple Computer)
Lawrence Ellison (Oracle Computer)
Michael Dell (Dell Computer) dropped out of the University of Texas

Other Business:
David Geffen (Geffen Records, Dreamworks SKG) flunked out of University of Texas, Austin, AND Brooklyn College, NY
H Wayne Huizenga (Blockbuster Video millionaire, owner of Miami Dolphins, Florida Panthers and Florida Marlins) attended Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, for 3 semesters
Ted Turner (media mogul) -kicked out, I hear!
Ron Popeil (tv huckster, RONCO)
William Hanna (Hanna-Barbera)

Conservatives:
Barry Goldwater ( berRepublican, Au H2O) Can you believe the anti-hippie himself tuned in, turned on, and dropped out? (Well, he dropped out at least)
Rush Limbaugh (media personality, tie salesman) spent 1 year at Southeastern Missouri State University before dropping out

Movies/TV:
Tom Hanks (actor) dropped out of CalState, Sacramento
Dustin Hoffman (actor)
Warren Beatty (actor)
Richard Gere (actor)
Burt Reynolds (former actor)
Sharon Stone (actress)
Bruce Willis (parody of an actor)
James Cameron (director of "Independence Day")
James Dean (actor, rebel, postage stamp)
Bill Murray (SNL, movies)
Andie MacDowell (actress)
Michael Keaton (actor)
Dennis Quaid (actor)
Kevin Sorbo (tv's Hercules)
Marisa Tomei (actress)
Brad Pitt (actor)
Stan Brakhage (experimental filmmaker)

Music:
David Byrne (Talking Heads) dropped out of the Rhode Island School of Design
Perry Farrell (Jane's Addiction, Porno for Pyros)
Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails)
Yoko Ono (you know) dropped out of Sarah Lawrence College
Burl Ives (appears in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas Special!)
Arlo Guthrie (singer) dropped out of Rocky Mountain College, Billings, Montana
Charlie Rich (Memphis blues musician, singer, songwriter)

Other Media:
Nina Totenberg (public radio) dropped out of Boston University


Here's something everyone should know: On July 8, 1947, witnesses claim a spaceship with five aliens aboard crashed on a sheep-and-cattle ranch outside Roswell NM, an incident they say has been covered up by the military.

On March 31, 1948, exactly nine months after that day, Al Gore was born.

That solves that one, but analysts are still trying to figure out the origins of George Bush.


Humor links from Larry Tomassini


Source unknown.

1. Home is where you hang your @. 
2. The e-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail. 
3. A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click. 
4. You can''t teach an old mouse new clicks. 
5. Great groups from little icons grow. 
6. Speak softly and carry a cellular phone. 
7. C:\ is the root of all evils. 
8. Don't put all your hypes in one home page. 
9. Pentium wise; pen and paper foolish. 
10. The modem is the message. 
11. Too many clicks spoil the browse. 
12. The geek shall inherit the earth. 
13. A chat has nine lives. 
14. Don't byte off more than you can view. 
15. Fax is stranger than fiction. 
16. What boots up must come down. 
17. Windows will never cease. 
18. In Gates we trust (and our tender is legal). 
19. Virtual reality is its own reward. 
20. Modulation in all things. 
21. A user and his leisure time are soon parted. 
22. There's no place like http://www.home.com
23. Know what to expect before you connect. 
24. Oh, what a tangled website we weave when first we practice. 
25. Speed thrills. 
26. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for months.



Debbie's Corner for April 18


"The taxpayer -- that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination."
-Ronald Reagan

"The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax."
-Albert Einstein


Ashland University

Objectives: The Department of Business Administration provides students of all ages with the fundamental business knowledge, skills, and applications needed to serve business and government institutions around the world. Students are provided with both theory and applied business education in the context of Judeo/Christian values of Ashland University. The department provides students with an understanding of cultural differences by encouraging all students and minorities to attend and participate in all facets of university life. Library and support services to include reference books, business journals, microfilm, computerized literature, computerized searches and inter-library loan are available. Interested Business Administration students gain the necessary academic preparation to be successful in advanced study.

Business Administration Courses and Descriptions

205 ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEMS
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites: BUS 108, 221
A study of accounting information systems and their application to manual and computer-based information systems.

479 THE MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisite: BUS 372 or permission of instructor
The theory and practice of planning, control and administration of the management aspects of MIS installations will be analyzed in general, and information resource management in particular. This course will develop the background necessary for relating the practice of information systems support to the realities of management needs. The student will be responsible for researching and reporting on current topics in the field.

452 SPECIAL TOPICS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS 1-3
Prerequisites: BUS 372 or permission of instructor
An examination of various topics related to current issues in information systems. May be repeated once.

 

Master of Business Administration Course Descriptions

MBA 513 MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
3 Credit Hours
Management Information Systems (MIS) is a set of systems and activities used to provide managers with information needed to support planning and decision-making. Effective and efficient use of a firm's information resource is facilitated by computer-based storage, manipulation, retrieval, analysis, and presentation of relevant information in a timely fashion. This course provides a managerial perspective on the design, development, implementation, utilization, and administration of computer-based information systems. Topics covered include decision support systems to enhance a firm's competitive strategy.

 


Assumption College

Business Studies: UG

   Accounting

ACC 211 Accounting Information Systems
The overall objective of the course is to develop a framework for the analysis and design of accounting information systems. Based on this framework, the objective is then to show the student how to analyze accounting information systems that satisfy the transaction processing, reporting, decision-making, and internal control requirements. Prerequisite: ACC 125-126. (Spring) Greenough/Three credits

Business Studies: Graduate Level

MBA719 - Advanced Information Systems Management - This course deals with the management of information technology in today's businesses. The strategic role of information systems (IS) requires effective management of those resources, closely integrated with other functional strategies. Emphasis will be on this strategic role of IS, managing the essential technologies, directing the development of systems, providing effective end-user computing and support systems and dealing with the people-related issues. Both text and cases will be used. Prerequisites: All Common Body of Knowledge courses, MBA718.

Other Great Sites
Sites to check out

New England Online

 


Athena University

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Management Strategies for Integrated Technologies

Tier 2

Tier Overview

The Information Age heralds not only fundamental changes in the manners of communication and technology, but also changes in the way in which we view and understand the world. One of the most powerful and important theories is that of Complex Theory. The impact of non-linear solutions and systems has a direct impact on how business will be conducted in the next century; already, what was formerly only within the realm of natural science has emerged as a potent answer to many of the problems facing businesses and corporations.

Nonlinear systems theory (or complex theory) has begun to have a great impact on marketing, management, and organizational theory. The applications developed by such companies as General Motors, Deere, and others, based on complexity theory, have proven that a knowledge of non-linear systems is essential to the manager of the 21st century.

Complexity Theory and Virtual Organizations

Description

The final component of this sequence, students will examine the role of virtual organizations in a complex system. Students will learn about virtual entities, their organizational structure, function, and future as important components of the business enterprise and market. The term "virtual corporation" is used to refer to an actual organization which, like a traditional corporation, aims to supply goods or services by means of its staff, equipment, and information systems, its form and rules of organization, its management principles and leadership styles, so that, in the widest sense, it can pursue its survival with maximum profitability. The virtual corporation is thus called because it accesses outside knowledge and resources, as well as its own, in order to supply its goods or services. This final sequence also introduces students to the next series of courses and must be completed successfully before being advanced.

Tier 3

In more and more businesses, the locus of value creation is shifting from the physical world to the information world. New products and services--some real and some virtual--dramatically affect how business is transacted, and, as a consequence, where value is created. This transition from marketplace to marketspace to is occurring at different levels of economic activity .

The first level is products and services, which will be reshaped to accommodate the information-based marketspace. The second level is marketing management systems. Managers will communicate with customers and organize their selling efforts via systems that are significantly different from those in current use.

There are four primary categories in this cluster: Electronic Commerce, Business Intelligence, Virtual Value Chain, and Knowledge Management.  Different courses in each cluster are offered for each session depending on the interests and needs of the students.  Below are some courses which have been offered in the past as examples for you to review.

 

Virtual Value Chain

Description

Source: "The Virtual Value Chain " (Harvard Business Review)

"The rise of electronic commerce creates a new location for creating value. We call it the marketspace to distinguish it from the physical marketplace. Executives must pay attention to how they create value in both the physical and virtual worlds. Understanding the difference in the processes for each world and the interplay between the two can help managers comprehensively see the strategic issues facing their corporations. Those who understand how to master both can create and extract value in the most efficient and effective ways.

"Creating value has been described as a model called the value chain, which is a series of value-adding activities that connect a company's supply-side (raw materials, inbound logistics and production processes) with its demand-side. This model treats information as a support element and not as a source of value itself. Federal Express has created value with information by allowing customers to track their packages through the World Wide Web. They can even identify who signed for the package once it has been received. This free service creates customer loyalty in a fiercely competitive market."

 


Athens State College

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
        ACCOUNTING

The objective of the major in accounting is to prepare students for a wide variety of careers in professional accounting, including public accounting, industrial accounting, internal auditing, and government service and to provide an academic framework for future graduate study. In addition to the program components listed below the student should complete the general college requirements and satisfy the conditions for graduation.

The following is one of the internet courses offered...Debbie

ED 300 INTERNET COURSE
FOUNDATION OF EDUCATION

This survey course is designed for the student who expects to prepare for the teaching profession and includes principles, history, philosophy and trends in education. Two full days of field experiences are required. Students taking this as a distance education course must have access to a computer that is connected to the Internet and that has a JAVA enabled browser, word processing software compatible with Microsoft Word 7.0 and access to e-mail.

Project Guidelines

 


If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.

Debbie did not have time to visit ACE this week.



And that's the way it was on April 18, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

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April 11, 2000


Quotes of the Week:  

Lord grant me patience --- and please hurry up about it!
Source Unknown
(Reminds me of my neighbor (Betty) who asked the patrolman to get on with it when writing up her speeding citation, because she was obviously in a hurry.)

Usefulness is not impaired by imperfection.  You can drink from a chipped cup.
Greta K. Nagel 
(Ath long ath the edgeth are not too tharp.)

The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
Ogden's Law

There's no problem a good miracle cannot solve.
Shick's Law

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein
(But knowledge fuels the fires of imagination.  Only mathematicians can imagine in nothingness space.)

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
Carl Sagan
(But why must we continue to wait for something incredible in accounting research?  Its been over 500 years since Pacioli wrote Summa.)

The obscure we see clearly.  The completely apparent takes longer.
Edward R. Morrow
(For example the term "grace" may seem to some to be completely transparent.  Yet in a video that asked people on the street what "grace" meant to them, none of them could provide much more than the answer "Grace Kelly."  In the Contemporary Worship Service devoted to "Grace" on April 9 in Parker Chapel, we found out why the "completely apparent takes longer."  I applaud our Trinity University students on making the completely apparent more apparent.)

Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
Leonard Bradwein
(That's only because programmers have loose screws.)

The meek will inherit the earth, but they won't get the mineral rights.
John D. Rockefeller
(especially in Texas.)

To iterate is human, to recurse is devine.
Charles W. Bachman
(Recurse is verb form of "recursive," which is a term in mathematics that refers to repeating a process forever or until a specific condition is met.  Iterate means getting nowhere by having to repeat what "recurse" means over and over again.)

Always keep copies of your email messages.  These show you've been working.
Adapted from Finagles Second Law


I stumbled upon an interesting quotes page at http://www.tufts.edu/~chill01/quotes.htm 
In the future I will perhaps cite a few of the quotations from this source.

These quotations are collected by the Goddard Chapel Chaplain named Scotty Mclennan.

Chaplain Mclennan maintains a very interesting and inspirational website that you can access at http://www.tufts.edu/chaplaincy/scotty.html 
This website might give us some ideas in our labors to develop a Parker Chapel website at Trinity.


How Stuff Works --- This is an amazing website!  http://www.howstuffworks.com/ 


What is XBRL and why will it change the business reporting world in the 21st Century?  The answer is given at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm 

You can learn more about this from one of our top experts on XML, XFRML XBRL, and RDF from one of the top experts, Glen Gray, in an afternoon workshop on April 27 as described at http://www.ohioima.org/workshop.html 
My part in that workshop is minimal in order to let Glen have a larger share of the time.

I will, however, be conducting an entire April 27 morning workshop on cases and controversies in FAS 133 and IAS 39 on accounting for derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting.  You can read more about this workshop at http://www.ohioima.org/workshop.html 


Penn State University's World Campus is a leader in online education.  For more than a year, one of the courses called Faculty Development 101 has been available to faculty teaching for the Penn State World Campus.  Now Faculty Development 101 no longer has a restricted enrollment and is available, at least in part, to educators around the world.  The website is at http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/facdev101/ 

To assist you, our approach was to create a "course", called Faculty Development 101, and offered in an on-line environment. While a "student" in FACDEV 101, you will have the opportunity to experience learning at a distance in a delivery environment which may be similar to one you will use to author or instruct your own course. Lessons are constructed around competencies vital for all distance educators, and will include opportunities for interaction with other faculty members new to the World Campus team. Wherever you see the World Campus logo you can follow a link to a password protected site where you can interact with other faculty and a course instructor. You may work through the course at your own pace, and each of the two course modules should only take about one week to complete if you spend approximately one hour a day on the materials. You will receive enrollment information for FACDEV 101 automatically once you have signed on to offer your course through the World Campus.


From the Scout Report

Knowledge Management WWW Virtual Library http://www.brint.com/km/ 

Created by author and founder/ chairman/ chief knowledge architect of @Brint.com, the Knowledge Management WWW Virtual Library is an award-winning digital library dedicated to knowledge management and intellectual capital information. This all-inclusive site features an extensive collection of research papers, articles, and interviews on topics such as data mining, complexity theory, and "the human side of knowledge management;" these documents can be found in the Themes in Knowledge Management section. Users are encouraged to participate in several ever-changing online discussion forums; archived discussions include Data and Knowledge; Creative Abrasion of Knowledge, Information, Intellectual Capital; and Jump Starting Communities of Practice. Because there is so much information on this site, at times we found it somewhat difficult to navigate and search. However, for those interested in knowledge management, it should be an invaluable resource.


Is the University of Phoenix really better positioned for the 21st Century than "many non-elite, especially private, traditional academic institutions?"

"Remaking the Academy", by Jorge Klor de Alva, Educause Review, March/April 2000, pp. 21-40.
 http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0023.pdf  

As education moves toward the certification of competence with a focus on demonstrated skills and knowledge— that is, on “what you know” rather than on “what you have taken” in school—more associations and organizations that can prove themselves worthy to the U.S. Education Department will likely be able to gain accreditation. This increased competition worldwide—from, for instance, corporate universities, training companies, course content aggregators, and publisher media conglomerates—will put a premium on the ability of institutions not only to provide quality education but to do so on a continuous and highly distributed basis and with convenient access for those seeking information, testing, and certification. In short, as education becomes a continuous process of certification—that is, a lifelong process of earning certificates attesting to the accumulation of new skills and competencies—institutional success for any higher education enterprise will depend more on successful marketing, solid quality assurance and control systems, and effective use of the new media than on production and communication of knowledge. This is a shift that I believe University of Phoenix is well positioned to undertake, but I am less confident that many non-elite, especially private, traditional academic institutions will manage to survive successfully.

That glum conclusion leads me to a final observation: societies everywhere expect from higher education institutions the provision of an education that can permit them to flourish in the changing global economic landscape. Those institutions that can continually change, keeping up with the needs of the transforming economy they serve, will survive. Those that cannot or will not change will become irrelevant, will condemn misled masses to second class economic status or poverty, and will ultimately die, probably at the hands of those they chose to delude by serving up an education for a nonexistent world. Policy Issues for the New Millennium is the premier conference on federal policy affecting networking and information technology for higher education. The conference engages higher education and government policy leaders in constructive dialogue on the latest policy issues posed by information technology and network development. Detailed information and an online registration form for Networking 2000 are available at Deadline for early registration: www.educause.edu/netatedu/contents/events/mar2000/

I don't think Jeoge Klor de Alva and I agree on the roles of what I called Type 2 (onsite) versus Type 1 (online) universities in the 21st Century.  Rather than repeat my rebuttal of his "glum" forecast for Type 2 onsite universities, I will simply provide a link to my rebuttal arguments that appeared in last week's (April 4) edition of New Bookmarks.  I have pasted my remarks into the following documents:


Let's face the facts --- who could not love accountants?   Lawyers and judges are not so fortunate.  Where do persons with both accounting and law credentials stand?  Are they shysters who saw the (accounting) light or good accountants who later went astray ?  Can we extrapolate from British Columbia to the U.S.?
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=14967&d=101&h=0&f=0&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y 

A new survey conducted by MarkTrend Research of Vancouver shows that British Columbians publicly approve of Certified General Accountants (CGA). The trust factor is well intact for these professionals, according to the survey. The survey ranks eight different groups and this year’s survey puts accountants, police officers, doctors and educators among those most highly revered. The researchers interviewed 503 people in random telephone interviews. Of those, 94 percent gave CGAs favorable to very favorable ratings while 93 percent gave Chartered Accountants the same ratings.

Behind accountants, the survey ranked police officers (92 percent), doctors (90 percent), and public school teachers (86 percent). Judges and lawyers were found near the bottom of the list at 71 percent and 62 percent, respectively.

MarkTrends conducts similar polls six or more times per year to provide an ongoing idea of how British Columbians respond to current issues. The report, which is titled The Bulletin, provides the government and the public information on the political, economic and social climate of British Columbia.


Accountants may want to read Bob Elliott's piece on "Who are we as a profession --- and what must we become?" at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/feb2000/elliott.htm 

We accountants have been the people who designed and operated these enterprise nervous systems—systems that at the micro level permitted the achievement of enterprise objectives and at the macro level permitted the mercantile, industrial and post-industrial revolutions.

Our technology for doing so was at once brilliant, effective and efficient. The system involved a double entry for each exchange with the outside world, representing the benefit and the sacrifice to the enterprise. That information was laboriously and expensively captured, and once we obtained it we collected no further information—only analyzed and reanalyzed that information into balance sheets, income statements and other reports.

Now, collection of fresh information is cheap, but we still adhere to the old accounting model which implicitly assumes information is costly. As a result, we have lost control of the enterprise nervous system to other information professionals who do not share that assumption.

We CPAs need to converge with these other information professionals, just as information technology is causing computing, communications and content to converge. As information technology permits enterprises to better create and use information and knowledge, the competitive marketplace demands it. In the future, the winners and losers among our clients and employers will be determined principally by their capacities to create and use knowledge—that is, by the “bandwidth” of their nervous systems.

Our challenge—and our opportunity—is to be the principal agents by which this is accomplished. This is not a new role—it’s what we’ve always done. But technology alters the tools and competencies, speeds the process and magnifies the efforts. The question is whether we can transform our profession to realize this opportunity.


From the Scout Report

"Everything I know about Leadership I Learned from Movies" -- _Inc._ http://www.inc.com/articles/details/0,,ART17290_CNT53,00.html 

_Inc.'s_ tribute to the 2000 Academy Awards lists the top ten movies that have inspired its readers in their business practices. While the list consists of some business standards like _Norma Rae_ and _It's a Wonderful Life_, it also contains unconventional picks such as _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_ and _Dead Poets Society_. Each entry's plot is summarized, and the movie's overriding business message is constructed and analyzed. This entertaining list brings new meaning to movies such as _Twelve O'Clock High_.


Some top accountancy links --- http://accountantsworld.com/category.asp?id=Accounting 


A High-Tech Accounting? The Internet boom may have inspired practices that—with hindsight—look ethically suspect
By Robert J. Samuelson Newsweek, April 3, 2000, pg/ 37 --- http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/bz/a17790-2000mar26.htm 

There are huge pressures to project optimism—and prop up stock prices. The line between what people genuinely believe and what serves their economic interests has blurred. Perhaps some people can no longer see the line. Stretching accounting rules (if that is what MicroStrategy did) is a flagrant trespass. But others are more subtle, ambiguous and, possibly, pervasive. Questions abound about underwriting practices, the independence of stock "research" and the use of stock options.

Consider IPOs. These are the "initial public offerings" of stocks by private companies selling their shares to general investors. The business is hugely profitable for the underwriters—the brokerage houses that handle the sales. Suppose that Whoopee!.com has a $100 million IPO. According to Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida, the underwriters typically get about 7 percent (or $7 million). Why would anyone buy Whoopee!.com?

Well, it helps if the Wall Street underwriter has a popular stock analyst whose recommendation will push up the price. The best-known Internet analyst is Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. In 1999 she reportedly made about $15 million. (The figure, cited by The Wall Street Journal, isn't denied by the firm.) She was paid so much in part because she helped attract so much underwriting. In 1999 Morgan ranked second in IPO underwritings at almost $14 billion, just behind Goldman Sachs ($14.5 billion), reports Thomson Financial Securities Data.

"The conflicts of interest are immense," argues Ritter. Stock analysts are increasingly "cheerleaders," he says. Their pay depends on the firm's underwriting, which depends on enthusiastic research reports. Glum Internet analysts aren't wanted. (Morgan Stanley Dean Witter has a different view: Meeker does prescreen Internet companies that the firm underwrites, but this review helps eliminate weaker candidates. "There are lots of companies that would like to be underwritten by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter," says a spokesman.)

Capitalism is about risk and reward. If there's risk, some people will lose. Companies fail. Business plans flop. The dot-com phenomenon won't (and shouldn't) be any different. That is not the issue. But to work, capitalism requires reasonably reliable information. If it's skewed, then the risk- reward equation becomes skewed.

Logic suggests that IPO underwriting standards have eroded—and they have. Before Netscape's IPO in 1996, companies going public generally were profitable, says finance professor Jeremy Siegel of the University of Pennsylvania. Now, most run losses. One reason is that they're younger. In 1995 the average IPO firm was 8.1 years old. By 1999 it was 5.2 years.


All About Value at Risk (VAR, VaR, FAS 133, Derivatives) --- http://www.gloriamundi.org/ 

You can read more about Value at Risk in my Glossary at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133glosf.htm
 


As a former tax columnist for the New York Times, I recently launched a comprehensive tax site for individuals and would like to recommend its listing in your tax links directory. The site is called TaxPlanet.com - All Things Tax for Individuals. Its url is www.taxplanet.com 
Gary Klott@taxplanet.com [GaryKlott@taxplanet.com


Inc.'s fastest growing 500 companies --- http://www.inc.com/500/ 


Just Quotes from international stock exchanges around the world (investments)  --- justquotes.com --- http://justquotes.com/ 


Better finance for better living:
Free online courses in finance --- GE Center for Financial Learning http://www.financiallearning.com/ 


I updated my review of electronic books.  Electronic Books, e-Books, or eBooks are books that can be downloaded from the Internet into special reading devices that cannot be printed, photocopied, printed on paper, or copied in whole or in part to computer files.  Since they are the highest form of copyright protection, publishers are interested in creating public interest in such books.  I added a threaded summary of my previous messages on electronic books at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm

Probably the most successful electronic book written to date was written by Stephen King while recovering from being hit by a car on a country road in Maine.  Recall that an electronic book can be downloaded from the Internet, but it must be downloaded into a device that will not allow printing or copying of any part of the text. 

Stephen King's electronic book was distributed free as a promotion of electronic books.  You can read more about the success of this electronic book in "A Thriller on the Net," Newsweek, March 27, 2000, pp. 46-47.  The online version of the Newsweek article is at http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/bz/a17498-2000mar18.htm

Folks in publishing are still trying to figure out what happened last week. One thing they think they know is that they've just seen the fastest-selling book of all time, Stephen King's "Riding the Bullet"—if you can call it "sales" when many of the first day's 400,000 copies were distributed free, and if you can call a downloadable but not printable electronic text a "book." The title of King's e-book-only story refers to a scary amusement-park ride. He wrote it while recuperating from being hit by a van last summer, with no special idea of how he'd publish it, so he didn't know how apt that title would prove. But e-books, which up to last week had seemed a niche market with distant possibilities, suddenly have a working mass-market model—almost working—and everybody's lining up for the thrill ride. Almost everybody.


I have updated my XML, XFRML BRML, and RDF helper page with the following questions and answers at
 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm#Relational 

Dear Professor Jensen, 
I have read roughly your review of XML and some XML references that you recommend in your homepage. Thank you so much for this very useful introduction. Taking this opportunity, I would like to ask you for some additional help. I would be grateful if you could comment on the following issues which arise from my reading of your review and other materials. 

My first issue concerns the possible contradiction between standardisation and customisation in the context of corporate financial reporting (CFR). Apparently, any widespread use of XML requires standardisation of tags which gives a common meaning to pieces of financial information. On the other hand, there has been a sustained call for a greater customer focus or customisation in CFR. My question is, to what extent XML's standardisation imperative contradicts the call for customisation? If any, in what ways? 

My second issue relates to XML's relative (dis)advantages over traditional databases (such as networked relational databases). It is claimed that XML is a powerful tool for data representation, storage, modeling, interoperation, and so on. Will XML simply replace traditional databases, or just operate on top of them? If comparable at all, how will you compare XML with traditional databases in terms of queries, storage, search, data import, data export, data exchange, data maintenance, data updating, data input etc? 

I am not sure that my questions themselves are valid, logical, or significant. They may appear silly to you, but I look forward to hearing from you. If you think these questions may be intersting to others and/or you wish to invite others to discuss them, you may post your comments together with my questions on the AECM. Many thanks in advance. Best wishes. Dr Jason Xiao Cardiff Business School Cardiff University, UK

Dr Jason Xiao 
Cardiff Business School University of Wales, 
Cardiff Colum Drive Cardiff CF1 3EU Tel: 01222-875374 Fax: 01222-874419 URL: http://www.cf.ac.uk/uwcc/carbs/xiao/xiao.html 

You can read the replies from experts that address the above questions.  These replies are given at
 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm#Relational 

What is XBRL and why will it change the business reporting world in the 21st Century?  The answer is given at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm 


The Bible and Homosexuality --- http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibl.htm 


Youth Suicide Prevention --- http://www2.hunterlink.net.au/%7Edejrw/backrpt.html 


There is a tendency for couples to bicker over little things and to bicker repeatedly on the same issues.  A psychology professor at UCLA provides some free help online to improve relationships in marriage.  The website is acceptance.com at --- http://www.acceptancesurvey.com/ 

Welcome to the Acceptance Survey, a non-profit site sponsored by Dr. Andrew Christensen, co-author of Reconcilable Differences and Professor of Psychology at UCLA. This web site allows you (and your spouse or dating partner!) to compare your level of acceptance to couples that are participating in a five-year study of marital therapy in Los Angeles and Seattle, the largest study of its kind to date. The questionnaires contained on this site are some of the same ones used in this five-year study. Specifically, this site will let you know if your relationship acceptance levels are:

  1. In the range of couples who are unhappy in their marriage and are participating in therapy to help improve their relationship 
  2. In the range of couples who are happily married and are participating in the research study as a comparison group. 
  3. Or, are in the range between the two groups.

Additionally, after filling in your information, you will be able to compare your acceptance level to people who have already used this web site.

By completing this questionnaire, you not only find out about your own relationship, but you add to our information base on acceptance. The information you provide, none of which is personally identifying, will allow us to get a fuller picture of acceptance in relationships. By completing this survey, in addition to receiving feedback on your acceptance level, you are participating in the continuing collection of data on acceptance.

If you agree to participate in this project, you will be asked to complete a total of 36 questions about yourself and your current relationship, which should take approximately 10-15 minutes. Because these questionnaires ask personal questions about your relationship, you may feel some anxiety, discomfort, or embarrassment in answering these questions. Furthermore, some of these questions will be sensitive and possibly should not be shared with your partner. You may want to complete the questionnaire in a place that offers you some privacy. Your participation is completely voluntary and you have the right to refuse to answer any questions you may not wish to answer.

Furthermore, all of your responses will be kept confidential and anonymous. In fact, we have specifically designed our site to NOT collect identifying information from you.


Bank Information Center --- http://www.bicusa.org/ 


Big Brother Is the Network --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35518,00.html 
by Declan McCullagh
Apr. 8, 2000 PDT

The trend toward network computing could endanger privacy rights, an expert said Friday.

As more and more information is stored on networks and increased computation is performed on remote servers, the corporations that control those machines can conduct surreptitious surveillance, said Whit Diffie, the co-discoverer of modern cryptography.


Forbes 500 Annual Directory --- http://www.forbes.com/tool/toolbox/forbes500s/ 


This is a really good website. I looked up a book and was surprised! Try it out.

Today's Reference Pick of the Day is: Best Book Buys at: http://www.bestbookbuys.com/ 

Site compares prices at 28 independent and chain online bookstores. Your search will show whether a book is in stock or back-ordered, how soon it will be shipped, and the approximate shipping cost. Includes textbooksatcost.com.

Paula Kelley Ward 
Development Information Systems Manager 
Trinity University, San Antonio Texas Phone 210.999.7432 FAX 210.999.7433 Benefactor 5.0, Colleague 16.0 PWard@Trinity.edu 


Center for the History of Music History and Theory http://www.music.indiana.edu/chmtl/ 


Dear Professor Jensen:

This week's issue (13 of 15) of The Wall Street Journal Accounting Educators' Review features 4 articles. The topics highlighted this week are operating costs, e-commerce, financial disclosures, business growth, internal controls and manufacturing processes.

If you would like to receive any of our other Educators' Reviews (Accounting, Business Law, Economics, Entrepreneur, Finance, Information Technology, International Business, Introduction to Business and Marketing) to supplement this one, please specify which disciplines.

We hope you continue to find The Wall Street Journal Educators' Reviews a valuable teaching tool and encourage you to share your comments or suggestions.

Thank you for participating in The Wall Street Journal Program for Higher Education.

Best regards,

Andie Pham Education Marketing The Wall Street Journal andie.pham@dowjones.com 

* ARTICLE 1 "E-Tail Gets Derailed: How Web Upstarts Misjudged the Game," By William M. Bulkeley and Jim Carlton, 04/05/2000, The Wall Street Journal, Page A1.

ARTICLE URL: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB954889766697047194.djm  

TOPICS: E-Commerce, Operating costs in e-tail businesses. (Financial Accounting)

Many companies that began operations selling products over the web are running into difficult times. As huge operating losses continue and widen, cash reserves are being depleted and sources of financing are shrinking. The stock prices of e-tail companies have been falling and there is fierce competition among the players making it difficult to recoup investments in advertising.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 
1. According to the article, what is the "principal cause of death" for many web retailers?

2. What are some of the trends in the e-tail industry that is adding costs to selling products over the web?

3. Examine the statements about advertising costs. What did Pets.com spend on advertising relative to its operations? What does Mr. Zecchione estimate is the average advertising cost per customer in the industry? What are other experts' estimates? How does this cost disadvantage web retailers?

4. Why do "old-line" retail chains that are moving on-line have an advantage over new companies?

5. If you were to compare the cash flow statement of an e-tail company to the cash flow statement of an established store such as Wal-Mart, what would be the most significant differences you would expect?

6. What financial statement ratios do you think would differ significantly between a new e-tail firm and an existing firm such as Wal-Mart?

* ARTICLE 2 "Small-Stock Focus: IPOs More Boldly Disclose Risk Factors," By Terzah Ewing, 04/03/2000, The Wall Street Journal, Page C1.

ARTICLE URL: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB954714138248508347.djm  

TOPICS: Financial Disclosures in IPOs. (Financial Accounting)

This article discusses a change in the tone of risk disclosures made by Internet startup companies in their prospectuses for their Initial Public Offerings. Although disclosing risk factors has always been a standard practice, recent IPOs have been listing more and more pages of risk factors.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 
1. Based on your reading of this article, why do you believe that startup IPOs are being so much more pessimistic in their prospectuses than in the past?

2. What role, if any, has the SEC had in changing the tone of the disclosure of risk factors?

3. What does the article mean when it says the disclosures may be a "Crying wolf" phenomenon? Do you believe that the investing public has started ignoring such warnings?

* ARTICLE 3 "Going Green: Plastic Lumber Builds a Market," By Jim Carlton, 03/31/2000, The Wall Street Journal, Page B1.

ARTICLE URL: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB95445250251046477.djm  

TOPICS: Manufacturing Processes, Business Growth. (Cost Management)

This article describes the operations at U.S. Plastics, a company that makes plastic lumber for decks. The company has redesigned its manufacturing process and strengthened its financial position while growing the business. However, many challenges remain.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 
1. What factors have helped make the plastic lumber a popular alternative to wood?

2. What were some of the problems in the old manufacturing process? What improvements were made to the process? How do you think the improvements affected the final product and its popularity with consumers? What affect do you think the improvements may have had on the cost of the production process?

3. After growing through acquisitions, the company is now in a highly leveraged position. What strategies could the company employ to reduce its debt? Should management be concerned about reducing the debt as long as the company can service such a high debt level? Why or why not?

4. An event is cited in the article that apparently led to a 26% decline in the stock of U.S. Plastics in a single day. What was that event? Why do you think investors punished the stock of U.S. Plastics?

* ARTICLE 4 "Net's Tough Question: Could You Show Me Some ID, Please?" By Thomas E. Weber, 04/03/2000, The Wall Street Journal, Page B1.

ARTICLE URL: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB954726834832952362.djm 

TOPICS: Internal Controls in E-Commerce. (Accounting Information Systems, Internal Control)

This article discusses the use of digital certificates that could be used as a positive proof of identification for web-based transactions.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 
1. Describe briefly how a public-key system works? Why is such a technology so important for businesses conducting transactions over the web?

2. What are the challenges that stand in the way of widespread use of digital certificates?

3. Some advocate that digital certificates could be considered as legally binding as a personal signature. What arguments are there in favor of this position? What are the arguments against such a move?

AUTHOR:

Dorothy A. Feldmann, DBA Associate Professor of Accountancy Bentley College


They grew up under Communist rule in China in the 1960s and 1970s. But they were among the first of their generation to be schooled in the U.S., and now they're the latest group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,35491,00.html 

The latest group of entrepreneurs to plunge into Silicon Valley's tech startup game grew up under the red star of Chinese communism. Over the last two decades, Chinese-born students have arrived at American university campuses and earned advanced degrees in science and engineering. After working for technology firms in the United States, many are now starting their own companies.

There are now more than 30 companies in Silicon Valley that were started by entrepreneurs from mainland China. The surge is part of a larger trend of immigrant entrepreneurs founding companies in the region.


From the Scout Report

The Knowledge Loom http://knowledgeloom.org/ 
Developed by The Northeast & Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University, this site offers a collection of materials on well-regarded, innovative teaching theories and models. The collection functions as a database providing links to sites devoted to user-selected topics. Search parameters include educational themes, level of instruction, states of the union, institutional settings, school type, and school organization. A keyword search is also available. (We advise users to begin with broad searches and narrow if necessary as our sample searches did not result in a deluge of data.) The site also hosts an In the Spotlight section that features a different educational issue on a regular basis. The current topic is professional development, and the site offers "research-based principles of practice for successful professional development, along with examples of those principles in action in real schools and districts." Users may participate in a professional discussion list as part of this feature.

Psybersite http://www.muohio.edu/psybersite/index.htx 
This learning resource site, hosted by the psychology department at Miami University of Ohio, features Web tutorials on a variety of topics in the field of Psychology. Written by undergraduate and graduate students at the university and supervised by faculty, these units cover a variety of subjects, including topics in cyberspace, social psychology, psychology and the environment, and more. There are currently 31 modules with more planned. Development of the site has been supported by a grant from the Learning Technologies and Enrichment Program on campus.


Achieva --- http://www.achieva.com/ 

Today's college admissions process is much more competitive than even a few years ago. We advise students on building strong high school curriculums, preparing for SATs and crafting the personal essay most schools require.

Our counselors are recent grads of top colleges across the nation and understand what makes applicants stand out from the crowd.


Below is a link to a DHTML tutorial - I used Macromedia's Flash for the graphics.

www.VirtualPublishing.Net/cvp001a/index.html 

Richard J. Campbell RJ Interactive http://www.rj-int.com  
mailto:campbell@rj-int.com "Bringing the excitement of accounting to multimedia"


United States of America v. Microsoft Corporation, Conclusions of Law and Order  --- http://usvms.gpo.gov/ 


Note that the new Netscape 6.0 has a foreign language translator built into the browser itself. Does anybody know how well this browser works with DHTML and Microsoft's interactive spreadsheets that run in Internet Explorer?

After a year's delay, Netscape will release the latest version (in Beta only) of its Internet browser, with its small but powerful engine and support for Internet standards --- http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt0004045/2505099/ 

PC Week Labs looks at the much-anticipated update and finds a browser that is streamlined and standards-based but still very capable. http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt0004051/2510507/ 

You can read the following at http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,35458,00.html 

Netscape 6.0 is available for download for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and a host of Unix flavors.

Along with the new browser, AOL announced a slew of licensing deals for Gecko, the rendering engine in Netscape 6.0, as well as a trio of new dedicated AOL thin clients from PC vendor Gateway.

"We hope you'll agree the Netscape magic is back," said Case.

He and the other Netscape executives made a point of giving credit to participants in Mozilla.org, the open-source project that brought into the browser development effort everyone from high school students to professional developers.

"They made a huge difference in our ability to tap into the brightest people in our industry to help with this program," said Jim Martin, senior vice president and general manager of Netscape.

Netscape 6.0 should be viewed not as a browser with an underlying graphics engine, but an engine with a browser on it, said the executives. Gecko is the true star of this development effort, the browser is simply one application built on that engine.

The company secured a number of prominent licensees, including IBM, Intel, Liberate, NetObjects, Nokia, and Sun Microsystems, who plan to use the Gecko engine.

The company would not say when or if it would use Gecko in America Online's client software, which currently uses Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine, but they did joke that Microsoft was welcome to license Gecko for its browser.

AOL representatives likewise were silent on Microsoft's legal woes, despite repeated questions from the crowd.

Among the new features in Netscape 6.0 is MySidebar, a browser-within-a-browser that keeps open one window, such as a newswire or a stock ticker, while you surf in the main window. MySidebar is customizable to add user-defined content. CNN, EBay, and The New York Times are among the early supporters of the sidebar feature.

The browser is also integrated with AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM). You can automatically log in when you start Netscape 6.0, and if an AIM user emails you, you can respond via the email client or send an instant message if they are online.

For the growing international market, Netscape 6.0 has a built-in translation engine, so if a user visits a Web site in a foreign language, the browser can translate from that language to the user's language of choice.

Netscape did not set a formal release date for the final version of Netscape 6.0.


Low budget travel for independent women --- http://www.adventuredivas.com/ 


American Indian History  --- http://www.csulb.edu/projects/ais/index.html#north 


Itching for your e-mail when stuck in traffic? Longing to access the Web during long drives? General Motors will soon have the car for you. http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt0004063/2522693/ 


Ocean images and science --- http://www.divediscover.whoi.edu/ 


There was quite a lot of discussion about this website on TigerTalk --- http://www.maguireassoc.com/ 

Colleges and universities today must adapt to a rapidly evolving marketplace. Students are insisting that schools address current employment needs and want assurance of an excellent return on their investment. Many students now seek part-time education or want to take advantage of on-line courses and other non-traditional options. Rising costs, a decline in public funding, and changing student demographics have led to dramatic changes in pricing and financial aid. In addition, more intense competition for students and sources of funding compels schools to market themselves to a wider community, including alumni, parents, business, and government.

Many higher education institutions must respond to current pressures with greater awareness of competition, expanded outreach efforts, strategic use of financial aid, and more rapid reaction to the demands of the market, while preserving their mission and heritage.

Maguire Associates utilizes a variety of services (enrollment management audits, market research, focus group testing, and analysis of institutional pricing and financial aid with the Enrollment Management Forecast Analysis System) to help clients understand current trends in education, assess their own strengths and weaknesses, and formulate the steps needed to solve problems and remain successful, vibrant institutions.


From the University of Waterloo
Career Development Manual --- http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infocecs/CRC/manual-home.html 


Although springtime is over in Texas, it's the glorious time of year for Yankees to dig in the dirt.  Three gardening sites mentioned in Newsweek, April 3, 2000, pg. 16 are as follows:


The art of Cartier --- http://www.harryfane.com/ 


Put your own photos online --- http://photos.yahoo.com/ 


Find old high school classmates:

    http://www.classmates.com/index.tf?s=2089 

    http://www.highschoolalumni.com/ 


History of the English Language http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/hel/hel.html 


Math for fun and learning --- http://www.math.com/ 


Now you can make your rage public --- http://www.tellthemnow.com/ 

Got a beef? High praise? How about a good idea? Now you can tell politicians, Big Business, media and your favorite celebrities as well as countless others in the news what's on your mind. They're just a click away. 

Give your opinions the power they deserve. TellThemNow. Simply enter their name in the space above and hit "go."


CIA Director's Statement: "The Worldwide Threat in 2000: Global Realities of Our National Security" http://www.odci.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/dci_speech_032100.html 


Lympne Wild Animal Park (webcams pointed at wildlife) --- http://www.howletts.net/ 


A Trinity faculty member wrote the following:

Bob,

fyi: I belong to Cititravel, a club that is open to any Citibank card member. For $60 per year, they will give me a 5% kickback on all lodging, air, train, rental cars, that I book through them -- with no $10 surcharge per ticket. For my family, its a great value. If one is not a Citibank member, many other organizations use the same service, sometimes called "Traveller's Advantage."

The Citibank website is at http://www.citibank.com/ 


Canadian Poetry Archive http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/canvers/ehome.htm 


OneDemocracy  --- http://www.onedemocracy.com/ 


Thanks to  Ed Scribner for this link:
Aging of Accounts Receivable and Payable at http://www.onlinewbc.org/docs/finance/arage.html 

If a company gives 30 day period terms, it should collect a receivable in 30 days. Anyone can sell; not everyone, however, can collect. One method of measuring the quality of receivables is to compare the actual collection period to the stated payment terms. The average actual collection period is known as Days Receivable.


The Laughing Place for hard core Disney buffs --- http://laughingplace.com/ 


From Yahoo

Tom Mangan's Seven Questions --- http://www.sevenquestions.com/ 

Tom Mangan is a seasoned and playful web writer: Newsies, his celebration of journalists with home pages, thrived from 1996 till its retirement in April 1999. Now, Mangan, a recent immigrant to Silicon Valley from the Midwest, has gifted us with articulate, seven-question interviews of intelligent, unfamous people pursuing their lives, work, and interests. Interviewees include artists, authors, humorists, journalists, techies, teens, and web loggers. Individual responses are indexed by subject as well as respondent, so that readers can enjoy topical entries on marriage, memory, hybrid cars, coping with kids, raising llamas, and more.


From Yahoo

Images for Reflection --- http://www.imagesforreflection.com/ 

"If all this suffering does not help us to broaden our horizon, to attain a greater humanity ... then it will have been for nothing." Thus reads the introduction to Scott L. Sakansky's photo tour of Europe's World War II concentration camps, a dark travelogue that goes from Auchswitz and Buchenwald to Warsaw and on to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial. Wisely, the photographer lets these images speak for themselves -- a testimony and moment of remembrance.


Biotech News --- http://www.eugenesis.com 


Bob,
Below is an amended description of the March-April issue of On the Horizon, which is available in the online version at http://horizon.unc.edu/horizon/online/html/8/2/ 

You may have received an earlier announcement that had the wrong URL for this issue and a subscription form that did not work. I apologize for the confusion, which I caused by using a Web editor to amend our subscription announcement to reflect that OTH Online will be available for a free trial only until April 20, at which time it will migrate to Camford Publishing ( http://www.camfordpublishing.com/  ), who has purchased OTH effective that date. The Web editor introduced junk html that mucked up the script for the subscription form.

If you don't have a subscription, you now have access on a trial basis to OTH Online until April 20 by going to the URL above. Please let me know if you have any difficulty.

Jim

-- James L. Morrison morrison@unc.edu  
Professor of Educational Leadership CB 3500 Peabody Hall Editor, The Technology 
Source UNC-Chapel Hill http://horizon.unc.edu/ts  Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3500 Editor, On the Horizon Phone: 919 962-2517 http://horizon.unc.edu/horizon  Fax: 919 962-1693

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

IN THIS ISSUE

Trends Transforming the Universities of this Century--Virtualize, Disappear, or Transform

Sohail Inayatullah, Tamkang Professorial Research Fellow, Visiting Academic, Queensland University of Technology

Jennifer Gidley, Educational Psychologist and Lecturer, Southern Cross University

Sohail Inayatullah and Jennifer Gidley explore the future of universities worldwide, evaluating the effects of such factors as globalization, virtualization, and multiculturalism. While they do not advocate retention of the age-old traditional university environment, Inayatulla and Gidley argue that the growing influence of for-profit and virtual universities is cause for concern as we reexamine the roles of academics and other intellectuals in society. They warn, "As the human side of face-to-face collegiate collaboration and student-teacher contact diminishes behind the screen, the disillusionment already felt by many young people is unlikely to improve."

The Emerging Knowledge Management Approach and Educational Organizations

Eric C. Adams, Technology Coordinator, Diocese of Monterey

Eric Adams assesses the state of knowledge management in our ever-changing digital age. He categorizes knowledge into four components-accessing, generating, embedding, and transferring-to explain the way in which the face of education is transforming, exceeding the bounds of the traditional classroom and permeating society at every level. Ultimately, Adams concludes, "Just as corporations need to redesign themselves as learning organizations, education needs to do a better job of integrating technology."

FROM THE EDITOR

Transitions

James L. Morrison, Program in Educational Leadership, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Founder and editor James Morrison describes the origins and development of On the Horizon in the last issue to be published by Jossey-Bass. He welcomes the transition to a new publisher and a new editor, and joins us in wishing both success.

TRENDS AND EVENTS: SOCIAL

Expectations and Reality: Delivering Financial Assistance to Distance Learners

Craig Karlin, Director of Financial Assistance, Fort Hays State University

For those seeking quick solutions to the problems that accompany university policies on financial aid for distance learners, Craig Karlin has a little advice-Be patient. As Karlin explains, financial aid offices are simply unable to accommodate the public's overwhelming response to distance learning courses and its subsequent call for financial support for those courses. And as is to be expected, governmental laws and regulations governing financial aid use are revised slowly. But according to Karlin, this evolutionary process should be a welcome transition for all involved, allowing learners everywhere to be "big winners."

COMMENTARY

Education at the Trans-Millennium

David Snyder, Consulting Futurist

America's public school system is in crisis. David Snyder argues that national efforts to improve the state of public education, including the current wave of state-mandated tests for students and teachers, are largely ineffective, and that the long-term failure of public schools to adopt proven, rigorous reforms in teaching styles and tools has now left public education vulnerable to the blandishments of privatization. With the return of national prosperity, the maturation of information technology, and the ongoing short-fall of competent recruits in the labor-pool, the long term stalemate in school reform is about to come to an end. Snyder concludes, "If there were such a thing as an ideal moment for a major public institution to re-invent itself, now would be that moment for education in America."


The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 37 April 7, 2000 http://www.accountingweb.com 

1. E&Y Partners Overwhelmingly Support Merger 
2. FASB Issues Guidance For Stock Compensation 
3. Accountants Still Ranked As Most Trusted Professional 
4. IRS Highlights Top Errors So Far 
5. Busy Season Stress Busters 
6. Consumer Internet Privacy Consortium Formed 
7. Pssst! Attn Marketers: Not-For-Profit Information Bonanza! 
8. The Secrets Of Successful Faxing 
9. You're a Winner! And Your Tax Burden Just Increased By . . . 
10. Internet Tip: Privacy Software Puts Internet Security Back in Your Hands

Tax Links for the U.K. -- http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=13447&d=182 


AccountingStudents Newsletter: April 4, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. CPA Exam Tips Package 
2. Are Informational Interviews Really Valuable? 
3. Win a CMA CD-ROM Review Course 
4. The Changing Face of Accounting 
5. Site of the Week: Colleges.com 
6. Tip of the Week: How to Get Career Options Information from Your Professors


Pro2Net Accounting Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of April 10, 2000 

1. This Week's Accounting-Specific Headlines 
2. Feature Articles 
3. This Week's Hot Talk: Debra R. Hopkins, CPA 
4. Gain Exposure. Get Published. 
5. Survey Results: Which mid-range accounting software product would you recommend? 
6. Our Tip of the Week: Mergers and Acquisitions Plans


The April 9th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. XBRL.. Finance's eXtensible Standard For Financial Information.. (Note: Name change from XFRML) 
2. Harvard Business School Publishing's Web Site List 
3. BeyondComputing's 12 Ways to Become Tech-Savvy 
4. NetB2B Names Top 200 B2B Web Sites for 1999 
5. Ernst & Young Team with Personify for e-Business 
6. 10 Tricks to Keeping Your Cash Flow Healthy 
7. Best of Show Awards From Spring Internet World


 


Whoopi!  Some of her jokes are really funny, but most are in bad taste and definitely not politically correct --- Whoopi.com - (official web site). http://www.whoopi.com/  (this website also has some boring and repetitive audio controlled by what must be some pretty sophisticated Java).



Debbie's Corner

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
           - Mark Twain


Greek rhetorician and teacher, 436 - 338 BC 

Among the great orators, teachers, and philosophers of Greece during the fourth century BC, Isocrates stood out as a primary figure. For nearly fifty years he was the most influential and respected teacher of young men in Athens. A passionate believer in the importance of ethics and practical intelligence, Isocrates established high standards of excellence for his pupils, including tough entrance requirements. His views on education strongly influenced the course of Greek political and social history. In contrast to the general beliefs of the time, Isocrates felt that there were no set rules that could be applied to rhetoric (the art of using language effectively). He felt that the three most important factors in rhetorical success were innate ability, practice, and education.

More about Isocrates: --- http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/gallery/rhetoric/figures/isocrates.html


If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.

ACCOUNTING TECHNOLOGY
ACCT 3533

http://www.uark.edu/depts/acctinfo/course/3533/3533.html

 

Instructor: Dr. Lizabeth Austen, CPA, CMA

Exam Information

The examinations cover lecture materials, readings, classroom discussions, and major concepts embodied in the projects. The midterm examinations are administered in our assigned classroom at our regular meeting time. The cummulative final examination is administered according to university policy. The exams contains both problem and objective type (e.g., multiple choice) questions.

 

Peachtree instructions

Instruction Sheet
The Waren Distributing Company


Accounting Information Systems  AC389

Culverhouse School of Accountancy
University of Alabama

Instructor First Name: Robert Ingram

http://cbasss3.cba.ua.edu/accweb/ringram/ais2.htm

Projects

Project Responsibilities

These responsibilities apply to all projects assigned in this course. Each team will have a project manager, assigned by the instructor, for each project. Teams will consist of up to four members including the manager.

Responsibilities of Project Manager

 


Colleges

Asbury College

The program in business management/ accounting at Asbury College provides an opportunity to study the principles of effective business management from the standpoint of the Christian world view. The philosophy of Christian liberal arts education with its breadth of perspective and biblical view of truth is reflected in a distinctly Christian approach to the study of business management. The program makes the biblical principle of stewardship and Christian standards of ethics an integral part of the acquisition of technical knowledge and of the pursuit of excellence in professional skills.

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS:

BM 361 (3) Management Information Systems (same as ACC 361)
Theory and design of information systems from a managerial perspective. This course provides an understanding of the role of information technology in business and how it can be used for competitive advantage. Topics include information technology (data base, networks, etc.), developing applications and managing with information (e.g. decision support systems and expert systems). Prerequisite: ACC 202, BM 251, BM 311.

Cool Link:
- Wilmore, KY's Web Site



And that's the way it was on April 11, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.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

 

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
 

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April 4, 2000


Quotes of the Week:  

Enter to grow in wisdom
Depart to serve better thy country and mankind.

Inscriptions on the 1890 gate to the Harvard Yard
Attributed to Charles William Elliot

     Carrier of news and knowledge, instrument of trade and commerce, promoter of mutual acquaintance among men and nations and hence of peace and goodwill.
     Carrier of love and sympathy, messenger of friendship, consoler of the lonely, servant of the scattered family, enlarger of the public life.

Inscriptions for the East and West Pavilions, U.S. Post Office, Washington D.C.
Attributed to Charles William Elliot

So far as it goes, a small thing may give analogy to great things, and show the tracks of knowledge.
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus, 99-55 B.C.)
Are these "tracks" precursors to web "links?"

Truths kindle light for truths.
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus, 99-55 B.C.)

The reward of labor is life.
Ernst Heinrich Haeckel

Hope is a good thing
And a good thing never dies

From an excellent movie called The Shawshank Redemption
I didn't know, until I searched for how to spell the name of this movie, that you can download the entire screen play from http://welcome.to/shawshank.  The movie is based upon a Stephen King short story and has a lot to say about playing out the hand that life deals you with dignity, independence, humor, cunning, pride, and courage.  It concerns turning dreams into reality with great struggle, pain, and patience.

Providing a student with a chapel, a theatre, a concert hall, a playing field, a dormitory, and a geology professor named Glenn Kroeger can all be described as a "service" in a broad sense.  Students are our "clients" in a very broad sense.  But neither our "service" nor our "clients" constitute very good business in an accounting sense, because more than 83% of the value of our service to clients is intangible and subject to circumstances outside our control.  Serendipity rules supreme in a Type 2 education.   There's no accounting for serendipity.  What we do best is to create an environment where serendipity has more opportunity.  Perhaps this is one of the main distinctions between training and education.  In this context, curriculum design should never become too structured as a tangible asset.
(see my reply to Dr. Spinks and Dr. Meyer below).


I am back from my wonderful week at the University of Munich.  Dr. Wolfgang Ballwieser and his excellent teams of helpers made this one of the best European Accounting Association meetings ever.  The program ran with German precision and exceptional hospitality.  The four social evenings were "Vundebar!!"  The first evening was a dinner in Munich's Old Town Hall with the Mayor of Munich.  The second night was a Governmental Reception in the residence of the Bavarian Prime Minister.  There was a special concert for us on the third evening.  And to end our meetings, there was the final evening's Bavarian Evening in the Lowenbrau brewery --- what a night (at least the parts I can remember)!

The program, like all programs, was mixed in terms of topics and quality --- of course my papers were flawless.  I wish that greater stress had been placed on the future of business reporting given the emerging technologies of the 21st Century, notably Internet reporting in real time (e.g., Cisco) and disaggregated networked database reporting (e.g., see http://www.iasc.org.uk/frame/cen3_26.htm.)  Also more attention should have been given to the vital future of XFRML and RDF in financial reporting (see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm.)

Some highlights of my recollections are as follows:

Neither time nor space is available for a detailed account of the research presentations at the Munich EAA meetings.  I do have many hours of video that I captured.  In the future, I will share some of the highlights with you.


One of my favorite PBS shows that I automatically record each week is called Computer Chronicles.  On April 2, 2000 the show featured Online Investing.  It was a good show that provided the following links:

DLJDirect.com
Bob Flowers of DLJDirect.com  explains how to sign up to trade online and how to make a trade. Dob also demonstrates the free MarketSpeed software you get with DLJ. He shows off the real-time market data you get, how you can set up a streaming ticker for any selection of stocks, funds or bonds and how you can monitor your portfolio’s overall standing in real time.

Quicken
Theresa McGuinness, product manager of Quicken2000 shows us how you can import new information on your stocks and bonds into your personal finance software. She demonstrates how you can use the in-built connections between Quicken and Quicken.com to update your overall financial profile, alert you to changes in, or news about, your investments, and keep track of how you are meeting your investment goals.

MSN Money Central
Jon Markman, Pulitzer Prize winner and managing editor at MSN’s Money Central shows us some essential (and mostly free) places you can go online to get professional quality financial information. He takes us to Yahoo Finance, MSN Investor, ClearStation.com, FreeEdgar.com and Briefing.com. He also gives us some tips on pitfalls to avoid (like trusting what people say in online finance chatrooms).

WindowOnWallStreet.com
Mitch Ackles shows us WindowOnWallStreet.com, a news, charts and quotes site for the high-end trader. WindowOnWallStreet used to be a software product but has been turned into a web-only monthly fee service. The best thing it offers is access to what’s called Nasdaq Level II. That means you get huge amount of live market info about the most popular market for heavy investors. You also get real time, interlinked charts, news and quotes and an almost infinite number of ways of customizing them to work best for you.

More on Online Investing:
Money Central Investor
Net Cafe: Personl Investing Online
StockMaster.com
The Motley Fool
MONEY.COM
Market Player

The main Computer Chronicles website is at http://www.cmptv.com/computerchronicles/ 


Education Intangibles:  
Will accountants "rule the world" of the future of educational institutions?

I was challenged by the recent TigerTalk exchanges on the emerging dominance of economics and accounting in higher education.  Although I still have hundreds of unopened email messages, I did encounter messages from Dr. Spinks (English) and Dr. Meyer (Director of Trinity University's Library)

Unfortunately, I agree that accountants should never "rule the world."  Actually business firms and educational institutions have much more in common than non-accountants tend to realize.  The race of Ivy League institutions to capitalize on their logos by partnering with corporations like UNext and Pensare is only the tip of the iceberg in this age of technology.  But the value of their logos and other assets cannot be realistically accounted for due to the many intangibles that defy accounting. 

If you aggregate all the prices of all the shares of companies traded in the world markets, the tangible assets that accountants account for on balance sheets tally up to only 17% of business "value."  The other 83% is comprised of intangible assets (largely a business firm's human resources, intellectual capital, organizational synergy, name recognition, goodwill, leadership, and R&D) that we do a miserable job of accounting for in business firms. In not-for-profit organizations, and especially educational institutions, accountants perform  even worse, because the proportion of intangible assets is even higher in those institutions.  Anyone interested in problems of accounting for intangibles should take a look at http://www.fastcompany.com/online/31/lev.html 

The problem with curriculum design is that it tries to turn intangibles into tangibles.   For instance, the term "Western Culture" is intangible and ambiguous. Adding specific courses with specific content to the "Western Culture Curriculum" is in some sense an attempt to "account for" what qualifies as tangible learning of an intangible topic.  In spite of our efforts to declare these "tangible" curriculum requirements, intangibles in the curriculum and other areas of living and learning dominate as much or more as intangibles dominate in business firm valuation.  In this context, curriculum design is a form of accounting for intangibles that becomes more and more hopeless as we attempt to turn intangibles into tangibles.

I think we give Trinity University students the full measure of what they bargained for even if they don't realize all they bargained for when they first appear on campus. The curriculum is only a part, albeit vital part, of living and learning while they are here. It is generally the most stressful aspect of college life, because satisfying the curriculum is where students discover that there is so much to be learned, and so little time in which to learn, from faculty with integrity and standards for demonstrating that learning takes place at equal or higher levels relative to our own peer competitors. To do anything less would be the real "bait and switch," because if the curriculum becomes too easy or irrelevant in changing times, then respect for a Trinity degree plunges.

The point here is that if you base predictions on 17% or less of the "total" data, then you hardly stand on sound footing for making predictions. One of the main problems accountants have in dealing with intangibles is that, relative to tangible assets, intangible assets are very fragile. Today you have them, but tomorrow they may disappear without even being stolen in a legal sense. For example, I suspect that Bill Gates is far less concerned about the anti-trust lawsuit than he is about emerging signs of inability of Microsoft's "intangibles" to prosper in a networked world of e-Commerce, ubiquitous computing, and wireless technologies.  Virtually all universities have been shocked by the paradigm shift in distance learning and are now worried about whether their "intangibles" can prosper in the new "McLearn" paradigm.

Having said this, I think that there will be two types of higher education institutions in the future.  Type 1 will be run like a business whether it is a corporation or a traditional university with web training and education programs.  This is what I will call a McLearn online university.  Type 2 is a traditional onsite university brimming with more intangibles.

McLearn online universities (or traditional universities operating like businesses) will provide certificate and degree programs from anywhere in the world. They will be very efficient and reasonably effective for topical coverage. The world will flock to them just as the world flocks to fast food restaurants for convenience, price, efficiency, and sometimes a craving for the food itself (e.g. a taco salad or a milk shake) that just seems right for the time. They may also have nutritious items on the menu. See Maitre d'Igital's cafe at http://www.technos.net/.  In the same context, McLearn's online knowledge bases will proliferate and become spectacular due to the billions of dollars that will be available for building such knowledge bases.

Business is not an evil thing per se.  Outstanding research takes place in the private sector as well as the public sector. Outstanding performances (music, theatre, film, etc.) take place in the private sector as well as the public sector. Even though we view Hollywood as blatantly commercial, some of our finest works of art have appeared in commercial films. The power of films and television to impact upon culture is both magnificent and scary.  On the magnificent side, do you think there ever has been anything more powerful than Hollywood in fighting bigotry in the hearts and minds of succeeding generations following the Civil War?  The same will be said, ultimately, for global and life-long learning in McLearn online universities.  In fact, for certain types of learning there is little doubt that corporations can and are doing a better job than the public sector (e.g., the success of Motorola University in delivering technical engineering training and education to the Far East.  See http://mu.motorola.com/.)

Be that as it may, McLearn online universities will have a difficult time putting together a cost-effective total education menu that competes with Type 2 onsite universities like Trinity University. This is largely due to intangibles that lie outside the grasp of McLearn online curriculum.  It happens that some of our best Type 2 onsite students are also varsity athletes, musicians, actors, etc. Athletic competition and artistic performances are part and parcel to living and learning for many students.  McLearn universities may have online debates and chess competitions, but these will never take the place of the roar of the fans, slapping your buddy on the butt with a wet towel, getting chewed out by a tempered coach, having your boyfriend or girlfriend in the audience even if you only have a bit part in a performance, etc.  McLearn online university will probably never find a way of making a bottom-line profit on building and running a chapel, having faculty that students consider friends as well as teachers, and having students learn about what real life is all about with loves gained and lost, living in rumor mills, enduring insults, helping someone who has lost the way, and learning to deal with greater diversities in life styles, and cultures.

Accountants will not rule the world at large. And curriculum designers will not rule the university at large. We are only bit players in immense productions in Type 2 onsite universities.  And we may need some of those cursed marketing metaphors that indicate how living and learning universities differ from learning universities.  Providing a student with a chapel, a theatre, a concert hall, a playing field, a dormitory, and a geology professor named Glenn Kroeger can all be described as a "service" in a broad sense.  Students are our "clients" in a very broad sense.  But neither our "service" nor our "clients" constitute very good business in an accounting sense, because more than 83% of the value of our service to clients is intangible and subject to circumstances outside our control.  Serendipity rules supreme in a Type 2 onsite education.   There's no accounting for serendipity.  What we do best is to create an environment where serendipity has more opportunity.  Perhaps this is one of the main distinctions between training and education.  In this context, curriculum design is necessary to a point but should never become too structured or too specific as a "tangible" asset in either the online or the onsite universities.

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

-----Original Message----- From: c. w. spinks [mailto:cspinks@Trinity.edu]  
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2000 12:44 PM 
To: rmeyer@Trinity.edu; tigertalk@Trinity.edu Subject: 
RE: Windmill #3: Blade 3 (marketing metaphors)

Nah, Rich, I'm not caught . If a University is an economic enterprise like a corporation, then it may be true, but that was my whole point, the university ain't that kinda beast.

Beside economic theorists don't really have a outstanding track record on predictions, definitions, or stipulations. What else would you expect of folk who have expropriated an energy quotient into economic theory? Efficiency (other than in a physical sense as an energy quotient) is still metaphoric and as hard to define as "service" and equally in need of clarification of its hidden assumptions.

If accountants rule the world, I am sure "bottom-line" is a primary value, and if these economic theorists (not all are efficiency readers), then I am sure efficiency is the primary value, but neither set of rules is privileged to the point of disallowing discussion of the consequences of the rules.

I surely will be caught in one of these verbal spins as my own gaminess collapses, but I don't think so yet.

bill

-----Original Message----- 
From: owner-tigertalk@Trinity.Edu [mailto:owner-tigertalk@Trinity.Edu
On Behalf Of Richard Meyer 
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2000 12:03 PM 
To: tigertalk@TRINITY.EDU  Subject: RE: Windmill #3: Blade 3 (marketing metaphors)

-- snip--

Alas, Bill, you may be stuck. Economic theory predicts that institutions that emerge do so as the result of their provision of greater efficiency. The consumer metaphor may be the most efficient one to communicate the concept of a university. -- Rich


Dr. Noble makes some good points but has he really done his homework?
"David Noble's Battle to Defend the 'Sacred Space' of the Classroom" by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 31, 2000, p. A47 http://chronicle.com/free/v46/i30/30a00101.htm  

David F. Noble says distance education is fool's gold, and he's eager to point out who the fools are. In speeches, essays, and countless sound bites, the professor argues that the primary motive behind the craze for online education is profit rather than pedagogy, and that the glimmer of dot-com riches is tempting some administrators to put the core values of their institutions at risk.

More of a good thing is not necessarily better.
"Psych Students Learn More Through Distance Ed But Are Less Satisfied" by Sarah Carr, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 14, 2000, p. A48 http://chronicle.com/free/2000/02/2000021401u.htm  

Undergraduates enrolled in introductory psychology perform better in distance-education courses, but are generally less happy with them, according to a study by Ruth S. and William S. Maki, two psychology professors at Texas Tech University.


But whether due to profit motives, cost efficiencies, outreaching to the masses, or better learning, online synchronous and asynchronous courses and programs education will be pervasive in training and education.  For 1997-98 facts and commentaries, download the following report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2000013 

Title:     Distance Education at Postsecondary Education Institutions: 1997-98
Abstract:     The purpose of this report is to provide national data on distance education in postsecondary institutions, based on data from a survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) using the Postsecondary Quick Information System (PEQIS). This report, using data collected from 2-year and 4-year postsecondary institutions in the 1997-98 academic year, provides estimates of the number of institutions offering distance education courses, the number of distance education course offerings and enrollments (by field of study and instructional level), and the number of degree and certification programs offered. It also looks at the types of technologies used to deliver education over a distance and at how tuition and fees for distance education compare with those for on-campus courses. More importantly, this report uses data from a previously released NCES report, Distance Education in Higher Education Institutions, to provide much-anticipated trend information for higher education institutions (a subset of all postsecondary institutions). The trend information includes changes from 1994-95 to 1997-98 in the percentage of institutions offering distance education courses, enrollments and course offerings, degree and certification programs, as well as modes of delivery.

Other reports are available at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/getpubList.asp?L1=136&L2=0 


"Balance Between Classroom And E-Learning Is Vital To Success," By Elliott Masie --- 
http://www.crn.com/search/display.asp?ArticleID=13289  

The Masie Center recently conducted a focus group of corporate training buyers and discovered these elements on their wish list for buying IT education:

The ability to buy the same course, with the same curriculum, examples and learning activities, in multiple delivery methods, including computer-based training, Web-based delivery and classroom instruction.

The desire to add access to tutors, coaches and subject matter experts to electronically delivered offerings.

A link between print-based reading and e-learning. There are still thousands of computer books that are the primary delivery system for learning about new systems.

The blending of structured online classes with performance support tools and services, ranging from databases of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to pop-up intelligent aids (such as the spell checker on a word processor).

The use of a "digital surround" bracketing a classroom event. The class can begin with an e-learning pre-event, use a Web site to support the class during the core period, and have a follow-up e-learning component. This allows a shorter class and yet extends its impact.

The blend of live synchronous events, using a Web broadcast model, will allow a learner to select the instancy of their training experience. The marketplace is creating these new blends with vigor. Smartforce has added a strong "community" aspect to their offerings, providing tutors and peer dialogues. DigitalThink is offering a set of online teachers to support the progress of their students. Portal sites like clicktolearn.com are broadening the blend of programs offered to the IT learner, aggregating multiple content strands from diverse publishers.

Finding the magic in the mix will not be easy for the learner or the marketplace. We will have to invent new pricing models, often shifting from the quantity of delivery to the value of the learning. For example, I would pay more for a shorter class, as it would save me time away from work. We will also have to recalibrate our expectations about learning and training. At first, it is strange to have a tutor in an "air traffic control" role, checking to see if we are making progress on an e-learning class. But, as we accept the richness of support, the tutor-learning model becomes a rich format for tackling new IT content. The magic in the mix will be a combination that helps busy IT professionals gain skills, stay hirable and be kept up to date with the crazy technical world we inhabit.


This interview may scare the publishing corporations --- http://www.technos.net/journal/volume8/4rawlins.htm 

Gregory Rawlins is a computer science professor at Indiana University. In 1990, he caused a stir with his writings about the future of publishing — which, with the subsequent development of the World Wide Web, is now upon us. Electronic publishing has changed the industry, and Professor Rawlins saw it coming. Today he works with his students on another futuristic project, dubbed KnownSpace, the goal of which is powerful computing for everyone without corporate control. Dr. Rawlins’ most recent books are: Moths to the Flame: The Seductions of Computer Technology (The MIT Press, 1996) and Slaves of the Machine: The Quickening of Computer Technology (The MIT Press, 1997), In his books, he writes of sentient machines by the Year 2050.  It is a world that can be frightening or fascinating, but his main message is that humans are the ones possessing choice and, ultimately, power — what will we decide to do?


What is the main advantage of an email chat room versus a video or audio conference or class?

Hi Dan,

One point that you might note in your document is that a major advantage of text in chat rooms is that the messages are easier to thread. If chat rooms are only in audio or video, you may be able to record the entire sessions, but then try threading pieces of the sessions. You almost have to transcribe the audio into text so you can thread those pieces.

I have never had much respect for many consultants.  They are often good at video and animations, but they really do not follow the literature of the educators out on the line such as Robert Ricketts, Peter Kenyon, Sharon Lightner, Amy Dunbar, and those other "daring professors".  See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ideasmes.htm.

In terms of academic sales of CD-ROMs or online materials, remember that certain types of content are more important than audio or video. The content that most professors want most is a set of problems and answers that make them look good with a minimum of preparation time. My advice is to invest heavily into problems, cases, and illustrations.

Bob Jensen


A free journal entitled Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration has such articles as those listed below:

"Why Do Educators Embrace High-Cost Technologies?" by Anna C. McFadden, George E. Marsh II, and Barrie Jo Price, University of Alabama

"Incentives and Obstacles Influencing Higher Education Faculty and Administrators to Teach Via Distance" by S. Kay Rockwell, Susan M. Fritz, et al., University of Nebraska

"Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Chat Rooms -- Are We Giving in Too Much to Technology?" by Nancy Griffin Mims, State University of West Georgia

"Cognitive Styles and Distance Education" by Yuliang Liu and Dean Ginther, Texas A & M University-Commerce

The web site is at http://www.westga.edu/~distance/jmain11.html 


A free journal entitled  TechKnowLogia:  International Journal of Technologies for the Advancement of Knowledge and Learning --- http://www.techknowlogia.org/ 

You are encouraged to download the entire PDF version of the Journal for your personal use. You may read it online, or print it, staple it and read it anywhere, anytime.

This is a very good journal on such topics as widely distributed education in rural parts of the world and library resources for the masses.  One example article is shown below:

The Full Story: Full-Text Publications on the Web Gregg B. Jackson, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Coordinator, George Washington University

The Internet is now the largest library in the history of the world. This article steers you to Internet sources that provide the full text of books, reports, journals, and newsletters.


Business educators should not forget the free journal entitled Academy Online from University Access --- http://www.academyonline.com/ 

Note the Heriot-Watt link dealing with accreditation --- http://www.academyonline.com/at_issue/index.htm 

Heriot-Watt dates back to 1821 when it was founded as an engineering school. The school has held a Royal Charter (the equivalent of U.S. accreditation) for more than thirty years. The Edinburgh Business School within Heriot-Watt awards the distance-learning MBA degree. Most of the business schools in the United Kingdom rely on their Royal Charter plus additional accreditation from the Association of Masters of Business Administration (AMBA), whose members are MBA graduates, or from the Association of Business Schools (ABS), an organization whose membership consists of one hundred major providers of business and management education in the United Kingdom. There are no official reciprocity agreements between the United Kingdom's ABS or AMBA and the United States' International Association of Management Education (the U.S. organization continues to use the acronym AACSB, derived from its original name, the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business). Recognition is negotiated between the schools involved on a school-by-school basis. Only one school in the United Kingdom (Warwick University) has applied for and received accreditation from the United States' business school accrediting body, the AACSB. Heriot-Watt holds a Royal Charter, the recognized accreditation standard in the United Kingdom. It seems reasonable to conclude that graduates of colleges and universities accredited in the United Kingdom would have little difficulty gaining admission to United States institutions or, perhaps more important, finding employment in positions that require a college degree.

The Editor of Academy Online is Chuck Hickman.  This former AACSB executive who is now the Academic Vice-President of University Access will be presenting a workshop in the afternoon of April 27 --- http://www.ohioima.org/workshop.html 


Richard Fern sent the following help message to some of my students working on accounting for in-process R&D.  Thank you Richard.

Bob: 
I just recently wrote a case study that indirectly hit on this topic. Here are some of the references that I used. These are rather general in nature, but may be a good starting point for your students. Perhaps the Journal of Accountancy checklist is the closest to what they are looking for. Hope this helps some. Richard Fern

"FASB Weight Killing Merger Write-Off" Wall Street Journal (WSJ) 2/23/99, page. A2

"Amount of Certain Corporate Write-Offs Falls 24% After SEC Battle on Abuses" WSJ 9/13/99, page A4.

"FASB Delays Killing Merger Write-Off" WSJ 7/29/99, page A3.

"Letter From the Office of the Chief Accountant Regarding the 1998-1999 Audit Risk Alert" www.sec.gov/offices/account/aclr1009.htm.

"SEC Scrutiny of In Process Research and Development" CPA Journal, 1/11/99 (www.nysscpa.org).

"Acquisitions of In Process R & D" (a reasonableness checklist) Journal of Accountancy, 2/99, page 8.

"High-Tech Firms Upset over SEC Crackdown" WSJ 2/1/99, page B4.

Richard Fern [accfern@ACS.EKU.EDU


Bartleby.com (Art, Literature, Encyclopedia, Poetry) --- http://www.bartleby.com/ 
Great Books Online


A tribute to my New Zealand friend Pete Mazany
This is the way networked interactive simulations for learning should be written --- http://www.smartsims.com/ 

You can read about Pete at http://www.business.auckland.ac.nz/departments/msis/staff/p.mazany/ 
This is one neat and "daring" professor who is willing to invest his own funds in a dream!  Remember from the quote above Pete:  "Hope is a good thing!"  I hope your hope never dies!


I sent out the following message to students in my International Accounting Theories course at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/index.htm 

One of the most important among all the assigned readings in ACCT 5341 is the document written by Alan M. Webber at J:\courses\Acct5341\readings\intanlev.htm 

The online version is at http://www.fastcompany.com/online/31/lev.html 

My rating of it as one of our most important assignments does not mean the above article does not contain errors and limitations.  It was written by a financial analyst who appears to have some limitations in accounting and accounting history.  For example, Luca Pacioli did not invent the double entry system --- that existed for centuries before Pacioli was born.  Pacioli was supposedly the first to describe the process algebraically in what is sometimes described as the first book on algebra as well as accounting.  The book is called Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita.  Interestingly, Summa has the root "sum."   That root has grown to become the main problem with accounting in the modern world.  We still want to "sum" the numbers in the financial statements even if they depict ghosts of the past that are measured in different scales and measured with different degrees of accuracy.  We refrain from accounting for ghosts of the future, however, because we can't figure out how to take them into the summation.

There are many web references to Pacioli.  For example, a particularly good historical reference is at http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Pacioli.html

It is most interesting to speculate what Pacioli would have written if 15th Century Italian merchants had as many intangibles as 21st Century business firms.  We are so caught up in a whirling blizzard of forward looking web documents (like the document of Alan Webber cited above), that it is easy to forget to teach the historical roots assigned years ago, by our own teachers,  when we are assigning work to our own students.  

Alan Webber's document is better at identifying the problems than in proposing solutions to those enigmas.  For example, I have problems with consensus forecast reporting, because this solution causes a chicken versus egg problem.  If we need forecasts before we report, on what basis do we base the forecasts?  Also forecast reports may tend to be self-fulfilling.  For example, a company that gets a really bad forecast may not be able to dig itself out of the whole in large measure due to the bad forecast that buried it deeper in the hole.  

You will notice that I gave up web counters years ago.  These have absolutely no reliability other than to the person who controls the website.  Professors can artificially inflate website visits by forcing each student to go to a website ten times per day.  Firms can force web visits up by hundreds of questionable ploys.  Therefore, judging patent value or other types of "knowledge value" by the number of website visits does not impress me as much as it does Mr. Webber (in the above article).


From FEI Express --- March 30, 2000
Thank you Phil Livingston

FASB AMENDS FAS 133 FEI leader Mitch Danaher is often an unnamed contributor to FEI Express. Mitch is assistant controller at GE, active in CCR and IMA's accounting committee. Really can't thank him enough for his great work! Recently he was kind enough to write a summary of the four key changes to FAS 133. Here's a link to that summary: http://www.fei.org/download/FAS_133_Amendments.doc, covering: 

(1) Application of Scope to Commodity Contracts; 
(2) Interest Rate Hedging (a.k.a. the risk- free rate issue); 
(3) Foreign Currency Receivables and Payables (a.k.a. the spot forward issue); and 
(4) Hedging Foreign Currency Risk with Intercompany Derivatives (a.k.a. the central treasury issue).

ACCOUNTING RESEARCH MANAGER Arthur Andersen's Accounting Research Manager product, an Internet tool for accounting and SEC research, is highly regarded by many FEI members as being one of the leading tools in the field. In addition to the U.S. version, Andersen released its U.K. version on February 29. FEI members get a discount of 5% on the initial purchase. You can also sign up for a 30-day trial. For more information visit: http://www.arm.arthurandersen.com. To get the discount, indicate on the order form that you are an FEI member.

MONEY SAVING WEB TOOLS The Philadelphia Chapter had a great meeting recently where Rich Routhier, American Express Senior Vice President for Middle Markets, addressed how new web tools can save your firm money, boost profitability and increase shareholder value. The turnout was terrific -- good program content is a sure fire way to get good meeting attendance. Keep up the good work Philadelphia. A copy of Rick's remarks are available at: http://www.fei.org/download/RickRouthierFEISpeech.doc .

HARVARD PROGRAM I still think the Harvard Program on strategic finance is the single best thing finance professionals can do to move their skills up another level. Check out the program at: http://www.fei.org/confsem/SEFM/harvardCFO.htm . The program, cases and faculty are absolutely the best. The rooms in the HBS residence halls have nothing but a single bed and computer. All one needs in life.


On behalf of all of us at Enfish Technology, I am very pleased to announce the upcoming release of our latest offering, Enfish(r) Onespace. I am sending you this exclusive email invitation because of your interest in our first product, Enfish Tracker Pro.

Enfish Onespace presents entirely new dimensions of integrated functionality for your PC and the Internet that have never before been available. And what’s even more exciting, is that we are providing it to you as a FREE Internet service.

By simply clicking on this Enfish Onespace link http://205.231.211.98/  you can be one of the very first people to experience the many exciting benefits of this unique multi-purpose technology.

WHAT IS ENFISH ONESPACE?

Enfish Onespace acts like a personal desktop portal, enabling you to work with all the information you want from both your PC and the Internet in one convenient place. Also, because of its unique design, it is the only portal today that keeps your personal information on your own PC, not on the Internet – providing you with maximum privacy and control.

Enfish Onespace is a "smart" browser enhancement to Microsoft(r) Internet Explorer that provides you with a fully customizable, multi-layered view of all the Web pages that are important to you. With a simple click or two, you can email your customized Enfish Onespace pages to your friends and colleagues.

We have posted a special Web site for our beta version users at http://205.231.211.98/.  
Please feel free to browse this site to look at FAQs, user profiles, 
and other helpful information.

Louise J. Wannier [teammsg8@enfish.com


Introducing new Media Center Plus! It's your one-stop source for digital content management - photos, MP3 sound files, MPEG and AVI videos, and more. With Media Center Plus, simply organize your files into albums and use the convenient thumbnail display to locate files fast. Then select one of the publishing options - including Export to HTML and print - that let you easily share files with family, friends, and coworkers. Media Center Plus makes media management and sharing a snap.

And now you can buy new Media Center Plus for only $19 US ($29 CDN) - a savings of $20 US ($30 CDN) off the suggested price of $39 US ($59 CDN)! Order yours today - click here: http://www.jasc.com/jascstore/23865 


Richard Campbell is another daring professor with hope!

I've got a brief demo of the above on my new web site, which is still not ready for prime time. I am just experimenting with video streaming from a RealServer using the SureStream technology of RealNetworks. This technology , which senses the connection speed of the user and adjusts delivery accordingly. Furthermore, by streaming from a RealServer G2, I can stream up to 20? streams simultaneously. So I guess I'm asking for performance feedback. My "camera work" will get better as I experiment with compromises between file size and window size. Here is the link - It's the third one in the Gallery and you'll need the RealPlayer G2 to run it. (link is on the site below. www.VirtualPublishing.Net/gallery.htm 

Richard J. Campbell http://www.rj-int.com  RJ Interactive "bringing the excitement of accounting to multimedia" mailto:campbell@rj-int.com 


Can hackers kill credit cards? --- http://www.msnbc.com/news/382141.asp?cp1=1 

March 15 — He calls himself “The Saint of E-commerce.” Two months ago, “Curador” started posting his catalog of stolen credit card numbers on his Web page. He’s stolen database after database from a variety of e-commerce sites, each time updating his site, then gleefully mailing notification to reporters. He’s up to 25,000 records now from 13 Web sites, and still going. Despite all that the financial risk and all that violation of personal privacy, no one can stop him. Perhaps instead, we’ll have to stop using credit cards.


HUD Is Latest Federal Agency to Plan Internet Oversight --- From Internet World News March 17, 2000

The agency that manages the government's programs related to housing and the economic development of cities said this week that it will create a national task force to fight hate and discrimination on the Internet.

HUD will direct $200,000 for the task force, which will include Internet industry representatives and civil liberties groups. The task force will hold meetings across the country to develop strategies against hate and discrimination. "Housing discrimination is just as illegal in cyberspace as it is in our cities, our suburbs and our rural areas," HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo said in a statement announcing the task force. "The Internet is not sanctuary from the rule of law."


Computer Curriculum Corporation helps young and old find online help in over 9,000 skills --- http://www.ccclearn.com/ 

Computer Curriculum Corporation, a unit of Pearson Education, is the leading provider of K-12 educational software and services to schools.

Computer Curriculum Corporation Receives Highest Customer Satisfaction Ratings for Helping Educators Meet Their Goals.


From the Los Angeles Times --- http://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/20000316/t000025020.html 

The digital divide may be narrowing between haves and have-nots in terms of access, but experts say the gap in content is enormous. A study released Wednesday found that at least 50 million Americans are poorly served by the Internet because of a dearth of Web sites targeting the needs of people with low incomes and those who don't read or speak English well.


List members will have been aware, via Double Entries if in no other way, of recent pronouncements by the SEC on revenue recognition. Indeed Chairman Levitt has been pounding away on these issues for quite some time. The most recent high tech company to run foul of the revenue recognition issue is MicroStrategy (remember Informix a couple of years ago? -- this is a re-run). Here is an item from InformationWeek on MicroStrategy's earnings restatement and the market response. Now, call me naive, but I would have thought that the market would have seen through this manipulation? ;^) A 60+% change in capitalization? After all, don't we know that *everyone* does this except Microsoft that does the exact reverse (i.e. postpone revenue)?

- MicroStrategy Stock Takes A Dive On Restated Earnings

MicroStrategy Inc.'s stock price plummeted nearly 62% Monday after the company disclosed that it will restate its sales and earnings for 1998 and 1999 because of a change in the way it accounts for software sales. The move means the business-intelligence software vendor will report a loss for fiscal 1999 ended Dec. 31 and reduced earnings for 1998.

MicroStrategy frequently sells its software bundled with services for large, lengthy projects. Until now the company has often accounted for the software portion of those deals as up-front revenue. But on the advice of its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, MicroStrategy will account for software-related revenue over the life of the contract, deferring sales from one quarter or year to the next. According to the company, the move conforms to recent accounting policy changes suggested by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the accounting profession.

The company expects the change in accounting procedures to reduce reported 1999 sales from $205.3 million to somewhere between $150 million and $155 million, and earnings from 15 cents per share to a loss of between 43 and 51 cents per share. Reported sales for 1998 will decrease from $106.4 million to somewhere between $95.9 million and $100.9 million, and earnings from 8 cents per share to between 4 cents and 1 cent per share. Deferred revenue as of Dec. 31, 1999, will increase from $16.8 million to somewhere between $66.5 million and $76.5 million.

News of the financial restatements caused MicroStrategy's stock to lose 61.74% of its value yesterday, dropping to 86-3/4 per share from Friday's close of 226-3/4 per share. MicroStrategy executives were not available for comment. - Rick Whiting

See how MicroStrategy compares in the market for business- intelligence software at http://www.informationweek.com/773/vabusint.htm 

Roger Debreceny, PhD, FCPA
CMA Nanyang Business School
Nanyang Technological University, Room S3-B1-B61 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798 rogerd@netbox.com  adebreceny@ntu.edu.sg  http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/adebreceny  
ICQ 22958324 Ph: +65 790 6049 Fax: +65 791 3697


Selling furniture online is one of "the hardest to crack" --- From Internet World News March 17, 2000

HomePoint Corp. will temporarily suspend its consumer retail operations and focus on improving its online marketplace for furniture makers and sellers.

The South Carolina company, which had aggressively developed a hybrid strategy that enabled consumers to buy online or get a referral to a local retailer, in January completed a funding round that brought its total capital raised to $75 million.

Its decision to shut its online store further limits an already shrinking field in online furniture sales. GoodHome, which is backed by Hearst New Media and The Learning Company, and FurnitureFind merged in February. The online consumer furniture market is unproven and considered among the hardest to crack, with problems relating to the nature of direct retailing itself, such as high shipping costs and the fact that consumers can't inspect merchandise.

Peapod is also having a rough go of it selling groceries online --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,34995,00.html 

Peapod, which has run up big operating losses since its initial public offering in 1997, said it would examine its options, including other financing or a possible sale of the company. The Skokie, Illinois-based company delivers grocery items to households from distribution centers after customers place their orders online.

The canceled investment comes at a time when most online grocers are struggling to gain a secure foothold in an increasingly crowded and unproven business. Peapod's competitors include Webvan Group (WBVN) and HomeGrocer.com. whose IPO last week was given a lukewarm reception from investors.


Every once in a while I have to be reminded to take a look at http://www.isworld.org/isworld/isworldtext.html 
This is a wonderful resource site for information systems topics and e-Commerce.


It took a Princeton man (Curtis Brown) to point out the Texas Almanac at http://www.texasalmanac.com/homepage_2000.htm 
(statistics, data)


Psychology Resources: A Guide to Conducting Internet Research in Psychology (Research)  http://www.psychologyresources.net/site/resources.htm 


Poker Pages (Entertainment, Gambling) --- http://www.pokerpages.com/


Earth From Above (Amazing Photography) http://home.fujifilm.com/efa/ 


Providing untethered Internet access to users is the next step for dot-coms and intranets. But will sorting out the puzzle knock IT off balance?  http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt0003201/2461853/ 


From the Rocket eBook Newsletter on March 17, 2000

First day demand was overwhelming for Stephen King's latest work, "Riding the Bullet." If you haven't done so already, downloaded it today and read it on your Rocket eBook. Here's the skinny:

Powells.com carries this title in RocketEdition FREE through Sunday, March 19, $2.50 after. Download it at http://www.powells.com/search/DTSearch/search?isbn=0-743-20467-0 

bn.com (Barnes&Noble) carries this title for $2.50. Download it at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bookshelf/ebooks/king.asp?userid=4J76CATTQO&srefer 

We want to hear from you! Take our eBook Snapshot Survey at http://www.pollweb.com/Poll.asp?PollId=5141 

When you've finished, don't forget to add your comments to the exciting discussion about this groundbreaking e-story at eBookNet.com. Get in on the action at http://www.ebooknet.com/cgi-bin/WebX?128@@.ee6fbc4  - 2.1.


NEW FEATURES from The Wall Street Journal at WSJ.com.

We've added another key personalization feature to our ranks -- the ability to receive a custom e-mail alert whenever we add a new job opening that matches your specific criteria.

This new personal-search agent makes it more efficient than ever before to uncover opportunities in the popular careers.wsj.com JobSeek database. To sign up for these e-mail alerts, visit http://careers.wsj.com  and click the JobSeek Agent link within the JobSeek database. Then simply specify your criteria and decide how often you want to receive alerts. You can also create multiple job alerts if you're keeping tabs on a variety of available opportunities, or want to segment the information you receive.

For those times when you want to conduct a full search of the thousands of jobs currently offered in the JobSeek database, we've also added some new, high-powered ways to focus your search. These include:

-- The ability to refine your keyword search by also specifying the city, state, industry/function and/or company you want.

-- The ability to search exclusively for job ads that appeared in The Wall Street Journal by geographic location and industry/function.

On a related note, we've also added another site to our growing family -- college.wsj.com. This unique, free site is a great resource for those who are embarking on a first-time career as well as their parents. It offers searchable, entry-level jobs and internship listings, as well as an extensive collection of news, information and tools that help with the critical transition from college student to professional. Visit it at http://college.wsj.com

Sincerely, Tony Lee Editor in Chief/General Manager careers.wsj.com 


Women in Politics: Bibliographic Database http://www.ipu.org/bdf-e/BDfsearch.asp 


Human Rights Watch World Report 2000 - http://www.hrw.org/wr2k/ 

ThisNation: The American Government and Politics --- http://www.thisnation.com/index.shtml 
The most comprehensive guide to American government and politics on the net.

Big brother can now record your every bite --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,34853,00.html 

Since September, orthodontist Michael McNeil of Corpus Christi, Texas, has been using the new headgear, which monitors compliance with a small infrared device attachment that records motion and relays it to a database.

He says the results with his 30 young patients, most between 10 and 12 years old, have been tremendous.

"It definitely works better," he said. "I plan to never go back [to traditional headgear]."

McNeil says it's a combination of fear and motivation that makes children actually wear the new headgear.

"It's kind of like big brothers watching over them. They know they can't cheat," McNeil said.


i-Opener --- http://www.netpliance.com/index.asp 


I added the following to my Career Passed Away document at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/cpaaway.htm 

From InformationWeek Online on March 21, 2000
Andersen Consulting revealed plans Monday to use E-business as a weapon in the war to retain and attract consulting talent. The consulting firm plans to reward its employees for their loyalty and performance through a $200 million fund that provides bonus compensation in the form of investment holdings.

The investments will be made in companies in which Andersen has an equity stake, including Avanade, Covation, Blue Martini, ChemConnect, and Snowdrops.com. Andersen Consulting Ventures, the consulting firm's venture-fund unit, will manage the investments, which are set to total $100 million per year.

Andersen Consulting will begin awarding the new compensation in September for loyalty and performance. Loyalty awards will go to all employees--consultants and support staff-- who've been with the firm for at least three years. Performance awards are available to consultants judged by a set of criteria that includes client service, skill, professional competence, and the ability to develop personnel.

"To be successful, we need to be nimble and execute on our plans. This means keeping talent," says managing partner Bob Gach. Andersen faces competition for talent from the high- tech industry, Wall Street, other large consulting firms, and the dot-com community.


Serious and secure software to help parents track progress of children in school --- http://www.chancery.com/ 
(There are also other topics of interest to parents and teachers at this website.)


From the Scout Report

Beliefnet.com http://www.beliefnet.com/ 

Founded by a former national editor for _US News and World Report_ and the founder of _The New England Monthly_, this site is designed "to do whatever it takes to help individuals meet their own needs in the realm of religion, spirituality and morality." The site is a smorgasbord of inspiration, reportage, instruction, and commentary on religious and spiritual issues and experience. Menu sections include religion, spirituality, news, culture, family, teens, and milestones. There are columns here from top religion journalists across the country, special features on politics and religion (this week's deals with George Bush Jr. and the Christian Right) as well as cultural issues (such as the effort to censor _Huckleberry Finn_), spiritual advice from the Dalai Lama, guided meditations, reports on developments in various spiritual communities from Mormons to American Buddhists, and much, much more. While the site offers a vast array of materials, these materials are all from high quality, reputable sources in their respective fields. Thankfully, the site does offer a search engine. We suspect such a site could only be created by (and for) America's prodigious spiritual diversity.


From the Scout Report

Center for Nonverbal Studies: _The Nonverbal Dictionary_ http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/index.htm 

The Center for Nonverbal Studies, a private, nonprofit research center located on the West Coast whose mission is to advance the study of human communication in all forms apart from language, offers online _The Nonverbal Dictionary of Gestures, Signs, and Body Language Cues_. Compiled by PhD David B. Givens and drawing on the work of anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists, linguists, psychiatrists, psychologists, semioticians, and others who study communication, this text is a fascinating compendium of brief essays on the way we say things without saying anything. From automobile grilles to folded arms to lawn ornaments to high heels, this text elucidates the language of nonverbal communication. New entries are added on a regular basis and featured at the Center's What's New page. The Website is affiliated with the Center for Ethnographic Research (CER) at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.


Helpers for students in core curriculum courses in college --- http://www.smarthinking.com/ 

Welcome to SMARTHINKING, providing online, real-time academic support for higher education students taking core courses. SMARTHINKING understands that education is about people and is facilitating learning by connecting learners to e-structors, SMARTHINKING's qualified tutors. During the spring 2000 semester, SMARTHINKING is working with higher education institutions to conduct a free pilot program of our services.


Will the English language continue to dominate the Internet? See http://www.prospect.org/archives/V11-10/nunberg-g.html 

The Internet was basically an American development, and it naturally spread most rapidly among the other countries of the English-speaking world. Right now, for example, there are roughly as many Internet users in Australia as in either France or Italy, and the English-speaking world as a whole accounts for over 80 percent of top-level Internet hosts and generates close to 80 percent of Internet traffic.

It isn't surprising, then, that the Web is dominated by English. Two years ago my colleague Hinrich Schütze and I used an automatic language identification procedure to survey about 2.5 million Web pages and found that about 85 percent of the text was in English. The overall proportion of English may have diminished since then--a 1999 survey of several hundred million pages done at ExciteHome showed English with 72 percent, followed by Japanese with 7 percent and German with 5 percent, and then by French, Chinese, and Spanish, all with between 1 and 2 percent. Figures like these are invariably inexact. But there's no question that the proportion of English will remain disproportionately high for some time to come, if only because use of the Web is still growing faster in the English-speaking world than in most other language communities--in the past two years, the number of Internet hosts in English-speaking countries has increased by about 450 percent, against 420 percent in Japan, 375 percent in the French-speaking world, and 250 percent in the German-speaking world.

To a lot of observers, all of this suggests that the Internet is just one more route along which English will march on an ineluctable course of world conquest. The Sunday New York Times ran a story a while ago with the headline "World, Wide, Web: 3 English Words," and the editor of a magazine called The Futurist predicts that, thanks to new technologies, English will become the native language of a majority of the world by some time in the next century. Indeed, one linguist has suggested in all earnestness that the United Nations should simply declare English the official world language, but rename it Globalese, so as not to imply that it belongs to any one speech community anymore.


HighWire Press from Stanford University --- http://highwire.stanford.edu/ 
Journals in science, technology, and medicine.  Over 100,000 full-text articles that can be accessed at no charge plus hundreds of thousands of additional articles for paying subscribers.

The above website also features digital publishing news.


Help in finding whether your research and writing has been put up on the web and/or is being used without your permission (copyright protection)  --- http://www.loran.com/ 

Loran Techologies, Inc. is really more than a detective.  It is an e-Commerce resource company.  

Loran Technologies is the leader in readying networks for e-business. With an ultra-rapid, low cost deployment, Loran delivers network management appliances that provide the enhanced availability, performance, cost-effectiveness, and controls required by e-business.

In today's economy, competitiveness is increasingly a function of information systems. To succeed, companies are looking to deploy applications that enhance every aspect of their business. ERP and e-procurement solutions are critical to efficient production of goods and services, while data mining, CRM, and e-commerce systems are enabling companies to market and sell more effectively than ever before.

The sampling of Loran's customer list is varied but nevertheless impressive:

Government

Industry

Education


Save the Otter Project --- http://www.otterproject.org/ 


Yahoo! FinanceVision (investing and finance) http://financevision.yahoo.com/ 


Conner Prairie (a living history of early settlers) ---  http://www.connerprairie.org/home.html 


How do you spell RELIEF?  --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,35079,00.html 

Setting a new record, researchers at Lucent's Bell Labs have for the first time managed to push an astonishing 3.28 terabits per second of data over a long stretch of fiber-optic cable.


Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology --- http://www.harcourt.com/dictionary/ 

And don't forget Bob Jensen's listing of Science and Technology Glossaries --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/booktech.htm 


Discovery.com: Great Books Series (literature)  --- http://school.discovery.com/ontv/themes/greatbooks.html 


Virtual Tokyo http://lightning.prohosting.com/~danders/ 


WebExhibits (art) --- http://webexhibits.com/ 


WhoelPeople (health) --- http://www.wholepeople.com/ 


100Mb of free storage for your files --- http://www.netdrive.com/ 


Minax Tarantulas (spiders, biology)  http://hem.spray.se/minax/ 


For my friend in Alaska (Tom Robinson) --- Auroras 2000 (northern lights) http://www.exploratorium.edu/auroras/ 


For Jan Williams:  Total Baseball Weekly --- http://www.totalbaseballweekly.com/ 


Kasparov Chess--- http://www.kasparovchess.com/ 


For Kevin Nickels
Robot kits and resources --- http://www.totalrobots.com 


Share photographs and files for free --- http://cgi.zdnet.com/slink?26930:2700840 


Accounting Software, e-Commerce, Inventory Control

Check out Cam Data at www.camdata.com . They provide point-of-sale and inventory control software and are moving it on-line to the e-commerce marketplace.

Douglas R. Lovett, CPA Geffen, Mesher & Co., P.C. 888 SW Fifth, Suite 800 Portland, OR 97204 (503)221-0141 (800)819-0141


Thanks to Bob Overn for the tip on Origins and Design ---  http://www.arn.org/ 


Is your back end covered?  From Webmonkey's Frontdoor on March 21:  

Have you been casing a site you think you might want to work for? Or maybe stalking a competitor? Viewing their source, looking for clever and/or shoddy code? Well, while you're at it, take a gander at their back end, with NetCraft, a handy little service that probes Web sites to determine what OS and Web server they're running. They also maintain a survey of how many servers worldwide are running what.

Apache is the leading web server --- http://www.netcraft.com/survey/ 


Check out the Journal of Mundane Behavior at: www.mundanebehavior.org 
Aaron Konstam

I checked it out and found out the following:

The Journal of Mundane Behavior, hosted by the Department of Sociology and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at California State University, Fullerton, is a new scholarly journal devoted to the study of the "unmarked" -- those aspects of our everyday lives that typically go unnoticed by us, both as academics and as everyday individuals.


The AccountingWEB Friday Wrap-Up Newswire - Issue 36 March 31, 2000 http://www.accountingweb.com 

1. Non-CPAs Making Headway In Traditional CPA Roles 
2. Microsoft Ditches Tax Prep Plans - Orrtax Picks Up The Product 
3. Finding The Best of the Web For Small Biz 
4. CPA/Client Confidentiality Principle is Victorious 
5. Develop QuickBooks Training and Support As A New Service Area 
6. The Key To Differentiation 
7. PWC Says No To SEC's Big Brother Campaign 
8. Attention Staff Recruiters: Better Spiff Up That Web Site 
9. New Technology/E-Commerce Security Firm is Formed 
10. Internet Tip: Find Prospective Client Leads Online


Pro2Net Accounting (formerly AccountingNet) Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of March 27, 2000 

1. This Week's Accounting-Specific Headlines 
2. Feature Articles for Public Accountants 
3. Scholarship Winners Announced 
4. Feature Articles for Private Accountants 
5. This Week's Hot Talk Interview 
6. Win Accounting Courses From CPA Trak 
7. Survey Results: What is your opinion of PwC's recent independence violations? 
8. Our Tip of the Week

Pro2Net Accounting (formerly AccountingNet) Update http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of April 3, 2000 

1. This Week's Accounting-Specific Headlines 
2. Feature Articles for Public Accountants 
3. April 15th is Just Around the Corner… 
4. Feature Articles for Private Accountants 
5. This Week's Forum Spotlight 
6. Gain Exposure. Get Published. 
7. Survey Results: Which product offers the best interpretation of federal tax law? 
8. Our Tip of the Week: Getting leads for your business


AccountingStudents Newsletter: March 21, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. Multiple Guess (Oops...Choice) Test-Taking Strategies 
2. Vicki Zahand on the Benefits Consulting Industry 
3. Win a Free CPA Review Course from BeckerConviser 
4. Survey Results: Do you feel your professors give you the full picture of your accounting career options? 
5. Site of the Week: freescholarships.com 
6. Tip of the Week: Reading Materials for Future Accountants 
7. Win Online Accounting Classes from CPA Trak

AccountingStudents Newsletter: March 28, 2000 http://www.accountingstudents.com 

1. Coming Soon: CPA Exam Tips Package 
2. Get Your Free CMA CD-ROM Review Demo Disk 
3. Site of the Week: 100hot 
4. Tip of the Week: Web Site Privacy: Know Your Rights 
5. It's Never Too Early to Start Recruiting 
6. More Contests! Enter by March 31 
7. Survey Results: Which search engine do you prefer to use? 
8. Need a Scholarship?


March 18th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Taxman86 Jim Schneider: Tax Savings Advice 
2. Online Real Estate Heats Up... One Word: Microsoft 
3. Does Accounting Matter? Ask the man who lost $6.2 billion 
4. Ohio IMA Council invites Jensen to Speak on SFAS 133; Glen Grey on Business Reporting on the Internet 5. HelpMeeting; Online Conferencing Services 
6. E-Procurement for the Middle Market Just Got Easier 
7. Free Online Security Guide from VeriSign

April 2nd edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. The Power of SMART Pricing.... Leads to Higher Profits 
2. Customer-Centric Restructuring... Is 2000 the Year? 
3. Auditors Alert: 2nd Edition Internet Resources is Here 
4. Tutors for Hire on the Net 
5. Wal-Mart.com... Not quite ready? 
6. Two Free Offers From SBT Accounting Systems 
7. Perfect.. MarryingMan.com Starts on April Fool's Day


It is unfortunate that someone from Microsoft did not sit in on one of Trinity University's great performances of Mozart's Requiem.
Forwarded by Bob Overn

The classically-music-minded among us may have noted a new TV ad for Microsoft's Internet Explorer e-mail program which uses the musical theme of the "Confutatis Maledictis" from Mozart's Requiem.

"Where do you want to go today?" is the cheery line on the screen --- while the chorus sings, "Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis,"

This translates to "The damned and accursed are convicted to the flames of hell."

Good to know that Microsoft has done its research.


Professions Defined --- Forwarded by Dick Haar

A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time.
(There is more than a little truth in this one.)

Actually , a Consultant is someone who asks to borrow your watch, tells you what time it is, THEN  keeps the watch.
Bee, Sarah
[bees@seattleu.edu

A statistician is someone who is good with numbers, but lacks the personality to be an accountant.
(I like this one Diane and Rick --- of course I'm not really sure that lacking such a personality is a bad thing! Remember extroverted accountants look at your shoes when speaking to you.)

A programmer is someone who solves a problem you didn't know you had in a way you don't understand.
(Perhaps the same thing could be said about accounting standard setters --- FASB, IASC, etc. FAS 133 comes to mind.)

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
(Charles R. Darwin)

A topologist is a man who doesn't know the difference between a coffee cup and a doughnut.
(But his failing shows up on his trousers.)

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000 word document and calls it a "brief."
(Franz Kafka)

A psychologist is a man who watches everyone else when a beautiful woman enters the room.
(Is that really true Glenn?)

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.

A school teacher is a disillusioned person who used to think she/he liked children.


From Dick Haar

As they entered the room, the preacher held out his hands and motioned for them to sit on each side of the bed. The preacher grasped their hands, sighed contentedly, smiled, and stared at the ceiling.

For a time, no one said anything. Both the banker and lawyer were touched and flattered that the preacher would ask them to be with him during his final moments. They were also puzzled; the preacher had never given them any indication that he particularly liked either of them.

They both remembered his many long, uncomfortable sermons about greed, covetousness, and avaricious behavior that made them squirm in their seats.

Finally, the banker said, "Preacher, why did you ask us to come?"

The old preacher mustered up his strength and then said weakly, "Jesus died between two thieves, and that's how I want to go."


Debbie's Corner

Arizona State University West

School of Management - (602) 543-6200

Course Descriptions:

ACC 346 Information Systems Management (3) F, S

Information requirements and transaction processing for integrated accounting systems emphasizing database systems analysis and design, controls, and computer processing. Prerequisite: previous course work in information systems or permission of director.

Cool Links:

Arizona Lin ks

Grand Canyon

Local Information Resources

Native American Programs

The mission of Native American Programs is to assist Native American students to obtain a university education by providing recruitment and retention services and activities which facilitate their academic success and graduation from the university.

Services:


Hindsight

Imagine what would happen if your biggest obstacle was removed. Think of what you could do, consider how far you could go, picture all the things you could accomplish. Visualize, in rich detail, what it would be like.

Imagine yourself on the other side of your most daunting challenge. And then look back to see how you got there.

When a difficult challenge lies in front of you, it is hard to see around it. Yet once you're past it, the path you took to get there is clear and obvious. In hindsight, it never looks as overwhelming. Wouldn't it be great if you could look at all your challenges in hindsight? You can – in your mind.

Imagine what it's like to be there, and the way to get there becomes infinitely more clear. See your challenges from the other side, and you'll find your way around them.

Copyright Ralph S. Marston, Jr. Used by permission. From The Daily Motivator® at www.dailymotivator.com 


If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.

Debbie was too busy to search ACE this week.



And that's the way it was on April 4, 2000 with a little help from my friends.  If you are an accounting practitioner or educator, please do not forget to scan http://www.accountingeducation.com/.

 

In March 2000 Forbes named AccountantsWorld.com as the Best Website on the Web --- http://accountantsworld.com/.

 

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
 

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